Augmented Google Earth animated with real time human and vehicular traffic

Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.

They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars' motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles.

From their video of an augmented virtual Earth, you can see if the pickup soccer game in the park is short a player, how traffic is on the highway, and how fast the wind is blowing the clouds across the sky.

Up next, they say they want to add weather, birds, and motion in rivers.



VIA - POPSCI.COM

Samsung Corby Hits India

Samsung has just announced the launch of the Corby (S3653) in India. It’s set to be one of India’s cheapest touchscreen mobile handsets with a price tag of just Rs. 9,600. It comes with bold color options such as Jamaican Yellow, Cupid Pink, Minimal White, and Festival Orange so that users can choose their favorite color.

“As a Company that leads in innovation, Samsung Corby is another example of the Company’s commitment to developing new products and technologies
designed for specific audiences in keeping with their needs,” states B D Park, Director-Telecom , Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd.




The handset will feature –

* 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI and Haptics, one finger zoom, gesture control
* EDGE/GPRS connectivity
* Bluetooth with A2DP and USB
* Live feeds for Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter
* MicroSD card support
* 2 megapixel camera
* FM radio with RDS

“Samsung leads the market globally for full-screen touch phones and recognizes the importance of SNS in the modern mobile industry. Samsung has its target audiences at the heart of its business strategy and the design and functionality of Samsung Corby meets the needs of a highly connected and style-conscious youth audience." stated Park

VIA - Tech2

Coming soon to the small screen: TV in 3D

Osaka, (Japan): You've seen movies in 3D. Now, how about your favourite TV series? Panasonic Corp unveiled on Monday a 50 inch (127 cm) high-definition 3D plasma TV and glasses that make images appear like you can touch them.

At a demonstration at Panasonic's head office in Osaka, F1 race cars roared right by viewers and gymnasts barrelled down a runway, hitting vaulting horse and flipping towards the audience.

"We've introduced concrete plans to deliver the first 3D into people's homes. It won't disappoint," said Yoshiiku Miyata, Panasonic managing executive officer in charge of audio visual products.

He declined to comment on an exact release date or price tag, stating that the company hopes the new TVs will hit shelves sometime in 2010.

The technology works by tricking the brain into seeing 3D as high-speed shutters in the glasses work in sync with the TV to deliver a double layered image at twice the speed of normal TV.

"When the TV is showing the left image, the shutter closes the right eye so people can see only the left image," explained Keisuke Suetsugi, manager in charge of high quality AV development.

"And the next moment, when the TV is showing the right image, the shutter glass is covering the left." The company hopes the smaller, more living room friendly 50 inch model will become a popular choice for home theatres than a 103 inch big brother that debuted last October.

The new model will go on display to the public at the CEATEC Japan tech show on October 6-10.

Panasonic announced in August it will team up with Twentieth Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment in the making of Oscar-winning director James Cameron's new 3D film Avatar, set to open in theatres worldwide this December.

Chief rival electronics maker Sony Corp announced earlier this month it also plans to launch 3D TVs by 2010.

Sony to launch new PS3 game title in theatres

Video gaming will hit the big screen next month when Sony Corp unveils a new game title for its Playstation3 game console at movie theatres.

On October 5 and 6, four theatres in San Francisco and Thousand Oaks, California, Rosemont, Illinois and Bellevue, Washington, will give viewers a chance to play the upcoming action game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves title--on movie screens equipped with Sony digital-projection technology.

Those theatres will provide viewers with PS3s connected to Sony's 4K digital cinema technology, which is in about 500 theatres nationwide and which Sony says provides better image resolution than traditional projectors.

Mike Fidler, senior Vice President of Sony Electronics' Digital Cinema Solutions and Services Group, hopes events like this can eventually drive revenues for Sony, video game makers as well as theatre operators.

"This is the first time we're doing it in a theatre. We think it's a start of something for us, and hope we can build this into a standard element in the movie-going experience," he said. "Our goal in converting theatres to digital is to go beyond the traditional movie-going experience and focus on helping exhibitors find ways to fill seats."

"Gaming will be an important part of that equation." The first night will be a private invitation-only event, while the second event will be open to the public, to be publicized through radio and social networking sites.

