Nokia Concept Phone: Morph

Morph is Nokia's current research on nano-technologies.

Several characteristics of this concept phone:-

• The surface is dirt repellent - good for careless users
• Able to recharge from solar energy - if it runs out off power middle of the day, just expose it to sunlight
• Detachable and stretchable - expand it to reveal mini-keyboard, fold it back into normal phone, wear it as a watch.....
• Buttons on the keypad are transparent in colour - you can see through it
  
• Sensing - I can't see the usefulness of this feature, does the phone change colour according to surrounding or what?
• Context dependent 3D keypad buttons - the physical buttons are embossed on the surface - not 3D graphics showing on the screen. The most interesting is the buttons change according to context - e.g. button is flatten to disable users from selecting it.
  

It is hard to predict how long this concept will come true. One thing we can predict is, the price will be very expensive when it hits the market.

Pakistan causes worldwide YouTube outage

Last Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered ISPs to block access to YouTube.com because of anti-Islamic movies. A PTA official said the ban concerned a Dutch movie trailer portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

The block was intended with Pakistan only.Pakistan Telecom directed requests for YouTube videos from local Internet subscribers to a "black hole," where the data was discarded. Pakistan Telecom's mistake was that it then published that black hole route to its international data carrier, PCCW Ltd. (Hong Kong).

PCCW accepted that route and started directing requests from its customers for YouTube data to Pakistan. And since PCCW is one of the world's 20 largest data carriers, its routing table was passed along to other large carriers without any attempt at verification.

Hence the block was extended to about two-thirds of the global Internet population. The greatest effect was in Asia where the outage lasted for up to two hours.

Source: msnbc news

Adobe AIR vs Microsoft Silverlight: A developer's perspective

Adobe AIR is competing with Microsoft Silverlight in RIA domain. Adobe AIR is released a few days ago, so it is one step ahead than Silverlight 2.0.

Basically, from developer perspective, both technologies offer different paradigms. AIR is helping web developers to make desktop applications using ActionScript etc. While Silverlight is better for desktop app developers to move towards RIAs using XAML + code behind approach - the .Net 3.0 way. Web designers and developers will probably prefer AIR because of familiar development environment.

In addition, Adobe AIR SDK is available for Windows and Mac platforms. Silverlight has poor support for development on Mac - I am not aware of any decent Silverlight IDE tool is available for Mac OS yet. Putting aside the lack of OS support issue, I found that Expression Blend is quite easy to use - so designers shouldn't be worry when designing for Silverlight apps.

As for dekstop-application support, Silverlight is lacking this capability. Since Silverlight is a subset of WPF, it shouldn't be too hard to build a full blown desktop application using WPF built upon the same codebase with Silverlight (provided WPF and Silverlight 2.0 use the same XAML syntax). The only disadvantage is the .Net 3.0 deployment issue for Windows XP. Also, WPF is not a cross platform technology.

As for AIR, besides drag-and -drop, and minimize to system tray, there is not much native OS support. I have tried the AOL Music desktop application, when putting the window into dock mode, it is not docked like Windows Sidebar but placed at the desktop edge as collapsed window. I think the current OS support is enough for most of the situations.

In term of UI design, desktop applications usually are designed based on some standards, e.g. the Office 2007 ribbon UI. For web designers to design desktop applications, it is likely that they will get too creative until we have to change our behaviour in order to use the oddly designed and seriously compromised UI. Desktop AIR application, built using AJAX+HTML, may just be a web-application without web-browser window border.

For LOB applications, Silverlight gives better advantages. It is already confirmed that Silverlight 2.0 has built in data grid control. Third party component vendors are developing more Silverlight controls as well. ADO .Net team is also coming up with ADO.net Data Services (a.k.a Astoria) technology. As a subset of .Net framework, it is easier to inter-operate with WCF and WF services. So, I believe Silverlight will have more tools and resources for us to build web-based LOB applications.

