Technology Madness

Prezi - The Zooming Presentation Editor: Infinite space on one slide

Are you looking for some tool for presentation but not from Microsoft -powerpoint? Prezi is incredible service will change the way we create presentations. Do you remember when you want to present a flow chart in slides with boxes and arrows but it always goes in linear (and boring) fashion. Then Prezi is an answer for you to add coolness to ideas!

Prezi is a nonlinear presentation editor, with a very intuitive interface and support for online sharing. With the help of Prezi you can create dynamic and visually structured zooming presentations using texts, videos, drawings, and present it as a very dynamic and free experience. (Prezi definition: via aether.hu)

Whole presentation laid out as if it’s prepared on the dining room table, and you zoom in and out to your presentation topics based on predefined path. Its like infinite space on one slide! Sounds interesting? It is more engaging for the audience than waiting for the next predictable slide. I guess this kind of presentation is fun to create for composer and fun to watch for audience too! Creativity is a prime key here.

See demo here to see what you can do with Prezi and find a different prospective of presentation. Currently registration is available by invitation only.

I can’t say much about the service, because I haven’t got my invite yet, but I’ve tried the demo (see here) on the site and it’s a “wow” so far. When you sign up for the beta invite at the site, write down that you read about Prezi @ Technology Madness blog

Demo:

Don’t Miss: YouTube - Prezi used at various venues

Via [go2web20, blog.prezi.com and aether.hu]

New Website for Obama’s White house - Change has come to Whitehouse.gov

The Inauguration Ceremony went nicely. As President Barack Obama was giving his inauguration speech, another transfer of power was happening online. At exactly 12 PM ET, Whitehouse.gov , the official Website of the President switched over to a new design. A government website that doesn’t look like a government website.

My first impression of new whitehouse.gov website looks cool, very sophisticated, easy to navigate, most of the stuff accessible in few clicks. One cool addition is whitehouse blog. Today first blog post is written by Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media. Macon Phillips is titled: “Change has come to Whitehouse.gov.” He suggested that blog post is going to continue by him and other staff of “New Media”. He assures that WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration’s online programs will put citizens first and laid down three priorities for new media efforts. – Communication, Transparency and Participation.

There are a number of feeds (though some are still empty as I wrote this):

• Agenda Articles Feed
• Press Office Feed
• OMB News Article Feed
• Blog Feed
• Photo Gallery Feed
• Video Feed

Hopefully, the administration will continue some of the experiments with citizen participation which it tried on Change.gov, its transition Website. Whitehouse.gov certainly has the same look and feel. However, currently, no social networking connections to be found on new website.

Congratulations to Mr. President and Mr. Vice-President. And Good luck!

Via [WhiteHouse.gov, whitehouse blog]

Google’s New Web Picasa: Face recognition and Auto Rotate When Needed

Just recently, Google web picasa was updated with new interface with few wow functionalities. Apart from overhaul user interface (UI) they have added face recognition feature.

Face recognition:
It is called “name tag.” This is very important feature for me as currently its taking lots of time for me to sort pictures based on person in it. The “name tag” feature presents users with collections of photos with what it judges to be the same person, and then let them click a button to affix a name. Tagging is a powerful way to sort digital photographs. Until now we all are used to create collection of photos as a album based on event, location, activities etc. But now face recognition technology gives new look and style to arrange pictures. It provides you with different lens on the same data. Once photographic subjects are named, users can browse an album of that individual on the fly. Does this feature sound familiar? Few years back, Riya.com developed such face recognition technology. I still like riya.com for face recognition technology over Picasa’s similar functionality. If you are really committed (for name tagging) the way your committed to eat your vegetables and exercise regularly then after few uploading you can create another set of database, like…

• View all photos of ‘my ex’
• View all photos with the following people my sister, my girlfriend and mom
• Create slide show with the following people …
• Share photos with the people tagged sister

“Once you’ve started naming people, we’ll start suggesting names for you based on similarity,” said Mike Horowitz, Google’s Picasa product manager. “The process of naming people is really addictive and tremendously fun.”

