Follow the Money

Ever thought where your money goes whenever you fill your car up?

PureDyne - Creative Media Linux

If you're an artist working with digital content you might want to give this PureDyne Linux Distro a try.

Based on Ubuntu and Debian Live and available as a "Live OS" you can simply boot off CD/DVD/USB, this
Puredyne is tuned for realtime audio and video processing, with a low latency kernel and offering the high responsiveness needed by artists working in this field.

Inside you'll have all you might need:

• audio
  puredata, supercollider, csound, chuck, ladspa plugins, ardour, audacity, ecasound, ...
• graphics
  gimp, inkscape, fluxus, freej, processing + extras, imagemagick, gthumb, gphoto2, ...
• multimedia
  mplayer, vlc, avidemux, kino, mencoder, transcode, luvcview, xawtv, recordmydesktop, ...
• streaming
  icecast2, ices2, ffmpeg2theora, oggfwd, darkice, darksnow, gstreamer, dvswitch, ...
• network
  firefox, links2, network-manager, wireless-tools, ssh, telnet, gftp, irssi, nfs, ...
• devel
  gcc, make, patchutils, subversion, mercurial, bzr, emacs-goodies-el, java jdk, python, ...

Definitely worth a shot:

Vook - Multimedia Books

With the recent uprising of "Tablet computers", you might think that showing a plain static page of text would be a waste o resources.

Well... you're right!

Check this Vook concept that mixes multimedia content into a book like structure, making it a very appealing concept to be used in Tablets and eBook readers.

You can check a demo vook here.

Apple opens VoIP over 3G

Looks like Apple wants to stay on the limelight after announcing its iPad. Today they've removed 3G VoIP restrictions (which prevented VoIP apps from working while on 3G network connections, working just over WiFi.)

You'll now be able to use Skype (and similar) VoIP apps wherever you are - and it also means you'll be able to do VoIP call on your brand new 3G iPad - it will be a "cellphone" after all! :)

The first available app is iCall, but we'll soon see updates popping up for all other VoIP apps in the App Store.

Apple iPad

Here's Apple Tablet (the so-called "iTablet") and it's name is...
iPad

You can check the tech details here - but it has everything you'd expect it to have: WiFi N, Bluetooth, 9.7" LED LCD (IPS - offering great color quality regardless of the viewing angle) with 1024x768 resolution and light sensor, custom made A4 1Ghz CPU, 0.5" thich (and light), accelerometers, digital compass, speakers, mic, and A-GPS in the 3G versions.
Major omission: no camera (I wonder why they wouldn't include one).

The iPad can run a regular iPhone app (either in "small screen" or rescaled to fit the iPad larger screen) and has access to the App Store, iTunes Store, and the new iBookstore.

First nice surprise of the evening: battery life - 10h in use, over 1 month in standby. Not bad...

But, up to this moment, people were feeling kind of: "Is this all there is?"
That's when the got to the event's critical moment: the iPad price.

On screen a $999 showed up - and everyone felt: "ok, major flop. Who will buy such a thing?"
But then, in a Steve Jobs twist, the price was slashed in half, and the crowd was left amazed once again.
The iPad starts at $499, and that was indeed the biggest surprise of the night.

Of course, this price is for the 3G-less 16GB base model. If you want 3G or more storage space, it goes up to $829.

It will be available in 60 days, and the SDK is available right now for any developer wanting to play around with it.

Things left unsaid: why the iPad lacks a video camera (no augmented reality apps, streaming or video chats, etc.  seems a bad choice at this time.)
Also... nothing said about the upcoming OS update: will it support multitasking at last, new ways to organize the hundreds of Apps people now have, etc? Guess we'll have to wait for that a bit longer...

Update: Here's the video.

Also, some more images (or  check this hands-on video showing how the iPad really zooms along).

Steve Jobs Last Wish [Funny]

Looks like Steve Jobs has everything covered for later today! :)

Apple iTablet [Rumour]

By this time tomorrow the entire world will know what Apple has been secretly (kind of) preparing for the last couple of years. The much awaited iTablet is expected to finally show its face in the upcoming Apple event everyone is anxiously waiting.

