Tuesday, January 13, 2009

ASUS Eee Keyboard: PC Embedded In a Keyboard

We have seen all-in-one apple MACs that lead the market for a long time. We also have the Laptops as all-in-one devices, but have you ever thought of a complete PC in the form of a keyboard?

ASUS has launched its Eee Keyboard at CES '09 which is a full-fledged PC embedded in a QWERTY keyboard with a built-in 5-inch (800x480 resolution)touch screen and an HDMI to let you connect it to any TV to have a large screen view.

Now having a look at the specifications, we come to know that it has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 or N330 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 16 or 32GB SSD(solid-state drive), 11.0b/g/n WiFi,Bluetooth 2.0, 2 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, HDMI & audio input/output ports, a built-in mic and a speaker. The HDMI out port might be used to connect to a video monitor or an HDTV wirelessly.

The Eee Keyboard comes with windows XP pre-installed on it so we cannot consider it the next multimedia solution but its a nice gadget to be owned by Geeks. It has not yet hit the markets but is announced to be launched 3 to 6 months later. No price is announced yet.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Beware, Fake Facebook Can Hack You!

I wrote an article a few days back, exposing a fake website impersonating social networking websites e.g Facebook and Twitter. Here I found another one. Please don't enter any information there if you want to visit the link.I recommend you to read this article before visiting the link
Here is the Facebook phishing website : facebook1(dot)50gigs(dot)net

World's Coolest Digital Photo

Lots of award winners are there in the field of digital photography but I never thought of such a masterpiece!

Click here to see the world's coolest digital photo.










-Courtesy JehanAra

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Projector Embeded Mobile Phone

A great enthusiasm exists for 3G's high data rate and realtime communication facilities e.g video calling and HDTV. But I have been thinking that what is the use of a 14Mbit broadband connection on a tiny screen of 2 inches? I had an idea to embed a projector in a 3G phone. But before I give out, Logic Wireless has done it.

Here comes the Logic Bolt's Projector-Phone.Now there's no need to worry about the tiny screen. The buit-in projector of this phone can project a fair screen of the size of a normal TV. Built-in projection is 640x480 pixels.
The picture quality is fair enough to provide you with an engaging entertainment time. The phone comes with a 3 megapixel camera and 4GB storage with microSD extension capability. It not only projects its own screen but can also do it for external VGA and RCA inputs. Battery is not an ideal one but can last for 2 hours in projection mode. It
is currently a GSM phone but a nice inituitive to pave the way to 3G projector phones!

Here is a picture slideshow.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Sentiments of a Kid: "America is the Home for Terrorists"

As the readers of my blog and my contacts on Facebook and Twitter know that I have a beard. Now, why I am telling you that? Because two people added me on Facebook as a friend because of my beard and they both are school going children! I was really astonished to know the sentiments of the young generation of Muslim Ummah. Now-a-days Israel's bombardment on Ghaza is going-on so the sentiments are on extreme. Here is my 1st chat with one of them:

9:54pm NameWithheld

assalam o alaikum
i think that american government is home to terrorists
they blame muslims for no reason

9:58pm Awais

walaikum slam! I agree

9:59pm
NameWithheld

i support the so called terrorists

9:59pm Awais

kia matlab? [what do you mean?]

9:59pm
NameWithheld

i mean i believe jihad is necessary against such evils

10:00pm Awais

yeah!

10:00pm
NameWithheld

u support the taliban too?
....
.....
.......
.........
..........
.............

10:01pm
Awais

u like him?? y?

10:01pm
NameWithheld

i also like maulana (.....)
n maulana (.....)
n mulla (....)
they r great scholars

10:02pm
NameWithheld

n military leaders
.....
......
.......
........
...........
..............
..................
......................

10:03pm
NameWithheld
r u phatan, Sindhi or balochi or mohajir or Punjabi

10:03pm Awais

I m Pakistani ;) :)

10:04pm
NameWithheld

i of course know that

10:04pm Awais

have u ever heard of Islami (...)?

10:04pm
NameWithheld

yes

10:04pm Awais

I think it is a terrorist organization

10:04pm
NameWithheld

well i don't!
i believe that it is not justified

10:05pm Awais

justified?

10:05pm
NameWithheld

do u live in Karachi

10:05pm Awais

no, Rawalpindi

10:05pm
NameWithheld

i will inshallah one day meet u n tell u y!!
u have a beard??

10:06pm Awais

yeah! :D:D
do u wish 2 have one?

