Technology

Evolution of Computers

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:19:26 PST

The human nee for easy ways of calculating and keeping record of transactions with other people dates back to early times. Primitive people kept track of their calculations by counting with their fingers and toes. This method of counting is the precursor of our present day base 10 or decimal numbering system. Medieval people were said to have computed and kept record of their sheep, cattle and goats using sticks or pebbles. Some made marks on walls of caves while others carved lines and shapes on stones.

The computer, as we know it today, is the most talked about , most used , most admired and perhaps, also the most feared contrivance ever made by man. IT has evolved from basis ideas, concepts and primitive tool to its present level of sophistication and no individual can claim credit for inventing the computer as we know it today. The present level of sophistication owes so much to the hard work, ingenuity, persistent efforts and follow-up actions by several reputable mathematicians, engineers, scientists and logicians, and even ordinary people.

Ipod Nano: the 4th Generation

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:20:46 PST

In the September of 2008, Apple Inc. published the new iPod nano. The new nano is smarter than ever, cooler then ever, and more colorful then ever. This time, the nano went away from the “fat” 3rd generation style into more slimmer style, like that of the 1st and 2nd generation. Memory goes up to 16GB, you can watch videos, and even play accelerator games, like the iPhone.

iPod nano now comes in nine amazing colors. From the classic silver, black, blue, red, green, new colors like yellow were added. The screen is 2”, and has more pixels per square inch than any other iPod/Phone. One the new hot features is the introduction of the accelerator. Accelerator is the machine that allows the machine to know when you have flipped or turned it. Like the iPhone/Touch, this new capability allows you to play games that you tilt and twist the iPod. The Maze game is added onto the iPod, so you can begin your fun right away. Another new feature that everyone is crazy about is the “shake-to-shuffle” feature. Just give your iPod a shake, and then it shuffles! It's a totally different, fun way to listen to your music. iPod has some new and exciting features!

Solidworks Tutorial: How to Draw Circle and Filleted Arc

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 03:12:21 PST

In the first article of my tutorial set, I tought you how to draw linear objects. Those were simply lines and rectangular, that is, the main elements of drawing. In this article, I aim to teach you curves and the simplest closed curve, a circle.

How to Draw a Circle

As a mathematical description, circle is a combination of points with the same length from a fixed point. To draw a circle, two things we need. They are the coordinate of center of the circle and radius or diameter of it. Let's now draw our first circle by Solidworks. Let's draw a circle with a center of origin and a radius of 20 mm.

Click the sketch button to define a plane on which you will draw. Since our drawing is 2D, any plane can be chosen. I choose top plane as a reference plane.
Click the circle button on the toolbar and choose origin as the center point of the circle. Afterthat, drag the circle to the out of the page.
By clicking "smart dimension" button , dimension the radius of circle. Since the radius is 20 mm, specify diameter as 40 mm.

How to Draw Filleted Arcs

To draw filleted arcs, we first need a corner of two intersecting lines. As an example, we will filet one corner of 40x40 mm square. Lets first draw the square by using rectangular button on the toolbar.

Click the fillet button on the toolbar.
Enter the radius of fillet as 5 mm into the fillet parameters space.
Choose the corner point which you want to fillet. Be careful here, you should select the point not the sides you want to fillet. After that, Solidworks automatically dimension the filleted arc. Here is the result.

How to Optimize Your Laptop for Longer Life and Usage

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:40:34 PST

Why buy a new laptop and replace a new one when you can preserve and extend the life of your current laptop? Yes, there are speicific ways of extending the life of your electronic gadgets, appliances and equipment, and the laptop is no exception. Many people waste needless amounts of money spent on replacing electronic gadgets which could have lived longer.

Invest in Anti-Virus Software

Don't ever consider this as a waste of money, or don't get annoyed with the repetitious anti-virus software updates. This is the single most effective way of protecting your computer. Whenever you insert a USB drive, or go online, read an email, open a website etc., you are making your computer vulnerable to virus invasions. That's why it's important to keep your anti-virus software updated and your firewall always up. Don't overlook this.

