Paper-thin battery

A battery that looks like a sheet of paper and can be bent and twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any needed shape has been developed by researchers at
Photo: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Wireless Electricity

Recharging your laptop computer, your cell phone and a variety of other gadgets may one day be as convenient as surfing the web--wirelessly.

Recently, a team from the Massacussetts Institute of Technology made a 60-watt lightbulb glow using electricity sent wirelessly between copper coils set seven feet apart.

Scientists have known for years that electricity can be transferred without wires, but had struggled to find a practical and efficient way of making it work.

Professor Marin Soljacic used the concept of resonance. Energy can be efficiently transferred between objects that resonate at the same frequency, so he used two copper coils, one transmitting and the other receiving power.

Professor Soljacic said: "We have promising ideas as to how to achieve this, so now is a good time to start seriously thinking about commercialisation."

However, up to 45 per cent of the transmitted power was lost before it reached the lightbulb, and Professor Soljacic said the system needed to be twice as efficient before it would be as effective as chemical batteries. Also the copper transmitting coils were two feet high, although there was potential for miniaturising them.

He said the project was inspired by his annoyance at being woken up by his mobile phone beeping when he had forgotten to recharge it.

How wireless power could work

1) Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper
2) Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4MHz, emitting electromagnetic waves
3) 'Tails' of energy from antenna 'tunnel' up to 5m (16.4ft)
4) Electricity picked up by laptop's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4MHz. Energy used to re-charge device
5) Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 6.4MHz

news from BBC News, The Independent, MIT

Microsoft shows off 'coffee table of the future'

Microsoft Corp. has taken the wraps off "Surface," a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

The machines, which Microsoft planned to debut Wednesday at a technology conference in Carlsbad, Calif., are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Harrah's Entertainment Inc.

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

Unlike most touchscreens, Surface can respond to more than one touch at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter last week, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group's marketing director, "dipped" his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair.

With a price tag between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit, Microsoft isn't immediately aiming for the finger painting set. (The company said it expects prices to drop enough to make consumer versions feasible in three to five years.)

Some of the first Surface models are planned to help customers pick out new cell phones at T-Mobile stores. When customers plop a phone down on the screen, Surface will read its bar code and display information about the handset. Customers can also select calling plans and ringtones by dragging icons toward the phone.

Guests sitting in some Starwood Hotel lobbies will be able to cluster around the Surface to play music, then buy songs using a credit card or rewards card tagged with a bar code. In some hotel restaurants, customers will be able to order food and drinks, then split the bill by setting down a card or a room key and dragging their menu items "onto" the card.

At Harrah's locations, visitors will be able to learn about nearby Harrah's venues on an interactive map, then book show tickets or make dinner reservations.

Microsoft is working on a limited number of programs to ship with Surface, including one for sharing digital photographs.

Bolger placed a card with a bar code onto Surface's surface; digital photographs appeared to spill out of the card into piles on the screen. Several people gathered around the table pulled photos across the screen using their fingertips, rotated them in circles and even dragged out the corners to enlarge the images - behavior made possible by the advanced graphics support deep inside Windows Vista.

"It's not a touch screen, it's a grab screen," Bolger said.

Historically, Microsoft has focused on creating new software, giving computer programmers tools to build applications on its platforms, and left hardware manufacturing to others. (Some recent exceptions include the Xbox 360 and the Zune music player, made by the same Microsoft division that developed Surface.)

For now, Microsoft is making the Surface hardware itself, and has only given six outside software development firms the tools they need to make Surface applications.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said in an interview that keeping the technology's inner workings under wraps will limit what early customers - the businesses Microsoft is targeting first with the machine - will be able to do with it.

But overall, analysts who cover the PC industry were wowed by Surface.

Surface is "important for Microsoft as a promising new business, as well as demonstrating very concretely to the market that Microsoft still knows how to innovate, and innovate in a big way," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.



from: http://www.komotv.com/news/7744297.html

Fondue

Fondue is actually Swiss dish but the word 'fondue' came from French, "fondre" ("to melt"), referring to the fact that the contents of the pot are kept in a liquid state so that diners can use forks to dip into the sauce. The sauce can be oil, cheese, or chocolate.

