We’ve seen robots controlled by cellphones before, but nothing quite like the T-34 from Tmsuk, creator of an amazing variety of bots that range from whimsical to menacing. The T-34 falls somewhere in-between, looking decidedly like a purple monster truck that’s been granted the ability to trap — or at least inconvenience — baddies. A remote operator can get a live feed of what the T-34 is seeing and then fire a large weighted net when the target is in range. As you can see in the video below it does look to be rather challenging for this loafer-wearing mock burglar to extract himself, but once free we’re not sure what else the T-34 can do other than bleat helplessly while waiting for someone with arms to show up. Just the same, if you’re looking to put a damper on your local criminal activity and have $9,000 to spare, Tmsuk will be happy to sell you one — in about two years when they become available.
We’ve seen robots controlled by cellphones before, but nothing quite like the T-34 from Tmsuk, creator of an amazing variety of bots that range from whimsical to menacing. The T-34 falls somewhere in-between, looking decidedly like a purple monster truck that’s been granted the ability to trap — or at least inconvenience — baddies. A remote operator can get a live feed of what the T-34 is seeing and then fire a large weighted net when the target is in range. As you can see in the video below it does look to be rather challenging for this loafer-wearing mock burglar to extract himself, but once free we’re not sure what else the T-34 can do other than bleat helplessly while waiting for someone with arms to show up. Just the same, if you’re looking to put a damper on your local criminal activity and have $9,000 to spare, Tmsuk will be happy to sell you one — in about two years when they become available.
We’ve covered a few tidbits of what the Windows 7 Beta has to offer, including the mess of machines we’ve installed it on, but we finally gathered together all our thoughts and impressions of the OS into one meaty pile of words and screencaps. Naturally, we’re working with a beta here, so things can absolutely get better (or worse), and Redmond might be hiding a feature or two in the wings — or for the inevitable SP1 — but we’d say Microsoft has really put its best foot forward here. Check out all our ramblings after the break.
They are here. With their lasers. And their clouds. And their secret tunnels that go 413 feet into the ground to extract energy. No, not the aliens. I mean the hippies with their art installations.
It’s the Ga Green Cloud, in Helsinki, Finland. Designed by artists Helen Evans and Heiki Hansen, it paints a green laser cloud over the smoke plume of the Salmisaari power plant’s chimney. The structure raises 508 feet and its tunnels dig 413 feet deep into the Earth’s crust to feed coal directly into the plant’s furnaces. According to them: ““No other space, network, grid, community could better represent a city and it’s activity as a whole.” Translation from Finnish: “Oh boy, this kicks ass.” [The Contaminated]
While Google’s Android “Cupcake” updates may not be available just yet, detailed screenshots of the platform update show new applications in addition to the highly-anticipated virtual keyboard.
Developer Arron La was able to test the most recent batch of Cupcake and make his own observations about the changes. According to him, there will be a new Notes and Global Time application, along with various other fixes. Since February is almost here, I wouldn’t be surprised to find most of these coming to the G1 soon.
1. New Local Setting Page - Gives you option to pick different locales and pick different text inputs. 2. New Option to view running and third party applications - An option to view running and third party applications from the normal application list. Does not provide a way to terminate them. 3. New windows opening/closing animation effect - a new popping effect when windows are opened/closed. 4. New default notepad - a very simple and ugly default notepad. 5. New Global Time application - not sure if it will be provided by T-Mobile but it’s just a rotating Earth and I couldn’t get it to do anything else. 6. New Spare Parts Application - Once again not sure if the official version will have this, but it provides a number of extra settings such as setting windows animation and transition animation speed, font size, end button behavior and etc. It also has a “display rotation” option which supposedly should allow auto-rotate base on orientation across the entire os, but it is not currently working. 7. New Virtual Keyboard (as seen on video -ed.)- The virtual keyboard will pop up on every edit box. I didn’t feel any haptic feedback but I am thinking that it’s just not there on the example keyboard. Because the phone does not auto-rotate (an option exists but it doesn’t work), it’s very hard to type on it. The sample keyboard also does not provide auto-corrections. 8. Slightly better looking buttons with more shadow.
We’re not gonna deny it—we love special effects. It ranks right up there with plot and concept as the reason why we go see movies.