Buy A Cooling Pad For Your Laptop

A cooling pad is a special gadget that you place under your laptop and it does just that -- cool your laptop. It is common knowledge that user electronics perform lesser and lesser when you frequently let them go overheat. With a cooling pad, you can keep your laptop cool and fully functional at all times.

Don't Just Install Any Software Just Because It's Free

There's lots of freeware and shareware online. These are types of software that you can download for free, or use a 7-Day Trial with. The problem with these types of downloadable programs is that lots of them contain malicious scripts, backdoor Trojans, worms, tracking cookies, and malware. All those terms mean one thing: Danger for your computer. Sometimes, these sneaky bugs and tracking scripts can steal your credit card information!

Unless You Have Sufficient Technical Knowledge, Leave Hardware Installation To The Experts

Don't try to reinstall hard drives, tweak the motherboard, or replace sound cards and video cards UNLESS you are confident that you know what you're doing. Don't take risks here. You can always solicit the help and opinion of Bill the Computer Whiz and Sam the Chip Master from next door. Or better yet, have your computer 'tampered' by a legitimate technical personnel from the computer shop.

Perform a Disk Clean Up And Defragmentation At Least Once Every Month

Disk clean up and defragmentation are all available options from your Windows Control Panel. Make sure you use these disk checking tools at least once each month so your computer can fix disk software errors. Usually, the computer will figure out what's wrong on its own. Disk clean up will delete unneeded 'cookies' and temporary files from your computer. Defragmentation, meanwhile, will rearrange file allocations and caches in your hard disk. Best of all, don't try to figure all of these things out. Just do it.

The Consolidation of Computing

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:35:59 PST

This was first brought to mind when I was working back in Ohio upon having a conversation with a fellow employee that wanted me to purchase a computer from him. I brought up cable television, and he said that he uses his computer for everything and his primary bill was from his Internet service provider. This was of course like 5 years ago and DSL was still a novelty, but he insisted that it was worth the time to sit by and allow content to load up, because he had complete control over the content.

Fast foward to 2008 and the average computer user is creating the content themselves, and can do for rather inexpensively. Internet connections are a lot faster; yesterday's dial up connection is now today's low speed DSL service and cable companies and telecoms like Verizon are aggressively pushing their fiber services. Most people do not realize that fiber is part of the infrastructure with your average cable company these days, only difference being that Verizon uses fiber throughout, whereas cable companies run it up to the equipment in your ward.

The way in which the Internet has democratized networking and made it easier to anyone and everyone to create content poses somewhat of a threat to network television, and all other forms of media available. The first signs of angst were seen amongst record companies, who now realize that peer to peer file sharing networks are not the only way to distribute digital recordings among the masses. The irony is that computer hardware manufacturers had the technology available back in the nineties, but it took a major name to both popularize MP3 players and legal downloading.

Apple could have taken the low road and just put their iPods out there and left it up to individuals at home to find music. These days, anything you want to do with multimedia is offered online; high definition content is still in it's infancy, but you can enjoy it with the right monitor (most analog monitors are still tapping out the limits of their technology, which is often a mere 768 lines of resolution), you can also sit back and choose from more protocols for video on a computer than you can in television, where only the most popular schemes are built into the hardware.

Your operating system probably already supports high definition, just that your monitor may not be up to speed, nor your graphics card. I barely watch television, and even though great sites such as Hulu exist that allow me to watch higher quality television than I do on YouTube, it doesn't really fit my needs.

YouTube and Google Video are about the only places you can still find an old videotaped commercial advertising early RCA VCRs that were actually recorded on an RCA VCR. It's the only place you will find someone exploring the urban landscape of dead shopping malls, girls showing off playing up the camera to get their 15 minutes of fame and guys doing the latest crunk/snap dance. On YouTube you can watch thousands of prisoners in Manilla doing choreographed moves to Thriller; or the High School cheerleading squad dancing to Crank Dat Batman.

