Although, Leopard and Snow Leopard may seem similar, several changes have been made under the hood, keeping in mind hardware advances in the future.

Pricing and System Requirements

Apple has reduced the pricing for the upgrade from the usual $129 to $29, but for customers upgrading from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, it will be $169. For users who have more than one Mac, a five-pack upgrade is made available at $49.

Snow Leopard will install on an Intel-based Mac with 5 GB disk space, 1 GB RAM and an optical disk drive that can read DVDs. Enterprise customers usually have compatibility issues with a new operating system and it is the same with Snow Leopard. Many of the applications may need updating. However, most of the major software drivers and major applications are said to work fine.

It all begins with the installation and Snow Leopard has been created smart enough to understand how to upgrade a system without having to be spoon-fed. If for some reason, this OS needs to be reinstalled, it will not write over the current system files.

Main Features of Snow Leopard

Here are some of the main features of Snow Leopard that actually make a difference:

Security

Snow Leopard comes with built-in protection against malware. It checks for dangers in files downloaded from the Internet. It provides defense against infecting the computer with harmful software; however, Snow Leopard does not have the option to remove the malware, once it finds out that the system is infected.

Exchange

Support for Exchange is one of the main new features of this OS. Exchange is Microsoft’s contact, email and calendar server. In Mac, once Exchange support is added to Mail, users will start receiving all their email messages in Mail. Exchange contacts can be viewed in the Address Book and Exchange calendars and tasks will show up in iCal. With iCal, users can schedule meetings depending on the status (free or busy) of invitees and even accept or decline meeting invitations from Mail itself.

Expose

Expose is a window-management functionality and displays all the windows on the screen. This feature already exists in the previous version, but there are improvements with the new OS. In the previous versions, the arrangement of windows was not aligned properly, but now they are aligned in a systematic order on a grid, making it easier to find any window. Users have the option to arrange windows either alphabetically or by application.

Now Expose has been integrated into the Dock. If an application in the Dock is clicked on and the mouse button held down for a second, Snow Leopard will display all the windows for that application, even windows that have been minimized.

Autosubstitution

We all know about the autocorrect programs that change “adn to and” and “fo to of.” Apple has now incorporated autosubstitution of text into this OS. Although, the programs need to be modified to support this, once it is done, they will share the substitution list in the System preferences. There are several common substitutions as mentioned above, but users also have the option to include their own. Even dashes, smart quotes can be enabled, which will replace the commonly typed symbols to the correct versions.

Finder

The file and folder management of Mac OS X has been overhauled in Snow Leopard. According to Apple, this Finder is far more responsive than the older version. The main changes here are the icons, which are now large at 512 x 512 pixels size. The icon size can be made bigger or smaller with the use of a slider located in the bottom of any window. Since these are very large icons, Apple has introduced previews inside them, such as document previews and if it is a PDF, then all the contents of the document can be viewed using the page preview buttons for navigation. If it is a movie, users will be able to watch a QuickTime movie in its icon.

QuickTime Multimedia Architecture

In Snow Leopard, the QuickTime multimedia architecture is named QuickTime X. The new QuickTime Player 7 is said to be not that great when compared to the older version. So, the old version can be used since it is still around in the Mac’s Utilities folder.

Services Menu

With the Snow Leopard, Apple concentrated on the Services menu. While earlier, it was difficult to access and navigate because of the long lists of irrelevant services; it is now easier to access as only the services related to what the user is doing or the applications being used come up.

That’s not all. There is the new eject manager that takes care of the external volume, the preview that is far better and accessibility with this OS is much greater for disabled people, making this operating system a far better improvement over the previous version.

These are just some of the main features as the Snow Leopard comes with a whole lot more, including dozens of smaller but significant changes. Time you checked it out yourself.

High definition displays are becoming highly popular, and the bigger the LCD panel the higher the resolution.

In spite of the price going down when compared to earlier, they are still on the expensive side, but for those that are willing to pay for quality, there are quite a few good 30-inch LCD monitors in the market.

Gateway XHD3000 – Around $1000

This one is the best general purpose monitor that gives the feel of a television, as the video is sharp, thanks to the special built-in chip, the Silicon Optix Realta HQV upscaler. This works by upscaling video content.

