Tech Brief
On Tech Brief today: A backpack-sized artificial heart, a Flash video plug-in which doesn't play video, and a map of the Twitterverse.
• The United States Food and Drug Administration has just approved .
Patients requiring a heart machine are normally stuck in hospital, attached to a device weighing close to 200kg, so the first user of the backpack-sized heart, 43-year-old Charles Okeke, was thrilled:
"I am about as happy of a person as you can have right now... to be able to sleep in my own bed after two years on a hospital bed, you can't imagine."
• There was a launch for an Adobe Flash plug-in for smartphones, as well as a new Android smartphone operating system at Google's recent I/O developer conference.
Technology writer of Google's new Android Operating System 2.2 for mobile phones, codenamed Froyo.
But she also found that the Flash plug-in for smartphones does not yet work with media from the popular video sites Hulu or Vimeo:
"On Hulu I got a 'your device isn't supported' message, and Vimeo told me I needed to download Flash 10. So, Adobe's Flash 10 plug-in for Android 2.2 is indeed beta."
• While we're all used to watching clips on websites like YouTube, it seems watching entire movies is growing rapidly in popularity.
indicates it trebled between late 2008 and late 2009. One in five US consumers streamed a full-length movie in October 2009. Brian Pickens, Senior Research Manager at Ipsos OTX MediaCT said:
"Video on the internet is no longer the domain of short, amateur clips, but has become a viable alternative for all forms of video, regardless of length."
• Is the Twitterverse like the Universe?
The web design studio Information Architects thinks so. And it's even identified a Big Bang, around which the team .
Stan Schroeder at Mashable said:
"As hard as it is to determine the exact level of influence of individual Twitter users, the is an amazing sight to behold. It's huge, complex, and beautiful."
• And apparently . John Rentoul says, for example, there is no other way he would have discovered this strange-sounding law:
"The Food (Jelly Mini-Cups) (emergency Control) ( Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2010"
That aside, he's quite serious about how Twitter has transformed his job:
"We who remember the waiting for dates, the missed phone calls and the microfiche libraries of the era before the Amstrad personal computer should recognise that Twitter completes the range of options available to writers."
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