Xeroavitar Tech

It's Crysis 3 by Spring 2013

2012-04-27T08:27:00.000+08:00

New York by year 2047 proves to be a great venue for sandbox FPS gaming. Photo courtesy of GamesPress.

A prophecy of vengeance is due by Spring 2013. And it will all play out in the Big Apple.

Prophet goes back to New York in

Crysis 3

, the third installation in the hugely successful Crysis franchise from Crytek and Electronic Arts. The Cell Corporation has encased the Big Apple in a Nanodome, and what has come to be known as "Liberty Dome" is only a shell of what New York once was. In place of the busy streets and rushing professionals, however, is a rainforest home to enemies both human and alien.

The Story so Far

You reprise your role as Prophet in the year 2047, and you are on a mission of revenge against the Cell Corporation. While citizens are misled to believe that the quarantined Nanodomes were used again for the purpose of protecting them and destroying what was left of Alien Ceph forces, you know better. You know about Cell's aspirations for world domination, and you won't let anyone or anything keep you from putting the corrupt Corporation down.

Luckily for you, you have the skill sets, the weapons, and the perfect stage to do just that: the Seven Wonders of Liberty Dome - seven different environments with their own unique themes.

The Game Mechanics

Your goal is pretty simple, and how you go about your objective is completely up to you. Prophet has advanced human and alien weapons and tactics at his disposal to mete out his vengeance in this sandbox-gameplay-meets-advanced-shooter game. Think lethal composite bow, powerful alien tech, and of course, the trademark enhanced Nanosuit, plus your choice of semi-automatic Jackal, Feline SMG, or Typhoon AW, and then some.

Why Wait Until Spring 2013?

For eager Crysis fans, the

Crysis 3: Hunter Edition

is already available to pre-order for £49.99 ($80.97) from participating retail outlets such as Origin.com. The Hunter Edition provides early access to some cool gear and bonuses in multiplayer, including the signature composite bow (plus attachments), the Hunter Nanosuit, XP boost to level 5, 3 exclusive dog tags, and a unique bow skin. Pre-order from the right retailers and you can also avail of 1 of 3 early multiplayer unlock packs:

Stalker Pack - Unlocks the semi-automatic shotgun Jackal and a unique silencer attachment.
Predator Pack - Unlocks 60-round mag Feline submachine gun plus camo.
Overkill Pack - Unlocks 500-rounds-per-second Typhoon assault weapon plus Typhoon skin, and 2 themed dog tags.

The game will be available for XBox 360, PS3, and the PC.

eBook: Hacker's Guide to Getting to the Top of Google Search

2012-04-22T18:25:00.001+08:00

Get the ebook from its Hyperink page or its Kindle edition from Amazon.

Having been specializing on web content and optimizing articles for search engines since January 2009, I can truly say it was a great opportunity to write The Hacker's Guide to Getting to the Top of Google Search.

The ebook is a rundown of the fundamentals of

search engine optimization

(SEO) with a focus on Google Search. Aside from SEO basics, the ebook also briefly delves into the history of Google and search, a simple analysis of what we know about the search algorithm behind the search engine giant, and recommended approaches to content optimization and strategy based on how SEO is progressing. It also touches on related topics such as a few approaches to writing web content and how to mix it up for a more engaging experience for readers.

Here's a short breakdown of the sections of the book:

Let’s Start at the Beginning – Google’s BeginningA short lesson on Google's beginnings, with valuable insight on how it works - from query processing to PageRank.

The Quest to Reach Google’s Summit: A Brief History of Past SEO EffortsSEO history in a nutshell.

Getting to the Top of Google SearchRelevance is key, but what makes a website relevant?

Content is the Core

Content is king, they say. But what exactly makes it king?

Your Content and Your Readers

Tips, tricks, and hacks to make your content optimized not just for search engines, but for the web and your website's visitors.

Mixing Up Your Content

Some writing styles and paradigms that work well on the Internet.

Usefulness First, Googlebot Second

Useful content is king.

Foundations of OptimizationThe fundamental and established SEO hacks.

Think Like GooglebotPut on Googlebot's skin and see what it sees.

Usefulness First, Googlebot SecondWhat does Googlebot want to see in a webpage?

The URL

Tips and tricks to make Googlebot like your URLs.

META attributes and HTML tags

A few HTML elements that tickle Googlebot.

The Plain Text

Content formatting and other tricks.

The Keywords in the Content

What's the fuss about keywords?

The sitemap and Sitemap

Using both works well.

The Links

Why links matter, PageRank, link building and link building strategies, and a few more tips.

Google Likes GoogleUse Google against itself.

Local Search with Google Places

A bit about Local Search and Google Places

Google+ and +1’s

A short discussion of Google Plus and the +1 button.

Using Google Products to Influence Google SearchLots of Google Products and Services. Leverage their use for SEO.

The Hacker's Guide to Google SearchSumming it all up.

The 7,000+ word ebook is well worth the read if you want to learn about the

basics of SEO

and if you want good insight into the workings of Google Search. The ebook is available from publisher Hyperink, and also has a Kindle Edition available on Amazon.

I hope you have fun reading it as much as I had fun writing it.

Apple Does It Again

2012-04-07T03:40:00.001+08:00

Source: Fresh Pics

I appreciate brilliantly performed magic tricks - so I appreciate Apple and what they did with the

New iPad

.

I'm an enthusiast of card tricks. I particularly like impromptu tricks that rely on psychology and sleight of hand. I learned quite a few and have been surprising folks here and there - but nothing in the scale like how Apple surprises gadget-loving consumers.

As how the moon shines on borrowed brilliance, the New iPad practically rode the waves created by the devcies before it, and the overall pull of its mother brand named after a common fruit. The new iPad's drastic improvements over its predecessor, the iPad 2, are only its stupendous display capacity and equally impressive 4G LTE Wi-Fi technology. Apple could not stomach to call it the iPad 3, but apparently thought it was worth releasing.

