PC Magazine’s, John C. Dvorak, posted an amusing article on their site a couple days ago about the “blogging fad”. It is said that blogging is gaining in popularity due to the Google purchase of Blogger. I can’t complain with that, I am a newcomer to this arena after hearing about the acquisition. The “fad” is likened to two similar über-fads — the CD-ROM business and the dot-com phenomenon. This implies to me that blogging is going to loose it’s appeal after some time. Click here if you are interested in reading the article.
“Instead of ink, we’re substituting components such as a growth medium and cells–which, just like ink, can be directed through the nozzle onto the ‘paper’ material,” said Thomas Boland, an assistant bioengineering professor at Clemson. In this case, the paper is actually plastic which can be placed in a petri dish for further study. Scientist believe that the technique can contribute to medicine as the printing press contributed to communications.
Printers were adapted to control the many variables involved in handling living tissue. The ink cartridges are washed out and filled with living cells and a bio-gel. The printing is done in layers alternating cells and bio-gel. When the 3-D structure is completed, the bio-gel is removed and all cells are left behind.
Like printing different colors, placing different types of cells in the ink cartridges should make it possible to create complex structures consisting of multiple cell types such as organs
Getting the science and technology to that point, however, could take 10-15 years, they warned. “As exciting as this is, it’s still in the very earliest stages.
Dupont states that in the near future, OLED will replace the LCD and Plasma screens. OLED, Organic Light Emitting Diodes, are all the rage with Dupont for they have many essential properties over existing technology. For instance, OLEDs don’t require a backlight, LCDs do. OLED displays will therefore be thinner and lighter. Power consumption will be considerably less, (No backlighting) so products using OLED will have longer battery life. The OLED viewing angle is greater than the LCD. They claim that it can be viewed from any angle. Color switching improves tremendously. LCD currently switch at 25 milliseconds, OLED switches at 25 nanoseconds. This will make for greatly enhanced performance and clarity of fast moving graphics. Inkjet printers will be used to print the OLED subpixels on glass, this process yields extremely fine pixel pitches. LCDs have pixel pitches of .50 mm, OLED will have pixel pitches of.20mm. Dupont says that OLED will go active-matrix some time in 2004. At that time we will start to see the monitors emerging. As of now, Dupont has models with passive-matrix displays. Dupont predicts that by 2010, they will be able to make the OLED in 200 yard rolls, much like newspaper paper. Then they will be able to produce HDTV displays that can cover an entire wall of your house, or larger and be able to be rolled up and put away.
OLED technology: This is a good site to get and understanding of the technology. Be sure to check out the Introduction to OLED page.
Source: Maximum PC, page 14
This is a maintenance realease that addresses several issues, check the change log. Go to the Movable Type website for more info.
I am a big user of the Instant Messengers. I am usually online with all three of the major ones (Yahoo, MSN, AOL) at any given time. Managing all three with Trillian. Just yesterday, I got word that my company wants to make the employees use their IM apps only within the office’s network (They will be tracking the IM messages.). That would be nearly impossible…people chiming in whenever they see you online or if you are running in invisible mode you may want to shoot a quick note to someone you see online. It is just too easy to communicate this way. Companies are forcing us to go back to using the phone…I digress. A company from France, Secway, has developed a method for securing the IM chatter. Secway offers two types of secure IM products that support MSN, Yahoo, AOL and ICQ–SimpLite is free for personal users while corporate users can opt for the licence-based SimpPro (which costs US$25 for one to 24 seats). Well this is the start of the end of external IM use at work. I guess I better start using the IM feature on my cellphone.
Sony really put some thought into this product.
The new device will feature a TV tuner, hard disc drive and a DVD recorder alongside the games console functionality, making it into an “all in one” device for gaming, media recording and playback.
Details of the device are a bit thin on the ground at the moment, but it’s expected that it will offer hard disc video recorder functions, similar to the TiVo and Sky Plus systems, and will feature a high speed internet port to allow downloads of music and possibly movies through Sony’s media distribution systems, in Japan at least.
I think the competition will have to scramble to keep up with this one. Good move, Sony.
