Facebook’s intern Paul Butler made an attempt to visualize data on Facebook connectivity. In the blog he wrote ‘When the data is the social graph of 500 million people, there are a lot of lenses through which you can view it. One that piqued my curiosity was the locality of friendship’.
Butler took a sample size of ten million pairs of friends from Apache Hive, Facebook’s data warehouse and then combined that data with each user’s current city and summed the number of friends between each pair of cities.
The outcome of this study represented relationships on a world map, that apart from being a picture that is beautiful and an image of how people of the world are interconnected, it also reaffirms the fact of how widespread an impact Facebook has in today’s internet world.
Deforestation and overfarming have helped decrease the productivity of about 70 percent of the world’s arid and semi-arid lands, which could force the migration of 50 million people by 2017. Our innovation of the year, the Groasis Waterboxx, an irrigation-free plant incubator, could help make these lands fertile again. And it’s nothing more than an exceptionally well-designed bucket.
Drylands actually have enough water to sustain trees for decades, but it’s several feet beneath the surface. Because rain and irrigation evaporate quickly, many young plants die before their roots can tap that reservoir. The Waterboxx, shaped more like a doughnut than a box, helps plants survive long enough to make it through that layer of dry soil. Place the tub around a freshly planted seedling, and fill the evaporation-proof basin—just once—with four gallons of water.
The Waterboxx does the rest. At night, its top cools faster than the air, collecting condensation to supplement those initial gallons. The tub drips about three tablespoons of water a day into the soil, sustaining the plant while encouraging its roots to grow deeper in search of more water. Once the plant reaches the moist soil layer, usually after a year, the farmer lifts the box off the plant and reuses it on the next sapling. Each Waterboxx is expected to last 10 years, and, for about a buck or two per tree grown, is cheap enough to use in poor nations.
In tests in the Sahara, 88 percent of Waterboxx-sheltered trees survived, versus 10 percent of trees with traditional cultivation. But the mighty tub’s inventor, Pieter Hoff, still isn’t satisfied. He’s working on a biodegradable version that decomposes to feed the plant too.
The newly launched Chrome OS comes with many extraordinary features. It is an attempt to bring people to experience web computing. No software installation required, no desktop environment. Everything you will do is in the cloud. There are plenty of features comes in the OS which you surely hadn’t heard about. Let’s take a look at the features.
1. Less boot time
Boot time of Chrome notebook is 10 seconds. It means when you switch on your computer, wait for just 10 seconds to login screen to be appear. After it enter your username and password or use Chrome OS guest browsing and get ready for work.
2. Instant sleep resume
With fever sleep options availability, Chrome OS developers focussed on the most basic one. There is a sleep mode in this OS to save the battery power. Close the lid to send it to sleep state or it will automatically go to sleep state after 8 minutes of inactivity. Tap any key to back to work, unlike windows computer, it won’t take time to resume.
3. Different keyboard and touchpad on Chrome OS netbooks
The keyboard used in this notebook is different from traditional one. There are special keys to perform web activities such as go to previous and next page in browser history, reload page, switch to next tab. Also there are keys to adjust screen brightness, and adjust volume.
4. Faster technology
The main aim of Google team behind introducing this OS is to improve the speed of accessing the computer. With crankshaft engine, Chrome OS gives you faster computing experience and you can access websites or web apps quickly.
5. All your data will store in cloud
If you are Dropbox user then you might know about cloud computing. In Chrome OS all the data you access, all the files you download and all your browsing session will store on cloud. It means you can access it even if you lose your computer.
6. All the data will be secure
Google assured security of your data. To access your data login is must. Also there will be less chance of malware and virus attack.
7. Access your data from any computer
Suppose you lose your computer while travelling or your laptop got stole then you don’t need to worry about data inside it because everything is stored in cloud. It means you can access your data from any other computer you want. Only thing required is your login credentials.
8. Automatic update
You turn on your notebook and it automatically upgrades itself to the latest features. No annoying update notifications will hit your notebook.