Does all this seem familiar? Hasn't this string of events happened before? Remember the initial lukewarm (at best) welcome and then the steady influx of praise for the iPhone 4s?

One of the most oft mentioned trinkets of wisdom in performing card tricks is that you should refrain from performing the same trick twice. While Apple didn't exactly perform the exact same trick twice, the crux of the illusion is the same, and it shows through the facade more the second time around. The iPhone 4s too was a product launched in place of something demanded and expected, and through rumors and speculation, overhyped. The iPhone 4s too was a release apart from the numbered lineup. The iPhone 4s too showcased too few improvements to merit a one-up, but was worthy of releasing to a gadget-hungry public. And now, much in the same way the New iPad is finding its place in the consumer electronics scene, the iPhone 4s has become one of the leading and most impressive smartphones today.

But perhaps Apple should refrain from showing the same trick yet again. After all, after the magic is revealed the performance loses its charm. Ah, but here is where Apple pulls one so terrificly simple and yet so diabolical that magicians everywhere would do well to learn. The magic is out in the open, free for everyone to see. In fact everyone already knows the trick behind the successful performance. It's brand. It's dominance. Apple owns the tablet industry - and in a strategy that aims to continue to dominate it, Apple needs to keep up with the brisk pace with which competitors are trying to dethrone it.

Every year where competitors release tens of hundreds of powerful tablets, Apple risks a dent like the Kindle Fire. Every year where Apple has nothing to offer, competitors gain an inch of foothold into its territory. And this cannot be. As powerful as the current display specs and the new connectivity technology of the New iPad is, they are still the only substantial improvements over the iPad 2. Are these two facets worth the price tag?

For Apple, the question is similar, but in converse: is improving all aspects of our current tablet generation worth risking industry and market domain?

Does the trick ever realy get boring? Watching from the sidelines, I'm quite entertained. Worried, perhaps, but entertained. My enthusiasm for new, better technology that develops in full strides instead of half steps has been overshadowed by magic tricks, psychology, and proverbial sleight of hand. First it was the iPhone 4s, then it was the New iPad. There can't be a third, can there? What will

Apple

play with next after all, its Mac OS line?

Google as Search Technology: the Wrong Way to do SEO?

2012-03-31T14:44:00.002+08:00

In researching and writing about

how to reach the top of Google Search

– basically search engine optimization (SEO) – for an ebook for Hyperink, I’ve come across a very interesting source of information that sheds some light on the inner workings of Google: Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s paper “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” that they submitted to the Computer Science Department of Standford University.

As a piece of modern technology, Google’s search algorithm is a work of art – even in its early days. PageRank, an all-important factor in SEO, was simply described thus:

Academic citation literature has been applied to the web, largely by counting citations or backlinks to a given page. This gives some approximation of a page's importance or quality. PageRank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. PageRank is defined as follows.

We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Note that the PageRanks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' PageRanks will be one.

PageRank or PR(A) can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web. Also, a PageRank for 26 million web pages can be computed in a few hours on a medium size workstation. There are many other details which are beyond the scope of this paper.

The paper went on to say that PageRank is a model simulating user behavior. You really can’t measure user behavior mathematically (yet), so the PageRank algorithm endeavors to calculate a website’s importance through its citations or inbound links from other sources. The more important or valuable the website is, the more places will link to it. The number of links and their varying prominence make up PageRank, which today has become far more complicated than the formula PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)).

Google and Googlebot’s job is to measure the links to and from a website and from there figure out just how important that given website is, and return it as a search result if a query with certain keyword matching its content is performed.

The paper goes on to briefly describe the query evaluation process as well as how the algorithm analyzes plain text elements to calculate content relevance to queries, but what I’m more interested in is the nature of PageRank. PageRank endeavors to measure each node in a given network that is constantly evolving following the behavior of its beneficiaries: the common Netizens.

To put this into perspective, let us delve into the complexities of networks. Any given network can be mapped out through the use of nodes (to stand for important points or entities within the network) and edges (to stand for the links between nodes). The Erdo-Renyi standard model of networking states that the more complex a network, the more random it is, and when any random network grows large enough, all its nodes would have a similar number of edges. Personally I can’t see my blog getting as much links as, say, CNET, regardless of whether the Internet grows into tenfold its size today. It would appear a certain Albert-Laszlo Barbasi agrees, as he found that within large, random networks, some nodes just simply had more edges than others.

In retrospect, this seems natural. Consider the World Wide Web. There are millions of websites within the web, but only a few have thousands of edges or links from other nodes or websites. Barbasi called these particular nodes “hubs.” These hubs, Barbasi found, did not just naturally occur in any random network, but were also crucial to the organization of the networks they are in. Hubs are influential and powerful movers of their networks, and every other node within their networks had to play their game, so to speak.

Now consider Google’s task of understanding the network of interconnected websites known as the web. Ranking each node is a difficult task, but there are sure to be obvious results. For instance, the “hubs” within the Internet are sure to rank higher than other nodes. In this case the hubs are big brands and business websites, which Google does indeed rank highly in search results.

Much has been said about Google’s bias towards big brands. It’s not as much unfair to other small and medium businesses as it is natural, and indeed, the common Netizen would find it much more useful to have search results where big brands are displayed because they are generally and typically the most useful, influential, reliable, and downright best sources of information for whatever it is they want or need.

Understanding how to become a hub in the mesh of nodes that is the Internet, then, is a crucial aspect to reaching the top of Google Search. I did not include this finding in the book I wrote, as the ebook was merely a basic and introductory, brief piece on SEO. Also, this finding means that the natural approach is to become a hub first, and then Google’s high ranking follows – instead of the norm that is to try to influence Google’s ranking to become a hub.

It was rather amusing to see that my trade – web content and

SEO

– was an unnatural approach to the order of networks.

New Naruto Shippuden Game Launches on March 13

2012-03-08T01:59:00.001+08:00

My pals and I had lots of fun with Naruto: Narutimate Hero 3, but if we could get a copy of the upcoming

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja STORM Generations

, I bet we'd be much happier.