Last month, I and some friends, we gathered to have a fondue buffet in the downtown restaurant. We had Fondue Bourguignonne (deep-fat fondue) with beef meat and chicken with 6 kinds of sauce, Cheese fondue eaten with bread, salad, and frites (french fries). We also got 1 drink and 1 dessert per person. All of these are 18 Euro.

The pot and meat

Sauce

my plate

Cheese fondue

Dessert

Yummy!

Vehicle ads

I just saw "Nissan Shift_" ads in the newspaper. I think the design of the next generation cars is quite cool and handy! Now they are integrated with GPS, bluetooth, mini theatre, etc.

Nissan Quest 2007 (Minivan)






First, looking at the exterior, the changes are subtle. The basic shape and sheetmetal is still the same and relatively unchanged. The front bumper fascia and grill have been redesigned for an updated Nissan family appearance; new wheel designs are offered; door handles are now chromed; headlights and taillights have been revised. And, perhaps most notably, there's an classy new chromed, beveled roof rack that's offered on all but the base model and replaces the more integral one on the outgoing Quest.

The interior is a different story. With its so-called "urban loft" interior - quite possibly the boldest, most stylized interior ever in a U.S. minivan - the Quest made waves in the design world, and it's been named the best-designed interiors in the business by several in the upper echelons of automotive design. But while the Quest was appreciated by those who value unique design, mainstream buyers were a little bewildered by the whole package. Nissan clarifies, specifically, that some buyers who were drawn to the Quest were a little discomforted by the general interior appearance, the odd center instrument cluster at the top-middle of the dash, and the lack of a center console. The basic message: keep it unique, but make it more functional.



Inside, there are significant changes throughout, and they're quite noticeable to anyone who's acquainted with the quirky current Quest. For starters, the gauge cluster is no longer in the middle. The perfectly functional set of round analog gauges is now in place behind the steering wheel and visible through a side range of angles. The dashboard as a whole is smoother and more horizontally continuous. The center control stack has been thoroughly revised, with redesigned audio and climate controls, and the control screen has been liberated to the position high in the middle of the dash where the gauges used to be. There's also standard wood-tone or metallic trim (depending on the interior color scheme), and the knee-busting (at least for tall folks like me), sharp, plasticky edge of the center control stack has now been rounded and trimmed. In addition, we can't be absolutely sure of it, but it feels as if the surface of the control stack is angled down more than before, allowing the driver a better view of the buttons without having to lean forward (the audio and climate-control buttons themselves have been redesigned).

Price: est. $24,500 base
Reviewed bywww.thecarconnection.com

Visit this site and play around
http://www.nissanusa.com/shift/

wanna eat noodles - อยากกินบะหมี่

Twisting the dough rope and pulling the noodles.

Solution for QuickTime error in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary - 7th edition

I just got the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary - 7th edition. I think it has a bug with QuickTime plug-in. When I installed it, it told me whether I want to install QuickTime. I clicked "No" because I already have QuickTime v.7, then the installation finished. I launched the program, suddenly I got an error.


"The QuickTime Plug-in requires the QuickTime System extension version 5 or later."

Whether I click "OK" or "Cancel", the program is launched. I can search for some words without any problem. Yet I click to hear the pronunciation then it comes the error.

"ERROR function playPron:
TypeError: oEmbed.SetURL is not a function
........MP3"

If you come across this problem too, here is the solution. It is very simple, just follow these steps.

1. Go to the program's folder, it should be in "C:\Program Files\Oxford\OALD7".
2. Rename the "plugins" folder to another, for example "oaldplugins".
3. Go to QuickTime's folder, it should be in "C:\Program Files\QuickTime"
4. Copy the "Plugins" folder and paste it in OALD folder (the same folder as in the step 1)
5. Run the program, you will not get any error again.

