The PC desktop of the future might leap from the 2 dimensions of old-- MIT graduate Jinha Lee presents the SpaceTop at the 2013 TED conference, a 3D desktop environment where users "reach inside" the computer.

First developed at Microsoft Applied Science, the SpaceTop desktop unites 2D touch-based UIs, gesture-based control systems (such as Leap Motion or Kinect devices) and 3D visuals with the combination of transparent LED display, keyboard and a pair of cameras.

Users place their hands behind the transparent display, which acts as a "box" one manipulates the UI in. One camera tracks hand gestures in 3 dimensions (allowing users to grasp and flick through objects on the display) while the other camera tracks eye position to maintain the illusory 3D environment on the display.

SpaceTop demos shows different interactions, including one where one hand scrolling through a document before the other reaches up and flips through a pile of folders and another where a 3D model is created with free-form manipulation.

Several key products make an appearance at the Haivision ISE 2013 stand-- including the new Makito X2 encoder and a low-cost take on IPTV with the Torpedo gateways and Amino STBs.

The Makito X2 is Haivision's next generation H.264 encoding platform, claiming to produce twice the quality (or half the bandwidth) of the competition. It features dual-channel HD encoding with only 55msec latency and simultaneous multiple bit rates (MBRs) from each source and an extensive feature set.

It is available as either standalone appliance or within a 1RU rackmount enclosure supporting up to x12 channels of HD encoding.

Haivision also promises easier IPTV with InStream Amino, a free video player application for the Amino STB. The software presents channels and related guide information directly from DVB sources (such as the Torpedo DVB to IP gateways), with DVB source aggregation from multiple gateways. Read more...

A development by University College London (UCL) might just bring an end to the infamous blue screen of death-- a "systemic" computer able to instantly recover from crashes by repairing corrupt data.

The researchers say the self-healing computer takes inspiration from the apparent chaos of nature. The computer divides context-sensitive data and instructions into small systems (each with own memory allocation) before choosing the order tasks are executed via pseudorandom number generator.

Systems carry out instructions simultaneously, with computation results emerging from random interaction. It sounds like something that shouldn't work, but apparently it not only does, but does so much faster than expected.

"[Natural] processes are distributed, decentralised and probabilistic," UCL computer scientist Peter Bentley tells New Scientist. "And they are fault tolerant, able to heal themselves. A computer should be able to do that."

According to Gartner Q4 2012 W. European PC shipments drop by -11.7% Y-o-Y to 15.3 million units, with declines across all PC segments as the market continues its shift towards tablets and mobile devices. 

"The PC market in W. Europe is in a downward spiral," Gartner says. "In 2012, it experienced the 2nd consecutive year of decline, but less steeply than in 2011, when the PC market in W. Europe decreased -14%. The 2nd consecutive yearly decline indicates that the issues the PC market faces are beyond a weak economy, a poorly understood new OS, or Ultramobiles being priced too high to generate demand.” 

Mobile and desktop PC shipments drop by -12.1% and -10.9% respectively in Q4 2012, the professional segment drops by -4.9% (a less severe decline thanks to replacement purchases) and consumer shipments decline by -17.6% Y-o-Y. 

HP remains the W. European market leader, even if it lost share in the mobile and home PC segments (leading to a -8.8% Y-o-Y drop in shipments), with 21.5% market share thanks to leadership within the desktop and professional markets.  Read more...