DX4 x 100 - Trendy Watch

More than 43.000 visitors watched Oscar nominaions 2001 announcement online

2011-01-25T17:06:00.000+02:00

Oscar nominations 2011 has been outlined. And it has attracted tens of thousands of people online for the live coverage of the event which took place at 8:39 am EST. Since there'll be zillions of sites listing and talking about the oscar 2011 nominations, I decided to stick to some online live viewers stats. Here's my findings:

As it was stated earlier, the live event would start at 08:30 AM EST so I started my findings as of this exact time frame. Official site for live streaming of Oscar nominations for 2011 was http://oscar.go.com. They had built their streaming structure over http://www.livestream.com

As the time was ticking 08:30 AM EST, there were 25.516 online viewers standing by waiting to see the nominations of Oscar 2011. And the rest of my 25 minutes long statistic hunt is as follows

25.516 viewers @ 08:30 intro began
26.460 viewers @ 08:31
27.611 viewers @ 08:33
29.186 viewers @ 08:34
31.343 viewers @ 08:35
32.586 viewers @ 08:36
33.977 viewers @ 08:37
35.332 viewers @ 08:38
36.832 viewers @ 08:39 live coverage began
37.974 viewers @ 08:40
39.401 viewers @ 08:41
41.017 viewers @ 08:42
41.394 viewers @ 08:43
42.931 viewers @ 08:43 peak # of visitors
41.080 viewers @ 08:44 live announcement ended
33.866 viewers @ 08.45
32.268 viewers @ 08:46
32.959 viewers @ 08:47
33.658 viewers @ 08:48
33.887 viewers @ 08:49
34.253 viewers @ 08:50
28.191 viewers @ 08:51
27.561 viewers @ 08:52
26.783 viewers @ 08:53 replay began
24.921 viewers @ 08:54

During 25 minutes of online viewing, number of online viewers started with 25.516 and began increasing. Peak point was 42.931. The same number of online viewers showed up after 24 minutes of the introduction of Oscar nominations 2001 live coverage.

However these stats do not imply the exact number of visitors who were watching the announcement live. There were several comers and leavers. And the peak numbers seem to be restricted by time frame. It was only 08:30 am in the morning EST, hence earlier through out to the west. Anyway, Oscar Academy Award winners of 2011 will be announced on 27th of February 2011.

And just for the record, here are the nominations.

Best Picture
“Black Swan”
“The Fighter”
“Inception”
“The Kids Are All Right”
“The King’s Speech”
“127 Hours”
“The Social Network”
“Toy Story 3”
“True Grit”
“Winter’s Bone”

Best Director
Darren Aronofsky, “Black Swan”
David O. Russell, “The Fighter”
Tom Hooper, “The King's Speech”
David Fincher, “The Social Network”
Joel and Ethan Coen, “True Grit”

Best Actor
Javier Bardem, “Biutiful”
Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”
Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
Colin Firth, “The King's Speech”
James Franco, “127 Hours”

Best Actress
Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”
Nicole Kidman, “Rabbit Hole”
Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter's Bone”
Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”
Michelle Williams, “Blue Valentine”

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
John Hawkes, “Winter's Bone”
Jeremy Renner, “The Town”
Mark Ruffalo, “The Kids Are All Right”
Geoffrey Rush, “The King's Speech”

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, “The Fighter”
Helena Bonham Carter, “The King's Speech”
Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”
Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”
Jacki Weaver, “Animal Kingdom”

Best Animated Feature Film
“How to Train Your Dragon”
“Illusionist”
“Toy Story 3”

Best Foreign Film
Mexico - “Biutiful”
Greece - “Dogtooth”
Denmark - “In a Better World”
Canada - “Incendies”
Algeria - “Outside the law”

Best Original Screenplay
“Another Year”
“The Fighter”
“Inception”
“The Kids Are All Right”
“The King's Speech”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“127 Hours”
“The Social Network”
“Toy Story 3”
“True Grit”
“Winter's Bone”

Best Art Direction
“Alice in Wonderland”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I”
“Inception”
“The King's Speech”
“True Grit”

Best Costume Design
“Alice in Wonderland”
“I Am Love”
“The King's Speech”
“The Tempest”
“True Grit”

Best Original Song
Coming Home - “Country Strong”
I See the Light - “Tangled”
If I Rise - “127 Hours”
We Belong Together - “Toy Story 3”

Best Original Score
"How to Train Your Dragon" John Powell
"Inception" Hans Zimmer
"The King's Speech" Alexandre Desplat
"127 Hours" A.R. Rahman
"The Social Network" Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Best Documentary
"Exit Through the Gift Shop"
"Gasland"
"Inside Job"
"Restrepo"
"Waste Land"

Best Film Editing
"Black Swan"
"The Fighter"
"The Kings Speech"
"127 Hours"
"The Social Network"

Best Makeup
"Barney's Version"
"The Way Back"
"The Wolfman"

Best Sound Editing
"Inception"
"Toy Story 3"
"TRON: Legacy"
"True Grit"
"Unstoppable"

Best Sound Mixing
"Inception"
"The King's Speech"
"Salt"
"The Social Network"
"True Grit"

Best Visual Effects
"Alice in Wonderland"
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1"
"Hereafter"
"Inception'
'Iron Man 2"

Best Documentary (Short Subject)
"Killing in the Name"
"Poster Girl"
"Strangers No More"
"Sun Comes Up"
"The Warriors of Qiugang"

Best Visual Short Film (Animated)
"Day & Night"
"The Gruffalo"
"Let's Pollute"
"The Lost Thing"
"Madagascar, carnet de voyage"

Best Short Film (Live Action)
"The Confession"
"The Crush"
"God of Love"
"Na Wewe"
"Wish 143"

Eric Schmidth is giving away his Ceo title to co-founder Larry Page, keeping himself only Chairman of Google

2011-01-21T15:00:00.002+02:00

Eric Schmidth has posted only 5 blog posts so far via Official Google Blog pages. Or one may say he has contributed to blog world only 5 times. This last one is the sixth. The other 5 posts which are all posted by Eric Schmidth are as follows:

A different kind of company name
This one was about April Fools Day joke and has been made online excatly on 1st of April 2010. Eric Schmidt, as Chairman and CEO of Topeko which was formerly known as Google, published this post to inform the world about Google's radical step for a name change. That was a kindly response to a Canadian city Topeko, whose mayor has announced that they would change their city's name to Google. Post is so serious but that seiousness is so funny as well.

Love and the Super Bowl
An other Google blog message posted by Eric Schmidt was about a Google commercial aired during Superbowl on 7th of Februrary 2010. Post is short but neat. Schmidth told why they decided to air this video which was already online for more than 3 months via Youtube, during Superbowl. Just for the record, the Google commercial video is Parisian Love.

We've officially acquired DoubleClick
On 11th of March in 2008, for the very first time ever, we, the net citicens saw a Google Blog post, posted by the chairman and CEO of Google, Erich Schmidt. It was good news for Google and strange news for other CEOs of Fortune 500. A CEO was saying they bought something.

A broadband catapult for America
How can a CEO be boring? Just read that post, posted by Eric Schmidth, CEO of Google. This message was also from 2010, excatly was made online on 15th of March. There are several links in the message which seems as if it has been extensively structured and well outlined. But at the end of the day, who cares?

Cloud computing: the latest chapter in an epic journey
Yes, now is the time for the real truth. This is by far the longest word count for a blog message posted by Eric Schmidth. Some may find it boring, some may say it sounds good. Cloud computing is not something suitable for everyday casual wear for geek users but it does have vital futuristic tech trends inside. It was posted on 10th of December, 2010.

To sum up, Eric Schmidth posted only 5 blog posts via Google Official Blog site. One from 2008 and 4 from 2010. His name was only CEO in some posts and Chairman and CEO in others. Even of them was showing him Chairman and CEO of Topeka, instead of Google (yup, April Fools day).

His last post, titled as An update from the Chairman as a CEO was published yesterday, for record, on 20th of January, 2010. He used only his name. No other titles were given, except the title of the blog post itself. According to this post which is really encouraging for his teammates, Eric Schmidth will be serving to Google as only chairman, leaving the CEO title to Larry Page, co-founder of Google. This change will take effect starting on 4th of April 2011.

We will see whether he will add several other posts to his account or not but it's crystall clear that, the new CEO of Google, Larry Page will have lot to say (ops.. write) in Google's official blog roll.