There aren’t a whole lot of movies from this crop that astound us, so these three capture the landscape of 2008’s special effects fairly well. Which one should win? [Oscar]
One revised feature in Windows 7 is the Backup utility. Previously with Vista, you could only designate types of files to back up. Now, you pick which folders to duplicate, plus export whole system images.
The new Backup and Restore looks pretty similar to the Vista version, where there’s a welcome screen to choose backup or restore, and a prompt to choose a target drive before getting into the nitty gritty of data protection. But instead of a screen asking you what file types you want to back up, there’s now a screen asking if you’d like windows to automatically choose the files to protect, or if you’d like to do it manually.
Letting Windows 7 back up your computer is a two click process. You click OK to launch the auto backup menu, and then you click OK to actually carry out the action. Manual backup, however, presents you with a tree menu that has check boxes next to each drive/directory/folder. From here, you can decide which folders are worthy of attention.
You can also create system images that automatically backup to an external drive with Windows 7, something you couldn’t do with Vista. Previously, backups were limited only to data files that weren’t system files, program files, or settings, but rather text docs, audio files, video files, and emails.
You still can’t save individual program and system files with Windows 7, but you can have the computer create a whole image that can be used to restore you computer if your drive craps out.. This is done without asking in automatic backup if there’s a proper amount of space, and is a checkbox option on the manual backup screen. It’s also worth noting that Windows Backup still won’t touch FAT formatted drives with a 39 and 1/2 foot pole.
It may not be as pretty or intuitive as Time Machine, but the levels of customization make it more functional than Apple’s backup solution.
In Windows 7, Microsoft has scrapped the virtual/smart folders feature previously available in Vista to categorize documents and replaced it with Libraries. At first, I was really confused: what the hell is a library?
Smart folders in Vista were essentially saved searches, and libraries do away with all of that. Unlike the “My Pictures” or “My Music” folders that exist, libraries aren’t actually folders. Libraries are instead collections of supervised/monitored folders. To edit which folders the libraries monitor, all you have to do is right-click the library and go to the Properties tab. So instead of having to keep all your music in one folder, you can keep them in multiple folders scattered throughout your hard drive. In addition to changing the folders that the libraries monitor, you can actually add new ones and define what folders you want to monitor too. Simply right-click Libraries in the tree view of Windows Explorer and there should be an option to create a new library.
A nice thing about the media libraries is that they are linked to Windows Media Center. Instead of having to repopulate or set up your multimedia library again, whatever changes you make to libraries will be reflected in Windows Media Center.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter what file you throw in to what library—if you throw in a folder that contains pictures to the Music library, it will not display audio files exclusively (except in Windows Media Center). Your pictures will still show up in the Music library. It’s not as “smart” as the “smart folders” in Windows Vista, which only included files that met certain conditions. It’s the only change I would make, but libraries are still a vast improvement over the useless virtual folder system. Libraries are a great way to keep your files organized without actually having to be organized, if used correctly.
View our other Windows 7 tips and our continuing coverage here.
iWork ‘09 trojan infects at least 20,000 machines? Quite a number of no-goodniks who thought they’d save a few bucks by downloading a pirated version of iWork ‘09 have gotten more than they’d bargained for — in the form of a Trojan Horse called OSX.Trojan.iServices.A. This guy installs itself in the computer’s startup as root, and once in place it can connect to a remote server and broadcast its location, allowing malicious users to take charge of the machine remotely. And since it has root access to the OS, the trojan can not only install additional components but can also modify existing apps, making this thing extremely difficult to remove. According to a white paper released by Intego, at least 20,000 people may have downloaded the infected software — which they’ll get around to installing as soon as they finish those episodes of Celebrity Rehab they grabbed at the same time.
They are here. With their lasers. And their clouds. And their secret tunnels that go 413 feet into the ground to extract energy. No, not the aliens. I mean the hippies with their art installations.
While Google’s Android “Cupcake” updates may not be available 
We’re not gonna deny it—we love special effects. It ranks right up there with plot and concept as the reason why we go see movies.
One revised feature in 
In Windows 7, Microsoft has scrapped the virtual/smart folders feature previously available in Vista to categorize documents and replaced it with Libraries. At first, I was really confused: what the hell is a library?
A nice thing about the media libraries is that they are linked to Windows Media Center. Instead of having to repopulate or set up your multimedia library again, whatever changes you make to libraries will be reflected in Windows Media Center.
Entries (RSS)