Oct 17

IDC and Gartner: Lenovo leaps past Dell for second place, still trails HP for the gold

Posted in: business, HP, industry, lenovo, market share, marketshare, PC, research, sales, statistics, tablet, Today's Chili
IDC and Gartner have come out with their latest Q3 rankings of the world’s PC manufacturers, which means it’s time for us to do some dissecting. Not much changed at the top of the heap, where, according to IDC, HP still rules the roost with about 18 percent market share (despite that whole PC biz spinoff thing). But the most dramatic shift came from Lenovo, which scurried past Dell for second place, with 13.7 percent market share (13.5, according to Gartner) — a 36.1 percent jump from the third quarter of 2010 (25.2 percent, says Gartner). Dell’s pie slice, on the other hand, shrunk slightly to 12 percent this quarter, down from 12.6 percent last year. On the global scale, meanwhile, PC sales increased by about 3.6 percent compared to Q3 2010 (3.2 percent, in Gartner’s books), though both research firms acknowledged that this figure was well below their respective projections. Why? IDC points to several economic factors, including the threat of a double-dip recession, while Gartner blames the rise of “non-PC devices,” including tablets. Surprise!

Continue reading IDC and Gartner: Lenovo leaps past Dell for second place, still trails HP for the gold

IDC and Gartner: Lenovo leaps past Dell for second place, still trails HP for the gold originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 17

CyberNotes: Encrypt Files with an Image

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

Securely sending files to friends and family is becoming a chore these days. Some people ZIP up a file and add a password, or post it to a password-protected website, but today I’m going to show you a more unique way to encrypt files.

Some people have taken a liking to hiding files in an image. It’s a pretty cool trick, but anyone with some knowledge of computers will notice when an image has a filesize that’s abnormally large. If your just stuffing a small file in the image it might not be so bad, but how about encrypting a file or folder using an image? Yep, that’s completely possible using a free application called PixelCryptor.

With PixelCryptor you give it a file or folder, and an image to use for the encryption process. The result will be a single file that is encrypted using the image you provided, and the only way to decrypt the file is for someone to have the same image that you used (PixelCryptor is also needed for decryption).

–How it works–

  1. Start PixelCryptor after you have installed it:
    PixelCryptor: Encrypt Files with an Image
  2. Select the file(s) and or folder(s) that you want to encrypt:
    PixelCryptor: Encrypt Files with an Image
  3. Select the image you want to use for encryption. This is almost like providing a password, except it will be much harder for a hacker to break.
    PixelCryptor: Encrypt Files with an Image
  4. Pick the destination for the encrypted file, and the encryption process will begin. It took about 30-seconds to encrypt a 14MB file with a 20KB image.
    PixelCryptor: Encrypt Files with an Image
  5. It’s now ready to send off!
    PixelCryptor: Encrypt Files with an Image

–Why it’s Useful–

One of the reasons I love this so much is that it requires little memorization. In my example above, I encrypted the file using our site’s logo. When I decrypted the same file on another computer I re-saved the image from the site, and named it to something different this time. PixelCryptor didn’t care about the picture’s filename, and had no troubles decrypting the file.

This is awesome because you could point someone to a particular image on the Internet: a logo from a website, an image from Flickr, or any image you have on your computer. You could pick your favorite photo to encrypt personal information, and then you never have to worry about forgetting a password. Nor do you have to worry about what they choose to name the image.

–Making it Better–

The only downside to the program is that the person doing the decrypting also has to install PixelCryptor. If there was a portable version that didn’t require installation it wouldn’t be so bad, but a message in their forum says that they are working on a standalone decryption utility which would also be nice.

PixelCryptor Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 17

SideBySide Uses Handheld Projectors for Multiplayer Games

Posted in: R&D and Inventions, Today's Chili

When two handheld projectors can see each other, their separate images can interact. Photo credit: Disney Research

When I first read the emails about this project (after a Sunday evening tipple), I thought that it consisted of merely pointing two projectors at the same wall, connecting them to two gaming devices and playing head-to-head. That would be awesome enough, but the reality is even more awesomer.