In Picasa, once you give a name tag to a face then it will automatically suggest person name for tagging for all future uploads but in case of Riya.com, after providing some training, it will automatically tags person name, if it considers absolutely positive match. In case of Google Picasa, it may be additive to assign name tag to each person but after a while I become bored. I have few hundred pictures in my non-public albums. I would expect Google Picasa (of course, after little training) to find all pictures when my sister is in instead I tag it manually for each picture or sometimes in bulk.

Rotate pictures automatically, when needed:
Another hidden feature that I like is – to recognize the side of the pictures. Many times when my wife takes pictures; she takes it with keeping camera vertical. So I have to rotate the pictures before I upload to Google Picasa to see the person in pictures in north-south way. However Google understood my pain (and my wife’s habit of taking pictures vertically.) Google Picasa understood all pictures which are taken vertically; rotate them automatically the way we want to see during upload. (like Apple iPhone, picture will rotate and maintain correct direction when you rotate iPhone.) This saves a rotating exercise for each picture that I have to perform before any upload. For me this is way cool than face recognition. Did you find anything interesting in latest version of Google web picasa?

Google Web Picasa Video:

Via [Memory Leak and Google Blog on Picasa web]

Very simple concept yet elegant and brilliant design

Nailing For Dummies (Nail Assist):
Some people can’t shoot the straight. I mean can’t hammer a nail straight. ‘Nail Assist’ is a god grace to them. It’s like Nailing For Dummies. Concept is very simple yet elegant and brilliant design. You put a nail in the tube, put it where you want, and bang on wide head/top and done. Magnetic piece inside the hollow tube will hold the nail straight. Make sure you hold the tube firmly while hammering the wide headed tube. There is no way you can go wrong. See how it works in below pictures:

Hang On Outlet:
I often notice bunch of electric wires are spreading around on the floor and disturb the harmony of my living room. One of the ideas that I mentioned is to hide all wires by using Powerblock. (See picture here) “Hang On Outlet” another cool product to organize your wires and keep the bunch of wires and the area neat, tidy and in harmony. Very simple idea yet brilliant.

Original idea of the product (Paulo Oh, designer) is to promote unplugging habit when it is not in use (note: I don’t know why all countries don’t require switches on the power points) and you can save massive amount of wasted energy. (See how much you can save? Electricity Usage Monitor)But I like the hanging design more for keepping wires are in right place and avoid tangling. Of course, I am always for energy saving. See here, here and here.

Via [yankodesign.com and conceptpop.com]

Travel between Los Angelis and Seattle in one tank of Compressed AIR

Could the Air Car be the next generation motor vehicle? Could this charming (but looks very retro) car be the starting of ‘death’ count-down for the oil-petroleum guzzler automotive industry in coming days?

Air Car is running exclusively on compressed air, it emits only air - zero pollution. The air car claims to be able to drive 106 miles per gallon which is 170 kilometer per gallon. Now lets say if car has 10 gallon tank, it means you can drive 1060 Miles in one tank of Gas (opppss, sorry, please read AIR, not gas) that is approximately distance between Los Angelis and Seattle. Wow, now this is amazing fuel economy.

It’s NOT a dream or a project on paper but ZPM (http://zeropollutionmotors.us) will begin taking reservations in mid-2009 for US deliveries of our compressed air vehicle in 2010. It is estimated to have a retail price of $17,800USD. A six-seater model is the first Air Car scheduled to enter the US. On top of all cool specs, this car has no keys - just an access card which can be read directly from your pocket. Also, Refilling the car tank will cost $2 (…that is unless the price of air goes up… he he)

Check it out. Watch this you tube video:

Via [popularmechanics.com and blog.sabasearch.com]

McCain attacks Obama with high-tech website versioning tool.

