fit-pc slim – tiny and low power

I have been keeping an eye on the compact PC market for a while now, eying the pico and nano ITX form factors but they remain on the expensive side. The micro Fit PC has been slimmed down and will be released in September 2008 touted as worlds smallest green PC. A mere 6W and running at 12V allows for easy hook up to a car or solar collection system running from a self contained water resistant enclosure you can hold in your palm. It features on board components like soldered memory retaining a removable 2.5 inch disk.

Prices (USD):

fit-PC Slim Barebones (256MB, no WiFi, no HDD) – $220
fit-PC Slim Diskless (512MB, WiFi, no HDD) – $245
fit-PC Slim Linux (512MB, WiFi, 60GB hard disk with Ubuntu and Gentoo pre-installed) – $295
fit-PC Slim XP (512MB, WiFi, 60GB hard disk with Windows XP Home SP3 pre-installed) – $335

linkage: fit- pc slim

knology internet speed test

My internet speed

linkage: test your speed here

how to skin outlook 2007

So if you are anything like me you will be a little sick of seeing the same Microsoft blue everywhere you look. Don’t despair I just worked out how to change the appearance (i.e. Skin) of Outlook 2007. It is actually very easy but not obvious – probably why I only discovered it today.

Now you can choose a nice black theme to match your Vista Transformation Pack or Nasa Night Launch theme for Firefox. That rocks!

Outlook Skin Screenshot Black

piclens – smooth fullscreen picture and video browsing

Cooliris (already known for their webpage preview when you hover over a link) have a plugin available for you browser called Piclens. After installing, with a single click you will be able to transform your flickr or youtube browsing to a beautifully rendered fullscreen photo wall.

Before

After

update July 2008: WordPress does not currently support the Piclens plugin – however you can still leverage it simply by hosting your pics somewhere like Flickr

It’s is actually pretty simple to get Piclens working on your blog. Simply host all your photos on Flickr (or similar piclens supported website). That way the little piclens play button is just visible and working.

So instead of uploading your picture directly to wordpress – upload them to Flickr (there is a good Batch Uploading tool if you upload photos all the time).

Once on Flickr browse to your photo
Right Click – Copy Address (firefox anyway – Internet Explorer may be a little different). Make sure you have the correct picture size selected ie Not the thumbnail
In WordPress create new post
Insert Image
Paste the URL you just copied from Flickr
Add a description
Add a Caption if you want
Insert Image into Post

Thats it! When you publish your post you’ll now see the Piclens icon for any/all pics you have hosted on Flickr.

linkage: download piclens plugin

the pirate bay vs. media defender – an in-depth look

The Portfolio.com website has an in-depth article on the hacking of Media Defender and subsequent publishing of internal documents. It includes the response from The Pirate Bay and details of the tactics used by Media Defender. A good summary of the state of the Piracy industry as a whole. Well worth a read

Here is a snippet:

“Oh, yeah, yeah, we’ve checked out our email server, and our email server itself has not been compromised,” the MediaDefender executive said.

But, of course, it had.

“In the beginning, I had no motivation against Monkey Defenders,” Ethan tells me. “It wasn’t like, ‘I want to hack those bastards.’ But then I found something, and the good nature in me said, These guys are not right. I’m going to destroy them.”

linkage: the pirate bay vs media defender – “the pirates can’t be stopped”

iphone 2.0 beta – includes activesync/exchange/cisco vpn support and an sdk!

Succeeding in staying a step behind Google’s platform Android, but releasing an SDK anyway, Apple will be opening up their phones for developers to generate apps for them free of charge. They have decided to take on Blackberry and friends by moving to the corporate market with support for Exchange and ActiveSynch and Cisco providing IPSec secure VPN tunneling over WPA2 Wifi encryption (That’s all good news if you were wondering).

I don’t know if we’ll see Outlook/LiveMail apps but it’s a possibility I guess

linkage: via apple.com, download SDK (you’ll need apple ID)

epoc thought senstive headset for pc’s

Now this looks interesting. The sooner we can loose the keyboard and mouse the better. Speech control has never really taken off so maybe we should skip that and go neural? With the demo at GDC (Game Developers Conference) of the Epoc headset by Emotiv (planned for late 2008 release) thought controlled PC may be closer than we’d suspected.

linkage: via kotaku.com

light graffiti

A colorful collection of light graffiti photos

linkage: light graffiti

slurpr ultimate wardrive wifi thief++

Ever got fed up with the slow speed of the neighbors wifi you are ‘borrowing’ for your Torrent download server? Well not to worry, Slurpr is here to save your day. Now you can steal ALL your neighbors wifi!

linkage: geektechnique 

images trick

Copy this:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI= document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i<DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position=’absolute’; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval(‘A()’,5 ); void(0)

Search on Google images for anything you want

Highlight the url in the address bar and paste over with the code snippet. Hit enter.

Update:  This script doesn’t seem to work with WordPress formatting. Just click the watch video link below and copy the script from their website

linkage: watch a video

how to best tag and manage your music collection for digital dj mixing (mp3 flac ogg etc)

The media browsers and database collections of most digital DJ mixing systems can be a bit painful to use (e.g. Virtual DJ). I have found that accurately tagging my collection in another program like Media Monkey and then copying the collection over in bulk to the mixing laptop is the best method of managing my collection.

Every incoming file on my computer automatically ends up in a folder called _untested. The _untested folder is further divided into sub folders Completed Torrents, From People, GetRight, and Soul Seek . In each root folder there will be individual files like in the picture below

Whenever I have the time I troll through all the folders and clean them out. All the software gets deleted or moved to the Software Drive (S:), same for the Watching Pleasure (W:). All the music I extract and play next in Media Monkey. I quickly skip through a few tracks to get a feel for genre of the album. I’ll delete the whole album fairly ruthlessly if it sounds at all cheesy or not really my style.

microwave that plastic back into oil!

No that isn’t a typo. Some engineers have worked out how to tweak a microwave so that it can return petroluem based products back into oil. Yup. Oil. Now I don’t know about you but I am blown away by the implications on recycling this is bound to have.

linkage: via new scientist

photosynth – multidimensional spaces created from global photo pool

The TED ideas web site has posted a great clip demonstrating Photosynth (and other visualization technologies) and application that composites 3d spacial renderings from the global pool of images tagged with metadata. The example of Notre Dame cathedral is truly boggling. They hyperlink to photos people have taken and posted onto sites like Flickr and position them in a model of real space on top, in front, or beside other identified images. The result is a composite of the real object. The implications are far reaching (unless Microsoft Labs who bought the company that created Photosynth a year ago) fail to deliver on it’s potential.

I think we will see composite software like this ported onto mapping software like Google Earth to model the world (and then the Universe) and forming the basis for a self creating and maintaining VR world. I can’t wait.

linkage: photosynth video demo via ted, try it yourself on microsoft labs

nano walkers carry co2

“A research team, led by UC Riverside’s Ludwig Bartels, was the first to design a molecule that can move in a straight line on a flat surface. Now this team has found a way to attach cargo: two CO2 molecules, making the nano-walker a molecule carrier.”

linkage: nano walkers carry co2

numenta and htm – has a.i. arrived?

It may not be what we were expecting after reading and watching sci-fi all these years. However Jeff Hawkins (of Palm and Treo fame) and the smart brains at Numenta may have developed the precursors, if not the first, true artificial intelligence. Based around Jeff’s HTM (Hierarchical Temporal Memory) model with four essential operations:

• Discover causes in the world
• Infer causes of novel input
• Make predictions
• Direct actions

linkage: overview of HTM via read write web, download the HTM white paper from numenta