Wooddyy

Open source .Net operating system: Cosmos

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Cosmos is an operating system that is done entirely in C#.Microsoft has a similar research project called Singularity, Singularity is not made publicly available (I thought the project was dead but the project website states version 1 is completed and is available for a small number of universities).Although an OS written in pure C# is cool, I am awaiting to see the real word examples to solve real world situations.

Firefox logo spotted in deep space by the Hubble Telescope!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:25:00 +0000

The photo is captured by the Hubble Space Telescope way back in March 2005. It is an image of V838 Monocerotis star which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. The same photo is overlaid with a familiar logo, an the fits in nicely!!! Actually, I think Internet Explorer logo can fit in too. It does look like a big 'e' as well.Source: Firefox Logo Spied In Deep Space

The 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:42:00 +0000

An article by PC World - you can read it at here.

The 25 Ergonomic ( and Most Unconventional) Keyboards !!

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:24:00 +0000

Check out the keyboards here. I wonder how to use some of the keyboards.

How Well Do You Understand Design?

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:10:00 +0000

Even though the blog post is more relevant to website design, I still learned a couple of fundamental design concepts there.

Yahoo! Mail is the most popular email service

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:43:00 +0000

According to TechCrunch, more people are using Yahoo! mail than GMail in 2007. If GMail maintains its current growth rate, GMail will catch up by year 2010. But expecting GMail to maintain such linear growth rate does not sound practical to me.

Nokia's Concept Phone: Morph

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:37:00 +0000

Morph is Nokia's current research on nano-technologies.

Several characteristics of this concept phone:-

The surface is dirt repellent - good for careless users
Able to recharge from solar energy - if it runs out off power middle of the day, just expose it to sunlight
Detachable and stretchable - expand it to reveal mini-keyboard, fold it back into normal phone, wear it as a watch.....
Buttons on the keypad are transparent in colour - you can see through it
Sensing - I can't see the usefulness of this feature, does the phone change colour according to surrounding or what?
Context dependent 3D keypad buttons - the physical buttons are embossed on the surface - not 3D graphics showing on the screen. The most interesting is the buttons change according to context - e.g. button is flatten to disable users from selecting it.

It is hard to predict how long this concept will come true. One thing we can predict is, the price will be very expensive when it hits the market.

Convert a web page into PDF file So easily

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:27:00 +0000

There is a free online service available to achieve this purpose: htm2pdf.

One important note, your converted files are published at htm2pdf website which are publicly available for anyone. So, in case you want to convert a confidential file, this service is not for you. In addition, sometimes the conversion failed but there is no reason given.

Oddcast 3D Videostar : You will become a film star

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:21:00 +0000

Oddcast 3D Videostar is offering an impressive technology that allow users to import their faces into movie clips and replace those of movie stars. No word on when the service will be available, but the samples available at Oddcast website look fantastic. If this service is open to the public and is easy to use, I guess there will be many interesting video collages appear on YouTube soon.

Viscosity: The Modern Art Generator ! Really !!

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Viscosity is the winner of Best Art Award at this year's SXSW festival. Viscosity is an online abstract art application, and it took years of efforts to develop it. I just checked it out, it is easy to use, it is fun, it is beautiful and it is free!! Here are few samples I took from Viscosity's gallery...

YouConvertIt: Online file conversion tool for you

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:05:00 +0000

YouConvertIt is a web application that can convert convert your document, video or audio files into another file format, e.g. from DOC to PDF, WMV to MP3 etc. You can use the service without signup an account. Simply upload a file, YouConvertIt will give you a list of possible conversions. Select a desire file format, then YouConvertIt will convert the file and send you a download link to the converted file via email.

YouConvertIt allows you to download YouTube, MetaCafe and Google Video without installing any browser plugins or desktop application too. Simply specify the URL and click download it, You can download the video as FLV file. The only inconvenient part is, the downloaded file has no file extension, You have to put back the ".FLV" myself.

