At GDC 2013, developers of the popular video transcoding software, Handbrake, announced that they will support Intel’s QuickSync technology on all Intel processors that support it, which includes Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, and forthcoming Haswell. If you’ve got an Ultrabook, you’ve got QuickSync. The tech allows developers to tap into hardware acceleration on Intel Core CPUs. The result is significantly increased speeds for video rendering and transcoding.

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At GDC 2013 yesterday, Intel held a day-long developer session focused on what they call ‘perceptual computing’ — interacting with computers in more natural ways, thanks to advanced sensors. They brought with them a heap of Ultrabooks, each with a different design, to allow a room full of developers the opportunity to get hands-on experience with many facets of perceptual computing and the Ultrabook hardware itself. Additionally, Intel sent attendees of the session home with their custom Kinect-like depth camera.

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Eric Mantion from Intel gives us an overview of a new tool Intel have developed for porting IOS apps into HTML5 so they can be re-distributed onto other platforms. The app porter does the ‘kickstart’ work in getting the bulk of the code working under HTML5 and Javascript and identifies areas of the code that need hand-tuning. For those people with existing IOS apps looking to go to other platforms, this could be a great way to get things moving or even to analyse the manpower involved in a porting project.

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Intel has made speed a big priority in Ultrabooks from the beginning. Instead of continuing the race-to-the-bottom that was the netbook, Intel wanted to pack premium components into sleek laptops. With the first generation, Intel made sure that every Ultrabook included Rapid Start, among other technologies, which cut resume times from something like 10-15 seconds down to 3-4 seconds. With even more performance in the second generation of Ultrabooks, Intel is now passing the threshold into ‘instant-on’ Ultrabooks.

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Intel has announced a new Intel SSD 525 series of mSATA SSD’s which boast a number of features like AES encryption, 6 GB/s performance and a wide range of storage capacities.

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I mentioned the timeline for Haswell-based Ultrabooks in an article about Connected Standby yesterday so let me just bring that up-front for you to see (and discuss) today.

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It’s Friday which means it’s time to give some attention to the software side of things with our continuing series of articles written in collboration with Intel. This week we’ve got the first ever Ultrabooknews podcast for you and guesting on the podcasts is Intel’s community manager for Ultrabooks and tablets, Bob Duffy.

Bob works in a team responsible for the Intel Developer Zone – the one-stop-shop for all your software dev information, forums, competitions, blogs, code examples, SDKs and more. The Intel Development Zone Ultrabook section is here.

In the podcast (24 minutes long) we have a great discussion about what happened at CES, about Ultrabook convertible form factors, what Haswell brings to the table, Connected Standby, CLovertrail, Bay Trail, touch, sensors, perceptual computing, events, competitions and more.

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Image courtesy CNET

At CES Intel is showing off their latest reference design for next-generation Ultrabooks with their next-gen CPU, Haswell. If you’ve been following Intel for any amount of time, you’ll know that they love reference designs. Reference designs package the company’s latest tech into a concept machine that won’t ever make it to market, but serves to show what is possible with their latest platform. Their latest Ultrabook reference design has a detachable screen which can be used as a tablet.

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