The Blog

Yes, all you need to set up a multi-touch sensor is a web camera and the Touchless SDK created by Mike Wasserman available from CodePlex.
The link: http://www.codeplex.com/touchless

The demo application is simple to use, all you need to do is download it, and run it (obviously) and set up some markers. To set up a marker, hold the object you want to use in front of the camera (pointers should be contrasting with the background) and click ‘add marker’ then you need to click on the middle of the point and drag outwards, creating a circle around the marker. Now whenever you move that object around the screen a black box will follow it around. There are a couple of demo games to try out in the demo tab (only accessible once you add a marker)

Gordon Freeman was spotted yesterday fine tuning the Hadron Collider particle accelerator in an effort to yet again save the world.

For those who don’t know Gordon is (From the game Half-Life) ”a theoretical physicist working at the fictional Black Mesa Research Facility, Gordon is involved in an experiment which accidentally opens an interdimensional portal, releasing confused, hostile beings into the complex”. 

The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, went online yesterday in Geneva. Estimated to cost between $4.5-9 billion US, some critics have called the project dangerous, with the European Court for Human Rights even facing a lawsuit filed by citizens fearing the creation of an Earth-destroying  black hole.

I’m glad we have Gordon Freeman overseeing the project. He will be ready for anything…. (I hope)

Intel is expected to announce the “Dunnington” processor later this month, the first six-core processor and last of its Penryn-class chips. 

Intel on September 15 is expected to roll out the Intel Xeon 7400 series Dunnington processor targeted at the server market, the final member of the “Penryn” family of processors, according to sources at server vendors. Penryn will be followed by the Nehalem microarchitecture, due to appear initially as the Core i7 processor in the fourth quarter.

Dunnington is also one of the first Intel chips to have a monolithic design (Nehalem will too). In other words, all six cores will be on one piece of silicon. To date, for any processor having more than two cores, Intel has put two separate pieces of silicon–referred to as die–inside of one chip package. 

See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10032313-64.html

Taking a quick look at Google Chrome this morning, it seems like a willing browser… it has all the required features of a modern browser and probably the most noticeable one is its speed. So I took a look into it and it appears that every tab runs as its own process…. Sounds inefficient? Not really, the memory management is very good, in other browsers (as explained here) when you close a tab not all its resources are closed up properly, which over time leads to excess memory usage. The difference? Well as you open a new tab a new process is started and when you close it the entire process gets destroyed – no memory overhead. Rather than the conventional UI with your tabs below the toolbars, Google Chrome has than above, meaning that each tab process has its own URL box and toolbars – what happens on one tab stays on the tab, so fewer resources required to be passed around. Not only is it a URL box, as you type into it, it brings up top search results for what you are typing so it acts as a search box too. If any tab freezes for some reason instead of the while browser locking up only that tab does, and in the tab manager you can then close it. With Chrome there is NO chance EVER of getting a popup – obviously that means ones you want wont come up either, but you can allow them through.

Google is launching an open source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser is designed to be lightweight and fast, and to cope with the next generation of web applications that rely on graphics and multimedia. Called Chrome, it will launch as a beta for Windows machines in 100 countries, with Mac and Linux versions to come.

UPDATE: The beta has been released: http://www.google.com/chrome/

Today I released a new update for BPL.Net, the changes are as follows:

• Added about window (Help>About).
• Fixed bug with the code editor where it does not correctly highlight the text when the text is first set.
• Fixed another bug with the code editor where if you used the auto-complete list and pressed Ctrl+Space again straight away, the program would crash.
• Changed the colours for the control select list.
• Changed the colours in the designer to match those of Visual Studio.

Download: Here

Keep in mind that this is only a preview of what this program will be in future.

What does the next version of Windows need…?

• Gaming Mode… I’m liking that idea.
• Standards Compliant Browser…. This is a MUST!
• Inbuilt CD/DVD Burning… Would be nice.

The full list over at Gadget Zone

What do you use Windows for…?

Air traffic control radar? No, how about to power British nuclear submarines? No….? How about controlling medical equipment? I’m sure you don’t use Windows for any of these uses, but someone does!

Top 10 worst uses for Windows
And Top 10 more worst uses for Windows.

Well, the other day I bought myself a copy of Office 2007.

At first it is very different compared to what I am used to, especially the ribbon menu. The ribbon menu replaces all the toolbars that you used to have in to something similar to a tab strip, with each tab having different categories (see in the picture, you have the ‘tab pages’ - Home, Insert, Page….. and in the home page you have a clipboard category, font, then it goes on to paragraph, styles….).
Next main thing is the different themes. In older versions, all the colors have been the OS colors, but not they completely render the entire form themselves. There are 3 different themes to choose from, the Default Blue - a nice soft blue theme, Silver - I think this is a rather flat gray theme, not all that nice, and Black (in the screenshot) - Probably the nicest looking theme, would fit in with Vista nicely I think.
As the ribbon strip replaces off your toolbars, you have no file, or edit menus (or others) either, as you may see, next to the Office logo there is a save and undo/redo button, but your main file menu appears when you press the logo, and it gives options to print, save (as), open…….

TiVo has arrived on the Australian market.

TiVo uses the standard HD channels, but has multiple tuners(I think 4), so you can watch/record multiple shows. It has an inbuilt hard drive (Can’t remember the size). When you connect it to the net you can search and download shows to watch, and trys to match your viewing habits and ustomatically records similar shows (I wonder how well that works). You can even schedule a recording from somewhere else over the net.

Check out the website for more!