Another option is to convert the online video to a specified file format before download. For example, you can specify to convert the YouTube video to WMV. YouConvertIt will convert the Flash Video to WMV then send you an email containing a link to download the end result.

I tried YouConvertIt a couple of times. It is pretty good except I have to wait for a long time to receive the emails containing the download links. So, don't use it when you are in urgent.

Misleading domain names

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:58:00 +0000

What is misleading domain name? For example, how do you read this:

www.TherapistFinder.com

or

www.TheRapistFinder.com ?

Now you get the idea.

Although I occasionally see some misleading domain names, I don't take notes of them like this guy. He compiled a list of misleading domain names.

In the future, do spend some times thinking about your domain name before registering it.

Super Copier: Copy your files more faster

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:36:00 +0000

Super copier is a utility program for windows to copy or move your files more faster. It keeps track of each files copied and creates new thread for every file to be copied. You can interrupt while copying or continue after a while. It is more convenient that usual windows copying or moving. For downloading click here or here.

Clipdiary: Keeping your clipboard history Saved !!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Windows Clipboard is a nice utility, when we copy something, clipboard keeps the data in memory, which allows us to paste the data some place else. But, sometimes I have a problem, I copied something, but forgot to paste it. Worse, I copied another piece of data before pasting the old one, etc etc. So here comes a nice utility, Clipdiary. Clipdiary keeps all your clipboard data in a database. I can always get back to my old data easily unless I clear the history cache.

Read Evolution of Microsoft Word for Windows (1989-2007)

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:09:00 +0000

Prior to 1989, Microsoft Word was originally a DOS application with complex set of commands. It was later added with more graphical features but only available for Mac OS. The first Word for Windows appeared in 1989 and was designed for Windows 3.0.

When Word version 2.0 was released as part of Microsoft Office 3.0 in 1992. Word became the market leader which was partly due to major competitor, WordPerfect, failed to produce Windows version. You can see that most of the basic features we use today are already in Word 2.0.

Office 4.0 was released in 1994. Word was called Word 6.0 at this point despite the fact the previous version number was 2.0. The purpose was to use common version numbering with the Mac OS version. Word 6.0 is the first version of Word that I used, I was still a primary school kid at that time

Word 7.0 was part of Office 95 which released in 1995 for Windows 95. Word is already more than a word processing application at this point, it included drawing tools, multilingual supports etc. The best feature is the real time spelling checking - the red-squiggle line.

When Word 97 released in 1996, it included a most stupid feature ever which had irritated most Office users - Office Assistant (the 'clippy-guy') which in fact wasn't assisting at all.

If I am no mistaken, Word 2000 (Part of Office 2000) released in 1999 was the las t release that support Windows 95. Office macro viruses were getting more widespread. Office Genuine Advantage was introduced at this time which allowed legal copy of Microsoft Office to download updates from the web. The major addition was the clipboard which allowed to hold multiple copied objects at once - very nice feature.

I can't believe they kept Mr Clippy until Word 2002 (Part of Office XP) which released in 2001. I remembered back in those days, I have to ask Mr Clippy to piss off every time I use Office at my University (Mr Clippy comes back again for the next user after you log off from the machine). Clippy was supposed to be switched off by default in Office XP but the university settings were different.

When Office 2003 was released in year 2003, Microsoft Word was renamed as Microsoft Office Word to emphasize Microsoft's intention to make Office application suite into a more integrated Office system. Besides the appearance changes to match Windows XP design, I don't feel any difference from Word 2002.

Word 2007 (Part of Office 2007) was released on 30 jan 2007 took approximately 3 years to develop. This release includes numerous changes. The most obvious one are the Ribbon user interface design and the new XML-based file format (which is incompatible with previous versions). Microsoft claimed the new Ribbon design is result-oriented (as oppose to command-oriented). However, many users complaint about the interface overhaul because they couldn't find the menu items they want. Having said that, majority users are satisfied after 2 months according to a survey conducted by Microsoft.

