Archive for February, 2009
IBM has filed a patent (US 7484451) for Bionic Body Armor, that could essentially allow us to dodge bullets like Neo in The Matrix. The armor would scan areas for incoming projectiles and when one is detected the system would deliver a shock to the muscles causing a swift reflexive action away from the projectile. Here’s what the patent describes the body armor as:
A method of protecting a target from a projectile propelled from a firearm comprises detecting an approaching projectile, continuously monitoring the projectile and transmitting an actual position of the projectile to a controller, computing an estimated projectile trajectory based upon the actual position of the projectile, determining an actual position of a target with a plurality of position sensors and a plurality of attitude sensors, determining whether the estimated projectile trajectory coincides with the actual position of the target, and triggering a plurality of muscle stimulators operably coupled to the controller and to the target when the estimated projectile trajectory coincides with the actual position of the target, wherein the muscle stimulators stimulate the target to move in a predefined manner, and wherein the target moves by an amount sufficient to avoid any contact with the approaching projectile. The projectile may be detected in the detecting step by emitting an electromagnetic wave from a projectile detector and receiving the electromagnetic wave after the electromagnetic wave has been reflected back toward the projectile detector by the projectile.
Read the full article at Tech Fragments.
A recent poll of more than 350,000 Americans on the importance of religion revealed that the nation is separated into enclaves of widely divergent viewpoints on faith, with some states and regions clearly religious and others significantly secular.
Gallup conducted a telephone poll of 355,334 U.S. adults, asking the question, “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”
As one might suspect, states from the “Bible Belt” scored the highest, with 85 percent of Mississippians and 79 percent of Tennesseeans, for example, answering yes.
The poll also revealed, however, that in addition to the Bible Belt, the U.S. also has a pair of “secular strips.”
The New England states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine scored the lowest in the nation, with only 42 percent of Vermont residents – or less than half the percentage of those in Mississippi – answering yes.
The other “secular strip” can be found in the West, where Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Nevada all scored in the bottom 10 states for affirming religion’s importance in daily life.
Gallup’s map of the nation, based on a state-by-state breakdown of responses to the poll question, can be seen below:
Read the original article posted on WorldNetDaily to see Gallop’s ranking of all 50 states.
The Authors Guild released a memo warning its members that Kindle’s new “text-to-speech” feature may in fact violate the rights of authors. The memo states that the new feature “…presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry. Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that.”
It will be interesting to see if this affects the end cost of Amazon’s ebooks since author’s and publishers will want to somehow recapture what they think they may loose in audio book sales as a result of Kindle’s ability to read the book to listeners.
I for one, enjoy reading from my Kindle and have no interest in having it read to me and certainly don’t want to see increased costs as a result of Amazon’s choice of adding this feature to the Kindle.
Read the entire memo issued by The Author’s Guild.
AceMoney helps people organize and manage their personal finances quickly and easily. It supports all the features required for home or even small-business accounting needs:
Manage multiple accounts of different types
AceMoney supports checking, savings, credit cards, loans, debt accounts. You can even create your own account type, such as a cash allowance for your kids!
Create and manage budgets
The program has more than 100 predefined spending categories. Setup budget limits for every category and track the difference between actual and budgeted values.
Track performance of investments
Track 401k, Stock options, Employee Stock Purchase Plans or any other investment activities. You don’t need to enter the stock quotes manually: AceMoney will download them from the net!
Do your financial math in multiple currencies
The software supports more than 150 different currencies and automatically downloads their exchange rates from Internet.
Track your spending habits and see where the money goes
Generate any report by categories or payors/payees, including pie charts. Now you can see at a glance how much you spent on food last month. Find all your withdrawals and deposits by any parameter.
Enjoy the convenience of on-line banking
Download and import information from on-line banks in QIF and OFX formats. If you run a small business, export to HTML, Text, or CSV formats to generate statements or perform complex statistical analysis.
Don’t miss the next deadline for bills
AceMoney takes control over your bills and shows you when they should be paid.
Double check
Enjoy the security of password protection of every file, scheduled backups and many other features without having any experience in accounting!
Plan debts and mortgage payments
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Do e-business with AceMoney
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Download AceMoney from MajorGeeks or FreewareFiles.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Google announced that it has been working on something called Google PowerMeter — a tool that will help you monitor and measure your energy consumption. Currently, most people simply pay their power bill blind — only being able to guess where that money is actually going.
This new iGoogle gadget will let you take advantage of “Smart Meters” — which will become a lot more common going forward.
- Analyze:
Get better information about how you use energy and what you can do to be more efficient. - Save:
Reduce your energy bills and carbon footprint by making smart decisions about your energy use. - Share:
Strike up a little friendly competition to see how your energy consumption compares to your friends and neighbors.
Access to information like this is very powerful for consumers. It will help them reduce their energy consumption, and at the same time, save money. Google PowerMeter could actually have a significant impact on energy usage in the United States.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Dell is launching a range of inkless printers aimed at the mobile user. The Wasabi PZ310 Photo Printer, from third-party supplier Zink Imaging, uses paper embedded with coloured crystals.
The colours are activated by heating tiny thermal probes on the paper to create images.
The 4.8in x 2.8in x 0.9in printer weighs just seven ounces and can print via Bluetooth from laptops and mobile phones.
It can print images up to 2in x 3in, and the paper comes with an adhesive backing so that the images can be used to create stickers and point-of-sale material.
“The Dell Wasabi is the fourth product available using the Zink technology, with many more on the way, including those capable of making larger prints,” said Wendy Caswell, president of Zink Imaging.
Original article on The Inquirer.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Most e-books require a dedicated, specialized device in order to read them. Amazon, for example, unveiled its Kindle 2 earlier this week. Now another e-reader outfit is taking a different approach: Use specialized software applications to bring e-books — or sometimes just bite-sized chapters or news articles — to smartphones, device lots of people already own.
