Camera Phones Plaza

While the students from Pakistan are working to improve their Internet connection, those from MIT have used the hidden parts of their imagination to come up with an innovation that in my point of view is the perfect device to make people go nuts.


This device is a blender that works with the sound analysis and motor control technologies and was called Blendie 2000.
It is a voice-controlled blender that starts its specific functions at the sound of a growl.
For example if you are near the blender and start to growl, it sets to Low, and if you imitate a high-pitched whine, its speed increases.


Blendie 2000 is described as an interactive, sensitive, intelligent, voice controlled device with its own mind.
In other words, the blender starts to spin when you imitate the sounds of its motor.
This is what Kelly Dobson wrote on the official page of the device:
“The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant. The participant empathizes with Blendie and in this new approach to a domestic appliance, a conscious and personally meaningful relationship is facilitated.
Machines influence self-conception, expression, social perception, and perception of responsibility and action. Blendie is part of a series of machines designed to access and vitalize the interplay of people and machines. Intercommunicative awareness is brought out and individuals are invited to reinvent their own existence.”
In her view, the blender is a combination of design, art, engineering, and psychotherapy.
I didn’t want to post the video demonstrating how Blendie 2000 works because it makes me nervous, but you can watch it on YouTube and leave your opinion here.

The students at the Lahore University of Management Sciences from Pakistan plan to try a new type of Internet connection that will avoid the Internet.



They have called it Poor Man’s Broadband, abbreviated PMB, and it consists of linking computers to each other directly for faster downloads, like in a P2P connection.



The condition is that minimum one computer on the network that has the special software installed to have the shared file downloaded from the Internet.
This is meant to replace the expensive broadband and the slow dial-up connections, and it will also reduce the risk of overloading the bandwidth supplied by its ISPs.



The system is a combination between the traditional P2P software and a form of dial-up, and its architecture offers a method for multiplexing the scarce and expensive international Internet bandwidth over higher bandwidth P2P dial-up connections within a developing country.
The technique mixes incentive-driven P2P data transfer with intelligent connection interleaving and content-prefetching.

SilverStone specialists have redesigned the SG01 cases to come up with a small-sized new case called SG03, meant for the use in different environments, providing an excellent cooling with its 2 large fans, measuring 12cm.



The case’s front panel and body are made from aluminum and the body is 1mm thin.
The total weight of this case is of 3.5kg and measures 200 mm x 360 mm x 312 mm.
It has additional expansion slots and reversible power supply unit installation design.



In short words, these are the case’s features:

-Reversible power supply installation;
-Adjustable fan positions;
-Light and compact all aluminum design;
-Extra large front and side mesh grills for unprecedented cooling;
-Amazing expansion capability;
-Support dual graphics card.



This case comes in 2 color versions - black and silver - and you can see them in the pictures.
Here you can read more details about the SilverStone SG03 SFF.

T-Mobile has recently released the Sidekick Slide and Sidekick LX mobile devices and the problems started to appear.
Many owners complained about the fact that when they flip the screen up and down a few times, the devices loose power and restart suddenly, this being very annoying if you are in the middle of answering a call or composing and email.


Motorola and T-Mobile have just confirmed the issue saying that only some of these units have this problem.
The companies have started to fix this and until they’ll release a solution the phone’s sales have been suspended.

The owners are advised to go call T-Mobile or go back to the store where they bought the device from and discuss about the available options.

Microsoft is working together with SourceForge and Daisy Consortium to implement in the near future a new plug-in for Microsoft Word 2007 that will allow the editors to save the text as an audio file type.
The DAISY Consortium is focused since 1996 on Digital Talking Books.

The conversion will be made automatically after choosing the Save as Daisy option.
What does Daisy mean?
Daisy is a nice girl’s name but in this case it comes from Digital Accessible Information System, which is actually XML files that offer the possibility to be read by speech synthesizers, a facility that will be accessible for free in 2008.


As probably some of you are already thinking about, Daisy will be very helpful, but especially for the people with eye disabilities, but the rest of us I’m sure we will find it at least interesting if not a useful utility.


"The Open XML to DAISY XML translator for Microsoft Office Word will begin the translation of Open XML-based content into an enriched multimedia format accessible to users around the world, regardless of the degree of their visual impairments," says Jeff Raikes, the president of the Microsoft Business Division. "This accessible technology is something that our customers have asked for, and we are pleased to be able to work collaboratively with the DAISY Consortium to realize this goal."


SourceForge has also announced publicly that they will build a converter for converting WordprocessingML documents to Daisy DTBook documents, and that it will be available as an Open Source.