USB 3.0 To Be Demoed At CES

The long awaited speedy version of the mainstream Universal Serial Bus is going to be demonstrated by Symwave at 2009's CES. 

At last! Higher speed data transfers without the wait..

[Engadget]

A Student One Day Woke Up Realizing He Owes $100 Billion !!!!

Imagine one day, you wake up, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the sky is blue and you owe $100.000.000.000 !!!!!!

Read more

[BBC]

8 Wheeled Electic Car

Tokyo's Keio University has recently built 2 eight - wheeled electric cars with a futuristic design. The are called the Eliicas and the university's team plans to manufacture 200 of those. Why eight wheels again?

Specs : Lithium - ion batteries on each wheel, 60 kilowatt engine, 230 - 250 mph top speed.

Price : $255,000

[Engadget] via [AutoblogGreen]

USB Erases Itshelf And Not Your Data

Strange USB concept comes in handy when you are at school and forgot to bring you eraser with you.. You pop up that usb drive you didn't forget to bring along and ...magic! It works as an eraser too!!

No matter how hard I try I just can't seem to figure out this gadget's usability. For instance, when the eraser its coated with wears out and the circuits are exposed, what's next? 

[Gizmodo] via [studioroom906] via [DVICE]

Four Seasons in 40 Seconds!!

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

This is a great video showing a seasons' passage through 2008 from Eirik Solheim's Canon Camera. Vivaldi would have been rery proud! 

Really impressive indeed.

[Gizmodo]

Macedonia...??

 

I recently came across an iPhone application "WorldFactbook". 

It's description: "The

 world at your fingertips! The World Factbook gives you instant access to a myriad of informat

ion on every country on the planet. Compiles by the CIA and presented in an easy access format, the World Factbook is great for students, travellers, diplomats or just fact junkies."

I happened to notice that FYROM, or Former Yugoslavic Republic Of Macedonia is mentioned as "Macedonia", to discribe the country's name.

This is inaccurate to say the least since no final agreement has been reached for the name issue. Thenaming issue is an ongoing dispute between Greece and FYROM and has generated a great deal of political and academic debate on both sides. 

The irony is that the description states that the application is compiled, approved and updated by the CIA (!) and is great for students and... diplomats (!)

I strongly believe that this mistake is going to be fixed with a future update since it lifts an eyebrow to an already tented matter.

High Tech Thieves

Well, we all know those emails which run malicious code and either render your PC unsuable or infect it in a way useful to the virus creator.

Those are so.. retro! We are 4 days away from 2009 people! Hackers have found new ways of sectretly infecting and intruding your precious by infecting web pages you inocently visit. 

The most remarkable new age virus is known as the Mebroot. It "knows" when is detected or treated they way it shouldn't and sends a report (log) home to tell dad, so next time it returns stronger, learning from its mistakes!

When viruses evolve themshelves is certainly not an optimistic feature, especially these days where people sync their lives to the web!

For the whole detailed report read the relevant article

[BBC] [Image Source]

This Is The End... My Friend, The End...

An excellent representation of what would it be like if the world ended tomorrow by a meteor collision.. 

Creepy... but possible... Yikes...

[YouTube] via [Gizmodo]

Top 10 Breakthroughs Of 2008

From Flexible Displays to Apple's App store, this is Wired's Top Technology Breakthroughs list. Neat!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!  ...And a Happy New Year!!

[Photo]

Something Wicked This Way Comes!!

Sony left a flash teaser on her official site, implying something about an ultra portable notebook (a.k.a Netbook) to be released soon. 

Fingers crossed while we wait for the best balance between price and caracteristics, something (according to the company's price lineup so far) sony isn't very fond of...

Update: So this is what comes! Not bad, actually.. not bad...

[Sony] via [Gizmodo]

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,

I've been a very good boy throughout the year. My list is simple. Just follow the link below and pick ANY of the "toys" you want to give me for Christmas!

Thank you Santa!

[Wired]

Amazing Facebook Statistics

Well... we all knew that Facebook is a powerful, emm I meant popular social networking site. But this? From the official Facebook records, there are more than 140.000.000 active users, spending more than 2.600.000.000 minutes each day, uploading more than 600.000.000 photos and 4.000.000 videos daily.

On the applications side, Facebook hosts more than 52.000 applications occupying more than 660.000 developers and interpreneurs from more than 180 countries.