I recently found out from Gamespress about this new title. NAMCO BANDAI has been rather succesful with the Ultimate Ninja STORM series, and with Generations, they are turning up the notch yet again. Come March 13, the new title will find its way to North American shores for XBox 360 and Playstation 3 gamers. So, what's new with Generations?

Basically, it's the same old formula multiplied many times over. Fans of the game series can enjoy more ninja fighting action with more playable and support characters (including Zabusa and Haku) in numerous battle modes. Studio Perriot also cooked up an hour's worth of all-new animations for Generations, so fans of the anime series can also get some animation value from the game - one of the most faithfully rendered among all Naruto games. The title supports online play, and, for the first time, will integrate real-world collectible cards into the game.

The cards can unlock artwork or launch mini-battles where players can win bonus skills for use in-game, among others. Powered by SEGA's LEGACY collectible cards edition, the cards will be sold separately. Nor surprise there. If you want to get a feel for the card system, limited supplies of the new Generations title will include one or several foil-printed cards, so if you have $59.99 (MSRP) to spare and are included in the game's "T" for Teen rating by the ESRB, save it for March 13.

If you want to try out the game, head on over to the Playstation Network or XBox Live and you can download a playable demo. The demo includes exclusive anime footage and pits you against such powerful opponents as Sasuke, Pain, and Madara in a small portion of the story mode. You'd be so dead if the in-game Madara is as powerful as the one in the manga.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja STORM Generations was developed by CyberConnect2 and is copy-righted material of NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc.

8 Generations: A Brief History of Video Game Consoles

2012-03-06T01:56:00.001+08:00

Unlike my work in Know Your Social: Leveraging for SMB eCommerce, this

ebook

/ pdf was initially a pet project and did not include serious, in-depth research. It's still a decent summation of the past 7 generations of

video game consoles

, I dare say.

Here's a sample:

Click here for the download:
8 Generations: A Brief History of Video Game Consoles
Save the PDF file or right click and select "Save as..."

Ciao.

Know Your Social: Leveraging Social Media for SMB eCommerce

2012-02-25T02:55:00.000+08:00

Work kept me away from Xero Tech. Since I've been doing a lot of research into ecommerce and marketing, I decided to create an ebook / white paper on one of the specific subject areas I've been delving into: social media in Internet marketing. The data comes from reputable and trusted sources (I cited works used), so anyone interested in using the research can rest assured they got the facts straight. I uploaded the full PDF file to my Dropbox public folder, with the download link below (after the 2-page sample).

Title:
Know Your Social: Leveraging Social Media for SMB eCommerce

Topic:
Research on

social media

and its use in small to mid-size business ecommerce.

File type:
.PDF

Introduction:

The Web is buzzing with excitement over how much marketing potential social media has. Just what is social media capable of and how can SMBs leverage its use for their business? Research findings from Nielsen, Forrester Research, and SocialFish provide a brief look into the current state of social media and mobile social use as well as the future of social networking and its correlation to ecommerce.

Sources:
Reports and research from NM Incite, Forrester Research, and SocialFish.

Keywords:
social media, SMB, marketing, social networking,

ecommerce

, research

Sample:

Download link:
Know Your Social: Leveraging Social Media for SMB eCommerce
Save the PDF file after it loads or right click on link and choose "Save As..."

Please feel free to leave comments, feedback, suggestions, or contractual research requests by using the discussion area below or going to my Contact page.

First Look: Digeus Registry Cleaner version 7.3

2012-02-16T19:46:00.000+08:00

There are too many important (and not-so-important, but equally interesting) things to do on the Web to be bothered by the infamous BSOD and its cohorts, sluggish PC performance and Internet connectivity. Luckily, a simple solution exists in the form of registry cleaners, like the recent version 7.3 of the

Digeus Registry Cleaner

.

I was recently informed of this new version of a long-standing registry cleaner brand and, being a staunch antagonist to the dreaded BSOD that plagues the Windows OS, set forth to see how it fares.

Version 7.3

of Digeus's registry cleaner is a basic application that cleans the registry, eliminating all the hazards a cluttered registry can result in.

As far as first impressions go, the Digeus Registry Cleaner is pretty simple and straightforward, being only a registry scan-and-clean setup that allows you to select which sorts of invalid entries you want identified by the scanner via checkboxes. It also allows for registry backup and recovery, plus the benefit of accessing a scanned entry through the Windows regedit application, for intermediate to advanced users. I do appreciate that it supports all Windows OS versions from Windows 95 (if for some reason you still have a Win95 system around) to Windows 7 - especially since the Windows registry past the Windows XP SP3 OS is is quite different from later versions.

I've yet to lay my hands on the full version, but overall I would recommend the Digeus Registry Cleaner to Windows OS users with none or basic to intermediate understanding of the Windows registry. The full version sells for $17.99, a bit hefty considering its singular purpose, but of course you can choose to avail of the Digeus All-in-One System Optimizer Suite that features the registry cleaner and all the other system optimizing and tweaking products from Digeus for a packaged price.

Zumba Fitness Rush Launched Today for XBox 360 Kinect Gamers / Dancers

2012-02-13T23:53:00.002+08:00

Credit: Gamespress

Love Zumba? Well it's your lucky day,

Zumba Fitness Rush

just launched.

Gamespress | February 13, 2012 - Zumba Fitness Rush, the sequel to the popular Kinect dancing game Zumba, releases nationwide (US) today. Zumba's publisher Majesco Entertainment partners up with 24 Hour Fitness health club to offer fans of the series a free 7-day pass that allows them to try a live class at a 24 Hour Fitness location. You can get the rated E10+ game for your Xbox 360 Kinect systems starting at $49.99.

If the 7-day pass isn't really your thing and you just want to dance your blues away, then you'll be glad to know that the Fitness Rush follows in the original Zumba's footsteps and provides the same formula of dance and fitness that the first title afforded its 6 million plus gamer-dancers. The game also boasts multiplayer functionality, licensed tracks, 40+ new routines, 24 dance styles, custom playlist options, online connectivity, and even a calorie tracker. And if you know your celebrity fitness instructors, then you'll probably be familiar with some or all of the 6 Zumba instructors who'll be guiding you throughout routines while playing / dancing.