The next release is Office 14 (There will be no Microsoft Office 13 due to superstition). No announcement is made regarding its release date yet.

Startup Delayer: Make Your Windows startup faster

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:58:00 +0000

A slow Windows startup is caused by too many applications are launching when Windows has started. One way to solve this problem is to disable some applications from launching during Windows startup. However, some applications have no way to allow you to disable this feature, but you can use msconfig to change the behaviour.

Completely disabling an application may not be desirable. This is where Startup Delayer becomes useful. Besides allowing you to enable or disable applications from running, Startup Delayer permits you to specify how many seconds after Windows has started up before running each program.

Startup Delayer is a free software. So far, I haven't encounter any problem running Startup Delayer on Windows XP and Vista.

Earth Day 2008 Eco-friendly logos in internet

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Major search engines changed their logo in support of Earth Day.

Google

Yahoo

AOL

And most surprisingly, green Flock browser...

You can download Flock Eco-Edition from here.

Create Log File With Notepad

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:23:00 +0000

If you want to create a log file, By log file i mean a file which has the date and time appended each time the file is edited, Follow these simple instructions.

Open Notepad
Type .LOG on the very first line and then press enter.
Save this file as any name you want

Now, Each time the file is edited the current time and date will be automatically inserted right above the start of the text.

The Reverse Game

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:16:00 +0000

This game is harder than I thought, try it yourself:

How to cheat in Windows Minesweeper game

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:08:00 +0000

The trick I am going to mention below has been around since Windows 3.1. But there are still many people who do not know it.

Before I start, I must say I don't think the cheat is still available in Windows Vista, the cheat works on Windows XP and earlier Windows.

To always win in Minesweeper game, please do the following steps:

1. Launch Minesweeper game
2. Make sure the Minesweeper window is focused / active then type xyzzy
3. Press Shift + Enter ( ie press enter key while holding shift key)
4. The cheat mode is now activated

You should notice a very small square ( 1 x 1 pixel) located at the top left corner of your desktop (not in minesweeper window) changes colour when you move your mouse over the Minesweeper tiles.

White colour square = The tile is safe, you can click on it.
Black colour square = The tile contains mine, flag it!!!

The square is very small thus it is very hard to see. Try to look carefully, if you can't see it, try the following things:

a. Adjust your screen positioning to make sure the top left corner is shown on the screen.

b. Change your screen resolution to 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 so that it is easier to spot the tiny square.

c. Use single-colour wallpaper. The colour should be a soft colour to make sure it is easier to notice the black square.

d. Minimize all other Windows.

After you spot the square, you can challenge others that you can win the advanced mode.

The World's Hardest Game

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:52:00 +0000

First, the screenshot of level 1...

Your aim is to move the red square to right side green box using arrow keys without touching the moving balls.

You still cannot see what is so hard about it? Go and try out yourself, then let me know how much time you have taken to complete the first level. It is a crazy game, you need speed and accuracy.

Roadkill Burger

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:31:00 +0000

In the design competition titled 'Dining in 2015', an Iranian team has made a crazy invention which allows you to grill burgers using the car exhaust pipe - mobile barbecue concept. It may be save you some energy and some time, but not sure how much it cost on your healthiness. For more information, click here.

Innovation on CAPTCHAs

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:05:00 +0000

When posting comments on a blog or registering for web services, you probably asked to read a CAPTCHA to ensure that you are a human and not a bot.To prevent the CAPTCHA being cracked by bot, some websites present very hard to read CAPTCHAs, but none of them is as hard as this one...

Some people are even thinking of commercialize the CAPTCHA...like this one..

The name behind wooddy....

noreply@blogger.com (Jijo Jose) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:34:00 +0000

The name wooddyy comes from Toy stories famous character woody.......
Woody is an old-fashioned pull-string stuffed cowboy doll with plastic head and hands.
In Toy Story, Woody is the leader of the toys....

Hope everybody could understand why wooddy is for ..........