10:06pm
NameWithheld

of course
inshalllah, when i grow up!
u should also wear a muslim hat!

10:06pm Awais

hmmm! :)
do u want 2 do something for Islam!

10:07pm
NameWithheld

i want to be a jihadi

10:07pm Awais

ooo!

....
......
...........
..............
..................

10:09pm NameWithheld

u seee my family is not the islamic type so i willl do all these things after growing up

i wanna be the prsident of pakistan n want to make Pakistan folllow the Islamic shariah

i want to defeat America

**Hassan is offline**

I believe that these innocents souls have a potential to do something for the country and Ummah. If he has such great sentiments at this age, he can do something great in his life. Wish you best of luck, kid!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Virtual Keyboard

Geeks always remain conscious to find a new gadget. They always wish to have a time machine which could lead them to the 100 year advance world. But now they can have a thing which is really a future gadget!

This is a bluetooth virtual keyboard. Just turn it on and it will project light on your table to draw a virtual keyboard. Don't worry about the physical keys, just start typing on the virtual keys drawn on your table! Its worlds smallest yet complete and full-sized keyboard. Connect it to any bluetooth enabled device and enjoy the future world.



You can buy it here

360 Degree 3-D Display

There has been a lot of advancement is the visual displays but we know that even the highest resolution 3D displays cannot give us a realistic view like our daily life. The 3D views are in fact 2-D because we cannot visualize the graphics from all sides (360 degree view). But now the problem is solved with the invention of a 360 degree display!

Paul Debevec and Andrew Jones of USC Institute for Creative Technologies along with Ian McDowall of Fakespace Labs, Inc., Hideshi Yamada of Sony Corporation, Mark Bolas of USC School of Cinematic Arts have created world's first real 3D display with 360 degree viewing. The display consists of a reflecting glass rotating at a high speed to give a 3D view, same as we can see in our real life.

Here is a demonstration video:





According to the project team, the display was shown at the SIGGRAPH 2007 Emerging Technologies exhibition in August 2007 in San Diego, California, where it won the award for "Best Emerging Technology". The award brought with it an invitation to show the 3D Display technology at Laval Virtual, the 10th International Conference on Virtual Reality in Laval, France in April 2008.

More details can be found here.

Some Useful Live Blogging Tools

Live Blogging has been a good source to drive attention and thus traffic to your blog. In past people used to live blog by simply editing their so-called live-blog posts again and again. This was obviously a hectic and non efficient method. As you may have seen that I have been live blogging at different events e.g at Seminar on Usability and Islamabad Bloggers Meet up. In my method, people attending the live blogs see the updates in a dynamic manner and can also comment and participate in it. Also there are services available which let you broadcast a live video stream of any event on your blog. Here are some tools which you can use for text and video live-blogging.

1) Cover It Live:

Cover It live is the most popular tool for live blogging and is completely free to use. All you have to do is to create an account at coveritlive.com, create an event and add the generated code to the HTML of your live-blog page. The live blog window will appear immediately at the relevant place. You can invite people to the live-blog by entering their email addresses. Multiple Twitter accounts and multiple authors can also be added.

2) Justin.tv

This is a tool for live-video streaming. All you have to do is to create an account and an event at www.justin.tv, attach a webcam to your laptop and start the live streaming.

3) Qik.com

Qik is a very useful tool that lets you broadcast the live video right from your cell phone as you can see here. If you don't have a laptop or a wi-fi connection, you can benefit from it. Picture quality totally depends upon your cell phone camera. Simply create an account at www.Qik.com, download a tiny software for your mobile and start live-streaming. You can also embed this video in your blog by pasting the embed code available. As I have done here:

Monday, January 5, 2009

Beware of Online Pirates, Secure Your Personal Information

A fake website is very active now-a-days to steal your usernames and passwords, Beware and secure yourself!

We find many people mourning over their stolen passwords. Many say that someone has hacked their email account and is sending emails on their behalf. Sometimes even the passwords are changed and the victim is unable to login. Same is the case with Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and other well known services these days. Now the question arises that what's the security flaw with these million dollar services??? In fact these websites have no security flaw! Then how is it possible for hackers to gain access to your account?? The answer is "Phishing". According to this trick, a web page visually exactly the same as the relevant website is created to deceive the users. E.g a fake Facebook login page is created. You enter your username and password and this info is sent to the hacker's email address and also to the Facebook to let you login! In all this scenario, you never come to know that you are hacked!
Mostly you receive fake emails directing you to a phishing page. For example you may receive a message with "Facebook" in the sender column and "A new Message on Facebook" as the subject. Obviously you will click the contained link to go to Facebook and as soon as you enter your login information, you are ruined!