Check out the trailer:

Ping Yahoo

3 Potential Gaming Trends that can Change the Face of Video Games

2012-02-13T19:37:00.002+08:00

Excited about the next generation of

video game consoles

? A single rumor about the PS4 or the Xbox 720 can cause a lot of buzz around the Web, but we might just be looking the wrong way. There are potential, even inevitable,

gaming trends

out there that can change the way we get our game on – and they don’t even have much to do with gaming consoles.

Put Your (3D) Glasses On and Get Ready for Real 3D Gaming

Despite advances in computing power and graphics processing prowess in current generation video game consoles, we seem to be falling short of stepping into a fully immersive, real 3D gaming experience – until now.

The innovation comes in the form of the Sony Playstation 3D display, a 24-inch 3D display that sports the SimulView feature, which allows multiple players to play the same game on the same display without having to settle for just a portion of the display. That’s right, the SimulView does away with split screen gaming (as well as screen-cheating) and instead projects different whole screen HD 3D views to all players involved. So when you’re racing against your pals, player 1 sees only his car, player 2 sees only his vehicle, and so on. Pretty cool, and you also get to wear futuristic-looking 3D glasses.

According to Popular Science, the display has its share of downsides, but the core of its $400 price tag – simultaneous 3D local multiplayer gaming sans split screen – is very promising. Indeed, 3D is the next step in the evolution of home entertainment displays. LG has the LG LW9800 Nano Full LED Cinema 3D HDTV currently in the market that sells for $3,800 and ships with 4 lightweight 3D glasses. The MIT's Media Lab is even trying to get rid of 3D glasses with an imaging technique that lets the human eye see 3D without needing them.

And because 3D is one of the next big things to hit your living room TV, video games of the near future will inevitably take this new technology into account. The power and graphics quality leap from the PS2 and Xbox to the PS3 and Xbox 360 will most probably happen again in some scale in the next iterations of these consoles, but sooner or later real 3D gaming will be the display race that consoles will inevitably compete in. That is if video game consoles don’t become obsolete first – a possibility that the next gaming trend can potentially lead to.

Don’t Even Need Your Own Console with Cloud-Based Gaming

It started with OnLive, the hugely popular cloud-based streaming app; It ends with video consoles becoming defunct and unnecessary. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but with how technology leaders are raving about the promise of cloud computing, it’s fair to say that it’s plausible. In fact, it might be happening right now.

The upcoming Google TV will have an OnLive gaming streaming app as a standard feature that lets users play console class games on their smart TVs. Look Ma, no consoles! When the advent of full-scale cloud computing hit, some experts went as far as to say that it will render local device storage unnecessary, and the devices – PCs, laptops, tablets – will only serve as end-user terminals to access data on the cloud and to perform functions with them. With this as a premise, it is possible that in the future, consoles dedicated to gaming might not even be needed.

Of course, that will be far, far off in the future, if it ever happens. For now, gaming on the cloud remains a neat experience, not a threat to the marketability of dedicated video game consoles. Smart TVs like Google TV are about to invade the consumer market big-time, though, and cloud-based gaming is increasingly becoming more than food for thought.

Back Off, this is Personal (Gaming)!

With the development of tablets brought on by the advent of the iPad, personal computing took on a whole new meaning. Bringing touch interface into the equation and providing users with all their computing needs in the form of apps, tablets became the personal mobile device of choice. Soon after the boom of the iPad, the tablet’s capacity for gaming was explored.

Aside from the proliferation of tablets, casual gaming also skyrocketed in recent years. Nowadays there are hardcore gamers, casual gamers, and hardcore casual gamers. Games like Diner Dash are leaving the confines of Web browsers and social media sites and are being ported to PSPs. Such subterfuges as Angry Birds make the rise of the tablet even more significant as these computing devices prove to be excellent platforms for such games. What happens when these two emerging elements come together?

We can get an idea of what happens when we look at Razor’s Project Fiona. Fiona might seem a little awkward at first, but once you get to know her she’s a sleek and sexy little thing. Sporting impressive Core i7 technology and heavy-hitting graphics, she also provides that controller grip gamers get calluses over. Right now she’s a trinket, a cool prototype with the promise of potential. She’s an interesting bit of gaming technology that explores the merger between personal computing devices and portable gaming. But she also represents inevitability. Gaming and personal computing are concepts that are becoming increasingly intertwined, and their union presents exciting opportunities for immersive, portable gaming.

What If Next Generation Consoles…?

The revolution the Nintendo Wii initiated and the Microsoft Kinect intensified leads to wonderful horizons for video games. But what if next generation consoles leaned more towards other avenues of development? What if the next generation of video game consoles can be played in full 3D without even the need for 3D glasses or only needing them for local multiplier without screen-cheating? What if you can pull out hundreds of games from your pocket and play them through one device supported by cloud-based gaming? What if video game consoles aren’t needed anymore?

Technological leaps and bounds are affording gamers a whole new world of games to explore, and there are more than just a few predictable ways to get there.

Nikon is Ready to Rumble with the D800 HD-SLR: 36.3MP Full Frame DSLR

2012-02-12T05:08:00.001+08:00

Meet the

Nikon D800 HD-SLR

.

The D800 follows in the D700's success in terms of capabilities - only it has so much more. About one-and-a-half-times more than the Nikon D3X flagship DSLR. The D800 righteously boasts a 36.3 megapixel FX format CMOS sensor that can churn out a whopping 7360 x 4912 maximum resolution when coupled with the Expeed 3 image processor. Popular Photography says Nikon claims it improves on shots in tricky lighting situations with the new new 91,000-pixel 3D Color Matrix Metering III system.

Well, it certainly looks the part of a kick-ass DSLR.