Theatre chains have struggled to sustain revenue growth as home entertainment and the recession entices some moviegoers to stay home. And Sony, like other game console makers, is hoping for a hit title this holiday season to drive platform sales as the industry grapples with a protracted decline.

Both Sony and Microsoft Corp, the maker of the rival XBox 360, have recently slashed prices on their consoles. Sales of video game equipment and software in the United States fell 16 percent in August to $908.7 million, the industry's sixth consecutive monthly decline, research group NPD reported.

Uncharted 2 is due to be released on October 13.

Firefox: Google Chrome Frame poses a security risk to users

Firefox backer Mozilla has joined Microsoft in criticising Google's Chrome Frame.

Chrome Frame is a plug-in that puts Google's browser engine under the hood of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Google argues it can modernise IE versions 6, 7, and 8 with faster page loading and JavaScript performance. It kicks in only on web pages that web developers have labelled with a specific tag.

After Google announced it, Microsoft criticised it as creating a potentially increased risk to browsing security.

Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering for Mozilla, published a different concern in a blog post Monday night.

"I certainly share that longing for a web in which the vast majority of web users enjoy the performance and capabilities we see in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera. Unfortunately, I don't think that Chrome Frame gets us closer to that web," Shaver said.

Google Chrome Frame

Firefox says Chrome Frame is not the answer (photo credit: Google)

Specifically, Shaver said Chrome Frame can disable IE features and confuse users' understanding of web security matters. And users of the IE 6 browser, he added, often won't be able to run Chrome Frame anyway because their computer is locked down to prohibit changes or lacks sufficient power in the first place.

"As a side effect, the user's understanding of the web's security model and the behaviour of their browser is seriously hindered by delegating the choice of software to the developers of individual sites they visit. It is a problem that we have seen repeatedly with other stack plug-ins like Flash, Silverlight and Java, and not one that I think we need to see replayed again under the banner of HTML5," he said.

Shaver's advice is to rely on the age-old technique: an upgrade suggestion on the website.

"It would be better for the web if developers who want to use the Chrome Frame snippet simply told users that their site worked better in Chrome and instructed them on how to install it," Shaver said. "The user would be educated about the benefits of an alternate browser, would understand better the choice they were making, and the kudos for Chrome's performance would accrue to Google rather than to Microsoft."

VIA - CNET

Google Chrome OS

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

VIA - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

Samsung launches solar-powered phone

Leading white goods and mobile handset manufacturer Samsung on Wednesday launched a low-cost solar-powered mobile phone, and said it was planning to introduce about 20 more models by year-end.

The new handset, launched under its low-cost line of products - Guru - at a price of Rs.2,799, has a solar panel on the back, which can be used to charge the battery anywhere the sun is shining.

"We have developed this phone keeping in minds the needs of the consumers, especially for people in areas where the electric supply is unstable," said J S Shin, president and chief executive of Samsung, Southwest Asia.

The phone, christened the "Guru E1107", can provide around 5-10 minutes of talk-time with one-hour of solar charging when the handset is turned off and sunlight has adequate intensity.

"Solar charging can give you enough time to make few important calls when there is no electricity or you are not close to a plug point," said Sunil Dutt, country head of Samsung India.

The battery will attain full power with about 40 hours of solar charging.

"But that is really not the intention behind the launch of this phone. It is to enable customers to make a call when there is no electricity," said Dutt.

The handset, the 11th model in the Guru series, will be in shops by month-end.

The first few batches of Guru E1107 will be imported from South Korea.

Saumsung has already launched about 20 models this year and plans to take this number to about 40 across categories.

Asked whether the company would consider introducing solar charging features in high-end phones, Dutt said: "We would definitely consider doing so."

Samsung, which has invested about $44 million in developing its mobile manufacturing facility in Noida, also has ambitious plans for the huge Indian mobile market.

"Our market share is in the early double digits currently. We plan to increase it by about 5-6 percent this year," said a company official.

The company is also planning to introduce in India its solar-powered touchscreen mobile handset, Blue Earth - unveiled at a technology conference in Barcelona, Spain early this year.

BMW developing cars that 'sense' danger

Munich: BMW is refining a car-to-car communication system that offers more pedestrian protection by "sensing" situations and persons that cannot normally be seen by motorists, according to the car maker.

