Tech N' Gadgets

Friday, June 30, 2006

If this is the future of computing, I wanna live for another 200 years

This is crazy, innovative and creative. I don't know how user friendly it will be but it sure strikes my cords.
Don't miss it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWe-TIy2Lbs&search=bumptop

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Peebattery

Inexpensive, easily-made medical sensors and disposable testing kits need inexpensive, easily-made power sources, but until now, these have been difficult to come by. "DNA Chip" type biosensors and the like don't need a lot of power, but they do need some. With that in mind, a research team at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology led by Dr Ki Bang Lee has devised a cheap-to-make paper battery that uses the fluid being tested -- urine -- as a power catalyst.The battery unit is made from a layer of paper that is steeped in copper chloride and sandwiched between strips of magnesium and copper. This “sandwich” is then laminated in place, which involves passing the battery unit between a pair of transparent plastic films through a heating roller at 120ºC. The final product is 60 mm x 30 mm and has a thickness of just 1 mm (slightly smaller than a credit card).

Give Nano More Power


This new external battery system is made for iPod Nano to provide an extra 12 hours of running time. A USB cable adapter lets you charge your cell phone in the middle of nowhere. Fully charged in 2.5 hours, it comes with a case and international AC adapter. Available in white and black.

Show you care.. not just with flower but print on it.



Sending flowers and a card is one of the time honored ways of showing you care. But what if the store doesn't have the right card to say what you want? Or what if you want to make a very special impression that will last even beyond when the flowers have faded? With the Flower Printer you can place messages and pictures directly on the delicate petals of flowers without damaging or ripping the flower. This wonderful new innovation allows you to send the message you want to loved ones, with that oh-so-personal touch, in a way they'll remember for a long time. Prints 85 to 200 flowers per ink cartridge. and it costs $1,450 so what dya say guys??

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Microsoft ventures into Robotics

Two of my favorite things meet up. I love Robotics and I love Microsoft and now the news is that Microsoft has finally decided to get into the Robotics with development kit. Microsoft has already setup the Microsoft Robotics Studio.
Microsoft also has several academic and commercial partners that plan to support its robotics software. These include CMU, Lego, CoroWare, KUKA Robot Group, Robosoft and MobileRobots.
Microsoft Robotics Studio delivers three areas of software: A scalable architecture that can span a wide variety of hardware and devices.
If you want more details then you can goto http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/

Thursday, June 15, 2006

The Power of Blogging

Well, this blog had been silent for last 3-4 days but all for good reason. I recently experienced myself how powerful blogging has become. India's one of the finest tech magazine i.t. Magazine (EFY's Production) has selected me to write Gadgets and Gizmo section for them and definitely my blog helped them to identify my interest area and gave me this honorable task.
THAT IS THE POWER OF BLOGGING.
I was busy selecting latest gizmos and writing about them and I'm done today so I'm back and hoping to start updating this blog with all recent happenings.
I certainly missed to cover some of the latest stuff like:
Yahoo mail got infected with virus and then various cure for the same.
Microsoft launched their largest patch for Windows XP so far to fix various vulnerabilities.
Sony is planning to have licensing scheme for PS3 titles.
and some more. I'll cover them soon with most recent stuff and not to forget all those cool gadgets.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Word 2007 to feature Blogging tool

I'd really say that Word 2007 is a major leap from the existing version of Word. It has tons of new features and I'll be talking about each of them here on my blog but let's start with the most relevant thing here i.e. Blogging using Word.

Word has dedicated Blog Post tab. It has some special commands that you will need to manage your blog service accounts and publish your posts, Even added strikethrough to the basic text group since bloggers like using it so much.

Another major change is that now the HTML is pure and clean HTML and not like the one we have right now while exporting from DOC (All those verbose word HTML), the only problem so far is that word is encoding smart quotes incorrectly so you have to turn off that feature in Word, but the goal is to output just what is needed to make your blog post clean and readable.
When you set up your blog you can specify an upload site and Word will take care of uploading any pictures that you insert in the blog post. Word automatically generate & upload PNGs for the Office graphics (charts, diagrams, etc.) that you insert in your post.

Other significant new features include pre-defined contents and formattings, sharing documents by converting them to PDF or XML Paper Specification (XPS), Quick comparision of two documents, Built-In workflow services using Sharepoint Server 2007, creating dynamic Smart Documents that update themselves by connecting to your back-end systems using new document controls and data bindings, enhanced protection and corrupt file recovery.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Sneak Peek Into Google Spreadsheet

Google Spreadsheet is just around the corner which will allow you to work on your spreadsheets online and let others have a look or even edit them. I wonder if it can affect Excel's potential to even one bit but if it does then Microsoft should immediately call a meeting and prepare a warpath NOW as Excel is one of the finest tool they have created and losing dominance even by 1% would really make google proud.

Here are some features of Google's Spreadsheet:













Choose who can access your spreadsheets.Just enter the email addresses of the people you want to share a given document.
Upload your spreadsheet files.Upload spreadsheets or worksheets from CSV or XLS format - all your formulas and formatting will come across intact.
Familiar desktop feel.




Share documents instantly.
Edit with others in real time.Multiple people can edit or view your spreadsheet at the same time as you - their names will appear in an on-screen chat window.



