Software Reviews

Nanotechnology researchers at the University of California have made “nanotube ink” from the chemicals used in an ordinary battery, thereby making it possible to print batteries onto surfaces like paper.

Lead researcher George Gruner has revealed that he used the same zinc-carbon chemistry in his batteries as are used in ordinary non-rechargeable batteries.

He believes that the technique to print flexible batteries onto different surfaces may prove helpful in powering disposable devices like long-range RFID tags or small displays.

The batteries, less than a millimetre thick, are made from two layers containing carbon nanotubes and a third layer of zinc foil.

For making the battery, a layer of nanotubes is first deposited in the form of “nanotube ink” onto a surface. The layer acts as the charge collector, which removes current from the battery.

Thereafter, a layer of nanotube ink mixed with manganese oxide powder and electrolytes, which carries charge within the cell, is applied on top, which acts as the cathode. Finally, a piece of zinc foil is applied, which acts as the anode.

“The batteries are similar to conventional batteries, with the electrically conducting nanoscale networks replacing conventional metals and electrodes,” New Scientist quoted Gruner as saying.

He further said that the designs should make it possible to get more power than a conventional design would from the same materials, “an important factor for portable electronics applications.”

The research team has also developed supercapacitors using the inking technique, and they now plan to combine them with batteries for applications requiring more power.

They have revealed that both printed batteries and supercapacitors can be made entirely at room temperature, which is why it should be possible to mass-produce them using established printing methods.

Nottingham University chemist George Chen agrees that nanotubes may provide ways to improve battery performance.

He, however, says that Gruner’s batteries have been tested at low power only.

“The discharge currents are, so far, smaller than needed for practical use,” he said.

Gruner, on his part, says that his team is working to increase power output and to demonstrate suitability of the designs for industrial production.

The new technique has been described in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

Singapore has lifted a ban on a Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) video game that contains a scene showing a human woman and an alien woman kissing and caressing, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.The Strait Times said Mass Effect would instead be sold with an M18 label, meaning it can’t be bought by anybody under the age of 18.

Mass Effect is the first video game to be given a rating in the country, and follows a public outcry over the ban. It effectively fast tracks a new ratings system that was due to come into effect in January, the paper said.

A similar move was made for the movie Lust, Caution, which was released uncut with a R21 age restriction after first being shown in a censored form.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz unveiled the company’s virtualization product line, xVM, at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco last week.

XVM consists of two components: xVM Server, a hypervisor with support for Linux, Solaris and Windows guest operating systems; and xVM Ops Center, a management console. The Ops Center project will be released under the open source GPLv3 license, and Sun has set up a community site at www.openxVM.org.

“Our engagement with the community is not something we take lightly,” Schwartz said. “It is in every way the foundation of our company.”

The news comes just days after Oracle unveiled its own virtualization product, Oracle VM, which like xVM Server, is based on the open source Xen hypervisor project. Both companies join a crowded market dominated by leader VMWare.

Sun said it intends to put $2 billion behind its vXM push. Ops Center, which is expected to be available next month, has already been validated to run on 1,000 system configurations, according to Sun.

Sun’s vice president of software, Rich Green, took the stage to discuss xVM’s features in greater depth. He said the industry-wide drive toward virtualizing data centers has resulted in new challenges. “You have these consolidated systems where headroom has been dramatically reduced,” he said. “That’s a byproduct of server consolidation.”

Enterprises with heavily virtualized environments are also dealing with “server sprawl,” according to Green. “You have this sprawling nature of things to manage, a complexity greater than what you had before,” he said.

He characterized Ops Center as “a complete suite of data center automation technology” with an interface easy for less-skilled users to work with. “Not everyone is a hardcore UNIX admin,” said Sun’s Steve Wilson, who demoed Ops Center for the crowd.