It also bests the D700 when it comes to its 51-point AF system. It might not bite the Nikon D4's head off, but the company claims that the D800 can focus even in -2 EV darkness. All this power and photo-shooting prowess is supported by a CF and SD card slot.

The D800 expands its horizons from just photos to videos, too. You can shoot 1920 x 1080 MOV file format videos at 24, 25, and 30p, and 1280 x 720 videos at 50 and 60p. Like the D4, it has a headphone jack, and since it uses HDMI full, uncompressed digital output you can use it directly with a capture device and leave external memory out of the equation. All in all it upgrades almost everything the D700 did right in the first place, though it falls a bit short of the performance heavyweight Nikon D4. It comes out in stores late March for a $2,999 price tag, and it has a D800E variant (same camera minus the lowpass filter) for $3,299.

Here's the official, exhaustive list of the Nikon D800 DSLR

full specs

) courtesy of the Nikon Press Center:

Kodak Bows Out of Digital Camera Market, Focuses on Printing Industry

2012-02-12T01:50:00.000+08:00

If you're old enough to call your photos '

Kodak

moments' back in the day, then be prepared to change the moniker - Kodak just exited from the digital camera market.

A recent BBC article confirmed that the company's 133 years in the camera manufacturing industry has officially ended, after months of financial loss owing to the rise of modern point-and-shoot capability camera phones. Kodak filed official bankruptcy to get a bit of wriggling space from creditors last month, a foreseen and forewarned last ditch effort since before the end of 2011. The company decided to live on in the photo printing and inkjet printer industry, however, only bowing out from the

digital camera market

to cut about $100 million in losses every year.

Company researchers found that the printing industry is the right way to go for them as they stand today, though Kodak will continue to honor all warranties and provide tech support for existing camera products. They are also working with retailers for the transition to be as smooth as possible.

Cool Tech Vids 2: Robots, Anyone?

2012-02-12T01:31:00.002+08:00

Anyone up for a few cutting-edge

robots

? Here's another round of Cool Tech Vids featuring

videos

of a remote controlled robot a-la Avatar (the movie), a coy female 'bot, and an all-around military droid.

In a recent article, MIT's Technology Review featured the Warrior, a general purpose military robot that's buff enough to tow cars and dexterous enough to open car doors. Of course, when we say "general purpose," we don't mean regular house chores. Weighing in at 450 pounds, the Warrior uses tank-like caterpillar tracks to get around and has an extendable steel arm that can clamp down and lift 150 pounds. The new 'bot from the company iRobot (the guys that came out with the Roomba robo-vacuum) can also be weaponized, making it an ideal substitute for precious human lives when disposing of IED's or other dangerous tasks. Check it out in action:

You know how mannequins can look pretty life-like? Well, pretty soon they'd be walking down ramps modelling the clothes they were designed to showcase, if the company behind the Geminoid-F female 'bot got its way. The Geminoid recently got a modelling job where she poses outside a storefront window in Takashimaya, Tokyo, where she looks like the typical Japanese shoujo waiting for a friend. She reacts in 65 different ways to sensory data she gathers, and while she might not be able to greet you with a polite "konnichiwa," she *could* look up and return a coy smile. Unless you're the theoretical friend she's waiting for, however, she'll most probably prefer looking at her smartphone than you.

Did you like the movie Avatar? If you thought the Avatar concept was interesting, you'd love the Telesar V, a Japanese designed robot straight out of Avatar (or Surrogate, if you're a Bruce Willis fan). The Telesar V is a robot you can control using a (very HUD reminiscent) head-mounted display and a pair of special gloves. As its controller, you can sense all the sensory data the Telesar gathers. Researchers who developed the technology want it to be able to delve into disaster areas too dangerous for humans to explore. Care for a peek?

It’s a Long Way to Go for the Federal Bureau of Social Media Investigation

2012-02-10T02:47:00.000+08:00

Credit: KimoraCochran

Given the information sharing prowess of

social media

today, it was unexpected that the

FBI

only recently made inquiries about establishing a data-gathering, threat-thwarting social media mash-up application. The premise has promise, but it needs to hurdle some big obstacles to fulfill its potential – obstacles like sifting through inevitable noise.

The FBI social network application is looking to “scrape” up information on highlighted words from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, and Itstrending. The question of privacy intrusion isn’t really a big deal initially since social media users voluntarily share through these sites. When it comes to what they unconsciously divulge; well, let’s just say they had the right to remain silent in the first place.

The problem starts when highlighted words being tracked like “recall” and “gangs” or even “leak” get used too much in casual social sharing. When Aunt Sally tweets about that “holy radioactive leak” in the basement, her hyperbolic humor might have just landed her in the must-watch list. She mentioned the word “leak” along with “radioactive,” and was one word short of mentioning Jihad.

If the FBI – or their contractors – work up an algorithm to deal with this noise effectively, however, then the effort could become an efficient technological tool in investigating national threats. It will take some time though for the application to become as effective a tool as, say, predictive policing; and it again begs the question of why the FBI only decided to ask around now. Or did they already complete a prototype and want to test it on the backlash of reactions to their official social media monitoring inquiries? Conspiracy theorists will love this development, for sure.

2YBWGWD25JJQ

Smartphones Vs Depression

2012-02-10T02:33:00.000+08:00

There are over 450 million

smartphones

shipped in 2011; There are about 100 million people suffering from

depression

globally. These two equally ubiquitous but very different commonalities in our lives today converge in an interesting way: smartphones have been found to possibly cause depression, and now technology is being developed to enable these devices to detect if their users are depressed.

A recent CNET News article talked about smartphone technology under development at Northwestern University called Mobilyze. It aims to transform smartphones into virtual therapists that help monitor their users' mood and thus assess probability of depression. Using a smartphone user's recent activity, location, and social context data gathered through accelerometers, Wi-Fi, GPS, and other built-in features of smartphones, the endeavor is to create a system that can correctly conclude depressive episodes and help towards alleviating the depression by making cheery suggestions or sending automated messages to family members.