Edit from anywhere.There's nothing to download; you access your spreadsheets from any computer with an Internet connection and a supported browser.
Never lose your work.Online storage and auto-save mean you need not fear hard drive failures and power outages.
Easily save and export copies.You can save your spreadsheets to your own computer in CSV, XLS and HTML formats.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

I beg to differ with Oracle's CSO

I recently heard Oracle’s Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson saying that most software people are not trained to think in terms of safety, security and reliability Instead, they are wedded to a culture of "patch, patch, patch," at a cost to businesses of $59 billion.
"What if civil engineers built bridges the way developers write code?" she asked. "What would happen is that you would get the blue bridge of death appearing on your highway in the morning."
The pressure to deal with the problem of unreliable and insecure software is building, and the industry has reached a "tipping point,"
I did an informal poll recently of chief security officers on the CSO Council, and a lot of them said they really thought the industry should be regulated.
"Industries don't want to be regulated, but if you don't want to be regulated, the burden is on you to do a better job."
Davidson also hit out at the "hacking mentality," and the incidence of exploits that could cause "a million dollars worth of damage...passed around freely at conferences."
She said there was a major difference between people working in the software business and engineers who "are trained to think in terms of safety, security and reliability first."

Before I start evaluating these remarks from Ms. Anderson, it’s really interesting that this comes from Oracle, which has recently been plagued by insecure, missing and broken patches, and spent years refusing to fix their software despite known security issues.

Now let’s move further and evaluate her remarks.
If she thinks that she’s perfectly right then it goes on to prove that Oracle itself doesn’t hire good programmers or the problem is at the senior level who doesn’t understand how important is the security and can’t define an architecture for the same and if it’s coming from a senior person then the gap is there and the blame is not on developers.

I have been fortunate enough to be on both sides of the development fence – development (Code crunching) and design (Spec creation). How often does a product design start off with one set of specifications, only to be completed with a whole new set of specifications? Such is the nature of development. Software development is an iterative process and iterations happen only in the form of changes or creeps and if what she’s saying matters then there’s no room for Change Request in Oracle. Using the bridge analogy is over simplifying the matter - (I am not a civil engineer, so please forgive me if I hit on anyone's toes) but in my opinion when building a bridge, the specifications are set out and signed off before the project starts. Once signed, that’s it - the specs don't change. What would the bridge look like, if halfway, the engineer decided to change the bridge from a pillar supported to a suspension bridge? Or start a concrete bridge and later change to a steel bridge? IMHO if we stick to the spiral life cycle of software development, the chances of buggy and insecure things can be reduced. Consider a scenario where you are working on a large project which deals with the complexity and your analysts design the architecture of the project but things may go wrong here also, for example: the person who wants to get his project done can’t translate his requirement into the proper phrases and giving a hazy picture of overall project or the person from our company dealing with the client can’t translate his details into a clearly written form which in the first phase itself may result into the requirement gaps.
I’d recommend a procedure in which a scope document is frozen with all plans clearly stated and let the execution phase start but changes are unavoidable which means we should have a policy for changes. Every change asked by the client should go through a brain storming session where causes and effects should be reanalyzed in terms of time, risk and money and send the updated document to the client and seek their approval and only if approved, the project should move further for the changes.

Another way to curb down the number of bugs and handle creeps is to have properly laid out milestones and milestone policies. If project is tested after every milestone then the chances of reducing the bugs and creating security holes will be reduced. Security seldom features in today’s (RAD managers specially) managers and since we don’t have these in document, you can’t expect QA guys to go through those vulnerabilities also.
Development is a predominantly reactive position, where a developer gets spec and creates accordingly - the developer cannot override the specification at a whim. If he consults the designer and if the specification cannot be changed, what must the developer do? Not write the code?
Same for QA guys who can’t override the specification, use cases and test cases and everything of these are totally dependant over the Scope designers.
IMHO, Instead of complaining about buggy code, rather get the original spec, use cases and test cases, and see if the code functions within the required parameters. If it does, then review the code. If it does not, yes, then its buggy code.

One more thing I’d like to emphasize on is that do we follow the methodologies when the budget or the timeline gets tight? BTW when everything is planned in a structured way then why budget or timeline should get tight? It boils down to one fact that software development is an iterative process and if this fact is accepted then have the concrete policies to allow changes and creeps in the projects gracefully and logically.

What you get is not the result of 'mistakes', it is the result of the compromises which were made along the way. If you didn't test enough, it was because someone preferred buggy code over testing. The same with deadlines, budgets, training, skills, and every other resource which was lacking, along with every other corner which was cut. 'We' typically don't want to admit it, but the fact is that the decisions we are making are not 'how do we get good programs', but rather 'what mix of bug free, quick and cheap is what we really want', with a huge dose of wishful thinking and mutual amnesia to hide the fact that we know exactly what will happen if we do 'A', when it would require doing 'B' to get really bug free code.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Google gets into 3D Modeling

Google does it again. I recently got to hear about Google Sketchup which is a 3D Modeling tool.
Here's the description straight from Google:

Google SketchUp (free) is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies.

SketchUp Features:

Sketchup Pro is also available which is a commercial version of the Sketchup.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

My test result for Onecare

As promised, I've complete testing Microsoft's Onecare.
First some positive points:
  • This is the only product which offers all in one caring solution and does good (not earth shattering though). We are waiting for Symantec's Genesis (Codename) to come out in the market which will also be offering all possible features.
  • Secondly it scores points at ease of use.
  • It's a no-hassle way to combine hard-disk maintenance, file backups, and security.
  • Backup process is top notch.

Now negative point:
  • First, it failed to detect 14 out of 1690 file viruses on the WildList, a published list of common malware; since these viruses are publicly known, you should expect your security software to score 100 percent here.
  • Secondly, among the ten security suites I looked at, OneCare received the worst score in my heuristics tests, which suggests that the program has a hard time detecting malware that it can't recognize through signature files. That said, Windows Defender is meant to be able to block an unknown piece of malware solely based on the way the file interacts with the PC. I did not test this capability, and AV-Test has no data on it.
  • Defender option is given but you need to separately install that and that works for spam control but I didn't check that so far.