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The Future of Things (TFOT) is an online magazine covering diverse topics related to science and technology. The magazine was launched in 2006.
TFOT was founded by Iddo Genuth and co-founder Barak Raz in early 2006 and its beta version was first launched on the 27 of September 2006. During beta the site included two sections – Picture of the Day (PODs) and Articles. In mid-2007 TFOT launched its full version with several new sections and a new design. Its team has more than 20 writers, from various countries worldwide. As of 2013 TFOT has been running under a different management.
As of September 2008, TFOT had several sections including: headlines, news, PODs, personal columns, book reviews and forums. TFOT also includes full articles which typically contain a Q&A section which, according to TFOT, is a more accurate way of doing an interview. In January 2009 TFOT added a video section featuring science and technology related videos from the web as well as original video clips produced by the TFOT team. Another change in 2009 was the expansion of the daily RSS service, providing headlines from similar websites among the original research published in the website. Until then, a smaller number of headlines were uploaded each day.
On August 22, 2007 TFOT was the first to extensively cover the Israeli company Mempile TeraDisc 1TB optical storage technology. The article was later picked up by numerous websites including Engadget, [1] tgdaily [2] and arstechnica. [3] On January 14, 2009 TFOT exclusively reported on advancements in laser hard drive development. [4] This news was quickly picked up by several publications including Engadget [5] and electronista.
Since its launch in early 2008, TFOT's headlines section was criticized several times for being too short (approx 500 characters); this, however, is probably the result of copyright issues.[ citation needed ] A different criticism was raised regarding the relatively short term look at the future of science and technology on TFOT as the site typically deals with research and technology for the next 5–10 years or so.
The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It uses the Compact Disc Digital Audio format which typically provides 74 minutes of audio on a disc. In later years, the compact disc was adapted for non-audio computer data storage purposes as CD-ROM and its derivatives. First released in Japan in October 1982, the CD was the second optical disc technology to be invented, after the much larger LaserDisc (LD). By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide.
An optical disc is a flat, usually disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid of a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side.
A CD player is an electronic device that plays audio compact discs, which are a digital optical disc data storage format. CD players were first sold to consumers in 1982. CDs typically contain recordings of audio material such as music or audiobooks. CD players may be part of home stereo systems, car audio systems, personal computers, or portable CD players such as CD boomboxes. Most CD players produce an output signal via a headphone jack or RCA jacks. To use a CD player in a home stereo system, the user connects an RCA cable from the RCA jacks to a hi-fi and loudspeakers for listening to music. To listen to music using a CD player with a headphone output jack, the user plugs headphones or earphones into the headphone jack.
In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from certain discs, while other drives can both read and record. Those drives are called burners or writers since they physically burn the data onto on the discs. Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives.
Pioneer Corporation, commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto on January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop. Its current president is Shiro Yahara.
The Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is an optical disc technology that was expected to store up to several terabytes of data on an optical disc 10 cm or 12 cm in diameter. Its development commenced in April 2004, but it never arrived due to lack of funding. The company responsible for HVD went bankrupt in 2010.
Optical storage refers to a class of data storage systems that use light to read or write data to an underlying optical media. Although a number of optical formats have been used over time, the most common examples are optical disks like the compact disc (CD) and DVD. Reading and writing methods have also varied over time, but most modern systems as of 2023 use lasers as the light source and use it both for reading and writing to the discs. Britannica notes that it "uses low-power laser beams to record and retrieve digital (binary) data."
DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are a collection of optical disc formats that can be written to by a DVD recorder and by computers using a DVD writer. The "recordable" discs are write-once read-many (WORM) media, where as "rewritable" discs are able to be erased and rewritten. Data is written ('burned') to the disc by a laser, rather than the data being 'pressed' onto the disc during manufacture, like a DVD-ROM. Pressing is used in mass production, primarily for the distribution of home video.
Labelflash is a technology which allows users to burn custom designs or images onto proprietary DVD media first announced in October 2005 as a collaboration between Yamaha and Fujifilm. While Yamaha developed the optical drives, Fujifilm manufactured the proprietary Labelflash optical discs. NEC manufactured the first Labelflash compatible drive, the ND4551, which was released in December 2005.
Ultra Density Optical (UDO) is an optical disc format designed for high-density storage of high-definition video and data. The format was introduced by Sony to replace the Magneto-optical disc format.
AMD Live! is the name of AMD's initiative in 2005 aimed at gathering the support of professional musicians and other media producers behind its hardware products. The primary focus of this initiative was the Opteron server- and workstation-class central processing units (CPUs).
The Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc is an optical disc format developed by Hitachi Maxell, which uses an array of wafer-thin optical discs to allow data storage.
3D optical data storage is any form of optical data storage in which information can be recorded or read with three-dimensional resolution.
The DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind of digital data and has been widely used to store video programs, software and other computer files. DVDs offer significantly higher storage capacity than compact discs (CD) while having the same dimensions. A standard single-layer DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data, a dual-layer DVD up to 8.5 GB. Variants can store up to a maximum of 17.08 GB.
Blu-ray is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs.
HD DVD is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format, but lost to Blu-ray, supported by Sony and others.
China Blue High-Definition is a high definition optical disc format announced in September 2007 by the Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center (OMNERC) of Tsinghua University in China.
A CD-ROM is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data is only usable on a computer.
Fabrik Inc. was a manufacturer of external hard drives and digital content management software and services. Fabrik claims it was the third largest supplier of external storage products in North America in 2007. It is headquartered in San Mateo, with offices in Santa Ana and Culver City, California.
Archival Disc (AD) is the name of a discontinued trademark owned by Sony and Panasonic describing an optical disc storage medium designed for long-term digital storage. First announced on 10 March 2014 and introduced in the second quarter of 2015, the discs are intended to be able to withstand changes in temperature and humidity, in addition to dust and water, ensuring that the disc is readable for at least 50 years. The agreement between Sony and Panasonic to jointly develop the next generation optical media standard was first announced on 29 July 2013.