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Just days after Amazon released the second edition of its Kindle e-book reader, a potential challenger has emerged from the north and appears set to enter the market. Shortcovers plans to bring e-books to a variety of smartphones and handheld devices, ridding readers of the need to carry an additional dedicated e-book reader.
Expected to launch by the end of the month in the U.S. and later this year in Canada, Shortcovers will offer users both an online and mobile destination through which they can acquire and read e-books and other literary content. |
“A shortcover is a chapter or excerpt, a magazine article, a blog, an op-ed, etc. The first shortcover is free to sample, and can lead you to paid content. We expect to have a free shortcover for every book that can lead you to the full book, or in some cases, a chapter at a time,” Michael Serbinis, executive vice president of Shortcovers and chief Information officer at Indigo Books & Music, told TechNewsWorld.
“We like to think of Shortcovers as ‘a bookstore in your pocket.’ People are reading differently now, which is why Shortcovers gives consumers the option to sample for free, purchase in bite-sized pieces, or buy the whole book,” he added.
Read the rest of this article on Technology News.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love my Kindle (K1) and knows that I’m always keeping my eyes peeled for anything related to eBooks and ePaper technology. My friend Paul (paulspoerry.com) pointed me to this article that DVICE posted. I couldn’t resist sharing it.
I can’t say that I share the same enthusiasm as the original author for some of these since my only experience is with the K1, but I think the fact that Amazon is approaching 8000 user reviews for the Kindle and it’s still holding a 4 out of 5 star rating lends much to its credibility.
So… on with the article.
The Amazon Kindle 2 bursts onto the scene with impressive new features, but it’s not alone. There are already plenty of e-readers on the market — and even more coming — each with its own abilities, shape and pricing. So how does the new Kindle stack up against its peers?
The Kindle 2, with its ultra-thinness and tight integration with Amazon’s vast array of e-books, is going to be hard to beat. It also stands alone with its free 3G connectivity, something no other e-reader has, letting you order books from anywhere there’s a Sprint wireless connection.
Here’s the Kindle 2′s most worthy competitor. The touchscreen Reader has the same 6-inch screen size and 800 x 600 resolution, nearly identical weight, a touchscreen keyboard instead of the physical one of the Kindle, and the ability to handle a variety of document and graphics formats (unlike the Kindle’s need for conversion). Sony gets clever with a couple of LED lights on each side of the screen for night reading (which diminish battery life).
Astak EZ Reader ($287)This e-reader seems to be popping up everywhere, and it’s known by many names, including the Hanlin V3 in Europe, IBook V3, Endless Ideas BeBook, WalkBook, and Papyre 6.1. Except for the lack of connectivity, its specs are similar to the Amazon Kindle 2, with the same 6-inch 800 x 600 screen. However, it handles a whole lot more document types and graphics with no need for conversion, and it costs $72 less. Astak teases us with promises of a 9.7-inch “flexi-screen” model “during the first six months of 2009.”
iRex Digital Reader 1000S ($749)Now we’re getting fancy. Aimed at an upscale market, the pricey 1000S has a relatively huge 10.2-inch screen with considerably higher 1,280 x 1,024 resolution. For $110 more, you can get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, or go bare-bones for $599 with the non-touchscreen iLiad “book edition.” The 1000S is big, about the size of a piece of paper, but its main drawback is its weight, a hefty 20.1 ounces. Some hands-on reviewers have called its response “sluggish.”
Foxit eSlick ($259, or $229 for early buyers)This one looks exactly the same as the $350 CyBook Gen3 and Astak Mentor, all the size of a medium paperback. It’s using that familiar 6-inch 800 x 600 screen, and at 0.4 inches deep, it’s almost as thin as the Kindle 2. The eSlick’s low price is matched by its featherweight heft, just 6.4 ounces. Foxit says its first eSlick readers have sold out, with the next batch due mid-to-late April.
Plastic Logic (no pricing announced yet)
This ultralight, all-plastic reader is just a prototype thus far, but it’s looking good. Its touchscreen is the size of commonplace 8.5 x 11-inch piece of paper, and uses gestures to navigate from one page to the next. Able to read Microsoft Word, Excel and Adobe PDF files as well as newspapers, magazines and books, its makers claim it can display anything you can print. The company says it’ll be shipping a few units later this year, but this e-reader won’t be widely available until 2010. Also not mentioned yet: pricing, which could be steep with such advanced tech.
Amazon Kindle 1 ($359) The Kindle 2 has 25% longer battery life, text-to-speech, is the thinnest reader on the market, is slightly lighter than its predecessor, and holds in its back pocket a formidable, if not devastating weapon: Amazon. The company offers more than 230,000 e-books for the Kindle 2, as well as numerous newspapers, magazines, and blogs — all downloadable anywhere. The downside? Those store-bought books are laden with DRM (digital rights management), preventing you from easily copying them anywhere else, and there’s a clunky email-to-yourself routine for converting PDFs or other files.
(Click image for full-size version)
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, The Times of India reports that a 68-year-old South Korean woman failed her driving test for the 771st time, but she plans to apply for a 772nd attempt. The woman has continued to fail the written exam since her first attempt on April 13, 2005, according to Korea Times.
She’s taken the written exam almost every day at the Driver’s License Agency, except for weekends and holidays. The agency said her number of failed attempts is record-breaking.
Read the original article on The Times of India.
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,Optical Brain Imaging Decodes Preference With 80 Percent Accuracy.
ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2009) — Researchers at Canada’s largest children’s rehabilitation hospital have developed a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference – with the goal of ultimately opening the world of choice to children who can’t speak or move.