Until then, just a few final predictions based on some rumors that I feel might actually be real.
It's highly likely Apple's iTablet will have video based gesture recognition. We've already seen it in several devices, from TVs to game consoles (as Microsoft's Natal) and it would just make sense to have it in there.

For those that argue about being just a "big iPhone", Apple might hold a very big surprise, offering the possibility to work with the Tablet in several modes: an "iPhone-alike" App Store mode, as well as an advanced full OS X "you have full control" mode.

Last but not least, a matching centralized content storage service, allowing you to stream your data wherever you are - tied to an unlimited access plan from a cell operator.


According to those rumors you'll be able to get an Apple iTablet for $1199 with two years unlimited data plan; for $699 with a 2 year contract; or $699 for a Tablet without 3G wireless (just WiFi and bluetooth.)

We'll soon know how off this info is! :)

Internet Addresses IPv4 vs IPv6

A few decades ago, when the Internet was at its infancy, the number of 3,706,650,624 usable addresses provided by the famous IPv4 seemed more than enough.

However, in just a decade we got dangerously close to reaching that limit, and that's why we'll soon be moving onwards to the newer IPv6 address space.

Every computer (or device) connected to the internet needs an IP address. However, as the 32 bit addressing provided by IPv4 was not enough, it forced network infrastructures to add networks within networks... That's why thousands of users can appear to be sharing a common IP address.
And that's also why it's often not enough to know a user IP to be able to "connect" to him directly.

With IPv6 it will all be different, we'll have a 128bit address space, enough for even "unimaginable growth" where every single electronic device might be connected to the internet, and it will make networking a lot easier; as each device will be able to have an unique and really identifiable address in the entire network.(Unlike what happens today, where both you, your friends, and millions other users can each share your own "192.168.0.1" IP address.)

Sadly, if you thought 32bits IP address weren't cryptic enough, the new IPv6 128 addresses will certainly make your eyes hurt, as you can expect to see things like "2001:252:0:1::2008:8" becoming more popular in the future. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, you should realy need to worry about it. Let's hope they're right!

CSS Polaroid Effect on Photos

When you first visit a web page like this one you'll be tempted to believe it's a Flash page.

There's animation when you move the mouse over the photos, with dynamic shadows and rotation, etc. But, if you look closer, you'll see it's all being done with nothing but plain old HTML and (not so plain and old) CSS.
Of course, you better be using a decent browser, as some don't properly recognize all these advanced techniques. ;)

If you want to dig a bit deeper and find out to do these CSS transition animations or just add the always cool polaroid effect to your pictures, just jump into this CSS transition tutorial and play a bit with it.

Sikuli: Visual Image Search and Automation

Just found this amazing paper: Sikuli: Using GUI Screenshots for Search and Automation
From MIT's Tom Yeh, Tsung-Hsiang Chang, and Robert C. Miller.

The idea is simple: how often you wished you had the possibility to use images instead of words?
They say an image is worth a thousand words, and sometimes that is actually the case.

In the graphical computer world we live in, there are things that just can't be translated into words, and using images would greatly simplify some tasks.

From their abstract:

We present Sikuli, a visual approach to search and automation of graphical user interfaces using screenshots. Sikuli allows users to take a screenshot of a GUI element (such as a toolbar button, icon, or dialog box) and query a help system using the screenshot instead of name.

But that's not all... imagine you want to create a script to automate some task on your computer, and you have to press an icon that may be positioned in different places?

Something like... this:

Sikuli also provides a visual scripting API for automating GUI interactions, using screenshot patterns to direct mouse and keyboard events. We report a web-based user study showing that searching by screenshot is easy to learn and faster to specify than keywords.

This kind of tools would allow you to easily do some complex image processing tasks, such as - for instance - a baby monitoring script, that would check if the baby was sleeping face up.

A really interesting project we should all keep an eye on: Sikuli!

Personal Stealth Plane from NASA

How do you feel about a small single-person airplane you could take-off/land anywhere?

That's what NASA wants to offer us with this Icarus.
As you'd expect, it's an environment friendly vehicle, with electric motors and very low noise, which might one day revolutionize the way we move around.

Until then, it's highly likely it will end being used by the military for special operations, where it's size and low noise will make it a perfect candidate for covert/stealth missions.

Firefox 3.6 Available Now

As I said earlier, Firefox 3.6 is now available for download. :)

What's new?

