Computer speaks Chinese in your own voice in real time

Sursa: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/11/micirosofts-brainlike-translat.html

Smartglass by Microsoft

Hand sensing with 3d sensor bracelet by Microsoft Research

Sursa: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22353-gesturesensing-interfaces-to-rival-keyboards-and-mice.html

Offline mobile translation on Windows phones

Asta e un feature pentru care as trece la Windows Phone. Este incredibil ca in ziua de azi asa ceva nu se gaseste in toate mobilele inteligente

Microsoft Office Productivity Future Vision

Asa crede microsoft ca vor functiona produsele lor prin 2020

HoloDesk - Direct 3D Interactions with a Situated See-Through Display

Tare as vrea ce va scoate Microsoft in urma tuturor acestor cercetari.

Originiea wallpaperului XP

Putini sunt cei care nu recunosc poza de mai jos. Poate doar cativa ultrasi Apple nascuti in lumea lor alba si lucioasa. A fost denumita Bliss si este wallpaper-ul principal al sistemului de operare Windows XP. Care este insa istoria ei?

Tot articolul: http://www.hoinareala.ro/blog/originea_celui_mai_faimos_wallpaper_windows/

The Freedombox - The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves

Windows 8 - User interface and compatibility

How does the Kinect really work?

I’m quite tired of seeing the stupid things people try to pass off as facts about how the kinect works so instead of complaining about it I decided to make this handy guide.

First of all what it isn’t: it is not an EyeToy or just a webcam. 

Hardware:

That weird (huge) box contains:

• a VGA 640x480 color camera (CMOS) with a Bayer color filter
• a IR 640x480 camera (CMOS)*
• an IR projector
• a motor,  an assortment of control chips and 4 microphones
• a fan!

(* it seems the outputted depthmap is 640x480 but the IR camera sensor size is closer too 1600x1200)
 

The hardware is something researchers have been pining over for a loooong time because it’s a cheap camera that provides distance measurements for every pixel. Previously all they could do was guess and hope for ideal conditions so that your algorithm would work.

How it works:

It is NOT a time of flight camera as a lot of websites have incorrectly stated. It is a structured light camera. You’ve seen those videos of 3d scanners projecting stripes onto things as if imitating venetian blinds? It the same principle at work only there’s nothing venetian about it.

That IR projector mentioned above is an IR laser that passes through a diffraction grating and turns into a lot of IR dots.

They look chaotic because that’s how the kinect can tell what’s going on. NO IT WILL NOT GIVE YOU CANCER. It is a class 1 laser so it's safe to be exposed to it indefinitely. Each of those points is unique and the IR camera sees how it distorts and says „hmm the distance to that point is x”.

Combine that data with the color image from the camera and you have this:

That ladies and gentlemen is a realtime 3D video stream!
Those odd shadows are where the camera can’t see. Combine a few more you say? You can’t. Remember how I said the dots are unique? They suddenly become a lot less unique if there are two or more dotfields in the same area. The Kinects would become confused, sad and depressed.
Switching between them so there’s only one dotfield active at a time might work but that would divide the 30Hz framerate by the number of Kinects rendering the whole thing useless.

Unfortunately laser light is already polarized to some degree so a hack to enable Kinects to operate simultaneously with polarized filters would prove challenging. In the same tone wavelength shifting would be insanely complicated and expensive as narrow band IR filters are not cheap or easy to come by.

Radu Bogdan Rusu has said that "Judging from a few basic tests with two Kinects, I can't seem to get them to interfere with each other to the point where the data is unusable."

Also here is a great explanation of how the pattern is used to determine depth:



The software:
The software is also quite revolutionary. One guy had this to say about it:

The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I've seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product.

...

We would all love to one day have our own personal holodeck. This is a pretty measurable step in that direction.

 – Johnny Chung Lee

 

Who’s Johnny Chung Lee? Remember this guy?

Him.

What’s he working on? The Kinect.

He’s not exaggerating either. The software is nothing short of revolutionary. Estimates are it took 5 to 10 years to develop! That’s the average lifespan of a ferret. 

(missing picture: Ferret computer scientists)

How it works:

The team first built a software that could learn, then sent it to school to learn how humans look and move.

And it works! It actually works. Until now computer vision has been this thing that sortof works and breaks if you look at it funny but this actually works.

As if that wasn’t enough it also understands your voice and tracks it in the room (those 4 microphones were not just for weigh balancing).

