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Bossie Awards 2010: The Best Open Source Software of the Year
InfoWorld’s Test Center has picked the top open source platforms, middleware, applications, and application development tools for 2010.
Open Source software has been around now for more than 30 years and it is here to stay. Each year InfoWorld sorts through the millions of open source projects and try to find the best, most promising and most influential projects.
Art Fakers Will Have a Tough Time Hereafter
Researchers at the National Academy of Science have come with a rather new technology that helps people identify art works that are real and that are not! The technology that is based on a system of breaking down the painting to the smallest possible levels, follows an approach that is called sparse coding. The method is aimed at breaking down an artist’s piece of work into smaller 144 squares with 12 rows and 12 columns.
This new computer method of analyzing painting is an improvised version of the method that was in existence from 1999. This method would ensure that art fakers will have a tough time replicating art works as this technical method of analysis was aimed at the smallest levels.
Tweets to Help In Assessing Earthquakes
Reading the title, you would have wondered what tweeting has anything to do with earthquakes! But scientists at the US Geological survey have a different opinion about tweets. The social networking site, Twitter is being used as a tool by the folks at US Geological Survey to get an instant access to public reaction on such earthquakes. The messages are being analyzed to give an idea of how much impact the earthquake had in a particular area.
In a graph of the number of tweets to the time of the earthquakes, there was a spike in the number of tweets when the earthquakes hit. The USGS believes, these spikes in the numbers of tweets can be an emergency responder in assessing such situations. The Tweeter Earthquake Detection project, is one such project by the USGS that aim at singling our tweets with words like quakes or earthquake, however, it has been modified to neglect terms like “Quake”( as in the game) and an icecream named Oreo Brownie Earthquake.
Source: BBC
New Version of Church Song and Video Projection Software Released
A new version of the church song and video projection software SundayWorship has been released.
This release adds two major features to SundayWorship.
- Support for running Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from SundayWorship
- The ability to import songs from EasiSlides.
You can download the latest version from here.
New iPhone Sci-Fi Accelerometer Game Launched; Introducing Nova Ball and Nova Ball FREE
Gary Sims, the technology consultant and author, is pleased to announce the launch of the new iPhone and iPod Touch game ‘Nova Ball’. Developed independently, Nova Ball is a space/sci-fi accelerometer game. In the game you control the ball by holding your device parallel to the floor and tilting.
The game has three modes: arcade, mayhem and missions. In arcade mode you need to see how fast you clear each level. Mayhem is all about survival; stop the stars reaching critical mass. In mission mode you have to clear each level to progress to the next.
‘I am really excited about this new game’ said Gary during the launch. ‘The iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad is a great platform for developing mobile applications and of course games’
There is also a free version of Nova Ball known as ‘Nova Ball Free’. This lite version can be downloaded from the App Store and played without any limitations or expiry. However it is different to the full version in that the Mayhem mode has been removed and there are only 6 missions to play rather than the full 50.
The games can be downloaded here:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/nova-ball/id356162161?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/app/nova-ball-free/id357822431?mt=8
About Gary Sims
Gary Sims is an independent technology consultant and author. As well as developing iPhone and iPod Touch applications, Gary is the author of the book: Learning FreeNAS which is available from Packt Publishing and at Amazon.com. Gary was also a key member of development team for the Live Hacking CD a new Linux distribution packed with tools and utilities for ethical hacking, penetration testing and countermeasure verification.
X-Ray Vision and Birds
A recent study by a team of researchers suggests that, birds like the small red-breasted robin in your garden has a kind of an “X-ray” vision. The team of researchers from the University of Oldenburg, wrote about their findings in the scientific journal “Nature”. According to them, the migratory pattern of many migratory birds and other birds were linked to the fact that they were able to sense the earth’s magnetic field.
This has now proven to be true, and has in fact revealed even more than that. The research team has said that, the birds can see the Earth magnetic field at night and this was possible by a particular area in the brain called “Cluster N” which processes light. Though they have not determined how this helps the birds in the process, but they have zeroed down on the fact that these birds could actually see the earth’s magnetic field.
Now You Can Connect a Keyboard to Your iPhone
There was a time when I used to dream… if I only had a keyboard to type on my iPhone so that I could type fast on this buttonless baby of mine. But my dream has now come true for me. Now there is an application through which we can connect iPhone or iPod touch to a keyboard.
If you want to sit and type through a keyboard, you must install “BTstack Keyboard app” from Cydia store. This application worth $5, but is equally helpful and pay its price.
This application works through Bluetooth. It searches for the keyboard device and let you connect it to your iPhone.
Isn’t that cool? So what are you waiting for? Just go for it!
Slim Tablet PC’s From the Makers of the $100 Laptop
The makers of the $100 laptop and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) have unveiled a new slimline tablet PC, the XO -3. The new tablet PC which is proposed to be released sometime in 2012, will be retailing for a price less than $100 and will be aimed at connecting children around the world. The company had earlier scrapped all plans of developing the XO 2 which was a foldable notebook kind of device.
The XO which was the actual $100 laptop had run into troubles with its cost right from the beginning and it was retailing for almost twice the price. The company has sold around 1.5 million units in over 34 countries and aims that the ever decreasing price of electronics would only bring the prices of these laptops down. The company would also be releasing the XO 1.75 in 2011 which was an upgraded version of the XO with a new processor and a touchscreen.
Source : BBC
4G Comes to Scandinavia!
4G networks have now become a reality and people in Norway and Sweden could be first ones to use the fourth generation in mobile networks. Telecom company TeliaSonera has announced that they have been working on two mobile networks in Stockholm and Oslo and people will be able to use the networks from sometime in early 2010. The networks are based on the Long term Evolution technology and users will first be able to access the network only through a laptop and a dongle as no mobile devices currently support the 4G network.
TeliSonera has said that the networks will be able to offer downlink speeds of upto 100 megabits per second and that many other operators will take on this new network. TeliSonera has not announced the costs a person will incur when he accesses the network. Customers will have to use a dongle to connect the network and it will be manufactured by Samsung. Mobile handsets supporting the 4G network will be available from the later half of 2010.
Source: BBC
All New Atom Processor
Intel has always produced the products which have always drawn the attention of the tech world. Not to an exception, Intel is again up in discussions with its new Atom processors, a powerful new processor that has evolved from its predecessor. These new Atom processors to an introduction are very small chips which are said to be much more efficient than the previous ones.
These small chips will be used for the mini netbooks and computers with entry level desktops. These chips are said to integrate memory controllers along with the graphic processors into central processing unit. Intel disclosed that N450 processor will be used for netbooks and the dual core processor using D410 and D510 will be in the lineup for the computers with entry level desktops. The N450 will be showing an improvement of about 20% in power consumption and the dual processor by about 70%. Intel said that many companies like Dell, Samsung. Lenovo, Acer and even many others will be using the Atom.
Let us just hope that everything comes out the way it is expected to.
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