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All you need is an eyelid to play your favourite iPod tune…Yes, there’s a new Japanese remote control that actually works with the blink of an eye.

What happens is, when the person winks, sensors clipped to him (via Headphones or glasses) detect the move and then generate a electric signal and uses them to play/stop/rewind/skip your iPod. Kazuhiro Taniguchi of Osaka University’s Graduate School of Engineering Science, who developed the “KomeKami Switch” or “Temple Switch”, said.

- When you wink Strongly for 1 second with one eye, it will rewind!
- Blink the other eye strongly to skip to the next song.
- Close both eyes to pause and play.

When asked if someone accidentally blinks, what will happen? will it malfunction or something?

“It doesn’t happen at all. This system doesn’t malfunction even if the user eats, talks, walks and runs,” Taniguchi wrote, saying there were differences in movement between an accidental and an intentional blink or wink.

“The computer can judge the difference of those signals,” he added — even if other people around you may be left wondering what message your eyes are sending.

DjFlush needs to buy one and I wish he gets a flu after that (Just to test the thing) - Joking

Lately there was a news circulating the Internet stating that Microsoft shall soon be unveiling its new version of MSN Toolbar beta (Powered by Silverlight).



Well here it is! LiveSide is reporting that MSN Toolbar beta is now available to users in its first phase of testing. The new beta version will be available to only some Microsoft Connect users so if you want to get your hands on the new MSN Toolbar beta, Signup now.

The cool thing is that the MSN Toolbar beta is powered by Silverlight (the counter-technology of Adobe Flash by Microsoft) however the toolbar is not good looking at all (I did not want to use the word “Ugly”) . Honestly if you come to think of it, how did Microsoft even deem that a black glossy style would be liked by Windows users who usually are accustomed to the white and sky blue colors.

The other big question is about Windows Live Toolbar, is Microsoft planning to dump it? or is Microsoft going to continue its development?

When it comes to interactive mobile applications and an exciting mobile experience, Nokia phones are the best because of their powerful back-end operating system — Symbian OS.

Nokia never fails to surprise its users and always comes up with a new technology that becomes the corner stone for the future.

Likewise, Nokia has just recently announced through a press release that it is soon going to introduce Microsoft Silverlight for Nokia S60 and S40 Symbian powered devices. This will of course open a new gateway for developers allowing them to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.


Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. It is much like Adobe Flash but with a different name and a different company on its back.

Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keynote at Microsoft’s MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees.

Finally, the much awaited browser by Microsoft — Internet Explorer 8 is finally available for download. This is the beta 1 release and I really cannot thank Microsoft enough for making the download available for the public instead of just pushing it to Microsoft Connect users only.



Of course there are new exciting features but the look most closely resembles to that of Internet Explorer 7. It is too early too say this already but it looks more like a major IE 7 update than a whole new browser itself but the thing to remember is that it is still the beta release, not the final.

Below is a list of new features in IE 8.

Activities

Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.


Web Slices

WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.


Favorites Bar

In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.


Automatic Crash Recovery

Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) is a feature of Windows Internet Explorer 8 that can help to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging. The ACR feature takes advantage of the Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer feature to provide new crash recovery capabilities, such as tab recovery, which will minimize interruptions to users’ browsing sessions.


Improved Phishing Filter

Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site. Phishing sites spoof a trusted legitimate site, with the goal of stealing the user’s personal or financial information. For Internet Explorer 8, we are building on the success of the Phishing Filter with a more comprehensive feature called the “Safety Filter”


Download and Install Internet Explorer 8

Download and install Internet Explorer 8 using the following links:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista x64 Edition
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 Edition and Windows XP SP2 Pro x64 Edition

Congratulations to Windows Vista for completing its one year journey in the technology market.

I know it has been a really tough year for Windows Vista and Microsoft as during the whole year Vista has been the subject of some major criticism and also attracted a lot of negative reviews but that certainly does not stop Microsoft from imposing this new OS on us even if we are not yet ready to accept and use it.

Lets take a deep review of Vista’s one year journey discussing the good and the negative points:

Delays and Repulsive Requirements

Windows Vista is famous for being the only Windows OS to be delayed the most times ever. However even after we got to see the final version of Vista on January 30 2007, the system requirements of the OS were so high that most of the people decided not to switch to it (Of course why would people want to buy a new PC just to try a new operating system?)

Worst Product of 2007

CNET and PC World even went to the extent of declaring Windows Vista as the worst product of 2007. This is sad because even I think that Windows Vista is not such a bad product after all. Perhaps?

100 Million Copies Sold

This is definitely a plus achievement for Microsoft. 100 million copies of Windows Vista have been sold to date even after the high system specification problems that caused users not to buy Vista.

Windows XP: Biggest Threat

This is now a funny part that the biggest threat to Windows Vista was not some other operating system like Leopard OSX or Ubuntu rather it was its own predecessor Windows XP.

Windows Vista: Threat to XP

As we all know that what goes around comes around so we have a kind of serious situation in this case. Microsoft is planning to cut the production and sales of Windows XP by June of this year 2008. This is extremely shocking for all of the Windows XP fans out there. If you think that Microsoft should increase the XP timeline then sign for your petition at SaveXP.

I think that sums it up quite well. If I forgot to share any important news about Windows Vista that took place in 2007 please share it with me in the comments.

Meanwhile just relax and listen to Wow is now - Windows Vista Promotional Song sung by Sunidhi Chauhan from India.

Another great step by Google as they introduced new features to Google Mobile, as it says “Access Google from anywhere, anytime” and it looks like we will all be a googaholic very soon.

According to Google, this new search service, mobile phone users will get amazing results for what they’re looking for. I thought, how will that be…well, accordingly these search results will not only be Web results, Instead, Google will search through the whole web, mobile web, news articles, local business listings, and image index to get the information needed and then provide the most relevant results.

For example, if you search for say…a Keyboard…it will provide links to webpages plus Images of that keyboard as well. Another thing I must mention is that Google Mobile Services varies…some services are provided more or less in different countries…but I don’t think that will be a big problem.

How to search?

Go to http://mobile.google.com on your mobile device’s web browser.


And click on any of the links provided to start using Google services on your device.




and you’re done

Source: Google Mobile

Finally after much anticipation, the Windows Product Management team at Windows Vista Blog has announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing (RTM) and will be available in March in five set of languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese).

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 intends to fix all bugs and issues that were reported and identified by Vista customers over the last year.

Vista Service Pack 1 claims to bring great progress in performance, reliability and compatibility. 2007 has been a great year for Windows Vista in terms of application development and device compatibility according to the Windows Vista Blog. Now over 78,000 devices and components are supported by Windows Update and as a result over 100 million licensed copies of Windows Vista have been sold.

According to the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 availability time line, it will be released to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com somewhere in mid-march. Customers who visit Windows Update will be able to choose to install Service Pack 1.

I hope with this great new news Microsoft will be able to reform the image of Vista as a good and useful product.