This monitor has a resolution of 2560×1600 with a decent 6ms response time, and a contrast ratio of 1000:1. It supports everything from DVI-D, VGA, component, composite and S-Video. The Nintendo 64 can be hooked up, and with HDMI support, Xbox 360 or PS3 can be connected too. It comes with a 6 port USB 2.0 hub.

With the stunning image quality that is perfect for both play and work, the XHD3000 is a great monitor and one of the best in the market. It stands out for its connectivity and QUAD HD-display with built-in processor.

Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP – Starting price of $1,400

This monitor comes with an IPS technology based 30-inch LCD panel with a very high resolution of 2560×1600. This is one of the very high resolution monitors available, that offers great color. The 8ms response time does a great job for fast motion video. This monitor also has several connectors, including DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA, dual-link DVI-D, composite, component and S-Video. The panel contains a 9-in-2 media card reader as well as a 4 port USB 2.0.

It has an adjustable stand that allows tilt, swivel, height and pivot adjustments. With this monitor, you get plenty of connection options and great looks.

NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi-BK – $1,979 – $2,800

This LCD monitor offers a NEC MultiSync LCD3090WXQi-BK display that provides unrivaled color performance along with a 12-bit lookup table, X-Light Pro and ColorComp technologies. Loaded with advanced features and technologies, the display comes with DVI and HDMI inputs. The resolution is 2560×1600 with a contrast ratio of 1000:1 and 6ms response time.

The monitor stand is full tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustments. It can also use VESA mounts of 100 x 100 or 200 x 100. The warranty period is for 4 years, which is a good thing as the price is quite high.

Although, this LCD monitor is on the expensive side, if it is just going to be used for writing documents or for light use; it is perfect for hardcore gamers and graphics designers.

Samsung SyncMaster 305T – $1,300 – $1,430

The SyncMaster is certainly a good buy if you are in the market for 30” monitors. It sports a 2560×1600 resolution but to be able to enjoy this, a high-end video card and a dual-link DVI cable are needed. There are also not too many connection options, other than the DVI port, but there are four USB downstream ports and one USB upstream port. This monitor supports HDCP.

The height of the monitor can be extended by 3” and rotated by 60 degrees to the left and right and 30 degrees to the back.

This is an impressive monitor and plays blu-ray and regular DVD’s with extremely great clarity, with a 999:1 contrast ratio. Because of the extremely good picture quality, playing games on this can be a very thrilling experience.

It may not really have a ton of features like some others, but the crystal clear picture quality and bright and vibrant colors can be very addictive.

If you are looking for a 30” monitor, there are a select few companies that create the best: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Samsung and Gateway. You are sure to find the one you are looking for, from among these. While you are at it, check out the Apple Cinema Display screen.

my computer screen. It was from my sister who always felt I deserved much more.

My boss walked in behind me at that moment. I was caught unawares and didn’t have time to close the window. He read it (I’m sure), talked about something else and left the room with a weird expression on his face.

I’m sure all of you must have faced similar embarrassing situations, either at home or at work.

Luckily for us, now there are systems that can block sensitive content on a computer screen. When a document is displayed, only the user of that computer can see the text. All others will see content that is convincingly made to look like real but is not.

This miraculous system is “Chameleon,” developed by Oculis Lab, a U.S. based company. According to Bill Anderson, president of Oculis Labs, “For example, a line of text that reads “the cat ran across the road” may appear to a snooper to say “the turtle had a nice lunch.”

For now, this system is designed specifically for military use.

How does this work?

Chameleon works by initially performing a calibration test on the person who is the original user of a particular computer. The movement of a person’s eyes over the text is observed. The pattern is said to be different for 95% of the people.

The text can be seen by the user, whose eyes are tracked by “gaze tracker,” an infrared camera. For people with a different gazing pattern, the text changes to something else. Anderson said, “We are replacing content with equally probably false content.”

All these text changes occur within 23 to 65 milliseconds during the saccades, which are the rapid unconscious eye movements. Of course all this happens so fast, that for the user, it is just like reading text normally on the computer.

Chameleon begins with intercepting application content, such as a Microsoft Word document and then turns to intercepting the graphics card. Anderson said that although the authorized user can intercept the changing text outside their peripheral vision, it does not create any problems with the comprehension of the document.

I know you’re wondering how Chameleon comes up with all that false unrelated content, but content that makes sense. It uses a statistical dictionary to create convincing content. If the computer is being used by a soldier for some confidential information, he doesn’t have to keep a watch over his back, as whoever comes from behind can only view this false content and not the original.