9. No software installation required
A notebook without any software. Chrome web app store will take care of all your needs. Developers made some amazing apps to fulfill all your needs. According to Google
In the near future, you’ll also be able to run traditional software remotely on our Chrome notebook. Companies like Citrix are developing solutions that will be available in the Web Store, and we are developing a free service called Chromoting that will enable Chrome notebook users to remotely access their existing PCs and Macs.
10. Chrome web app store
The coolest things for Chrome notebook users. Google revealed Chrome app store where you can find thousands of amazing web apps at single place. Apart from apps you’ll get Chrome extensions and beautiful themes to enhance your browsing experience. My two most favorites one are Tweetdeck and Snapshot.
One of the big announcements made yesterday by Google is that it has a Chrome OSCr-48 netbook ready to ship out as part of a pilot program.
If you wanted one there is a sign-up page where you can fill out your details and cross your fingers. What we didn’t know at the time was just how many of these netbooks Google was planning to ship. All we knew is that they would only be sent to interested users in the U.S.
The netbook is being manufactured by Inventec, and DigiTimes has had it confirmed that the company has shipped 60,000 Cr-48 netbooks to Google. It’s therefore safe to assume the vast majority of those will be used as part of the pilot program.
While we don’t know how many people signed-up for the pilot yesterday, having 60,000 available means there’s a good chance you are going to get one if you did sign-up soon after the announcement was made.
Rohan Saparamadu will become Chief Designer and Advisor to Styling at Maruti-Suzuki on September 7, 2009. Click for larger images
The 1996 L-Series sedan (left) and the 1997 Saturn SC coupe (right): the brand's first global market sedan and first sports coupe, respectively
Saab 9-7X design came from an early concept sketch that Saparamadu prepared for Bob Lutz in 2003
Rohan Saparamadu has been appointed Chief Designer and Advisor to Styling at Delhi, India-based Maruti-Suzuki. Saparamadu, a veteran of GM Design for the last 23 years, was offered the position after he accepted an early retirement from the automotive giant late last year.
Buick Rainier (2004)
Cadillac CTS (2007)
"The company was good and that's what kept me there all those years," Saparamadu told CDN of his career at General Motors. However, when he was given the option of an early retirement he decided to take the chance.
"For a couple of years I was thinking of making a change because I knew that I needed to do something different at a different company," Saparamadu said, adding that the position at Maruti-Suzuki had simply been "excellent timing".
In his new role, Saparamundu will be the company's styling advisor responsible for a "small and very young" group of 22 designers, clay modelers and digital designers. He starts his new role at Maruti-Suzuki, which has more than 50 percent of the market in India, on September 7th.
Born in Sri-Lanka, Saparamadu studied at CCS in Detroit and started his career at GM soon after graduation. Rising through the ranks to become Assistant Chief Designer, Saparamadu worked on the interior and exterior design for Buick and Cadillac concept vehicles as well as the first Saturn L-Series, which was created in collaboration with Opel engineering in Morfelden while he was on a two year assignment in Germany.
Saparamadu also worked on other GM concept vehicles during that time, emphasizing brand characteristics within each project, and was promoted to Lead Designer in 1994.
His appointment to Design Manager in 2002 saw him lead the teams that developed the Cadillac and Saab crossover vehicles as well as an electric vehicle for the Cadillac brand. The Saab 9-7X design came from an early concept sketch that he prepared for Bob Lutz in 2003, which had been inspired by Buick's first SUV, the 2004 Buick Rainier, also penned by Saparamadu. More recently, he led the Perceptual Quality team for the award-winning Cadillac CTS.
Internet has proved to be a good place of investment for many entrepreneurs, young and old. Some of the young entrepreneurs have earned huge success in their projects and have become millionaires at an early age.
This list includes 10 such young entrepreneurs who have become millionaires on the internet.
10) Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith
Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith Tagged Inc. co-founded
Age: 28 years old Project: Tagged Wealth: $45 million
Tagged Inc. was co-founded by Harvard graduates and entrepreneurs Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith. Tagged.com was launched in October 2004 by Tagged Inc. and is privately owned.Tagged.com is a social networking site founded in 2004. Tagged is the subject of numerous customer complaints for sending deceptive bulk mail and is regarded as a phishing and spamming site and an "E-mail scam" by consumer anti-fraud advocates. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States
9 Jake Nickell
Threadless Co-founders Jake Nickell
Age: 28 years old Project: Threadless Wealth: $50 million
Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store run by skinnyCorp of Chicago, Illinois, since 2000. Co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started the company with $1,000 in seed money after entering an Internet t-shirt design contest.