Deployment isn't a big issue since both technologies are easy to deploy (approx 10mb download + a couple of seconds to install). If Siverlight 2.0 is built into Windows 7 by default, then it is even easier for Silverlight developers in the future. Another concern is the application update. .Net Framework has ClickOnce deployment technology to simplify application updating for desktop applications. I am not sure how easy it is to let the installed AIR applications auto-update themselves.

When putting Silverlight and AIR side-by-side, it is obvious Silverlight has something to catch up. Depending on the purpose of the applications, I tend to believe Silverlight will surpass Adobe AIR as the best RIA development platform in long term.

Popular Social Networking Websites Around The World

So.....only Malaysian, Singaporean, Indonesian and Filipino are using Friendster??



Anyone who can read French, can you please enlighten me what is the meaning of those numbers for the bar graphs? I suppose those are million hits per month??

Source: Le Monde.fr

Obsolete skills - you don't need these skills to survive nowadays

• Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV
• Blowing the dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
• Booting off a floppy disk
• Changing the ribbon on a typewriter
• Editing dates and time source code for Y2K
• Darkroom photography skills
• Faxing a document
• Getting to know your neighbors?
• Having your gas pumped for you and your oil checked at a full-service gas station
• Inserting a game cartridge at just the right angle to make it work
• Loading data from a cassette tape
• Modem to Modem Computer Gaming
• Netware
• Operating an agitator washing machine and clothes ringer
• Propping an airplane to start the engine
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
• Remembering telephone numbers
• Switching from TV mode to Game mode on the box behind the tv?
• Typesetting
• VCR Programming
• Walking long distances
• Writing email whilst offline and going online to send
• Using a DOS window on a computer

More...

Cloudo: Technology that will change your digital life

Cloudo is taking a step further than gOS by putting an entire operating system in your web browser!! In other words, Cloudo is an Internet Operating System - bringing the whole desktop experience to web browser.

Imagine that you have signed up on Cloudo, all your applications or files are actually hosted on the web. Hence, you can access your data from anywhere as long as you are connected, eliminate the need to bring your laptop along. You can access you same files using your home PC, from your school / office PC, and your mobile phone too! Maybe even Xbox 360. So, no more copying files using USB drives (more importantly, no more 'Oops..I forgot to copy the files'), no more complains on this PC does not have the program I need or I can't open the file in this PC etc....In addition, you can even sign up a joint accounts to facilitate information sharing / collaboration within a group.

I think the implication for general consumers is that, since the system is actually web-hosted, majority of the processing should be done at server side, i.e done by Cloudo servers, we as users, only running small Javascripts. Hence, the hardware requirements to run Cloudo should be very low - you can easy invest in cheap machine to run it - good for students and non-profit organisations.

For enterprises or IT staffs, managing the systems are simplified hence the maintenance is centralized now - data backups, updates and security are managed at one place and easily rolled out to user accounts. As for me, I am eager to know what kind of opportunities Cloudo will make available to developers. I think this technology is great and will have positive and important impacts to all of us.

Cloudo is still under development, and should be launched publicly later this year. For more information, you can visit Cloudo website. Unfortunately, the streaming of the Guided Tour video at the website is very poor, but, luckily, someone has uploaded the videos to YouTube a few days ago. So enjoy...

Part 1...

YouTube Desktop - not really a desktop application

I was googling for YouTube desktop application - an application that allow me to search, view and download YouTube videos. Unfortunately, I didn't find such integrated applications. However, I came across this one - iDesktop.

iDesktop is actually not a desktop application but trying to bring desktop experience to a web application. Technically speaking, this is one of the best AJAX web applications I have seen so far. You can drag and drop, minimize, and resize the videos (yeah, somthing YouTube.com does not have). The most important feature is the ability to build a playlist. You can drag videos from search results to a player to build a playlist - easy but powerful.

