"Gestris" - Gaming with Gestures

Intel’s Pittsburgh Research Lab opened its doors this week for a tour of the fascinating exploratory research they’re doing on future technologies including a natural gesture interface for games built as a novel application of SLIPstream parallelization techniques.

The Pittsburgh lab demonstrated this interface with a head-to-head Tetris-style game, where the players use whole body gestures to control the motion of their pieces.

Unlike typical approaches to gesture detection that employ props, special clothing/markers (motion capture systems) or a controlled environment such as a blue screen), the Intel approach is designed to work in everyday environments and does not require users to be segmented from the background. Although the technique is computationally expensive, the researchers have achieved interactive speeds by parallelizing the vision algorithm across a cluster of machines in a manner that minimizes latency.

NEHALEM - Intel's Next Generation Processor

Nehalem is the codename for an Intel processor microarchitecture, successor to the Core microarchitecture. The first processor released with the Nehalem architecture is the desktop Core i7, to be released in Q4 2008. Server and mobile Nehalem-based processors will follow in 2009 and 2010.

Initial Nehalem processors use the same 45 nm manufacturing methods as Penryn. A working system with two Nehalem processors was shown at Intel Developer Forum Fall 2007, and a large number of Nehalem systems were shown at Computex in June 2008.

The architecture is named after the Nehalem River in Northwest Oregon, which is in turn named after the Nehalem Native American tribe in Oregon.

A Platform for the Next Technology Revolution

In an e-mail to customers, Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, shares information about new technologies from Microsoft that will open the door to a new generation of solutions that extend from the desktop to the mobile phone, the mobile media player, the car, the TV, and beyond.

During the past decade, a dramatic transformation in the world of information technology has been taking shape. It’s a transformation that will change the way we experience the world and share our experiences with others. It’s a transformation in which the barriers between technologies will fall away so we can connect to people and information no matter where we are. It’s a transformation where new innovations will shorten the path from inspiration to accomplishment.

Many of the components of this transformation are already in place. Some have received a great deal of attention. “Cloud computing” that connects people to vast amounts of storage and computing power in massive datacenters is one example. Social networking sites that have changed the way people connect with family and friends is another.

Other components are so much a part of the inevitable march of progress that we take them for granted as soon as we start to use them: cell phones that double as digital cameras, large flat-screen PC monitors and HD TV screens, and hands-free digital car entertainment and navigation systems, to name just a few.

What’s missing is the ability to connect these components in a seamless continuum of information, communication, and computing that isn’t bounded by device or location.

Today, some things that our intuition says should be simple still remain difficult, if not impossible.

Why can’t we easily access the documents we create at work on our home PCs?

Why isn’t all of the information that customers share with us available instantly in a single application?

Why can’t we create calendars that automatically merge our schedules at work and home?

Pl. visit http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2008/10-28nexttechrevolution.mspx to read the full text of the interview.

CONVERT YOUR COMPUTER INTO A VIRTUAL TELESCOPE

Experience WorldWide Telescope.

Immerse yourself in a seamless beautiful environment.

WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelengths: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope.

WWT is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and powerful user interface.

Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before.

Do visit www.worldwidetelescope.org to know more about it and experience the Universe.

Bon Voyage !

Microsoft unveils the pre-beta release of Windows7

Windows7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the next version of Microsoft Windows and the successor to Windows Vista.

Microsoft has stated that it is "scoping Windows7 development to a three-year timeframe", and that "the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar." According to Mike Nash, Microsoft’s vice-president of Windows product management, “The decision to use the name Windows7 is about simplicity. Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore Windows7 just makes sense.”

There have been far more than 7 releases of Windows. In saying "this is the seventh release of Windows"; it is the versions built on the NT kernel being counted.

Current Trends : CD >> DVD >> BD ( BLUE RAY DISK)

Blu-ray Disc is a next-generation, optical disc format that enables the ultimate high-def entertainment experience. The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue-violet laser used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser. Blu-ray Disc offers up to 5X the capacity of today’s DVDs.

Blu-ray Disc provides these key features and advantages:

• Largest capacity available anywhere (25 GB single layer/50 GB dual layer).
• Maximum picture resolution. Blu-ray Disc delivers full 1080p* video resolution to provide pristine picture quality.
• Best audio possible. Blu-ray Disc provides as many as 7.1 channels of native, uncompressed surround sound for crystal-clear audio entertainment.
• Enhanced interactivity. Enjoy such capabilities as seamless menu navigation, exciting, new bonus features, and network/Internet connectivity.
• Backward compatibility**. Blu-ray Disc players enable you to continue to view and enjoy your existing DVD libraries.
• Disc robustness. Breakthroughs in hard-coating technologies enable Blu-ray Disc to offer the strongest resistance to scratches and fingerprints.

PHISHING

Phishing is a common form of Internet piracy.

The term is a variant of fishing, and alludes to baits used to "catch" financial information and passwords.

It is used to steal the personal and confidential information like bank account numbers, net banking passwords, credit or debit card numbers, personal identity details etc of customers. Later, the fraudsters may use the information for debiting money from the victim's account or use the victims debit/credit cards to make high value purchases resulting in huge bills or even worse, one could also become the victim of identity theft.

Phone Phishing (Vishing)

Not all phishing attacks require a fake website. Messages that claimed to be from a bank told users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts. Once the phone number (owned by the phisher, and provided by a Voice over IP service) was dialed, prompts told users to enter their account numbers and PIN. Vishing (voice phishing) sometimes uses fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from a trusted organization.

Do's and Don'ts:

● NEVER verify your account information/Login or Transaction Passwords/ Debit or Credit Card details through an e-mail.
● ALWAYS CHECK if the URL of the login page starts with the text ‘https://’ and is not ‘http:// ‘ The 's' stands for 'secured' & its presence is very important indicating that the Web Page uses secured encryption
● Login with your User ID and Login Password only after verifying the above security details
● You may provide personal details over phone/Internet only if you have initiated a call or session and only after you have duly verified and authenticated the other party.

What to do if you have accidentally revealed password/PIN/TIN etc:

If you feel that you have been phished or you have provided your personal information at a place you should not have, please carry out following immediately as a damage mitigation measure:
● Change your password immediately
● Check your account statement and ensure that it is correct in every respect
● Report any erroneous entries to Bank.