Microsoft releases first Open XML SDK. But it does not support ISO.
The current SDK supports the version of Open XML supported by Office 2007, which is not the same as that ratified as a standard by the ISO, due to changes effected during the ratification process.And,
At the same time, Microsoft said last month that it will begin supporting the rival Open Document Format (ODF) in Office 2007 and Office 14, beginning with a service pack set for release in the first half of 2009.
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LG has announced round shape LCD, which was followed by NEC's announcement of heart shape LCD. Actually, not only heart, but any shape one likes to have. We can have more fun product very soon.
I know about this Moor's law. But it is always fascinating how vendors (Samsung this time) can roll out products in the speed beyond our imagination, but right to our expectation. Can't wait for to come out so that I can carry my photos around without much troubles.Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, announced today that it has developed the world's fastest, 2.5-inch, 256 Gigabyte (GB) multi-level cell (MLC) based solid state drive (SSD) using a SATA II interface, at the fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum held here today. Samsung's new 256GB SSD is also the thinnest drive with the largest capacity to be offered with a SATA II interface.
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Here is the announcement. The following is quoted from it.
GIS has been taken to heart by neogeographers, a new breed of developers with increasingly powerful tools built on the back of open standards and free APIs from the likes of Google and Microsoft, and application frameworks like Mapstraction and GeoDjango. Increasingly, the open source GIS stack is supporting the Web, adding a new arrow in the neogeographer's quiver. Geonames, an open-data service, is built from this data web-accessible data. Google has started exposing geo data in a separate index that is growing daily.
According to Princeton University Researchers, encription of one's hard drive may not the saftest thing anyway, during cold boot to be exact. The details are too complex to be briefly described here. But my interests are in the egg and chicken situation. Are some of the virus actually taught by the researchers? Of course the "hackers" may later find the key to new computer virus anyway, but I feel that the research result of many security related researchers definitely help to speed up the works of hackers.
プリンストンの研究者に よると、コンピュータをコールド起動するときに、つい最近動いていた時に、DRAMに残っていた暗号化のカギー情報が実は残っています。ハッカーたちはそ れをコールド起動の間にそれを盗み取れば、暗号化されたはずのハードディスクは、なんと、簡単に複合化されてしまいます。
しかし、詳細はその記事 にゆだねますが、セキュリティ関係の研究者たちは、ハッカーたちのウイルス創作の助けになっていないかは、気にまります。いずれハッカーたち自身によっ て、発見できるかも知れません。しかし、以上のような成果は間違いなく、ハッカーたちの進化を助長することになるのでしょう。
According to ABS News, we may have an even smarter search engine than Google. So far, I am mostly happy with Goole. But sometimes, I do feel in need of a smarter one. Hope Powerset make make the dreams come true, as soon as possible.
Basically, Powerset's technology is said to have been "designed to understand the meaning of Web pages", which is exactly conventionaly keyword (and page ranking) only based technologies lack.
There has been companies adding location sensitive features, but a lot of times I feel strong needs for time sensitive features. Even Google some times generate very obsolete contents, which waste my time in finding the right one I want.
OPeNDAP (Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol; wikipedia entry here) is a framework that simplifies all aspects of scientific data networking (quote from OPeNDAP document). It makes local data accessible to remote locations regardless of local storage format. OPeNDAP also provides necessary data transformation tools.
I have seen some applications to GIS related projects. One example is the one by Northeast Fisheries Science Center - Oceanography Branch. The researcher claims to be able to generate dynamica GIS maps in shorter time than when using predefined SQL statements in the traditional way.
According to wikipedia, "OPeNDAP is widely used by governmental agencies such as NASA and NOAA to serve satellite, weather and other observed earth science data." Furthermore, "Compared to ordinary file transfer protocols (e.g. FTP), a major advantage using OPeNDAP is the ability to retrieve subsets of files, and also the ability to aggregate data from several files in one transfer operation."
It is even waterproof, with a price tag of US$299.00. Said to be available from May. 10, in US(?)
This is a bit too expensive (US$699.00!) to me, but an embedded micro chip controling air pressure according to (automatically detected) activities of the wearer is something.
Here is the product page.
More people should work in this direction, not just a few venture companies. Really a few people have the knowledge of protection oneselves while trying to keep healthy. It is not widely known, or at least well observed in daily life, that careless sports actually hurt people, not make people healthier. ABC.net provides great tips about how to prevent sports injuries.
According to New Scientist, a Geman research group has developed a device that can reproduce spider's silk, which has the applications starting from light weight bullet-proof vests and optic fibres. And according to one of the researchers, "The best thing is to reproduce nature, instead of cutting open spiders," Interesting.