Before YouTube, you had to pass videotapes around, or watch America's Favorite Videos. Those days are so over; so why can't a decent site like Hulu compete with the eternal amatuer hour over at YouTube? For one Hulu lacks enthusiasm; I don't want to see snippets of Die Hard or be told that the only movies available is a B rated movie from 1982. I'm not interested in seeing the first episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show. I most certainly do not want to see Family Guy or Friends, because those shows are probably playing in some distant part of the world every hour of the day anyway.

Hulu is a cold, corporate approach to rebroadcasting material, though it is slick and has an easy to use interface it lacks the authenticity that sites like YouTube has. Sure you can often find the latest music on YouTube months if not years before it comes out, and Google needs to do something about that because while those songs are often AM radio quality they are still there. But on the other hand Universal has a channel on YouTube where they post their own music videos, and at times without commercials being inserted into the video. Artists are posting their own videos up there as well.

So why even have a television, other than the slow download speeds? It still takes about as long as the movie plays to download one on DSL, and that's not even as DVD quality. But quite honestly, I'm not even that interested in downloading movies because I'm not that interested in what Hollywood does anymore. Insulting my intelligence with tripe like another installation of Indiana Jones or yet another remake of the Incredible Hulk movie. It's no wonder why Sex in the City the movie broke box office records.

Speaking of Sarah Jessica Parker they have Square Pegs minisodes online. If you want to watch your video on the run you can watch an entire episode in like 4 and a half minutes. For those old shows that's all you really want; watching Square Pegs is more about reminiscing about choppy eighties style video editing and bad acting, nothing more nothing less. I wouldn't buy a copy of Square Pegs unless it was in a bargain bin for like 75 cents, and even then you would have to include more than one episode.

I wouldn't watch an old commercial from the eighties for any amount of money either; but there is a huge interest on YouTube for that type of content. Often it's a poor videotape as well; companies should take note of which ads people are watching and then start unloading high quality content on the site. A Coke ad from 1980 is just as effective as one is today, and can still drive sales; in fact these are commercials that people actually want to watch.

So why let them down, why continue to fight them. One of my favorite commercials is for something that doesn't even exist anymore, the World Trade Center. I don't know how effective that ad was at the time, but it brings back memories of better days, so I'll hunt it down and watch it every now and again. I've never been to the World Trade Center, so that is my way of paying homage and keeping the memory alive until I can get back to New York to actually visit Ground Zero. Unfortunately the movie World Trade Center doesn't do that for me; too morbid and lacking the disturbing violence that actually occurred on that as the approach was a bit abstract.

I just now got my high-definition working without the picture freezing up; the solution was an old antenna from 1980 that I used to use a cheap 75-300 adaptor for. The adaptor was $5 and the antenna $3, but it works like a champ. I can finally watch CBS in high definition again, and you would think that I would but it still pales in comparison to actually being able to make content and have control over what you watch. I can use software to record the flash and create a playlist and burn all of that to DVD and sit back and watch the games begin.

These days the only reason I even deal with CDs is because I have a player in my car. CDs are a non-starter these days as everyone has graduated to using hard drives, so I can get them for like 30 cents a pop, could pay less but what for. I don't even keep them in my case anymore in fact I can't even find the CD wallet.

High definition television is about the only saving grace of broadcasting these as I might watch something I normally wouldn't just to see the quality of the picture. The color issues that plagued analog television are a non starter with digital; now you're just plucking more color depth out of the signal with a better television and aren't confined to the poor color reproduction that analog offered. Your cheapest digital television showing high definition content is probably giving you better color than the best media that analog set could ever reproduce.

Whatever happened to actually using your computer for, well, computing? Well other than writing and visiting some social networking sites like Answers it rarely gets any use. In fact it's the non computing needs that are tying my computer down; I insist on loading an hour or more of high-definition content into memory and then have the nerve to get upset when the audio is out of sync or the picture freezes.

Today the computer is a multimedia type of appliance instead of a real computer. Everything is pretty and we complain and moan when we are forced to watch anything less than the 24-bit color we've become accustomed to. A command line or a script of any sort, let's not even mention actually programming the computer for a change, is our worst nightmare.

