Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Rock, sled, sit, spin, imagine! Meant to stimulate activity and creativity, these wonderfully designed shells made of high density polyethylene can handle even the most rambunctious kids. Take it to the park, the beach, the playroom or the living room - these babies can handle anything and go anywhere. Available in vibrant blue, green or red. Winner of the Swiss Federal Award for Design (2001), Dr. Toy Best Active Products Award (2002), and the ID Magazine Design Distinction Award (2002) and has been included in museum exhibitions. Each color sold separately.

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Reading will never be the same with this entertaining book and toy set. In this simple and smart book Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, author Mo Willems uses a pigeon to capture the thin line between negotiation and tantrum talents. The book is illustrated in child-like drawings and the easy language allows for a two-way conversation between Pigeon and child to take place as he or she responds to the bird’s requests. Your child will love squeezing Pigeon and hearing him squawk “Let me drive the bus!” while you read the same line in the book. Pigeon is filled with beans and covered in soft chenille with embroidered eyes, and velour feet and legs. The author lends his own voice for Pigeon. A wonderful, entertaining lesson for children to see unfold.
Awarded a 2004 Caldecott Honor. Sold as a set.

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Do you look to the heavens for decorating inspiration? Then this Antique Tiller Sculpture is just the piece your home needs. A celestial sculpture hand carved out of antique sugarcane presses by artisans in Chiang Mai of northern Thailand is not just a wonderful conversation starter, but a rustic and attractive accent. In its past life, the hardwood for these stars was rolled across sugar cane to squeeze out the juices. A great addition to your table, countertop or mantel. Handmade in Thailand.

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Bring digital beauty to your dining room with this transparent red acrylic fruit bowl. The entire structure is formed from crisscrossing pieces of laser-cut acrylic that interlock to form a gently sloping bowl form. This tabletop bowl’s modern lines will contrast strikingly with your fresh fruit, and is also a perfect home for your high-tech objects like cell phones and mp3 players.

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Le rétro est au top

Original post by Benjamin Gauthey

The Palm Foleo is a mobile companion for Treos, turns on and off instantly, and runs on Linux. The Foleo has a large screen and full size keyboard to view and edit email and office documents. What’s cool about this "mobile companion" device, which Palm claims is the first of its kind, is that edits made on Foleo automatically are reflected on its paired smartphone and vice-versa (via Bluetooth).

It has a battery life of up to 5 hours and accesses the Internet through a built in WiFi radio or through the smartphone’s radio. Palm also says the device is designed for use with Treo’s that have the Palm OS or Windows Mobile, but most Windows Mobile based smartphones should also work. In fact, Palm is keeping the Foleo open to developers - Palm hopes to repeat the success of the Palm PDA and Treo smartphones - both of which developed huge followings in their respective developer community.

The Foleo weights around 2 lbs and features a 10" screen. U.S. availability for Foleo begins this summer with pricing expected to be $499 after an introductory $100 rebate. Will you buy one to add to your gadget repertoire or will you save your money and buy an Apple iPhone? I wonder since it’s running on Linux if the Foleo will run the Linux Skype client or some other VoIP client?

Hat tip to Evan at ComputerWorld.

Treocentral has more.

Finally, check out the video from the Palm Founder below.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

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Original post by Ryan

Microsoft dropped a bombshell with their new Microsoft Surface touchscreen computer that is a touchscreen coffee table with "eyes" that can see what is placed on it blending the virtual and real worlds together. Microsoft thinks this technology developed under the top-secret codename ‘Milan’ will change the world and be used as a coffee table replacement in living rooms and family rooms. According to Popular Mechanics, here’s how the screen works… A diffuser turns the Surface’s acrylic tabletop into a large horizontal "multitouch" screen, capable of processing multiple inputs from multiple users. The Surface can also recognize objects by their shapes or by reading coded "domino" tags (i.e. RFID). Like Superman, Microsoft Surface even has XRay vision. Ok, I lied, it’s infrared vision, a different end of the electromagnetic spectrum, but it could have Xray vision, perfect for seeing through clothes or to view the other poker player’s hand - Xray radiation be damned! This table this screen kind of reminds me of those old tabletop video games you’d find in bars and pizza parlors.

