YouTube looking to offer paid channel subscriptions as early as Q2

According to several sources, YouTube hopes to begin offering paid subscription channels which will offer premium, produced content.

In an attempt to lure producers away from the traditional television avenues of content delivery, Google is looking to become the first production company for online content capable of reaching such broad audience.

YouTube has allegedly reached out a select group of channel producers inquiring whether they would like to create channels with paid content, the price of which would be between $1 and $5 a month.

There’s also talk of providing paid access to coverage of live events via pay-per-view, or for specific self-help or financial advice programs.

Likely, the initial group of paid channels will be small, with around 25 being submitted for the trial run, the first of which could appear as early as this Spring.

NVIDIA allegedly to manufacture low-cost Android devices for other companies

Following the rather modest success of the Tegra platform in the smartphone and tablet segment, it seems NVIDIA is now gunning for a bigger share of the pie, so far dominated by the likes of Qualcomm and Mediatek.

According to Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-review.com, NVIDIA is planning on manufacturing smartphones and tablets of its own and will be selling them to companies to be rebranded and sold under their brand.

The plan is to manufacture reference designs for smartphones and tablets, the way they do it for their computer graphic cards (or Intel does for their phones). Then, instead of selling these designs under their own brand name, NVIDIA will license it to companies, who will then rebrand them and sell it in markets around the world. We already see this happening a lot in markets such as Russia and India, where several companies are selling what are essentially cheap, China-made devices under their own brand name.

What this will do is help increase the penetration of the Tegra platform, especially into the budget handset market, which undeniably forms the major portion of all the Android device sales.

This plan is expected to go into action by May-June this year, with both budget as well as premium

WiMAX Forum Issues Requirements for Smart Grids for Utility Networks

WiMAX Forum has announced the publication of “WiMAX Forum® System Profile Requirements for Smart Grid Applications”.

This document codifies work done on WiGRID^TM, an optimized IEEE 802.16 system profile being developed by the WiMAX Forum against the requirements of the Utility companies. This set of requirements was assembled by the WiMAX Forum’s Smart Grid Working Group, which is composed of technical representatives from major electric power utilities, WiMAX vendors and industry experts.

“Approval of the WIMAX System Profile Requirements for Smart Grid Applications document establishes WiMAX as a technology capable of meeting the demands of Smart Grid wireless application,” stated Eugene Crozier, 1800 WG, UTC Canada and Chair of the WiMAX Forum’s Smart Grid Working Group.

“The publication specifically provides the implementation details to meet typical utility use cases and describes the WiMAX specifications required of equipment used for electricity management. It was developed by manufacturers and utilities working together, and is an important step in the road to standardization and certification of IEEE 802.16 products for use in utility networks.”

The proposed WiGRID System profile is an Ethernet version of IEEE 802.16 that includes numerous new features that allow uplink centric data communications, lower latency, extended range, and enables the use of new frequency bands that various Utilities hold, namely 1.4 GHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 3.65 GHz and 5.8 GHz.

“Electric utilities require nearly ubiquitous telecommunications coverage over their service areas to enable ‘Smart Grid’ applications,” said Paul Senior, Vice Chair of the WiMAX Forum Smart Grid Working Group andCTO of Airspan Networks.“WiGRID technology provides a reliable wireless communications medium to ensure Smart Grid functionality, and is an excellent complement to wireline technologies already in use. Our new requirements document provides utilities and vendors with the information they need to advance this revolution in field area networking technology.”

The WiMAX Forum’s mission is to facilitate the adoption of WiMAX and WiGRID technology across the world and ensure that industry products are interoperable. The publication of the WiMAX Forum® System Profile Requirements for Smart Grid Applications document is the latest step in the organization’s continuing effort to support utilities across the globe.

Wateen has been at the forefront of advocating the adoption of smart grids for electricity and gas to resolve the issues facing the consumption of energy in Pakistan.

ITU approves H.265 codec, paves the way for smaller video file downloads

H.265, the successor to the highly popular H.264 video codec, used for over 80 percent of all the online video, has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), allowing it to be used for the creation of video content that is significantly smaller in size than what we have today.

Known also as High Efficiency Video Coded, H.265 allows file sizes that can be around half as much as the current H.264 encoded videos while maintaining the video quality. This allows content providers to supply much smaller files with the same quality, thus reducing the time required to download or stream the video.

But there is another advantage to this. Because the file sizes are now lower, you can have higher resolution videos, such as in 4K, without having obscenely large file sizes.

Of course, for all this to happen, content creators will need to adopt the format quickly for encoding their content. Moreover, hardware and software will also need to be updated to support playback. Hopefully, both these things will happen sooner rather than later.

Kanguru Defender DualTrust Encrypted USB Drive Secures Web Browsing

Secure, encrypted USB flash drive is nothing new. What about an encrypted USB drive with a secure virtual web browsing enviroment. This is exactly what Kanguru’s new Defender DualTrust USB device does. In addition to providing encrypted file storage, the drive also offers a built-in virtual safe, secure web browsing environment for online banking, bill payment, browsing and investment activity, protecting your sensitive personal data.

The Defender DualTrust utilizes 256-bit AES hardware encryption (FIPS 197) to keep data safe and protected. When you plug the drive into a computer, the drive launches a Linux-based secure browsing environment isolated from host OS and vulnerabilities such as viruses, malware or spyware. Each session will start a new Chrome browser and no trace of your activity will be left behind. Files you downloaded to the flash drive will be automatically encrypted.

The Defender DualTrust has 7GB of free space for secure storage. It comes pre-loaded with Bitdefender Antivirus with 30 days free trail. The drive is priced at $99.95.