Another key feature is ability to download the video. Unlike many softwares which simply download the FLVs (Flash videos), YouTube Desktop converts the video on the fly hence you can download the videos as WMV, MP4 and various popular formats.

I like the compact view like this. Note the search bar at the top, the zoom track bar and pagination at the bottom...


The maximized video player...the playlist is on the right, note the download link at the lower left part..


Overall, the whole interface design is pretty clean and easy to navigate, I like it. It serves all my original purposes of googling although it is not a desktop application.

iDesktop is very impressive technology and worth a try.

Kagaya Wallpapers for Download

Kagaya Yutaka is a Japanese digital artist who is well known for his elaborately detailed painting style. His favourite painting subject is astronomy. A man with dreams, he wishes to live at the moon after retired!!

Most people who seen Kagaya paintings are eager to place them as desktop wallpapers. I believe many of you have at least seen his constellation series. I put his artworks as my desktop wallpapers even as early as 10 years ago!!! Below are just a few samples...







If you like Kagaya's artworks, you can find the full collection of Kagaya wallpapers here (Old works only, new works are not made into wallpapers). You can find the latest artworks from Kagaya Studio, the official website.

Googles releases Google Moon and Google Mars

Combining science and art, Google takes large volume of imagery celestial bodies and apply them to Google Maps technology. The result of this hard work is Google Moon and Google Mars. To enhance its educational values, Google adds a lots of side-notes on the landing sites of Apollo missions on Google Moon.



More information: Google Moon, Google Mars

The shiniest computer in the world

Japanese computer manufacturer, Zeus, introduced a new range of PCs. On the physical appearance, the CPU box is wrapped in platinum or gold colour. The casing is encrusted with diamonds which are arranged to resemble constellations. Inside, it is equipped with 3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 256MB GeForce 8400S graphics card, 1 terabyte SATA drive, 2GB RAM, and Blu-ray / HD-DVD optical drives. It comes with Vista Ultimate, too. The platinum-casing choice (called Jupiter) is sold at 80 million yen. The gold casing (Mars) is slightly cheaper and is available at 60 million yen. I am curious how many units are sold to date.





Source: Zeus Computer (Japanese language)

Excellent Blog Design

I like these two design: both contain aesthetic page layouts. With reasonable amount of spacing, the content is easy-to-read, and the search box is located at obvious place too.



I saw this kind of map+photo blog before, it is really innovative. This example is integrated with Google Maps...


Source: Smashing Magazine (Feb 2008, Nov 2007, Aug 2007)

Making music using only Windows theme sounds

This one is done in Windows 95 or Windows 98...using the Sound Recorder


This one uses theme sounds from Windows 98 and Windows XP...

Samurize: Desktop enhancement software

Excerpt from Samurize website:

Samurize is an advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. IT professionals, overclockers, gamers and desktop modders alike use Samurize for system information, weather reports, news headlines and much much more. And best of all, Samurize is 100% free!

Still very vague of what is meant by desktop enhancement? When you browse its screenshot gallery, you will be fully amazed....

Nice system monitoring gadgets....


Windows OS turns into Mac OS....


Absolutely no hint it is Windows...

Windows Sidebar Styler: Customize your Windows Sidebar

Windows Sidebar Styler provides extensions to the existing functionality of Windows Sidebar. It allows you to customize the appearance of the sidebar and even resizing it. For software developers, we can now create WPF gadgets for the sidebar. In addition, Windows Sidebar Styler is available in a number of languages. Various styles by other designers are available at the gallery here.

Apple's MacBook Air Is Beautiful and Thin, But Omits Features

Apple's MacBook Air is undoubtedly looks very nice.




Before you put too much expectations on this nice looking machine, please read this - my heart cools down after reading it, MacBook Air is not for me.

Remote assistance program that works

Although I never use it, I heard that Crossloop works very well, and able to connect no matter what kind of firewalls and proxies are between two computers. Another popular choice is UltraVNC. However I don't know the difference between RealVNC and UltraVNC, only heard that UltrVNC is better than RealVNC.