I was reading my Maximum PC magazine lastnight and there was an article in the WatchDog column. A gentleman bought a WD 120GB hard drive and when he installed it and formatted it, it read 111.7GBs. Of course, he felt cheated and wanted to know what the deal was. Well, it turns out that hard drive manufactures use the proper name for their measurement, GigaBytes, meaning 109. Microsft uses a measurement called GibiBytes, meaning 230. Clearly there is a difference in the to values and that is where the lost storage is. I have found an article on AnandTech.com that should help clear up the confusion.
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This phone is real eye candy, but is it functional? Nokia loaded it up with all the bells and whistles; its a cell phone, a web browser, a PDA, a 640×480 digital camera, and a mini video-camera. It is a Tri-band GSM phone and has BlueTooth technology built in. The screen is color and can display 9 lines of 30 characters but when wireless web-surfing the images are striped out of the pages. I would imagine that surfing the web would not be a pleasant experience. Nokia has equipped this unit with a rotary style keypad for dialing, but if you look closely, the numbers are not in their classic positions. It is listed at $500 without a calling plan and $300 with. From what I have read so far, this phone is more flash than performance. You make your own decision.
Here is an article about it
I must give a great amount of credit to my brother Michael for all the help he has been giving me in creating my blogsite. He usually points me to certain sites for ideas on layout and also tips and tricks. He has more time to do that type of surfing for he works from home as a swing trader. He maintains a very informative site called www.tradermike.net. If you are at all interested in working in the stock market, you need to take a look at his site. This one article points out certain things to look for (or lookout for) and provides links to the terminology used. I hope this learning tool will be helpful to everyone. Just remember, play at your own risk.
I found this interesting. I first heard word of this from an article on one of my favorite sites, Extremetech.com. I’m guessing that Nvidia is feeling the pinch from ATI. Take a look.Futuremark’s Audit
Nothing is faster than light, but….. Parts of a light wave can be accelerated beyond this speed by passing the wave through a vial of energetic potassium atoms. On the face of it, this contradicts Einstein’s special theory of relativity. So, rather than saying as Einstein did that nothing can be faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (abbreviated as c), physicists now prefer a more precise version: information cannot travel faster than c.
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Scientists think they have discovered a way to rid us of the mosquito everywhere. My question to you is, should they. “I doubt there’d be significant ecological consequences,” says mosquito expert Frank Collins of Notre Dame University. They believe that the mosquito is neither a significant pollinator nor a critical, reliable food source. Therefore it’s extinction will not impact the world much. I happen to believe that we don’t know how all the cards are stacked in nature. I think that we may have a good idea on how the mosquito interacts in nature but we don’t know it all. Then if we introduce our plan to rid the planet of it we will find out what their major role in nature is and it will be too late. Another scenario, we try our plan, and as it is now the 95% will fall victim to it. The 5% that are genetically immune to the malicious gene will become stronger and reproduce. The offspring will be immune to the killer gene as well. That leaves us a species on mosquito that will be even harder to kill. Perhaps my theory is a bit unrealistic but I think that nature may find a way to combat the impurities that man introduces. Popsci.com has a interesting article on the suggested plan man has for the mosquito. Take a look and form your own conclusion. The Ultimate Exterminator.
Story borrowed from PopSci.com
The first DVD videocamera, from Hitachi, was a bulky novelty. Three years later, however, we’re happy to see svelte models from Panasonic and Sony (shown here) — as well as a new trimmed-down model from Hitachi — that will hit the shelves in the coming months. Why ditch your trusty MiniDV camcorder? Because you can take the 3-inch DVD-R disc ($2) out of these cams and pop it into just about any DVD player for viewing. Even better, they don’t skimp on quality or recording time: You’ll get 60 minutes on each DVD-R disc, or 120 minutes with a rewritable disc. Sony’s model, the DCR-DVD200 (price not set) weighs only a pound and a half, and includes in-camera editing. Look for it this summer.
