One of the most complicated problems of Science is to reach full reproductibility of experiments. Even more, it is merely an issue of knowing how one experiment was done. It is in this context of research and education that the JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) web site was created to present videos of some scientific experiments.
It is not always spectacular. Most of the videos will probably not bring a Nobel prize to their author, but there are plenty of interesting things, like this dissection of Drosophila ovaries (the Drosophila fly is the most common guinea pig of biology).
Already a great marketing success. While everybody was expecting the announcement of a new VoIP (Voice-over-IP) phone set by Apple under the name of iPhone, there is a product launched under that exact name by… Linksys.
The networking company is stealing all the publicity from Apple in a coup. But it is not only a marketing move, it is going along the impressive offer of no less than five (5) different phone sets including:
finally, it’s happened! Microsoft announced officially the end of FrontPage (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Expression Web Designer will come in Spring to replace it).
As a matter of fact, FrontPage did not really succeed in penetrating the pro market for web designers. Its utterly simplistic approach to web design was obviously far behind some serious competitors (or leaders) like DreamWeaver. But, non-specialists now stop using it -essentially- because they no longer need it. Today, ready-to-install blogs (like WordPress, or Joomla or Mamba or SPIP) have already marginalized web site design, but solutions including both the blog software and the web hosting (like WordPress.com) allow to forget completely about both the tool and the installation. You can immediately start using it… without even looking at FrontPage.
So, FrontPage saw its public disappear. FrontPage lost its justification. We won’t cry.
I have been testing DU-meter as a way to display the network traffic around my computer. It shows a nice little graph to present the network traffic in a very usable/understandable way like here:
This graph is updated in real-time which means that color bar allow you to recognize incoming or outgoing traffic, but this is continuously updated according to the real activity of your PC.
Despite the nice look of DU-meter, I was a bit annoyed by the fact that it is shareware and that the end of the trial period was arriving. Actually, I was able to find another program providing the same kind of services in a freeware package. The look is slightly different:
However, BitMeter2 have about the same set of features. Both are providing the same semi-transparent window (allowing to see the underlying windows through semi-transparency of the graph). The only thing that could be improved is the size of the BitMeter2 window that seems impossible to change (contrary to Du-Meter).
It may be a little oddity, but I feel it’s an interesting idea for all those who want to browse the web anonymously. Usually, there is only one solution: using an anonymizer proxy, but APAZ is bringing you a nice twist to it by allowing you to build your own anonymizer proxy (a server allowing to hide the actual origin of a web communication).
APAZ is a small PHP software that can be installed nearly anywhere you can host a small PHP-based web application. It provide on-demand anonymizer proxy. It’s no longer necessary to dig into long lists of more or less available proxy servers.
Have you been contacted by an unauthorised overseas firm trying to sell or buy stock shares (in the United Kingdom)? The FSA would like to hear from you.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is an independent non-governmental body, given statutory powers by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 to regulate the stock market and assist inverstors in the financial markets.
A man living near Johannesburg (South Africa) was recently fined by a court for a bizarre reason: He stole a pregnancy certificate and forged it to get seven days off work.
Apparently, he did not think that somebody would notice the ‘difficulty’ a man would have to become pregnant.
Firefox 2 is hardly out that developers are already working hard on the new version 3 as shown by the apparition of an alpha version on the FTP server.
Some visible improvements:
Bookmarks will be replaced with “places” that will end in a left-side menu (an innovation to be tested).
Tabs will be easier to sort and re-organize (as in Opera).
Auto-update of the browser will be possible (good for reliability, security and ease-of-use).
Reminder: An alpha version of any software ahs no good reason for being stable or debugged. So, nobody will be surprised if the cold-blooded testers have bad surprises. You have been warned now.
BitTorrent, the leader and creator of the P2P technology that is driving most of the video and large-file peer-to-peer exchanges just announced that they bought µTorrent (micro-Torrent or uTorrent), the company providing the smallest, lightest (and maybe, fastest) BitTorrent client.