XVM Server can be used to host all three major operating systems: Windows, Solaris and Linux. It also will provide access to features like ZFS and Predictive Self-Healing. “We’ve raised the bar technically on what a hypervisor can be,” Green said in an interview following the keynote. The product is set for a spring 2008 release.Like its other offerings, the software will be free, with Sun making money through support services. “Most people applying virtualization in the data center are not going to do it unsupported,” Green said. Forrester Research principal analyst James Staten said Sun’s announcement reflects the general drive to build virtualization offerings on top of the Xen project. “There hasn’t really been a leader emerging around Xen yet,” he said, adding that while one could point to Citrix, there remains a lot of room in the market. “What’s unique about Sun is that they’re marrying it to Solaris,” Staten said, describing Sun’s platform as well-used to running on massively parallelized systems. That could be “a huge advantage” for Sun as the industry increasingly moves to adopt multicore hardware, Staten said.

Sun said a broad array of companies has endorsed xVM, including AMD, Intel, mySQL, Symantec, Quest Software and Red Hat.

Also Wednesday, Dell CEO Michael Dell joined Schwartz onstage to announce the company has agreed to a deal to distribute Sun’s Solaris 10 operating system on its PowerEdge servers. “I’d like to believe Dell is going to have a much different conversation now with the Solaris installed base,” Schwartz said.

FFDShow is a set of DirectShow filters and VFW codec for video compression, decompression and processing and audio compression and processing.

FFDShow uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project or for video decompression (it can use xvid.dll installed with xvid codec too), postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL’ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.

- fast video decompression using optimized MMX, SSE and 3DNow! code
- support for different codecs: XviD, all DivX versions, MS WMV, MPEG-1 and - MPEG-2
- image postprocessing for higher playback quality
- automatic quality control: automatically reduces postprocessing level when CPU load is high
- hue, saturation and luminance correction
- experimental sharpening filter
- noising (of course if you want it)
- presets
- completely free software: ffdshow is distributed under GPL
- support for various subtitle formats.

>>> Download <<< 

WorkshopLive.com is a virtual music school that features dozens of professional instructors teaching lessons online for all levels of expertise, in guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums. When WorkshopLive was in the early stages of development, the company had limited funds to devote to hardware, software, and human resources, so CTO Marilyn Hoefner decided to give open source software a try. “We’ve been extremely happy,” Hoefner says.

Hoefner’s mandate was to create a site rich in multimedia, including video teaching and animated fretboards to demonstrate chord fingering. “We needed a fairly powerful platform, but we didn’t have a lot of money to spend,” she says. “I come from a corporate background and hadn’t used open source before. But the developers here were very comfortable with it and felt it was extremely secure. Also, we had some outside contractors working on development and they were high on it.”

Though Hoefner was not familiar with Linux and other open source software, she was quite experienced when it came to proprietary platforms. “It’s extremely costly for support, and you end up paying huge license fees. So I went with the recommendation.”

To host what is now a collection of over 10,000 videos and animations and some 1,800 lessons, Hoefner chose Red Hat servers managed by Rackspace. She says that open source software, coupled with support and automatic upgrades from Rackspace, has made her job easy. WorkshopLive is coded with ColdFusion, but Hoefner has been so impressed by open source that she’s decided to use more of it in the development environment, including Subversion and other open source development tools. “In my previous life, I was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on these things,” Hoefner says. “My last job, the budget was over a million dollars for annual licensing alone. Here, I’ve got nothing in it. We don’t spend a penny on any of these development tools.”

Hoefner says the biggest benefit of using open source software has been the stability and security. “When you’re running on a Microsoft platform, you’re always worried about security, upgrades, and problematic patches. It’s more time-intensive to support the end user and to maintain the applications, and we just don’t have the staff to dedicate a full-time person to keeping the servers running. Our developers can spend their time developing code instead of administrating the network.”

Her experience has been so good, Hoefner recommends other Web developers take a hard look at Linux. “I would just research it according to their requirements. Linux servers integrate very easily and they will reduce the costs. We haven’t come across any pitfalls — there’s nothing negative. Test it out in a contained environment and I think they’ll be very happy with it. It’s definitely a platform I would invest in again.”

 By Grant McNamara

If you’ve been keeping track of Internet trends then you’ll be aware of the huge potential of promoting and selling e-Books. E-Books are becoming a common medium used on the Internet. An e-Book is simply a book, that can be read on a computer. Many
books now aren’t even published in hard copy.