The good news is that during a brief testing period where a prototype was tested on 8 patients who had major depressive disorders, the smartphone technology contributed to alleviating their conditions. The premise of the technology is also quite beneficial, as depression is one of the most neglected psychological afflictions. The bad news is that smartphones themselves, when used too much, can lead to smartphone addiction which subsequently leads to depression, among other psychological concerns.

The smartphones can act like TVs in that they draw you in and deadens your senses (and sensibilities). Their use as communications devices also contributes to sleep disturbances, prolonged stress, and depression in the long run. Constantly checking social media sites, email, and messages appear to be the problem, and if you're wondering how serious it can really get, a Bayer survey a couple of years ago found that 28% of women actually blame their smartphones for floundering sex lives. It's serious enough to affect your intimacy.

Well, knowing that already gives us a heads up - properly using smartphones and making an effort to restrain oneself from constantly checking for updates on them would help keep smartphone-abetted depression at bay. And if the common psychological condition sets in without us knowing, then our smartphones might just be the first to warn us about it.

Business As Usual

2012-02-08T16:28:00.003+08:00

Every time I feel quite satisfied after one task, I tend to procrastinate on the next one. After successfully buying a domain for

Xero Tech

and tweaking it somewhat (check out the new About page and the category navigation UI bar), it was no surprise that I did just that – even only for a couple of days. Well, Xeroavitar Tech is upgraded and will be delivering tech-related news, features, opinion articles, and reviews on some of the coolest, hottest, most interesting, and most cutting-edge topics worth knowing soon enough.

To keep updates uniform, I will be doing news articles on weekdays and other articles mostly on weekends. Another recent content development decision is putting up daily (well, I’ll try) updates on games releases courtesy of Games Press – the place to be for games journalists. I’ll be doing it alone, however, so I’m expecting it to be fairly difficult to manage alongside actual freelance content writing and development jobs. Until such time that I can generate some income from Xero, though, that will be the way it has to be.

It will be a fun and fulfilling challenge, at the very least.

For any concerns at all, please contact me on G_Dino@xeroavitar.com (yeah, I wanted to show my new email address off).

Out.

"Mirracle" System Lets You See Your Insides

2012-02-02T00:27:00.001+08:00

Look into that mirror and tell me what you see. Your intestines? Seriously?

If you find yourself looking into a mirror and not only do you see your reflection but also your innards, then you are looking at the

Mirracle

augmented reality visualization system. The system makes use of a Kinect-based sensor and a mirror that allows you to look at yourself and your insides. The breakthrough comes from a year-long project by a team from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. They used a

Kinect

hack and fused its technological prowess with a mirror to help teach basic human anatomy in an engaging and interactive way. After all, it's way cooler to look at your own insides rather than a random drawing in a textbook, isn't it?

The Kinect does the motion tracking, and the projection is courtesy of software from PrimeSense NITE and OpenNI. The subject or student using the system can openly interact with the learning tool. The insides you would be viewing are not really yours though, so there is nothing astonishingly special...yet. Let's give it some time - and perhaps some live CT scan features.

A prototype of the Mirracle system has already been installed in the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. This is not the first time a Kinect-based system or hack is going beyond the realms of gaming. Kinect's revolutionary system has been used for a virtual dressing room, among others, in the recent CES 2012. And, of course, there are a number of healthcare sector advancements the Kinect has been proving useful for.

New Sony Cyber-shot W Series Additions Launched

2012-02-01T01:13:00.000+08:00

Sony's line of all-around point and shoot cameras just got an upgrade with the introduction of the

Cyber-shot WX70 and WX50

.

The Sony Cyber-shotW, touted as an all-around, all-purpose Cyber-shot series, receives its next two additions in the WX50 and WX70. Both cameras inherit the sleek, compact designs of previous Cyber-shot models, and of course adds a bit more punch into the photo- and video-taking capabilities of their predecessors. Both WX's sport 16.2 MP ultra-sensitive Exmor R CMOS Sensors as well as the BIONZ processor. With this combo, Sony promises that both models can easily and speedily capture flawless, low-noise pictures.

This extra high sensitivity technology can be put to good use in low-light conditions, and it also allows easier spontaneous, flash-less shooting. The brand giant emphasizes that the new models only suffer from 1/6 of the noise levels of previous Cyber-shots, and they also sport almost all the good stuff of previous models one-upped for better performance.

Aside from other features, Sony highlights the Optical SteadySot technology that stabilizes images even in high zoom settings, Superior Auto shooting for capturing images like a Pro, an expanded range of picture effect options, and 5x optical zoom as well as 10x clear image zoom.

Here are the

full specs

of the Sony Cyber-shot WX70 and WX50, courtesy of the Sony Press Center:

Ultrasound Tech "Promising" Male Contraceptive Option

2012-01-31T18:50:00.002+08:00

Condoms might be the last minute choice for contraception, but ultrasound may just be the up and coming male contraception trend.

At the very least, it could be a viable alternative to vasectomies as a potentially reversible contraception method - if tests on lab rats could be any basis.

Birth control

and research into male contraceptives could be close to breaking ground: North Carolina researchers recently successfully zapped off significant levels of lab rat sperm using a therapeutic ultrasound generator.

Sperm-killing ultrasound was conceptualized in a research study conducted in the 1970s in the University of Missouri. Subsequent efforts to recreate the effects by other researchers have failed, however, stumping further developments. With a few adjustments though (namely using the specific temperature of 98.6 degrees F for 15 minutes over 2 days),

ultrasound contraception

proved to be doable, at least in concept.

Therapeutic ultrasound uses heat to help heal an area of the body by promoting blood circulation. Heat is also widely known to severely hamper sperm generation in males, as well as kill off existing sperm. You probably read about how heat from a laptop sitting on your lap can fry your swimmers - that's exactly the case.

In a recent Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology issue, researchers claimed the technology to be a "promising candidate" for contraception in males, and noted that a bit more research can establish full efficacy measurements as well as if it is reversible or if there are long term effects to deal with or avoid. If they're successful, teens of the future might be buying commercial therapeutic ultrasound generators as much as they would condoms.