In any event, the infrared "machine vision" uses an 850-nanometer-wavelength LED light source aimed at the Surface screen. When objects touch the surface, the light reflects back and is picked up by multiple infrared cameras with a max resolution of 1280 x 960. Microsoft demo’ed the ability to take a digital photo, place the digital camera on the surface and the photo was instantly transferred to the Surface. This "surface computing" as it is called, can utilize a blend of wireless protocols, special machine-readable tags and shape recognition via the infrared cameras to merge the real and the virtual world. Microsoft’s Milan team refers this as "blended reality."

Simply by embedding any variety of wireless transceivers, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, etc. it can sync instantly with any device that touches its surface. I wonder how long before Microsoft or a 3rd party develops some "virtual world" games for Microsoft Surface. It could also be used as an educational tool for youngsters. For instance, the table could say something like "Place the yellow triangle on the table" and then determine if the child correctly performed this task. I do have some skepticism that this will pass the WAF (wife acceptance factor). You really think she’ll want to swap out a nice wooden coffee table that coordinates with the rest of the room with some high-tech coffee table gadget? What about the power cord that will now snake across the floor unless you professionally install it under the rug? Nevertheless, all gadget lovers will salivate over this new piece of high-tech furniture gadgetry - including me. To quote Butthead, this is the coolest thing I have ever seen!

Check out the video demo from Popular Mechanics:

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Original post by Ryan

Tout en vidéo par Larry
ici.

Original post by Benjamin Gauthey

Arcosoft Inc., developer of VoIP call recording software, today announced the release of VONaLink DialBridge. . Services exist to enable someone to call a local gateway number, enter the destination number, and then be connected at cheaper rates than dialing directly. DialBridge is similar, except that the DialBridge software runs on your cpmputer so that your VoIP service provider can be leverages for low-cost long distance VoIP.

My first thought was that this solution must be hardware-based, since you need PSTN connectivity for the incoming call to the PC. I figured it was some sort of ATA network device, a USB gadget with FXO port, or perhaps it leverages a voice modem (though unlikely). I was surprised to learn this is a a 100% software-based solution. It leverages your VoIP softphone client for both inbound (your inbound cell phone call) and outbound connectivity (the number you are dialing). Tested VoIP providers include Vonage and Callcentric. I’m not sure exactly how it "hooks" into these softphone clients and tells them to initiate an outbound call as well as tells it to conference the call with your inbound cell phone call. Perhaps it’s a simple pre-programed scripting & macro language that sends mouse clicks and keystrokes to the softphone. I’ll have to download it and check it out.

In any event, caller authentication is by caller ID or password. Optionally, DialBridge can do a callback so that instead of a long-distance outgoing call from a cell phone, the call is turned into an incoming call, allowing the unlimited incoming minutes of a cell phone plan to be used.

DialBridge runs on Windows Vista, XP Pro, 2003, and 2000. Priced at $29 USD, DialBridge is available now for evaluation download.

Update:
It’s much simpler than I thought. Since DialBridge is a softphone, you simply enter your SIP credentials in DialBridge and it connects to your SIP provider.

It is simply a SIP call from the PC to a SIP-based ITSP, such as Vonage. The software basically acts as a SIP relay. The software takes an inbound SIP PSTN call (to your Vonage DID) and then initiates an outbound call though Vonage’s SIP server.

I assume for the 1st leg of the call when you dial the PC the software plays a prompt, i.e. "Enter phone number to dial" and then the software passes these DTMF digits to Vonage’s SIP server (or another ITSP) and dials the 2nd leg. The software must mux the audio from both legs together. I have an email out to Arcosoft/Vonalink to ask if my assumptions are correct.