Amazed? I sure am.. And the funny (?) part is that it's constantly growing, so it won't be science fiction if one day, the entire world's population can be found on a site like this. And you know what's even better? With status updates and all, theoretically everyone can have a track record of every friend's actions, moods and lifestyle leadind to a global "Big Brother's Eye" we created for ourshelfs... Niiice... Let's see how this turns out...

[Facebook]

DRM. Everything You Needed To Know

DRM. (Digital Rights Management) is an annoying thing preventing you to do whatever you want with your legally purchased digital stuff (movies, audio, e.t.c.). 

There is a comprehensive article from Gizmodo explaining everything you need to know about this kind of irritating technology.

"There are, approximately, 10,742,489 kinds of DRM and copy protection. Almost every company or format has its own flavor that works in a slightly different way from everyone else—Apple's iTunes-smothering FairPlay, Blu-ray's BD+, the restrictions built into every gaming console. They've gotten more complex and nuanced over time, too, as content delivery has evolved. For instance, elementary-school DRM would simply keep you from copying or converting or doing other unseemly things to a file, like playing it on a non-sanctioned device. Or you might remember old-school CD keys, before the days of online activation. Today's DRM, like for movie rentals, music subscriptions or software, constructs more elaborate obstacle courses, nuking videos 24 hours after you press play, or allowing a certain number of copies."

[Gizmodo]

Oh Not Again... (Formatting C:/ ...)

Oh well..  Sooner or later we all come across that dreadful moment when all the junk in our computer riot to the point of no return..

There are times that the only solution to an unbearably slow machine is to "format" the hard drive containing the operating system...

Solution 1:

Always use more than one Hard Drive installed in your machine. One carrying the operating system and the other(s) for your data. So when you have to, you can only format the disc containing the operating system keeping your data safe and sound.

Solution 2:

Back up regularly. It is wise to have an external drive to back up the data you can't afford to lose. (For mac users, "Time Machine" is a perfect solution)

Solution 3:

Create an iso image (using e.g Norton Ghost) of your drive in its best working condition. This can save you alot of time, especially when combined with Solution 1.

I came across the "format" solution many times so I've made a list of the programs needed after you format. (My personal list..)

iTunes

Whether you own an iPod or not, this still is a great free program to organize and listen to your music

Picasa

A lite, simple, pretty and free program for viewing and managing your photos

MS Office or Open Office

An office editor is always needed. MS Office is by far the most commonly used but there is alway a competitive free alternative!

Klite Codec Pack

A free codec pack needed to play all kinds of video formats on the PC

VLC

A very good player usually for those High Definition video files (using matroska codec)

Acrobat Reader

Absolutely nessesary to open pdf files (recently voted as a global format standard)

Nero Burning Software

The burning software of my choise.. in a rich and "full" package

NOD 32 (Antivirus)

I prefer esset's antivirus software for the fact that it requires almost nothing from the user's part but Avast (lite edition) is a free competitive alternative.

WinRAR - WinZip

Both free, and usefull programs for unpacking compressed files.

Firefox

No 1 internet browser.

Xvid4PSP

Is a free video converter supporting all common video formats

Easy CD DA Extractor

Easy CD ripper which connects to online database to download Cd covers, track album and artists' names. Also works as an audio format converter.

Beethoven And His Contribution To CDs' Length

Beethoven is one of the most important and most influental musicians of the Classical and Romantic era. His masterpieces like the Fifth, the Moonlight Sonata, or the Ode to Joy are very well known even to those indifferent to the kind of music he represents. The latter is, actually, the reason CD length is aprox. 74 minutes!

Story says that the wife of Sony's chairman at the time, insisted that her favorite piece of music, the Ninth Symphony should fit on a single CD.

Story also says that the size of that little hole in the middle of every CD was determined by the diameter of a Duch coin!

Read the full (interesting enough) article here.

[Wired]

Antikythera's First PC Device Working Replica is Built

World's first computer made in Antikythera, a Greek island, was recovered from the sea in 1902. 2000 years ago was originally used for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games.

The British Museum made a working replica of this precious Greek artifact.

[Guardian] via [Wired]

What is wrong with the world?!

In the past 4 days I came across some bizzare tragic news..