Members of the Threadless community submit t-shirt designs online; the designs are then put to a public vote. A small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through an online store. Creators of the winning designs receive a prize of cash and store credit.
8 Alexander Levin
ImageShack Co.founder Alexander Levin
Age: 23 years old Project: ImageShack Wealth: $56 million
ImageShack is an image hosting website on the Internet. ImageShack has a subscription service, but the majority of their revenue is produced from advertising related to their free image hosting. The imageshack.us Alexa ranking as of September 25, 2007 is one of the top 40's. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, ImageShack was the fourth fastest growing web brand in July, 2006.
7 John Vechey
PopCap Games Co-founder John Vechey
Age: 28 years old Project: PopCap Games Wealth: $60 million
PopCap Games is a leading American casual game developer and publisher, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and currently employs more than 180 people. Most of Popcap's games can be played free in a limited form, with the full version available for a fee.
PopCap’s flagship title Bejeweled has sold more than 25 million units across all major platforms. PopCap games are available for Web, PC and Mac, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, cell-phones, PDAs, iPod Classic, iPhone/Touch and other mobile devices.
6) Angelo Sotira
DeviantArt Co-founder Angelo Sotira
Age: 26 years old Project: DeviantART Wealth: $75 million
DeviantArt (official typeset as deviantART; commonly abbreviated as dA) is an American online community with worldwide appeal showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others. DeviantArt, Inc. is headquartered in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States. As of May 2009[update] the site consists of over 10 million members, over 81 million submissions, and receives around 105,000 submissions per day. The domain deviantart.com attracted at least 36 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.
DeviantArt aims to provide a place for any artist to exhibit and discuss works. Works are organized in a comprehensive category structure, including photography, digital art, traditional art, literature, Flash, filmmaking, skins for applications and others, along with extensive downloadable resources such as tutorials and stock photography. "Fella," a small robotic cat character, is the official DeviantArt mascot.
5) Andrew Michael
Fast Hosts founder Andrew Michael
Age: 29 years old Project: Fast Hosts Wealth: $110 million
4) Blake Ross and David Hyatt
Mozilla firefox project by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross.
Age: 22 years old Project: Mozilla Wealth: $120 million
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox has 22.98% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of August 2009[update], making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has 66.97%.
To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards in addition to several features which are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.
Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka "geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.
Firefox runs on various versions of Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and many other Unix-like operating systems. Its current stable release is version 3.5.3, released on September 9, 2009[update]. Firefox's source code is free software, released under a tri-license GNU GPL/GNU LGPL/MPL
3) Chad Hurley
Chad Hurley co-founder and Chief Executive Officer youtube
Age: 30 years old Project: YouTube Wealth: $300 million
Chad Meredith Hurley (born 1976) is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the popular San Bruno, California-based video sharing website YouTube. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2.0's "50 People Who Matter Now" list. In October 2006 he sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google.
Hurley worked in eBay's PayPal division—one of his tasks involved designing the original PayPal logo before starting YouTube with fellow PayPal colleagues Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.
Hurley is a user interface expert and was primarily responsible for the tagging and video sharing aspects of YouTube
2) Andrew Gower
Andrew Christopher Gower is a British games developer and co-founder of Jagex Ltd
Age: 28 years old Project: Runescape Wealth: $650 million
Andrew Christopher Gower (born 2 December 1978) is a British games developer and co-founder of Jagex Ltd, the company he founded with Paul Gower and Constant Tedder. He is noted for writing MMORPG RuneScape, with the assistance of his brother, Paul Gower and also a lead developer.
Jagex Games Studio (or Jagex Ltd./Jagex Software/JAGeX) is a producer of online computer games based in Cambridge, UK. It is best known for the three versions of its RuneScape MMO, as well as for having produced the FunOrb games site and developing the 'to be released' MechScape MMO. Jagex has over 350 employees, with all content development, management, and customer support provided 'in house'.
