Wednesday, June 29, 2011

FEZ Ultimate Kit

This is a great product for .Net Micro framework developers.


Description

GHI also provides a complete and free project ebook  for the kit.

Already own a FEZ Panda or FEZ Domino? Or want to use the internet with Arduino or its derivatives?
Consider the FEZ Internet of Things Kit.

The FEZ Ultimate Kit Includes:
 This is a library provided by the community to add controls to FEZ Touch (watch the video) http://code.tinyclr.com/project/328/fez-touch-ui-controls/

Related products
This unique kit provides internet connectivity to FEZ processor boards.
72Mhz .NETMF powered board with Micro SD, many of IOs and a lot of exclusive features
2.4 inch color touch screen display with 240x320 resolution.
Go wireless with the same Ethernet port with this easy to configure Ethernet to WiFi Wireless bridge.
Related categories
Simple sensors for your next project with open source drivers.
Shields allow you to expand your hardware to create cool projects.

Google Plus



Visit https://plus.google.com/



A quick look at the first pieces of the project.


Sharing is a huge part of the web, a part that we think could be a lot simpler. That's why we've been working on adding a few new things to Google: To make connecting with people on the web more like connecting with them in the real world. We hope that you like what we've cooked up so far. And stay tuned, because there's more to come.


Circles


You share different things with different people. But sharing the right things with the right people shouldn't be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another and your boss in a circle all on his own – just like in real life.

Sparks


Remember when your Grandpa used to cut articles out of the paper and send them to you? That was nice. That's kind of what Sparks does: It looks for videos and articles that it thinks you'll like, so that when you're free there's always something to watch, read and share. Grandpa would approve.

Hangouts


Bumping into friends while you're out and about is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let your mates know that you're hanging out and see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until we perfect teleportation, it's the next best thing.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Solar Sinter Solar-powered 3D Printer

Solar Sinter solar-powered 3D printer turns sand into glass, renews our faith in higher education (video)
Where would we be without the world's graduate art projects? In the case of Markus Kayser's Solar Sinter, we might never have seen the day when a solar-powered 3D printer would turn Saharan sand into a perfectly suitable glass bowl. Well, lucky for us (we suppose) we live in a world overflowing with MA students, and awash in their often confusing, sometimes inspiring projects. Solar Sinter, now on display at the Royal College of Art, falls into the latter category, taking the Earth's natural elements, and turning them into functioning pieces of a burgeoning technology. Solar Sinter uses the sun's rays in place of a laser and sand in place of resin, in a process that is perhaps more visually stunning than the results. See for yourself in the video after the break. 

Source: Engadgets

Monday, June 20, 2011

Withings Blood Pressure Monitor for iOS


Withings users not satisfied with only being able to share their weight with the world can now add blood pressure and heart rate to the mix. This iPhone-connected blood pressure monitor made its first appearance at CES, but you'll finally be able to order one of your own today. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, the $129 accessory costs three to four times as much as off-the-shelf blood pressure monitors, but integrates well if you're looking to pair it with your Withings scale for a complete vitals management solution. Results can be sent to health sites like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, or directly to your doctor. Care to see how it works? Join us past the break for a hands-on look at the monitor, including a video comparison with the in-store vitals machine at our neighborhood Kmart.

Update: Withings wrote in to let us know that the blood pressure readings in the video below were likely inflated because we were talking, though we do appreciate the concern you've already expressed in the comments.


Source: Engadgets

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Comcast Cable Show Features 1Gbps Cable Modem Speed

As promised, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts treated Cable Show 2011 attendees to a quick demo of the company's latest and greatest tech earlier today. The presentation consisted of the new Xfinity TV platform with all its cloud processing and internet content from Facebook and others, as well as a speed test running on a Comcast cable modem that broke through the 1Gbps speed barrier on the production network. There's no word on when home users might see such speeds but the company promised to "keep up the pace as the internet continues to evolve" -- let's hope that extends to the increasingly restrictive 250GB bandwidth cap. The demo of new DVR software also went off without a hitch, appearing to run smoothly and showing off a vision of "cloud processing" that speeds up search, personalization and recommendations in the program guide by handling them at the head end instead of on the box itself. We're still waiting to get our hands on the RF remote and see if the experience is just as smooth ourselves, but for now you can get a taste in the 17 minute video embedded above.
Source: Enadgets

Kinect for Windows SDK Beta


Microsoft's been talking up its forthcoming Kinect for Windows SDK for quite a while now, and it looks like developers might soon finally be able to get their hands on it. According to WinRumors, Microsoft will roll out the beta version of the SDK during a special event on Channel 9 at 9:30 AM Pacific time (12:30 Eastern) tomorrow -- something that's now been backed up somewhat by the Channel 9 website itself, which is simply promising a "special Kinect focused event tomorrow." WinRumors is also reporting that the President of Microsoft Spain said during an appearance at a conference today that the beta SDK would be available "this week." So, it certainly seems like things are lining up for a release -- it's just a shame that "Kinect applications" doesn't have the same ring as Kinect hacks.


Soruce: Engadgets

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Father's Day






A Dad is a person
who is loving and kind,
And often he knows
what you have on your mind.
He’s someone who listens,
suggests, and defends.
A dad can be one
of your very best friends!
He’s proud of your triumphs,
but when things go wrong,
A dad can be patient
and helpful and strong
In all that you do,
a dad’s love plays a part.
There’s always a place for him
deep in your heart.
And each year that passes,
you’re even more glad,
More grateful and proud
just to call him your dad!
Thank you, Dad…
for listening and caring,
for giving and sharing,
but, especially, for just being you!

Happy Father's Day 2011

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Knocking down barriers to knowledge - Google Search by Image and Voice

As much as technology has advanced, there are still many barriers between you and the answers you’re looking for—whether you’re juggling a clunky mobile keyboard or waiting for a website to load. Today we held a media event in San Francisco where we talked about some of the latest things we’re doing to tackle these barriers on mobile, announced that we’re bringing our speech recognition and computer vision technology to the desktop, and took the next step for Google Instant—Instant Pages.


The thirst for knowledge doesn’t stop when you step away from your computer, it continues on your mobile device. In the past two years, mobile search traffic has grown five-fold. Mobile search today is growing at a comparable pace to Google in the early years.


Here you can see that mobile search traffic growth over the past three years (the red line) is comparable to overall Google search traffic growth over the same duration (the blue line) but earlier in our history.

One of the technologies driving this growth is speech recognition. With Voice Search, you don’t have to type on a tiny touchscreen. You can just speak your query and the answer is on the way. We’ve invested tremendous energy into improving the quality of our recognition technology—for example, today we teach our English Voice Search system using 230 billion words from real queries so that we can accurately recognize the phrases people are likely to say. As the quality has increased, so has usage: in the past year alone, Voice Search traffic has grown six-fold, and every single day people speak more than two years worth of voice to our system.

We first offered speech recognition on mobile search, but you should have that power no matter where you are. You should never have to stop and ask yourself, “Can I speak for this?”—it should be ubiquitous and intuitive. So we've added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box. Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search. This can be particularly useful for hard-to-spell searches like [bolognese sauce] or complex searches like [translate to spanish where can I buy a hamburger]. Voice Search on desktop is rolling out now on google.com in English, but in the meantime you can check it out in our video:



Searching with speech recognition started first on mobile, and so did searching with computer vision. Google Goggles has enabled you to search by snapping a photo on your mobile phone since 2009, and today we’re introducing Search by Image on desktop. Next to the microphone on images.google.com, you’ll also see a little camera for the new Search by Image feature. If you click the camera, you can upload any picture or plug in an image URL from the web and ask Google to figure out what it is. Try it out when digging through old vacation photos and trying to identify landmarks—the search [mountain path] probably isn’t going to tell you where you were, but computer vision may just do the trick. Search by Image is rolling out now globally in 40 languages. We’re also releasing Chrome and Firefox extensions that enable you to search any image on the web by right-clicking.



Whether you type, speak or upload a photo, once you’ve indicated what you’re looking for the next step in your search is to sift through the results and pick one. To make this faster, last year we introduced Google Instant, which gives you search results while you type. We estimated Google Instant saves you between two and five seconds on typical searches. But once you’ve picked a result, you click, and then wait again for the page to load—for an average of about five seconds.

We want to help you save some of that time as well, so today we took the next step for Google Instant: Instant Pages. Instant Pages can get the top search result ready in the background while you’re choosing which link to click, saving you yet another two to five seconds on typical searches. Let’s say you’re searching for information about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so you search for [dc folklife festival]. As you scan the results deciding which one to choose, Google is already prerendering the top search result for you. That way when you click, the page loads instantly.



Instant Pages will prerender results when we’re confident you’re going to click them. The good news is that we’ve been working for years to develop our relevance technology, and we can fairly accurately predict when to prerender. To use Instant Pages, you’ll want to get our next beta release of Chrome, which includes prerendering (for the adventurous, you can try Instant Pages today with the developer version). It’s one more step towards an even faster web.

To learn more about today’s news, visit our new Inside Search website atwww.google.com/insidesearch. There you’ll find a recording of the event (when it’s ready), answers to common questions and links to other blog posts about today’s news on the Mobile blog and Inside Search blog. The Inside Search website is our new one-stop shop for Google search tips, games, features and an under-the-hood look at our technology, so there’s plenty for you to explore.

We’re far from the dream of truly instantaneous access to knowledge, but we’re on our way to help you realize that dream.



Source: Google Blog

SQL Source Control 2.1

SQL Server developers and DBAs use SQL Source Control to:

  • Source control schemas and data within SSMS
  • Connect their databases to TFS, SVN, SourceGear Vault, Vault Pro, Mercurial, Perforce, Git,
    Bazaar, and any source control system with a capable command line
  • Work with shared development databases, or individual copies
  • Track changes to follow who changed what, when, and why
  • Keep teams in sync with easy access to the latest database version
  • View database development history for easy retrieval of specific versions
SQL Source Control makes database version control seamless. It links your databases to your existing source control system straight from SSMS, so you can enjoy the benefits of source control without having to disrupt your workflow.
It doesn't matter whether your development team works with a central database or individual, local copies – SQL Source Control supports both development models. Just pick the one you work with and carry on as normal.
You can keep track of who changed what, when, and why, improve change management and auditing, and easily share or revert changes. SQL Source Control also stores a complete history of your updates to simplify database versioning, and provides a sandbox for risk–free experimenting.
Because SQL Source Control is powered by our SQL Compare technology, you can even combine it with SQL Compare Pro and SQL Data Compare Pro, to automate deployment and migration of your source controlled database.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

HTC Invades Belgian Train Stations With Miniature Android Army

HTC invades Belgian train stations with miniature Android army
The master of bizarre marketing ploys, HTC, has employed a more militant approach to its latest PR stunt. In a move apparently aimed at promoting the launch of a bunch of new Android phones (specifically the Flyer, Sensation, Incredible S, Desire S, and Wildfire S), the outfit meticulously filled railway stations in Antwerp, Brussels, and Namur with varied configurations of the little green monsters. While the stunt's grabbed our attention, we're happy the bantam buggers weren't there to greet us at the outset of our morning commute. More pictures await you at the source link below.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Microsoft Amalga

Advancing understanding of your organization’s performance drivers.

Microsoft Amalga brings historically disparate data together and makes it easy to identify and act on insights into clinical, financial, or operational performance.

Overview:

Microsoft Amalga centralizes digital information of all types into a single, continually updated repository that is available for analysis and data sharing.



Microsoft Amalga helps answer questions like these:

How can we use one centralized system to improve operational performance across our enterprise?

How can we get usable reports faster?

How can we create a simpler process for managing CMS quality measures that helps minimize abstraction time and redundant reviews?

How can we help ensure our organization is properly reimbursed for patients admitted from the Emergency Department?

With extensive data readily available, you are empowered to:

Drive information exchange. Amalga, an enterprise health intelligence platform, enables information sharing and adoption across the organization supporting meaningful use and promoting better outcomes. Amalga provides the strategic foundation that not only supports today’s requirements but also provides you the flexibility and confidence for meeting tomorrow’s demands.

Proactively manage care. With the ability to analyze across patient populations in context, you can gain a better understanding of cause and effect, dependencies, and ramifications across a system. This triggers more actionable intelligence and helps more effectively identify the linkages between care, costs, and outcomes so you can more proactively manage chronic disease and other "at risk" patients.

Get a more complete view of every patient. By aggregating ambulatory and inpatient medical records in a common data store, Amalga delivers a single view of a patient’s medical history across the care continuum. The data can then be viewed from different perspectives—from an individual to a cohort, from the micro level to the macro level—in a single view.

Empower your people. Amalga empowers your staff to test new concepts and unlock potentially new approaches for delivering better care. No matter where the source of data is located—whether it’s encapsulated in existing systems or newly generated via the tools in Amalga—users can find, combine, and analyze data on demand. And the customizable interface enables your staff to view information in new ways now and in the future.

Ice Tube Clock kit
This is our first clock kit design, made with a retro Russian display tube!
  • Cool glowing blue tube with 8 digits, PM dot and alarm on/off indicator
  • Adjustable brightness
  • Alarm with volume adjust
  • Precision watch crystal keeps time with under 20ppm (0.0002%) error (< 2 seconds a day)
  • Clear acrylic enclosure protects clock from you and you from clock
  • Battery backup will let the clock keep the time for up to 2 weeks without power
  • Selectable 12h or 24h display
  • Displays day and date on button press
  • 10 minute snooze
  • Integrated boost converter so it can run off of standard DC wall adapters, works in any country regardless of mains power
  • Great for desk or night table use, the clock measures 4.9" x 2.9" x 1.3" (12.5cm x 7.4cm x 3.3cm)
  • Completely open source hardware and software, ready to be hacked and modded!
Complete kit comes with a 110/220V 9VDC power supply (a $1 plug adapter from your local hardware store will allow it to be used worldwide), all components including PCB, vacuum fluorescent tube, backup battery and a clear acrylic enclosure. Assembly is required! This kit is made of through-hole components but is best built by someone with previous soldering experience as there are many parts and steps.
For assembly

Spy Shots: Dell’s 7-Inch Tablet Has a Slide-Out Split Keyboard





What the tablet world needs is innovation, and from these newly uncovered spy pics, it looks like Dell is the one stepping up with a design that’s unlike any other.
Rather than copying the look and feel of the iPad as so many other tablet manufacturers have done, Dell has apparently pinpointed one of the iPad’s weakest characteristics and improved upon it: its keyboard.
In these pictures (somehow obtained by Engadget), notice the split keyboard that’s not on this little 7-inch tablet’s touchscreen, but it’s part of a slide-out keypad that gives each of its users’ thumbs an easy shot at quick typing.




We’re getting a feeling of déjà vu here. Isn’t this design getting precariously close to those failed tablets of five years ago that Microsoft and Intel codenamed “Project Origami?” Some of those Ultra-Mobile PCs’ split keyboards were arranged on either side of the screen, and some even had slide-out keyboards.
Maybe Dell figures the reason those Origami PCs didn’t succeed was because they were underpowered, their touchscreens didn’t work well, they were too big, heavy and overpriced — not because their keyboards weren’t good.
Back to the present, Dell presented this prototype in both black and white finishes, and each had a rear camera which we hope has better quality than the iPad’s. Beyond those specs, there’s precious little info about when we might see this tablet design hit the marketplace, if ever.
Still, perhaps copycat manufacturers might want to take a look at this design rather than creating yet another Apple-esque slab. What do you think, commenters? Is this throwback to the past an improvement on the iPad and all the other tablets that look just like it?

Google Maps Tells You Just How Late Your Bus Is


Waiting for your bus can sometimes seem like slowly dying in a desert as you watch vehicle-shaped mirages glimmer on the horizon. As a remedy for that transit-parched feel, Google is integrating live transit updates into Maps for mobile and desktop.
Before you get all excited, the update is only available in four U.S. cities (Boston, Portland, San Diego and San Francisco) and two European cities (Madrid and Turin), and for Google Maps for mobile on Android devices (although it will work on mobile browsers, and it doesn’t require any downloads to access).
Residents of those cities will be able to see delays and alerts when clicking on transit stations or planning routes, as well as “live departure times.”

DSPL: Dataset Publishing Language



DSPL stands for Dataset Publishing Language. Datasets described in DSPL can be imported into the Google Public Data Explorer, a tool that allows for rich, visual exploration of the data.


This tutorial provides a step-by-step example of how to prepare a basic DSPL dataset.

