Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, March 21, 2008

Sony is giving "Fresh Start" a fresh start, losing the $50 fee

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/255751176/

Filed under: Laptops

After a minor outcry at Sony's new "Fresh Start" option to skip the crapware on TZ laptops for a hefty $50 charge, the company has seen the error of its ways and is going to start offering the option for free as of tomorrow. Sure, it would've been nice to have it like that from the start, and there's no word yet if there will be refunds for those who did fork over the $50, but we got the impression from the Sony spokesperson who spoke to us that Sony Japan was just as surprised as we about the charge, and quickly asked for it to be removed. We're still waiting for word as to whether this option will hit other VAIOs, but we're cautiously optimistic.

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Array-based flash memory could enable 1TB memory chips

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/255788554/

Filed under: Storage

The alphabet soup of different flash memory technologies is already a little bewildering, but it looks like the latest entrant could end up being the most promising of all, with single chip storage capacities of 1TB expected within ten years. Called array-based memory, the tech has been under development at a company called Nanochip, Inc. for nearly 12 years, and it looks like the first working samples will go out next year. Although those first prototypes will have storage roughly equivalent to NAND flash at tens of gigs per circuit, the plan is to rapidly scale up to 100s of gigs and finally to 1TB on a single chip. Because the chips can be manufactured using conventional fabs and aren't subject to the same manufacturing constraints as traditional flash, they may also end up being far cheaper per gigabyte. The company is being funded by a number of prominent tech giants, including Intel, and says the tech can be used to improve everything from USB keys to SSDs to enterprise-grade servers -- wait, bigger, cheaper, and potentially better? Yeah, sign us up.

[Via Slashdot]

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Interesting Illusions by Donald Rust

Source: http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2008/02/interesting-illusions-by-donald-rust.html

As a camouflage artist, Rusty's fine reputation has spread rapidly. Now, his intriguing work can be seen internationally on products such as collector's plates, tee-shirts, greeting cards, note cards, calendars, limited-edition and open-edition prints. Diversified, best describes his work as his renditions may range from people to wildlife to scenics - always creating the unexpected.

Donald Rust was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1932. He began drawing and painting at a very early age and has never had the desire to be anything but a serious artist. His early work was directly influenced by his grandfather, Emil Rust, Gil Elvgren, Bob Toombs, and Norman Rockwell. However, he feels there has been no one single influence in his wildlife art and insists that all wildlife artists have affected his style.
For many years, Rusty's paintings concentrated on circus and portrait subjects; but recently, wildlife subjects have intrigued him more and more.

Rust's paintings hang in the Ringling Museum of the Circus, Sarasota, Florida, the Norman Rockwell Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Rusty's ability to capture nature lies between fantasy and reality. Realism is his style, but he wants to take the collector's imagination one step further. He is an artist sensitive to nature and its surroundings. The beauty of his artistic documentation is distinctly his own. Rusty takes us not just to a creative visual, but to a place and a story.

Source: rusty! rust.dre amg8.com

One Seriously Tight Light Bike

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/255626055/

Like to ride your bike after the sun sets? Are you a real Night Rider? Confused as to why trucks don’t seem to notice your pleads for attention and keep slamming your bones around the city streets? Well if you like life and don’t want to die while cruising down the avenues after dark, this bike design by Niklas Galler called “Tong City Bike” just might be all the vehicular enlightenment you’ll need. The designer’s concerns for your safety have manifested in this brilliant (pun intended) bike design that is not only low maintenance, but also safe and secure. The low maintenance aspect is in the all-in-one housing for the brake system, drivetrain, shock absorbers and gears. The safe aspect comes from the use of integrated light tubes that can be customized to any color you desire, making you a more obvious target. Last but not least, this rolling rig even comes with a mini lockable safe, for storing your mobile phone, wallet, light saber or Batphones.

Designer: Niklas Galler

Niklas Galler

New Blog Aggregator from AT&T That Can Read Stories For You

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/buzz-blog-aggregator-tech-read-stories/2634/

buzz-blog-aggregator Telephone company AT&T has launched a nice blog aggregator (called Buzz) that collects the most popular stories from blogs across different categories such as Technology, Sports, Gossip, etc.