The project is called SideBySide, and comes from researchers Ivan Poupyrev and Karl D.D. Willis. It combines a camera with a projector so that the two on-screen (or on-wall) images can actually interact with each other. Each unit consists of a modified DLP projector which outputs a single color of visible light and also an invisible infrared image. The IR image is detected by the camera of the second device, letting it know what the other device is up to, and where. Take a look:

Games are the obvious use-case, but if cellphones had this tech you could drag and drop files between them, for instance, using an IR 2-D barcode. Fittingly, SideBySide is a product of Disney’s research labs. And this might hint at the project’s true value: keeping the kids quiet, wherever you happen to be.

Ad-hoc Multi-user Interaction with Handheld Projectors [Disney Research. Thanks, Karl and Ivan!]


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Oct 17

Kindle Update Adds Read Position Sync, Cloud Storage

Posted in: kindle, Software, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, update

Amazon will now sync your reading position for personal documents

A somewhat innocuous update for the Kindle looks like it’s not even worth a press release, but a closer look reveals it to be a pretty big deal. Kindle Keyboard Software update v3.3 brings Whispersync and cloud storage to personal documents.

While some might frame this as an answer to Apple’s iCloud, it seems like an obvious move for Amazon. Right now, you can redownload any purchased content — like ebooks, music, movies — from Amazon any time you like. This update (already included in the new Kindle and Kindle Touch) does the same for any content you add yourself.

If you e-mail documents to your Kindle, or add them via USB, they’ll now show up on the personal documents section your Kindle management pages at Amazon. From there, you can delete them or send them to one of your devices. You get 5GB of space, which should be more than enough, even counting PDFs

What’s more, if the file is in “Kindle format” then your reading progress will be synced between devices. Thus you can read a converted ebook on the Kindle in bed, and switch to the Kindle app on your phone when you’re waiting in line at the store.

Or you will. The new services only work with the actual Kindles right now. Updates are coming soon for the various Kindle apps.

There are two more new features in this update. You now get local deals included in ads if you own a Special Offer Kindle, and the Voice Guide can now be started by pressing the shift and space keys together. I tried this last one and it seems buggy at best. I could only get it to work once.

The update is free, and don’t panic if your Kindle seems to go into an endless loop of restarts. It will end eventually. I promise.

Kindle Keyboard Software Update Version 3.3 [Amazon]

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Oct 17

Wireless bike brake system has the highest GPA ever

Posted in: bike, concept, germany, prototype, Today's Chili

Color us a yellow shade of mendacious, but if we designed something that works 99.999999999997 percent of the time, we’d probably round off and give ourselves a big ol’ 100 percent A+. We’d probably throw in a smiley faced sticker, too. Computer scientist Holger Hermanns, however, is a much more honest man, which is why he’s willing to admit that his new wireless bike brake system is susceptible to outright failure on about three out of every trillion occasions. Hermanns’ concept bike, pictured above, may look pretty standard at first glance, but take a closer look at the right handlebar. There, you’ll find a rubber grip with a pressure sensor nestled inside. Whenever a rider squeezes this grip, that blue plastic box sitting next to it will send out a signal to a receiver, attached to the bike’s fork. From there, the message will be sent on to an actuator that converts the signal into mechanical energy, and activates the brake. Best of all, this entire process happens will take just 250 milliseconds of your life. No wires, no brakes, no mind control. Hermanns and his colleagues at Saarland University are now working on improving their system’s traction and are still looking for engineers to turn their concept into a commercial reality, but you can wheel past the break for more information, in the full PR.

Continue reading Wireless bike brake system has the highest GPA ever

Wireless bike brake system has the highest GPA ever originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 17

Salt enables six times the storage capacity for snail-unfriendly hard drives

Posted in: nano, nanotechnology, science, storage, Today's Chili

Salt: sure, you might use it to cure meats for your latest solar-powered circumnavigation. But hold onto your kippers, Magellan, because Singaporean scientists have found that sodium chloride — ordinary table salt! — can also dramatically increase storage capacity. You see, typical hard drives have randomly-arranged magnetic grains, which allow data density of about 0.5 terabit per square inch. But a high-resolution e-beam lithography process, aided by our good friend NaCl, arranges the grains in a tighter, more orderly fashion, upping the density to 3.3 terabits per square inch. Called nanopatterning, this technique enables a 1TB drive to hold 6TB without additional platters; it also works with current manufacturing technology, meaning no expensive upgrades. If that’s got you dreaming of a higher-capacity future, hit the source link for more glorious technical details. We’ll warn you, though: the pictures of luscious, bee-stung lips stop here.

