With the coming of engineering in the 21st century, reality television has made the front seat. As more and more proficiencies are formulated to make TV more interactional and advanced, sporting events are not left far behind. Nascar has started the race F/X technology, which has enhanced the interest further amongst TV audiences. Well, the technology was primitively started by FOX, which started trailing the hockey puck on national television. The trick was hot, and it became an instant hit.

Nascar brought in a synonymous technology to track their cars. But tracking a puck on a hockey field and tracking a car moving at 200 mph on a racing circuit are two different matters entirely. In Nascar, the commentators talk about a car and then the car is spotlighted with a glowing halo around it. It looks incredibly cool on television. The statistical information about the car is also presented just above the car.

The Technology Behind The Trick

Race F/X uses a wide range of parameters to showcase their final product. GPS orbiters form an integral component of the Race F/X technology. They are used to dig up the cars as they move around the circuit. They work in tandem with an earth-based navigation system. The tracking is so accurate that the car is tracked up to 20 millimeters distance from its real position.

In-car sensing elements in the cars also play a important part in enhancing the telecasted event. They help the GPS locate the cars and also help the networks to collect as much statistical data about the car as possible. The info is highly detailed and contains minute contingents like RPM, acceleration, speed, fuel consumption, and even braking. This information is gathered at the speed of ten times a second. So you can rest assured that it is most recent information that you see on top of your favorite Nascar cars.

You Will Be In It

The day is not very far when you will be able to control the Nascar cars race F/X technology and you will be able to select and highlight the car that you want to follow. This will be done with the help of a set top box, Nascar says. A video game variation of Nascar is also on the advent. This will enable you to race your own virtual car on the racing circuit with the greats of racing. So the days are not far when your own car will be racing beside Jeff Gordon and you will be in your living room all the time. Now isn’t that cool?

This will propel Nascar racing into a entirely different realm altogether. So, get ready, get set, GO!

Not long ago I was cleaning out my files and shredding bills from years ago. Each year I dutifully box up my bills and income tax statements and store them away in case I ever need to reference them. Periodically I dispose of them after sufficient time has passed and they no longer serve any purpose. On this particular occasion I was examining what I had been paying for over ten years ago.

One of the first things I noticed was the difference in my telephone costs. I used to pay for just a land line at about $50 a month which also accommodated my long distance charges. Today, I average about $170 a month in telephone costs which covers my cable telephone and the cell phones used by my family. And this doesn’t include the hardware costs which range from $50 to $400 for the phones themselves.

Does anyone remember when television was free? I do. We didn’t have a lot of channels back then and the programming was probably a lot better than it was today as only the cream of the crop made it to the airwaves. Today, my cable bill averages at about $36 a month for the basic package. I know a lot of other people who are paying a heckova lot more for premium channels. This means we have many more channels than in the old days, but I can’t say we have better programming as many stations put just about anything on to fill the time. Something else; does anyone remember the original premise of cable? That there would be far fewer commercials, if any? I guess the cable networks missed the memo. Let us hope XM radio, another technology we now pay for, doesn’t forget this.

For entertainment, we played cards and board games or just socialized. If we went to the movies, we would go to the local theater and pay a couple of bucks. Today we have cineplexes to watch many different movies, usually computer generated, in Dolby “surround-sound” for about $10 per person. Renting movies isn’t too bad as there is some fierce competition out there. I’ll be curious to see what impact the downloading of movies will have on the price of a movie.

We also pay a lot for video games. The Xbox and Playstations range in price from $350 to $600 depending on the options you order, and this doesn’t include the games themselves which range from $30 to $60 each. For example, the much touted “Halo 3″ sells for about $60.

Computer hardware prices have gone down, but interestingly, software has gone up, particularly the price of operating systems (which range from about $100 to $300) and office suites ($120 to $500); then you’ve got financial packages, graphics packages and anti-virus packages and other utilities, etc. It’s not cheap. In total, computer costs have actually gone up, not down.