Source: CNET News

PCs Turning Green – 5 Leading Eco-Friendly PCs

2012-01-29T09:23:00.000+08:00

The need and demand for greener technologies in recent years has led to the development of devices that are designed and manufactured using environmentally friendly materials as well as less power hungry in operation.

Green tech

is everywhere – from smartphones to home appliances – and of course, to the PCs that pervade out technologically interconnected lives.

Here are 5 of the leading

eco-friendly PCs

in the market today.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1

Lenovo might not be as big in the consumer market as other brands, but the company has a good grasp of green technology. The recent ThinkPad X series has several eco-friendly ratings and qualifications:

EPEAT Gold-Efficient
Energy Star-Efficient
UL Environment Gold-rated

And it doesn’t hurt that the X1 is designed to go with you virtually wherever you need it to. It sports a spill-resistant keyboard, a carbon-fiber roll cage, and even scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass. The ThinkPad X1 is rugged and green at the same time.

HP Compaq 8200 Elite USDT

HP’s currently available desktop series was designed to lessen environmental hazards, and as such were built without using polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) – some of the most harmful substances in manufacturing. Of course, that’s not all the Compaq 8200 Elite USDT has going for it. It also qualifies for EPEAT Gold and Energy Star.

Along with its built-in Windows 7 OS, the power supply design lowers energy use in the CPU in terms of both hardware and software.

Toshiba Portégé Z835

The Portégé Z835 weighs less than 2 and a half pounds and sports a profile that is barely 0.63 inches, making it the lightest 13.3 inch platform in the world today. But Toshiba’s Portégé Z835 belongs in this list because not because of its dimensions, but because of its EPEAT Gold and Energy Star qualifications, as well as its built-in energy efficient 128GB SSD storage.

Great pains were also taken in ensuring its design and manufacture were eco-friendly. Its printed wiring board does not have halogen, its body does not have PVC, and its LED display is mercury-free. As an added bonus, the PC can run full 8 hours of operations on a single charge, and it also comes packaged with Toshiba’s eco utility.

Fujitsu ESPRIMO E900 Series

The ESPRIMO E900 series encapsulates Fujitsu’s commitment to eliminate the use of substances that can prove harmful to the environment and can potentially be a risk to their consumers. The series uses halogen-free circuit boards which qualify for Energy Star, EPEAT, and Nordic Star certificates.

Beyond manufacture materials, Fujitsu’s PCs feature a power supply that can go up to 94 percent energy-efficiency rates while providing users with improved power management settings and even an optional 0-Watt consumption off mode.

Sony VAIO SA

The Sony Vaio’s EPEAT and Energy Star certifications can be seen in action in the Vaio SA. The S series controls the brightness of its screens depending on ambient light, and it also fades the backlighting on the keyboard when not used for a period of time – both of which directly contribute to consuming less power.

But Sony goes a step further by joining hands with IBM and its World Community Grid. The processing power saved by the Vaio S series while in idle assists scientists and researchers in humanitarian research in concerns such as cancer, AIDS, and global environmental issues.

These 5 PCs are not only developed to be more powerful and useful for consumers, but also more environmentally friendly. The good news is that they’re just ushering in a grander and greater age of green technology.

Amazon.com Widgets

Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing Now Available for £50,000!

2012-01-29T04:40:00.001+08:00

If you always want the latest, greatest, and priciest gadgets that do little more than make you look (or just feel) cool, then the

Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing

is perfect for you.

Created by Modern Toss in association with Clay Design Studio, the device is an actual table that features 103 colored buttons on top, arranged conspicuously like one of the most god-awful science tables you had to memorize in science class. In place of abbreviations for the elements are abbreviations for some of the most colorful and creative expletive combos you will ever come across in all your time surfing the Web. Press on a button and voila! You get cussed out using the obscenity of your preference.

Like the periodic table upon which it was based, the expletives go from dark colors (very offensive – and creative) to lighter ones (playground rubbish) to confusing innovations of swearing at the bottom. If you were wondering why it costs so much, it is probably because it’s a one off and no other models will be out on sale anytime soon – that and under the hood it sports 300 feet of cabling plus 300 soldered joints. Not only does it look and sound hilariously cool, it’s cool even under all the colorful swearing.

So if you got £50,000 stashed somewhere being saved up for the next ‘it’ device, the Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing might just be what you were waiting for. ‘Coz there’s nothing like creative cussing when it comes to relieving stress (or causing others to feel stressed) and withstanding pain (as the Mythbusters themselves confirmed).

For more info, and to check out a video of the table, visit its Firebox page.

Sony Unveils New Walkman B170, USB 3.0

2012-01-28T00:08:00.003+08:00

Old School enough to sport a Walkman instead of an iPod?

Then this should be good news for you: Sony recently announced that the new range of colorful

Walkman B170

models are available for consumers. The B170 series is a petite, colorful Mp3 and WMA music format player that boasts a Bass Boost button and a 3-minute quick charge option that allows it to play 90 minutes of music. Fully charged, the Walkman B170 can play up to 18 hours of your favorite music. Models come in 2 or 4 GB capacities, and they also feature USB support, drag-and-drop file transfer, ZAPPIN search technology, and oh, it has a color matching illuminator - in case you want to jam in the dark and get some club lights going on.

Check out its full specs below (courtesy of Sony Press Centre):

Aside from new Walkmans, Sony also recently announced the new

Micro Vault USB Mach 3.0

, which runs on - you guessed it - USB 3.0 interface. In a nutshell, what this means is that the Mach 3.0 line is currently among the fastest USB flash memory drives around. With read and write speeds of up to 120 MB/s and 90 MB/s respectively, you can save 8 to 64 GB of data into the new data transfer speed demons. It also doesn't hurt that it's backward compatible with USB 2.0.

North Korean Government Bans Mobile Phones

2012-01-27T23:40:00.000+08:00

Have a mobile phone? In North Korea, that makes you a war criminal.

