Microsoft Gets Desperate - Free Vista Business, Office Pro 2007
This isn't exactly the kind of promotion one normally sees leading up to a major OS update. PowerTogether.com is a promotion put on officially by Microsoft offering full licenses of Windows Vista Business or Microsoft Office Professional 2007 to any US resident (sorry international readers) willing to watch 3 (for each license) informational video or interactive presentations, answer a few questions regarding the content of the presentations, and sign over your first born give them a bunch of personal information. Now, I can vouch for the legitimacy of this promotion, as Microsoft has done this kind of thing in the past (I participated in one about 3 years ago to get a free copy of Visual Studio, which I to this day have never taken out of the package). The subject matter of the presentations may be imposing to some, but if PowerTogether is anything like the VS promotion, the answers to the questions are more about the quality of the content than the content itself.
The PowerTogether promotion requires IE6 or higher to complete.
Student invents 256GB sheet of paper
An Indian engineering student has developed a new method of storing up to 256GB of data on a very familiar medium: an ordinary sheet of paper.
Sainul Abideen, a 24-year-old who recently completed a master of computer applications degree in southern India, created a way of storing data that uses colored geometric shapes instead of zeros and ones and storing those shapes in dense patterns on paper. While the data storage format can store up to 256GB of data on an A4-size sheet of paper measuring 8.26 by 11.69 in., when tranferred to a DVD, the format can store up to 450GB of data, according to a story in the Arab News. By comparison, a DVD can store 4.7GB of data.
Abideen has demonstrated a 45-second video clip being encoded on paper, which he called a "Rainbow Video Disk" (RVD), and then played back through a computer with an RVD scanner attached. Abideen said that smaller scanners could fit inside laptop computers or mobile phones and read subscriber identity module (SIM) card-size RVDs containing 5GB of data.
Read the full story at Computer World.
http://tinyurl.com/yxzzap
Xerox Reinvents Paper, Trees Rejoice
Not to be confused with the spy paper we showed you a few months back, the brainiacs at Xerox have invented a new self-erasable paper that fades to white after 24 hours. The invention "came from developing compounds that change color when they absorb a certain wavelength of light but then will gradually disappear." The paper is reusable though it appears you'll need a special printer to get images on to it. I can see this working in the newspaper industry and such, but I can also see a ton of scam artists making people sign contracts that "change" over night. – LOUIS RAMIREZ
Google Calendar Todo Integration
Plank + cheap mic = touch sensitive tablet
Matthew sez, "Some software and cheap microphones is all that is needed to turn a wooden board into a touch sensitive input device. The video is pretty impressive."
Acoustic sensors make surfaces interactive
A series of acoustic sensors that turn any surface into a touch-sensitive computer interface have been developed by European researchers.
Two or more sensors are attached around the edges of the surface. These pinpoint the position of a finger, or another touching object, by tracking minute vibrations. This allows them to create a virtual touchpad, or keyboard, on any table or wall.
http://tinyurl.com/yxeq6p
Cheap air travel via bulk cheese purchasing
Buy a wheel of Swiss Knights Fondue and Cheese and you get 500 AAdvantage air-miles -- that's like a trip to Australia for $1,100 -- a serious bargoon (if you can book far enough in advance to use your miles, of course).
This weekend I was handed an opened wheel of processed cheeses by a friend. He said that his brother-in-law had caught wind of a frequent flyer promotion whereby you get 500 miles for each purchase of this cheese wheel and had purchased 75,000 miles for ~$300, which also means he's got more opened cheese wheels than he knows what to do with.
How to: Graphical Multiplication Trick
Linutop PC Keeps Computing MinimalIt doesn't get any simpler than this. The Linutop is a small form factor PC that comes pre-installed with Linux, and, well, that's about it. The PC has no hard drive, video card, or other components as it's meant specifically for Web surfing only and comes with just enough ports/connections for all the essential peripherals. A number of other pre-installed apps (Firefox being one of them) are also included. Cost and availability are still unknown, but if you're looking for a cheap, bare bones PC, I can't picture anyone topping this. – LOUIS RAMIREZ
http://tinyurl.com/wf2nw
Tracks - GTD application on Rails
http://tinyurl.com/y5lat6
Trillian Astra alpha testing sign-up
Boites de la Paix: Furniture made from Ammunition Cases
http://tinyurl.com/spqpx
Organize your RSS Feeds and Optimize your Readflow
http://tinyurl.com/vebd3
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