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Graphics

Submission + - Drawing on Air

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "In a recent article, PhysOrg.com reports that a team of computer scientists at Brown University has developed Drawing on Air, a haptic-aided interface to help artists to create 3D illustrations while wearing a virtual reality mask. 'The technique introduces two new strategies, using one hand or two hands, to give artists the tools they need for drawing different types of curves, and for viewing and editing their work.' The researchers hope that these techniques will improve the precision with which scientists can interact with their 3D data using a computer. This also would help artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects. Read more for additional details and several pictures made with this system, a bat flight, a bearded man and a Swahili bride."
Education

Submission + - Wikipedia 2.0, with added trust (tmcnet.com)

Submitted by
USB EVDO
USB EVDO writes: "The online encyclopedia is set to trial two systems aimed at boosting readers' confidence in its accuracy. Over the past few years, a series of measures aimed at reducing the threat of vandalism and boosting public confidence in Wikipedia have been developed. Last month a project designed independently of Wikipedia, called WikiScanner, allowed people to work out what the motivations behind certain entries might be by revealing which people or organisations the contributions were made by . Meanwhile the Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that oversees the online encyclopedia, now says it is poised to trial a host of new trust-based capabilities. Source: New Scientist."
Announcements

Submission + - Toshiba breakthrough to yield smaller mobiles

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: Toshiba announced that with its latest memory-chip architecture, phone designers can now produced a mobile phones with more compact designs and even more memory for file storage. The breakthrough came when Toshiba's engineers managed to house two types of flash memory in a single chip. One for storing programs and the other, a multi-level cell (MLC) memory used for holding data used by stored programs. MLC is said to be generally cheaper and has much higher storage-physical space ratio, making it more ideal for storing video clips, images and music.
Software

Submission + - Fight Global Warning from your desktop (localcooling.com)

Submitted by
Patricia Cassola
Patricia Cassola writes: "Global warming and its impact on the environment is a hot topic in the news at the moment. As a software company, we are aware of the fact that the energy required to run the computers belonging to 660 million users worldwide, runs into millions of kilowatt hours each day. It is estimated that more than 30 billion kilowatt hours of energy are wasted each year because many people forget to shut down their computer when leaving the office. The CO2 emissions from all those computers are huge, especially as the emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car! Here's something that every computer user worldwide can do from their desktop, right now, to reduce the output of CO2 from their computer and it's totally free. LocalCooling.com is a brand new project from the labs at Uniblue Systems. The new downloadable application will automatically optimize the power settings on a PC, by using a more efficient and effective power save mode. An easy-to-use interface allows users to change their default power settings, meaning savings on electricity bills for the users, and therefore a reduction in the amount of Greenhouse Gas that results from powering a computer. The LocalCooling.com website updates the results in real time for power savings, and translates this into meaningful environmental terms, such as how many trees and barrels of oil have been saved since the LocalCooling.com Community started. As word spreads and more people download the application, the website will display the rapid increases in the savings made globally. Members can set up Individual, Team and Company Accounts showing the savings for one, two or a whole office network of PCs. There is a fun aspect to LocalCooling.com, as users can compete with each other in the "Top 100" League Tables of the biggest savers worldwide. Uniblue's goal is to introduce 100 million PC users to the LocalCooling.com Community. With that many members, the community could prevent over 30 billion kWh of gas emissions each year — amounting to a saving of around $3 billion on energy costs alone. For more information about the impact computers have on the environment, see www.localcooling.com LocalCooling.com is a non-commercial website and is not a selling platform. It is malware free, carries no advertising, political content or bias in any way. It has been developed specifically to help in the fight against global warming; to demonstrate that individuals can take action and make a real difference to an issue of global importance. By joining the LocalCooling.com Community, PC users can work together to bring about a positive, noticeable change to the future of our planet. Uniblue Systems Ltd The idea for LocalCooling.com was the brainchild of the Uniblue Labs team. It evolved out of an internal project to make the company more energy efficient. Uniblue was launched in 2003. Uniblue Systems Ltd is a provider of award-winning software products designed to deliver superior performance, protection and security to PC users in the Home, SoHo and Business Markets. Products include Registry Booster, WinTasks, WinBackUp, and SpeedUpMyPC. Uniblue also provides its acclaimed Process Library services free to all PC users. As ProcessLibrary.com, it is recommended by several prominent companies such as Yahoo, as the definitive reference point for checking the functionality of what is and should not be inside a Windows operating PC."
Media

Submission + - The end of internet radio?

Submitted by hellopolly
hellopolly writes: According to this article "The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)." Apparently this is between 100-200% of all the revenue that a small independent webcaster can generate. I know I would not have bought quite a few CD's if would not have heard it on Radio Paradise first. So do the record labels really want to drive internet radio out of business?

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