Here are some interesting brochure photos of Asus Wavi Xtion and Asus Xtion Pro

2011-01-08T11:06:00.002+02:00

These photos have been distributed to audiences during CES 2011. But however, Asus Wavi Xtion and Asus Xtion Pro release date and price is still not officially announced as of January 2011. Take a look at these shots. Please not that, according to these publications now we can answer these questions:

What is Asus Wavi? It's name of the multimedia device which will probably be running Windows 7 with media center capabilities.

What is Asus Xtion? It's excatly the same device as Microsoft's Kinect, but with some changes. It has larger cameras to visualise the environment and sense the objects, such as you.

What is Asus Xtion Pro? It's the name of the development platform dedicated to developer who wish to produce some sort of software that can be run with Asus Wavi Xtion couple. And those developers will be able run to sell their software through some sort of application strore which is not yet known.

Asus -as promised- introduced Eee Pad Slider, Eee Pad Transformer, Eee Pad MeMO and Eee Slate EP121 at Ces 2011

2011-01-05T17:33:00.000+02:00

Among these tablets, only Eee Slate EP121 will run on Windows 7. Others are all Android 3.0 tablets, which yet to be announced. Ok but can we call it even against Apple's iPad? Not excatly for Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets should be available no before than June 2011.

Asus is rolling fast. Yesterday Wavi Xtion with Prime Sense and today we have 4 new tablets all designed for different purposes. Asus Eee Pad Slider, Eee Pad Transformer, Eee Pad MeMO and Eee Slate EP121 will cover a wide range of tablet consumers. That's to say, Asus is keeping itself under the radar agains iPad's immortal fame.

This quadro tablets from Asus aim different trends according to the features. But performance seems to be top priority. Early Eee Pad Slider, Eee Pad Transformer, Eee Pad MeMO and Eee Slate EP121 review will not be available till they are released. Here's the details:

Most powerfull Windows tablet to date: Asus Eee Slate EP121
Eee Slate EP121 is a Windows 7 tablet with 12” display area, fully multi-touch enabled and backed with Intel Core i5 CPU. It's a business tablet as the Eee Slate EP121 price is around $1000 - $1100. Eee Slate EP121 release date is January 2011. Yes this masterpiece has already been cooked and ready to be served on the shelves starting this month. Performance is said to be outstanding, thanks to Intel Core i5 mobile CPU. This means HD video playback is also possible. Eee Slate EP121 operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium.

Android 3.0 powered tablets from Asus
Asus has 3 different Android tablets on the table as a fresh start. But unfortunately they are not ready to be sold yet.
Asus Eee Pad Slider price is around $400-$800 but release date is scheduled to be in June 2011. Having said that, this Android 2.0 tablet is runiing like its name: Slider. Keyboard of Eee Pad Slider slides and makes this device excatly same as a netbook. Yes keyboard may add a little bit extra thickness but using the keyboard would be awesome for typing wizards. Eee Pad Slider has a 10.1” IPS touch panel and powered by Nvidia Tegra 2 Dual Core cpu together with a GeForce GPU. Sounds really nice.

Asus Eee Pad Slider

As you may call it a cousin of Eee Pad Slider, Asus Eee Pad Transformer is also a 10.1” tablet with touch capability and it uses the same CPU as Eee Pad Slider. External keyboard attacing is possible. Eee Pad Transformer price is around $400-$700 and release date is again June 2011.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer

Asus has also introduced a mobile phone like tablet, called Eee Pad MeMO. Asus Eee Pad MeMO is a 7” tablet device but it will be positioned between a mobile phone and tablet. Just like Samsung Galaxy Tab does. Eee Pad MeMO price will be between $500-$700. Eee Pad MeMO release date should be again this June. Because this is the date Google plans to unveil Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

Asus Eee Pad MeMo

So, all in all, Asus is ready to fight back with Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets but hey, hold on a minute. Will Honeycomb be announced as Android 3.0 or Android 2.4? That's not a gamble I can handle right now.

Kinemote is the prime reason for Primesense and Asus partnership in Wavi Xtion

2011-01-05T12:00:00.000+02:00

As PrimeSense and Asus announced their partnership for Wavi Xtion and Xtion Pro, Kinemote deservers a second look to see the reason behind this deal. Kinemote is an open source tool that has been punched in with the help of Primesense to bring Kinect like sensing out of Xbox platform.

There has been plenty of Kinect hacks around for this brand new toy to be used as a separate instrument to sense 3D depths. But all of them did not pass through experimental phase. All you could say were just a whoooo after watching several Kinect hack videos.

But PrimeSense came to the rescue and gifted away some parts of Kinect source code for 3D sensing to the open source world. And Kinemote came to live.

But anyway, what does kinemote do at the end of the day? Well so far the best Kinect hack seems to be as Kinemote. It's a software layer in order to interpret hands movement into mouse gestures by using Kinect as a standalone sensing tool and a media center capanle PC. There need to be Boxee or XBMC installed prior to Kinect. You need to install several other drivers and software packages in order to run Kinect smoothly. All the instructions can be found via this official link for Kinemote:
http://code.google.com/p/kinemote/

And yes, if you have not seen what can Kinemote do before, here's its Youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0JT0xR_a4&feature=player_embedded

As you can see, this combination of Kinect with a few software packages help you control your media center remotely without a remote. You will be de remote controller and will navigate inside your media center. Notice the gestures in the Youtube video? They are actullay interpreted to so called human interaction interface by sensing the area in real time. But how smooth and lack the lag? Wavi Xtion will prove it whether it's worth the shot or not.

Once more let me add this. Wavi Xtion features are to be announced in CES 2011. Wavi Xtion price and release date yet to be unknown. Best match is second quarter. Lets wait and see.

Wavi Xtion and Xtion PRO will replace Kinect in PC platform powered by Asus and Primesense

2011-01-04T19:02:00.001+02:00

Asus and PrimeSense teamed up for a new era for Kinect like sensing devices in order to bring some 3D sensing leisure to your living room with Wavi Xtion and Xtion PRO. For your consideration, PrimeSense is the brutal sensing force behind Microsoft's Kinect motion sensing device for Xbox platform.

What will Wavi Xtion and Xtion PRO be used for? Well, according to press release, they will totalyy change your way of navigating in front ot your big screen TV without using any remote controller. You will be the remote controller of your multimeda device. Yes, Wavi Xtion and Xtion PRO will be used for entertainment purposes but as of now, there's no sign of gaming. Simply you will be navigating within your media center's content and applications remotely, using your hands (or perhaps body?).

Wavi Xtion and Xtion PRO release date and price will be announced in CES 2011. And probably those fancy new toys of human kind will be available in second quarter of 2011.

What does PrimeSense do in this cooperation? They are actually the driving steam in Kinect. They developed the technology and Microsoft used it as the first comer. Now, PrimeSense's Immersive Natural Interaction (what a holly word trio) will be outside of Kinect as a standalone solution.

According to PrimeSense and Asus, Wavi Xtion will be the name of the device, connecting PC platform with screens. And Xtion PRO will be a development platform for developers who wish to create their own gesture solutions for the masses. They will be allowed to sell their software to be used with Wavi Xtion. That sounds interesting.

Dell's ST2220 21.5-inch LCD is like a multi touch baby

2011-01-04T17:05:00.000+02:00

Computer giant Dell has shouted out loud whit its new LCD monitor, namely ST2220 21.5-inch multi touch LCD. It is already available via Dell Online Store. It has a resolution of 1920x1080 and ready to boost all kinds of HD content with its HDMI interface, but guys still stuck ad VGA and DVI-D are also welcome.

According to Dell, 178/178 degrees view angles representing horisontal and vertical aspects let you watch and touch your LCD monitor from almost any side. That's said, those who prefer to use this fancy LCD monitor comes with a so called oleophobix protective layer. This layer is supposed to leave no blueprints of your fingertips but do not trust that one if you know what does CSI mean.

Dynamic contrast ratio is said to be 50.000:1, thanks to Dell's meaningfull numbers. It could have been millions. Brightness, which is the main factor of viewing pleasure is only 250 nits and response time is quite fast for a mutli touch piece: 8ms.

However, multi touch capabilities may vary according to your feeling taste. At the end of the day, Dell ST2220 21.5-inch LCD is not an iPad afterall. So you will only be performing clicking or dragging with your bare fingers. Or just use it as in the old days.

Dell's ST2220 21.5-inch LCD is priced at $310.