On the PopSci.com site…
The GT skunk works, as it’s known inside Ford—an homage to the team of Lockheed engineers who in 1943 created a World War II P-80 Shooting Star prototype in an unheard-of 143 days—is more than a simple exercise in speed; it’s a much-needed attempt to bring new luster to the company by reviving the carmaker’s daredevil DNA. In 1901, Henry Ford brazenly took on auto pioneer Alexander Winton in a 10-mile motorized-buggy race. Against all odds, Ford won, and consequently drew investors to his budding automobile enterprise. Sixty-two years later, after a failed attempt to purchase Ferrari, the founder’s grandson, Henry Ford II, issued a blank check to conquer international endurance racing, a seemingly impossible task. That challenge spawned the original GT40—a teardrop-shaped, droop-nosed, 380-horsepower wondercar. After stumbling twice at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in its first two years, the GT40 swept the first three finishing spots in 1966 to snap Ferrari’s streak of six straight wins. The car won at Le Mans three more times and, by 1970, had racked up 148 major sports car victories. By the time the last GT40 came out that year, the car had become the most revered vehicle that Ford had ever made.
“Wired News is reporting that the new owners of ReplayTV are considering dropping the Commercial Advance and Send Show options features.” I had bad luck with that function chopping out bits of show anyway. Between that and the 30 second skip function, I’m surprised ReplayTV has lasted this long!
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Theres a new Matrix 3: Revolutions trailer available for download! Just click the link below and checkout the trailer.
Patiences, this can take a while. Matrix 3: Revolutions trailer
Who could resist? “Show your support for our troops by downloading our free cursors!” says MyFreeCursors.com. One click, and your mouse pointer is an American flag. That click implies that you consent to their terms. The terms are that eUniverse Inc. has the right to watch your every move on the Internet. What’s more, the policy indicates that eUniverse has the right to install other software in the future on the users’ computer — and uninstalling the cursor program won’t remove this additional software from their system.
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I came across this little guide and thought that you all might be able to use it. So if you really have to be on the golf course right after lunch try these suggestions.
| Technology | The Trick | Slacker Application |
| E-Mail Timers | Set e-mail timers so that messages send when you’re out of the office. (In most MS Outlook programs, click "options" in your message and fill in the "Do not deliver before" window.) | Go to bed early, but make team members think you’re burning the midnight oil by timing messages to send at 3 a.m. |
| RIM BlackBerry Handheld | Reconfigure the gadget so that e-mails look just like regular office messages. To remove the "sent from my BlackBerry" message, click your desktop icon, select Redirector Settings, choose the General tab, and delete the autosignature. | Leave work early to avoid traffic, but send a few BlackBerry messages from the road to cover your tracks. |
| GoToMyPc.Com | Download software to your office PC that allows you to control your work computer screen over the Internet from anywhere. You can even operate your mouse remotely. Costs $19.95 a month. | Log on to your work computer during vacations, and open up today’s newspaper on the screen. Colleagues will think you just stepped away for a moment. |
| Instant Messaging | Crack the settings in your Instant Messenger program and disable the "idle" feature, which tells coworkers if you’re online. (In AOL Instant Messager programs, go to "preferences," then "privacy.") | Perfect for three-hour lunches and mid-afternoon pedicures. |
| Yahoo By Phone | For $4.95 a month you can call in and have your e-mails read aloud to you by a computerized voice named Jenni. | Forward your office e-mail to a Yahoo address. When you travel out of e-mail reach, you can call in to make sure you’re not missing anything urgent. |
| Call Forwarding | Available for a few dollars a month from most phone and cellphone companies, this feature allows you to forward your desk phone to another phone. | You can take the afternoon off for a massage, and still pick up your work calls in real time. |
Ray Ozzie, the famous creator of Lotus Notes, shares his ideas on revamping the internet. Ideas of a next generation Internet like Internet2 or IPv6 have been proposed by others but Ozzie has his own ideas. Ozzie gave examples of what could be part of a rebuilding effort, including XML packets replacing IP packets, encrypted V-cards instead of the usual DNS, a message-switching layer more like the open source Jabber than SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), or a dynamic DNS that works more like instant messaging for finding people.
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