Introducing video ads to Google search results

Google used to differentiate itself from competitors by having no banner ads or other intrusions on Google.com, but this is going to change. According to the news here, Google is going to test video ads on search results. Google is considering other formats including image ads. So, this is going to be cultural shift for Google.

Man arrested at gunpoint after police mistake his MP3 player for a gun

Be careful when carrying a MP3 player in public places, especially the black colour one. Click here to get to the news.

Roadkill Burger

In the design competition titled 'Dining in 2015', an Iranian team has made a crazy invention which allows you to grill burgers using the car exhaust pipe - mobile barbecue concept. It may be save you some energy and some time, but not sure how much it cost on your healthiness. For more information, click here.

Clipdiary: Keeping your clipboard history

Windows Clipboard is a nice utility, when we copy something, clipboard keeps the data in memory, which allows us to paste the data some place else. But, sometimes I have a problem, I copied something, but forgot to paste it. Worse, I copied another piece of data before pasting the old one, etc etc. So here comes a nice utility, Clipdiary. Clipdiary keeps all your clipboard data in a database. I can always get back to my old data easily unless I clear the history cache.

Yahoo! Mail is the most popular email service

According to TechCrunch, more people are using Yahoo! mail than GMail in 2007. If GMail maintains its current growth rate, GMail will catch up by year 2010. But expecting GMail to maintain such linear growth rate does not sound practical to me.

Microsoft Plus! for Windows Vista

Microsoft is doing the best to lure Windows XP users to upgrade to Windows Vista. Microsoft has introduced Ultimate Extras for Vista Ultimate users. Ultimate Extras was thought as a replacement to the Plus! Pack. It seems Microsoft is reviving the Microsoft Plus!. Look at this at Amazon.com (As it is listed at Amazon, this product is certainly not available for free). Unlike previous Plus! pack, Plus! for Vista includes only casual games. Not sure of the product release date since Microsoft and MumboJumbo (the games developer) have not finalized content.

GreenPrint: Combat printing waste

GreenPrint can help you to avoid printing wastes. GreenPrint analyzes pages sent to printer (in this way, GreenPrint should work with any applications and printers) and highlights any unnecessary content like banner ads, footnote, etc in red colour. You can un-highlight any parts to include them in printing. Also, GreenPrint allows you to print as PDF file, i.e. it is a PDF writer as well. GreenPrint offers a free edition called World Edition but it is ad-supported.

Use tab-browsing in Windows Explorer

I like tab browsing!! Tabbed MDI architecture is made famous by Firefox. QTTabBar is an add-in for Window XP and Windows Vista that gives tab browsing feature to explorer windows. Again, this software is based on .Net Framework 2.0, Windows XP users must make sure .Net Framework 2.0 is installed in your PC.

Disable WIndows Vista from connecting to Microsoft's server

There are reasons to disable my PC from connecting to Microsoft's server, e.g. I always make sure the automatic Windows Update is disabled to prevent unexpected changes to my PC, etc. So, Vispa can help you to manage Windows Vista in ths regard, it is yet another tweaking program that bring all the relevant settings into one place.

Tweaking utility for Vista

VistaTweaker is a tweaking utility designed for Windows Vista, it works on Windows XP too. This software is currently in beta. I have grabbed 2 screenshots from VistaTweaker website - judging from the screenshots, I would say it is a lots easier to manage Windows Vista now. Since it is written in VB2005, you need to have .Net Framework 2.0 installed if you want to run it on Windows XP.

Windows Update can kills Windows Vista

Recent Windows Update for Windows Vista can turns into disaster. Windows may crash during the update. When you try to reboot, Windows won't start up, according to a victim here, the startup won't even get to boot menu - so no chance to do system restore or get into safe mode.

Given that Vista has poor driver support, this may not be Microsoft problem, it may be one of those drivers again.