Internet fraud, Lottery Winner

Today, I got an e-mail told that "You are a winner."
You will receive a cash prize of US$500,000 from the total payout. But I have to respond this e-mail within 14 days.

Normally, when I got this kind of e-mail, I delete it just because a simply question: HOW CAN I WIN A LOTTERY THAT I HAVE NEVER BOUGHT?

In this time, I took the company name and searched on google. I found this company's name on the Internet fraud list at this website. http://www.data-wales.co.uk/nigerian_lottery.htm

I think it is better that we should not be greed on something that is not our because sometimes we have to pay more than we will get.

Widget <--> Gadget

Today, I added 2 widgets here.

The first is the Sudoku widget. If you are a sudokuholic person, you can challenge yourself here.

The second is the horoscope widget. From now on, when you visit my blog, you can get your daily horoscope. Anyway, make sure that you select the right sign. :)

Last night, while I was searching for some firefox add-ons, (They are my favourite powerful features of firefox.) I got the google toolbar gadget. Actually, I do not like to have many toolbars because they reduce some spaces of the screen vision. However I like to test, I will try it for a few days and see if I like it or not.

When you reach this sentence, do you have any questions in your head? What is widget, what is gadget?, what are their differences? I have to admit that I am not an expert. From my understanding, I think they can be used substitutively. The word 'gadget' named before 'widget'. Gadget means a small device used for a specific purpose. (from wikipedia) It is often referred to a high-technology device. Apple is the first computer used the word 'gadget' for its small applications in Mac. The gadgets are very popular tools in Mac, later, they crossed platform to windows and they were called 'widgets' since then.

Firefox lover part 1

I have devoted myself to be a Firefox lover for more than a year. For me, it is much better than IE but I still need IE because some of my favourite websites are not Firefox-friendly support. :P

Even the easy-looking font appearance of IE 7 is comfort for my eyes but the speed and add-ons of Firefox win my mind so I prefer Firefox.

Anyway, there are 2 IE problems frustating me everyday:

1. IE always comes up when I click on the link in my mail from Outlook. I came across this problem easily by search on google and found the solution from this website
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/firefox.htm

I re-edit the solution and put it below.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How to use Firefox to open the link in Outlook.

1. Open My Computer
   
2. Select Tools and then Folder Options... (Tip: In Windows, if a list of the menu has '...' at the end, it means there will pop a new window.)
   
3. Select the File Types tab
4. In Registered File Types, look for Extension: File Type :: (NONE) URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol
5. Click Advanced button in Detials for 'Drive' file type
   
6. In the Edit File Type window, in Actions:, select open and click Edit... button
   
7. Click Browse button to find where your firefox program is. It should be in "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
   
8. Clear the Use DDE message box
9. Click OK
10. If the icon is still IE icon, click on Change icon... button. Type or Browse to "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" then choose the icon you want (There are only 2 icons.) and Click OK
11. Repeat 4-10 for File Type:: (NONE) URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol with Privacy and FTP
12. Click OK and see the change!
    

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you are someone annoyed by this problem, try the above solution.

2. I could not change the first page (hom epage) of IE. It always open www.msn.com for me. Thanks Bill, but I do not want it! I tried many methods, I closed my anti-virus programs, I changed registry but it does not work. I have not yet found the solution. If you know how, please let me know.

Activities of mine = marridian

I took this name from astrological meaning.

marridian came from Mars + Meridian.

Mars = action, energy, aggression, ambition, fire
Meridian or Mid-Heaven = self spirit

The origin of this blog

Today is Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 16:42 local time in Namur, Belgium.

How come is this blog?
I created this blog by pursuing of my younger friend. (see her blog here)

What is it?
I will post some photos and write some messages about what I experience, something I want to remember, something I learn from others, and something I want to share to others.

Example of my interests:

• astrology
• computer/ internet problems and solutions
  
• cooking
• technology and modern life
  
• traveling and taking some shots
• movies * (gay interest)