Household cameras and film processing used to be pretty inexpensive too. Today we have digital cameras and camcorders which range in price from hundreds to thousands of dollars. I don’t think anyone remembers “Brownie” cameras, “Instamatics,” or Polaroids anymore.

One has to ask, as the price of technology goes up, has our quality of life gone up? I guess that’s debatable. I know driving has become infuriating as people actively chat on their cell phones as opposed to concentrating on the road. It also seems people like to “tune out” on their iPods or other devices as opposed to socializing. And I question the quality of our programming on television. All I can say is “Thank God for remote controls.” I can’t image a television set without one anymore.

If you were to add it up, you would probably find that technology has quadrupled the cost of living, and that’s probably a conservative estimate. Kind of scary isn’t it? Maybe the best thing I should do is simply not open those boxes of bills and just burn them instead.

Such is my Pet Peeve of the Week.

Note: All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

For a listing of Tim’s Pet Peeves, click HERE.

Copyright © 2007 by Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.

“Today we are Mobile”. So Simple and so Smart phrase. People who are not having even a savings account in a bank or even a credit card, one can find a mobile handset with them. World has seen so many innovations both Technical and Business, but if we club these two together I’m sure it will be a real hard job to find out a faster and smarter innovative example beyond the word called “Mobility”. It’s just awesome. This specific segment has shown tremendous growth in both Technology and Marketing innovation and in this small article I’m trying to inscribe the most important Technology Innovations in a chronological way.

A. Pre-Cellular Era: In 1895, Marconi transmitted wireless signals and it gave birth of radio. Till the end of World War I, wireless innovation took place in AM (Amplitude Modulation) technology. Then FM (Frequency Modulation) came to the picture. Till the end of World War II , the technical development in the field of radio and other wireless technologies were done by Government bodies , in different countries. But the birth of “cellular” concept came just after the innovation of “Integrated Circuits”.

B. The 1G Era: Analog Cellular: Based on Analog Transmission ; launched in early ‘80s, the 1G networks were for voice communication. The basic concepts came from two key standards, (i) the Nordic NMT and, (ii) the US AMPS. In late ‘80s, when 1G took its own pace, different standards started getting popularity in different regions, for example, NTT’s proprietary standard in Japan, US AMPS in North America, the British Standard (a derivative of US Standard) in Western Europe and NMT standards in Scandinavian countries.

C. The 2G Era: Digital Cellular: In early ‘90s GSM became mandatory in Europe and it was done by the European Commission. Regional wireless leaders specifically the Nordic vendors Ericsson and Nokia and a couple of another operators held the major market share. Not only they became popular in their respective countries but in a very short span of time, they became Global Giants. And the impact became very strong in late ‘90s, only in Western Europe GSM caught almost 35% of the worldwide market. In US and APAC, the same thing happened, that was a huge business growth. By the year 2000, in APAC, GSM held almost 60% of the regional market.

D. The 3G Era: Multimedia Cellular: After the superb success of 2G Standards, it got a world wide demand for Data Traffic also, along with the Voice Traffic. But initially the basic target was to get a uniform platform for that. Here the European GSM got a tough challenge from US based Qualcomm’s CDMA technology. Now all the mobile handset manufacturers got two options, either GSM or CDMA and ultimately the adoption became absolutely regional. The first adoption of 3G could not bring that pace as it was expected the transition from Voice to Data. In Japan , the local leader NTT Do-Co-Mo did the Data Transition in 1999 in their own way.

E. The 4G Era: Towards Wireless Broadband: From 1G to 2G and then 3G, the basic intention of all the carriers was to improve and increase the spectrum capacity. Now when we talk or think beyond 3G, it’s really very difficult to comment on the 4G standards today. We can only say that the major players in the market are putting their huge efforts to build the base. For example, the technologies like Wi-Fi , WiMax , UWP, ZigBee , Mobile-Fi are nothing but the building blocks for a super powered , never seen Mobile Broadband revolution. The major careers have put endless endeavors to develop 4G, but according to industry specialists, 4G Ear shall be seen after 2010.