I have come across this interesting piece of news about Biannual International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence deciding to evolve a common platform for all future robotic instructions. The surprising thing is about the new OS as opposed to the Microsoft OS which you guessed it right would want the scientific community to make itself the chosen OS for robotics. The scientific community is no doubt wise now knowing Microsoft’s ambitions to make it self indispensable.

But this is not what I wanted to write about. It is not the OS or the robotic instructions that have to be standardized but the need is for evolving a comprehensive robotic language that mimics all the five senses. It is when a language exists in which programs can be written that an OS can evolve.

The programs have to integrate what the robot sees which means image processing and dare I say image analysis, image comparison, storage, parallax corrections, integrating with a GPS which has become such a common place. These faculties have to be integrated with sound wave processing , touch and no doubt English Language (of course the Japanese would want their robots to Japanese language).

It is only when this happens that instructions can be used for movement in a particular direction, doing a particular action and speaking a particular sentence or thinking of a correct reaction to a situation.

Can the present computer languages have that capacity. If not some one should go about creating that situation.

So as I see it the need is not of an OS and app stores included but a medium that is required that makes the robots function.

Some how I do not like the word Artificial Intelligence. Any takers for the word “Programmed Intelligence” ?

Judging by the leaks things are moving rather fast at Microsoft. Microsoft has employed Lippicott as consultants for the concept, principle anddesign of its retail stores.

The pictures coming out of Microsoft I should admit are impressive.

People cannot be kind when it comes to Microsoft I guess. It is said that the design concept of the Microsoft retail stores take the best elements from Apple, Sony and other “flagship”. I guess you cannot blame these unkind commentators when you realize that Microsoft cannot create some thing original even if its as basic as the design of its retail store. And this coming from the land of milk and honey of intellectual property rights.

The products that will be vying for attracting consumers attention will no doubt be Windows 7, Xbox, PCTV, Windows Mobile. The design is oriented to attract Microsoft’s average customer whom it calls “Emily”.

Link

http://gizmodo.com/

Forget the complaints about personal information not being deleted from Face Book much after you leave a group. Face book has conducted a survey in which it wanted to gauge how much personal information people are willing to share with every body without any reservations.

It would be ideal for Face Book if people are ready to share all their personal information with out any reservation. May be Face Book has not heard of the adage “Familiarity Breeds Contempt”.

When people are young they socialize as per their groups and they may not have any inhibitions about sharing personal information with in the group. But with age the personal relations change. When you enter the phase of personal relationships you are not willing to share that information with others.

When professional relations start and a family is being raised, there is a limit to what you will share with others. People out grow the groups get into new relationships.

It is surprising that people do want to maintain such a large number of social relationships. But Face Book wanting you to reveal every thing to every body on the net. I think it is stretching it a bit too far.

Twitter is rightly worried about this provisioning by Face Book. I think Twitter is more professional oriented where a person has a following and in  course of time the relationship might mature into sharing personal information. The principle on which these two work are different and not related.

But we hope Twitters hope that Face Book’s present ploy comes true for the sake of human relationships.

If you are an aficionado and a connoisseur of music you can not be far from Billboard that brings you regular weekly chart of how the most popular numbers and albums are performing. But the Billboard homepage is getting a face lift and is being restructured by an API to become music fans friendly destination on the web. Billboard has also opened its homepage to developers  keeping up the trend of an open forum so that music and probably video oriented Apps are developed for Billboard.

The history and rise to eminence of an Artist can be tracked by fans of an Artist by tracking the data that Billboard now is going to make available of all its weekly charts etc.,

With this App Billboard hopes to make it foundation for other mashups on music that will come around.

We hope Billboard starts providing more information about an artist than merely the performance of a number on the weekly charts. There is any amount of information fans will be hungry about when they love a song and want to know about an artist. Billboard can provide information and links to the sites which provide this information or it could be a site that an artist makes available for his information hungry fans.

Link

http://developer.billboard.com/

The advent of new technology makes your PC significantly more responsive while you are performing everyday tasks. A new memory management technology known as Windows “Super Fetch” helps keep the computer consistently responsive to your programs by making better use of the computer’s RAM.

What is SUPER FETCH TECHNOLOGY??

Super Fetch is the only application that makes sure that programs you are currently using start quickly when you open them by prioritizing them over background tasks. It pre-loads commonly used applications into memory to reduce their load times. It also adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and preloading these into memory that is expected to be used in the near future.

The background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, it repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. On returning to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left.

Certain myths are being floated over the web that you should disable Super Fetch in Windows Vista. This speeds up the boot process and saves memory which absolutely not true. The truth is that Super Fetch preloads those applications into memory that are used most. It is essentially a memory management feature designed to enhance Windows Vista’s responsiveness when loading and switching between applications that you use most often. Using adaptive techniques, Super Fetch will constantly reorganize most often used data and applications on the hard disk and intelligently move them to specific locations on the hard disk where they can be loaded into memory the fastest. Nevertheless, some web developers are skeptical about this technology.

The biggest hindrance to slow performance in the computer is disk I/O. Super Fetch offers a real improvement for disk I/O operations. It will temporarily sideline a low-priority I/O application when a high-priority I/O application takes precedence. This enables Windows Vista to load programs faster because of Super Fetch technology.

However this is possible only if Windows does not execute any other write or read accesses. Disabling Super Fetch therefore does not affect the time it takes to launch Windows. It is recommended to fill the memory with data thereby optimizing your system’s performance. Windows empties a portion of the memory used by Super Fetch within a few milliseconds so that the program can immediately use it.

Google is stopping  it’s free to use website service, Google Page Creator, by this JUNE-09.  Google page creator is a simple webpage creator and aslo file uploader of your locally created files. Google will start  Google Sites, in the place of previous GOOGLE page creator. This new Service GOOGLE SITES, doesnot support any file service and Hence Google will not take any responsibility of uploading ur files from the previous adress to the new site. But one can very well download the files from google pages by making a zip archive.

So, Its upto u to download all the files in ur google pages account to ur system and then use them at ur wish. But remember these files cant be uploaded in the new version GOOGLE SITES. So download them n have a copy f the files in ur pc.

Here is simple description on  How to download your files on google pages in the form of ZIP ARCHIVE:-

Suppose you have a site  on Google Pages as http://somename.googlepages.com. Then u have to type an URL in the following format as  http://pages.google.com/migrationInfo/somename into your browser and hit enter as shown in the following image

Once you go to the adress, you will be prompted to enter ur Username and Password for your account. After entering ur password and username succesfully you will be redirected to a page where u get a download link to download files in the form of a ZIP archive. Google also asks some user details to protect ur privacy, so please furnish them too.

So Go,ahead and grab ur files backup as soon as posible. HURRY UP!!