The Ostendo CRVD features LED powered DLP technology to generate a 2880x900 resolution image on a 43" curved surface.
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Nov 7, 2009
Augmented Reality: MIT's sixth sense
'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.
The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction. 
The SixthSense prototype implements several applications that demonstrate the usefulness, viability and flexibility of the system. The map application lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures, similar to gestures supported by Multi-Touch based systems, letting the user zoom in, zoom out or pan using intuitive hand movements. The drawing application lets the user draw on any surface by tracking the fingertip movements of the user’s index finger. SixthSense also recognizes user’s freehand gestures (postures). For example, the SixthSense system implements a gestural camera that takes photos of the scene the user is looking at by detecting the ‘framing’ gesture. The user can stop by any surface or wall and flick through the photos he/she has taken. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing an ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.
The current prototype system costs approximate $350 to build.
More information can be found at the project website:
http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/
Nov 1, 2009
Google Maps Navigation edition. (beta)
This is great! This application promises to provide GPS navigation capabilities for everyone with an Android phone.
Take a look at the video and tell me what you think:
A demonstration of Google Maps Navigation (Beta), an internet-connected GPS navigation system that provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps on Android 2.0 phones.
Take a look at the video and tell me what you think:
A demonstration of Google Maps Navigation (Beta), an internet-connected GPS navigation system that provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps on Android 2.0 phones.
Screenshots
3D Navigation
Search along route
Traffic view
Street View
Navigation voice shortcut
Navigation during call
3D Navigation
Street View
Satellite view
Satellite view
More information can be seen at the Google Maps Navigation homepage.
Oct 29, 2009
iPhone - Google App
If you want to see some impressive voice recognition software, try out the Google search app on the iPhone...
Find local businesses, directions, and other information by just speaking into your phone!
Check it out:
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
RocketDock - www.rocketdock.com
This is a great tool that gives you a Mac OS-like dock for Windows. I use it to quickly access critical folders and documents.
Get it at www.rocketdock.com
Description from www.rocketdock.com:
What is it?
RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.
Now with added Taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
Aug 26, 2009
Remove the Content Advisor and Ratings Password
If you have forgotten the Internet Explorer content advisor password and want to change the ratings settings then follow these instructions to change the settings back to their defaults.
All the Content Advisor settings are stored in the key below. If you no longer have the password, then simply delete the key, and all the settings will be removed.
Open your registry and find the key below. Single click on the key to highlight it, press the DELETE key, or alternatively select Delete from the Edit menu.
Close Internet Explorer, re-open it, and the Content Advisor feature should now be disabled.
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Ratings]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Ratings]
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
Aug 16, 2009
Insignia NS-4V24 Teardown
You are looking at an Insignia NS-4V24 mp3 player.
This MP3 player would only turn on when a USB cable was inserted. I bricked it after I stupidly followed the advice of a BestBuy rep and attempted to format the flash memory to reset all configuration settings. I decided to tear it apart and posted the pictures here. Overall, I think this MP3 player is an iPod killer. It supports 8GB SDHC cards, it has a built in FM tuner, it supports wireless bluetooth headsets, plays videos, and has a nice 2.4" LCD.
Click on the images to enlarge them.
Jul 10, 2009
iPhone Contacts in Exchange - How to hide certain contact groups.
One of the issues I recently ran into was trying to hide certain contact lists from the iPhone's contact manager. The iPhone does not allow you to 'select' which contact groups to synchronize. It is configured to 'hunt' for contact folders throughout your entire mailbox tree and then makes everything available. For those of you that have thousands of contacts, this solution might work for you.
1) Create a Contacts folder in the Public Folders database of Exchange. You can use Outlook to do this or the Exchange System manager.
2) Change the permissions for the newly created folder so that "Default" and "Anonymous" have no access. Set them to "none". Uncheck "Folder Visible" for Default and Anonymous. You can do this by right clicking on the Public Folder, properties, then permissions. Make sure that you are set as the Owner of the folder.
3) Move the Contact lists that you want to hide from your iPhone into this newly created Contact folder. Since this new folder is located in the "Public Folders" database of the Exchange server, it won't synchronize to your iPhone.
If you set up the permissions correctly, this contact list will be visible only to you, and your iPhone won't see it.