But there is a slight problem – about 5% of the people are said to share the same viewing pattern, which means if such a person looks at the computer screen, he or she will be able to view exactly what the user is viewing. But then since such people make up only 5%, it is unlikely that such a situation will arise.

Chameleon is also smart enough to resist a tempest attack, which is an old technique where electronic signals that the hardware sends out, such as the graphics card etc. are detected and then used to figure out the content. There can also be no viewing the content with screenshots taken with zoom lenses.

Currently, the system has been developed to work with Microsoft Windows PCs, but may be used with other operating systems too. The company plans on approaching the U.S. military initially and later other NATO allies. Each license per computer costs US$ 10,000.

Regular consumers like us need not be disappointed, as Oculis has already released for sale, a product called the “Private Eye,” that works with a regular webcam. This detects the user of a computer and if that user turns away from the webcam, the text on the computer screen is blurred within 100 milliseconds.

Sometimes, closing the window makes it seem rude or distrusting of the other person. Such awkward situations of closing the window as soon as someone walks in are alleviated.

The company is releasing an advanced version, the PrivateEye Professional, very soon. If the webcam sees someone standing behind the user, it will immediately display a thumbnail video window of that person’s image. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for an interloper who snoops from behind hoping to see what you’re up to, and sees his own face instead.

One would think the cost of such a wonderful device would be very high, but a consumer license for PrivateEye costs just $19.95, while a commercial license costs $59.95. PrivateEye Professional costs $59.95 for a consumer license and $119.95 for commercial use.

Oculis Labs has come a long way from being a family and friend financed business that started with $1 million, and is currently on another fund-raising spree, with a hope of raising another $1 – $1.5 million. It has big plans for the future and hopes to use this technology into data leakage security products offered by big vendors. Another option it is looking at is to be able to ship PrivateEye with new PCs by entering into a deal with PC makers.

Well, at least with the smart thinking of this company, we are soon going to be rid of the dread of using computers for confidential or personal matters.

Lenovo ThinkPad X200 – $1,542

This is one of the best full-featured ultraportable laptops that offer a wonderful performance and an unbelievable battery life. It is equipped with the new Centrino 2 processor and is far more powerful than its predecessor, the ThinkPad X61, although the screen is only 12.1 inches.  But that doesn’t make this 2.95 pound beauty any less superior.

The screen is bright and easy to read with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and it also has a built-in Webcam, which makes it perfect for execs to work on the move.  The keyboard is much bigger and is spill resistant.

It comes with 2GB of RAM, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo P8600 and a 160 GB hard drive. Lenovo has also expanded the battery line and offers three choices, with the most powerful nine-cell model giving almost nine hours.

For people looking for the “best” travel laptop, nothing can beat this Lenovo model.

Sony VGN-Z598U/B – $4,450

Sony has some of the most uniquely designed ultraportable notebooks, with prices starting from $1,499.  Here, we are talking about this high-powered multimedia business machine that costs a whooping $4,450.  This is for people who can afford to pay for the convenience.

The price of this wide-screened beauty is on the higher side because it comes with a couple of 128GB solid-state drives.  It is also fitted with 4GB RAM, a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 CPU,, as well as a dedicated G3Force 9300M GS GPU, all in its tiny 12.4 by 1.3 by 8.3 inch frame.

In spite of the heavy configuration, it weighs only 3.3 pounds. The battery life prolongs to a little more than 4 hours when working with the integrated Intel GPU.

It is also preloaded with Microsoft Works, a video editing program, video content exporter and the VAIO Control Center.

Except for the price, this is great for high-flying business people. But $2000 can be slashed off the price tag if one goes for a platter-based hard drive instead of the dual SSDs.

Samsung X360-34P – $2,500

This little machine is sleek looking and provides a clearer picture than most laptops and can attract people easily.

This is great for people who can afford to spend $2500 on an ultraportable machine that comes with a 1.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400 CPU, RAM of 3GB, a speedy 128 GB solid-state drive and weighs only 3.7 pounds.  The 13.3 inch screen with 1280 x 800 pixel resolution is bright and easy to view even in direct sunlight.  One of most impressive aspects of this laptop is the battery life, which is over 7 hours.

