Archive for: September 12, 2007

We’ll be honest, we see nothing wrong with just phoning someone up and venting your frustrations, but for those looking to insert yet another layer in their relationship, Project E could apparently help. that interesting prototype consists of a web-based spine (Eco), a central hub (that Exo crea…

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Gadgets

Apple took some flak a few months ago for shipping 18-bit LCD panels in the MacBook and MacBook Pro — a hue and cry that reached its inevitable conclusion with a class-action lawsuit by the “sparkly” and “grainy” quality of the screens. Well, it looks like Cupertino isn’t too fazed by the uproa…

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Desktops, Gadgets

For those building a house from the ground-up, installing a slew of cameras and touch panels to automate it may not be all that burdensome, but new research is hoping to use electrical noise to enable current homeowners to reap the benefits of home automation without tearing the walls back down….

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Gadgets

This software update may include security patches new or revised settings and features and other items which will change your current operating system We encourage you to check this page from time to time for software updates and to always maintain your system to use the latest version of the system software

micro Torrent is an efficient and feature rich BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint micro Torrent was designed to use as little cpu space and memory as possible while offering all the functionalites expected from advanced clients With BitTorrent you can download files faster and contribute by sharing files and bandwidth
Features of quot micro Torrent quot
middot Multiple simultaneous downloads
middot Smart bandwidth usage
middot File level priorities
middot Configurable bandwidth scheduling
middot Global and per torrent speed limiting
middot Quickly resumes interrupted transfers
middot UPnP support WinXP only
middot Supports popular protocol extensions
middot Trackerless support Mainline DHT
middot Localized to different languages
middot Typical memory use less than 6 MB
middot Incredibly small about 200 KB
The biggest changes were full Vista support and the removal of the 65 536 piece limit for torrents
Also added was support for finding local peers peers on the same LAN and optionally not having any upload restrictions for them
It is also possible to turn on automatic updating for betas now found in the quot Other quot section of the preferences
Changes in micro Torrent Version Version 1 7 5
nbsp Fix rare crash bug with malformed UPnP response
Fix downloads stalled in rare cases

On Tuesday, Computerworld Australia printed this story, which claimed that pirates running an illegal copy of Microsoft's Windows Vista would soon be visited by a so-called "black screen of death": "A black screen after one hour of browsing/ No start menu or task bar/No desktop".

We know that Microsoft has built in a reduced functionality mode, where users are either in one of two "reduced functionality" states: an "out of grace" mode, where a user hasn't activated Vista within the 30-day time period; and a "non-genuine" mode, where the OS suspects the copy is a pirated copy.

The problem is that Microsoft said the reporter received "inaccurate information," and that "Microsoft has not rolled out any updates to WGA in Windows Vista." But what was inaccurate?

I'll freely admit that I haven't used a pirated copy of Vista (or any other OS), so I'm not quite clear whether there is a black screen of death, or whether this is completely false. I specifically asked if there was a BlackSOD, and received the following response via email: "We contacted the writer of this story to let him know that there have been no recent updates to WGA in Windows Vista." And that's it.

According to Microsoft's link, in "out of grace" mode a user can remain logged on for just one hour. I would assume, however, that he or she would then simply be kicked out to a login screen, complete with an error message. Dumping the user into the void of a black screen seems very un-Microsoft. Error messages can be cryptic, but at least they're there.

So I'll ask you: any pirates out there willing to clear ...

Microsoft has signed its first Silverlight follower.

The software giant is partnering with Internap Network Services Corporation to equip the Web sites of several large radio groups with media players powered by Silverlight, Microsoft's version of the Flash player. Internap will be the first partner to commercially deploy the Silverlight-based player, with ad content provided by Internap.

Participating stations include Citadel Communications, Univision and Radio One.

Microsoft released Silverlight from beta earlier this month and announced a formal partnership with Novell to provide Silverlight for Linux.