Adobe Photoshop's CS6 Texture Aware Filter rocks

2010-03-30T17:55:00.000+03:00

You must have already heard Adobe's flagship product Photoshop's upcoming CS5 suite (Creative Suite 5). It has a brilliant filter called “Content aware filter” which generates closest environment pixels when cleaning up some area. Results are really awesome according to newly published sneak peak Youtube Video. Just choose an area to be interpolated or cleaned up, then apply content aware filter and see the final picture as if it is totally a new one but has been reproduced by guessing the closest pixels to the borders of the pre-chosen area. Here's a before-after example:

Photo courtesy of http://www.inquisitr.com

In order to play on your own, April's second week needs to be come around. But, and a big one of course, after seeing this really interesting video, you can not stop making wish list for Creative Suite 6 or possibly for a Photoshop CS6 edition which may come and visit your computer next year or so. Here's my own wishlist:

Texture Aware filter: Upgraded and more genius version of Content Aware filter which was introduced in Adobe Photoshop CS5. It just re-generates the pixels according to the selected text area. And the results are more than real. Check it below :)

Before Texture Aware Filter in CS6

After Texture Aware Filter in CS6

While you are reading this, I'm also adding some lines regarding Photoshop's version numbering scheme. Here's the list of Photoshop's all versions that belong to last decade.

Photoshop 7.0

Photoshop 8.0 => CS (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite)
Photoshop 9.0 => CS2 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 2)
Photoshop 10.0 =>CS3 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3)
Photoshop 11.0 =>CS4 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 4)

This one is still under development
Photoshop 12.0 =>CS5 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 5)

These ones are just imaginations
Photoshop 13.0 =>CS6 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 6)
Photoshop 14.0 =>CS7 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 7)
Photoshop 15.0 =>CS8 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 8)
Photoshop 16.0 =>CS9 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 9)
Photoshop 17.0 =>CS10 (Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 10)

How fast are you?

2010-03-25T13:36:00.000+02:00

An other funny tech geek photoshopped image I had come across lately via Kuvaton. I've just added a little bit height :) Scroll down to see the real humor.

Wikipedia went down for 1 hour, accused overheating of servers

2010-03-24T23:34:00.000+02:00

Word’s largest data farm, Wikipedia couldn’t stand the overwhelming heat of global warming. As Mark from Wikimedia stated in Technical Blog pages of Wikimedia, some servers in Europe seemed to be melt down by excessive heat caused by unknown sources (Global warming? Who knows).
Their official announcement can be found in this link. If you are lazy to surf that site, here’s the full transcription:

Due to an overheating problem in our European data center many of our servers turned off to protect themselves. As this impacted all Wikipedia and other projects access from European users, we were forced to move all user traffic to our Florida cluster, for which we have a standard quick failover procedure in place, that changes our DNS entries.

However, shortly after we did this failover switch, it turned out that this failover mechanism was now broken, causing the DNS resolution of Wikimedia sites to stop working globally. This problem was quickly resolved, but unfortunately it may take up to an hour before access is restored for everyone, due to caching effects.
We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Update: Unfortunately, for many, this outage seems to have lasted longer than an hour. It appears that many ISPs’ DNS resolvers do not honor the so-called Negative Cache TTL that we send (1 hour), and instead use a longer value. We have circumvented this problem by renaming the affected DNS record to something else.

Logitech Wireless Keyboard has a dialpad

2010-03-19T19:44:00.001+02:00

Thanks to Logitech for this wonderful wireless keyboard with a dialpad.

Nokia 3310: Blast from the past

2010-03-19T18:35:00.002+02:00

This is a picture taken from an e-bay style site called sahibinden.com. Due to its uniqueness and stylish features, it has become a hit in a very short time. Since the features in the sale is not in English, I tried to translate them in here with my comments in parenthesis:

1996 model, full accessories (no doubt)
20.12 megapixel camera (Ad says: Medicine is not only evolving in USA - Means technology is not under USA's cartel)
512MB SD memory (expandable - are you sure of that?)
Bluetooth: Its range is awesome. Can work till to the point where you bought this piece of art (May stop working just at the time you enter to the territory of the seller)
MP3, MP4, MP5, MP6, MP4564645 compatible, works with all formats (hell yes, Loved that idea)
Sound system: **Couldn't translate this one**
Can be used as a chock for your car's safety (Also seems to be a perfect match to my grandma's radio)
Built in radio but earphone jack is not available (So you are on your own to solve this issue)
Microsoft Windows compatible (WTF???)
Don't get caught to the cops, you may be punished if you get caught using it while driving (Wish only cops could punish)
Promotion: Free one glass of water with the purchase of this item to the buyer (It must be to calm the buyer down after the transaction)

10 Best Remote connection software for your needs

2010-03-17T16:48:00.001+02:00

Connect remote pc and use it as if you are sitting right in front of its keyboard. Remote connection is something you either do not need for ever or use it very often. No in between. So having said that all of these, I've compiled a list of 10 handy tools for remotely connection lovers. And for the honor of the last one, just show your condolences for a second. Here's a quick list of totally free software that you can connect your pc remotely from anywhere in the world.

1- Teamviewer: A very handy tool to take control of remote pc via internet. You even do not need to install it. Pretty simple. This one is best free remote connection tool for me. You can download Teamviewer from this link:
http://www.teamviewer.com

2- Gotomypc: An other great software to connect to remote pc. It's very user friendly. You can download gotomypc from this link:
http://www.gotomypc.com

3- Symantec's Pcanywhere: An other tool to use your computer from remote location. It has many features as most of these software do. You can download pcanywhere from here:
http://www.symantec.com/norton/symantec-pcanywhere

4- Logmein.com: This one is sort of a web based remote control software. Free trial is possible
Here's the link though you can see it from the name itself:
http://www.logmein.com

5- Laplink: This one was actually very popular to connect two pc with a serial cable in the past. But they have managed to comply with the rest of the world and developed a web based interface. Here's the link:
http://www.laplink.com

6- RealVNC: This one is a serious alternative to other remote connection softwares. But it is not free for ever. Check the details from their website.
http://www.realvnc.com

7 -Remotely Anywahere: An other familiar brand name for remote connection. Remotely Anywhere lets you use your pc at home while you are at work or reverse. Up to you. Check this link.
http://remotelyanywhere.com

8- Showmypc.com: This one is very similar to TeamViewer. It lets you share your pc with a remote user. But it is not free for ever. However, usage is very easy and fast forward.
http://www.showmypc.com

9- Windows Remote Connection: Last but not least is an other handy tool from Windows operating system itself. However whatever version you are using, it must be professional. It lets you to use your remote pc as if you are sitting in front of the keyboard. Sorry guys, no link this time.

10- And RIP Avalan's Remotely Possible:
Yes it was possible to use your pc from remote with remotely possible. But Computer Associates bought it and made it almost disappear from home users. It has become a free bonus or something for Ca customers under the name of ControlIT (Control It).

Green gadgets come to the rescue

2010-03-16T18:04:00.000+02:00

What is a green gadget actually? The one made of re-cycling materials or the one with less energy consuming and less pollution parameters? Well, you name it. It's true for both scenarios. However this piece of cardboard computer case is lot more greener than its competitors. Owner of this cardboard computer has submitted this work for a design contest based on “Go greener” theme in a contest held by Greener Gadgets. It is called Recompute Sustainable Desktop Computer. It's ment to be sustainable during manufacturing, use and disposal as stated by Brenden Macaluso.

You can see lots of contestants with creative ideas. Unfortunately the winner of this contest was not Brenden. Instead Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries and Phillip Torrone from Make Magazine has taken their invention to the top. It's called Tweet-a-Watt. This funny device converts your power usage to your Tweeter followers wirelessly. It has a modified power meter such as Kill-a-Watt and sends the power usage at the end of the day to your tweeter account as a post. Ops. It sends the total power consumption result of whatever is connected to it. If you want to have a look at it, just follow tweetawatt in twitter.

Just having a fresh source of brand new design concepts would put a little smile on your face I bet.

Understanding Google Apps Marketplace in ten steps

2010-03-10T19:52:00.000+02:00

Google has opened its doors of Apps Marketplace to the masses. While news are rolling around and RSS feeds are getting darker about this, I thought it will be helpful for those who want to do use the shortcut to understand the basics of this platform. So here's my Google Apps Marketplace facts in 10 steps.

1- What is Google Apps marketplace?
It's a cloud computing platform for buying or selling web based services for the masses. It is being managed by Google's cloud platform. It basically helps a business owner outsource its hardware and network requirements to run its software or services. In fact Google has already deployed this system since a couple of years ago and was running its own services but on March 9th it has just opened its doors to the globe; meaning you can too send them your software to be listed on Google Apps marketplace only if it is approved. You can sell or give it for free (in order to drive traffic or genereate leads to your other services).

2- Who can benefit from this apps marketplace?
Anyone but some conditions apply. Your project has to be approved by Googling geeks of Apps Marketplace.

