The new Japanese robot Miuro turns an iPod music player into a dancing boombox-on-wheels. The 14-inch-long machine from ZMP Inc. blares music as it rolls and twists from room to room. The robot, which looks like a ball popping out of an egg, has a speaker system from Kenwood Corp. Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod player locks into the top of the robot, which comes in white, black, yellow or red. The robot costs around $930.
MSNBC reports that Khagendra Thapa Magar, 14, has applied to Guinness World Records to be named the shortest in the world. He is only 20 inches tall and weighs 10 pounds. There was no listing on the Guinness World Records Web site on a shortest boy category, but Thapa claimed the closest competitor was 25 inches tall.
Update: MSNBC reports that Guinness World Records dismissed the application saying he’s too young to consider.
OpenOffice.org Premium is a free and open source enhancement of official OpenOffice.org plus some Extras for you to use. The premium edition contains
Unlike Microsoft Office, it’s free.
Linux Journal has an article on using your iPod with Ubuntu. The excerpt is based on the book Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks. It explains in detail how to sync your iPod with Ubuntu using gtkpod or YamiPod, syncing your podcasts with iPodder, sharing your photos with GPixPod etc. It’s worth reading the article if you have an iPod and if you use Ubuntu.
Browzar is a new web browser that uses Internet Explorer’s engine. It doesn’t leave any track of the sites you surfed on the computer you used. Browzar doesn’t save your web history, cookies, forms you filled etc. It deletes everything including the cache when you close the browser. Ofcourse you can do the same in Firefox and Opera if you set the options. Browzar is a very small application since it uses Internet Explorer’s engine. It’s only 264K. You can run Browzar from USB thumb drive also instead of installing it on your system. Ofcourse Browzar has some limitations like no tabs, no UI shortcuts etc. It’s currently available for Windows platform. Mac and Linux versions are in development.
Update: Rafe Needleman wrote on CNet blog that ”
Now I must angrily report that I’ve been duped. Browzar does, sometimes, leave tracks. They’re not as easy to find as the records left behind by the native Internet Explorer application, and Browzar also leaves incomplete trails, rather than the full history that IE does. But in several cases I was able to recover clear HTML files from pages I visited using Browzar. Even when I ran Browzar directly from a USB thumb drive, it left traces of its activity behind on my host computer.
In sum, the current version of Browzar is not reliably secure and it does not perform as advertised.“
You might have read the news all over the web about Ubuntu’s update on August 21st broke the graphical interface. As per the reports and feedback, it broke only the graphical interface and users should be able to use the terminal mode. When I rebooted my desktop at home (dual boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu with SATA drive as master and PATA as slave) the next day, my system was making a click-clack noise and the bios didn’t recognize my SATA hard drive. The SATA drive had both OSes installed. The bios recognized only the PATA drive. I couldn’t get the system to boot. I initially thought the hard drive went bad. I tried several options and nothing worked. I then thought the SATA controller on the motherboard went bad. I tried fixing the problem for a week and I couldn’t get it to work.
I finally booted the system with Ubuntu live CD y’day. I then manually mounted the SATA drive though it didn’t show up in the BIOS. I then copied the data over to my external hard drive and tried to delete the partitions and format the hard drive using Partition Magic. I booted the system with Partition Magic and tried deleting the partitions. I could delete all the partitions except the /boot parition. I was getting a message that it was locked. I then ran an error check on that partition and it came back with no errors. I could delete the partition after I ran the error check. Something happened to the /boot parition that rendered the system unusable. I then reformatted the hard disk and the click-clack sound stopped. I reinstalled Windows XP before I went to bed. I have to reinstall Ubuntu tonight. I couldn’t think of any possible reason why X-server update could damage the /boot parition making the hard drive unusable. The cause of the problem could be something else, but it just happened the day the Ubuntu updates broke the system for many users.
CNN apologized Tuesday after an open mike transmitted Kyra Phillips bathroom conversation with another woman live over the network as it was carrying President Bush’s speech in New Orleans. Head over to HotAir blog from Bryan to see the video (and ofcourse the audio). “Live From” anchor Kyra Phillips had apparently left the set around 12:48 p.m. EDT Tuesday for a bathroom break while the news channel carried Bush’s speech marking the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Phillips’ wireless microphone was turned on and picked up about a minute and a half of a muffled conversation she had with an unidentified woman where she apparently talked about her husband, laughed and talked about her brother.
CNet news reports that hackers broke into AT&T’s system and accessed personal data of thousands of customers who used it’s online store. The data includes credit card numbers. The break-in occurred during the weekend. This is the latest in the series of losing personal data by various organizations.
AOL is offering AIMPhoneline, a free service to receive phone calls and voicemails that uses your computer and existing Internet connection. You get a local phone number called AIM Digits and people can call that number from any phone. You can answer the phone through your computer if you are online else it goes to the always on voicemail which is delivered right to your email inbox. You can use this number if you don’t want to give your home phone number or your mobile phone number. It’s one way to avoid marketing calls.