• Support for a new type of theme called Personas, which allow users to change Firefox's appearance with a single click.
• Protection from out-of-date plugins to keep users safer as they browse.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time.
• The ability for web developers to indicate that scripts should run asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Continued support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
• Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
• Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API, which allow for more interactive web pages.
• Changes to how third-party software can integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.

Do It Yourself LED LCD Projector

When you talk about home cinema, no one can deny that: the bigger the screen the better!

Unfortunately, big screen TVs aren't usually within our desired price range; but, what if you could build your own LCD LED video projector?

That's exactly what you can find, with detailed step-by-step instructions at Instructables. A really creative project that will surely appeal to everyone you invite to see a movie with. :)

Firefox 3.6 Launchs Today

The latest Firefox version, the multiplatform browser that has been steadily gaining popularity face Internet Explorer will be launched later today..

Besides the speed improvements that will make this Firefox 3.6 the fastest ever, you can also expect enhanced security (with automatic detection of outdated plugins - which are becoming an ever growing attack vector), themes, and more.

Watch the following video to know what to expect:




You can follow it live here.

Update: it's available now! :)

Inklet Trackpad

Are you aware your MacBook multitouch trackpad is capable of doing much more than it's actually doing? Check out this amazing software called Inklet.

With it you can turn your trackpad into a fully fledged tablet capable of doing things like pressure painting in photoshop and even writing recognition .

iPhone OS 4.0 Want-List Suggestions

As we grow closer to Apple's new devices annoucement, and inevitably a new iPhone and OS update, people start talking about what we'd like to see in iPhone OS 4.0.

Some of them are quite complex and/or too complicated for Apple to even consider, but there are others that should have been done a long time ago.

For instance, the lock screen. I wouldn't mind if it showed a nice layout with my missed calls and unread emails, etc. But more importantly, I'd like it to alert me if I missed the notifications.
Without a blinking led, there's no way for us to be visually "alerted" to something on the iPhone after the notification message is shown. Maybe it could simply "flash" the screen every 30sec or so... Or else, are they expecting us to press the home button every time we want ti see if we missed a call or notification or etc.?

Besides, the notification sure need a serious overhaul. Modal popups that instantly zap any previous pending notification? Totally unacceptable... Fix it!


While some ask for extra menus (with vertical swipes evem), I would go for a much more tried and tested approach: give us folders to manage our Apps!

I want to be able to group games/photo apps/utils together without swiping right and left like a madmen.
Even better, as we're not allowed to delete Apple official Apps (including the ones we intend to never use) at least we'd be able to thrown them into a "trash" folder and forget about it.


Dictionary and auto-correction. Ok, it works great most of the time... but... that's no excuse to keep correcting perfectly good words with nonexistent ones! At least in Portuguese there's a dreaded known issue that corrects "te" to "Tê" (which doesn't even exist in Portuguese!) Come on Apple... give us the chance to at least enforce some dictionary rules to prevent this from happening (or do it yourself in a timely fashion, so I don't have to use nasty workaround like creating a fake contact name for the next couple of years.)


Dynamic Icons.
With all the attention to detail Apple is known for, I still can't figure out why they haven't done this sooner. If Apple cared enough to show a little plane zooming along when you select/deselect airplane mode, why - oh why - do I get a Weather App icon showing a sunny day and 22ºC even when it's pouring down and freezing below zero?
Similarly, why it the "Clock" App icon stuck at 10:15 all day long?

If the iPhone is all about the "tiny details", then have someone look into this!


Multitasking.
I rarely feel the need to multitask on the iPhone... as most of the Apps I use found ways to alleviate the problem. Twitter clients now have embedded browsers and allow us to send emails without leaving the App, as do other Apps; and Safari itself shows us how well it could be done, flicking through different screens with ease... We do realize multitasking affects battery life, but shouldn't we be allowed to make that decision? Sometimes it would be far more efficient to have two apps running for a couple of minutes, than having to go back and forth beween them, opening and closing them each time, and taking far longer!

I've talked about a lot of this stuff right after OS 3.0 came out (auto-translated link). Let's hope Apple addresses some (if not all) of these issues in the upcoming 4.0 iPhone OS.