This laptop is travel-ready and comes with a lot of ports, both HDMI and VGA for video, a modem, an Ethernet jack, Bluetooth, three USB ports, a PC Express card slot, a five-in-one flash card reader and the headphone and microphone jacks, and a Webcam.  It has a surprisingly loud sound for an ultraportable laptop.

It is a solid travel machine that can be used in the office too.

HP EliteBook 2530p – $2499

Well, this one costs $2499 but it worth every penny, as it comes with a lot of extras that are rare on an ultraportable.

It has a high-end configuration of 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo SL9400, 80GB solid-state hard drive, RAM of 3GB and weighs 3.8 pounds.   It has a 12.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel wide-aspect screen, which is bright and glossy while not being reflective.

If looks are important, then do not look beyond this black and silver beauty. Performance is great too with this Windows Vista business machine. It outperforms many laptops in the same genre.

The battery lasts pretty long, almost 7 hours and the EliteBook is equipped with the capability for Wi-Fi wireless, Bluetooth, modem and network jacks, SD Card slot, Firewire port, built-in Webcam, two USB ports and also several business applications.

A light and easily portable machine that can do wonders for a business person.

Acer Timeline 3810T – $799

This ultraportable is Intel powered and is one of the first laptops to use the Intel CULV processor. It fits snugly somewhere in between the netbook and notebook.

This slim and stylish looking laptop comes with a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400, 500GB Hard Drive, 4GB of RAM, and weighs 3.5 pounds.

The battery life is amazing at more than 8 hours, which is the best compared to so many others.

Some of the features include a Wi-Fi connectivity and Acer Backup Manager, HDMI and VGA for video with three USB plugs, RJ-45 ethernet port, Webcam, with a decent sized touchpad.  Where software is concerned, beyond Microsoft Office, there is also Microsoft Works, Orion, MyWinLocker for the safety of files and the eSobi news reader among others.

This machine scores high in the looks department and is a great deal at the low price.

With so many ultraportables in the market today, it becomes difficult to find the best ones that offer great performance.  Although, most of the laptops in this list are on the expensive side, they are certainly some of the best, for those of you that can afford to pay a higher price for better performance.

In the recent past, there has been a great deal of talk and rumors about there being a consistent decline in the ringtone craze off late, and this is mainly attributed to the fact that users are now adept at creating their own ringtones easily from song downloads.

There are sites such as makeownringtone.com that allow users to create ringtones for free. Users just need to upload songs in various formats, such as MP3 and WMA, and then select the part of the song they want to use as a ringtone, remix their selection and upload the final result to their phones. As simple as that!

CNET sources recently created a base for rumors by reporting that Apple has come up with an excellent innovative idea, that of offering ready-made ringtones for the iPhone.

Apple has concentrated a lot on the iPhone in the past and continues to do so. iPhone users have enjoyed the option of creating their own custom-made ringtones for their devices ever since 2007. Users had to look for the bell icon next to the song that indicates the song can be converted into a ringtone, and double click on the bell for the ringtone editor to open. Once the portion of the song for the ringtone is selected, the user has to click buy, for the ringtone to be created and the user charged for the purchase. It will then show up in a ringtone play list to be synced to the iPhone. The whole process takes the least amount of time and one doesn’t have to be tech savvy either to figure out how it is done. Even a child can do it with ease.

However, Apple is bent on pampering and making iPhone users lazier than ever. It is said to have struck a deal with the music industry and obtained rights for offering ready-made ringtones.

Ringtones have been a hit with the users ever since they have been introduced. The music industry benefits a great deal from them too, as it has been seen that people prefer ringtones that play for a few seconds rather than full song downloads. In the past, people were even wiling to pay $3 to hear bits of their favorite song when receiving an incoming call, in MIDI format. Music labels and retailers find them more profitable when compared to full song downloads.

But now most phones use the standard file formats, such as MP3s and users who are not happy with default ringtones, use the option of creating their own. It costs just 99 cents to use the custom ringtone feature on the iPhone, and it enables them to select a 30-second segment of a song to play back as a ringtone on their iPhones.

But these music snippets are now becoming more of a convenience-based feature, what with Apple painstakingly editing these ringtone clips. Users can just select from a 30-second ready-made ringtone clip created by Apple. This alleviates the need to create ringtones of their own.