Even more Windows 7 screenshots leaked out

More information on Windows 7 can be found on a Russian website called 'What is next?'. I am amazed by the quantity of screenshots published on the website. Check out here and here. You need to use Google Translate service if you want to understand the writings.

LINQPad: A better way to practice using LINQ

Imagine that you can use C# to query against your database. Now there is a free tool available to let you do that. Best of all, LINQPad is preloaded with 200 examples. I have read some articles on LINQ, but haven't started to get serious on it. It seems LINQPad is a great tool to help me get myself started to learn more about LINQ.

More Windows 7 screenshots

More screenshots can be found at here. The UI is still pretty identical as Windows Vista. Note that a splitter is added between address bar and search box in the explorer windows. How many of you use that search box frequently? I seldom use it, if I need to search, I use the search box in the start menu.

WIndows Vista = Broken Windows??

A nice summary of why Vista is bad. Hopefully Microsoft learns from the mistakes and makes Windows 7 a really nice OS for us.

Screenshots of Windows 7 Milestone 1

I have seen far too many fake screenshots of Windows 7 in various forums. But this one over here is highly likely the real screenshots of Windows 7 as the design looks pretty realistic.

NEC launches Vista downgrade product

NEC is offering downgrade to Windows XP? This is happening in UK - read this. Seem like some people prefers to swap their Vista license to get XP license. I know many people who are quite resistant to Windows Vista and Office 2007 at first because of the changes in the UI. We need some patience to get used to the UI. Unless you cannot stand the slowness of Windows Vista, then NEC's offer may be the right choice for you.

InfoWorld launches 'Save XP' website

In a brave attempt to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, InfoWorld has launched www.SaveXP.com, and tells us why XP must be saved, and so, InfoWord invites us to sign the Save XP petition.

So far, I believe this move will fail in the end since there is only 90,381 people had signed the petition by 12-Feb. Although I do not know the how many Vista users are out there by now, I am sure 90,381 is not statistical representative enough. Having said that, I have to admit only minority of my friends upgraded to Windows Vista voluntary. Most of us are actually 'forced' to use Windows Vista by purchasing new PC. However, if Windows 7 is really good and is going to release by 2009, may be those Vista haters can skip Vista and get directly to Windows 7.

Windows Seven scheduled for a H2 2009 release?

An article from TGDaily indicates Windows 7 will be introduced in the second half of 2009. Whether or not Microsoft can hit this target, I really hope something better than Vista is coming out soon. However, given such a short development time frame (relative to Windows Vista time frame), I expect there is no significant UI changes. Given the goal is to make a smaller OS kernel, and provided Microsoft can really deliver it, Windows 7 is probably the 'complete' version of Windows Vista.

Weee - Bomb the Internet Explorer

Watch this funny video clip. That 'weee' sound is a bit irritating....

Unwanted CDs as (useful) decorative

Ever wonder what you can do with your piles of unwanted CDs? I think this is quite creative, turning CDs into a decorative lamp:

Photo grabbed from here.

Cool wallpapers

The artist has made many pretty cool wallpapers. Click here to check out all of his artworks.

Open source .Net operating system: Cosmos

Cosmos is an operating system that is done entirely in C#.

Microsoft has a similar research project called Singularity, Singularity is not made publicly available (I thought the project was dead but the project website states version 1 is completed and is available for a small number of universities).

Although an OS written in pure C# is cool, I am awaiting to see the real word examples to solve real world situations.

A puzzle game: Bloxorz

I spent 3 hours to get to level 30 (33 levels in total), and got stuck there. Some levels are quite challenging. Go and try out yourself.

I have recorded the passcodes to following levels:

• Level 18 - 284933
• Level 21 - 728724
  
• Level 24 - 088198
• Level 25 - 250453
• Level 26 - 426329
  
• Level 27 - 660141
• Level 28 - 769721
• Level 29 - 691859
• Level 30 - 280351
  

Click to Play Bloxorz !