In a typical situation a child could suddenly jump onto the road from between two parked vehicles. In such a case the moving vehicle would communicate with an electronic transponder carried by the child or cyclist for protection.

The project is part of the AMULETT research project aimed at preventing accidents with sensoring and tracking technology. On board car systems are networked with those of other vehicles or transponders carried by persons. These can be installed in school bags, mobile phones or in a walking stick.

Should the system determine an impending collision or danger situation, the driver is warned with a signal on the head-up display. If he or she does not respond the system automatically triggers a braking procedure.

According to German government accident statistics 48 per cent of child accident victims between the age of six and 14 ran onto the road without observing the traffic. Other research has shown that in 40 per cent of fatal pedestrian accidents, the driver could not react in time.

Facebook in Indian Languages

With desi being the buzzword nowadays, Facebook, the second most popular networking site in India, will let members navigate in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi, Malayalam and Telugu.

But that's about it. Users can only browse through the site in these languages, not message or update their status. The site is not yet enabled for transliteration. Users can change language settings through the 'settings' tab or through the language option on their Facebook homepage.

Orkut still leads the social networking race India, and with this Facebook hopes to connect to the Indian audience on a more local level.

Firefox beta 3.5: Breathing down IE's neck

Mozilla on Monday released beta 3.5 of Firefox, a revamp of the open-source web browser designed to include better performance, several new web-programming features and a private-browsing mode.

The earlier betas had been numbered 3.1, but Mozilla switched to the version 3.5 name after concluding the changes were more significant than it thought before. Mozilla has said earlier the fourth beta will be the last, with more polished release candidates expected before the final version of Firefox 3.5 is released.

The software emerges amid what has become a fiercely competitive browser market. Microsoft has released a significant new version, Internet Explorer 8, while Google has entered the market with Chrome, and Apple is trying to secure a Windows foothold for its Safari browser. Firefox holds second place in market share to IE.

Among the changes compared with the current Firefox 3.0.x versions are:

* The faster TraceMonkey engine for running websites' JavaScript programs
* Built-in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) technology for exchanging data between servers and browsers
* Support for tags to describe audio and video content the way images have been available for years
* Private-browsing mode for leaving no traces on your computer while surfing
* Support for technology to let permitted applications know the user's location
* Support for the web workers standard for letting a browser perform processing in the background without holding back a web application's user interface

With this beta, there are a number of known problems with Gmail and with AVG SafeSearch v8.0 on Windows, and, of course, many of those extensions that are so popular on Firefox could break.

Original article: Mozilla releases Firefox 3.5 beta from CNET News.com

Vista service-pack update ready for rollout

Microsoft has wrapped up work on the second service-pack update to Windows Vista, the company announced late on Tuesday.

The update provides, among other things, support for Bluetooth 2.1, an updated Windows search technology and the ability to natively record data to Blu-ray discs.

In a blog posting, the company said the update should be publicly available later this quarter. Microsoft is also ending a blocker tool that prevented computers from downloading Vista Service Pack 1, so those customers who had been using the tool will now see Vista SP1 offered via Windows Update.

The update has been in broad testing since late last year. A near-final release candidate version was issued in February.

Microsoft said earlier in the day that it was releasing the second service-pack update to Office 2007. Windows Vista and Office 2007 had their mainstream launch on the same day in January 2007.

Microsoft to woo users onto Windows 7 with 'XP mode

Microsoft is trying to make it easier to sway users of Windows XP onto the latest version of its operating system.

The company has been building a "Windows XP mode" that uses virtualisation to allow Windows 7 to easily run applications designed for Windows XP. According to sources familiar with the product, the application compatibility mode is built on the Virtual PC technology that Microsoft acquired in 2003, when it scooped up the assets of Connectix.

By adding the compatibility mode, Microsoft is aiming to address one of the key shortcomings of Windows Vista: its compatibility issues with software designed for Windows XP and earlier versions of the operating system.

The technology has not been part of the beta version of Windows 7 or previously disclosed by Microsoft but is expected to be released alongside the upcoming release candidate version. Microsoft said on Friday that it will release it to developers next week and publicly starting 5 May.

Details of the Windows XP mode, previously known as Virtual Windows XP, were first published on Friday by the Windows SuperSite blog.

Later on, Microsoft confirmed XP Mode in a blog posting.