Researchers would pay thousands until now for hardware that wasn’t half as good as this. The community has embraced this thing with open arms. Microsoft has said they’ll release an SDK to work with their wonderful software (hurry up will you?). Until now computers couldn’t actually see. Even the limited info they could receive wasn’t really that easy to interpret so it wasn’t used. The Kinect has given computers more than eyes, it’s given them vision.

One question is: Why livingroom gaming as the first target?  It seems like an odd first choice. My personal theory is that it’s a trojan horse tactic. First get it into everything then enable everyone to write software for it. Developers, developers, developers.

One thing is certain. This has changed the face of computing and robotics forever.

Wildfire - imagine cup 2010

19 Tips Every Windows 7 User Needs To Know

Keyboard Shortcuts for Committed Mouse Abolitionists
Master Your New Font Manager
Launch Games with Keystrokes
Burn a Spittin' Image
Become More Wordly with Hidden Wallpapers
Take Control of UAC
Calculate Your Mortgage and Other Math Tricks
Reveal All of Your Drives
Use Devices and Printers to Quickly Dig into Hardware
Calibrate Your Notebook's Text and Color
Control AutoPlay Settings Like a Megalomaniacal Tyrant
Solve External Hard Drive Hassles with Convert.exe
Convert WMC Recordings for Use with Vista and XP
Command Windows 7 to Generate an Energy Report
Cling (Desperately) to Vista's Taskbar
Exile Programs to the System Tray
Manage Your Jump Lists
Organize Your Taskbar and System Tray
Accelerate Your Start Menu
Arrange Files by Type, Month, Artist, and Other Options
Pin Folders to Favorites and Start Menu
How to load Windows 7 onto a bootable USB key



Tot articolul: http://gizmodo.com/5523272/19-tips-every-windows-7-user-needs-to-know

HP slate - 400 Euro

Reputable Spanish publication Clipset has the first concrete report on pricing and internal specs for HP's Slate. Seemingly obtained from HP itself, the €400 ($546) price tag positions the Slate a notch above netbooks and bodes well for the expectation that it'll undercut the iPad's entry level pricing.

Further info includes an Atom CPU, Flash support, USB connectivity, a memory card reader, and a back-mounted webcam (see it after the break). The launch of this Windows 7 device is slated for June, while retail availability in Europe is said to be expected at some point "before September."

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/19/hp-slate-priced-at-400-for-june-launch-atom-cpu-confirmed/

Dealing with information overload

Windows Mobile 7

Daca tot vorbim de sistemele noi de operare ale mobilelor sa vorbim de Windows Mobile 7 prezentat tot azi si care ar trebui sa apara in curand.
Un video se gaseste la linkul de mai jos

http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now

Windows God Mode

By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition.

The trick is also said to work in Windows Vista, although some are warning that although it works fine in 32-bit versions of Vista, it can cause 64-bit versions of that operating system to crash.

To enter "GodMode," one need only create a new folder and then rename the folder to the following:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Atentie! Modul acesta e extrem de folositor dar puteti strica ceva folosind meniul acela!

Articol: http://gizmodo.com/5440159/understanding-windows-7s-godmode

Create a Virtual Machine of your Existing Computer

Let’s say you have a computer that is already running all the software programs you frequently use, but you now want to move to a new computer or upgrade your operating system. You can then consider creating a virtual machine of your old machine using the Microsoft utility and this will help you use all your favorite programs (with the same settings) on the new machine.

You can also use virtualization to create a ghost image of your hard drive in a single file and this will be handy in the event of a disk failure.


Articol: http://www.labnol.org/software/create-virtual-machine-of-existing-computer/10510/

Windows 7 torrenting party

In caz ca nu stiti Microsoft vrea sa tinem o petrecere cu ocazia lansarii Windows 7:



Mai probabil o sa facem asta:

Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party - watch more funny videos

:)

Burgerul Windows 7 la Burger King

Microsoft has taken the unusual step of promoting Windows 7 in Japan with Burger King's launch of a Windows 7 Whopper. Fitting in with the software theme, the burger stacks seven patties in an otherwise normal Whopper and measures 5.1 inches tall. It also has an appropriate 777 yen ($8.53) price.

Mai multe: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/10/21/microsoft.promos.win.7.with.bk.deal/

Dubrovnik auto-modelat in 3D

Orasul a fost modelat de un algoritm care prelua imagini de pe flickr

Mai multe informatii: http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-09/building-virtual-cities-automatically-150000-flickr-photos