Microsoft Announces Imagine Cup 2007 Winners

As the world's premier student technology competition, the Imagine Cup encourages young people to apply their imagination, passion, and creativity to create technology innovations that can make a difference in the world today. See this year's winners, and read a blog entry by Microsoft's S. Somasegar recapping the thrilling week of competition in Seoul, South Korea.
To learn more about the Imagine Cup and this year's finalists, check out an interactive map powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth software and watch onsite video updates at ImagineCup.com and Channel 8.

MDM Zinc 2.5 for Flash

This product creates Projector files, Screen Savers and Installers from SWF files. However, it also extends the functionality of Projector files using its own scripting language, {mdm} Script, which works with both PCs and Macs. Zinc 2.5 includes over 800 commands that you can use to add a range of functions to your SWF files.

Zinc 2.5 provides both synchronous and asynchronous scripting, and is native on both Windows and Macintosh computers. You can find out more about this product at the developer's

web site - http://www.multidmedia.com/.

CSS Toolbox

CSS Toolbox is a freeware productivity software for web developers who work with CSS code. Free CSS Toolbox includes a number of tools for fast-tracking and enhancing the development of style sheet code, such as an advanced CSS Formatter, CSS Validator and CSS Code Compressor. If you develop websites that use CSS, the Free CSS Toolbox can help you save time and increase productivity without any cost.

You can download this freeware from http://www.zdnetindia.com/downloads/Windows/info/10722908.html

Gaming mouse from Microsoft

Its been a long time we heard of anything from the Sidewinder range of product from Microsoft. Here it is after a long gap and MS announces their plans to launch the Sidewinder gaming mouse. The mouse is loaded with features which you will get to know after the product is launched in the market. Dont want to spoil the surprise do we? The Microsoft SideWinder is due for launch this October and will retail for about $79.95.

Also check
Steelseries

Sharp Corp. LCD TV

Sharp Corp. has launched a prototype LCD screen. The wall-mounted LCD panel is just 2 centimeters thick and gets its signal via a high-speed wireless link, so that leaves us with just the power chord and no painful wires.The panel is built on Sharp's cutting-edge technology, is shod with a 52-inch LCD and weighs 25 kilograms.

The high-definition screen has a high contrast ratio of 100,000:1. This provides a clear, vivid image even in bright rooms, and color reproduction that's 50 percent greater than that provided by an NTSC signal, so that colors from digital sources appear deeper and more life-like.

Iubi Blue

Iubi Blue is a portable media player with 4.3 inch widescreen TFT LCD. The player has razor sharp screen and it is a visual treat. The iubi blue supports virtually every video codec including MPEG , 2, 4 DivX 3.X etc...

Apart from watching movies and playing music iubi blue has the recording capabilities. It can record straight into MPEG4 (640 x 480 30fps) from your TV, DVD player or VHS player, allowing you to record up to 75 hours of video footage. Simple, easy and effective.

Apart from these features iubi Blue distinguishes from other Mp3 players and makes itself a true advanced mp3 player, due to its Bluetooth abilities

CSS Sculptor

Meyer’s CSS Sculptor, is a CSS layout creator for Dreamweaver. Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor generates styles sheets for both Screen and Print in one operation. You can even save your modified layouts as new presets to be easily re-created or modified further. Bring the master’s touch to your designs with Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor.

CSS Sculptor supports the majority of modern browsers being used today. Browsers directly supported include Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.x and 7.x; Firefox and Mozilla 2.x; Safari 2.x and Opera 9. Layouts degrade gracefully in older browsers with all content available.

Key Features

• World class CSS output


• Preset layout designs and control


• Style with backgrounds and borders


• Integrate text and link stylings


• Core layout flexibility


• Refine your page structure

Sony's New Mp3 Player

Sony has launches the NW-E010 Mp3 Player which resembles a Lipstick. It features a direct USB connection, a 3 line color display and an integrated FM tuner. The storgare capacity varies from 1GB to 2GB and lasts up to 30 hour battery life. The price is tagged at 77 pounds for this product.