Microsoft's Scott Woodgate said in the blog: "Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small businesses move to Windows 7. Windows XP Mode provides you with the flexibility to run many older productivity applications on a Windows 7-based PC."

According to the post, "all you need to do is to install suitable applications directly in Windows XP Mode which is a virtual Windows XP environment running under Windows Virtual PC. The applications will be published to the Windows 7 desktop and then you can run them directly from Windows 7".

Microsoft said it "will be soon releasing the beta of Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate".

United Nations looks to SAP for ERP system

The United Nations may be on the verge of installing an ERP system from SAP AG, potentially resulting in one of the largest public-sector deployments to date for the German software vendor.



A UN spokesman said Friday that SAP had won the right to negotiate a deal with the organization, but that a contract had not yet been finalized.

According to a report by Reuters, a German newspaper, citing unnamed sources at the UN, published a story on Wednesday saying that the deal could be worth as much as $300 million to SAP.

SAP already has a large presence in the public sector. For example, some of its ERP customers within the U.S. government include the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, a DHS unit that combines the former Customs Service and Border Patrol.

Via ComputerWorld

Adobe, Intel to Extend Flash to TVs

Adobe and Intel will collaborate to develop the porting and optimizing of Adobe Flash technology for the Intel Media Processor CE 3100.


This move is expected to provide consumers with a more seamless Web-based and video viewing experiences through advanced Intel-based cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail connected AV devices.

The high-definition capabilities of the Adobe Flash Platform, together with the Intel Media Processor CE 3100 - the first in a new family of purpose-built Intel System on Chips (SoCs) for CE devices - creates an entertainment hub capable of delivering rich Web content and Adobe Flash based applications to Internet-connected CE devices.

Intel and Adobe are working together to optimize both the Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Flash Lite for the CE3100.

Intel plans to ship the first CE3100 with support for an optimized implementation of Adobe Flash Lite before mid-2009.

"The Intel Media Processor CE 3100 is a highly integrated solution that provides a powerful, yet flexible technology foundation that will bring to life the high-definition capabilities of Adobe Flash," said William O. Leszinske Jr., general manager of Intel’s Digital Home Group. "Our effort with Adobe is poised to accelerate a rich, yet relevant Internet experience on the TV that will provide consumers with access to a growing number of Flash based applications that will ultimately be enjoyed across a number of screens seamlessly, from the laptop to a MID and now the TV."

Adobe and Intel are also working together to bring an optimized implementation of Adobe AIR technology to Intel’s digital home platform in the future.

Mozilla Releases Firefox Fennec Alpha 2

Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile browser has reached its second alpha stage today. Reports are stating that there only seem to be performance improvements with regards to navigation and viewing capabilities. Of course many users will expect the browser to support some form of Plug-in just like the desktop version. We’ll have to wait and see as the development continues.


As of now, only Nokia’s internet tablet the N810 is the testing ground for the Fennec browser with other OS’ to follow suit, like Windows Mobile and Symbian. Windows, OS X and Linux clients are available


This is an early developer release of the mobile version of Firefox, for testing purposes only, intended to:

* get wider community feedback on our approach to the user experience
* engage Mozilla community teams, including localizers, add-on developers, and testers
* get feedback from Web developers

The initial focus of development was on building a new user interface that reflects Firefox's design principles, and adds touch screen support and other features that are appropriate for mobile phones and other handheld devices. For alpha 2, we focused mainly on performance, improving the responsiveness of panning and zooming, both while pages are loading and when they have completed loading. There are still many improvements we intend to make, including enabling TraceMonkey by default.

To help out, visit the Mozilla mobile page to learn about our public weekly meetings, how to find our community on IRC, and more.

These Release Notes provide a "quick start" for the impatient, some highlights of what's included in this version, download and installation instructions, known issues, and frequently asked questions. Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting bugs to Bugzilla.
Quick start

This release is available for the OS2008 ("Maemo") software platforms that runs on the Nokia N810 Internet Tablets. If you're viewing this on an N810, install Fennec.

Don't have an N810? Don't worry, you can still experiment with Fennec, provide feedback, write add-ons, and get involved by installing a version of Fennec for your desktop PC:

* Windows
* Mac OS X
* Linux

The idea behind releasing the package for PCs is to give people who don't have a Nokia Internet Tablet the ability to localize, experiment and build add-ons. Note: The desktop version of Fennec is not a supported product.

