[Update: scam] India’s 10$ laptop one step closer to the masses

BIG SCAM from India (nothing resembling a laptop)

Remmember the initial rumour about an OLPC competitor that could put XO to shame? Some more good news surfaced on indiatimes.com. The 10$ laptop, which had to resemble somewhere the double price Negroponte’s 100$ laptop got to, actually costs $20, with efforts ongoing to get to the $10 target and is to be revealed in Tirupati

new-concept digital presentation tool: Prezi, the zooming map prezentation

Zoomable presentation interface

I haven’t seen any improvement in the concept of software presentation tools for a very long time and this one got me surprised.

Even similar concepts exist like mind mapping user interfaces, zoomable presentation tools like this seem so natural and simple to understand and use.

Pluto home server does it all

There’s been a lot of Buzz lately on the LMCE (Linux Media Center) and as I am very interested in such home appliance (see my other articles on the issue here and here) I did some research and found out that the LMCE, which is an application that installs ontop of Ubuntu linux (for now) and wraps itself around different open-source projects to offer a complete media center solution, uses Pluto as it’s ground. Actually

Free CAD tools for the designer savvy: alternatives

It’s a pity amateur designers that love to design mechanical or industrial stuff don’t really have a tool to rely upon for their personal use. Or students don’t really have many options when it comes to a fully functional CAD software. They always have to pay for a software that they want to learn so future employers buy new licenses of the software for them to work on and it’s a shame, really.

10$ laptop hope comes from India

After an article where I was writing about the aprox. $7000 compressed air- fuelled car, India is going to make the rest of the world a new surprise especially when you think of all the efforts Nicholas Negroponte put into his OLPC project.

Ring! Ring! House delivery!

Bell Travers Willson Architects have taken the house building to a level few have dared to dream. Now you can have your very customized house delivered at the door. Ups, what door? You have just ordered a house to have a door. Perhaps a postal box ) .

After many technologies that have revolutionized the house building their Digital House provides “a new method of building houses harnessing digital design technology and low volume production methods.”

becoming homo-web2.0: web services that make a difference

I’ve written a few articles back about the threat the internet and this all exciting new technologies could be for people that aren’t strong enough to use it only for their needs, to solve certain problems but become addicted and can’t stop reading/playing/wasting time/etc. It’s the case for too many people and we don’t even realize it.

I started to realize I might overuse the computer and the internet when I got the computer eye strain and my eyes had a very bad condition of being able to focus the near objects. But that’s not the only problem. The curse of web 2.0 is that we get access to too much information and we must develop another sense, the sense of picking only the relevant things from the internet, the information that helps us fulfill certain needs and raise our knowledge in a profitable way (in money or knowledge or relaxation or whatever).

Performancing for WordPress update

It’s been some weeks since I’ve wrote an article on wordpress post editor versus performancing and after these weeks I can say that if you are not a blogger with many blogs on different blogging platforms you don’t get better with performancing on wordpress. I mostly use it now as a flickr uploader. The feature is the coolest thing as it tells you the URL to your picture on flickr and you just copy/paste it in wordpress editor. Very easy, you don’t have to go to flickr, make your way to the picture, right-click and copy the image location. But that’s all. The Tehnorati Tags are ok in performancing but I installed a greasemonkey script that adds a button in the code editor that does the tehnorati and site search tags pretty easy.

So, as a conclusion, my use of performancing remains a flickr uploader.

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Technorati Tags: WordPress, Performancing, Comparison, review
Site Search Tags: WordPress, Performancing, Comparison, review

Tags are NOT categories -Crits to WordPress.com-

Carthik Sharma, in the Tags are Not Categories article, points out a very frustrating WordPress.com confusion, stating loud and clear that categories are not the same with tags, and he’s got a good point.

Categories organize, hierarchically. Tags need not. Tags provide meta-information, Categories need not. Tags cross-connect, Categories do not.

Foxmarks first synchronizing job

I got this morning at the office and tried for the first time synchronizing the bookmarks on the Foxmarks server, which are the same as they were at home at the moment I’ve shut down the computer. It is so cool, in no time I was verified of having an account, signed in and voila, all my home computer bookmarks are there.

The tool is good, I like being able to have browser-based bookmarks instead of online-based bookmarks as it integrates better with the GUI and we’re so used with menus. The great thing about it is the synchronizing service Foxmarks offers which works behind the scenes so anybody is able to access his data on several computers. That’s what I call mobility.

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Technorati Tags: Foxmarks, synchronizing Bookmarks, Bookmarks
Site Search Tags: Foxmarks, Bookmarks, Bookmarks

Foxmarks – bookmark synchronization between multiple computers

Neat. I don’t actually use del.icio.us and I stumbled over this Firefox add-on which looks very nice. So all bookmarks I have on different computers from now on I will be able to access from everywhere. This really is something I wanted for a long time.

What I was really impressed with was the way the service

Online Feed Reader testing

I don’t know what you feel about mobility but when it comes to computers mobility is essential. Even if one has a laptop or pda or any other device that gets you online in notime my belief is that many things that we usually do on our computers will go online. Broadband will help this become a reality. Personally I strongly believe in “the online personal storage space” or “the online harddrive” where you can keep files and pictures that you don’t consider critically secret or personal because it could happen that the site goes off sometimes or could be hijacked but these things are less and less frequent especially with big boys playing in this area.

We already have an online email adress for sure, an e-mail photo-album, an e-mail bookmarks place and perhaps more.

I didn’t use any feed reader until

Blender 2.43 Released

One of my favourite 3D software freely available (as it is an open-source software), Blender has reached version 2.43. Even if there’s nothing much I can do in this – capable otherwise – 3D software (see Elephant Dream project), I have it in my view for some time and it comes closer with each release to the commercial 3D giants. Perhaps not the same thing but more and more 3D graphics and animation studios adopt this open-source tool and integrate it in their workflow.

drawing software that gets your job done

Usually we use software to solve real life problems. When we plan anything it’s best to be able to visualize it before really do it as this spares you of the frustration of changing your mind or getting things wrong because the model in your head wasn’t that clear as the 3D piece on the computer screen.

I am myself driven by “the best performance for the price” way of living and if it’s free and good that’s even better. That’s why I love open-source when it comes of computers. That’s why ‘ve choosen WordPress CMS for my blog here. That’s why I use Linux as much as possible to solve my problems. That’s why when it comes of making drawings I usually rely on tools like Gimp, Inkscape and Blender3D.

Last night I found the resources to take a better look at Google’s SketchUp

a home and a computer

For a while I must admit that I spend more time in front of my computer than anywhere else in my home (excepting sleeping:P). Actually I got at the conclusion that I pay for cable TV almost for nothing. I started wondering why is that and I realized that when I go home I usually can’t wait to turn on the computer and lay in bed, perhaps listen to some music, have a cocktail (usually non-alcoholic), start IM-ing with friends, perhaps Skype and check for news.

I would say that the computer and the internet offer us about half the confort