The company produces games exclusively written using the Java language, its name standing for "JAva Gaming EXperts". It has received a number of awards for its achievements and is one of the highest profile developers in the UK.
1) Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg Facebook Founder
Age: 23 years old Project: Facebook Wealth: $700 million
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. As a Harvard student, he created the online social website Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Facebook is a social networking site popular worldwide. Zuckerberg serves as Facebook's CEO. He has been the subject of controversy for the origins of his business and his wealth.
Time Magazine added Zuckerberg as one of The World's Most Influential People of 2008. He fell under the Scientists & Thinkers category for his web phenomenon, Facebook, and ranked 52 out of 101 people
In the future, we'll all be able to drive without leaving home. Researchers in Berlin reworked their DARPA-spec autonomous minivan to be controllable by an iPhone app (Courtesy of popsci.com)
A recent ad for Vodafone featured Formula One champ Lewis Hamilton piloting his F1 steed, as if it were an RC car, using a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. Many were fooled, some were not, but really it was just a wishful-thinking play by clever ad people.
But one such convergence of smartphones and automobiles apparently is legit. Computer science researchers at Berlin's Free University worked up this Chrysler minivan that can be controlled remotely by an iPhone app.
The team developed its iDriver app to manage the highly modified "Spirit of Berlin" autonomous vehicle using WiFi and the smartphone's controls. The unit's accelerometer controls steering, accomplished at hand by turning the device, while screen buttons control braking and acceleration. The system also sends a live video stream of the road ahead to the iPhone screen.
The van can also drive itself, by way of technologies developed for the 2007 DARPA Urban Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle race (the van was their entry). Packed inside are a stack of IBM Blade servers, video cameras, 3D laser sensors and GPS for positioning, as well as the drive-by-wire system that enables the iDriver app's functionality. In one experiment, a team member reportedly sat on the roof rack and steered the vehicle from above.
Galleon hedge-fund partner Raj Rajaratnam was escorted by FBI agents in New York Oct. 16 in what authorities are calling the largest insider-trading case against a hedge fund.
(Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
Raj Rajaratnam, who was arrested Friday for insider trading in the US, is also linked to a money-transfer case in Sri Lanka.
The world’s 559th wealthiest individual and hedge-fund owner, who was arrested in New York Friday for insider trading, is not just in trouble with US authorities. Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, is also connected with an indictment against a Sri Lankan member of Parliament and two others, according to the Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka.
The MP and his two accomplices were indicted for depositing $3 million in a private Sri Lankan bank without informing the nation’s central bank, a violation of Sri Lanka’s banking rules. According to the indictment, $1 million of the funds came directly from Galleon on Dec. 22, 2006, and $2 million were deposited by Mr. Rajaratnam on Jan. 3, 2007. The funds were intended to purchase shares in the Union Bank of Sri Lanka, according to the Mirror.
Rajaratnam,, a Tamil born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and widely regarded as a Wall Street wonder boy for perpetual returns over 10 percent, was not indicted in that case. The trial, scheduled to begin Sept. 25, has been postponed until February.
In the US case, federal investigators closed in on Rajaratnam through a series of wiretaps. Authorities say that the case against Rajaratnam and five codefendants is the largest ever against a hedge fund.
“He is not a master of the universe,” said Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, at a press conference Friday and reported by the New York Times’ DealBook blog. “He is a master of the Rolodex.” According to the indictment, Rajaratnam and his codefendants “routinely received inside information directly or indirectly from insiders and provided it to each other for the purpose of trading based on the information,” netting more than $20 million in illegal profits in 2006 and 2007.
Rajaratnam alone racked up more than $12.7 million in illegal profits for Galleon by trading on insider knowledge about companies including Hilton Hotels, Google, Akamai, and Advanced Micro Devices, according to the FBI.
While his wealth may seem astronomical, Rajaratnam is at the “lower” end of all-star fund managers in terms of income, banking “only” $200 million in 2008, for example, when some managers were hauling in over a billion.In Sri Lanka, Rajaratnam was known as a leading example of Tamils who left the country and prospered overseas. After the 2004 tsunami hit the coast, he set up a charity in the country and urged others to contribute funds for rebuilding. Last month, he put up $1 million to fund reintegration programs for Tamil Tiger fighters whose rebellion was crushed earlier this year.
