Archive for the ‘Geek lifestyle’ Category
March 8th, 2008 | 
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While YouTube is best known for its work in promoting social video, the company is looking to live video as its next format. In an interview with NewTeeVee, YouTube founder Steve Chen said that the company plans to introduce a new live feature sometime this year. He said that the company had always wanted to do it, but didn’t have the resources. Now that YouTube is owned by Google, Chen said the resources are now at their disposal.
Analysts say that YouTube is likely to quickly build momentum in the marketplace, which is primarily due to its already strong presence in social video. “Like video, content creators want to be on the service that gives them the most exposure, no matter how good the alternatives are,” Duncan Riley wrote for TechCrunch. “YouTube already has the user base; live video streamers will flock to YouTube like a moth to a flame.”
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Apple wants the iPhone to become a business email gadget – and a portable video game machine that might also help users manage their health records.
To help fuel that transformation, the company is teaming with a prominent venture capital firm to offer $US100 million to lure developers to the iPhone to create the next generation of applications.
Cupertino-based Apple unveiled new software on Thursday that reflects its intensifying effort to court business customers and placate third-party developers who want to build iPhone applications but have been locked out. A beta version of the free software update went out Thursday; the full version will be available in June.
With the announcements, Apple is foraying beyond the consumer mobile phone market while simultaneously supporting innovations for the phone that could spur sales. But not all developers will be happy with Apple’s approach, since the company will retain tight control over what programs go on the iPhone…
The power of human touch will soon be used to transmit data.
Telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) is planning a commercial launch of a system to enter rooms that frees users from the trouble of rummaging in their pockets or handbags for ID cards or keys.
It uses technology to turn the surface of the human body itself into a means of data transmission.
As data travels through the user’s clothing, handbag or shoes, anyone carrying a special card can unlock the door simply by touching the knob or standing on a particular spot without taking the card out…
On Thursday, Microsoft removed the beta tag from the Windows Live SkyDrive service. More importantly, it upped the amount of free online storage to 5GB, giving users roughly the same amount of storage that comes on a new Eee PC. That’s up from a recent cap of 1GB.
The service allows for personal folders as well as ones that are shared with a select group of friends, or the public at large. Microsoft is also expanding the service to 38 countries or regions including large swaths of Europe, Central and South America, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Taiwan.
In a move that could shake up control of the $1.4 billion online advertising sector, Google’s acquisition target, DoubleClick, confirmed yesterday that it planned to launch an eBay-style auction system in Australia to sell online adverting space.
The commercial networks have periodically toyed with the idea of setting up their own auction platforms in the $3.7 billion TV sector but have considered the structural change too dramatic for the industry.
While some critics fear the rapid emergence of automated trading exchanges for online advertising will hand too much control globally to the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, all three companies are pressing ahead with plans to establish auction systems in key adverting markets around the world. The exchanges work by publishers listing their advertising space for buyers to bid on in real time.
The high definition disc format wars could be over after reports revealed that the main backer of HD DVD, Toshiba, is preparing to fall on its sword.
The move would mean consumers won’t have to worry about choosing a format that could eventually become obsolete. But the reduced competition could eliminate incentives for the rival Blu-ray camp to keep prices low.
A Toshiba source, speaking to Reuters, confirmed earlier reports that the company was planning to concede defeat as early as this month.
Earlier, a report by Japanese public broadcaster NHK said Toshiba would soon discontinue all HD DVD production and close factories in Japan. It estimated the move would cost Toshiba hundreds of millions of US dollars.
It follows a series of defections to the Blu-ray camp by major US retailers, which came on the back of already disappointing sales and movie studio support for HD DVD.
Researchers are cannibalising the Sony PlayStation 3 console and other gaming hardware, turning them into low-cost supercomputers to model pharmaceutical molecules and black holes, the weekly New Scientist says.
The PS3 console uses a Cell chip, made by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, that comprises a central processing unit and eight slave processors and can run on the open-access Linux operating system.
The chip is prized by chemists and physicists because the kinds of calculations required to make high-quality graphics for games are similar to those used to simulate reactions between particles, ranging from the molecular to the astronomical.
University of Massachusetts astrophysicist Gaurav Khanna has strung together 16 PS consoles to simulate gravity waves that occur when two black holes collide, the British magazine says.
Another innovation is a graphics processor made by NVIDIA that boosts gaming-image quality in personal computers.
By using the C programming language to run the chip, University of Illinois chemist Todd Martinez found he could run calculations 130 times faster than on an ordinary PC.
His is now calculating the energy of the electrons in 1,000 atoms, which add up to the size of a small protein…
Several users who have tried to leave Facebook have posted unflattering tales of their experiences online, with some saying it has taken weeks or months to extract themselves entirely from the popular social networking service.
A Facebook spokesperson told eWEEK that users can remove their information from Facebook by deactivating their accounts. Once a user deactivates the account, their profile becomes inaccessible on the main Facebook service, and the data is kept by Facebook only to allow easy reactivation.
For those users not interested in any further relationship with the site, they may delete their profile, which means their name and all e-mail addresses associated with the account are deleted from Facebook servers.
What Facebook doesn’t explain in its statement, or in its help section, is the hoops users have to jump through to delete their accounts…
Someday, your shirt might be able to power your iPod ? just by doing the normal stuff expected of a shirt.
Scientists have developed a way to generate electricity by jostling fabric with unbelievably tiny wires woven inside, raising the prospect of textiles that produce power simply by being stretched, rustled or ruffled by a breeze.
The research, described in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature, combines the precision of ultra-small nanotechnology with the elegant principle known as the piezoelectric effect, in which electricity is generated when pressure is applied to certain materials.
While the piezoelectric effect has been understood at least as far back as the 19th century, it is getting creative new looks now, as concerns about energy supplies are inspiring quests for alternative power sources.
I just realized today that you are able to change the color themes in Office 2007 Suite. There are three colors offered at the moment and they are Silver, Black, and the original sky blue.
Now to change the themes click the round button at the very top left of the screen. Then on the bottom click word options. Under the Popular tab click the drop down box for Color Scheme. Choose your color and voila you have anew theme. I don’t know about you guys but I will be sporting the black color.