Some people just can't be bothered to use their mouses. The time it takes them to move their hands from the keyboard to the mouse to click something drives them mad, as though every click is time wasted and productivity lost. Now they (and you) can rest easy, thanks to KeyXL. The service claims to be the world's largest database of keyboard shortcuts and commands, for virtually every operating system and application.

Productivity mavens love keyboard shortcuts. No wasted motion, no wasted energy, and most important, no wasted time. But even for those of us who love our mice, using a key-command to perform some of the most common and repetitive tasks can save time. For example, did you know that in Firefox, clicking the middle mouse button (or scroll wheel) will close a tab? KeyXL knows, and if you type "Firefox" in the search bar, you'll find out as well.

When you type an application name into the search bar, make sure you select the operating system you're running it under (such as Windows, Linux, or MacOS), or else you'll get hits for each operating system, and you'll have to select the right one. When you choose the right link, you'll get a list of key commands and shortcuts for multiple functions that you can print out and hang next to your computer. If you don't find the keyboard shortcut useful, you can rank it down, and if it's a lifesaver you can rank it up. The search box can be filtered based ...

A new study comparing the news coverage of major media outlets with that of citizen journalism sites like Digg found that there is a pretty wide gap between what the people find interesting and what newspeople think the public will find interesting.

Conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the study followed the headlines on three user-drives sites (Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us) with 48 media outlets from TV, radio, and the Web through the last week of June 2007. According to the data, 7 out of 10 stories linked on user-driven sites came from blogs and other non-news sites. Additionally, of the 10 most covered stories in the mainstream media throughout the seven-day period researchers saw only 5 percent overlap with user-driven sites.

The top stories in the last week of June (as far as readers were concerned) centered on gossip, rumors, and (of course) the iPhone. As far as the mainstream media, the top stories centered on the war in Iraq and immigration.

All told, the most popular topics for citizen editors are technology and health/lifestyle stories. And user-generated news tends to have much faster turnover than mainstream media, which tends to revisit the same story from differing angles for several days.

Major media outlets, like the BBC, still account for about 25 percent of stories on user-edited sites.

A couple weeks back, our own Jen DeLeo shared something a bit disturbing with us on our lunch break: The Weird Hunter had returned from an Aaron Lewis concert with a quick reference postcard laying out the age of consent in every U.S. state and territory. Those of us around the lunch table were a little creeped out, to say the least (did you know the age of consent in Puerto Rico is only 6.9? shudder).

John Ordover, the man behind MarryOurDaughter.com, felt that same wave of ickiness when he looked at state marriage laws. "As far as I can tell, in every state but Oregon, parents can marry off their children," he told The New York Times. The site allows parents to list their daughters in a searchable database and set a price (much like a dowry) to marry her. For example, suitors can "propose" to Ashlee R., a pop-music-loving 15 year old gal from the Midwest, for "bride price" of $37,500.

The site, intended as a parody of laws that allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission, has drawn over 20 million hits in the last two weeks. Masquerading as MarryOurDaughter.com publicity director, Roger Mandervan, Ordover got some airtime on stations in Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and Houston where shock jocks and listeners alike trumpeted their outrage over the site. (Ordover says the site now gets over 1,000 emails a day—most of them outraged.)

Ordover came clean that the site is entirely fake on Tuesday morning when The Times' Brad Stone gave him a quick phone call.

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This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power performance and reliability The ATI CATALYST software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability nbsp
This release note provides information on the latest posting of AMD 39 s industry leading software suite Catalyst trade This particular software suite updates both the AMD Display Driver and the Catalyst trade Control Center This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power performance and reliability The AMD Catalyst trade software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability

This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power performance and reliability The ATI CATALYST software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability nbsp
This release note provides information on the latest posting of AMD 39 s industry leading software suite Catalyst trade This particular software suite updates both the AMD Display Driver and the Catalyst trade Control Center This unified driver has been further enhanced to provide the highest level of power performance and reliability The AMD Catalyst trade software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability