Sunday, October 10, 2010

Building devices with .NET Gadgeteer

Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer is a rapid prototyping platform for small electronic gadgets and embedded hardware devices. Individual .NET Gadgeteer modules can be easily connected and programmed using C# to make fully functional devices.

This video shows how easily .NET Gadgeteer modules can be connected together to build devices, including a simple MP3 player and digital camera.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Microsoft LightSpace

Microsoft LightSpace brings Surface (plus shadows) to any table (video)
It's hard not to love the crazy stuff happening at Microsoft Research, but it's also hard to imagine when any of it is going to actually start changing the way we interact with our PCs. Surface was bested bySecondLight as the coolest tech we can't buy, and now here comes another successor: LightSpace. This gets rid of the expensive table in favor of a (surely not cheap) series of projectors hanging from the ceiling paired to a 3D camera. The camera detects the relative position of things and instructs a projector to apply a Surface-like interface onto any flat surface. From there a user can literally grab any file they like and carry it over to another surface, where it will be displayed. It's all demonstrated quite handily in the video below, and while the system does look a wee bit rough at the moment, the potential is surely there. Just like it was with SecondLight, and Surface, and Courier...more

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Google Street View Now Available in Ireland


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A big bone of contention in many countries, Google's Street View mapping service today goes live in Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica, meaning Street View now has a presence in all seven continents.
Launched in May 2007 in five US cities, the panoramic imaging service has gone on to map cities on every corner of the planet, attracting ire and admiration along the way.
Brian McClendon, vice-president of engineering at Google Earth and Maps, wrote on the company's blog: "We often consider Street View to be the last zoom layer on the map, and a way to show you what a place looks like as if you were there in person – whether you're checking out a coffee shop across town or planning a vacation across the globe. We hope this new imagery will help people in Ireland, Brazil, and even the penguins of Antarctica to navigate nearby, as well as enable people around the world to learn more about these areas." more

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

CCEnhancer Makes CCleaner Even Better

CCleaner is one of the most popular programs for cleaning up the extra files and leftover data on your PC. Although I haven’t had much use for it on my more modern PCs (Windows 7 apparently does its own maintenance regularly) I know I’ve used it in the past to restore friends’ older and somewhat abused PCs to a fresh and clean state, sometimes even dramatically boosting performance in the process.

But I did not know of this: CCEnhancer can add to CCleaner’s capabilities by providing support for hundreds of extra programs beyond those supported by default.

According to FreewareGenius, the add-on app supports 270 extra programs including things like Quicktime and Flash, for example, it works even as a portable app, offers 1-click operation and is simple to use. Nice - who knew? You can try CCenhancer for yourself, just download it from here. It’s free, but donations are accepted.

Panasonic Toughbook S9

Panasonic's Toughbook line hasn't only been impressing in extreme durability lately, but also in extremeweight-loss. Joining the 3.2-pound Tougbook C1, is the newest 12.1-inch Toughbook S9, which weighs just three pounds. And yes, Panny's claiming it's the lightest 12-incher with an optical drive, and our quick research seems to prove that claim right. Even more impressive is the power that's packed into the featherweight chassis -- it's got a Core i5-520M processor, 2GB of RAM, and a shock-mounted 320GB hard drive. Thought that Panasonic gave up the durability for that weightage? You'd be wrong -- the magnesium alloy case can still withstand a 2.5-foot operating drop, meets all the Mil Spec 810-G drop procedures, has a spill-resistant keyboard, and can take more than 220 pounds of pressure on its lid and base. It does sound great for when someone drops it off the airport security belt, but that's until you hear about the physical beating it'll take on your bank account -- it'll retail for $2,499. Yeah, we wish we had better news to end on, but perhaps the press release and pictures below will turn that frown upside down. More

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Netduino Plus


The two new Arduinos should spell good things for the Arduino heads out there, but meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks... Secret Labs is launching its .NET-friendly Netduino Plus, which adds Ethernet and microSD to a regular Netduino board (which in itself is a sort of high powered, Visual Studio-compatible Arduino, with a 32-bit 48MHz ARM7 processor, instead of Arduino's 8-bit number, but pin compatible with Arduino "shields"). Unfortunately, the networking code eats of a good majority of the board's already meager code storage and RAM, but you can always flash the original Netduino's firmware on here if you'd like. Right now the board is in a "public beta" while the firmware gets some extra tweaks, but you should be able to drop $60 on the final model by the holidays.

Buy a Netduino Plus from here...
Download development kit here...
See few sample projects here...

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Microsoft Research Lab: Z3 - An Efficient SMT Solver

Z3 is a high-performance theorem prover being developed at Microsoft Research. Z3 supports linear real and integer arithmetic, fixed-size bit-vectors, extensional arrays, uninterpreted functions, and quantifiers. Z3 is integrated with a number of program analysis, testing, and verification tools from Microsoft Research. These include: Spec#/Boogie, Pex, Yogi, Vigilante, SLAM, F7, SAGE, VS3, FORMULA, and HAVOC. It can read problems in SMT-LIB and Simplifyformats.

Links:

Azure Throughput Analyzer


The Microsoft Research eXtreme Computing Group cloud-research engagement team supports researchers in the field who use Windows Azure to conduct their research. As part of this effort, we have built a desktop utility that measures the upload and download throughput achievable from your on-premise client machine to Azure cloud storage (blobs, tables and queue). The download contains the desktop utility and an accompanying user guide. You simply install this tool on your on-premise machine, select a data center for the evaluation, and enter the account details of any storage service created within it. The utility will perform a series of data-upload and -download tests using sample data and collect measurements of throughput, which are displayed at the end of the test, along with other statistics.
Download

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Thursday, September 23, 2010

U1 With Sunlight Viewable Screen

Remember Panasonic's Toughbook CF-U1? Yeah, so it's been a while (2008, in fact) since it was unveiledand then reviewed, which is exactly why Panny thought the time had come to update the rugged UMPC. Its Toughbook U1 has the same magnesium alloy chassis -- we're told it's still the most rugged Toughbook of them all -- but has been updated with "enhanced sunlight viewability." It's no PixelQi display, but the TransflectivePlus screen can be cranked up to 6000 nits for checking e-mails and other pertinent information in the bright light of day. Internally, the U1 has acquired a newer 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a larger 64GB SSD with Windows 7. The optional two megapixel front-facing camera has also been tweaked with better auto-focus and white balance features. However, the updates aren't just hardware-based: screen icons have been enlarged, and there's a new virtual right click button and larger virtual keyboard with a zoom mode. Of course, military grade doesn't come cheap -- the street price has been set at whopping $2,799. That still makes it one of the most expensive Atom device out there, but then again can you really put a price on something that's Rammer-resistant? We didn't think so.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Microsoft Visual Programming Language: Kodu



Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input. Download

Programming as a Creative Medium

The core of the Kodu project is the programming user interface. The language is simple and entirely icon-based. Programs are composed of pages, which are broken down into rules, which are further divided into conditions and actions. Conditions are evaluated simultaneously.

The Kodu language is designed specifically for game development and provides specialized primitives derived from gaming scenarios. Programs are expressed in physical terms, using concepts like vision, hearing, and time to control character behavior. While not as general-purpose as classical programming languages, Kodu can express advanced game design concepts in a simple, direct, and intuitive manner. mor
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