"Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions," Microsoft says.

The company is not happy with evaluating human response while they interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers, so, they wants to read the data straight from your brain as you work away. In fact they got a patent for their mind reading application, which is based on using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain.

Whether humans will accept Microsoft reading their brain waves or not, the company claims that the data will better enable to them to design user interfaces that people find easy to use!!!

Yes, it's Google's own instant messaging system, for text and also voice communications.

Google Talk goes beyond text-based instant messaging using a computer keyboard to let users hold voice conversations with other computer users.

If confirmed, the combined computer text and voice-calling service would put Google in competition with a similar service pioneered by Skype, which has attracted tens of millions of users to its own service.

Earlier, Google introduced a new service called the Google Sidebar, a stand-alone software program that sits on a user's desktop and provides "live" information updates.

Personal computers could soon fit entirely on a key ring. Researchers at IBM have developed a way to carry a powerful, personalised virtual computer from one PC to the next, without losing the user�s work.

The trick is to store the virtual computer on a USB key, or any portable device with substantial storage space, like an MP3 player.

Thumb Drives: If you're going to get yourself one of those fancy things, you may as well get one that actually looks like a thumb.

A couple of months ago, the Japanese entertainment giant Sony has patented an idea for transmitting data directly into the brain, with the goal of enabling a person to see movies and play video games in which they smell, taste and perhaps even feel things, it was reported today.

That sounded science fiction? Today I came across this article that says that by the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download your brain to a supercomputer. If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine.

Want to have breast implants but worried they may not be so pleasing to God? Wondering if the marketing campaign devised to boost your business is spiritually sound? If you are a Shia looking for guidance, what you may find useful is your very own online ayatollah - a sort of electronic agony aunt with a broadband connection to God. The good thing about the site that it's not only in Persian, but also Arabic, English and Urdu.

This year, Computerlove.net invites artists to interpret the theme of “Geography and Information” in any style of visual language to express and reflect their personal feelings…

Finalists’ Gallery

See also this amazing 'WORLDPROCESSOR'.

Abu Mahjoob way of " Why buy when you can steal?"

An pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far.

In June 2004, surgeons implanted a device containing 100 electrodes into the motor cortex of a 24-year-old quadriplegic. The device, called the BrainGate, was developed by the company Cyberkinetics, based in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Each electrode taps into a neuron in the patient's brain.

The BrainGate allowed the patient to control a computer or television using his mind, even when doing other things at the same time. Researchers report for example that he could control his television while talking and moving his head.

Source: Nature News

In the not-so-distant future, your wristwatch could stop you if you try to run out the door without the necessities you need for the day, like your keys, wallet or cell phone.

At work, it could prompt you for important items needed for a meeting or a business lunch. In an academic setting, it could remind students which books to take as they hurry out the door for class.

Think of it as a technological string around the finger – one that’s smart enough to take the initiative to save you from the inconvenience and embarrassment of forgotten essentials.

Such integrated, responsive systems are the next logical step in computing, according to Gaetano Borriello, a University of Washington computer scientist who has developed a working prototype of the idea. Borriello is also an expert in the field of ubiquitous, or invisible, computing, which seeks to seamlessly mesh technology into our lives in ways that are useful and natural.

Source: University of Washington

KITTY, a finger-mounted keyboard for data entry into PDA's, Pocket PC's and Wearable Computers which has been developed here at the University of California in Irvine.
KITTY was one of this years ISWC (Int. Symposium on Wearable Computers) Wearable Fashion Show main features (see here).

KITTY, an acronym for Keyboard-Independent Touch-TYping, is a fingermounted keyboard that uses touch-typing as the method of data entry.

The device targets the portable computing market and in particular wearable computing systems, which are in the need of a silent, "invisible" data entry system based on touch-typing. The new device combines the idea of a finger-mounted chording device (such as the "Twiddler" by the HandKey Corp.), with the advantages of a system that uses touch-typing (such as the Virtual Keyboard by Senseboard or the Scurry by Samsung).

However, the KITTY system has distinct and important advantages in comparison to the mentioned devices (see attached Comment.txt document).

A patent application for KITTY has been submitted. We also have secured the international rights on the device.

More information about KITTY (including a Flash Demo) can be found at Kittytech.

Microsoft wins patent to exploit network potential of skin. Fact or fiction - carrying a keyboard on your arm.

