An old skool Command Line Junkie’s rejoice in the world of GUI?
“”Enso is dead simple to use. You just hold down the Caps Lock key and type an Enso command, which is displayed in a translucent overlay. Once the command is typed, you simply release the Caps Lock key to activate it, and the overlay disappears. If you type fast, it all happens in a flash. For instance, to launch the Firefox Web browser, you just hold down the Caps Lock key and type "open firefox." To look up the meaning of the word "proclivity," you just hold down the Caps Lock key and type "define proclivity."’ - Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal
Here we go again, the immortalized timeless classic “Last Christmas” by 80s synth pop duo “Wham!” .
In fact it should be a depressing song about broken heart just happened at christmas, but somehow it always makes people laugh and happy! :)
Still ain’t enough? More compilation of all the good, bad and ugly cover versions at www.last-christmas.com :P
Credits: Greeting to the flickr.com communities as most of the inspiring still pictures theme were shamelessly ripped from there.
Any copyrighted media featured in this video are strictly for evaluation purposes only.
“A fleet of NASA spacecraft, launched less than eight months ago, has made three important discoveries about spectacular eruptions of Northern Lights called "substorms" and the source of their power.
NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission observed the dynamics of a rapidly developing substorm, confirmed the existence of giant magnetic ropes and witnessed small explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field.” - More from NASA’s THEMIS site
“”Researchers have worked out the neurological trick used by a species of wasp to turn cockroaches into 'zombie slaves'. The discovery explains why, once stung, cockroaches can be led by a much smaller master towards certain death. Researchers have proven their theory by replicating the effect, and by using an antidote injection to release the cockroaches from their zombie state….
The geeks from Redhat.com, Dan Williams, John Palmieri and Miguel Alvarez, giving a tech talk about the mesh networking on how OLPC “talk” to each other even without widespread internet access and how is the network they create different from the network at your home or office.
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Microsoft Live Labs Architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas presented at the TED2007 (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference in MontereyCA, demoing integration with Seadragon (acquired by M$ in Feb 2007), now Photosynth is one step closer to rulez all our photos…
This is a sample video presented by Professor Stephen Palmer of Visual Perception Lab who try to make a interesting science out of studying people's aesthetic responses to spatial , color/object composition, biases and color harmony …etc, which the results show that "aestheticscience" is a new and exciting topic within cognitive science that can shed new light on the nature of our appreciation of the visual world.
A must view for all artists, graphic designers, photographers and creative alike geeks!
Above short sample clip covering topics on “But why use Linux as a BIOS” and the infamous "The DRM BIOS Issus (eg. EFI , etc)” presented by Ronald G Minnich.
“”The Magenn Power Air Rotor System (MARS) is an innovative lighter-than-air tethered device that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to winds , efficiently generating clean renewable electrical energy at a lower cost than all competing systems.
This electrical energy is transferred down the tether to a transformer at a ground station and then transferred to the electricity power grid.
Helium (an inert non-reactive lighter than air gas) sustains the Air Rotor which ascends to an altitude for best winds and its rotation also causes the Magnus effect. This provides additional lift, keeps the device stabilized, keeps it positioned within a very controlled and restricted location, and causes it to pull up overhead rather than drift downwind on its tether.
All competing wind generators use bladed two-dimensional disk-like structures and rigid towers. The Magenn Power Air Rotor system is a closed three-dimensional structure. It offers high torque, low starting speeds, and superior overall efficiency thanks to its ability to deploy higher. The closed structure allows Magenn Power to produce wind rotors from very small to very large sizes at a fraction of the cost of current wind generators.
Magenn Power is currently in the prototype phase of our Magenn Air Rotor System . Magenn Power plans to ship their first official product, a 4 kilowatt version in 2007.””
And from its informative FAQ, there will be even a backpack-sized units too:
“”Backpack size or small units may be available in one to two years. Magenn Power is looking to license this technology and may not manufacture it ourselves.””
Guess there will be lotsa potential and alternative for its size and mobility deploying in a rural area, sea, tall building , powering SOS radio/beacon or Wi-Fi device doubled as antennal, serving advertisement banner or even as old skool barrage balloon …etc :)
It also interestingly mentioned how Cartographers and Artists tweaked their works too.
So what are you waiting for? More Panoramas tips and trick at Panoguide’s How to…, especially life easier using freeware Autostitch program which automatically do image stitching perfected for lazy geek wannabe (like me) out there. :)
Above fast forwarded short clip was a spiced up with text-to-speech voice with the following summaries:
“”Retrieving the stylus of a pen-based device takes time and requires a second hand. Especially for short, intermittent interactions many users therefore choose to use their bare fingers instead. Although convenient, this increases targeting times and error rates. We argue that the main reason is the occlusion of the target by the user’s finger. We propose a pointing technique we call Shiftthat is designed to address this issue. When the user touches the screen, Shift creates a callout showing a copy of the occluded screen area and places it in a non-occluded location. The callout also shows a pointer representing the hotspot of the finger. Using this visual feedback, users guide the pointer into the target by moving their finger on the screen surface and commit the target acquisition by lifting the finger. Over large targets, in contrast, no callout is created and users enjoy the full performance of an unaltered touch screen. In our user study, participants acquired targets faster when using Shift than when using the traditional offset cursor technique.”” - Patrick Baudisch
“”Photography lost its innocence many years ago. In as early as the 1930s, shortly after the first commercially available camera was introduced, Stalin had his enemies "air-brushed" out of photographs. With the advent of high-resolution digital cameras, powerful personal computers and sophisticated photo-editing software, the manipulation of digital images is becoming more common. Here, I have collected some examples of digital tampering in the media, politics, and the law.”” – Hany Farid
OMG, love its nonsense GeekSpeak!, Real fits for those IBM engineers.
LOL! on that part on Doppler Supplamated Magneto, "Can be purchased in any hardware store for about 37 cents".
I guess those born in Sesame Street era would love it.
“”In 1967, Henson used the "Wheel-Stealer" puppet for an IBM training film called "Coffee Break Machine". In the sketch, the monster (with frightening eyes and fangs) devours a complex machine as the machine describes its purpose and construction. At the end of the sketch, the talking machine explains that its primary purpose is to produce the greatest explosion known to man. The monster promptly explodes. This sketch was also performed in October, 1967 on The Ed Sullivan Show”” - Cookie_Monster
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Above short clip was a fast forwarded video from Google TechTalks 2007 with the following summaries:
Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the user's motor system (fingers and eyes, for example). I describe a system intended to rectify both these inefficiencies.
Dasher is a computer accessibility tool enabling users to enter text efficiently using a pointing device rather than a keyboard, for example,
- when operating a computer one-handed, by joystick, touchscreen, trackball, or mouse. - when operating a computer with zero hands (i.e., by head-mouse or by eyetracker). - on a palmtop computer. - on a wearable computer.
It has been likened to an arcade game, since to use it you zoom through characters that fly across the screen. It uses a probabilistic predictive model to give priority to more likely character combinations.
Dasher can be described as a back-to-front version of arithmetic coding, a data-compression algorithm.
Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute.
It takes advantage of Fitts' law – the fact that larger areas can be selected more quickly than smaller areas.
Dasher is licensed under the GPL. It is available for several platforms including Linux, Microsoft Windows,Pocket PC, and there's even a little java version for your web-browser.
Technie Note: Thanks to the original author from “One bad cat” video. This video was spiced up with James Bond’s theme using the freeware versatile VirtualDub video processing utility with Deshaker plugin to stabilize the original jerky video, plus a little touch on lame old skool Ascii Art. :)