Every single minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Add to that the hundreds of TV shows now available to watch on the Internet, and the sheer volume of video posted online quickly overwhelms. How do you find the good stuff?
Blinkx, a video search company, creates some stylish order around the vast video haul. Blinkx bills itself as the world's largest video search engine, and says it has indexed more video, audio and TV shows on the Web than anyone else--35 million hours of it. Chief Executive Suranga Chandratillake figures that's about two-thirds of the video content online, and the other one-third is mostly locked up, requiring payment or passwords to view it.
British-born Chandratillake, 31, founded Blinkx five years ago in San Francisco after serving as chief technology officer in the U.S. for U.K. Internet search firm Autonomy. He predicted then that people would be watching more video online and would need a better way to find it.
"Video search is difficult," he says, explaining that most video search looks for descriptive text in tags attached to the video, which can be incomplete or misleading. But Blinkx uses speech recognition, visual analysis and scene-change detection, which enable a more accurate search as well as the ability to search within videos for specific words or people.
Blinkx got a head start by licensing Autonomy's search software, which was designed primarily for use within large companies. (Autonomy has a 10% stake in Blinkx.) Chandratillake started with a dozen programmers to refine the software to better locate and categorize video for the average viewer. The site now has channels that give you the day's news, entertaining videos, or the TV shows you want to watch. Blinx fan Chip McCormack of Kokomo, Ind., says he spends more time watching Blinkx than regular television.
Blinkx went public in May 2007 on the AIM market in London and has been on a fast growth path ever since. The company licenses its video search technology to Ask.com, Real Networks and some Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) sites in the U.K. Much of its $13.9 million in revenue for the year ended March 2009 came from advertising revenues it shares with hundreds of travel and how-to partner video sites such as Howcast and Geobeat.
The WLAN Project Team (L-R): Mr Graham Daniels, Dr John O'Sullivan, Dr Terry Percival, Mr Diet Ostry, Mr John Deane.
Australian inventiveness lies at the heart of how millions of people now use wireless networks to access information on a myriad of portable devices.
14 October 2009
In homes, offices and cafés, most of the wireless devices we use every day to access the Internet and other networks rely on CSIRO’s solution to a complex radio problem.
"CSIRO’s solution to the ‘multipath problem’ and its subsequent commercialisation ranks as one of the most significant achievements in CSIRO’s 82 year history," CSIRO chairman Dr John Stocker says.
"The technology is used in over 800 million devices right now and its use is rapidly expanding."
“CSIRO’s solution to the ‘multipath problem’ and its subsequent commercialisation ranks as one of the most significant achievements in CSIRO’s 82 year history,”
CSIRO chairman Dr John Stocker.
Today at a ceremony in Melbourne, the scientific, commercial and legal teams responsible for the achievement will receive CSIRO’s highest honour: the Chairman’s Medal for Research Achievement.
One of the main problems the team managed to solve was ’multipathing’.
"You might imagine that the little box with the flashing lights that powers your home wireless network is simply beaming information straight to your laptop," CSIRO’s Dr John O’Sullivan, leader of the scientific team says.
"In reality the radio waves travel in all directions, bouncing off walls, furniture and people – making it very hard to deliver a clear signal to the receiver."
The team solved this problem by adapting ideas that had their roots in radioastronomy and the search for exploding black holes.
"I was inspired to think about ways of cleaning up smeared radio signals to make searching for short pulses like those from exploding black holes easier," Dr O’Sullivan says.
"We ended up building a ‘fast Fourier transform’ chip to do these sorts of processing tasks efficiently and fast. That proved to be the key to untangling the web of wireless signals so we could build a workable high speed wireless local area network (WLAN)."
A US patent was granted in 1996 and, in 1999, one of the first modern international standards for WLAN (IEEE 802.11a) relied on the technology covered by CSIRO’s patent for its implementation. In 2001 the first products entered the market.
"CSIRO set out to encourage the industry to take licenses for the use of its patented technology," Mr Nigel Poole, CSIRO Executive Director, Commercial says.