Although, the cost of these ready-to-use ringtones is not known yet, it is rumored that they could be anywhere between $0.79 and $1.29. While some people opine that these ready-made ringtones may help improve sales, others feel that since Apple charges very less for custom ringtones and makes it simple to get any clip of a song; the ready-made ringtones may not really make much of a difference.

In a scenario, where users can get cost free, easily made ringtones by just selecting clips from any song they wish, why would they want to pay for it?

It is left to be seen if these ready-made ringtones from popular songs provide the much needed shot in the arm for a dying ringtone market. If you go to the discussion boards and see youngsters talking about them with all the enthusiasm and excitement, it sure does not look like the craze for ringtones has gone down. But sales figures are what we have to go by and there is still time for the verdict to be out.

Even as people await the release of the much-speculated tablet from Apple, Freescale has come out with the Smartbook that could be a competition for the low-cost mini laptops.

Smartbook is a combined effort of Freescale Semiconductor and Arm Holdings.  The company is marketing the smartbook as a new category of computing devices that can be squeezed somewhere between the smartphone and the PC-like notebook or netbook.

Freescale Semiconductor is a leading manufacturer of embedded semiconductors for the consumer, industrial, automotive and networking markets. The company is based in Texas and has several research and development, design, manufacturing and sales outlets spread all over the world.

Rich Beyer, Freescale CEO said, “Netbooks based on Intel’s Atom processor and Microsoft Windows simply replicate the PC experience, they are just notebooks in a smaller format.  The Smartbook is a different experience, something between a small screen phone and a PC.”

The biggest selling points for the Smartbook are said to be its instant-start feature, intuitive interface and long battery life.

The company has commissioned several prototypes by entering into a deal with a leading North American industrial design program.  These prototypes were displayed at the Computex show in Taiwan.

-         One that unfolds to offer a keyboard and mouse

-         A sleek smartbook with a touchscreen display

-         A device that enables customization

-         Smartbook with sliding keypads

-         A sleek prototype featuring vertical display

Created with an unusual design, the smartbook stands tall as it is meant for vertical displays, and unfolds into several pieces, allowing users to use a keyboard and mouse. There is the option to slide the keypad out from both sides of the smartbook.

This 409 gm lightweight product sports a 5-inch screen, which is larger than the smartphone device, has 512 MB memory and 4 GB flash storage device that can be extended.  When the smartbook was launched in Japan by Sharp Electronics recently, there have been mixed reviews.  But there is one thing everyone agrees to, and that is – it takes no more than 3 seconds to boot and the battery lasts as long as ten hours.

Freescale is also working closely with the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) on a program that explores all the requirements, such as user interfaces, ergonomic issues, form factors and also accessories for new age smartbook devices.

A marketing director of Freescale states, “As the smartbook market emerges, new form factors and product categories will evolve to support and better align with user needs, and our engagement with SCAD demonstrates Freescale’s intention to lead this evolution. This initiative has given Freescale valuable insight into how end-users prefer to interact with smartbooks, and this knowledge will be fed back into our chip design processes, ultimately resulting in future i.MX processors that enable compelling consumer experiences and entirely new classes of consumer devices.”

This product uses Freescale’s iMX processor and targets youngsters who are internet-savvy and expect instant access to the Net, visit the social networking sites, check out YouTube clips or watch movies.  It runs the Linux operating system as Windows loads slower and is not the best interface for all these activities.

A full-featured smartbook currently will be priced at $480 in Japan, but according to the CEO, it is expected to be available in the market for around $199 within a year’s time.  The manufacturers believe that it will prove to be a challenge to netbooks once it hits the lower price point, especially in countries where netbooks are not doing as well as expected solely due to the higher price.

Smartbook Network Systems has created a video conferencing application for the smartbook.  A camera has been inbuilt into the smartbook and it allows users to use the video chat feature using the Smartlink application, similar to how Skype is used.  The video quality is said to be very good and the images are expected to be even better by the time the product is perfected.  The company says that only half the power of the processor is being used currently.

Freescale is devoting a large share of its market budget to smartbooks and hopes to meet the increasing demand for handy ultra-portable devices.  Only time will tell how well they are accepted.

Not very long ago, technology giant Microsoft challenged the might of Google, with the launch of a new search engine, Bing.  Not stopping at that, it went ahead and announced Office 10, which will include free online versions of its four popular software programs – a shot at Google’s web-based office applications.  Google, not one to be left behind, surprised everyone with a talk about its new operating system, clearly hoping to overturn the dominance of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows.

