Working on Windows,I end up having various files,folders and shortcuts on my Windows Desktop. I try to keep it organized to the best of my ability,but the fact that I can’t pin a certain set of folders to one location and leave the remaining items sorted by Last Modified becomes a problem. That was until I discovered Fences. A small application by Stardock,Fences allows me to organize my desktop into different sections (Games,Frequent Programs,and so forth). It’s a great tool,with a relatively small memory footprint. Oh,and it’s FREE>
Google has unveiled a new feature for Google Maps. While it’s great tool to find directions from one place to another,or the nearest grocery store or mechanic to a certain location,it isn’t so great when you are trying to figure out what else is in a certain area. Let’s say you are visiting a new city,you want to be able to find out what else is in the area you are going to. Till now,you would have had to check other sites,or try different keywords in Google Maps. Now you can just right click on a location in Google Maps,and select What’s Here?. While still in it’s infancy (when I checked near my apartment,the only thing it returned was a restaurant 4 blocks away,ignoring at least 30 other restaurants and bars,my apartment building itself,and countless stores),it returns a list of major locations in the area (which are sure to grow rapidly). (Found on TechCrunch)
Augmented reality looks like it’s really kicking into high gear. Last week we had Layar released for the Android system,and today we have IBM releasing an application called Seer for Android users attending Wimbledon. As seen in the demo video above,Seer allows users to determine where things are at Wimbledon,such as restaurants,bathrooms,various courts,and provides a real-time data stream from there,so you can see how long the lines are at the restaurant,or what match is being played on a certain court. While useful for Wimbledon,I can definitely see this being adapted at amusement parks to see ride lines and statuses,or historical sites to point out interesting facts about buildings (imagine this applied at the Colosseum in Rome). While announced today by IBM,it should be available soon,and seeing that Wimbledon starts today,one can only hope it is very soon. (Found on Gizmodo)
I found it quite amusing that Microsoft billed Bing as a “decion-making”engine. What the hell does that even mean? It is a search enginer straight up. I can’t ask it for a movie recommendation or where I should go to eat. Sure I could ask for Thai restaurants near my location,but it is presenting me options like Yellow Pages. Urban Spoon’s application on the iPhone may be more of a decision engine than Bing is. However,now there is a real decision-engine called Hunch. You answer some questions (initially it was 20,but you can keep answering questions to build a more accurate assessment of your taste and profile) and it will try to answer questions that you may have (example above.. I already read Wired,so good choice there,and the second option was Popular Science,which I also already read). There are a lot of different questions avaialble (Can you recommend a cult or campy movie?,Should I get a Canon or a Nikkon?,etc). It’s a very interesting idea,and something I will need more time to play around with before determining if it is actually going to be useful or is just hype and will die off in a few months. (Found on TechCrunch)
iTunes for Windows doesn’t get as much love as the Mac equivalent. There are amazing programs and extensions,all for free,that you can get for your iTunes on the Mac that help manage and extend your iTunes functionality (You Control and I Love Stars being prime examples). Finally,there is something that well help me with some of my iTunes tasks for my Windows PC. Meta-iPod is a free Windows-only application that has a host of functionality built into it. You can easily fix the meta data for a track,find songs that are in your iTunes folder and not in iTunes and vice-versa,fix your album art,transfer ratings from your iPod to your PC and,coolest of all,automatically rate your music depending on how many times you’ve heard the track and how many times you’ve skipped it. Quite impressive for a free program. (Found on DownloadSquad)
More often than not,I end up looking up and planning a decent amount of vacations I take with family or friends. I have usually done this by setting up a folder in my bookmarks,and just saving pages and pages there. A recent trip to Amsterdam netted about 15 bookmarks in that folder,and another 3-4 else where that I had forgotten to put in the appropriate folder. This is why I am so excited about Gliider. It’s basically a FireFox extension that allows you to set up trips,and then easily copy and paste text and images from the website to categories within the trip (i.e. hotels,food,flights,shopping,etc). You can easily organize your entire trip and have access to the information as and when you need it,all organized. Love it. It’s still in private beta (I’m waiting on my invite),so I encourage you to sign up if you’re the one who plans trips out. (Found on TechCrunch)
Google has released an upgrad for their Google Apps Premium Edition that will allow them to cheaply compete against Microsoft’s enterprise dominant Exchange service. Essentially,App Sync,acts like an Exchange interface in Outlook,keep your Outlook address book,email,and calendar in sync with Google’s Gmail,Calendar and Contacts. Google’s service allows people who are used to using Outlook to continue to do so while reaping the benefit of a cheaper alternative to Exchange (Google claims it costs half as much). It’s only available to people (companies?) paying for the Premium version and running Windows (why does Google hate on Apple users so much?) right now. Video details after the break. (Picture from TechCrunch)
Researchers at the Univeristy of New South Wales have developed a way to restore sight to people with low or no vision. Using stem cells obtained from a patient’s working eye,they coated a regular contact lens with the cells and placed it on the patient’s other eye. Within 1-2 weeks,2 of the three patients who were legally blind were able to make out the type row of a eye chart,while the third patient who had previously been able to read the top 1-2 lines,is now able to pass a driver’s vision test.
The technology and process is suppossedly easy and cheap enough to carry out in developing countries eventually. This is the type of technology and developments that are encouraging because they’ve actually made it out of labs and into the real world with human tests. I hope that this treatment is available soon to people everywhere. Just amazing. (Found on Gizmodo)
I just finished watching the full demo video of Google Wave,and I am truely excited about this new technology. It is going to revolutionize how we communicate,how we share information,and how we work.
My favorite features from the demo:
- Spelly - Intelligent smart spell checker which can detect the context of the word,and automatically correct your spelling or suggest a word. Sentences like “Icland is an icland”,in realtime is converted to “Iceland is an island”.
- Linky - Functionality that automatically detects you are typing a link and converts it to a link.
- Open-source –The API and Wave system as a while will be completely open source,allowing developers to easily built functionality,but even more important,other companies to build competing wave products (like email) and even intranet/private wave systems (again like email).
- Real time sharing –Multiple people can be adding and removing text,pictures,links,videos to a wave and everyone will see it all in real-time. You can easily add/remove people who have access to documents,play a video of all the edits made by different people,and even update a master copy,implementing source control functionality.
- Extensions - It seems like there will be a very easy to use system to create extensions that integrate with external or internal functionality. Demoed in the video were extensions that will in real-time move your Wave to a blog post (where your edits are shown in real-time),a twitter extension,and …
- Real-time translation –This was amazing. Two people can be conversing in real-time in two different languages,and Rosie (Rosy?) will convert what is being typed between 40 different available languages as you are typing it character by character.
If you haven’t done so already,watch the full demo video. It is just under 1.5 hours,but it is also really amazing stuff. I really just can’t wait to try this out. Congratulations Google and the Google Wave team.
Siri is a new application that is launching later this summer for the iPhone (and I assume other mobile devices based on their sign-up page). What it does is that it utilizes speech-to-text to take your queries to produce results that best match them. What’s special is that you ask Siri as you would a normal person. You can find things to do,what the next available flight is,book movie tickets for a movie you want to see at a nearby theatre,or get a cab to go to a new place for dinner. Instead of you having to go to various websites and webpages to get this data,Siri presents what you want in an easy to read format. Video demo after the break thanks to TechCrunch.