Apparently, they intend to re-inforce their presence, possibly in preparation of an extension of the technology to appliances like TV sets.
The brand new slick nice digital SLR camera from Sigma -the SD14- is announced late. Sigma published that the Digital Single Lens Reflex will be available not in November (we knew it), not in December (before the Christmas purchases), but in March 2007.
This is very bad news for this good product. After having missed the Christmas season buying spree, the SD14 may have itself in a tough strugle with the new products bound to appear in Spring 2007.
The Nikon D40 should arrive now in the shops (if we believe what Nikon announced). So, it is the right time to try and summarize the tests, reviews and comparisons available on the Internet about this digital camera that, if he is not a real revolution, represents a major step forward in making digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras accessible to the masses thanks to a nice price.
Comparing directly the entry-level Nikon D40 camera with a high-end monster like the Canon 5D is out of question, but it is quite sure that with the upcoming shopping season, many consumers will be attracted.
On a PC computer equiped with Windows 2000, I had a major problem of network slowness (when accessing the network, all operations seemed to atke ages to complete). I admit I was somewhat lost without a solution. So, I decided to use the ever-powerful solution: Google. It allowed me to find a web site with a very deeply documented page specially built to solve problems of slow network on Windows. The page contains everything you shoudl check and solutions to a lot of cases. And there is a lot of choice!
Thus, I was quickly stopped by a remark about the use of several network cards on the same machine. And my mind suddenly lit like a candle! It happens that this problematic PC has no less than 3 network interfaces including an unconnected one. So, it was only a matter of checking -as advised- that they were all disabled (except a single one) to get a proper operation back in seconds.
This is the obvious conclusion of this minor news that may attract the attention of the engineers among us: Apple now has no less than seven suppliers for the Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) of its iPod (they expect a strong growth in 2007):
Tripod Technology,
Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board (NPC),
Unimicron Technology,
Compeq Manufacturing,
Wus Printed Circuit
APCB
Gold Circuit Electronics (GCE)
In some industries, second sourcing to secure a supply merely means to add a second redundant supplier (its better to have two malls near your home, rather than only one). Apple pushes this strategy to the extreme.
When a good idea appears in the Internet space, it attracts people, a lot of idle people and a lot of marketing people. Of course, with marketing comes its shameful brother: SPAM.
This is exactly what is happening right now on MySpace, the virtual social network where teens have been spreading and sharing for months now (nearly 50 million users in this end of 2006). An example that borders on caricature is the appearance of pseudo user Red Passion (not only a user with a pseudo!). Here is how she present herself:
What I adore… Strong and skillful people, tolerance and freedom, the ambiguous side of life, testing… in every sense, excitement and thrill, sharing, seeing and being seen. What I hate… Strictness, simple-minded people, stupidity and foolishness, fear and shame, prejudice, meanness… in every sense and, more than everything, the lack of imagination. This is me, female, from a place you’ll never know. Explore my world…
With such an invitation, on a dating web site (even more than on a social network site), the first contact is virtually automatic. Red Passion is not a real woman (after all, who could blame her for that since false identities are plentiful on those sites – or at least identities that are fantastically more generous than the mere reality), but – more importantly – she is a real advertisment.
Yes! This is an online ad for Campari (the Italian alcohol drink) and HotelCampari.com the accompanying web site.
Some feeble-minded observers would think that this would not stand for long, but no. SPAM – here as everywhere else – uses the proven theories of advertising to extend them to their worst extreme. Isn’t abuse too big? Alcohol beverages advertised in a virtual location obviously crowded with teens.
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On a PC computer equiped with Windows 2000, I had a major problem of network slowness (when accessing the network, all operations seemed to atke ages to complete). I admit I was somewhat lost without a solution. So, I decided to use the ever-powerful solution: Google. It allowed me to find a web site with 