While you are reading a story on Buzz, you also get to see reactions from other blogs on the same story which I think is really useful.

And if you are doing something else like checking email or reading another site, Buzz has a 3D avatar that can read the current story for you in the background. Not bad either.

Buzz.com may be no substitute for our favorite Techmeme but still a site worth checking out. And I have now clue how they pick blogs for including in their index.

New Blog Aggregator from AT&T That Can Read Stories For You - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

Read DOCX Files in Internet Explorer - No Word 2007 Required

Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/docx-reader-open-docx-files-internet-explorer/2637/

Question: How do you quickly read a docx document on some computer that has no Microsoft Office Word 2007 and is neither connected to the Internet (online conversion is therefore ruled out).

Solution: No worries, you can make a docx reader out of Internet Explorer or any other text editor (like notepad) - just follow these steps:

Step 1: Change the file extension of your docx file to .zip (hello.docx -> hello.zip)

Step 2: Extract the contents of this zip file locally using Winzip or any other unzip utility.

docx-reader Step 3: Open the “word” folder in the extracted files and you should see a file called document.xml.

Open document.xml inside Internet Explorer and there you have the full text of your docx document.

If there are any images or charts, they’ll be available under a sub-folder called media.

Though you get to read the text without formatting, it’s still a useful technique to know.

Read DOCX Files in Internet Explorer - No Word 2007 Required - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

Interesting Quotes Spotted on Twitter

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/interesting-twitter-quotes-recently-spotted/2644/

google-searches

install-microsoft-office

Interesting Quotes Spotted on Twitter - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

Login Into Multiple Google Talk Accounts At Once

Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/login-multiple-google-talk-accounts-gmail-ids/2654/

multiple gmail gtalk id It can be frustrating if you maintain two or more accounts on GTalk especially when there are no overlaps and each account has a different set of friends.

You need to log off Account A in order to chat with friends of Account B and vice-versa.

I face this problem all the time because my old Google Talk ID, that has most friends, is associated with a Gmail account while the newer one is on Google Apps.

Though there are hacks that allow you to run multiple instances of Google Talk simultaneously using the nomutex paramter with gtalk.exe, a much better solution is Disgby.

With Disgby, you can chat with multiple Gmail IDs simultaneously in one client. You can even switch to offline or invisible modes, a privilege currently not available in the standard Google Talk client.

Best of all, you can use the same Disgby client to read Facebook messages and Twitter updates. Highly recommended.

www.digsby.com | Check out some more Google Talk Hacks

Intel's Smart Security Watches You, Distinguishes Your Behavior From an Attacker's [Security]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/255530321/intels-smart-security-watches-you-distinguishes-your-behavior-from-an-attackers

Intel's Proteus security software starts out by getting to know you better—understanding your habits and network demands—using those statistical guidelines to clamp down on stuff that, let's face it, doesn't really sound like You. At least, not the You that Proteus has grown to love. This kind of learning really helps when trying to protect company-owned portables: Not surprisingly, typical behavior at work and typical behavior at home turn out to be two very different things.

Many security programs simply trigger an alarm when bandwidth demands exceed a certain point. They can be dumb, and might not know that it was you who wanted to download four movies at once, or send picture e-mail to 100,000 of your closest friends. This thing sees what you're doing and how you're doing it, and can safely say more frequently that some bizarre behavior is acceptable—though maybe not to your boss.

The software also watches for regular pings to computers across the net. By seeing not just the location but determining the intervals of the calls "home," Proteus can even figure out which malware is in use.

The reason this is so effective is that it differentiates systems that otherwise look identical. Corporate laptops all look the same, software wise, right? If someone can crack one, they can crack them all. If Proteus gets deployed, hackers have a much harder time with the old virtual B&E. Even when, say, a spambot was in place, it would have to know when each user would typically be in the mood for more bandwidth in order to fool Proteus.

Since this comes from Intel, word is that the company is trying to figure out a way to hardwire this stuff right into the chips, rather than let it be some subscription program that pops up every so often to scare you with over-the-top allegations of your system's vulnerability. [Technology Review]