We're content to pay the next guy to worry about that; you can't complain about rock star music producers getting paid a million plus for a beat on a song you'll forget about in three months when you not only do not play any instruments but haven't time in your busy schedule to sit down and listen to someone else play one. No you'd rather get that ear candy; the right sounds at the right pitch with the perfect rhythm to get you into the mood. The instant gratification that only the most advanced drum machines can afford.

We're living in a society dominated by cheap content on disposable interchangeable hardware made as quickly as possible in order to get on with it and move on to the next big thing. No one has a relationship to content anymore, even less so to the actual medium that content is on. Even the computers themselves, at $400 a pop, are pretty meaningless these days. I purchased a computer for $100 at the thrift store and installed a Linux cd and suffered through a lot of frustration and angst trying to get it do certain tasks. But I miss that computer, my Vista machine, which takes care of everything and idiot proofs the operating system, is administrating itself. It tells me when a website is questionable at best, what hardware I should install and what steps I should take to make the computer faster when it is non responsive. In fact I rarely have to do anything with this machine so of course I am not learning anything whatsoever about computing.

I have to force myself to do something; there are solutions out there that will work for about anything and everything you need to do, and it's hard not to. But this is a day that technologists were anticipating, though I bet few ever realized that computing would eventually render everything else that technology used to offer meaningless and worthless.

Why Solidworks?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:54:10 PST

Today, engineers and engineering students use many software programs while designing new constructions, mechanisms and systems. Of all those software programs; Autocad, Solidworks, Unigraphics, Catia and Proengineering are the most popular and preferred programs. Autocad is usually used for 2D design. However, others are for 3D design. I've started using Solidworks after one year experience in Autocad. I realized that Autocad sometimes doesn't meet my requirements. I discovered Solidworks and what I would do with the assistance of this program.

Why solidworks? Because it is very easy to use. Eveything is clear in Solidworks. If you know English and have a little computer knowledge and technical information, you can easily learn how to use Solidworks wtihout needing any additional source like books and tutorials. It is very easy to understand the fundementals of SW.

Other plausible reason is that there are many Solidworks books in Bookstores. One can find many resources written in different languages. For me, it is easy to find such sources written both in English and my native language Turkish. Solidworks have been given as two-semester course in most of European and American universities.

Designing starts with 2D in Solidworks. Above all, you should have a knowledge of drawing in 2D. You should be capable of making 2D sketches. You should be capable of forming the main 2D construction of solid systems. Rest is very simple because it goes on with simple extrusion, hole making, cutting, lofting and revolving processes.

Another advantage of Solidworks is that it works well with all versions of Windows operating system. The last version, SW 2008, is installed and worked on Vista after loading Service Pack of Vista. Without Service Pack, it doesn't run on your system.

To learn how to use Solidworks and how to design systems or just making drawings for fun, follow my tutorial set. My next article will be about simple 3D drawings. In the next articles, you should learn how to draw cylinders, rectangular prisms and cubes with very different dimensions.

In a nutshell, Solidworks is a good way to explain the things in your mind with simple lines and curves.

25 Fantastic Computer Mice

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:50:16 PST

Girl Thing

Perfect mouse mod idea for the office ladies who are so much busy for their work and almost have no time for their selves. With this blush on mouse mod they can make up even they are doing there job, they sill be always looking beautiful for men.

Steam Punk Computer Mouse

Image Source

Made from pure iron scrap materials, the most heaviest computer mouse ever made.

Sexy Lingerie Body Mouse

A great gift idea for your boyfriend, give this so even you are not with him he will always remember your sexy gorgeous body.

Cyber Gun

Gun shape mouse, gives much more realistic for your counter strike and other shoot-em-up games, Pull the trigger for left click and the button on the handle for the right click.

Ghost

Perfect stuff for Halloween occasion, with glow in the dark effects.

Pixelated Mario Mouse

For those still addicted on old school game super Mario, This is the Mario USB mouse which is a stunning pixelated looking mouse which is golden in color. This retro look USB PC or laptop mouse is a retro 8 bit appeal and has the normal old school roller ball mechanism.

