Articles from Tips and Tricks

9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network
2007-07-25 05:35:00
The news may overflow with stories about the social networking giants, such as Facebook and MySpace, but a horde of companies are doing their best to reduce the fundamental features of these websites to mere commodities. These up-and-coming companies provide so-called “white label” social networking platforms that enable their customers to build their own social networks (often from scratch) and to tailor those networks to a range of purposes.The idea of white labeling a network is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social network’s users and to brand the network with the builder’s identity or intent. While definitions of “social networking” may vary, social networks are primarily defined by member profiles and some sort of user generated content. There are roughly three types of companies that have emerged in the space of white label social networking. The first provides hosted, do-it-yourself solutions with which customers can largely point and ...

9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network
2007-07-25 05:35:00
The news may overflow with stories about the social networking giants, such as Facebook and MySpace, but a horde of companies are doing their best to reduce the fundamental features of these websites to mere commodities. These up-and-coming companies provide so-called â€œwhite labelâ€ social networking platforms that enable their customers to build their own social networks (often from scratch) and to tailor those networks to a range of purposes. The idea of white labeling a network is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social networkâ€™s users and to brand the network with the builderâ€™s identity or intent. While definitions of â€œsocial networkingâ€ may vary, social networks are primarily defined by member profiles and some sort of user generated content. There are roughly three types of companies that have emerged in the space of white label social networking. The first provides hosted, do-it-yourself solutions with which customers can largely point an ...

Toshiba Ships first Notebook with HD DVD-R
2007-07-25 04:50:00
Toshiba’s Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the availability of the Qosmio G45-AV680, a cutting-edge audio-video notebook computer with Dolby surround sound technology and the first U.S. model to feature an HD DVD-R optical drive and full 1080playback resolution.As the first U.S. notebook computer with an HD DVD-R optical drive, the Qosmio notebook provides users with a state-of-the-art multimedia machine that can burn up to 30 GB of data, including home-videos, entire photo albums and music libraries onto a single HD DVD recordable disc. In addition to storage capacity, the HD DVD-R optical drive also plays HD DVD movies at a resolution six times sharper than the DVD format. The enhanced technology of HD DVD provides Qosmio users with a groundbreaking level of interactivity that will change how people watch movies. Features such as in-movie commentary and downloadable internet content will provide layers of valu ...
Dvd

Toshiba Ships first Notebook with HD DVD-R
2007-07-25 04:50:00
Toshibaâ€™s Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the availability of the Qosmio G45-AV680, a cutting-edge audio-video notebook computer with Dolby surround sound technology and the first U.S. model to feature an HD DVD-R optical drive and full 1080playback resolution. As the first U.S. notebook computer with an HD DVD-R optical drive, the Qosmio notebook provides users with a state-of-the-art multimedia machine that can burn up to 30 GB of data, including home-videos, entire photo albums and music libraries onto a single HD DVD recordable disc. In addition to storage capacity, the HD DVD-R optical drive also plays HD DVD movies at a resolution six times sharper than the DVD format. The enhanced technology of HD DVD provides Qosmio users with a groundbreaking level of interactivity that will change how people watch movies. Features such as in-movie commentary and downloadable internet content will provide layers of ...
Dvd

NASA to Dump Junk in Space
2007-07-24 09:08:00
It's not the politically correct way to dispose of trash, but NASA says it has no better option than to dump from the International Space Station a refrigerator-sized container holding ammonia and a 200-pound camera stand. Station flight engineer Clay Anderson will do the deed during a spacewalk planned for Monday. "We agonized over this for a very long time before we came to this decision," space station deputy manager Kirk Shireman said in an interview. "It sounds bad."NASA is not as concerned about its image as it is about the potential damage the ammonia container, which weighs more than 1,400 pounds, could do after it falls from orbit in about a year. Pieces as big as 39 pounds could survive re-entry and crash on Earth. The U.S. space agency calculates the odds of the debris hurting or killing a person at one in 5000. That sounds high, but consider that engines flown on the country's heavy-lift Delta and Atlas rockets have a one in 1,000 chance of affecting a person. Continue ...

Emotion-Sensing Furniture Changes Hues
2007-07-24 09:06:00
Ancient Japanese people believed that gods lived in all things, whether animate or inanimate. Talking to a wall was not an idle act, but actually a kind of soul-searching. And usually, the wall talked back. Now a table and a set of chairs embodies that philosophy. Called Fuwapica, which loosely translated means "soft and flashy," the furniture senses people's presence and gradually changes colors accordingly. The interactive set, which could be in shops, airports, museums, or bars within a year or two, uses technology to extend people's emotional state into a room that may be devoid of ancient ideas. "We want modern people like us to remember that there was an interaction between people and furniture," said Ichi Kanaya, assistant professor at Osaka University. Continue reading>> ...

