Time Online reports that a Welsh company is developing a new lighting solution – light emitting wallpaper (and paint). Read more about this low power lighting option that should be on sale in 2012, here.
Archive for December, 2009
New OLED Application – Glowing Walls!
Thursday, December 31st, 2009The alternative to a single 3D camera…
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009… is to use two synchronised 2D cameras. You just need StereoData Maker, two cameras, a z-bar to mount the cameras, and a switch which you can build or buy.
Radioactive Gifts
Monday, December 28th, 2009Would you buy an Atomic Energy Lab experimental kit for your kids for Christmas? Well, it is no longer available, but in 1951 to 1952 the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab was on sale. Read more about this and other radioactive products of the past on the Scientific American website.
Real-time thought to speech
Saturday, December 26th, 2009In a study led by Frank Guenther of the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems and the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Boston University, as well as the Division of Health Science and Technology at Harvard University-Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the research team has successfully implemented a real-time thought to speech translator that interfaces directly with the human brain. Initial results look very promising and this is definitely something to keep a close eye on. Details here.
Side effects of Technology
Friday, December 25th, 2009The new-fangled trend of using LEDs for everything is fantastic, in terms of clarity, eco-awareness and all such trendy things. However, it seems that there are some unintended consequences with using LEDs for everything… since they run cooler than conventional lamps, traffic light fitted with LEDs are not melting the snow as they used to. Potentially dangerous, but easily fixed. Details here.
Installing hMailServer on a 64-bit Operating System
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009hMailServer is my prefered email server. It is really good – very user friendly and its configuration is quite detailed and versatile. And of course it is free. :)
I recently installed it on a clean installation of a 64-bit operating system. On startup, the installer told me that the .NET framework version 2 is required and will now be downloaded. So I let it download and (I thought) install .NET. However, when it got to the step of configuring the database, the application would not start. All I got was the relatively non descriptive error “failed to initialize properly”. And the same error occurred when trying to start up the tools from the start menu.
I was just about ready to give up, having found no helpful hints online. However, when I got to the “Add or Remove Programs” dialog, I realised that the .NET framework is in fact still not installed. Curious but solvable. So I downloaded the .NET framework manually, and tried to install it. As it turns out, I accidentally downloaded the 32-bit version – which cannot be installed on a 64-bit operating system. The 64-bit version is about 10MB larger than the 32-bit, which made me realise that the hMailServer installer downloaded the wrong version for my operating system. I had to uninstall and reinstall hMailServer after this whole process, but now it is running perfectly.
Moral of the story – when installing hMailServer on a 64-bit OS, make sure that you have the .NET framework version 2 installed first!. :)
Hacked US Air Surveillance
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009Old news… but still relevant nonetheless. Iraqi militants managed to hack into a US predator drone using some shareware software and eavesdrop on the video surveillance footage. Even worse, it seems that the US isn’t particularly fond of encrypted video streams and it is possible to use the same piece of software to hack into the primary airborne surveillance system of the US!!! Details here and here.
NetBeans Platform Refcard
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009DZone has a number of refcardz – cheat sheets for developers. They are free and can be viewed on the website, but you have to be signed in (registration is also free) to download them. Useful refcardz include: Core Java, Design Patterns and NetBeans IDE. And now there is also a brand new refcard for the NetBeans Platform!
Nanotube Circuits
Monday, December 21st, 2009Technology Review reports that Stanford University has created the very first carbon nanotube circuits. Being much faster than silicon circuits, this is a very exciting technological advancement.