"When that did not prove successful, we initiated legal proceedings which then led to proceedings being initiated against CSIRO.
"The result earlier this year was that 14 companies settled with CSIRO under confidential terms. The revenue arising from these settlements to date is approximately $A200 million.
"Soon an announcement will be made about how Australian research will benefit from this success."
Bring high quality sound and large bass to your laptop or netbook
Model
uBoom
Recommended Retail Price
AUD$189.00
Design
Bring high quality sound and large bass to your laptop or netbook
Specifications
Speaker Membrane Size: Left/Right 2, Subwoofer 2 1/2 Speaker Impedance: 4 ohms Speaker Frequency Response: R/L 100~20KHz, Woofer 20~250Hz Total RMS: 24 Watts Power supply: AC/DC adapter 100V~240V 12VDC/2A Driver: Driver Free Connection: 1 x USB, 1 x AUX in, 1 x Microphone Jack Operation Temperature: 0°C ~ 45°C Operation Humidity: 20%~90%RH Weight: 3000g Dimension: (W x D x H) 595x135x90mm
SupremeFX X-Fi discrete Audio Card 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC EAX® Advanced™ HD 4.0 X-Fi CMSS®-3D X-Fi Crystalizer™ Creative ALchemy Supports 1 x S/PDIF out header Supports Coaxial/Optical S/PDIF out ports on rear Blu-ray support
•Supports the Intel® Core™ i7 and Intel® Core™ i5 Processors in the LGA1156 Package •Intel® P55 chipset •Dual-channel, DDR3 2133(O.C.) Support •ROG Connect •GameFirst •MemOK! and MemPerfect
Best known for its disk defragmentation software, Diskeeper has licensed HyperBoot to Taiwanese PC maker Asus, which will install it on its Eee netbooks and other laptops running Windows XP.
Diskeeper is working on more deals, including with large US PC makers, said Derek De Vette, vice-president of global alliances for the company. It may eventually sell the software to consumers and other end users, but not anytime soon.
Long a headache for users, lengthy startup and shutdown times for Windows ballooned with Vista's release several years ago. Microsoft and PC vendors have tried to respond.
Last week, Lenovo said its computers will load Windows 7 up to 56% faster than when loading XP or Vista.
Yesterday, DeviceVM launched a virtualization enabled corporate version of its instant on Linux platform.
Diskeeper, which has sold 36 million copies of its defragmentation software, began working on HyperBoot six months ago. The software rearranges the order in which applications and services are loaded by Windows to minimise delays and maximise efficiency.
A HyperBoot-enabled PC will average 100% CPU utilisation during the Windows loading process, said Ed Beckman, vice-president of development for Diskeeper.
Even after optimising a PC the first time, HyperBoot will continue to monitor and re-optimise Windows as it continues to run, and more apps are installed, preventing the sluggishness most users are accustomed to, Beckman said. The software can also cut shutdown times by about 10%.
Version one of HyperBoot was optimised for Windows XP and conventional hard disk drives. Version two, which Diskeeper is now offering to PC makers, works with Windows 7 as well as solid-state disk (SSD) drives, which many performance hounds are turning to for even faster boot times, Beckman said.
Unlike Lenovo, HyperBoot does not tweak the PC device drivers nor its BIOS. HyperBoot is not yet good at accelerating the loading of Windows virtual machines on Macs either, Beckman said.
HyperBoot does delay the loading of some services and apps until after the Windows desktop appears. Those continue to load in the background, meaning that applications that users try to open immediately after the startup will load up slower than normal, Beckman said.
Giorgetto Giugiaro is a very important person; probably the most important person that no one’s ever heard of. He’s the car designer of the century, and he’s responsible for some of the most beautiful and influential vehicles of all time.
Here are his 5 most beautiful creations:
1. The Iso Grifo – 1963
There were actually two body styles for the early Iso Grifo, the A3/L (the one pictured above) and the A3/C, and they were both designed by Giugiaro when he was only 25 years old. The A3/C was the sleek competition version that looked almost like a lighter Ford GT40, and the A3/L was the more aggressive street version, with the mean brow and front end that inspired the American muscle cars later on in the decade.