Straight out of sci-fi and into reality, this pair of "cyber goggles," invented at the University of Tokyo, records everything you see as you wander through the day, then tells you where to find stuff later.
A computer analyzes the video for recognizable objects: you know, a hammer, a cellphone, a potted begonia, etc. To search for an item, you type in a keyword, and if located, a video of that item plays in the LCD screen positioned over your right eye.
The intended end product is a less bulky system that can help people locate lost belongings and maybe even assist in investigations and other visual searches. Naturally, though, the core of this whole system is insanely powerful visual recognition software, and until that works without a hitch, your just gonna have to remember where you left your car keys.
You've probably heard about synaesthesia, the glamorous neurological condition in which people's senses get swapped so that they smell colors and feel words. Now a group of roboticists and bioengineers have got a working prototype of a little machine that gives you the synaesthetic ability to feel things you see. This tiny device attaches to your fingertip, using a camera to translate visual images into feelings by activating a little vibrator attached to the sensitive nerves in your finger. So you wave your hands around and "feel" objects across the street.
The creators of this device, called the Fingersight, write:
Extending the hand's innate ability, we mount miniature cameras on individual fingertips, permitting rapid sweeping through the 3D visual environment at greater distances. The information gleaned from each fingertip camera is fed back to that finger by a small vibrator, so the sense of touch remains related to each finger's individual interaction with the environment. Metaphorically speaking, we have given eyesight to the fingers, and thus we call the resulting capability, "Fingersight."They've been working on this device and demoing it at conferences for about a year. Can't wait for the consumer version. Whoa, man, I can FEEL the colors on that chair across the room. No really, I can.
NEC は11月29日、蛍光灯から電力を取得する無線LANネットワークカメラを世界で初めて開発したと発表した。同社が昨年2月に開発した「蛍 光灯給電技術」を応用。蛍光灯の電流による電磁誘導と、蛍光灯端子から取得した電力を合わせて給電する仕組みで、ケーブル工事不要で設置できる。
蛍光灯にリング状の装置を取り付け、カメラに接続して給電する。インバータ型蛍光灯内の電流によって発生する磁界から電磁誘導で発電する技術と、ラピッドスタート型蛍光灯の端子から電力を分岐する技術を組み合わせた。
取得電力に応じて撮影頻度を自動制御する機能も新開発。市販されている全てのインバータ用直管型蛍光灯で、最良画質で撮影・伝送が可能としている。
オフィス内で社員の在席状況や会議スペースの空き状況を確認したり、スーパーやコンビニの客の行動を分析するといった用途を想定し、製品化に向けて開発を進める。
This is in teresting research. It's in Japanese, but upon choosing a route, the user can view videos along it, in any angle while moving forward. I have seen similar researches, making use of the redundancy of video frames to build panoramic views. But this one has much nicer user interface, and should also have efficient data structures and algorithms.
Nov 2 2007)Now, the Associated Press has good news for all you wine lovers. Scientists have speculated that the chemical culprit in red wine might be biogenic amines, like histamines. And although that hasn't been proved for certain yet, a group of UC Berkeley researchers working on that hunch have created a device that can detect the level of those amines appearing in a glass of wine.
With a single drop, the device can determine how much of the nasties are in a glass of wine and, therefore, how likely an amine-sensitive person is to get a headache after a few drinks. Right now the device is the size of a briefcase, but the lead researcher and the start-up he co-founded are working to get that down to the size of a PDA.
Interestingly, the technology it's based on was developed by NASA to help detect life on Mars. Who says investing in NASA is a waste?
Mitsubishi unveils walk-in panoramic display
On October 31, Mitsubishi Electric unveiled a 2-meter tall, 7.5-meter diameter panoramic display system consisting of synchronized rear-projection displays arranged in a wall that encircles the viewer. The 150 million yen ($1.3 million) system, which was built-to-order at the company’s Kyoto factory where it was unveiled, consists of 17 pairs of 67-inch panels arranged in a 340-degree near-circle — the 20-degree gap presumably allows the viewer to enter and exit the walk-in display. The system uses Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology and has a total resolution of 27 million (1024 x 768 x 34) pixels.
At the unveiling, Mitsubishi said it will deliver the panoramic display system to the customer early next year, but the company was unwilling to say who the customer was or how they intend to use the display. However, Mitsubishi did say it hopes to begin selling the system as a virtual reality display for use at museums or in applications such as traffic simulations.
[Source: Iza!]
