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Continue reading Grace Digital’s rugged Eco Terra iPhone dock: because nature’s too quiet for you

Grace Digital’s rugged Eco Terra iPhone dock: because nature’s too quiet for you originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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British retailer Marks and Spencer has launched what it claims is a world first: a carbon neutral bra.

Part of M&S’ Autograph Leaves collection, the bra has been independently verified by the Carbon Trust Footprinting Certification Company, based on a variety of factors. First, the bras are made at the company’s eco-friendly factory in Sri Lanka, which is powered b renewable energy and new waste-management initiatives.

M&S also purchased the equivalent of 1,440 tonnes of CO2 via a carbon credit project, to help offset the rest of the production and transport.

“The complexity of a bra’s supply chain makes it the ideal product to learn about the practicalities of carbon footprinting, as it contains 21 component parts from 12 different suppliers,” M&S’ Mike Barry said. “We’re already applying the lessons we’ve learned to other product areas and have taken an important step towards our goal of giving every single M&S product a Plan A attribute.”

Sure, a lack of first-party tools never kept you from bending the Kinect to your diabolical whim, but Microsoft’s taking some time out at MIX 11 to talk about the official Kinect SDK for Windows and show off a few demos. Mind you, all of that’s going to happen on stage over the course of the next hour, so we don’t have many details for you right now, but Redmond says devs will have access to not only the basic color and infrared depth cameras, but “robust skeletal tracking” of two simultaneous individuals as well, and perhaps most excitingly, full access to the Kinect’s array of four microphones for noise canceling and voice recognition complete with API support. Hate to say it, Kinect hackers, but the bar’s about to be bumped up. Keep it locked right here and we’ll let you know if the Microsofties reveal anything else fun!

Update: Yep, we’re getting some Kinect SDK details now — Microsoft says you’ll be able to write Kinect apps for PC in Visual Basic, C#, and C++, and they’re showing off basic coding now… with just a few minutes of work in Visual Studio, they had a program that could draw lines using the wave of a hand.

Update 2: Okay, we just saw some straight-up Minority Report fun here — a guided astronomical tour of the universe controlled by Kinect, and a motorized lounge chair! Connection permitting, we’ll have video up soon.

Microsoft details Kinect SDK for Windows PC, promises ‘robust skeletal tracking’ (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on December 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Over in the CyberNet forum, Pieter posted an awesome tip for Linux users where you can actually create a shortcut to forcefully terminate an application. This is handy in situations where a program, such as Firefox, freezes up and won’t shutdown. I figured there had to be a way to do this in Windows as well, and so I started searching around.

Almost every site that I found recommended using the taskkill (instructions) command line option, which is rather easy to create a shortcut for since it is built-in to Windows. Doing taskkill /f /im firefox.exe would be the command needed to “forcefully” close Firefox at a moments notice, but I found one flaw with it. Sometimes it is handy being able to forcefully close Firefox even when it’s not frozen, because then you know the next time you start the browser it will ask whether you want to restore your tabs and windows.

What I found with taskkill was that if a program wasn’t frozen it would gracefully close it. That might be nice in some cases, but when you use this with Firefox you won’t get the option to restore your session the next time you start the browser. Don’t worry, I wasn’t about to give up! With the help of a very small (just  6.5KB) free program it will take under a minute to setup.

Note: These instructions are written for Vista, but should be similar in all versions of Windows.

1. You can download Taskill (note that it is only spelled with one “k”) from the developer’s homepage, but you’ll have to scroll down a ways to find it. Alternatively we are mirroring the file on our server to make it easier to download. Place the file in a location where you’ll easily know the path to it, such as at the root of the “C:\” drive.
2. The program does have an GUI, but we aren’t going to be using it. Remember, our goal is to create a shortcut that takes advantage of it. Right-click on the Desktop and choose New -> Shortcut.
3. When it asks for the location you need to type the path to Taskill, followed by the executable’s name that you want to forcefully close. It will look something like this:

   "C:\taskill.exe" firefox.exe

   Where the part in quotes is the location of taskill.exe, and then immediately after that you put the name of the executable program you want to close with the shortcut. Then click the Next button.

   (Click to Enlarge)
   

4. Name the shortcut whatever you would like. In this case we’re going to call it Kill Firefox.

   (Click to Enlarge)
   

5. Now you should have a pretty new icon that you can use to kill all instances of Firefox. You can put this on your desktop, in the Quick Launch bar, or even in the Start Menu.
   
6. Extra Credit: You can change the icon of the shortcut by right-clicking on it, selecting Properties, and then click the Change Icon button. While you’re in the Properties you should consider adding a keyboard shortcut if you plan on using it a lot!

This will probably only appeal to a small amount of people, but given the tiny application size and the fast execution I thought Taskill was pretty darn awesome. I use this with my Firefox so that I can shut it down at a moments notice!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryKill Multiple Processes in Windows at OnceQuickly Kill Tasks in WindowsCyberNotes: Shortcut to Close Multiple ProgramsUltimate List of Keyboard Shortcuts

Of the nearly 20 consumer laptops Lenovo unleashed upon the world at CES, the IdeaPad Z570 was billed as the multimedia notebook with the least flashy design. (Okay, we’re paraphrasing a little.) Curiously, the company didn’t say at the time how much its metallic wonder would cost nor when it would be available. Three months later we’re finally getting our answer: it’s on sale now starting at $699, already taking a gentle tumble from $999. To refresh your saturated noggins, the 15.6-inch Z570 moves to a chiclet keyboard, as many other Lenovo laptops have, and packs a Core i3-2310M processor, 4GB of RAM, and 500GB 5,400RPM hard drive at its lowest price point. Those willing to spend more can step up to a $999 version that includes a Core i5-2520M CPU and 6GB of RAM. Either way, they come with DVD burners and relatively low-res 1366 x 768 screens, and the graphics top out with Intel’s integrated HD 3000 chipset. That’s all fine for everyday use, but deserving of that “multimedia machine” moniker? We’ll leave that to you and your wallet.

[Thanks, Tim]

Lenovo’s metallic IdeaPad Z570 finally goes on sale, starts at $699 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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