In the presidential campaign candidate keep track on opponent as much as she can. In the era of internet, it has reached unprecedented new levels. Using technological tool, it’s probably easy and accurate to keep track on certain things, like changes on the opponent website. McCain team is exactly doing the same thing. Recently McCain attacks Obama using website versioning tool-versionista.com, which tracks all campaign pages’ precise word changes up to an hourly basis. Recently, McCain team caught the changes on ethics page of Obama’s website regarding “Campaign Finance Reform” issue which gives enough material to attacks Obama.

The McCain campaign web site recently published a link to a Versionista comparison that shows changes to Obama’s web page about the Iraq war

Track version changes of the programming code is fairly common in software development world but Versionista is bringing it to the new level in fast changing world and gave you upper hand about competitive and critical information useful to journalists, campaigns, corporations, and activists. Versionista provides side-by-side comparison and multiple other views let you see “before and after” versions of every monitored page.

General audience can also get the benefit using this tool for monitoring prices on a product page of your favorite shopping sites. Tool highlights what text has been added, deleted, or moved. Versionista tracks up to 25 versions per page. Also, Versionista will email you whenever a change is found. Versionista subscription based service, price/fee is starting from $16/month for 30 urls tracking and goes upto $499.00/mo for 2500 urls.

Alternative Web Page Monitoring Services to versionista are ChangeDetect and watchthatpage.com. And price is just right (Free!)

Cool roller coaster animation for Zuerich Chamber Orchestra

As the music builds steam, so does the coaster-cam pick up speed, taking hair-pin turns (sharp turns) and swooping down vertiginous drops. Enjoy!

Google introduced speech-to-text technology and search for spoken content of speech

Google introduced speech-to-text technology and search for spoken content of speech. This is huge. Currently this functionality is added to some of the YouTube videos that enable you to search for text spoken in these videos. You can see what’s coming next from Google. I guess its still under beta version as its available through google gadget only to your Google homepage only. Using the gadget you can search spoken content as well as gadget will tell you exactly when words are spoken in the video, you can jump right to the most relevant parts of the videos.

According to Google blog: The gadget only searches videos uploaded to YouTube’s Politicians channels, which include videos from Senator Obama’s and Senator McCain’s campaigns, as well as those from dozens of other candidates and politicians

Here’s a look:

If your search query match some YouTube video, the positions indicates by yellow marker- and hover the mouse to read the text.

Via [in their own words political videos]

Releated: blinkx video search engine @ labnol.blogspot.com

OSIM iCare 200: Gift for all.

After a long day working with computer or after eye-intensive work, it would have been nicer if we can get an eye massage the way we get body massage. (Obviously with not the same force and intensity but gentle touch like feather.)

OSIM launched iCare, the stylish ergonomically designed eye belt/mask featuring effective massage on and around eye with various level of combination of heat, air pressure and vibration. There is no setting for cold massage. I am sure; technically it’s challenging to provide cold massage functionality and stay in reasonable price range. Currently its marketed in $129 USD.

Various pre-defined setting and manual arrangement gives you stimulate blood circulation and provide relief from a number of common eye conditions including eye strain, tiredness, insomnia and headache.

Have you used this eye belt? Please feel free to post your experience and comment about it.

Via [OSIM]

Who will feed your Fish when you are out?

My wife frequently asks me to bring pet animal at home (i.e.: Fish) but I have some (maintenance) problem, especially who will feed my fish when we are out?

Now she got an answer to my dilemma - A Robotic Fish Feeder is the answer. (Designer: Ran Xiangfei) FIFER robot (Fish Feeder) does feeding job to Fish. Fish finally get the attention they deserve. One less item you need to worry about on your day to day tasks. (Related article: End of one more boring task - inflate your car tire)

Fish feeder not only feeds but feeds the fish in correct amount. First it calculates the density of Fish in water and dispenses the right amount of food at the pre-set times. If you are growing fish in fish pond then Robot moves to another area (based on pre-set path setting) of the pond calculate the fish density and dispenses. There is also a plant on top which grows to represent the health of your fish.

See more pictures here

Via [GearFuse.com and Designer: Ran Xiangfei]