Perhaps you’re considering writing an e-Book, well if so read on. This article explains some of the mystery and might well save you a heap of cash.

E-Books have a wide popularity and avoid many of the costs of traditional hard copy publishing. They don’t need to be printed, and as such avoid the associated costs of distribution, inventory and the risk of not selling. In fact they don’t need a traditional publisher. Anyone can write a manuscript, format it as an e-Book and promote it on their web site themselves. And of course there are numerous examples of e-Books being the
basis of promoting successful affiliate programs.

Many e-Books are used as a mechanism (often indirectly) to promote web sites. Authors of e-Books gain credence from the fact they’ve achieved publication, not to mention the
information their book contains.

Creating an e-Book is technically very simple (once the text of the book and any associated artwork has been completed). In order to create an e-Book we need a software product. The software takes the manuscript developed in a word processor and converts this into an e-Book.

The resulting e-Book created by the software will usually be in one of three forms; either a PDF document file, an executable file (called an exe file type) or an ‘ebo’ file (the e-Book
system used by Microsoft).

PDF, which stands for Portable Document Format, is the file extension for e-Book (along with any other document) created with Adobe Acrobat Writer. This is the de facto standard used in the commercial printing industry. If you plan to have hard
copies printed then you should seriously consider using the PDF format.

An alternative is to use an e-Book software system called a compiler. Such products effectively do exactly the same task as Adobe Acrobat Writer, but the output is an executable (which is the file name suffix of the resulting file). Most such compilers are priced at around US$100.

And the third alternative; the Microsoft ebo file system which is making dramatic inroads. It is still relatively new, but like most things Microsoft do, once they decide they want to
be the market leader, competition beware!

So this raises the question of which type of e-Book is the most appropriate. Deciding the answer to this question depends on several factors, not least of which is how the e-Book is going to be marketed.

Advantages of using Adobe Acrobat Writer include:

Adobe Acrobat Writer will convert an entire document containing all of the text and graphics in a single step. To do this the original document needs to be a single word processing document (or a linked document equivalent). This also facilitates updated
versions to be created if the source needs to be edited.

The resulting file can incorporate an index, external links to the internet, automated page numbering and a multitude of other facilities.

For the person who wants to read the book they use a software system called Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe makes this software available for free and it is widely distributed and used. It is an excellent product which allows the reader to print, use the index, and have complete control over the size of the text. It also facilitates add-ins such disability facilities (i.e. a synthesized voice system can read the text). The free Adobe Acrobat e-Reader system is an alternative to Acrobat Reader. As well as all the features of Acrobat Reader the e-Reader system takes any existing PDF file and presents the text in an
e-Book form.

The resulting PDF file is almost always far smaller than an equivalent executable file. Thus download times are shorter and the file occupies less space on the reader’s computer.

PDF files can be guaranteed virus free, where as executable files don’t have this advantage. People generally don’t like to download files that have an exe suffix in the name. Exe files are a notorious way for viruses to be spread and people tend to be more reluctant to download them than they would with PDF files.

PDF files have the advantage that they are supported on a variety of computer operating systems including all versions of Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OS, and Unix/Xenix/Linux. Exe files are restricted to Windows. And when you think for example
that there are over 8 million Macintosh users in the US alone that’s a large number of potential readers to exclude.

Advantages of EXE files include:

E-Book compilers are priced far lower than Adobe Acrobat Writer (around US$250). Such software is also far simpler to use. (Adobe Acrobat Writer is a very sophisticated publishing system with the creation of PDF files a minor function). There are other software products which can create PDF files. Some word processing systems have the facility, as does Corel Draw.

Some e-Book compilers are available for free use. Those I’ve tried though all either add some information about themselves into the resulting document, or limit the number of pages.

Alternatively they’re limited to a trial period such as 30 days. The writers of such software understandably really want you to buy their software! Once purchased all these frustrating limitations disappear.