Salt enables six times the storage capacity for snail-unfriendly hard drives originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ZDNet  |  sourceInstitute of Materials Research and Engineering (pdf)  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 17

RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing

Posted in: app, application, BlackBerry, business, download, free, mobilepostcross, money, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, Today's Chili
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has already apologized for last week’s widespread BlackBerry outage, but apparently, that wasn’t enough. Today, the manufacturer announced that it’s offering customers a full slate of “premium apps” for free, in the hopes of earning back some of the goodwill it lost following that mysterious blackout. In a statement, the company said the gesture is “an expression of appreciation” for the patience that many BlackBerry users demonstrated during the incident, with Lazaridis adding that his company remains “committed to providing the high standard of reliability” that consumers have come to expect. For now, the company’s offering a total of 12 apps (collectively valued at around $100), including SIMS 3, iSpeech Translator Pro and Shazam Encore among others, though more will be added at a later date. The offer kicks off on Wednesday and will last for a month, so head past the break to see which goodies are up for grabs.

Continue reading RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing

RIM offers free apps to make up for that whole BlackBerry outage thing originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 17

Crestron debuts free, paid mobile apps for Android devices

Posted in: app, hdpostmini, mobile, remote control, RemoteControl, Today's Chili

It’s taken some time, but Crestron has finally rolled out an official version of its home automation remote control software for Android. Crestron’s iOS efforts have been around and there was also an unofficial solution available from former Sling founder Blake Krikorian, but now users can choose between the free Crestron Mobile app and $100 Crestron Mobile Pro app. Judging by its iOS counterpart, the Pro version adds a number of control options including pre-set scenes and more. Of course, if you’re rocking one of the company’s setups then we figure you pay someone to explain this stuff to you who can probably break it down in more detail. Hit the link below to download or check out the press release after the break.

Continue reading Crestron debuts free, paid mobile apps for Android devices

Crestron debuts free, paid mobile apps for Android devices originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 03:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 17

I Finally Moved to 64-bit Windows

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista

This article was written on January 14, 2009 by CyberNet.

vista x64 dvd.jpgFor the last few years I’ve been using a Windows Vista Media Center machine to record television shows, stream media to my Xbox 360, and perform backups of other computers in the house. When I made the switch from XP to Vista I contemplated installing the 64-bit version of the operating system, but I didn’t feel like hassling with any driver issues. After all, a 32-bit Vista serial number will also activate on a 64-bit install meaning you can make the switch at any point.

Almost two weeks ago I had a hard drive crash on me, and had to order a new one. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to install 64-bit Vista on my 4-year old Pentium D computer. Beforehand I made sure that drivers were available for my ATI graphics card and other devices that I knew would need them. Things looked good so I proceeded with the install.

The setup was a breeze, and I can’t really say that it felt any different than installing the 32-bit version of Vista. Some of the applications I use have versions specifically for 64-bit Windows, but all my other 32-bit programs still run fine. Although by running 32-bit programs you don’t necessarily get all of the advantages the operating system has to offer.

One of the big reasons that I wanted to make the switch is that using the 32-bit version of Vista meant that I couldn’t take advantage of all 4GB of memory in the computer. Before Vista was only able to access about 3.2GB of the memory.

So now I’m wondering how many of you are already running a 64-bit version of Windows, or are you holding out despite having a processor capable of handling it?

P.S. Here’s Microsoft’s guide comparing 32-bit & 64-bit versions of Vista

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 17

Get Your Hands On VMWare GSX Server For Free

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 03, 2006 by CyberNet.

Get Your Hands On VMWare GSX Server For Free

The competition for Microsoft is continuously growing and it is coming from more sources than just Google. Virtual Server 2005 is a popular application that Microsoft released to allow users to put a server OS on top of another operating system. VMWare is competing with Microsoft by releasing their version of Virtual Server, dubbed VMWare GSX, for free! VMWare is a very popular company that has been in the virtual operating systems business for quite some time now. This is a very prominent move on their part.

News Source: Bink.nu

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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