Note that you may have to disable Contacts in your iPhone's Exchange account settings to clear the contacts, and then re-enable it to refresh it.
Good luck.
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
Apr 17, 2009
How to block google chat in igoogle.com
Recently, I found out that Google did not provide a mechanism for blocking google chat in igoogle.com like it does for gmail chat.
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
To block gmail chat, you simply configure your firewall/proxy to block requests to/from 209.85.201.189 which corresponds to http://chatenabled.mail.google.com
There is no such mechanism for igoogle.com chat. In fact, igoogle.com redirects to http://www.google.com/ig/ which meant that blocking igoogle.com as a domain would not do the trick. Users could still go directly to www.google.com/ig/ and access chat.
Today, I accidentally ran across a solution.
To successfully block the chat feature of igoogle.com you need to block access to the following URL.
I used special URL filtering software to block any requests sent to "talkgadget.google.com".
You can do the same using windows default HOSTS file by redirecting talkgadget.google.com to 127.0.0.1 or using a proxy that filters out this domain.
The result is access to igoogle.com and all other google features, but with chat disabled!
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
Mar 20, 2009
Capture login time / logout time for users on any Windows PC using simple scripts
The following scripts can be used to track user login/logout activity on workstations or terminal servers. I have it set up to track just one PC, but you could easily adapt this script to monitor multiple workstations by removing the IF statement after "Set THENetwork . . . " line. If you do this, please do not forget to remove the "End IF" statement as well.
You need to personalize the BOLD/ITALIC statements to your environment.
I used a GPO to run these scripts at logon and logoff in our domain. I suggest you do the same. You need to create a network location that is accessible by everyone. You can set the folder permission to allow write but only allow administrators to list/read the location.
The output files are Comma Separated and can be easily opened by Microsoft Excel.
LoginReport.vbs
START SOURCE CODE
WriteLineToFile()
Function WriteLineToFile
Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8
Set THENetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")
IF (THENetwork.ComputerName = "CHANGE THIS TO THE COMPUTER YOU ARE MONITORING") Then
filename = "OUTPUT LOCATION" & THENetwork.UserName & ".csv"
Dim fso, f
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(filename, ForAppending, True)
qMark = Unescape("%22")
coma = Unescape("%2C")
today = date()
curTime = Time
username = THENetwork.UserName
computername = THENetwork.ComputerName
f.Writeline()
f.Write qMark & today & qMark & coma
f.Write qMark & username & qMark & coma
f.Write qMark & computername & qMark & coma
f.Write qMark & curTime & qMark & coma
Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(filename, ForReading)
WriteLineToFile = f.ReadAll
End IF
End Function
END SOURCE CODE
logoutReport.vbs
START SOURCE CODE
WriteLineToFile()
Function WriteLineToFile
Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8
Set THENetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network")
IF (THENetwork.ComputerName = "CHANGE THIS TO THE COMPUTER YOU ARE MONITORING") Then
filename = "OUTPUT LOCATION" & THENetwork.UserName & ".csv"
Dim fso, f
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(filename, ForAppending, True)
qMark = Unescape("%22")
coma = Unescape("%2C")
today = date()
curTime = Time
username = THENetwork.UserName
computername = THENetwork.ComputerName
f.write qMark & curTime & qMark & coma
Set f = fso.OpenTextFile(filename, ForReading)
WriteLineToFile = f.ReadAll
End IF
End Function
END SOURCE CODE
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
Mar 18, 2009
Can't remove additional Outlook mailboxes
USE THE REGISTRY EDITOR AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Here are the basic steps I used to correct the issue:
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
1) Run regedit to edit your windows registry.
2) Locate HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\"Your outlook Profile"
3) Click on each sub-folder and open the 001f3001 keys to determine which folders are associated with each additional mailbox.
4) It's easy to spot the 'dangling' mailbox since you'll be able to spot the user's mailbox name in the registry key.
5) BEFORE PROCEEDING: I would backup the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\"Your outlook Profile" keys by exporting them to a safe location.
5) Delete the entire sub-folder of the key.
6) Re-Load outlook and the 'dangling' mailboxes should now be gone.
Please leave me comments. Let me know if this worked for you, or if you notice something that needs to be changed. Use the Tell&Share icon under the title of the post to share it with your friends or digg it!
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