2018
submission
savio13 writes:
Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU demonstrates his interface-free, completely intuitive, multi-touch-driven screen. The presentation was recorded at TED earlier this year. The screen allows one to zoom, pan, animate and visualize in a new way. (Hint: Think about the computer interface/screens from Minority Report...just don't think about Mr. Cruise). The video at youtube is about 9 min long, but it's well worth a look.
1910
submission
savio13 writes:
The EFF has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a patent law ruling that could pose a serious threat to Free and Open Source Software projects. A recent Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision required that even the most obvious incremental advances can be patented unless it can be proved that someone else suggested it prior to the patent being filed. As such, many 'bad patents' are being used as roadblocks for legitimate innovators, especially those working for FOSS projects (who have better things to do then search through thousands of technical papers for some mention of the obvious).
Read the full breif here or the story at the EFF website.
1562
submission
savio13 writes:
For Gmail fans that want to organize their lives a bit more...check out GTDGmail. It's a Firefox extension that integrates the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology into Gmail. You can read more about GTD at wikipedia
BTW, as they point out, any page modifications are against the GMail Ts&Cs, but this is a cool and useful tool. Maybe we'll see Google Gadgets for GMail?
geter done
1125
submission
savio13 writes:
Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of its Open Source Software Lab has invited 4 Mozilla developers to spend 4 days with Microsoft's Vista Readiness ISV team. The invite can be found here mozilla.dev.planning and was posted on Saturday (Aug. 19).
Schroepfer replied by indicating that Microsoft and the Moz guys are already in contact via email and will follow up on the offer there.
This is interesting because Sam posted the offer in a public forum (and indicated that he'd sent a PM, but was posting in case they had an @microsoft.com email filter). Sam also made a point of stating that the Vista ISV Readiness offer is typically only for commercial ISVs.
873
submission
savio13 writes:
On Aug. 21, designer Pilotfish and sensor maker Synaptics are releasing a prototype of a cell phone without any buttons. The phone, (named Onyx), understands signs and gestures, via a sensitive touch pad covering most of its surface. It opens and closes applications when swiped by one or two fingers. The phone recognizes shapes and body parts so when you lift Onyx to your cheek and it will pick up a call.
868
submission
savio13 writes:
A BusinessWeek article about GPLv3 starts to shed some light on where things are in the process and what the hold up is. While the article is very high level, ( a la the non-tech audience BW reaches), it's important because it'll mean more C-level execs have open source licensing on their minds, to some degree at least.
