Archive

Archive for June, 2009

SoundSense: make the mobile phone to learn the user

21:15:49 June 27th, 2009 No comments

It has been a while that researchers have trying to make the mobile phones not to be just a communication tool but a smart device that can understand the holder’s behavior. Recently, researchers from Dartmouth College made a far step forward. They developed a tool that is able to determine the current “scene” by analyzing the sound picked up from the microphone of the mobile phone.

Google App Engine update with free quota decrease

18:37:35 June 22nd, 2009 1 comment

Google App Engine (GAE) is a cloud computing platform provided by Google. GAE allows users to create rich web applications using either Python or Java. Publicly released in Jul, 2008, there has been thousands of GAE applications online. The Google App Engine has been recently updated to version 1.2.3 with several new features along with, unfortunately, a major decrease of free quota.

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Customizing the Windows Explorer icon on the Windows 7 taskbar

16:11:38 June 19th, 2009 1 comment

The “quick launch” function on taskbar has been significantly improved in Windows 7. Popular programs can be “pinned” to the taskbar instead of being launched from an external “quick launch” bar. However, it is not easy to customize the appearance and function of the default “Windows Explorer” icon.

Format volume with /P switch to erase sensitive data

15:44:56 June 16th, 2009 No comments

Ever since Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced a new /P switch for the famous FORMAT command. The /P switch zeros each bit in the volume a certain number of times. This function is very useful when you have sensitive data (such as privacy or classified content) on the disk.

Georgia Tech develops new efficient cooling system for data centers

11:07:20 June 11th, 2009 1 comment

The electricity consumption of large data centers has always been a critical problem. A large data center may run as much power as big city. The data center operators is trying hard to reduce the pwoer consumption of the servers. In a different way, researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology has recently developed a new [...]

Towards the wireless network performance on fast vehicles

16:59:50 June 10th, 2009 No comments

Currently when accessing the Internet through wireless connections, such as using a netbook or cell phone, on a fast moving environment, the performance should be significantly limited. Recently researchers at Winlab, Rutgers University and NEC Laboratories have designed R2D2, a new system designed to fit this situation.

German started the fasterest computer in Europe

23:45:09 June 7th, 2009 No comments

The fastest computer so far in Europe, JUGENE, was unveiled in Gauss Center at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. JUGENE is also the first petaflop supercomputer in Europe, which can perform more than 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) mathematical operations per second…