Friday, July 21, 2006

Magic Mirror

Adding secondary functions to mirrors isn't a new concept, but Craig Barr has literally made a dream -- or at least a fairy tale -- come true. The animatronics guru that produced the King Kong ride at Universal Studios Florida has channeled his creative powers to Themeaddicts, Inc., a startup company that makes it their business to turn wild fantasies into take-home products. The "Magic Message Mirror," aside from being a decoration of stunning novelty, doubles as a security monitor in which Basil, your on-screen tipster, gives you the low-down on what's happening on your premises. The mirror is connected to a series of triggers and cameras mounted around your domicile, and when those alarms are activated the system springs to life while Basil magically appears to alert you. This conversion piece is mighty sophisticated, and even Barr admits he's aiming this at "cribs like you see on TV," so we're not surprised that pricing is not disclosed. If you consider off on-the-wall security devices and home decor must-haves, then Basil should fit the bill quite well. You can catch the mirror and its inventor at the CEDIA Expo this September.

Very nice home decor binging fantacy to real world :)

Monday, July 17, 2006

Seminar at KASC

On saturday (14th July,06) I went to Kangu Ats & Science College for delivaring a seminar on MVC Architecture & PHP Framework.

It is sad such a interesting programming language such as PHP which has tremendous industry value is not tought in any university of India. We teach Java, .Net which is re-tought again upon joining industry where as if we could teach PHP we could have open new avenue for the professionals. The basic concept being the same and, PHP being relatively simpler than its parallal platform it would be possible to let the students understand actually understaing the underlaying the technology rather than investing considerable amount of time understanding mamoth programming laguages like Java.

But to my utter surprise the students of KASC responded very well. It was great to look at their enthusiasim and interaction with me and each other thats quite encouraging for me.

I was also moved by the participation of the ladies who usually remain silent ,participated very actively and brought up many new dimension to the discussion as a whole.

The workshop also seems to be very productive. I specially liked the way the students managed to setup eac and every system alloted without my intervention. I directed once and the students proactively took the responsibility and setup the other systems. I liked the thrive in them to learn a new prgramming methodology and put forword their opinion about it.

Really great experience and i would be more than happy to visit KASC again.


Thursday, July 13, 2006

Protein-coated discs could enable 50TB capacities

We know that it shouldn't come as a shock anymore when researchersannounce new storage technologies that promise to hold tantalizinglylarge amounts of data, but we were still pretty stoked to learn that arecent breakthrough at Harvard Medical School may eventually lead toDVD-size discs whose capacities approach an eye-popping 50TB. Unliketraditional optical or magnetic solutions, the disc developed byProfessor V Renugopalakrishnan and his colleagues is coated withthousands of light-activated proteins called bacteriorhodopsin whichare found in the membrane of a particular salt marsh microbe -- andwhich temporarily convert to a series of intermediate molecules whenexposed to sunlight. That property allows the proteins to act asindividual bits in a binary system, but since they have a tendency toreturn to their grounded state after mere hours or days,Renugopalakrishnan and his team modified the requisite microbes' DNA toproduce proteins capable of maintaining that intermediary state forseveral years. Unfortunately we won't see this technology come tomarket anytime soon, and even when it does, 50TB capacities will stillbe a ways off, so it looks like we'll have to settle for thosedisappointing 200GB Blu-ray discs for the foreseeable future.


The only concern is how much scratch proof it will be and how many person other than media professional would need that amount of storage, maybe in the next few years. Let us just watch and see.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Million Dollar Bed

Well here is chance for a person to float, well really.


Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars has designed a magnetic bed that floats on air, basically suspended enatirely by magnet.

Well thats interesting, but hey what about the price. It's $1.5 million only. He he did I mention only. Now we need to look for a person who will be passionate enough to buy this and claim himself the only person who does not sleep on earth.