This announcement by Google threw the tech world into a tizzy; some going to the extent of saying that Google’s new offering would finally mark the end of Windows’ rule and others shaking their heads at what they perceive to be a great mistake by Google.

It is certainly going to be quite a ride!  Microsoft powers almost 90 percent of the world’s computers and this gives Microsoft an inherent advantage, where operating systems are concerned.

Google’s new operating system, called the Google Chrome Operating System, is initially expected to target net books. It may be released to the world in the second half of 2010.

Why is Google even trying to get into Microsoft’s domain?  Google sees a huge opportunity here, as it believes that Windows is an archaic system from the pre-internet era, and outdated in the current day, where all our activities are moving online.

According to Google, the point of access should now shift from the desktop to the browser, and it has invested a lot of money and time, in what it sees as the future of computing – the cloud.  Cloud computing is a global network of huge data centers, that puts all the data and applications on the internet, which can be accessed by users with a network connection anywhere and at anytime.

The new operating system is expected to work perfectly with its other software applications, such as Google Maps, Google Calendar and Gmail.  It would be fast and light weight, and users will be able to access the web within a few seconds.  It is based on open-source Linux code.

It is not going to be easy to take away Microsoft’s market share, say experts.  There have been other alternatives in the past, but nothing could dent Windows.  But they do agree that things may be different this time around, because Google has deep pockets and plenty of resources unlike the other challengers.

Pertaining one of the key areas of competition for the two, Browsers, Internet Explorer dominates 70 percent of the market and Google’s Chrome browser has a hold on only 2 percent of the browser market.

In the online search area, Google is synonymous with the term “search”, and nothing else even comes into the picture. Google delivered about 80% of search results in June for U.S. web users.  Microsoft hopes its innovative search engine would fare better than Google, but as of now it only dominates 8.2 percent of the searches.

Coming to operating systems, Microsoft has been in the business of operating systems for 28 long years.  It continued to lead 90% of this market all these years, even dominating the business world, catering to millions of users from around the world.  In contrast, Google made its entry into the OS market just a couple of years ago with its Android operating system for small devices.  Google is now working on its new operating system to compete with Windows.  It hopes to convince developers to write software that is browser based.

Microsoft and Google have locked horns over the years in several markets, from mobile software to internet search.

From the looks of it, they are in the midst of a full-blown battle, and surprisingly, the fight is over who will be considered the most important tech company in the world.

The key to success for Google in this area would be to lock-in partnerships with top PC makers, such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, which currently use Windows on most of their products.  For Microsoft, the stakes are high because Windows OS attributed to 45% of its profits last year.  If this war between the two giants results in better products and more options for us, the consumers, all this excitement would be worth it.

Credit: Bert Kommerij (via Flickr)

When I look back into my son’s childhood, there are specific images that flash in my mind – images of his tiny frame playing in his room, his first day at school, him walking into my office with blood all over from a bike accident and smilingly calling it tomato ketchup.

Some sad, some happy, but they are all precious.  But then I regret not remembering every single day of his growing up years. If only I could….

We do remember some things from our past but definitely not every single detail.  This is where Gordon Bell is trying to ring a bell.  He is part of Microsoft’s research team, a principal researcher and is working towards making sure we can remember all the special moments of our lives.  He has worked as a chief engineer and vice president of research and development at Digital Equipment Corp. for 23 long years and later founded the Computer History Museum.

Bell himself wants to capture all the moments of his life and store them on his Dell laptop. He wants to be able to pull up every single picture, every conversation, every email whenever he wants.

Credit: Deadlyllama (via Flickr)

Project MyLifeBits

This project is appropriately called, MyLifeBits, and Bell is trying to collect as much information from his past as possible and store his life on his laptop.  He wants to convert his PC into a repository, a personal memory base.  He feels it is essential for all of us to hold on to every bit of our lives – and be immortal.

He is not keen of making his life public and these memories are for him alone. According to him, “A lot of people put their lives on the Web. I’m not an advocate of that,” he says, adding that he thinks revealing too much personal information online can be dangerous. “We’re not life loggers because we’re not publicly disclosing or talking about ourselves. This was built to be entirely personal, to aid the individual. You will leave a personal legacy — a record of your life.”

How did the idea come about?