Story Machine Captures Sound, Images
2007-07-24 08:10:00
When it comes to writing, the pen and paper can take storytelling only so far. Now a new technology allows kids — big and small — to embed sound into traditional drawings and create an interactive story-game. The Jabberstamp, invented by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is not only just fun to play with, it can also allow children to capture and share intricate ideas before they have mastered the skill of writing narratives. "We can help them learn new things that are really complex by giving them new toys," said Hayes Raffle, a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant. Raffle developed the device with fellow Ph.D. candidate Cati Vaucelle and Cornell University researcher Ruibing Wang.These days, a new toy most likely is computerized. But electronic toys and books are akin to television, said Raffle. Most of the content is already preprogrammed with stories that have been created by someone else. "I always thought that it was a shame that kids couldn't cre ...

Nintendo DS, Wii Continue Hardware Sales Lead for June
2007-07-24 08:06:00
The sales numbers released by research firm NPD Group for June continue to highlight Nintendo’s current strength in the market. Both the Nintendo DS and Wii lead all of its competitors in terms of software and hardware sales. The Nintendo DS collected even more sales than during May, moving an amazing 561,900 units. The Wii followed closely behind with 381,800, also slightly up from the previous month. Nintendo’s near-obsolete Game Boy Advance sold a surprising 109,400 consoles, despite there being no new software released for the handheld. Sony took sat next in the ladder, with the PSP selling 290,100 and the undying PlayStation 2 at 270,700 units. The PlayStation 3, which was once again the lowest-selling, current-market console, only managed to sell 98,500 units. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sold 198,400 units, also up from May’s figures. Overall, video game hardware sales were up 34 percent for the month as compared to the same period last year – accum ...

Protect Your Mobile Phone From Unwanted Access Using Iris Recognition
2007-07-24 07:53:00
The Japanese company Oki Electric announced the development of an iris recognition technology for cell phones, in the first application that uses the existing video camera of your phone or PDA, in an ultra high level of security protection. No one will ever be able to make any calls, or to access the web from your phone, unless it is authorized by you. The software Iris Recognition Technology version 1.0 needs a 1 or 2 megapixels camera to function properly, and is based on a proprietary algorithm designed to work with standard cameras on mobile phones. The program runs on both Windows Mobile and Symbian, so it’s compatible with a lot of cool mobile phones on the market, and it should probably work with your current phone. Find out more about this cool technology at Oki Electric (translated). ...

86 Essential Photoshop shortcuts
2007-07-24 00:17:00
Working with Photoshop isn't that easy for both beginners and advanced users. There are times when applying a simple effect to your image can be so much time consuming. What follows is a list of often used(and much abused tools) tools and their shorcuts to make working with them second nature-we don't want to handle our tools clumsily while unleashing our creativity, do we?H (Hand Tool) — When zoomed in to a portion of your photo, this command brings up the hand tool which allows quick panning.B (Brush tool) — The brush is an extremely useful tool when working with masks, and I’m constantly using this command along with the hand and zoom tools.Sift + B (Cycle through Brush tools)- Use this shortcut to bring up a list of other tools in brushes palette.Z (Zoom Tool) — This command brings up the zoom tool, which allows you to zoom in.Ctrl + 0 (Fit to Screen) — This is a command to get the entire photo in front of your eyes.Ctrl + Z (Undo) — Very useful for going back one st ...

Microsoft, Ask.com pressure Google on privacy (computer world)
2007-07-23 10:19:00
Microsoft is joining Ask.com in offering web surfers a way to use its search engines anonymously, and the two companies are now calling on the search and online advertising industry to develop a common set of privacy practices. By year's end, Microsoft will give users a way to search anonymously on its Microsoft Windows Live websites, and it will also implement a new data retention policy that after 18 months will scrub all search query data of any information that could be used to identify the searcher."We think that we as an industry ought to take a look at ways to further enhance privacy protections," said Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen. "We're really trying to make sure that people always have the ability to have a trusted experience."These steps are similar to those taken by Ask.com last week and are part of an effort to create industry consensus on privacy practices, Cullen said.When visitors use Microsoft's Windows Live search engine, Microsoft stores the sea ...
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