3- Is it something useful?
Hell yes. You won't need to buy extra hardware or network to sell your services. Instead, Google's cloud computing platform will be there for you to handle them all.

4- Wait, I'm just a surfer. How is it useful for me?
Well, go and search for free services. Right now, Aviary Design Suite is offering its design templates for free. You can even create your own Avatar - Navi style portrait with this suite. Otherwise there's nothing special for you in it.

5-How much does it cost?
As a welcome party, as far as I see, most of the services come with a free trial. But cost varies according to the services after trial period expires. Take DimDim example. It's two months free; and it is an application environment for browser based online video conferencing. Seems like yummy but becomes sour when it charges you starting from $19.90 per month (considering you are still just a surfer around).

6- Hey I mean how much does it cost to sell something?
Ops. Sorry; here you go: Google App Marketplace says: "There is a non-refundable $100 fee for your first listing. There is no charge for subsequent listings".And furthermore, you have to share your revenues with Google. Like 20% of your revenues will be Google's as clouding fees. But there's more addons on top of that. Please chek Payment Policy link.

7- What if I'm a newbie?
You are also welcome. Google App team have prepared a Youtube video for that. Try to understand it at a glance.

8- This page seems tricky, any more detailed information on this?
You bet! Go to Offical Google Blog and look for the links at the end of the article. There are dozens of links, but you need to try harder to find howstuff works style infomatics. Good luck.

9- How much money will they make out of it?
Are you Turkish or something? Cause I remember people making same discussions even in the entrance queue of Eıffel Tower in Paris who are all Turkish. Coming to your question: It's far beyond your imagination if rivals fail to respond fast.

10- Are you selling something in this marketplace?
Nope. And hopefully will not based on my current occupation :)

Remember this person?

2010-03-10T16:55:00.000+02:00

This picture is from GuideBookGallery, a site which belongs to Marcin Wichary. It simply reminds me of early computeched days of life. It's almost 25 years from now and I just can not think of what people were doing without so much tech gadgets.
These pictures were published in magazines. And good news is that, there are lot more than these ones in GuideBookGallery. You must definitely take a look. You will see not only Microsoft or Bill Gates related oldy but goldy pictures, but from a variety of other brands as well in a timeline scale like Mac OS, Symbian and many others. GuideBookGallery is a collection of graphical user interfaces and it demonstrates several graphical interfaces from handheld devices to desktop computers from yesterday till today.
I'm glad I've found that source via Technologizer

The secret behind Apple iPad commercial aired in Oscars

2010-03-09T15:52:00.000+02:00

What happens when advertisers become players just like in the iPad commercial aired during Academy Awards – 2010? Well the quickest answer is this: You get a bit of what they are up to in their daily life and if you are lucky or careful enough, you find mind blowing sources as a bonus if you dig the net by the book. And if the commercial you will dig is about an Apple's brand new product – iPad, then you may have the chance so stare to the people behind this so called creative product. Here's how:

In this blog, dx4100.blogspot.com, I always take care of uniqe content and try to be helpful to others whenever I see a hot spot out there related to my personal interests. But this time I will share my findings about some other interests that belong to some creative guys out there.

Ted Kapusta is back again
My story begins with seeing the iPad commercial on some tech blogs. Shortly after the Academy Rewards – 2010 ceremony, Apple also made it online and that was the time I've noticed something strange in the commercial. It was a fast flip between a man and a woman who were using the device in the commercial. Just at the 22th second, where I believe it is woman's turn, she checks her e-mails and scrolls down the list of received mails. That was that moment I've thought I've seen something familiar. It was Ted Kapusta. That guy has sent a mail to pick him up from airport to the owner of the account that was signed in iPad commercial. Ted Kapusta as far as I know is working in advertising industry and he is a copywriter. I remember this name when I searched the net in order to find people behind Apple iPhone commercials.

When I met Ted again, I just wanted to make Google searches on other guys whose names were clearly visible in the iPad commercials. Here I go down the list:

Ted Kapusta: Ever wondered who is writing those fancy words for Apple? Probably Ted is in charge. And I'm curious whether he was picked up from the airport or not on that January morning.
Nathan Iverson: This guy is an art director. His mail in the commercial is about his vacation photos. You can see the link of his photos under Apple's Mobileme Gallery. I will not give direct link. Go back to the commercial and look with your naked eyes.
Teddy Phuong: This guys is like a ghost. Can be jumped out of any social site with a different nick name. He seems to be a creative mind and yes he is related to Apple closely. Apart from several creative design resources I've discovered using his foot prints in the net, this tiny little statue reveals his connection with Apple.
Heather Scafidi: Sorry mam, you are apparently not related to Apple at all unless the company you work for is also providing some sort o footage for Apple. And by the way, god bless that new arrived baby you're mentioning in your e-mail.
Perrin Raushc: He is an agency producer and he is organizing a BBQ party in the weekend.
Anne Oburgh: She is also an agency producer probably at the same firm as Perrin is working.
Elena Hale: She is also working at an agency which I believe produce commercials for Apple.

And this is the end of the list. In fact that list goes on. I wish I could grab the owner of the account used in that specific iPad commercial. I assume the name begins with J.

What I've learned from this commercial and its contents?

I saw Ok Go's glorious new video clip on vimeo
I've found about that apple statue that is visible on the top of this post
I've discovered a heavy loaded design related sites
I've seen some seriously competitive commercials
I've seen and surprised to see some sketches of paper products, the ones which are still in sketch mode, do not have a body yet, but very creative. Now I have no doubt judging how these guys create new trends for Apple.

Well this is the end of the post: I'm repeating the title: The secret behind Apple iPad commercial aired in Oscars. And the answer iiiiiiiis: People behind Apple iPad commercial revealed themselves in an innocent way and made their ceremony right at Academy Awards. Congrats

I see dugg people!

2010-03-08T12:34:00.001+02:00

Inspired by the Oscars and 24 and Sixth Sense. Here's a parody of mine about social bookmarking related to Digg. All images are copyrighted by their respectfull owners, and my digital work is totally copylefted, feel free to share..

Who Dugg it?

The digg link those guys (and the kid) are talking about is this:

http://digg.com/d31KELq

And here it is for a fast view. It's hosted @ imgur and become popular. It ıs the most dugg piece of stuff in March 2010 so far and includes a brilliant idea about future of Apple, or iPad in general.

Download Printable Oscar Ballot, print it and track your bets

2010-03-08T02:00:00.000+02:00

I have just come up with this useful tool to track your Oscar 2010 standings. Printable Oscar Ballot can be downloaded from this link. Though Avatar seems to make a landslide over the Academy rewards, be prepared for full of surprises. Not: This post has been typed even before Red Carpet ceremony took off. Thanks to internet and Google trends for letting me find this piece of pdf file. Will help a lot for sure!

Nvidia GeForce 196.75 WHQL is the latest weapon for blowing VGA card

2010-03-05T14:47:00.000+02:00

Just in case you haven't heard of it; Nvidia's less than a week old new driver set Nvidia GeForce 196.75 WHQL has been pulled of due to incoming complains from consumers who scream like a hell showing their burnt VGA cards as proof of their anxiety. Before hand, this driver set was advertised as providing a 30% increase in performance. Well speed does not always shine, it may sometimes smoke as well. Till Nvidia comes up with a solution, keep your previous drivers up and running. Things happen, this tiny little problem for VGA world but a huge nightmare for burnt VGA card holders will make those manufacturers more responsible for sure. Let's wait and see what happens next.

Anatomy of Apple Design by TransparentHouse

2010-03-05T11:32:00.001+02:00

When it comes to design in technology, there's no doubt that Aplle is a leading pioneer as setting the limits in technological design trends. Here's a short video made by Transparent House in order to reflect some milestones of Apple during the last 34 years of its existence. At the end of the video you can see the list of the products being shown in the video but just in case, I've again grabbed them in here. Have fun.

Anatomy of Apple Design from Transparent House on Vimeo.

Stariing:
1976 Apple I
1984 Macintosh I
1989 Macintosh Portable
1991 PowerBook
1993 Newton Message Pad
1999 iBook
2006 MacBook
2007 iPhone
2010 iPad

Microsoft says don't press F1 unless we tell you so

2010-03-03T19:05:00.000+02:00

A recent bug found by a Polish researcher Maurycy Prodeus in Windows XP clearly indicates that, some sort of malicious codes may take control of Windows XP machines via Visual Basic or VB scripts when the F1 key is pressed. This action has the possibility to invoke .hlp file associated with the script. But the real story behind this bug may be as tricky as the bug. Here's why:

Since F1 is the universal key for calling “Help files” under any Windows family operating systems, hackers may prepare specially designed software codes asking users to press F1 fur further information.
Seems very risky and phishy. But luckily turnaround of this bug is only effective on Windows XP with Internet Explorer - IE 6, 7 and 8. So, if you are using Vista or fancy Windows 7, you are not at risk. What do all of these mean?