2. Fiat 850 Spyder – 1965
A tiny little car with a tiny little engine. Grossly underpowered compared to the other 4 cars on the list, but still important because of the straight, clean lines and really simple elegance of the car.
Where do you think the Mazda Miata’s styling comes from?
3. DeTomaso Mangusta – 1966
The Mangusta was slightly more accessible than the Vallelunga before it and better quality than the Pantera after it. It’s DeTomaso’s coolest car, and one of my favorite cars of all time. It looks like it’s going to take off and attack an impala and go eat it in a tree or something. It’s a monster car.
4. Maserati Ghibli – 1966
Anything Giugiaro did for Maserati was solid gold, but the Ghibli was the best. This car was the European version of the C4 Corvette, nearly 20 years before that Corvette was designed. Again, Giugiaro was ahead of his time with a beautiful, really clean body style. It looks fast just sitting there.
5. Lotus Esprit – 1972
This is the big one. Giugiaro designed the concept for the Lotus Esprit in 1972 and it went into production in 1976. The Lotus Esprit wasn’t just another angular sports car, this was the first angular sports car. Nothing looked like this before 1976, and everything looks like it after. Any sports car built today, you can still see the influence of the Lotus Esprit. The Ferrari Testarossa, the Lamborghini Countach, the Diablo, basically all modern Lamborghini’s, and just about all of those modern high level sports cars can trace their design linage to the 1976 Lotus Esprit, and so, to Giorgetto Giugiaro.
A new fighter jet camera which can read the time on Big Ben from the Isle of Wight has been hailed as a breakthrough for fighter pilots in Afghanistan.
The RAF Tornado GR4 technology - known as a Raptor - is used to zoom in on Taliban hideouts and snipers. It is one of the most advanced reconnaissance sensors in the world today.
The pod, which is just under two metres long, is fixed underneath the jets, enabling pilots overhead to see precise detail from miles in the air. It contains a dual-band sensor using both visible light and infrared, so can be used both day and night.
The Raptor pod can be seen attached to the underbelly of the Tornado GR4
Test flights showed the raptor can spot tiny details 75 miles away
Speaking at Kandahar Air Field, Wing Commander James Linter, officer commander 12 (Bomber) Squadron, said: 'It brings great flexibility to us and is particularly useful in Afghanistan.
'We have had them since July 1 - since then we have been able to deliver high quality imagery from amazing distances.
'One of the early testers flew over the Isle of Wight to test it. They were able to take a shot of the face of Big Ben.'
First used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq in Operation Telic, the RAF now has eight Raptor pods and two ground stations.
Raptor, standing for Reconnaissance Airborne Pod for Tornado, is built by BF Goodrich Aerospace. The infrared sensor offers superior haze-penetration in poor weather conditions, while the night time imagery can reveal details such as the fuel levels in storage tanks on the ground.
The camera has both visible light and infrared sensors so can be used during day and night missions
A Tornado GR4 is fitted with Raptor in Afghanistan
The pictures received by the pod can be transmitted via a live data-link system to image analysts at a ground station, or can be displayed in the cockpit during flight. It can also record for post-flight analysis.
The pod is capable of imaging over 200 separate points on any one flight.
Squadron Leader Jon Nixon said: 'The thing about Raptor and its strategic capability is that it can take a huge amount of imagery in a short space of time.'
In the past many reconnaissance pods have been designed to operate with the aircraft either overflying or passing very close to the target, but the Raptor works differently.
'The stand-off range of the sensors also allows the aircraft to remain outside heavily defended areas, thus minimising the aircraft’s exposure to enemy air-defence systems,' an RAF spokesman said.
The Raptor transmits data from the camera to a ground station (pictured) for advanced analysis
Boy howdy could I use this thing at CEATEC today. Running on a Windows Mobile handheld, Toshiba has a real-time voice translation demonstration. It worked quite well. How much longer until we get the Star Trek universal translators?
I am a virtualization enthusiast. I work with VMware, Hyper-V, RHEV and Citrix technologies. From the day I have started working with VMware, I have been excited to work with these technologies.
