Designed by a coalition of consumer electronics manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung, LG and Valens, HDBaseT promises to not only carry video and audio signals, but also provide a network connection, a USB signal and even electricity using a single cable.

You won’t even need to buy a fancy new cable to use it. According to the HDBaseT specification chart, you can "use existing network wiring" with a standard Cat5e/6 LAN cable and an RJ-45 connector. The HDBaseT Alliance, which is made up of the aforementioned electronics companies, has just finalised version 1.0 of the spec, and says it will be available for licensing within the second half of this year.

via THINQ.co.uk – TV business kisses HDMI goodbye. This would be awesome, I love the idea of two things, first a single cable to carry everything and second is that it’s a cable already in use. However, just about every 6 months I read another story of a new standard that never goes pass the concept phase.

The demos have three levels of obstacles for non-Safari browsers even if the other browsers implemented the HTML5 features being demoed (only video and audio; the rest is CSS!) and implemented the proposed CSS features once standardized:

via hsivonen – -webkit-HTML5. Apple promotes open standards by calling them by the wrong name and using the most closed version possible to prevent all other browsers from seeing the effects. Oh and one of the demos doesn’t even work in anything other than the latest version of Mac OSX.

Of course, those filters don't actually work, and using them to force entire sites to be blocked, despite them having a relatively tiny proportion of such content isn't just dishonest and underhanded, but dangerous. We're all in favor of trying to stop child porn, but you do that by focusing on the source, not by putting up filters willy-nilly in a misguided attempt to get politicians to also protect your business model.

via Anti-Piracy Group Says: ‘Child Porn Is Great’ Since It Gets Politicians To Block File Sharing Sites – Techdirt. How much a slime ball do you have to be to use child porn to keep your obsolete business model profitable?

WOMEN now outnumber men at elite colleges, law schools, medical schools and in the overall work force. Yet a stark imbalance of the sexes persists in the high-tech world, where change typically happens at breakneck speed.

via Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley? – NYTimes.com. Not only did the article discuss the challenges women face in the technology realm but also how women have to face the difficult decision of children or career and women can be happy choosing a career.

A lot of startup business models involve building products that fill gaps in existing platforms. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and there have been a few success stories. But if you don’t own the platform, or if you aren’t wildly successful at filling the gap you’re taking a really big risk.

via The Dangers of Building on Someone Else’s Platform | trevoro.ca | blog. There is a definite and real danger to merely filling the gaps in other platforms, generally whatever you can do the company building the platform can do or buy the ability to do.

This is quite an endorsement for Canon, with a network giant entrusting the finale of one of its most popular shows to the 5D Mark II (which happens to be the first digital camera to take the Presidential portrait as well).

via House Season Finale Filmed Entirely with Canon 5D Mark II. Impressive number ones for the camera both as a video and still camera.

Hard on the heels of iPad-mania and a new update for the iPhone’s operating system, Apple continues to ride the product wave this month (and its only half gone) with the introduction of upgraded MacBook Pro notebook computers that the company says will run as faster speeds and with longer battery lives.

via Apple Refreshes MacBooks – Gadgetwise Blog – NYTimes.com. What other company gets free advertising in the New York Times when they just update their lineup of computers.

iBooks’ use of tons of private APIs is frustrating on a few levels, the biggest that it makes all third-party reading-related apps second-class citizens.

via Marco.org – iBooks and private APIs. I have to agree if Apple is going to distribute apps through the App Store, they should be required to not use private API’s. It’s a matter of conflict those applications are fighting for the same end users as are other applications and now Apple has given them an immediate and certain advantage.

Let's forget that the statement ignores the fact that there are plenty of businesses built on the OSS model (RedHat, WordPress, Canonical for starters). But beyond that, it seems astonishing to me that anyone should imply that simply recommending open source products – products that can be more easily tailored without infringing licensing rules – “undermines” anything.

via When using open source makes you an enemy of the state | Technology | guardian.co.uk. Cory Doctorow tries to make sense of a loss in logic by the IIPA.

“What if instead of adding new features, a company concentrated on making the service or product much easier to use? Or making it much easier to access the advanced features it already has, but that few can master? Maybe what they lose in market share in one area will be more than compensated for in another area. In a lot of markets, it’s gotten so bad out there that simply being usable is enough to make a product truly remarkable.”—Kathy Sierra

via Make Less More – 52 Weeks of UX. What if indeed. I distinctly recall one commercial software project that had a glowing review due to this.