Bizarre Mouse

This is the most disgusting mouse I ever seen. With two scary hand fingers have dirty nails and a mouth teeth at the bottom. Yuck!

Real Mouse

A real mouse look-alike mod, but be sure don't let your cat to see it.

USB Optical Car Mouse

Korean version of 800 dpi mini car optical mouse. Compatible in windows computer only.

Prehistoric Mouse

Prehistoric mouse mod.

Minty Mouse

Altoids mint tin computer mouse mod.

Hello Kitty

The Gold Brain

The gold-brain mod made by Pat.

Luminous Crystal Mouse

The luminous crystal has body contains water and with a glowing Light Emitting Diode (LED) inside, makes it unique and has a beautiful look.

Alien

Out of this world optical computer mouse.

Lady Bug

Lady bug computer mouse mod.

A Dog

This should not be call computer mouse but a computer dog.

Wooden Mouse Mod

Helmet Optical Mouse

The USB optical mouse made for die hard bikers and racing fans.

Power Ball Mouse

No software driver required, easy to use non slip soft rubber cover ideal for laptops and desktops. and easy to drive off table, Power Ball Mouse is the ultimate gamers mouse.

Hanwang Two-in-One Tablet

This is what they called the "T & mouse”, It was released by Hanwang company in Beijing, China. This device is a combination of a traditional mouse and a small tablet at the top for drawing small lines or Chinese writings.

Belkin Hybrid

Belkin N52te is perfectly designed for gaming easy to handle, features 15 fully programmable keys and rubber non-slip pads to keep the speed pad in place during high intensity gaming.

Ezkey Mouse

Ezkey mouse is the best choice for accountants and engineers, The 2-in-1 mouse which combines mouse and number pad. This is what their looking for when they are traveling on the road and they can"t comfortably handle their laptop and suddenly need to compute a long list of numbers, this Ezkey solve their problem.

Mouse Mod- With LCD Screen

Soup Pointing Device

Soup is a mouse-like pointing device that works in mid-air. A technology puts a twist on our traditionally optical mouse. It is much more easy to use, very convenient, you can use it even you are walking around.

Lets Learn C : Printing Strings on to the Screen

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:02:41 PST

Here is the first article of my tutorial set. I aim to teach you the basics of C. In this first lesson, I am going to teach you how to output a series of strings on to terminal screen of C program.

Virtually every program code has inputs and outputs. Before compiling a source code, programs generally request an input from the user and then output it to the screen after compiling if the program is well designed and there is no error inside it. Usually, as the program becomes more complicated, error possibility increases. A good software expert easily realizes where the code has faults and corrects it. Since our first code will be very small and very simple, we will not face with any error.

Before starting to write code, we initially have a compiler which is going to evaluate our code. I use Dev C for this. There are many other compilers which run on different platforms like Unix, Linux and Windows.

In this project, we will output the names of the subprograms of Triond on to C terminal screen. This is the simplest algorithm since there is no input in this example. Let's start writing our code step by step.

Step 1: Open the File from the menu bar of C software and save as the blank page Project1. This yields a file with an extension of cpp.

Step 2: Describe the name and aim of the programs. To do so, we use comments. Comments are ignored by the compiler. For commenting, we use some special scripts like double slash or slash-asterisk character .

If we use a single line comment, double slash is enough. However, if our comment is placed more than one line, we use double slash for each line or take the commented part between slash-asterisk and asterisk-slash characters .

Step 3: C needs library files which define what the input and output functions are and what they do when they are used in a code. Iostream is the library file of input and output function.

Before the name of library files, we use a special character, preprocessor directive character. Include is used before the name of every library file and such file names are placed mathematical comparison characters.

Step 4: Every C code uses functions. The default function is main. Main function is the first function compiled by the programs. This function usually calls other functions. Before the name of function, we specify which type of output our code returns. In our program, we think that it returns to integer and use int. After the function name, we use parantheses. In this example, there will be nothing between parantheses but in more complicated programs, there may be parameter names and it's types or definitions. We place our statements between left brace and right brace.