Bio Battery

Sony today announced the development of a bio battery that generates electricity from carbohydrates (sugar) utilizing enzymes as its catalyst, through the application of power generation principles found in living organisms.

Test cells of this bio battery have achieved power output of 50 mW, currently the world's highest level for passive-type bio batteries. The output of these test cells is sufficient to power music play back on a memory-type Walkman.

Cell Phone signal booster

Having problems receiving signals from your cell phone carrier? Here is a solution to the problem. zBoost captures the wireless signal outside, brings it inside.

The unit is comaptible with Cingular, Verizon and Alltel service carriers in the frequency ranging between 824 - 894 MHz.

How to speed up your website?

One of the latest article from roscripts focus on “how to speed up your website”. The article is worth reading. It covers all range of solutions to make a website load faster, right from graphic and css handling to Script and server request. Here is the direct link to the article:
http://www.roscripts.com/How_to_speed_up_your_website-175.html

Google Sky

Google Earth releases a new feature called the Google Sky. So what is new in it you may think, well! the name says it all. Google now lets users on the web to have a glance at the wonderful Galaxy at click of a button. To use the Google Sky feature, you need to download the latest installation software of Google Earth. Open the Google Earth and from the menu select 'Switch to Sky' and voila you are in open space. You can view Galaxies, Starts, Planets you name it and you got it on Google Earth/Sky.

Also check out
Google Earth/Sky

Living Light from Philips

Nice looking picture right? Its not just the picture, the product discussed here is very exciting too. The Living Light is another New from the Philips stable of innovative technology. The end result of the product is to produce nice ambient light to your Office, Living room, Bedroom or any other room which you think is appropriate. The Living Light has a combination of LED lights of Red, Blue and Green. The intensity of these bulbs can be adjusted and add some Life and Color to your rooms. The product is scheduled to be launched sometime in September 2007. You can pre-order at RED 5

Buy this product at

RED 5

Microsoft's Tafiti: A Silverlight based tool powered by Live Search

Microsoft’s latest experimental release Tafiti is an eye catching, interesting and innovative search tool built on top of Windows Live Search and Silverlight.

Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili(a sub-Saharan language), enhances searching on the web by allowing users to search, save, e-mail results across multiple queries and sessions.

Tafiti is based on Release Candidate (RC) of the Silverlight 1.0 browser plug-in and it runs everywhere Silverlight does i.e. On Vista, XP SP2 running IE 6, IE 7, Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 and Firefox 2.0.x; and on Mac OS X using Firefox 1.5.0.8 and Firefox 2.0.x

All you need to have is a pre-release version of Silverlight installed which comes free as of now.

My initial experience with Tafiti revealed these facts:

• Search results can be dragged from the results pane to a shelf, be labeled and stacked upon.The stack content can be edited, saved or e-mailed to someone else.

• There is a Tree View where by search results are placed on the branches of a tree which can be rotated and zoomed as necessary to visualize the search results.

• Tafiti includes a carousel to simplify the organization of returned search results. By rotating the carousel, one can access search results from the web, images, news, RSS feeds, or books.

• One major hitch in the tool is, one can’t right click the links to open in a new tab.

For the ones who’s looking for a simple search, may be a text based search such as, Google, Yahoo will serve the purpose but if you want to experience the Search then surely Tafiti has something new to offer you.

It’s just designed to show off the kinds of apps developers can build using Silverlight.

Watch a Video to know more about Tafiti.

Adobe Extends Web Video Leadership with H.264 Support

Adobe delivers support for H.264 video and High Efficiency AAC audio codecs in the latest update to Adobe Flash Player 9, available in beta on Adobe Labs.

This update, codenamed “Moviestar,” includes new features, enhancements and bug fixes for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux versions of Flash Player 9, including:

• Support for H.264 video and HE-AAC audio codecs (new Aug. 21, 2007).
• Multi-core support for vector rendering.
• Full screen mode with hardware scaling.
• Flash Player cache for common platform components, such as the Flex framework.
• Support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) in the Windows plug-in.

Watch this space for Adobe Media Player