Well, you may call it just an other bug, rumor is rumor everywhere. It seems like this annoying bug is an other attempt for Microsoft for pushing its customers to a higher version. But surprisingly, latest estimates still favors Windows XP usage among experienced or old users. So my best guess is that, we will see several bugs aiming only Windows XP in the near future. Cause this is the only way to throw this oldy but goldy piece of software platform into ashes.

What if you're still using Windows XP with Internet Explorer? Answer is simple. Switch to Firefox or Chrome. And do not press F1 unless Microsoft provides a patch when you need to use Internet Explorer.

Top 10 lawsuits that included Apple in history

2010-03-03T00:50:00.001+02:00

As Apple sues HTC news are rolling around the net, here you can find a top ten lawsuits that Apple was an actor both claiming patent infringements or being claimed to violate many. Also some wtf facts are in the list for your information.

Apple sued Microsoft numerously back in 90ies. Most famous lawsuit was based on Quicktime’s source codes. Parties didn’t settle, as well as there were hundreds of lawsuits. Result? Microsoft bought some shares of Apple to give some fresh cash to Apple.

Apple sued Cobalt claiming Cobalt’s Qube is a copy cat of Apple’s G4 Cube in 2000. Cobalt was purchased by Sun Microsystems.

Apple sues NYC, yes New York City municipality, New York’s Travel and Tourism Office claiming an ad campaign uses an image which resembled pretty much to company’s logo -> Green apple. Result: Case dismissed. Fruits do not mean to belong companies.

Creative sued Apple in 2006 on media player interface claiming Creative has the patents od media library or playlist scheme in mp3 players with $100 million. Result: Both parties settled and Creative began to manufacture iPod accessories.

Cisco sued Apple in 2007 for Apple’s mythical device named iPhone, claiming Cisco has already a product patented and copyrighted as iPhone to be used in Voice over IP. Parties settled.

Nokia sued Apple claiming some smart phone patents were infringed by Apple in 2009.

Apple was sued by Apple Corps, which was Music Company of Beatles. In fact computer manufacturer had nothing to do with a music company unless it began to dive into music business with mp3-4 players and through iStore. Parties settled (Beatles believed to have got an other whooping $50 million apart from world wide sale rights).

Apple even sued his co-founder Steve Jobs. Yes it’s no joke. When Jobs was forced out of the company in 1985, he opted to co-found an other firm aiming at higher educational institutes but board of directors at Apple filed a lawsuit following his departure to put a hold on his future plans. This case was closed very soon after the application.

Apple sued a Canadian school - Victoria School of Business and Technology - for using a logo similar to Apple’s apple. Result? Victoria’s School is still running on its original apple logo. Hey back off. I mean the fruit, not the computer, macputer, mp3puter, smart phoneputer or appstoreputer giant’s logo.

This one is my best. Apple was sued over iPod’s music capability by a consumer who claimed to have lost some hearing ability in 2006. Result? I have no idea :)

AND here comes 2010. Apple sues one of its most bully competitor from Far East Asia, HTC claiming HTC infringed iPhone’s several patents including multi-touch features and interface.

Multi functional tablet laptop design by Yavuz Cengiz

2010-03-02T15:12:00.001+02:00

When it comes to design, technology trends are almost borderless. Here's a wonderful example of an ergonomic tablet laptop - notebook computer design which was awarded by Turkish Office.of Asus. Keyboard is aligned with respect to natual hand position but wasn't it tried and found faulty before by Microsoft's so called ergonomic keyboard? I don't mind. What I care is detachable screen which makes this tablet pc a member of an other era, which is not today's obviously.

IO and MN Appliance Rebate Program are promising a green future

2010-03-01T23:06:00.001+02:00

Minnesota and Iowa Appliance Rebate programs have proved it wrong. We do care about our - ~~pocket~~ - world. Very first results have almost zero accomplishment but sometimes even the lowest number tells the whole story. Rebate programs aimed at pushing gren energy products to the masses that were planned to be take off back in 2009 have hit a milestone today. Both Iowans and Minnesotans woke up today to apply for their newer, greener energy efficient freezer or dishwasher or clothwasher or even refrigerator but it seems this public rush has to be delayed to a later morning.

Both hotlines and websites that were scheduled to go online today immediately showed red lights instead of green due to overwhelming applications. That’s a very rigid sign that with a little financial support, we do love to make shopping; no matter whether it is for going green or for renewing or appliances. Anyway, if you have somehow come to this page to find a bit of information about ongoing rebate programs, here is a short summary that I believe will help you:

For Minnesota Appliance Rebate Program
http://www.mnappliancerebate.com/
Toll free phone number 877-230-9119

You can buy with mn appliance rebate program:
1- Clothes washers ($200 rebate)
2- Dishwashers ($150 rebate)
3- Freezers ($100 with purchase and proof that their old unit has been taken off the grid; $50 for purchase only)
4- Refrigerators ($200 with purchase and proof that their old unit has been off the grid; $100 for purchase only)

For Iowa Appliance Rebate Program:
http://www.iowaappliancerebate.com/
Toll free phone number 877-267-7495

You can buy with io appliance rebate program::
1- Clothes Washer ($200 rebate)
2- Dishwasher ($200 or $250 rebate)
3- Refrigerator ($200 or $500 rebate)
4- Cooling ($100 or $200 rebate)
5- Heating ($150 - $400 rebate)
6- Hot Water Heaters ($100 - $200 rebate)

Io and Mn appliance rebate program is just a startof the bigger Picture worth of $350 million. All purchases need to be done through authorized sellers and with Visa prepaid card starting from 1st of March 2010. I will be watching these appliance trend programs and dive into them wihtout any hassle when they include iPad Tablet PCs too ;)

Next generation Wall-E 2.0 exposed, now with 3D capability

2010-03-01T16:31:00.001+02:00

Panasonic's brand new Full HD 3D camera design seems like a blast from the past, namely a blast from our lovely robot Wall-E. What happens when we merge them? Here's the answer with step by step guide :)

Wall-E 2D

Wall-E 3D add-on

And here comes Wall-E 3D

PSN and PS3 networks are down, what else were down in the past?

2010-03-01T15:32:00.000+02:00

PSN or Play Station Network went down globally due to a glitch which affected all PS3 and PS2 owners but PS3 Slimmers were far beyond trouble according to Twitter tweats. Users were getting 8001050f error code message when they tried to connect to the world famous online network. This is not the only network suffering a connectivity glitch. Google's Gmail service was also suffered some sort of login errors just a couple of months ago and millions were affected by the couse. While PSN has been to undergo this, I've compiled a small list of major glitches of all times in the online history.

Twitter went down on 6th of August 2009
Google went down in 2004
CNN.com, Yahoo.com, Ebay.com went down on 6th of February 2000
Hotmail went down when Microsoft forgot to renew its passport.com domain in 1999

Digital shaving mirror

2010-02-26T13:21:00.002+02:00

While surfing the net, I've come up with this genius idea. If there's no mirror, then create one using available technologies at home, forming a sort of digital mirror for your self. Get a camcorder, connect it to a pc (and a monitor) for a bigger viewing experience and do the stuff you ought to do like shaving or make up.
The only tiny little problems with this invention are: A- Mirroring technology is not functioning properly. While you're shaving your left cheek, you see your right cheek. It's totally troublesome. The image needs to be horizontally mirrored in real time. B- Where the hell is water if you are not using a shaver machine?

Eset is confusing. Is it Nod32, Nod33 or Nod34?

2010-02-24T15:31:00.002+02:00

If you're confused with anti virus stuff out there for your online security, then you haven't seen this car yet. Relax and pay attention to the back windows stickker and plate of the car. This picture was taken by a friend of mine while he was in between a heavy traffic and I'm authorised to use it. Thanks buddy :)

Which one is bigger, a netbook or a 50” widescreen TV?

2010-02-23T15:39:00.000+02:00

How big is your small netbook? Although netbooks are easy to carry, fun to work devices, they lack dimension and require more attention while typing. But their varying dimensional monitors hide one concrete truth. Yes size matters for some specific cases but netbook monitors are not as small as they seem from a distant. Here's why?

