Sharp and clear font on your screen
Do you use an LCD monitor and the text looks pixelated and hazy?
You have an in-built help in Windows called “ClearType” which makes the fonts on LCD monitors sharper and clearer. In fact they will become razor-sharp and clearer than ever before on notebooks. No harm in trying it on CRT monitors, but there is no proven word about the performance enhancement on that kind of monitors yet.
ClearType is a feature of XP, which is turned off by default (and the suckers say it is ON in Vista, the fiasco!).
Let us assume you are yet to be sucked in by the Vista bug. Here’s how you get to turn on the ClearType. Right-click on the open desktop, choose Properties -> Appearance -> Effects. Check “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts,” and select “ClearType” from the drop-down list. Click OK and OK. You are done.
I understand that in Linux, it is called “subpixel smoothing”. FOSS aficionados may bear this out.
ClearType can be further tweaked by any of the following tools:-
- Microsofts’ Wizard
- Powertoy proggy for ClearType
- A free nifty utility called ClearTweak
Make your font easy on your eyes and enjoy!
Source: PCWorld
Wooden laptop PC
Fujitsu has come with a prototype of Laptop PC with its case manufactured from wood rather than the more traditional plastic or metal. It may usher in an era of environment-friendly notebooks.
Infoworld reports further:-
The laptop, which is only a prototype, uses cedar wood for the case and also makes use of bio-plastics for parts. Bio-plastics are plastics produced from renewable sources such as vegetable oil rather than petroleum used in traditional plastics.
Google adds Sites to its web-apps
You can’t contain an innovative bunch of kick-ass geeks at Google! Let the Micro$ of the world indulge in shenanigans to retain a semblance of control over the cyberworld. But Google will outsmart them by making things easy for the user - both lay and geeky - by offering light-weight web-based toolkit with multiple functionalities.
The latest addition to the arsenal is “Google Sites”, a powerful new tool for easily and collaboratively creating and editing Web sites. It is built around JotSpot, the wiki platform that Google acquired in October of 2006.
Google has aimed to make the Google Sites easy enough for a beginner yet feature-rich enough for a power user. For example, building a Google Site requires no HTML, according to the company: It’s “as easy as editing a document,” the company says. There’s also a “growing list” of page templates to get users started, including “Web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard, and list,” according to Google.
At the same time, Google Sites lets page creators easily insert content such as videos (from Youtube), docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows (from Picasaweb), and calendars. By integrating Google Sites with the other gems adorning its jewel box the user has a lot to play around with, thus making Google Sites a reliable online collaboration tool.
Here is a video by the developer:
YouTube - Watch - Google Sites Howto
And more info from the Google Sites page
Charming Burqa!
Technology can ultimately beat the Talibanism!
Photo by Markus Kison
“CharmingBurka” is a project by Markus Kison, at the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany.
Project description:
The Charming Burka deals with Freud’s idea that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. The Burka was chosen, because it is often perceived in the west as a symbol of repression. A digital layer was added so that women can decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually. The Burka sends an image, chosen by the wearer, via Bluetooth technology. Every person next to her can receive her picture via mobile phone and see the women’s self-determined identity. In the artists interpretation the virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the Charming Burka fulfills the desire of living a more western life, which some Muslim women have today.
Therefore the Burka is equipped with bluetooth antenna/micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.Although the “Charming Burka” is positioned in the context of religion, this project should be seen as a research towards the future possibilities of everyday clothing to own a digital layer and transmit additional information about its wearer. It questions which information people would choose to send. For example this might also be an image of their “Second Life” avatar.
A novel way to achieve self-expression breaking through the fundamentalist veil!
Web 2.0 for Dummies!
The machine is Us/ing Us!
YouTube - Watch - Kansas State University Video
Britain shuns Vista
According to an InfoWorld report, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) has instructed that British schools should not upgrade to Microsoft’s Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite. It also supported use of the international standard ODF (Open Document Format) for storing files, specifically avoiding Microsoft’s OOXML (Office Open XML) document format because of concerns about compatibility between different applications.
The BECTA report has made the following observation which is very significant:
We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit,
Let us wait and see as to how many countries will take the cue and see reason!
Hail Ubuntu!!
Nada nada nada
After my posting on “nothing” with the title, “There is more nothing than something”, I thought the good old nothing hasn’t got that many fans in this world, even though 81 people have read my post.
But I was wrong! There is actually more to nothing than being mere nothing. It is “NaDa”! Yes, the term “Nada” means “nothing” in Spanish (though the term is also used in Sanskrit to denote subtle aspects of musical sound. But we are not going to dwell on that!).
And “Nada” has become a hit in Cyberworld! Look at the Wikipedia explanation for “NaDa”:-
NaDa is a fake-satirical software that “does nothing, but does it very well.”
“NaDa does nothing for everybody”
NaDa is actually a useless and otherwise harmless empty file, one byte small (a newline), compressed and available for download from its site.
The site is designed to look like an actual professional programming company site, complete with users’ testimonials, legal disclaimers, advertisements, etc. The NaDa page actually belongs to the professional site of a graphic artist, Bernard Bélanger. The testimonials are written by “fans” who decided to mail him. The site has over a million visitors.
The NaDa website describes NaDa like this:-
NaDaâ„¢ is a new concept. A thought, really. It is very light : 1 byte. It doesn’t take long to fetch. It doesn’t take long to understand. It doesn’t disturb your habits nor does it makes you feel insecure. It is a reassuring piece of software that does nothing, and does it very well. That’s a lot !
Most products we see on the market want to increase our productivity, organize our screen joyfully or make wonders with our sound card, but NaDaâ„¢ does nothing. This is a revolutionary whole new approach, a concept far beyond what you usually expect from the software industry. Download it and forget it.
Spifftastic idea, what!!
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About Me
I am S.K!
Ok, what's the big deal, you may ask! But you may miss a good deal if you do not dwell deep into this web site, specially hand-crafted for you. But what about me, the person? Wait, I am not good at making things up. If you stumble upon a good-sounding résumé, please pass it on to me!
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