Using FPGAs for HDTV design

Tam Do's article from Altera on EDN. Read here.

Adding a Mic jack to iTouch phone - use with VoIP!

I just got a 16Gig iTouch as a gift and almost immediately went to search for hardware hacks for it. To my pleasant surprise, iTouch has a microphone circuitry inside allowing one to activate it! The guys at www.touchmods.net created an iTouch USB to mic converter and a software that can be installed on the jailbroken gadget to allow the happy owners to make VoIP calls.

VoIP call demo from touchmods
Freeappleipodtouch.com's tutorial link

There's another cool hack that allows using Motorola bluetooth headset with iTouch: link

These are the great hacks! I needed the voice recording capability and it looks as it's possible without the need for the second device!

Good job, the Touchmods team!

Entrepreneurship Articles, News

Startup from PhD thesis (Farid Mobasser, Ottawa U., 2006 winner (one of two) of Atherton Entrepreneurship Award)

Places to get funding: Sponsoring innovations (Ottawa, Canada)

ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up (Philip Greenspun tells ArsDigita's story), thanks to Nick for the link.

Reconfigurable ECAs - new platform for SDR?

Article by Chen Zhang, Virginia Tech. Chen implemented a simple ZigBee using an ECA (Element CXI's Elemental Computing Array). ECAs provide "higher computational density, lower power consumption and higher structural robustness" [1] compared to GPPs, FPGAs and DSPs. It looks like a great new platform for Software Defined Radio (SDR) projects!

[1] Dynamically-reconfigurable ECAs - Part 4 (Student Project #2), Programmable Logic, Jan 2, 2008

Related:
ECA Architecture
ECA Programming Model
ECA Project (FIR Filter)
ECA Project (Image Processing Algorithm, ECA vs FPGA)