Google Gears: Browser up, OS down!
We all knew this was coming and it has finally come. The final problem of offline access to web-based services has been addressed by Google Gears which was released last week. Today, I saw the first instance of it being available to the end user via the Google Reader.
You can have consistent, transparent access to all your favorite websites/web applications through the browser. The OS becomes less important now and the need for natively installed OS specific applications is greatly reduced.
It would be interesting to see the changes this will bring in our world!
What’s that under my skin – an RFID?
I have always been very excited about this but have been putting it off. However, the IEEE doesn't want to let us on-the-edge engineers rest in peace – they went ahead and dedicated an entire issue of Spectrum magazine on embedding RFIDs inside human bodies. Reading about the experiences of the few people who have done it helps reduce the anxiety around it and very strongly tempts me to go ahead and get it done. I have already looked up online about where I can order the RFID chips and readers from. I am at the last step – I need to order it and schedule an appointment with a doctor to perform the 3 minute insertion procedure.
I suggested this idea to fellow students at SI and have got many concerned responses – why do you want to make it easy for the Big Brother? Is it safe? What's the point?
Big Brother (Privacy): It's a passive device for identification and authentication, just like finger-prints, so it is not as scary as the potential scenario of a GPS enabled chip that radios in to Big Brother at intervals. Safety: well, the IEEE seems to endorse it, they haven't made active and scary disclaimers about the risks involved, if any. And animals have been RFIDed since a long time now. The point: Well, to be honest, there is no point. It's only a cool thing to do, like getting a tattoo; just a more geeky tattoo. There is absolutely no compelling reason about why the RFID should be under my skin – can I really not be ok with it being in my pocket?
Well, we will have to see what I end up doing!
Republic Day of India
India got it's freedom on 15th August, 1947. It is referred to as the Independance Day.
The constitution of India was formed on 26th January, 1950. It is referred to as the Republic Day.
Both days are national holidays in India.
26th January 1950 is one of the most important days in Indian history as it was on this day the constitution of India came into force and India became a truly sovereign state. In this day India became a totally republican unit. The country finally realized the dream of Mahatma Gandhi and the numerous freedom fighters who, fought for and sacrificed their lives for the Independence of their country. So, the 26th of January was decreed a national holiday and has been recognized and celebrated as the Republic Day of India, ever since.
[via Tajonline]
Today I feel a lot can be learned from this 57 year old Democracy constituting of 1 billion people. Specifically, the electronic voting system in India is a great showcase of simple genius.
To mark the ocassion, the Indian Students Association at Umich held a flag hoisting ceremony. Only 20-30 Indians were brave enough to show up in frigid weather. They missed the laddoos 
Amdocs 7
Amdocs' latest offering is Amdocs 7. When I read about this, I got an instant flashback of the time I spent working in Amdocs. Always on it's heels, always thinking ahead, prepared well in advance. It was a very good experience. I am glad I am still very much in touch with many of my former colleagues.
Perceptive Pixel – Multitouch Touchscreens
Remember these touchscreens from "minority report".
A real version of this will be commercially out soon:
[via Gizmodo]
Microsoft Robotics Studio Released
I had referred to this before and I was eagerly waiting for a release. Well, there you go, Microsoft has released the commercial Robotics Studio (1.0). It is quite exciting and I hope to be able to play around with it some time soon.
Yes, you can download it for free for personal use:
That means if you are student, educator, academic researcher, or hobbyist looking to try out or use the software without the objective of making money or running your business, the software is available for download for free.
Go ahead and play around!!!
Microsoft Zune – A new social experience?
So Microsoft has finally declared that the Zune will be priced at $249. They make a bold statement there on the press release:
“On Nov. 14 we’re delivering not only a device, but a shared, social experience that will be shaped by the collective imagination of consumers,” said Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Zune. “We’re infusing the spirit of discovery and sharing into everything we do — from the experience we crafted around the device and service to pre-loading music and videos on every device to expose people to something new.”
We will only know for sure once we experience it, but this sure has me all excited. So now you know what I want for Thanksgiving.
PlanetRead – A small change for Colossal gains in Literacy
A fairly simple yet promising idea.
Link to PlanetRead .. A small change for Colossal gains in Literacy
Not just another Google – Microsoft comparision
I am tired of people saying how Google will eat away into Microsoft, and how the software Giant will be overshadowed by the new 'revolution'.
I want to clarify some things. Most often than not, Microsoft has always been very active in either bringing about, or capitalizing on any new revolution.