A boy shot both of his parents  (and killed his mother) because ...they took away Halo 3... (Link)

A woman stabbed her husband over a remote control domination fight! (His condition remains stable) (Link)

18 year old Cristina Balzano and her 16 year old brother, both members of the band Soul Cry stabbed their 18 year old guitarist 50 times (!!!!) during the rehearshal because of his poor performance! (Link)

So, what's next? Guy decapitates friend for not answering to his SMS? Boy skins mom for not letting him eat chocolate before lunch? Toddler shoots dad for impersonating santa?

In the words of monk "Oh, the humanity !.."

Update: Apparently there is even more to it, brothers stabbing each other for a video game...

(Original Image By Klein)

So you think you can... play the guitar?

It seems like yesterday I bought my "first real 6-string". Never been to a tutor, I kept staring at the instrument waiting for that knowledge to come along. 

...Then it happened! Internet actually came along and ...taught me how to play. 

No need to panic! One of the best things about the guitar is that it can be transcribed in tabulature, meaning that the fretboard can be depicted on a piece of paper without notation.

Searching the net one can find plenty of guides on how to teach yourshelf.

Fist step : Learn how to read a tabulature (Easier than you might think..)

Second step : Search for your favorite song in tabulature. Tab robot, for instance is a great seach engine for tabulatures (a.k.a tabs).

Third step : Play!

It is as simple as that!

Keep in mind though that it takes time and patience to reach a desired level and for your convinience start with siple songs with plain chord progressions (A, Am, B, Bm, C, D, Dm, E, Em, F, G).

Good Luck!!

Google Almighty! ..and Facebook

Have you noticed that nowadays we use to say : "Don't know it? Google it!" 

Actually what Google has achieved is enormous! The company managed to change the word "search" with her own name!

What triggerred this post was a questionnaire I saw my brother filling out when he gave the IELTS examination:

"11. How did you first find out about IELTS? British Counsil? Google Search? Friends/Family? Education Fairs? Other:____"

Yes ladies and gentlemen! It appers that if you used "Yahoo!" or microsoft's "Live Search"... you didn't google it...

Facebook also appears to be a category itshelf rather than just another social networking site:

Just look at question 24...

Links :

Question 11 (Google)

Question 24 (Facebook)

Touch Me!

Okey! So every single mobile phone company now tends to create at least one touch screen phone. Everybody is craving for a macbook tablet or tend to turn their notebooks touch screen.

Microsoft has revealed a touch screen table which "does cool stuff" and so on.

Well, is the future touch screen compatible?

Are peolpe ready to abandon their "primitive habits" and start touching more and click less or they are going to miss all the blipity blop keystrokes?

I guess time will tell...

Anyhow, not all touch screens work the same way, meaning that different kind of screens need different kind of "touch" to work. ..hmmm..

Resistive Touchscreens are the most common ones. Cheap to build but hard to work with. When you touch the screen, two thin layers above the actual screen get in contant at the point of pressure, giving the disired effect.

Capacitative touch screens. iPhone comes to mind. You dont need to press anything here, you gently touch and let your body's electrical charge do its thing! No stylous needed (or working).

Infared touch sensing is a complex touch screen technology seen on microsoft's surface which works with infared cameras beneath the actual surface able to tell when you place an object or make gestures.

After all these one song comes to mind..

Theory of evolution in technology...

Cell phone has come to a point to being the reason that technology is evolving. Strange as it may sound, lets see it through.

The mobile phone started as a plain portable phone device with the ability to send an SMS and maybe (the most advanced ones) do a calculation or wake you up.

Now it has come to a point that the screen, for instance, from its black and white only style, not only did it turn coloured with thousants of coulours but it has a touch ability.

Nokia's first camera addition began to give more potentials to the portable device.
Mp3 player's evolution, together with flash memories prize downfall in proportion to the amount of data they can store, gave the cell phone mp3 player capabilities. This, together with camera and decent video player capabilities, made the cell phone a full featured portable entertainment device.

So, what's next?

It seems that these days technology struggles to make an all-in-one portable device, combining cell phone's portability and ease of access with computer's potentials. Efforts are being made with the aid of nanotechnology in shrinking the pc. The latest and greatest achievement is the "netbook", which is a stripped down version of the laptop which itshelf is a compact version of the PC.

As you can spot, there is a small but notisable "gap" between new generation cell phones (a.k.a smartphones) and the netbook. To my view this "gap" is the next technological achievement. The "all-in-one device" with no compromise on size (portability comes to mind) or specs.

The only drawback so far is battery's lifetime, but not for long..