As Published In September/October 2006

Wireless Skype, cooler servers, and more-effective ads

Skype Anytime, Anywhere

Skype is changing the world of communications by allowing users to talk from PC to PC for free using internet telephony. Skype's limitation—until now—has been that users needed to be near a PC with an internet connection. NETGEAR is taking Skype to the next level with the Skype WiFi Phone, which leverages wireless internet networks to allow users to make free calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world, anytime there is Wi-Fi access, without a PC. The phone's display shows all of a user's contacts who are currently online. And like other Skype phones, NETGEAR's phone lets users make calls to ordinary phones for just pennies a minute. NETGEAR is making true mobile wireless internet telephony a reality, especially as cities such as San Francisco move to Wi-Fi-enable the entire city at no cost to end users. Who needs a cellular phone?

Measuring Memorable Advertisements

Web Locator NETGEAR Skype WiFi Phone NeuroFocus HP Electric-Ducted Fans

Do you have a favorite television commercial, yet you have no idea what product is being advertised? While many advertising campaigns are memorable, some fail because viewers don't retain information about the product or company. Most businesses face the enormous and potentially costly issue of deciding how to advertise their product effectively. A company called NeuroFocus has a solution that measures the effectiveness of all types of advertising, including online, TV, radio, and print. A team of neurophysiologists and psychometrics scientists use quantitative indicators of attention, emotional engagement, and memory calculated from each millisecond of neurological data recorded by high-density arrays composed of millions of sensors as test subjects are shown advertisements. This measurement is used to determine which aspects of the message contribute most and least to its overall effect. The solution offers potential benefits for advertising and public relations agencies, corporate marketing departments, political campaign offices, and design firms.

Cool It

Walk into any server room and you'll feel the heat—and every new generation of processors generates even more. Engineers must find cooling fans that are both small enough to fit inside smaller server chassis and powerful enough to dissipate increasing amounts of heat. HP engineers have turned to model jet planes for inspiration. The company is using electric-ducted fans (EDFs), originally developed to power radio-controlled jets, to cool its next generation of servers. Essentially propellers in a box, the fans produce enough air pressure to cool even the hottest of servers. In EDFs, the blades are placed inside a tube, or duct. Shorter than typical propeller blades, these blades spin faster and create more thrust. The duct reduces noise and prevents air vortexes from forming around the tips of the blades—which saps the thrust produced by traditional propellers. Since servers don't need thrust, the blades have been redesigned to produce pressure. The fan blades force air into a server's chassis, so that a certain volume of air per minute flows past the heat sinks, carrying heat away through convection.