Canvas-based game: Ajax has come far

The online game “Berts Breakdown” is fun and there is no Flash involved! It is all done via JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas tag. Quite impressive. Warning: Canvas means that this game won’t run on Internet Explorer, only on Firefox and Safari (and possibly on Opera). [Source: Ajaxian]

[Update 2009-12-13] More pure JavaScript games are shown at EffectGames.

10Gbps: one cable to rule them all

Intel has just presented a new kind of optical cable technology called “Light Peak”. At 10Gbps it is fast enough to handle any kind of wired data transfer currently in operation: networking, displays, storage, etc. As a bonus, it can transport several protocols at the same time, so multi-function devices only need a single cable (there is no word on whether the cables also carry electricity, though). Lastly, cables can be up to 100m long. Engadget has pictures of the connector which looks suspiciously (and pleasantly) Firewire-like.

Update: “Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010”. The headline sums up the article pretty well.

Update 2: A CNET article has more information on Light Peak. Apparently it did not originate at Apple.

Update 2011-02-25: Thunderbolt (code-named Light Peak): an overview

Clip shows

Every now and then when following a TV series, an awkward kind of episode comes along: a frame story is used—rather heavy-handedly—as an excuse to sum up recent story lines by showing clips from past episodes. After just having watched one too many of those, I googled and found out that this kind of episode has a name, it’s called a “clip show”. The rationale for clip shows is as an introduction for newcomers to a series and to save production costs. A wikipedia article has more on this topic, including some history.