E-Book compilers also (usually) include a rebranding facility. The rebranding facility allows other people to market your e-Book. But rather than having the contact details and web site links referenced back to your site, they can be altered to point back to their own site which the rebranded book promotes. Your authorship is still protected, but this feature allows the e-Book to be used in an affiliate program. The rebranding can be achieved with Adobe Acrobat Writer but it is more difficult to achieve.

Using e-Books as a promotion tool is usually far more effective if the down stream resellers can customize the book to their own affiliate links.

Web site references for e-Book compiler software:

http://www.ebookcompiler.com/
http://www.ebookgenerator.com/
http://www.ebookedit.com/
http://www.ebookpaper.com/

If you use free E-Books as a viral marketing tool, rebranding is the key to success, because people are much more likely to promote your E-Book if they can customize it with their own affiliate links.

Microsoft Reader:

The Microsoft Reader software (the software which allows someone to read your E-Book) is available for free download from the Microsoft web site. Using the reading software is
very simple and for those with reading disabilities, the standard download includes everything needed to increase text size, and use voice synthesis.

Microsoft Reader is restricted to use on the various Windows operating system variants. To date I’ve heard of no instances of an E-Book in this format having a virus. The file type is nothing like an EXE file so the virus problem is far less likely. Size wise the resulting e-Book is similar to a PDF.

To create an E-Book for this system requires that you have Microsoft Word version 2000 or 2002. Assuming that MS Word is installed then a small add-on is available for free download from the Microsoft web site. And from my own experience, creating an E-Book under this system is incredibly simple.

I’ve not determined exactly how the resulting e-Book can be rebranded for any affiliates you might wish to include in distribution, but I’ll spend some time on this soon and add
a new article about it.

I alluded above to Microsoft tending to become market leaders. It is worth noting that both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble have picked the Microsoft Reader system as the future industry standard. They, along with several other publishers are ver busy making their e-Books available in this format for on-line purchase. In the free category several Universities are making e-Books available, again using Microsoft E-Book as their
delivery system.

About Author:

About the Author:Grant McNamara has over 20 years experience in IT,and specializes in multi-lingual web site and software development and training.His web sites are http://www.selling-it.com/ and http://www.translateme.co.nz/ mailto:grant.mcnamara@selling-it.com

If you are a teacher or a professor, obviously you will be vexed when one student gives a sneaky yawn in your class. Don’t hastily blame him but think twice about your lecture: may it lack a small fire of passion and creativeness?

If you are a student, you cannot wait to become a Jack Black’s pet in “School of Rock” as you can memorize a mathematical formula by a song and get A mark not because of any force but your true love.

All is about new pedagogy.

No student wants to listen to a rambling speech and many teachers try to add some games, small contests, etc. into the lessons with the hope that their class becomes more vivid. However, this world seems to be not enough without the wise recognition of the new technology’s usage.

Voice changer software (VCS) is one of the modern tools which can perfect your educational audio projects. With the function of a recorder, MP3 player and especially voice changer and voice simulator, VCS can support you to prepare lesson plans. Imagine that in your literature class, you don’t need to finger-point at any student to ask him/her to read an extract of Romeo and Juliet but turn your recorded file on. Your multi-voices in multi-characters will bring an enjoyable feeling to your students as they can live in a real world of Shakespeare and all characters’ accents sound like in the 16th century. VCS is also a useful teaching aid for any music teacher. With a bit creativeness, you can morph music, edit melody, add effect and so on to make all your students goggle with an interesting mixed CD of their favorites.

The list of those benefits can be much longer, but it is up to your own pedagogy. Simply visit www.audio4fun.com or use the phrase .“voice changer software” in Google search engine to find more information. You can do all, but remember that your students are future’s seeds, so your educational projects must be from the needs of them.

The telephone is a vital business tool, but for many companies telephone usage costs are among their biggest expenses, largely as a result of lack of control. An effective call accounting system can help contain and reduce telecom costs and improve security.

A call accounting system is a collection of software modules that monitors and records incoming and outbound telephone calls in an enterprise. It determines the source and destination of each call, keeps track of its date, time and duration, and calculates its cost. The system then stores this data and uses it to generate the desired reports. Here are some of its many potential benefits, which can save up to 30% or more on monthly telecom expenses.