Call it the ultimate wireless network. From the ends of your fingers to the tips of your toes, the human body is a moving, throbbing collection of tubes and tunnels, filled with salty water and all capable of transmitting the lifeblood of the 21st century: information.
In what may seem a move too far to some, the computer software giant Microsoft has been granted exclusive rights to this ability of the body to act as a computer network. Two weeks ago the company was awarded US Patent 6,754,472, which bears the title: Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body.

Microsoft envisages using the human skin's conductive properties to link a host of electronic devices around the body, from pagers and personal data assistants (PDA) to mobile phones and microphones, although the company is uncharacteristically coy about exactly what it may have in mind.

In a statement it said: "Microsoft hasn't recently held discussions about this patent, and it does not currently map to any particular Microsoft product that is either shipping or in development. That said, one of the objectives of the intellectual property licensing policy Microsoft adopted in December 2003 is to provide other parties with access to the fruits of Microsoft's nearly $7bn annual investment in R&D - especially to innovations that do not end up manifesting as Microsoft products."

According to the patent, the technology could usher in a new class of portable and wearable electronic gizmos such as earrings that deliver sounds sent from a phone worn on the belt, and special spectacles with screens that flash up accompanying images and video footage.

Linking electronic devices raises other possibilities. Gadget lovers could use a single keypad to operate their phone, PDA and MP3 music player, or combine the output of their watch, pager and radio into a single speaker. At its most far-reaching, the technology could combine with chips and sensors fitted around our bodies and clothes to sense and react to the changing circumstances of our everyday lives.

Source: The Guardian

Would You Like a Bouquet of Nanoflowers?

Today the Institute of Physics releases some of the most beautiful science images of the year so far, a collection of photomicrographs of tiny "flowers" and "trees" less than one thousandth the width of a human hair. The images are published in the Institute journal Nanotechnology.

These stunning images were taken by Ghim Wei Ho, a PhD student studying nanotechnology at Cambridge University. She has named some of her best photographs nanobouquet, nanotrees, and nanoflower because of their curious similarity to familiar organic structures such as flower-heads and tiny growing trees.

Ghim Wei's work involves making new types of materials based on nanotechnology and these flowers are an example of such a new material. Here, nanometre scale wires (about one thousandth the diameter of a human hair) of a silicon-carbon material (silicon carbide) are grown from tiny droplets of a liquid metal (Gallium) on a silicon surface, like the chips inside our home computers.

The wires grow as a gas containing methane flows over the surface. The gas reacts at the surface of the droplets and condenses to form the wires. By changing the temperature and pressure of the growth process the wires can be controllably fused together in a natural process to form a range of new structures including these flower-like materials.

Source: Institute of Physics

A full-featured PC that is small enough to slip into a shirt pocket is being hailed by its makers as the world's first modular computer. The machine can perform as both a PC and a handheld computer, but it remains to be seen if consumers are willing to pay for such a hybrid device.

The Modular Computing Core is being launched on 7 November by Antelope Technologies, a Colorado-based start-up. The device is a single portable unit into which all the essential computing components are crammed. At 76 by 127 by 19 millimetres (5 x 3 x 3/4 inches), the MCC is not much bigger than a deck of cards.

This core unit can then either be slotted into a docking station to be used with a screen and keyboard as a desktop computer, or into small portable "shell" with a touch-sensitive screen, turning it into a handheld computer. "Modular computers will change the way people use their computer," claims Kenneth Geyer, president of Antelope Technologies.

Inside the MCC is a 1GHz microprocessor, 256 MB of RAM and a 10 or 15 GB hard drive. It will also run a full version of Microsoft's XP operating system, instead of the stripped-down operating systems used by handheld computers.

Source: NewScientist

Chicago researchers at Northwestern University have fused the brain stem of an eel to a robot the size of a dollar coin, creating a crude cyborg, or cybernetic organism.

Kept alive in a saline solution, the brain adapts to changing light conditions and directs the robotic wheels to move towards light beams like a bull chasing a matador's swishing cape.

In February last year, a partially paralysed 43-year-old man in Phoenix, Arizona, began to walk again - with the help of electrodes implanted permanently in his spinal cord. He still needs a wheelchair, but can walk as far as 300m with the help of a walking stick.

The following month, British scientist Kevin Warwick had a centimetre-long electrode with 100 points as thin as a strand of hair implanted into a nerve in his forearm. This transmitted his nerve activity wirelessly to a computer.

As he moved individual fingers, that nerve activity was recorded, and the signals re-transmitted to operate robot arms successfully, even across the Atlantic.

Source: TheStraitsTimes