how many times have we experienced the traffic jams caused by an auto accident not because of the accident itself but because of the gawking drive-by onlookers? pretty normal occurance in malaysia no matter which state you’re from. call it curious, call it malaysians fascination with gore, call it ‘kaypohchee‘, it’s a fact of life in malaysia. You hear radio annoucements (to move on and don’t stop) and jokes (alex yoong and him slowing down when there’s a crash at the race) about it.
We have products designed “by gamers for gamers” and smart tags (the toll ePayment contactless drive-through system), so along the same line, I now introduce you to a device that would hopefully ease the accident-related traffic congestion the next time an accident happens - the AccidentCam™. With 8x zoom, full spectrum low light mode down to 0.05lux, linux-embeded computerized item-focused & tracking, motorized pan/tilt (200°/70°) 100/s rotating base, 10″ LCD screen HUD, and options of velcro straps, you don’t have to slow down to ‘enjoy coverage’ of the accidents on the affected lane ever again.
The AccidentCam™
Simply mount the device (on your dashboard, roof or wherever you think will get the best view). Direct the camera as you’re coming up the the vehicle(s) involved in the accident (the only interaction needed from you to power up the AccidentCAM™ and start the sequence), and let the embedded computer take over. AccidentCAM™ then uses it’s item-focus lock-on to the spot (targeting is shown on the 10″ LCD HUD) and the camera starts capturing “the moment”. the camera even rotates the full 200° arc to capture the scene as you drive past. you can later review the footage by interfacing it with your personal computer. The joy is in the unlimmited replays, zooming, sharing it with your like-minded malaysian friends and family, and not missing the minute details as you ‘relive’ the accident at the comforts of your own couch.
object-focused targeting & tracking view from the 10″ LCD HUD.
Get your AccidentCam™ today and never miss an accident, no accident-gawking-related-jams, never needing to shift gears to slow down and never being too late to jot down that license plate number to punter at your local 4D/Magnum shop. Now how cool is that? Retailing now at RM299.99 at wherever they’re selling one.
Next up: MatRempitCAM Edition by the same people that brought you Crittercam. Designed by NatGeo in association with Putera Umno chairperson Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim :).
August 30, 2006
Google to allow free downloads of public domain books
NEW YORK (AP) - Google Inc. on Wednesday plans to begin letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain.
Using Google’s Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante’s “Inferno” and Aesop’s “Fables” will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.
Google supports the service by showing its small, keyword-generated text ads on search-results pages.
The download initiative does not include any books under copyright. For these titles, Book Search only displays basic bibliographic information and, in many cases, small snippets of text surrounding a search term, unless it has permission from the publisher to show more. The company’s display of snippets has riled some publishers, but Google has argued the small bites of text constitute fair use.
Google’s Book Search service is the product of its Books Library Project, which is digitizing books from major libraries around the world in order to make them searchable online. Its partners include the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of California and the New York Public Library. Google is also conducting a pilot project with the Library of Congress.-AP
AsenDURE’s comments: newspaper snippet from The Star today. not something revolutionarily new as there are a couple of private sites and public online libararies that offer these but what google does is make it easily available (plus who doesn’t already know google?). i laud the launch of this service whereby great works (one of mankind’s heritage i dare say) is digitize and preserved.
August 30, 2006
Contig from SysInternal is a handy app that lets you do a defragmentation on a single file(or flies) but don’t want to bother running the Windows defragger and waiting overnight for it to finish. Usefull for those who are continiously working on big files. eg. compressing/uncompressing those rar01, rar02 files from bit torrent or adding/removing files to those iso files.
Download from here.
To defrag registry hives, pagefiles and other files that are being locked-down for exclusive access, PageDefrag (also from SysInternal), is the app I recommend.
Download from here
August 29, 2006
Freeware program HideWin lets you define a list of windows you want to be able to hide fast and completely from your desktop and your taskbar for whatever reasons. eg. browsing that sleezy site and someone walks in on you. *ahem*
It doesn’t kill the window but actually hides it so popups will still be running on the background if you’re not using a popup blocker when browsing but because popup windows sometimes become visible again, HideWin continually searches for and hides windows. sometimes windows don’t usually have titles to uniquely identify them but can specify just a class name to hide multiple windows of the same type (e.g. all notepad windows have the class name of “Notepad”).
The downside is that there isn’t a keyboard for this program so it’s a two-click affair.
download here
August 29, 2006
Volumouse is a little proggie that transforms your scroll wheel into a volume dial without having to open up the volume control in either the system tray or the media player you’re using (provided it’s supported) or if you don’t have those remote, fancy keyboard with built-in dial or one built-into your case.
the setting allows you to set rules for your scroll wheel so that you don’t lose the abilities of the default scroll function of your mouse when you want it.
download here
August 25, 2006