Now the question arises that how to protect yourself? How to differentiate between a fake login page and an original one? The answer is simple! Always look at the address of the website in your browser before entering the personal information. For example if you see "www.Facebook.xyz.com" instead of "www.Facebook.com" in the address bar, it means that you are entering your information on "www.xyz.com" and not on "www.Facebook.com". Entering information on www.gmail.com/login, www.accounts.google.com, www.login.yahoo.com, www.signup.orkut.com is OK. Why? because the word just before .com, .net, .org defines the real website and is called the top level domain name (TLD).

Now-a-days a phishing site is very active for Facebook and Twitter. As seen in the following snaps:

So the simplest rule to save yourself is to verify the domain name before entering login information for your email or any other web service.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Trash Your Cell Phone and Have a Happy Life!

Cell phones have become a part of our lives. Either we stay at home or roam around the world, a cell phone has become a must-have device. There's hardly a person without a cell phone, very low income people and even beggars own one.
But have you ever thought of living without a cell phone?? No? I have!
My cell phone got damaged mysteriously, six months ago. It was a precious and obviously a costly cell phone. A sight at its blank screen was enough to make me sad. I ran to a reparing shop and the guy there promised to repair it for a heavy payment. But after a continuous effort of a couple of hours, when he re-assembled the phone it was in the same condition. In a deep grief condition I returned home.

A few days later, when I was thinking over buying a new one, I felt that life is very happy without it. I noticed that when I keep on working in the office for late hours, I don't receive any calls from home. While working on a critical project, I am not disturbed with an annoying text message. My cell phone does not ring in the middle of an important meeting. I don't have a hassle of turning it off before entering the mosque. I go for an outing and come home late at night but I never receive annoying calls from home. Whenever I get late for the office, my boss cannot call me, all I have to face is what I face in the office. I never have to care for it to fall while playing football with my mates. I never have to find a safe place to place it when I put off my clothes for swimming. When we go for hiking, we ask one of us to stay at the bottom of the hill caring for the cell phones of all of us but now I don't have to handover it to him. I never come across a situation when a colleague snatches it and spends all the credit. I never have to attend an emergency call while driving. I never ever have to worry for its battery drain out. I never have to care for it while enjoying in the rain. No one calls me to say that rush to me, there's an emergency. I never have to put one hand on my pocket while walking through a crowd. Nobody asks to lend it to him for a couple of days.

Whenever I plan to buy a new cell phone I recall the annoying calls of my boss, Whenever I decide to turn to the cell phone shop, I recall an emergency call which made me very close to a road-side accident. Whenever I see an iPhone in my friend's hand I decide to buy one but I suddenly recall the snatch.

In short, it has been six months when my phone got damaged and I have never seen happier moments in my life. I advice all of you to live a happy life without a cell phone!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Obama's Leaked Letter to Israel in Favour of Attacks on Ghaza

Senator Barrack Obama is a continuation of the rules of blood sucking America. Some say that because of its Muslim background, he might act a little responsibly about the international affairs. But the facts reveal the bitter! The UN security counsel's meeting ended up without any proper decision to stop Israel, Why?? I dare to expose the truth. Here is a leaked official letter of Obama:

http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/12/31/want-to-understand-obamas-silence-on-gaza.html

A Comprehensive Overview of Israel's Attack on Ghaza

International community keeps on blaming muslims as terrorists. They are blamed to be involved in terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Kosovo and Palastine etecetera. But a bird's eye view of the international politics reveals that they are infact victims of terrorism. America's attack on Iraq - knowing that there are no illegal weapons, on Afghanistan - without any proof of involvement of Al-Qaida in 9/11, Israel's occupation of Palastine, India's occupation of Kashmir, Serbia's occupation and most recently Israel's bambing on the innocent kids and women are all shouting to tell that who is the real terrorist.

Recently, Israel's attack on Palastine is a continuation of its past role. So far more than 400 people have been martyred. The great flag holders of freedom of speach are all scilent on Israel's restriction on the coverage of the incident. However I salute Al-Jazeerah TV for having these videos published.





The Zionist state Israel claims to be a jewish state, protecting the Jewish religion but here is a very interesting video in which the pro-religious jews are protesting against Israel.



International media is banned by Israel so a very few pictures of war wrecked area are revealed. But here I dare to reveal some pictures taken by a friend of mine who lives in Ghaza.