A netbook is really small. There is almost no room to store your desktop folders if you have dozens of them. Keyboard of a netbook? It's not right to say it is too small but letters are so tight. You must be a keyboard sniper to shoot the correct points of the keys. On an actual desktop keyboard you are free to make hitting errors worth of 0.5 inch but on netbook keyboards you have to be precise as much as 0.2 inch or you better go and look up the meaning of “precision” at first hand. But in between all this chaotic dimension problems, I've found out one huge giant component of a typical netbook. It's simply the monitor.

What's hidden in a typical netbook monitor? Well, it's motion picture capability of course. To prove this, let's stick to a netbook of 10” in size. If you're sitting in front of your desk or sitting on a couch, you will probably be 30 inches away from it. Now keep in mind that 10 and 30 inches.

Go and explore your living room. Do you have a big flat screen? No need to say a yes. National statistics show that we do have at least a 20” TV in our houses, up to 50.inch.

Ok, now move on to our next question. How far away are you sitting from your TV? Let's say an average of 150 inches. Please note that I'm not using feet stuff. Let's just live with inches for a short while.

Now calculus 101 tells us that we can make a proportion from 30 inch to 150 inch with 10 inch to 50 inch. Are you satisfied with this magnif(ying)icent result? Your 10” netbook has the same visual capability as your 50” TV. Period.

Bank of Nikolai: A stunning warning about our online security

2010-02-22T17:40:00.002+02:00

Thanks to Norton for producing such a brilliant commercial regarding online security. For those who have no idea what phishing is, it's simply transferring your money or passwords or sensitive data to those banks like the one Nikolai has. Just have a look at this video.

After watching this video, you can either move on to the next one by pressing “Allow” and see other examples to realise how things can get too tricky in online world. If you're satisfied with the warnings, either equip your computer(s) with anti-virus software or continue investing your valuable data to Nikolaish people. It's up to you.

How I saved my notebook from a bottle of soda water?

2010-02-22T02:09:00.000+02:00

Here's my solution to recover from a water damage on my laptop. Recently, I poured almost half of a bottle of soda water right over the keyboard of my notebook (or laptop). Well I'm just jumping the incident steps as the cap was supposed to be closed but apparently it wasn't. Shame on me.Day 0: Soda water has been poured all over the keyboard of my laptop. It feels like aching.
Step 1: Disconnected my laptop from electricity immediately and removed the battery. It was painful to see some moisture inside the battery house. I want to cry.
Step 2: I used toilet paper and paper towel to dissipate any water droplets from the keyboard and put my laptop upside down as the keyboard was facing my table.

Day 1: After waiting almost 24 hours, I decided to give it a shot and connected the power cord only. I pressed the power button and holly s...!!! My laptop was beeping continuously. I even didn't see the boot up screen. Turned it off, removed the power cord and forgot my laptop.

Day 2: More than 48 hours have been passed. Should I try again? YES!!!. Connected the power cord and pressed the power button. It seemed like it's time to google for technical help when I heard those annoying beeps again which were shouting like “I'm drowning here, where the hell are you my dear?”.

Day 3: Before calling for professional help, which may cost me a fortune to fix it, I decided to give it an other shot. Connected the power cord and pushed that button with praying inside. Walla!!! Boot up was ok. I saw the starting Microsoft Windows animated logo and yes, I was at my desktop screen. How come it was so easy? Never begin cheering till you see you're typing!!! Yes I could see my desktop but something was strange. I got the clue when I just opened a browser window. My keyboard was on auto pressing millions of “zero”s (000000000000000.........). Ops. Sorry my dear laptop but I need to shut you down again.

Day 4: Desperately I tried again. And those auto pressing zeros were smiling me in my face again. Let me wait for an other day before googling for help.

Day 5: Whenever I decide to google, my laptop made an other step through a success but never showed up as it was right before I split soda water on it. That's why today my laptop seemed to be working for about 5 minutes. And then guess what? Auto-pilot zeros have advanced (or de-advanced) to a next level together with small a. When in caps lock or when pressing shift, instead of zeros, it was keeping auto-piloting parenthesis. Was it the case from the start? I will never know that.

Day 6: Almost a week is in the past and I could only use my laptop for surfing purposes, as long as my sites are in my bookmark list, they were ok. But accessing the sites by typing were like nerve cracking. I needed to fight with zeroz. Deleting them, clicking a non text field in the page, trying this for a dozen times were just for those who know the meaning of patience very well.

Day 7: “No, I will not touch you today” said the desperate voice of mine.

Day 8: Yes it was time to google around to see what others were saying. There were plenty of suggestions which almost all of them require expert and screwdriver techniques. So I tried to give it a shot but I would stick to my own techniques. I removed all the plastic letters from keyboard. This process requires strict attention. There are too tiny clips and they can easily be broken. My two fingers were aching after that hard work. I removed them and put the sort of naked laptop wide open at large hoping to have a quick dry keyboard.

Day 9: I had to skip this day for some personal matters. I couldn't find time to touch my laptop.

Day 10: Let's have a look to see where am I. My possibilities are limited. I'd either be happy or give it a shot by looking for some brand new laptops out there. Guess what? My laptop started up well but after 10 or 15 minutes of uptime again annoying zeroz were there. What's going on? Now back to basics about some chemistry and physics 101. My best guess was as follows: There was still moisture inside the keyboard. When the laptop was getting hotter, that moisture was evaporating and somehow short circuiting my keyboards microscopic wires. To create a good ventilation I decided to remove the back cover also. Since my laptop has already been aged for claiming a warranty check, I all removed warranty stickers and unscrewed all. Let's wait one more day this way. Ops. Just a tiny reminder: You need to have a proper screwdriver to remove all the tiny screws.

Day 11: Skipped this way on purpose. I didn't want to see those zeros again.

Day 12: Deal or not day. I just made a quick test by attaching power cord and turning on power. Everything seemed fine for about half an hour. I left the cursor at address bar and autopilot zeroz were not in the vicinity at all. I couldn't use my laptop as the letters were not mounted yet. Would do that the other day.

Day 13: I must have screwed up. I mounted all the letter keys back to their place and turned my laptop on. Yes, all systems were up and running except A, S and M. I couldn't type those capital letters by pressing shift key. How on earth can this happen? Anyway, I'm pretty happy for this issue. Better than nothing.

Day 14: Almost two weeks have been in the past. My soda watered laptop seems to work pretty well except the issue I mentioned yesterday. What I have learned from this experience?

A: If somehow you split water on your keyboard, your rescue 101 mission for watered keyboard must be removal of your keys from your keyboard. Do not wait as I did till day.8.

B: Keep a proper screwdriver handy. You're not expected to have one but just in case. Loosing one day to get one is not the end of the world.

C: First action is always life saving. If you drop your laptop to the pool, you may not be so lucky, but removing the battery and power cord immediately should be your first attempt.

D: There are many solutions out there. And thanks god, most of them offers natural ways of drying. Using heaters or air ventilators may make things worse. Water droplets or moisture trapped inside has to find a way to get outside. Using those devices do not help this. You have to open appropriate escape routes for trapped water. I mean opening the back cover is a must.

E: Good luck if you experience the same water problems like me. I managed to return back to normal, except those 3 keys.

Copenhagen wheel: Why is it so special?

2010-02-19T15:10:00.000+02:00

Some genius guys in MIT's (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) MIT Senseable City Lab have developed a stunning wheel which can operate itself if you use your brakes while riding. Having almost the same concept with hybrid cars out there, this wheel can store energy into its battery operated motor inside when braking power is about to applied. Commercial products need to be matured a little bit; let's say a couple of years? Who knows...

This wheel which is by no means not different than an ordinary bicycle wheel is equipped with a couple of instruments just attached to its core design. But what the hack are they? Well, let's start with the basic question. Why this wheel is called “Copenhagen Wheel?”

Answer is pretty easy. The inventor behind this concept is Danish. For those who may not have known this, Copenhagen is a city in Denmark. It's in fact the capital city of Denmark. And what is so special with Copenhagen? This city has been officially announced as “Bike City” by UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale). Copenhagen is the most adopted city according to cyclists in the whole world. According to wikipedia data, almost 750.000 miles are covered every day by cycling people through out this city.

Lets get back to our wheel. This wheel has been unearthed last year in December during a conference related to climate. Reason behind this event is lying in the supporters' nature. Italian Ministry of Environment and world famous brand Ducati is also backing up this project. Main concept may seem radically an adaptation of hybrid car technology into a bicycle but protecting the environment is one step ahead. To strengthen the bonds with this concept, some sort of sensors are also bundled into this project, making this wheel aware of air pollution. It's also designed to share collected data across the networks via smart phone connectivity.

Brilliant idea, with a stunning simple design. Will it work? It seems so. But to some level of course. It works if you're not one of those guys who think this Northern European wheel may be an other reason for thieves to steal your techno-powered bicycle.

