Daily technology digest!

[astarmathsandphysics]

Happy at this. Google good microsoft bad. There are already a lot of open source operating systems out there though. Why foot they just fund one of those

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

For The Ladies: Twilight, The Board Game






I can't say I'm surprised there's a Twilight board game, but I can say that I'm a little disappointed nobody's bought it for me yet. DON'T YOU LOVE ME? Ooh, a review:

    This game is terrible. There are trivia cards to do with the movie but the other questions are all depending on what you roll with the die or they ask us to write down what the other player's favorite animal, movie,band etc. They have absolutely nothing to do with the movie and they are pointless. I thought it would be like trivial pursuit and different categories about the movie scenes, etc. To accomplish a task you have to roll a die and depending on what number you get you accomplish the task. These are pointless tasks and are not challenging at all. A 2 year old could do that. This is coming from a person that has loved the books, movie and anything else to do with twilight. The game is not worth what you pay for it. The pieces aren't the best quality and the cards are flimsy. What a rip off. Buyer beware.

Oh man, that was way too many words for me. Somebody summarize it for me. I ordered two.

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

Wireless Cybercriminals Target Clueless Vacationers





he newest trend in Internet fraud is "vacation hacking," a sinister sort of tourist trap.

Cybercriminals are targeting travelers by creating phony Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, in hotels, and even aboard airliners.

Vacationers on their way to fun in the sun, or already there, think they're using designated Wi-Fi access points. But instead, they're signing on to fraudulent networks and hand-delivering everything on their laptops to the crooks.

"More and more people are traveling with Wi-Fi devices like smartphones and laptops," says Marian Merritt, Internet safety advocate at the computer-security giant Symantec. "Airports and airlines and hotels are responding. They're setting up free Wi-Fi networks to lure in customers. Now they're luring in hackers as well."

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

so better take care during holidays
 

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

Software Watches Ball Games, Calls Plays






July 10, 2009 -- Researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania reported last week that they've developed a computer program capable of learning to understand video footage and describe it in words.

A sort of video-to-text system, the software reports the action rather than the dialogue. So an analysis of a video showing Hank Aaron hitting his 715th career home run to surpass the mark set by Babe Ruth wouldn't include the play-by-play announcer saying, "It's 715! There's a new home run champion of all time!"

What the software offers to differentiate the moment from Aaron's previous 714 homers is the description of two fans running alongside the new home run king as he trots around the bases.

What makes the system, which the researchers described at the IEEE Computer Society's Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, in Miami Beach, unique is its ability to draw links among human actions and to understand causal relationships.

To illustrate how the system works, the researchers showed how it analyzed footage of Major League Baseball games. During a learning period, the system watched games that had already been tagged with human-generated captions describing who the players were and what they were doing (pitcher: pitch; batter: no swing; batter: swing-miss; batter: swing-hit-run; fielder: run-catch-throw).


source:http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/10/baseball-software.html

[astarmathsandphysics]

You can already tag videos with descriptions in html. Soon though i am sure google will tag videos with user generated comments.

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

Twilight time for Yahoo search



Uncertainty is in the air in the wake of Yahoo's deal with Microsoft, as everyone wonders: What will Redmond keep, and what will it discard?

more information: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10308539-2.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

Facebook launching Twitter-like 'Lite' site?

Alerts for a beta test popped up and then disappeared on Tuesday night. From the looks of it, a new stripped-down Facebook profile feature hit the Web prematurely.

------------------detailed story-------------------




Facebook, it appears, was not about to let Google get this week's award for shadowy new projects. On Tuesday night, a number of users--including Mashable blogger Ben Parr--received notifications that they were beta testers for something called "Facebook Lite."
The notifications, as well as the site hosted on the subdomain lite.facebook.com, disappeared within minutes. It seems to have been rolled out prematurely by mistake.
"Last night, the test was temporarily exposed to a larger set of users by mistake," an e-mailed statement from Facebook representative Brandee Barker read. "We have not opened up access to lite.facebook.com to all users at this time. People who are not part of the test and are trying to access 'Lite' will be directed to Facebook.com as usual.
From what it looks like, Facebook Lite is a simpler version of the site and pares down profiles to basic information and a stream of status updates. The easy conclusion is that this would make Facebook's service look a whole lot like Twitter. And given the fact that Facebook had attempted to acquire Twitter, got snubbed, and then acquired the significantly smaller real-time streaming site FriendFeed this week, a Twitter-like service would be rife with implications.
Here's Facebook's official explanation: "We are currently testing a simplified alternative to Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently. Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook 'Lite' is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept friend requests, write on people's walls, and look at photos and status updates."
Blogger Jason Baptiste managed to get screenshots.
The obvious guess is that this is yet another attempt on Facebook's part to stay abreast of Twitter in the race to own the "real-time streaming Web." There are, potentially, other reasons for launching a simplified site:
• For use on slower connections.
• For stripped-down computers in developing markets, where the 250,000,000-member Facebook wants to make inroads.
• As a more "portable" profile that could potentially tie into Facebook's aim of being all over the Web rather than a destination site.
Facebook hinted that the "developing markets" answer could be an accurate one. "We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience," the statement from Facebook explained.
Got any guesses, speculation, or conspiracy theories? Comments are welcome.

[Blizz_rb93]

As Unbreakable as ... Glass?



 CLEAR VIEW A project lets visitors see all angles from the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago. Builders are experimenting with new materials and methods to expand the use of glass in construction

CHICAGO — To truly appreciate how glass can be used structurally, make your way to 233 South Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago. More precisely, make your way 1,353 feet above South Wacker, to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower.

DAMN! That picture looks scary xD

[Zain-Xa]

DAMN! That picture looks scary xD

yeaaa it doeess whooa haha

[O.T.13.]

daily, when was the last time anything was posted in hea? 

[DrEvil]

i think the name of the thread shud be changed to Monthly Technology Digest...

[DrEvil]

Sony Reader Digital Book

Sony has released a new reader digital book. This reader is ultraportal, has a 6" touchscreen display, E-ink pape-like touchscreen display, built in LED reading light, search-annotation-highlighting capabilities, adjustable text sizes, longbattery


life, thousands of ebooks available from the eBook Sony store or other sites that have DRM free ebooks, and multiple formats are supported. Just like the Kindle, the Sony Reader Digital Book gives bookworms the opportunity to take thousands of the books they love to read with them where ever they go.

[DrEvil]

Stanford develops safer lithium-sulfur batteries with four times the charge of lithium-ion cells

Longer battery life is high atop our list of gadget prayers, and the brainiacs at Stanford are one step closer to making our dreams come true with a new lithium-sulfur technology. Half of this trick lies in the silicon nanowire anode that the same team developed back in 2007, whereas the new cathode consists of a similarly commodious lithium sulfide nanostructure. Compared to present lithium-ion batteries, Stanford's design is "significantly safer" and currently achieves 80 percent more capacity, but it's nowhere near commercial launch with just 40 to 50 charge cycles (Li-ion does "300 to 500") due to the compound's rapid degradation. That said, we're promised a theoretical quadruple boost in capacity as the technology matures, so until then we'll keep that hamster running in our backpack.

[astarmathsandphysics]

Waiting for an ereader mobile phone