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Original post by Ryan

After bashing Google Blog Search (saying it sucks) just 3 days ago, a Google engineer came across my blog article and emailed me. He stated that Google corrected a bug with their back-end and that TMCNet’s blogs were back in Google Blog Search. Kudos to Google for not only responding so quickly but for proactively contacting me since I had difficulty reaching Google.

The funny thing is that he emailed my old email address (tkeating @ tmcnet . com) which should have bounced back to him as System Undeliverable. However, I forgot my Google Blogger password, which was registered to my old email address. So I temporarily added my old email address back into our Active Directory server so I could receive the password recovery email. Just minutes later I got an email from the Google engineer regarding my Google Blog Search issues. Had he sent it just a few minutes later, it would have bounced back since I disabled this email account again and I would have had no idea TMCNet blogs were back in Google Blog Search. What are the odds? Maybe I should play Powerball this weekend.

I’m happy that TMC’s blogs are back in, but I still wish Google Blog Search had some of the more advanced functionality like Technorati has, such as a tag searching, Authority ranking, etc. Of course, rumors abound about Google acquiring Technorati, so they could acquire their technology.

Although if Google did acquire Technorati, it could make Google Blog Search redundant. That’s what happened with Yahoo! when they shut down Yahoo! Photos in favor of Flickr whom they acquired. Regardless of what happens, I do like Google’s new universal search which integrates news, blogs, web search results, and video into the main Google search engine.

Finally, if curious, here’s the email Google sent me:

Tom,
I’m an engineer at Google, and I work on Google blog search. I read your post about the problems with blog.tmcnet.com. For starters, I wanted to let you know that we fixed a bug and all of the tmcnet.com blogs should be in the index again. A query for your blog– blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=blogurl%3Ablog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating
–shows about 1200 posts dating back to mid-2005.

I’m sorry you had so much trouble reaching us. The engineering team usually hears about user reports like the one you describe, but I don’t recall hearing about your complaint. I’ll check with the user support team and see what we can do to be more responsive in the future.

It looks like the root cause of the problem was a bug in our backend.
We attempt to distinguish between blogs and non-blogs. We do crawl the feeds for site’s like TMCnet’s Alternative Power magazine or the New York Times. It looks like the blogs of TMCnet got put in the same bin as the non-blogs. In short, we weren’t serving your blog because we thought it wasn’t a blog. Distinguishing between feeds from blogs and non-blogs is big challenge and we’re continuing to improve here.

I hope you have better luck with Blog Search in the future, and let me know if you run into other problems.

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Comments on this Entry:

(Sameer on
May 25, 2007 1:12 PM)

Kudos to Google and especially to the engineer for this sort of responsiveness. Its very refreshing to a large org manage such a high level of interactivity with its users. We hear a lot about how smaller companies are great at engaging with users - looks like Google has not lost its edge as well.

Sameer

(Gautam Chhabra on
May 27, 2007 5:11 AM)

This proves there are humans too at the other end of internet companies. This has raised a ray of hope among all of us that there is a chance that our plea wont go waste every time!!

Original post by Ryan

According to the Spyware Guide, a Skype worm is in the wild that not only targets your Skype contacts, it also checks the registry for programs like AIM, Trillian, Yahoo! Messenger, Miranda and  ICQ and then attempts to send the infection via these other IM/VoIP clients. According to the Spyware Guide, "it uses the tried and tested methods employed by similar infections over the past few months, with the ultimate payload being the Stration Worm." This "cross-breed" worm that goes across multiple popular IM networks is certainly an alarming trend. I should point out that now that Skype features "pay by Skype" (Paypal integration), this gives virus/trojan writers yet another area to target to try and surreptitiously steal funds from their victims.

Here’s a screenshot demonstrating the infection being sent to an MSN Messenger client. The Spyware Guide blacked out certain sections for privacy:

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Original post by Ryan

American Idol fans that didn’t watch the finale live are shocked to learn their TIVos didn’t record the last 6 minutes of last night’s American Idol finale. The finale ran a bit long - 10 minutes according to my calculation, but some TiVo users do pad in a little extra time at the end which might account for the slight discrepancy (6 min vs. 10 min).