Please note that, all of the images are courtesy of MIT Senseable City Lab. These photogrpahs have been taken by talented photographer Max Tomasinelli

What are your technology fears?

2010-02-08T18:33:00.000+02:00

These are the top 10 brand new additions to phobia all related to technology. Scientists will definitely look for a cure for each one. I hope you enjoy my latest phobias all based on true stories :)

Aerocrackophobia: Fear of wifi hack. Ever heard of Aircrack? Well you should go check it and reconsider how safe it is to prefer WEP on your wireless networks.
Gigaphobia: Fear of exceeding download limit (via 3G? so likely)
Lattephobia: Fear of getting late for your online date :)
Machophobia: This is a common sense of fear felt by industry wide designers. They know, what ever they create will be thrown away into ashes with the introduction of brand new thrilling designs by Apple (no not the fruit; the plastic and metal one :)
Optiphobia: Fear of Cd-Roms/Dvd, any toptical discs. Patients with optiphobia has a strong fear of their optical discs' cleanliness. No finger print or dust of any kind should be allowed on both faces.
Patrophobia: Fear of being busted by the patrolling BOSS @work while surfing for nonsense (!!!) stuff online.
Passaphobia: Fear of passwords. Passaphobia patients are always afraid of their passwords, thinking they will be hacked. Their computers may open up in less than 1 minute but to reach their welcome screen, a couple of minutes are required for entering multi level passwords even if they are not connected to the internet.
Socionephobia: We are all homosaphiens right? Well, Socionephobi is specifically devoted to the fear of Social saphiens networks. People with Socionephobia has a stunning fear of being exposed in social networks like Facebook, Hi5, Orkun, MSN Live and MySpace as well as many many others.
Viruphobia: Fear of computer viruses. A computer user who has this phobia never opens any attechment in e-mails.
Youtuphobia: It's the branch of psychology that investigates new addiction type to online videos. Patients spend hours of their precious time surfing among rubbish videos and can not take themselves from watching and watching watching... They're in fear of the next video in the queue, thinking that one would be the last video they will have.

The naked truth about iPad

2010-02-02T16:29:00.000+02:00

The new iPad from Apple is definitely not a netbook replacement but it is obvious that, large multi touch screen will kick some butts when it is about to launch. Especially freedom to surf the web with wifi or 3G where applicable will let iPad lovers carry this shiny electronics toy wherever they go on the long run. But, PC enthusiasts who want to run power applications will find it lacking.

An other day without Adobe Flash

At the end of the day, you'll be getting a fancy entertainment device capable of covering your basic needs like surfing, listening and watching. Anyway, if you're about to buy one, enjoy it. You will not be throwing your money away. But do not cry after your third of fourth usage about the ones you will be missing when you could buy a netbook instead. My priority for a surfing device would be Adobe Flash capability which both iPhone, iTouch and iPad lacks.

According to Apple, iPad specifications are as follows:

Currently it has only two models, one with wifi and the other with wifi+3G
It's priced between $499 and $829 depending on the capacity and 3G feature
It has assisted GPS only in wifi+3G model
Processor is 1GHz Apple A4. May be powerful as new Intel Atom processors that can play HD content
Flash capacity varies between 16, 32 or 64GB
Screen resolution is nearly 10” with widescreen LED-backlit technology
3G capability can only be used for data. As of launch there were no specific keynote dedicated to voice plans which can be made through a headset (bluetooth would be nice)
Operating system is very much the same as used in iPhone and iTouch
And the most interesting part is about battery power. iPad can play movies for 10 hours with its fully charged battery. Strange isn't it?

Those specs should tell you one concrete truth. This is an entertainment device dedicated to your daily non-commercial, or preferrably personal needs. Things that are related to work should wait till you get to touch a Mac or PC when you're at home/work/school.
More info can be found via Apple

What is Seofessor and Seoman or What does a Seofessor Doctor do?

2010-01-27T17:59:00.000+02:00

We are all learning new terms as internet evolves. Now it's time to take a look at two different terms: That's to say, Seofessor and Seoman proficiencies. In fact, as you can imagine those two words are almost the same. They both imply people who are keen on SEO searches and implementation. But why is this so important in today's internet era? First let's look at some basics and then proceed to the importance of seofessor or seoism.

SEO as you may already know and chew it like a gum is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. But what on earth does this optimization mean? Well, those websites over there are not for self publishing purposes. Whether they are non-profit or commercial, personal or not, they do want to drive in traffic. And the most healthy way of getting traffic is through search engines of course. This kind of traffic is called “organic traffic”, meaning getting visitors with almost natural ways. Getting hits from search engines also serve for an awesome platform for advertisers. They get what they want; interested visitors with the content they are about to view!

Keyword jungle up in the digital world
Ok, terminology is explained. Now what? People who are digging the networks for keywords are so called seoman. They search for the most searched terms and provide a basic list of useful terms for the websites they work for. It does not need to be the most searched ones. The ones with rare searches are also a plus for search engine optimizators. These findings are considered to be key magnets for visitors how are making numerous searches in search engines to find what they are looking for. Once you're listed with a specific keyword by a search engine, your site is likely to be visited by organic visitors unless your site does not have a front page coverage. Getting up to front pages in search engines is not established by luck. It's done with respect to highly matching keywords in your sites by the search engines themselves.

SEO experiment #1 starts here
So, up till now, you must be familiar of a typical day time job of a seoman in general. Ok, what does a Seofessor do then? Well, this type of nerds are the ones who can judge, predict or analyze a keyword's or a keyword combination's chance for getting listed and ranked in search engines. I'm not a seofessor nor a seoman at all. But if you have come to this article or this site through a search engine, this means I have covered a lot more than I can imagine in SEO world with my shiny niche keyword “Seofessor”. If I see that this article is listed in search engines with this keyword, I will post proof of it as well :)

Good luck with your own findings
So, if you're brand new to internet publishing or blog or whatever you call it and want to drive in organic traffic, then the first phase should be look into seo stuff further. No need to be a seofessor for a start. Just make sure you keep your keywords naturally in your articles in your website. But before that, you need to inform the digital world that you're online. Just go to Google's Webmaster Tools web page and install something to your site. That will trigger this search engine giant for sure.

If you want to learn more, just subscribe my blog to be informed about my future posts about getting viewed organically by the digital world.

Basics of backlinks

2010-01-14T18:05:00.001+02:00

Backlinks are simply clickable links from other sites or pages that linked through your site or your particular link. They also help search engines “find” your site easily.

In general, main concept is not to search out, but give references to other sites. The higher a site or a page has many backlinks, the more probability of being indexed by search engines. Backlinks can create a natural, organic links to your site and are given due relevance to the content or referred to the relevant content.

Another way to create backlinks is directory submission which I will explain in a different topic later on. Other choice are link exchanging, buying links from reviews, social communities and collaborative ways to build.

The value of a link is measured with respect to anchored text (keyword that sends link to a page or site), link age, link type (image or text), text surrounding the link and relevance to the page reference.

Number of backlinks to recommend a site or a page is another important factor to be included in search results. Besides the above factors, the number of backlinks influence positioning searches.

Quality of backlinks is not in the least, an important factor. I said earlier that the number of backlinks is an important factor, but if the number of the backlinked sites are of low quality sites, then this number is almost irrelevant. Sites that contain your links must be high ranked, popular or must drive traffic at most. Page rank is a score that estimates a quality of a site, but ultimately it does not determine actual or overall quality at all. It just gives a quick concept of a site's eligibilty.

WYRINWYG - What you read is not what you get

2010-01-12T15:52:00.000+02:00

For the last two months, I spent quite a messy time surfing, or lets be honest, rushing for e-gold. I want you who is reading these lines as of now about be aware of a brand new approach of mine. That's called: WYRINWYG to the masses.

For the last two months, I spent quite a messy time surfing, or lets be honest, rushing for e-gold. I want you who is reading these lines as of now about be aware of a brand new approach of mine. That's called: WYRINWYG to the masses.

What you see is absolutely not likely as what you will get at the end. If you think all the information you see online is trust-worthy (even this one), you are wrong. I will dive into this concept in a copule of weeks as I'm still collecting my proofs.

In order to stay upto date, here's a list of my latest interests that I'm thinking of coverin in the very near future:

Backlink concept
SEO engineering and beyond
Keyword jungle
Promoting your site

All these will be outlined one by one, one topic at a time. So please be patient and stick to this blog regularly. Hope to see you soon with my latest updates.

Google Chrome is ready to go!