A DSPL dataset is a bundle that contains an XML file and a set of CSV files. The CSV files are simple tables containing the data of the dataset. The XML file describes the metadata of the dataset, including informational metadata like descriptions of measures, as well as structural metadata like references between tables. The metadata lets non-expert users explore and visualize your data.

The only prerequisite for understanding this tutorial is a good level of understanding of XML. Some understanding of simple database concepts (e.g., tables, primary keys) may help, but it's not required. For reference, the completed XML file and complete dataset bundle associated with this tutorial are also available for review.


Before starting to create our dataset, here is a high-level overview of what a DSPL dataset contains:
General information: About the dataset
Concepts: Definitions of "things" that appear in the dataset (e.g., countries, unemployment rate, gender, etc.)
Slices: Combinations of concepts for which there are data
Tables: Data for concepts and slices. Concept tables hold enumerations and slice tables hold statistical data
Topics: Used to organize the concepts of the dataset in a meaningful hierarchy through labeling


To illustrate these rather abstract notions, consider the dataset (with dummy data) used throughout this tutorial: statistical time series for unemployment and population by country, and population by gender for US states.





This example dataset defines the following concepts:
country
gender
population
state
unemployment rate
year


Concepts that are categorical, such as state, are associated with concept tables, which enumerate all their possible values (California, Arizona, etc.). Concepts may have additional columns for properties such as the name or the country of a state.


Slices define each combination of concepts for which there is statistical data in the dataset. A slice contains dimensions and metrics. In the above picture, the dimensions are blue and the metrics are orange. In this example, the slice gender_country_slice has data for the metric population and the dimensionscountry, year and gender. Another slice, called country_slice, gives total yearly population numbers (metric) for countries.


In addition to dimensions and metrics, slices also reference tables, which contain the actual data.


Let's now walk step-by-step through the creation of such a dataset in DSPL.
To get started, we need to create an XML file for our dataset. Here is the beginning of a DSPL description for our example dataset:The dataset description starts with a top-level element. The targetNamespace attribute contains a URI that uniquely identifies this dataset. The dataset's namespace is especially important when publishing the dataset, as it will be the global identifier of your dataset, and the means for others to refer to it.



Note that the targetNamespace attribute may be omitted. In this case a unique namespace is automatically generated when the dataset is imported. read more...

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Offline Google Maps


Google Maps
Dutch tech site All About Phones claims that Google Maps Navigation will get a true offline mode later this summer. In December the Android app received an update that cached routesand the surrounding areas, but without a data connection you still couldn't enter a new destination. A source inside the Dutch telco industry said that Goog would removing the requirement for coverage -- an obvious next step for the nav tool, especially with Ovi Maps bringing its turn-by-turn prowess to WP7. The move is also bound to be another thorn in the side of standalone GPS makers like Garmin and TomTom. After all, it's tough to compete with free

Apple's New Spaceship Campus


Shortly after taking the stage at WWDC, Steve Jobs made an appearance before the Cupertino City Council to pitch the local governing body on Apple's ambition to build a new campus. The site for the curvaceous, four-story, "human-scale" building to house 13,000 employees is the original home of HP's computer systems division, land that was recently sold to Apple. The property is currently covered by a series of big asphalt parking lots. Apple's plan would increase the landscape coverage from 20 to 80 percent with the help of a senior arborist from Stanford who will help restore some of the indigenous plant life to the property, including the apricot orchards. Apple plans to make the campus' energy center the facility's primary power generator using natural gas and other "clean energy" sources -- the city would simply provide backup power when needed. Of course, what would a Jobs presentation be without a few choice superlatives? In this case, Jobs claims that the new curved-glass facility will be the "best office building in the world," luring in students of architecture anxious for a peek. Apple plans to break ground in 2012 with a 2015 move-in date.

As an aside, it's fascinating (and yes, troubling) to observe Gilbert Wong, Mayor of Cupertino, guffaw at Steve's "jokes" like a smitten schoolgirl, going so far as to fawn over his own iPad 2 in front of the assembly. For his part, Jobs seems to bite his tongue during several exchanges particularly when one city council member tries to extort free WiFi from Apple in an apparent quid pro quo. Click through to see what we mean. read more...