This project is almost ten-years old having started in the late 90’s.  At that time, Bell wanted to scan his books, articles and memos into a digital format, transforming all his paper records. It was at that point that he came across and read “The Road Ahead,” written by Bill Gates.  In this book, Gates wrote about his future vision of people someday being able to record and recall everything they have ever seen or heard.

That kick-started Bell’s thought process and he wondered how much information we end up with in our life. If we can have it all, what would it cost and in what way would it be useful to us. That’s what got him started and he decided on performing an experiment on himself.

Implementation

Bell started scanning in 1999 and in 2001; a colleague and friend at Microsoft made him see that he needed a bigger database to access information.  Bell began storing more information about himself; all the CDs, all the videos of lecture he had given and all the photos he had ever taken or had with him.  He then proceeded to collect images of all the web pages and television shows he has watched.  He recorded phone conversations, audio and video conferences, instant messages and his emails.

He even started wearing a SenseCam digital camera around his neck that takes pictures automatically every 30 seconds or whenever someone approaches, and has been created by scientists at Microsoft Research Lab in England.

MyLifeBits software is developed by Microsoft Research team and it has the ability to record web pages along with radio and television programs.

This mountain of data is worth more than 350 gigabytes, without including the streaming audio and video, and it is a replica of his biological memory.  Bell says it is better because this e-memory never forgets.

Since the project is very personal in nature, all the good and bad things about Bell’s life are recorded and Bell hasn’t felt the need to delete anything.  He wants every bit of his life to stay – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Future of memories

According to bell, digitizing our memories will be standard in about 20 years.  Smartphones with location awareness and inexpensive digital memory storage in the “cloud” will make this transition inevitable. Your memory may fade but your memories will not.

Bell says this will “change what it means to be human.”  He talks about this in a new book authored by himself and researcher Jim Gemmell, called “Total Recall.”  Even if we don’t go to the extent Gordon Bell has, we can start storing all our special memories and immortalize them.

Apple is facing unexpected problems with its iPhone application store, which contains more than 50,000 applications and is one of the most popular entertainment and information tools for mobile phones.

BeautyMeter is one of the applications at the iPhone app store.  This photo sharing application is meant for 17 and over, where users have the ability to upload images and rate them on the basis of “hotness.”  The application has a built-in safety mechanism as it requires users to enter their iPhone IDs.  Apple kept this check to ensure no illegal material is uploaded and for ease of tracking if anyone posts anything untoward.

However, in spite of this check, the problem started when kids started uploading images of themselves in the nude and there have been potentially objectionable materials showing up in the past few weeks.  The  latest example that caught the public eye, is that of a 15-year-old girl who uploaded her own nude photo, which stayed up for long enough for 5000 users to rate it.  It was only then brought to Apple’s notice and pulled down.

This was not the sole incident of its kind.  About a week earlier, there was another mobile phone application called “Hottest Girl,” that also showed a photo of a topless woman and was removed from the iPhone app store.

Apple is attracting unnecessary attention due to these happenings.  This has raised several questions about Apple’s ability to control iPhone content and keep its app store clean, which prompted Apple to remove BeautyMeter app from its store.

Apple always had a sterling image of a family-friendly company and in no way would it want to jeopardize that. An Apple company spokesman said, “Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography.”

While explicit content such as this has the potential to tarnish this image; Apple, like any other website that allows user-submitted content, is doing its best to keep all offensive material at bay.  While some iPhone apps are developed by Apple, many are submitted by third-party developers and take their place in the app store after they are approved by Apple.

Experts who know how these things work understand that Apple or the app developers cannot be help responsible for illegal content that shows up in iPhone apps, because there is no way for them to know the type of content that was going to be uploaded by users. This makes it an almost impossible task to keep all such material out of the app store. It becomes even more difficult as the number of new apps keeps increasing.

According to the editor in chief of Engadget, Joshua Topolsky, “It’s completely out of Apple’s control that someone uploaded a nude photo, and to some extent, it’s out of the app developer’s hands as well.”

However, some are of the opinion that Apple can become more stringent with its policies on the type of appllications it approves.  Apple is said to approve almost 96% of the app submitted for approval by developers.

However, an approval does not necessarily mean the app will stay up forever.  There have been several apps that have been pulled from the store because they were offensive.  One such app was pulled because it streamed a song with offensive lyrics.  Another iPhone app where users could shake a digital crying baby to death was removed as Apple found it deeply offensive.  It even apologized for approving it in the first place.