Step 5: To print on to the screen,we use cout function. We simply place our string inside double quote characters. Every statement inside the functions ends with a special semicolon character.

Step 6: To check the validity, we use return function.In this simple example, it returns to 0.

Click here for the code

Stand by for Faster Wireless

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:47:39 PST

The advent of wireless networks into our homes has made things a whole lot easier. If you are one of those "wirephobic" computer users, wireless internet certainly helps. However, it is not perfect by any means. For instance, they still haven't managed to find a way for the computer to power itself, without plugging it in to a mains outlet (more wires), at least, not with a power unit small enough to fit in your pocket, like a mobile. Then there is the printer and all the other peripherals (even more wires). WiFI does its job without wires, but is still too slow for most of our internet needs.

Regarding the subject of wires and the internet, there have been cunning changes going on in the background. It took some doing, but faster wireless internet may be just round the corner. How do we know this? Because wireless products using "Ultra Wideband" are already being developed! As 3G/WiFi continue to be fierce competitors in the wireless market place with higher sand higher speeds, UWB as it is known is on its way. However, the word “Ultra Wide Band” may not appear in everyday vocabulary just yet.

UWB will be able to achieve things that WiFi can only dream about, even though WIFI continues to increase in speed. For instance, let's take a DVD on Bluetooth. How would you like to take your phone to a retailer, purchase a downloadable DVD, and download it to your phone in roughly 30 seconds flat? You then take your phone home, and save the DVD to a disk. Job done!

UWB has potential in a number of areas. For instance:

Wireless local area networks (LANs) to ad hoc networks
More efficient services for mobile phone networks
IP mobile computing to multimedia applications

The “claim to fame” for UWB in this case is that it can match the speed of wired networks with wireless technology, and be much faster than current WIFI or 3G wireless technologies.

So how does it work? Well, Radar technology has been using the concept for some time. Ultra Wide Band uses the same signal frequencies and positioning technologies as those used in radar systems. Narrow band uses only a portion of the available signals in use today. This is the reason why the 56k modem came into existence. The bandwidth is only suitable for speeds of this range. Broadband (as the term implies) uses a wider range of signals. Now Ultra Wideband uses a little used frequency range. This is known as an “unlicensed” frequency band as it is not currently licensed by other technologies, such as 3G and Narrowband.

The diagram below illustrates the differences in signal bands and where the boundaries lie. You can see that UWB has the highest speed potential.

Ultra Wide Band would allow mobile phones to stay on for hours longer, because it uses very little energy in normal use. Another feature is the signals are very clear and less likely to interfere with other equipment such as radios and be affected by televisions etc. UWB technology uses "impulse" signals, which basically means that it sends a signal at regular intervals, and filters out all other signals.

The potential for UWB is enormous. UWB products are coming into existence. For instance, in February, 2008 Hitachi produced the first Ultra Thin LCD HDTV based on UWB technology. The width of the product can be seen below:

UT HDTVs like this one can receive high-definition video wirelessly from any HDMI equipped audio / video component. Transmission speeds of up to 480Mbps are expected. These are now on widespread sale in Japan.

You may have seen similar products in the stores, named “Video Senders”. These work but have nowhere near the speed capacity of UWB technology products. The current video sender technology usually works on infra-red or other wireless technology.

So how come this technology is only just coming into being, when radar has been in use for almost 60 years? Well, radar positioning technology is one thing, but harnessing the true power of UWB for modern day purposes is quite another. There have been the contention issues with other types of wireless signals. After all, the governing bodies, justifiably would not want the signals used by UWB to interfere with other signals, such as 3G and other frequencies.

Another issue has been the standards war, which is still not fully resolved. There are two schools of thought on how UWB should operate. This has been mainly resolved into an ISO standard. However, for years the “UWB Forum” and the “Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA)” have had different ideas as to how UWB should operate. This is similar to the battle between Betamax and VHS in the days of video.

So, if you see the term “Ultra Wideband” in advertising before very long don't be surprised. It is the next level of wireless technology.

Protect Your Computer: 10 Free and Useful Antivirus

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:43:17 PST