YouTube to post full-length films

YouTube, the largest video-sharing website, will show full-length television shows and films from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's archives in its latest step to boost advertising revenue by adding professional programming, the company said on Sunday.

The site, owned by Google Inc, plans to make the announcement about the new partnership on Monday.

MGM Studios will kick off the partnership by posting episodes of its decade-old American Gladiators program to YouTube on one channel. On another channel, MGM will post full-length action films like Bulletproof Monk and The Magnificent Seven and clips from popular movies like Legally Blonde.These will be free to watch, with ads running alongside the video.

YouTube in October forged a similar partnership with CBS Corp to run full-length archived shows, including Star Trek, Young and the Restless and Beverly Hills 90210.

Many TV networks already run short clips on YouTube, which also offers millions of home videos uploaded by users. But until now, YouTube videos were predominantly short clips of 10 minutes or less.

The company has been experimenting with full-length shows for some months with Time Warner Inc's HBO and CBS's Showtime cable networks. The new partnerships put YouTube in more direct competition with Hulu, the online video site owned by News Corp and General Electric's NBC Universal.

Hulu features up-to-date full-length shows from News Corp's Fox networks, NBC and CBS. It also has a YouTube channel which features short-clip versions of its shows.

Internet searches may strengthen the aging brain

A variety of studies have suggested that engaging in mental heavy lifting of any sort not only draws the brain into the task but actually can change the way the brain responds to the task. The greater mental engagement that results is thought to create a sort of mental reserve that can protect the brain in the face of insult and injury; it also appears to preserve mental function in the face of aging.
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A new study of older individuals has now looked at brain activity as subjects undertake Internet searches and it concludes that, for regular Internet users, far more of the brain gets engaged when searching than when reading.

Like other studies that rely on fantastically expensive functional MRI equipment, this one had a small subject population: a dozen each of regular Internet users and Internet novices. The savvy users typically went online a minimum of once daily, while, on average, the novice group reported using the Internet either not at all or once a month. The average age of both groups was in the early to mid-60s.

Once in the MRI tube, the subjects were given one of two tasks: read some text formatted along the lines of a typical book page or undertake a simplified Internet search. Both tasks could be managed by a simplified set of controls that both fit in the MRI apparatus and did not cause significant head movement. Runs lasted for four minutes for each task, and the topics of the reading passages and searches were identical, which should limit the impact of the details of the task on the mental processing involved.

For the Internet novices, searching didn't significantly change the areas of the brain that were engaged, which have previously been implicated in mediating language, reading, memory, and visual activity. Although there were differences within these regions, the most significant difference was that reading engaged more areas of the brain than searching did for Internet novices.

This was most certainly not the case for regular users of the Internet; far more areas of the brain were active when these users were engaged in searches than when they simply read static content. Volume measurements suggest that nearly twice as much of the brain was engaged when the experienced users searched than when naive users did. The additional areas engaged included those thought to be involved in decision making and complex reasoning. The implications are that those familiar with Internet searches have learned to become mentally engaged in the process in a way that goes well beyond reading.

The authors caution against reading too much into the results, given the small sample size. They also suggest that factors beyond the actual process of searching could influence the neural activity. "The decision to avoid technology may reflect a pattern of other lifestyle choices that could explain our findings," they note.

Still, taken at face value, the results appear to suggest that frequent access to information on the Internet can create a higher mental engagement with the content. Given the value of mental engagement in helping preserve brain function, especially as people age, the results suggest a potentially positive role for Internet use in aging populations.

These results will be published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

VIA arstechnica

Toshiba's First Fuel Cell Coming in a Few Months

Toshiba is close to launching its first commercial direct-methanol fuel-cell device, which promises a faster way to recharge portable electronics products.

The company said Monday that the DMFC will be launched during its current financial year, which ends March 31, 2009. Toshiba won't say yet what the product will be, although it offered a possible clue last week at the Ceatec show in Japan, where it showed a cell phone based on a fuel cell.

DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction between methanol, water and air. The only byproducts are a small amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide, so DMFCs are often seen as a greener source of energy than traditional batteries. Another advantage is that they can be replenished with a new cartridge of methanol in seconds.