Recently, in an update to the iPhone software, Apple began providing users with the right to choose the type of content they would want to block from their phones.  They have also asked developers to submit age appropriate lables.  A new parental-control system that allows iPhone owners to decide what apps they want to buy has been incorporated.

Apple is doing its bit to keep illegal and offensive material, such as pornography away from their app store as they are proud of their image and would do everything possible to keep it intact.

This move will benefit both corporate and smaller customers.  While corporate customers will be able to get in on the paid subscriptions and tap into the online services, others can sign up for a service, where their online files will be stored and get help with data backup and security.

The best thing about this is that, everyone will be allowed to use the online versions of different applications, such as Word and PowerPoint without it being necessary to buy the desktop versions.  All they need to do is sign up for the free Windows Live account.

The technical preview engineering milestone for Office 2010 has been announced, and this allows thousands of people, mostly software engineering partners, to test drive the software by downloading it.  The beta version of the software is expected to be released by the year-end and the final version may be shipped in the first half of 2010.

Results of several technical previews reveal that improvements have been made to the office suite, such as the Ribbon being the default interface OneNote, Outlook and all other Office applications.  Not only is Ribbon made default but it has also been tweaked a bit.

The new features added include better mail handling in Outlook and video editing in PowerPoint.  Among the other changes that enhance productivity are the photo-editing tools and an improved paste operation.

Let’s take a look at the most important Outlook.  The new version adds a wide variety of new features that solve the major issue of e-mail overload. With the use of a full-blown Ribbon, most functions are within easy reach.  Quick Steps is a new feature that is said to speed up mail handling.   As we all know, one of the main problems of Outlook has always been the confusion with following threads of messages.  This version eradicates this problem and is sure to increase productivity.  Now, a conversation can be “cleaned up” by deleting all the unwanted previous mail text and quoted text, which brings down the clutter by keeping only the unduplicated versions.

For all of you social networking fans, this version of Outlook may prove to be a disappointment as it does not have integration with Facebook and other social networking sites.

According to Microsoft, an estimated 400 million people have a Windows Live account with using services like Messenger and Hotmail, and 90 million corporate customers already have Office subscriptions.

There have been comments floating around that Microsoft is a bit too late to enter this arena and it may be difficult to catch up with the competition.  In response, Microsoft says, “Lots of competitors are doing nothing beyond copying what we have done in our product for years.  They have weekly releases to add things like bold and italics and more than four fonts.  We have to redefine what productivity means to 500 million people.”

Redefining productivity means offering tools that allow people to work simultaneously on presentations, documents and other things on the internet.  Applications such as PowerPoint have also been pepped up, making it easier to add high-definition video into their projects.

There is not much of a change in Word; although, “search” now comes with some new features that allows users to search tables and charts as well as some other things too.  Documents can be prettied up with the use of special effects to text, such as reflect, shadow and glow.  Document sharing has been given new life and allows more than one person to work simultaneously on a document online.  Overall, you may find that this version of Word is not much different from Word 2007.

Although, there are no major changes in Excel, there is the addition of “Sparklines,” which is the option to embed small charts into a worksheet next to data.  Another feature that could prove to be useful is the improvement in “Conditional formatting,” which allows the formatting to change based on the formula or value of the cell.  For corporate users, Microsoft is planning on shipping with the final version, “Project Gemini” add-on for Excel 2010, with the capacity to handle data in large amounts, and worksheets containing millions of rows.

PowerPoint’s video features are one of the most used and this version sees many new features, such as a set of basic video editing tools that are now built into PowerPoint.  They may not be as powerful as a high-end video editing software but they do their job efficiently.  There is also a great improvement in animations in PowerPoint, with a wide choice of animations that can be easily edited using the custom animation feature.

While the above are the most known features of Microsoft Office, there are other important ones too, such as Microsoft Publisher and OneNote, which have been improved.

The new Office is available in 64-bit version too.  The most important change to Office 2010 is the Web-based access and access for mobile phones and other mobile clients is expected to be introduced in the final version.  There will also be mobile versions that allow viewing of documents on a smartphone or other mobile devices, as well as copy and paste between applications.  Outlook is said to work even on mobile devices.

Although, it may not be completely different from the 2007 version, there are many solid improvements in Office 2010, which certainly makes it worth checking it out.