Flash on the iPhone with Gordon Javascript runtime

Proving that the future of the web will steer away from external plugins, here's one more interesting project: the open-source Gordon project.

What is this Gordon?... Well, its a flash runtime done entirely in javascript.

It means any javascript capable browser can now execute Flash SWF files without having the Adobe Flash plugin installed. Yes... it also means you can run Flash on your iPhone without any problem!

As you'd expect, this Gordon does not yet implement all the functions and features available in Flash, but it will surely prove a point.

Apple Event on the 27th

It's confirmed "something" is coming: Apple just officially announced a presentation even for January 27th! :)

With so much hype surrounding this, it better be really good!. :)

Giada Slim Computer (Atom+ION)

Just the other day I bought a Giada Atom+ION Cube N3 barebone (I'm working on a review for it and I'll post it as sooon as it's ready, don't worry.) But, if you want something in an even slimmer format you might want to check this Giada Slim N10 that caught my eye at Trusted Deals.

It has all the important features you might want in such a device: a dual core Intel Atom N330 CPU and -even more interesting - an NVIDIA ION graphics processor that allows you to playback high-definition video without taxing the CPU.
You can also find a an e-SATA port for external hard drives and even gigabit ethernet support; in addition to a multi-format memory card reader (SD, SDHC, MMC), DVI and HDMI, and SPDIF for digital audio.

Flowcharts Online

If you often need to create flowcharts (or any other kind of diagrams) let me present you: Flowchart.com.

Once again the power of Web apps shows that it has nothing to fear from traditional programs (in fact, it's the other way around!) as this Flowchart.com has a wide range of features that will amaze you. Besides working in any popular browser it offers some unique multiuser realtime colaboration features, as well as several other advanced possibilities - like the creation of user scripts to enhance its capabilities, or even the possibility to record and replay your flowchart creation process.

Definitely worth your time!

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Preview

The most popular image editing software will soon become even more powerful. See some of the things the new Adobe Photoshop CS5 will allow you to do:



Seeing is no longer believing! :)

Internet Worst Secrets - New Project

It's finally time to announce you a project I've been preparing for a while and that will be the perfect complement to Internet Best Secrets. Ladies and Gentlemans let me present you...

Internet Worst Secrets

Internet's Worst Secrets is the place where I'll challenge you to determine if you can really believe in everything you read on the internet. Each week you'll be invited to vote "true or false" on each latest exclusive news I'll be presenting you.

I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I hope you will! :)

WiFi Wireless Battery Charger

How about a simple adapter that can recharge your batteries using WiFi energy?
That's what this Airenergy from RCA claims to do, one more device in the long list of wireless energy promisses that we're still waiting to see delivered. According to them, it can "charge a mobile phone battery in little more than 90 minutes."

Well... if that sounds too good to be true, so did to several other people who took the time and effort to do some calculations where they concluded that such device would take over 30 years to charge a cell phone battery using a single WiFi signal (and assuming some very "lucky" conditions.)

Let's wait to see how RCA responds to that...

Steadicam Smothee for iPhone

If your iPhone 3GS home videos are shaky enough to make your friends feel dizzy, here the solution: iPhone Steadicam Smoothee from Tiffen.

Better than words, check the following video to see the difference:

Cheap iPod Touch Lookalike

If you're looking for a portable media player but have a limited budget, here's a iPod Touch lookalike that might interest you.

Take a look at this Touchscreen Media Player which might resemble some "other models" you've might have seen elsewhere. :)

It supports several audio, video and photo formats, like: MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE, AAC, MPEG(AVI), RM, RMVB, JPEG, BMP, GIF.
It also has some games, voice recording, and lots more features that might interest you (or not.)

Of course, no one in their right mind would consider paying $200 or $100 for such a player; but if I told you can have this player for less than $50, maybe you'd be interested.

In fact, you don't even have to pay $50, as this 4GB MP3 "touch" media player can be yours for just $40.24 (with free shipping from Deal Extreme .)

Google stops operating in China

The big news today is: Google has ceased to operate in China.