Apparently not enough "padding time", since a few of my fellow co-workers are peeved they didn’t get to see Jordin Sparks get the nod over Blake Lewis. Yes TiVo users, you missed out on Jordin Sparks emotional and tearful acceptance and her final song on the show. At least one American Idol fan was instead watching the popular Lost TV series and set American Idol to record.

Moral of the story: Always watch live TV shows since there is a chance it could go long and set pre-recorded TV programs to record on your TiVo.

Well, if you missed the final minutes of the finale, you can click here and download the finale from The Pirate Bay using a Bittorent client.

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Comments on this Entry:

(Aswath Rao on
May 24, 2007 9:56 AM)

TiVO users pay a monthly fee for the TV Guide service. So one would think that as part of that service, TiVO will in real-time adjust the TV Guide information, which would in turn control the recording. In any event, this problem will be more acute for sports fans.

(Alberto on
May 24, 2007 10:17 AM)

Good example of the potentialty of collaborative P2P platforms

(Tom Keating on
May 24, 2007 10:53 AM)

I think real-time updating is difficult, since most TiVos use the PSTN line to update the guide data. The live American Idol show themselves probably didn’t know they were going to go long.

Some TiVos do use an Internet connection for updating the guide. But even that is flawed, since TiVo would need to simultaneously update millions of TiVos once they realized the American Idol show was going long. Also, I think each TiVo unit pulls the guide data at very long intervals.

The real solution is IPTV, since they can encode the show data real-time into the stream. Thus, you will know exactly when each show ends. Maybe they’ll even encode when commercial breaks are, so you can instantly fast-forward them?

(Note: I believe some cable companies do encode commercial breaks into their video stream for their own tracking - wasn’t mean for their customers to FFW through them)

(acocddy on
May 28, 2007 2:00 AM)

Maybe they’ll even encode when commercial breaks are, so you can instantly fast-forward them?

Original post by Ryan

Leonardo may be bad at being a monster, but you will find that he is very good at being a friend. Your child will love cuddling with this huggable monster, while you read Mo Willem’s Leonardo the Terrible Monster together. Your child will delight in Willem’s spirited, child-like illustrations. Each hardcover book comes with a your very own Leonardo the monster toy. He has a soft chenille bean-filled body and a fabric pocket, so you can also use him as a puppet. A wonderful story about discovering what you are best at and making friends. Sold as a set.

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This floppy bunny toy is the perfect companion for your child and Mo Willems’ cautionary tale. Knuffle Bunny is an adorable and hilarious account of a how baby Trixie’s stuffed bunny gets lost at the neighborhood laundromat and causes the whole family to go on a frantic bunny-hunt. In Knuffle Bunny, Willems combines beautiful black and white photos of Brooklyn, New York with his childlike and spirited illustrations. This hardcover book will become a childhood favorite, and so will the replica of baby Trixie’s Knuffle Bunny. This cute bunny has embroidered eyes, a velvet nose, a luxurious soft velour bean-filled body, ears lined with shiny velvet and a chenille tail. You’ll never want to lose this Knuffle Bunny! Sold as a set.

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In today’s world, being environmentally conscious is not just important, but it makes for cutting-edge style. This urban-chic tool bag is the perfect example - it’s made of reclaimed vinyl billboards. Yes, those giant roadside advertisements find new life in a miniature, functional work of art. The PVC vinyl is durable and waterproof, and each bag is a unique collage of colors and graphics taken from billboards. This tool bag has seven smaller pockets on the outside, one large outside pocket and a large open interior to hold all of your tools and home improvement necessities. Criss-cross handles make it easy to tote around, and there is even an elastic strap on the outside to keep taller tools from falling out of their pockets. The billboard tool bag is a contemporary update on the traditionally metal or plastic tool boxes, and is definitely much cooler and more useful than anything you’ll find on grandpa’s rusty old tool bench.

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