ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL NEARLY COMPLETE

The tipping point came in 2002 - that was when the world began storing more information in digital than in analogue format, or so estimate the researchers from the University of Southern California who recently completed an inventory of the world's technological capacity. As humanity races toward completing its shift from analogue to digital data communication and storage, scientists can look back at how fast the transition has been. In 2000, three-quarters of the world's information was still in analogue form. By 2007, 94 percent had been preserved digitally. The team surveyed 60 categories of analogue and digital technologies during the period from 1986 to 2007, and the results reflect the near complete transition from the analogue to the digital age. The researchers also estimated that the world's technological capacity to compute information via application-specific devices such as electronics' microcontrollers or graphic processors roughly doubled every 14 months over the past decades. The capacity of general-purpose computers such as PCs and mobile phones has doubled every 18 months.



3-D channels to begin broadcasting full time
Two 3-D television channels will start broadcasting full time in the next week. Discovery, Sony and IMAX said Thursday that their 3-D joint venture, 3net, would begin televising on Sunday night. That’s one day before ESPN turns ESPN 3D into a 24-hour channel. Around-the-clock broadcasting is an important step for both channels, but there is still little to watch in 3-D, so the channels will repeat the same shows over and over again. 3net says it will have about 20 original hours of programming in February. On Sunday, 3net will start up at 8 p.m. Eastern Time and show three nature documentaries: “China Revealed” at 8, “Into The Deep 3D” at 9 and “Forgotten Planet” at 10. Most people will not be able to watch: 3net will be available only to DirecTV subscribers initially. And of course, DirecTV subscribers will have to have a 3-D TV set and 3-D glasses to tune in. DirecTV already carries one 24-hour-a-day 3-D channel, n3d, which is powered by Panasonic. That channel started up last January and is exclusive to DirecTV.