Toshiba and its competitors, including Sharp, NEC, Hitachi, Sanyo, Fujitsu and Canon, have all shown or disclosed prototype fuel-cell work in the past few years, but nothing has yet come to market.

In the product shown at Ceatec, the fuel cell had been integrated into the clamshell phone under the keypad and made the handset a little thicker, though not considerably. While the phone was a prototype, the build quality was close to what you might expect from a commercial product.

In addition to cell phones, companies have also talked about DMFC rechargers that can top up the battery of a portable device when it's not in range of a power socket. Such devices are seen as stepping stones on the way to products directly powered by fuel cells.

VIA PCWORLD

Google Launches 'Mail Goggles'

Have you ever regretted of sending any mail at the fit of anger, frustration or drunken state that sometimes landed you in-box of ex-flames? Did you ever wish if and only if I could stop mailing it? Well, Google is at your service again with its all new launch 'Mail Goggles'.

"Mail Goggles" helps you prevent from sending stupid e-mails, especially at particular hours when they are most likely to be inebriated and at risk of making a complete idiot of yourself.

This is how it works

Mail Goggles throw five maths problems up on the screen when a user presses the "send" button. The problems have to be solved within a limited period of time. Being able to do so would cause the system to presume that the user's mental state is sound enough to send appropriate mails.

Even if a person is very good at solving mathematical problems, there is an option to ramp up the difficulty of the questions. However, the questions remain in the arithmetic realm, and do not drift into interesting algebra or calculus.

The default setting enables the system between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. Internet users can change it in accordance with their preferences, reports CBS News.

Mail Goggles can be activated by going into Gmail's settings, and turning on Mail Goggles in the "Labs" tab. One can adjust how and when it works in the "General" tab. The idea, according to the Gmail engineer Jon Perlow, is to help those who are a little too tired and emotional to foresee the consequences of their actions.

Seagate Unveils New External Storage Drives

Seagate has unveiled its 2008 lineup of FreeAgent external hard drives - that includes desktop and mobile options, for both Mac and Windows operated computers.


The flagship pocket-sized offering, the FreeAgent Go, is the slimmest external drive available today. At a height of 12.5 mm, the new FreeAgent Go includes advanced shock and vibration protection and is the first external hard drive to offer a docking option that is sold separately and comes paired with a black leatherette carrying case.

The FreeAgent Go is available in a variety of colors, including silver, black, red, and blue. The drive also ships with a USB 2.0 travel cable.

The FreeAgent Desk drive and FreeAgent XTreme drive are the family's two 3.5-inch high-capacity desktop offerings, and provide up to 1.5 Terabytes of storage. The design of these drives provides the flexibility to sit horizontally or stand vertically to maximize the workspace. The FreeAgent Desk drive comes with a brushed aluminum finish, with a USB 2.0 interface. The FreeAgent XTreme drive is a black, brushed aluminum high-capacity storage solution incorporating a triple interface of eSATA, USB 2.0 and FireWire 400.

Seagate has also unveiled external storage solutions designed specifically for the Mac community. The FreeAgent Go for Mac and FreeAgent Desk for Mac are both formatted for use with Mac OS X out of the box and are Time Machine ready with FireWire800/400 or USB 2.0 connectivity.

The Seagate FreeAgent Go drive is available for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of Rs. 5500 for 250GB, Rs. 7000 for 320GB and Rs. 12000 for 500GB.

The FreeAgent Go drive for Mac is available for an MSRP of Rs. 9000 for 250GB and Rs 10000 for 320GB, while the FreeAgent Desk drive for Mac is available for an MSRP of Rs. 9000 for 500GB, Rs. 14500 for 1TB and Rs. 19000 for 1.5TB

The FreeAgent Desk drive is available at an MSRP of Rs. 7500 for 500GB, Rs. 8000 for 640GB, Rs. 13000 for 1TB and Rs. 17000 for 1.5TB.

The FreeAgent XTreme drive is available for an MSRPof Rs. 9500 for 500GB, Rs. 10000 for 640GB, Rs. 14500 for 1TB and Rs. 17000 for 1.5TB.

The FreeAgent Dock and Case will be available for an MSRP of Rs. 1600.