* Catch billing errors. The system calculates the cost of the calls, so any discrepancy with billed amounts can be quickly determined and resolved.

* Improve security. Because the system tracks each outgoing and incoming call, any suspicious calls can be tracked down and corrective action taken.

* Increase productivity. When employees know that their calls are monitored they tend to keep their personal calls to a minimum and thus devote more time to business-related activities.

* Improve utilization. Because the system can track the routing of calls, it can help management decide what trunk lines are properly utilized, where extra phones should be added and where they can be removed.

* Emergency notification. Call accounting software can be programmed to page one or more persons whenever a 911 call is made, thus alerting them to an emergency.

* Cost reduction. Overuse of directory assistance can quickly increase the size of a phone bill. So can unauthorized use of toll-free numbers by family and friends of employees. Appropriate action, such as issuing phone books to those who need them and informing employees that toll-free numbers are not free to the company can do a great deal to reduce these costs.

A reliable call accounting system can contribute greatly to an executive’s peace of mind and enhance a company’s bottom line.

More information about call accounting systems can be found at www.telsoft-solutions.com.

About the author:
Author, Peter Verhoeff, writes articles on the business benefits of call accounting and call detail record technology. More information can be found at http://www.telsoft-solutions.com.

The Internet-enabled recruiting market has brought with it more reach for employers and, in general, a higher volume of applicants for jobs. With thousands of applicants vying for each position advertised, recruiting is becoming an increasingly automated process. The aim of the recruiters is obviously to screen applicants in the shortest possible time. And the aim of ResumeGrabber Pro is to help the recruiters in their job.

ResumeGrabber Pro helps the recruiters to manage the flow and choose the best applicants for jobs than ever before. Though the interview remains a key component, recruiters always search for a tool like ResumeGrabber Pro to screen the right candidates.

Beyond the straightforward elimination of applicants who don’t meet clear criteria, though, assessment is a complex practice requiring significant effort. ResumeGrabber has made it easy by highlighting the competency factors like skills, experience, knowledge, preferences. This excellent feature has always helped the recruiters in comparing the candidates based on the criteria transparently.

With minimal effort, the time and cost associated with the classic separation of applicants into two piles, one for those who should not be considered and another for those that require further screening, can be accomplished instantly with automated tool like ResumeGrabber Pro.

Most of recruiters agreed that ResumeGrabber Pro was of most benefit in saving time of the recruiter reviewing hundreds of resumes for a position. Then weeding out those in one on one interviews, then reviewing more. It is definitely a great tool reducing the time and rigor of the search effort and allowing the recruiters to spend more time with Clients and Candidates in building productive relationships as they are a key to success in the employment search and consultancy businesses.

If you are a sort of graphics addicted person you will not take advantage of one or two programs and you would need an entire series of programs to satisfy your exigences.Yet, you should always be aware of their price as they can cost a lot. There are some measures by which you can save a gret deal of your money.One way to satisfy your need for a highly performant program is to search for the academic software version.If you attend any education institution you do probably benefit from some academic software purchases which can save you a large sum of money. You should know that academically priced software is of a great quality and it is given to affordable prices if you are part of any educational institution. The disadvantage is that no manual is given along with the program but the amount of money you have saved should be more than enough for you to buy one.

If you do not want to purchase a manual for your program there are many free tutorials on the Internet where you can find the useful information to start working with your program.

This along with free instructions and pieces of advice should be enough for you to register a great success with your program.If you believe that the price of the software with academic discount is suitable for you, you may contact your institution’s library or any other source which deals with them in yoyur school or faculty. You can also find them along with the discount on some Internet websites.

A frequently asked question is whether the academic software can be used in commercial purposesor not.Well, this is relative and totaly dependent on what it is mentioned in the license Agreement for that particular program. Generally you are permitted to do so but some companies do not allow you to use the program in commercial purposes.

About the author:
If are a student, teacher or school and you want to save a lot of money on software, just visit http://www.sprysoft.com for academic software and student software discounts.