Behind this decision, that many are assuming to be an anti-censorship milestone (I remind you Google.cn was forced to filter out content deemed "inappropriate" by the Chinese government; for which Google was heavily criticized) there are a lot of worrying issues: Google claims there have been a high number of cyber attacks to its infrastructure, theft of important source code, and worst of all - that several user accounts have been systematically violated. Accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

In the stock market, the results were immediate, showing this isn't a "cheap" decision for Google.

However, this a major opportunity to force China to review their "Great Firewall of China" and this can very well be a day to remember.

Have you imagined if this is the first step that will make China change its stance to the world? That would certainly give an all new meaning to "the Internet changed the world"!


P.S. - And, probably thanks to this, Gmail now has https secure access enabled by default.

Touchscreen Accuracy Test: iPhone, Nexus One, Droid

Touchscreen devices are becoming the norm these days. That's why it becomes increasingly relevant to see how well the first layer of interaction works: and here's a simple test to check yout touchscreen accuracy.

You only need a basic drawing program - available for free for all platforms: iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc. - and draw some straight lines, slowly, across the screen.

Depending on your touchscreen accuracy you'll get straight or waving lines, as well as easily detect any rough sports in the corners and edges of the screen.

DIY Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Google News

France wants to create "Google Tax"


What do you do whenever some new media format makes the previous one obsolete? It's simple, just tax it!
After radio and TV taxes, after taxing recordable blank media as CDs and DVDs, now we're approaching... the Google Tax. At least, that's what France wants to do. When will they learn to embrace the new technologies instead of desperately hanging on to the old ones?


Earthquakes on Google Earth

In case you haven't noticed it yet, you can noe check for seismic activity as a layer in Google Earth.

Makes us remember just how awesome all the tools at out disposal are!

Google Near You Now


Google Mobile now offers a very interesting search feature: "Near me Now." It allows you to quickly and easily find what's near you and it's currently available for the iPhone and Android devices. Check the following video for a better understanding of what it does.

Lenovo IdeaPad Hybrid Tablet

I've shown you a couple of new Lenovo models the other day, but this new Lenovo IdeaPad U1 deserves a post of its own.

This is an interesting model, combining the best of two worlds: it acts like a regular laptop, running Windows 7 in its Intel CPU and 128GB SSD... however, you can instantly detach its screen and then it becomes a Tablet similar to the Lenovo SkyLight, running on an ARM processor.



I can imagine this to become popular - if it has the right price. Or else, just give us the tablet part, at a fraction of the total cost. :)

Eye-Fi Pro X2 - WiFi SD Card

If you regularly use a digital camera, you've certainly experienced the dreaded "out of memory" warning at least once.

Well, with this SD Eye-Fi Pro X2 you'll never have to face it again.

As an evolution to the previous Eye-Fi, this card now offers a faster 802.11n WiFi connection and some interesting extra services - the most curious being the "endless memory" mode.

If you activate it, whenever the card runs low on memory it will automatically delete the photos that have already been uploaded to your computer (or a number of different web photo hosting services.)
No more worrying about which photos are safe to delete and which ones are not - the Eye-Fi takes cares of that for you.

Improved Google Reader Mobile

The mobile version of Google's popular RSS feed web reader, Google Reader, has been improved.

The top menu bar has been redesigned in order to look similar to other Google mobile services (at last!) and the upper section has also been redesigned with an expand button to access more functions. This will prevent a common press by mistake on the "mark all as read" button that existed previously.

In a similar fashion, the option that showed up in the bottom of each item can now be expanded to show extra functions (the most used ones will show up automatically). This saves up some valuable space on the usually small screens of mobile devices.

Good to see Google continuously improving their web services.

Lenovo IdeaCentre and SkyLight

Lenovo has announced some interesting models.

If you're a fan of all-in-one integrated computers, you can now imagine how the new Lenovo IdeaCentre 300A would look in your home, being less than 20mm thick.

With a 21.5" Full HD 1080p LCD LED display, you'll find a Core 2 duo CPU, up to 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD and even an HDMI in port. For about $600 USD I think it will be a success.

But, if you're looking for something smaller and more portable, here's Lenovo SkyLight.

This is one of the new breed of netbooks with an ARM based CPU - allowing it have a 10h+ battery life. You'll also find a 10.1""HD Ready (1280x720) LCD, 20GB Flash, MiniSD with an 8GB card, webcam, WiFi, and 3G. Price should be around $499.