Anyone caught with a

mobile phone

during the 100-day mourning period for the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (which started on his death on December 17, 2011) is liable to be charged and punished as a war criminal. It is the same scenario for people caught fleeing the country. So what makes mobile phone use as heinous as trying to escape oppressive, totalitarian rule?

It would appear that a lot of North Koreans are capitalizing on (no sarcastic pun intended) the death of the "great leader" to escape diminishing supplies of food and increasing oppression and poverty. North Korean governance seems concerned enough about the stability of current leadership (the title of leader passed on to Jong Il's son, Kim Il Sung) that they wanted to keep a tighter grip on information flow in the country. Think that's drastic? Only about a million North Korean citizens have mobile phones in the first place - just 5% of the country's population. But no, depriving these 'privileged' folks of mobile phone use is not drastic, it is just characteristic of North Korean rule, which, only four years before, can send citizens into prison camps or even put them to death for having the handy devices of communication.

Nope. No

North Korean Spring

in sight anytime soon. It's no phones in NoKor - for a hundred days after December 17.

Source: CNET News

In the Midst of an IT Boom - Taking Measure of Current Information Technology Standards

2012-01-26T15:04:00.001+08:00

XERO Tech is back after an unexpected, week-long hiatus, and to mark the reveille, I decided to post something out of the blue. Feeling lost in the grand mesh of information called the Internet, I just can't help thinking about a few tidbits of trivia floating around in my head.

2 Petabytes

The human brain is estimated to be able to store about 2 petabytes of information. A petabyte is 1,024 terabytes, and a terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes (in terms of virtual storage, that is; in terms of disk space, the factor increases only by 1,000).

This means your 2 petabyte brain can save an equivalent of 2,097,152 gigabytes of digital data. How we quantify real world info to correspond to digital binary bits with which we measure data is still an open question, however, so for all we know a family picture you remember so distinctly may take up space in your brain corresponding to 1 bit or 1 megabyte. That said, that little trivia about your brain being a 2 petabyte memory device is so far practically useless in your everyday life.

It can, however, allow us to compare the data capacity of a single human brain to the digital data we constantly create in the Internet.

1.8 Zettabytes

An article in the Popular Science magazine's November 2011 issue estimated that by year-end, we would have reached or breached 1.8 zettabytes of digital data created in the Internet. That estimate is 0.6 zettabytes more than last year. A zettabyte is 1,024 exabytes, and each exabyte is 1,024 petabytes.

If the estimate held, then all the data in the Internet created last year would have been equal to the memory capacity of 943,718 people. In 2011, there was almost 1 million brains' worth of data readily accessible through the World Wide Web. Don't be overwhelmed though - only a tiny fraction of the 1.8 zettabytes will be useful information to any single individual.

Of course, memory storage is just one fascinating facet of the Web. There's also

processing speed

in terms of computations per second (CPS). Looking at current technology, where do we stand right now in terms of CPS processing speeds?

2.1 Trillion CPS

The typical Playstation 3 boasts processing speeds of about 2.1 trillion CPS. That's right. You play your PS3 games at a speed of 2,100,000,000,000 computations every second. If you think that's a lot of zeroes, the K Supercomputer in Japan is currently the fastest supercomputer in the world. Launched with a very impressive CPS processing speed of 8.6 quadrillion, it was later upgraded to top 10.51 quadrillion. Every second, the K supercomputer can solve 1,051,000,000,000,000 mathematical equations.

How many math computations per second can you solve?

Feeling dumb yet? Don't. Your brain operates a gamut of complex processes within your body and your mathematical aptitude isn't a reliable measure of your brain's speed. Your brain is actually estimated to be at least 5 times faster than the K supercomputer - though it might not feel like it. Futurist author Ray Kurzweil estimated the human brain's processing speeds to be about 10 thousand trillion CPS. Another estimate put the petaflop capacity of the brain at about 55, with each petaflop being worth 1 quadrillion computations. Flops is an acronym: FLOPS = FLoating Point Operations Per Second. It's the same thing said differently; the K supercomputer tops out at 10.51 petaflops, 5 times slower than your brain's 55 petaflops. No matter the estimate, the human brain still bests the current generation K supercomputer in terms of processing power.

So this sort of leads me back to my current conundrum:

I've been connected to the Internet for around 3 hours now, and in that three hours my ISP recorded that I downloaded 200,336,487 kilobits, which is around 23.88 gigabytes. I'm just expecting that the supercomputer in my head, sporting 55 petaflop processor speed with 2 petabytes of

memory allocation

, should breeze through 23 gigabytes of data pretty easily, I suppose.

Or not.

Cool Tech Vids: Rescue Dogs & Robots Combo, Sony’s Smart Watch, and Biomolecular Animation

2012-01-18T22:18:00.001+08:00

Today’s feature is a round-up of videos of some

cool tech

. Let’s start it off with cutting edge search and rescue:

PopSci recently featured an animal-machine rescue system developed at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute that combines the prowess of search and rescue dogs with the capabilities of a snakebot. S&R dogs are equipped with collars which hold the snakebots (or any other rescue robot). The dogs are let loose to try and sniff out survivors trapped in collapsed buildings in tragic accidents or calamities, and when they find traces of survivors they bark – the signal which deploys the rescue robots they’re equipped with.

A Canine Assisted Robot Deployment system (borne of the partnership between Carnegie Mellon University’s Biorobotics Lab and Ryerson University’s Network-Centric Applied Research Team Lab)
showed off what it can do during a US Department of Homeland Security demonstration. See it in action below:

After smartphones and smart TVs, Sony is ushering in a new generation of smart watches with its first Sony SmartWatch. MIT’s Technology Review posted about it in their blog (a recommended read if you’re interested in transforming your wrist into something resembling a heads-up display), and afforded us a video to see just how smart the watch is:

CNET News recently reported on biomedical animator Drew Berry’s animation of the human body in action – on a molecular scale. Jump to the 3-minute mark in the feature video below to see the biomolecular animation itself.