2009-10-28T18:00:00.000+02:00

Google's much anticipated so called operating system Chrome OS Beta is ready to be downloaded. According to Google's announcement, the new OS is based on Linux and using Gnome 2.24 as desktop environment. Here's Google's official announcement with my comments at the end:

New Chrome OS 0.4.223 beta is available now!

Chrome OS is a brand new free operating system built around the revolutionary Google Chrome browser.

The project aim is to provide a lightweight Linux distribution for the best web browsing experience.

Featured software in Chrome OS:

* GNOME 2.24 desktop environment
* Google Chrome 4.0.223 web browser
* Google Picasa 2.7 photo manager New!
* OpenOffice.org 3.0 office suite
* GIMP 2.6 image editor
* Flash Player 10.0 plugin
* and much more!

System requirements of Chrome OS:

* Processor: Intel Pentium, Xeon or newer; AMD Duron, Athlon, Sempron, Opteron or newer
* RAM: min. 256 MB
* Hard disk: min. 1 GB
* Graphics card: supports most modern graphics cards

Download Chrome OS virtual appliance and give it a try!

I'll definitely give it a try. And may be post my next article from Chrome OS :)
The ISO file of the Google Chrome OS Beta is about 550MB and can be downloaded either via torrent sites, or direct links or Wuala by Lacie. But hey, why there's no KDE?

Why blogging is becoming popular?

2009-10-28T17:40:00.002+02:00

Because it is a mirror effect of true human mind. No ghosting at all (or to some extent). In general, bloggers out there share their own experiences with any kind of subject they are up to. That's the real root of attraction. It's like a columnist working for him/herself, not for a regular type of media.

Check back soon to see more and more content in this blog about various types of technological experiences of both mine, my friends' and others'. I promise to be mostly honest :)

Real time search to the masses

2009-10-28T14:06:00.001+02:00

In search egnine business, indexing web sites are done through search bots. But how often do these artificial intelligence creatures visit the sites? Every second? For some sites, yes, major search engines assign some of their bots as a full time employee and get the newly added content back to headquarters for every second the site updates. Google and Microsoft's Bing have this already. But now it's time for Yahoo to join the party.

Real time search is a totally new hype. It's apparent that search engines work very hard to index the true content which was submitted just seconds ago. It's something very crucial for news related web site content for sure. And search engines make the decision about which sites to be followed very closely. If you are a frequent forum user, on some forums you must have noticed some users named as Google, Yahoo etc. Yes, for popular forums, these bots act like a member and digg the newly submitted words whether they carry a valuable info or not; and if so, entries or forum pages are indexed rapidly. That's why we come across with tons of forum sites when making searches.

When it's about searching, I generally prefer Google as a top priority. Though you may face lots of buggy pages for what you are looking for, if you are an experienced surfer, the results become more friendly with limiting your search to some specific words. Well, that's really something.

Anyway, keep enjoying real time searches if the results mean something to you. Wish you good searches and less getting losts :)

Windows 7 is out, now what?

2009-10-23T13:07:00.000+03:00

Now that we have Windows 7 available worldwide, now it's time whether we should switch or not? But before giving a decision, go check out that funny commercial from the hillarious "I'm a pc and I'm a mac" series.
Apple's "Get a Mac" ad: "Broken Promises"

Half a billion Skypers out there

2009-10-22T16:39:00.002+03:00

VoIP is gaining momentum day by day. The figures prove it. Ebay has announced that its best investment ever, namely Skyp has surpassed half a billion users, reaching 521.000 subscriptions since its launch.
That much amount credited Ebay a hefty sum of $185 million in the latest quarter of this year. For, more fascinating numbers, go and take a look at TechCrunch's article, which also includes Paypal's latest revenues.

Wanna play soccer (virtually and online of course)?

2009-10-08T18:11:00.000+03:00

Soccer's global governing body FIFA, gaming software-maker Electronic Arts and Sony Corp's PlayStation announced the start of the FIFA Interactive World Cup 2010 (FIWC10) season on Tuesday.

The sixth edition of the world's largest football gaming tournament allows virtual athletes the unique opportunity of competing in an official FIFA World Cup, FIFA said in a statement.

The champion will be decided at the final in Barcelona, Spain on May 1, 2010, for which players can qualify online or at live qualifier events.

The winner will receive $20,000 and "a money can't buy" experience of attending the FIFA World Player Gala, where he or she will mingle with the best football players in the world.

"More than half a million players vied for a spot in the Grand Final of last year's FIFA Interactive World Cup," said Chuck Blazer, a member of the FIFA Executive Committee.

"This makes it the FIFA tournament with the most competitors."
Over the next seven months, players will compete against each other online or at one of the 10 live qualifier events that will be held in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Africa and Britain.

For the first time, the online qualification will be split into two separate seasons, the first running from October 2 through to December 18 2009, and the second from January 4 to March 31, 2010.

Players interested in participating in either the online qualifiers or one of the live qualifier events will find all information on how to register as well as reports and stories around the tournament on the official website, www.fifa.com/FIWC.

The 31 players to successfully qualify for the grand final will come up against last year's FIWC champion -- Bruce Grannec from France -- who has automatically qualified for the final and will be aiming to become the first player to retain his title.

Apple Tablet to be produced by Foxconn

2009-10-07T15:19:00.000+03:00

Today Digitems approved that, long awaited Apple Tablet's manufacturing process has took off with ongoing negotiations between Apple and Foxconn.
Apple tablet has many wish list so far. Rumors about features and availability is still mystery. But we are certain that Apple rumors always (well lets say generally) come true.

By the way do you remember Foxconn from a missing iPhone 3GS protoype myth? It was actually true. An employee under investigation who was accused of the loss of one protoype is not breathing anymore. Lets hope, Foxconn will not force its employers to the limits again, if iTablet (Who knowa what the brand name will be?) is to be produced by them.
Digitimes article about first estimates in terms of quantity and other related information is here.

WMware Fusion 3 is ready to rock Windows 7 on Mac OS X

2009-10-06T18:31:00.000+03:00

VMware Fusion 3, that helps us run Windows on Intel Macs, will be available worldwide on October 27 2009 with more than 50 additions to its successor WMware 2 and quite full Windows 7 functionality.

The announcement came from WMware today, citing a huge step forward in virtual machines.

The new version (aka WMware 3.0) has:

Optimized solution for Snow Leopard
Has Windows 7 under a handy environment
Supports DirectX 9.0c under Windows
Can run Windows apps in tabular Mac OS X interface

Last but not least, can transfer all Windows apps, files, settings via local or remote network. Sounds great!

WMware can also run Linux OSes under Mac.

All images are courtesy of WMware

External HDDs goes under water

2009-10-06T14:55:00.000+03:00

A-Data is shipping the industry's first ever waterproof and shock resistant portable HDD, named A-Data SH93 Portable HDD.

According to A-Data, SH93 is the industry’s first ever waterproof and shock resistant portable HDD, is a super strong hard disk drive designed specifically for students, road warriors, and sports enthusiastic.

Still according to them: "Incorporating rubber and special water-proof materials, the SH93 sustains 1M waterproof test for 30 minutes and military standard MIL-STD-810F drop test. The MIL-STD-810 test addresses a broad range of environmental conditions to generate confidence in the overall durability of a system design. With the USB cable cord tucking into the slit that goes around the side of the HDD, the SH93 is beautifully designed with a finish paint in racing car yellow. It is easy for users to conveniently carry around massive documents without the fear of damaging files stored in the HDD in the incident of accidental drop or water spills."

End of trendy words
This colorful storage device comes in 4 capacities according to your flavour. 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, and 640GB choices will be on the shelves soon. There are so many brands incorporating external storage solutions, but this one knows how not to get lost in the tech jungle by being different. Well, it says in the PR material that you only have 30 minutes if you drop it in water or pool (hey watch out, it must be at most 1meters deep). SRP is yet not known. For those looking for this one or any other A-Data product, may follow this link.

Time is ticking for virus hunters: MSE on the rise

2009-10-06T13:34:00.000+03:00

Microsoft's last entry to software market threatens anti-virus makers. Microsoft Security Essentials promises hassle free surfing,

(currently website is available only to US and Canada. Rest of the world can still get the install files through direct download links from Microsoft) while keeping consumer's butget free from at least one cost: Anti-virus (trojan, malware and spyware) watch.

Will Microsoft Security Essentials hit the right target? It's not easy to decide before having real new virus deals out there. Till then please feel free to go and get your copy according to your needs:
Windows XP: mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-xp.exe
Windows Vista&7 32: mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-vista.exe
Windows Vista&7 64: mssefullinstall-amd64fre-en-us-vista.exe

Hell yes, you need to validate MSE prior to installing