Microsoft has smart people. Very smart people. They know what they are doing. Just take a look at the research pages of Microsoft and you just have to respect the kind of stuff there. It's really nice. If a company has invested so much in such varied and futuristic research areas, you can't elbow them out the way we think Google will.
Things as varied as Virtual Wi-Fi to concurrent programming. That's the role of a software giant. It sure is giving back to the community. It's putting so much money to research. What's wrong if they want to get rich while serving the intellectuals.
Check out the Research Projects Downloads section. If you are my kind, you will find yourself with a lot of respect for M$!
USB Powered Sewing Machine!!!
Brother corp Japan has launched the Innovis range of sewing machines which connect to the PC via USB and can be operated via the PC.
There are two models the "Innovis M200" and the "Innovis N150".
Size is common 436 x 204 x 292mm, the M200 weighs 11.7 kg and the N150 10.0 kg. The M200 costs $ 2375 and the N150 costs $ 1800.
P2P for premium content: finally.
As I had mentioned in my previous post, P2P can be used to explore new economic models.
It's nice to know that there's formal work in that direction as can be understood by this post.
They are doing exactly what I wanted them to do. It's nice to know the world is becoming a better place. And it inspires me to coninue my speculatory existence.
Public Proxies and Thought Pointers – where will google stop?
The next thing google will probably do now is provide public proxies.
Using a google proxy will be faster than surfing the internet directly - the catch - nice pretty plain-text ad's will get embedded in the web-pages we browse through the proxy.
So you go to hotmail.com and you will get a plain-text ad on top of the hotmail logo saying "try GMAIL - it's free".
The way its going, finally they will have some compelling and free interface to our brains, and every thought will result in the ad-sense engine to fire up and 'Point' our thoughts to relevant ads.
So you just come home from the gym and 'think' of drinking something and google ad-sense will 'suggest' to your brain the idea that Real Fruit juice would be the most apt thing to ingest.
Is this good, or is it too invasive, I do not know.
Personal Fabrication – not too distant reality
If you could make anything you wanted, what would it be?
The Dream Factory
The concept is simple: Boot up your computer and design whatever object you can imagine, press a button to send the CAD file to Lewis' headquarters in New Jersey, and two or three weeks later he'll FedEx you the physical object. Lewis launched eMachineShop a year and a half ago, and customers are using his service to create engine-block parts for hot rods, gears for home-brew robots, telescope mounts - even special soles for tap dance shoes. "Designing stuff used to be just for experts," Lewis says. "We're bringing it to the masses."
Hybrid Cars
This is a field that is maturing fast and it is very significant.
Fossil fuels (gasoline, petrol) are getting over. We need to find alternative sources of fuels. Until we find total replacements for the present fuel sources, we need to work on increasing the efficiency to help complete utilization of whatever is left of it.
Hybrid cars are a very good example of it.
Most fuel engines (pistons & cylinders) are tuned for high efficiency at average-speeds (say 40-60kmps - correct me if I am wrong, I am not an Automobile Engineer). So we tend to waste a lot of fuel when we start a car or are running it at low speeds in urban traffic.
An electrical engine(electromagnet & motors) on the other hand is efficient over a wider range of speeds, including the very low speeds. But we can not carry such heavy batteries in our cars to go just 100 km.
So what do we do? We combine both fuel engines and electrical engines. We use the electrical engine at low speeds, and fuel engine at higher speeds. So fuel is utilized most efficiently.
Aah, but where do we get the electricity from? Do we stil use batteries? No! We use regenerative braking. Everytime we break the car (which happens most in Urban traffic), instead of using friction to stop the car, we generate electricity (maybe using induction - again correct me if I am wrong). We store this electricity in a buffer fuel cell, and use it to drive the electrical motors at low speeds.
So we have effectively increased the milage by a large amount.
Read more about it at 
Or read the complete information at Howstuffworks "How Hybrid Cars Work"
And then there are organisations like NRDC which are asking people to break the chain - of dependance on fossil fuels. Read more about it here.
Katsuya Matsumura’s PC Cases
Katsuya Matsumura makes PC cases which are very "different".
Take a look here
A Good GPS device
A GPS Device
I really want a GPS device. I have a smartphone, so I want a bluetooth GPS receiver so I can use them together. Read a lot about them, SIRF chipset or XtracSIRT chipset. Finally liked the Fortuna Clip-On, but its not available easily in the market Am attaching a Doc file which shows a real-size comparision of all the Small GPS devices available in the market. Take a look at it to see how big (or small) these devices really are.
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