Category: News

Found under: Windows Mobile, Push email, google, google sync, Guide, How to, Tips,

Here is guide published by xda-developers member Laos101 which shows you how to get gmailpush email working on windows mobile phones. This is for Windows Mobile devices running WM5 or later. It is based on Google Sync which is a beta feature by Google that allows you to synchronize your cloud-based Google services Such as Gmail Google Contacts Google Calendar etc. with your PC handheld and is widely cross platform. Okay I recently posted the news on Googles new synchronization ef

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Eco Factor: Solar panels on curtain walls of buildings can generate renewable energy.

Massachusetts-based Konarka has launched a pilot project that will integrate the company’s Power Plastic solar panels into non-load bearing exterior walls of the building to generate renewable energy. The company is testing the technology in an office building owned by Arch Aluminum & Glass Co.

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Twitter has completed the first round of translations it announced a couple of months ago with the introduction of a German-language version of the site. It is the last of the FIGS ( French, Italian, German and Spanish) languages it initially set out to release and the last translation for 2009 apparently. It has been available in just English and Japanese for quite a while, but has recently introduced Italian, French, and Spanish versions of the site.

As was the norm, Twitter announced the new translation in the native language, in this case German, lucky Google Translate does a decent job at getting the message out for those of us who don’t speak the language. “German is one of the most widespread languages of the EU and is the last language we introduced in 2009 on Twitter.com,” Twitter’s Jenna Sampson wrote.

“With the indispensable help of our many fantastic translators and translators, we have five new languages in less than two months introduced – a huge achievement for our international group. The faster we can make available to Twitter for people all over the world, influencing the faster the different cultures of the world, the global conversation on Twitter,” she added.

To enable the new interface language go to the Settings section, scroll down to language … (read more)

Here are more pics of the lovely Mercedes E-Class cabriolet. The technical details of the E-Class cabrio, including the Aircap and Airscarf features, are interesting, but we think you’ll be especially impressed by its gorgeous style. If you want a hot-looking four seater cabrio, this is just as good as the other members of the Mercedes E-Class family. For the engine range and other details, see our first post on the E-Class cabriolet.

Mercedes E-Class Cabriolet more pics

If you’re making something chocolaty – crinkle cookies, chocolate mousse, brownies, fudge – and really want to turn up the chocolate flavor, there’s a simple trick you can use with just about any recipe. Do you know the secret ingredient?

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Brian points us to the news of yet another questionable patent lawsuit filed by yet another shell company, yet again in Eastern Texas against a ton of software companies. The patent in question (5,222,134) is for a “secure system for activating personal computer software at remote locations,” and was originally filed back in 1991 and granted in 1993 — meaning that the patent is actually nearing end of life. Odd, then, that it was suddenly noticed that all these companies were infringing. The lawsuit is filed by a shell company called BetaNet, and no one seems willing to speak. The lawyers representing BetaNet won’t say who is behind the company, or how they even got the patent. This is typical. Many of these types of lawsuits are filed by shell companies to hide who is actually behind them. As for the defendants, here’s the list:

Adobe, Apple, Arial Software, Autodesk, Carbonite, Corel, Kodak, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, McAfee, Online Holdings, Oracle, Rockwell, Rosetta Stone, SAP, Siemens, and Sony.

Obviously, none of those companies could have come up with ways to remotely activate software without this patent (yes, that’s sarcasm). As the Register notes in the link above, even some of the software products listed as violating this patent don’t seem to involve activation at all, raising serious questions about how they could possibly violate this patent. This sounds like yet another case of someone having read the book Rembrandt’s in the Attic and deciding to go trolling for companies to sue with a meaningless patent.

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Eco Factor: Zero-emission electric car harvests solar energy.

The Philippine Solar Car Society Inc. has launched the country’s second solar-powered car. Dubbed Sikat, the solar car is a successor to the Sinag, RP’s first solar-powered car that was developed for the 2007 World Solar Car Challenge in Australia.

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Many cultures consider horseshoes to be a good luck charm and their placement and shape are very important. A horseshoe is hung on a door with the ends pointing up as to have them pointing down brings bad luck. The idea behind this is that the good fortune will spill out if it is facing down. Some people also believe that you must find a horseshoe that has been lost by a horse for it to be lucky. A few traditions dictate that any luck – either good or bad– will only affect the owner/finder of the horseshoe and not simply the person who hangs it up. Some people believe that guests must enter and leave a house under the same door with the horseshoe hung over it in order to take the luck with them.

The story of Saint Dunstan and the Devil tells of a blacksmith who becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury in 959 AD. It is said that Saint Dunstan once nailed a horseshoe to the Devil’s hoof when he requested re-shoeing. Seeing that the Devil was in great pain, Dunstan made the Devil promise never to enter a place that had a horseshoe hung over the door. Horseshoes are made by blacksmiths who work with fire and iron which were considered magical and so the trade was considered lucky. Many believed blacksmiths could heal the sick and that if they presided over a marriage it would be a lucky one. Another lucky aspect of the horseshoe is that it is held in place by seven iron nails. Seven has long been thought a lucky, significant number.

Eco Factor: Sustainable pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010 will be covered in natural stone.

Designed by Haim Dotan Architects, the Israeli pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 will have a unique design that looks like two clasped hands. The pavilion will be divided into three areas – the hall of light, the hall of innovations and the Whispering Garden.

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RIFTEK has just introduced a new low cost kit for 3D laser scanning. The kit has been developed for use with any type of working CNC machines with any type of control. The supply package includes an RIFTEK Series RF603 triangulation laser sensor, synchronization module and software package. In the scanning mode, the machine CNC system sequentially moves the laser sensor over the prototype of the product thus forming a digitized model of the prototype. The model obtained is memorized as a ‘cloud of dots’ as well as in a general STL format suitable for subsequent use in CNC machining

SANYO DENKI EUROPE SA. is pleased to introduce their “SANMOTION R ” with built-in positioning function AC servo drives. Available in both serial interface (RS-485 Modbus-RTU) and DI/DO interface version, this serie has been greatly simplified as the positioning control unit becomes unnecessary.

Specifications :

•Main input voltage: 200 to 230VAC +10, -15%, 50/60Hz +/-3Hz 100 to 115VAC +10, -15%, 50/60Hz +/-3Hz
•Control input voltage: 200 to 230VAC +10, -15%, 50/60Hz +/-3Hz
•Power capacity: 6 models up to 300Amps
•Interface: Serial interface (RS-485 Modbus-RTU) or DI/DO interface
•R-Setup Software: Parameters setting, Auto-tuning, DI/DO configuration, Oscilloscope, Alarm History, Test mode
•Standards: CE, UL and cUL
•Positioning function specifications:
configurable positions: up to 254 points (P000 to P253)
maximum range of commands: from -2147483648 to +2147483647
command unit: mm (linear axis) or pulse (rotary axis)
point data setup: numerical input via PC, or setup by teaching
travel point number setup: parallel 8 bits (binary code) or RS-485
current limit
travel modes: zero return, manual (JOG, 1step) and point-specified travel, JUMP, REPEAT, S-CURVE…
zone signal: maximum of 8 zones

Main features :

•Simple System
A maximum of 254 positions can be pre-registered. The amplifier allows to set 4 types of servo gain patterns, speed, acceleration / deceleration and S-curve acceleration/deceleration for each target position. After moving to the first point, it jumps to the next specified point. Point command is repeatedly executable for specified times. The system can be terminated when hitting any object while moving. Since positioning control unit is unnecessary, it saves wiring and system space.
•Infinite or finite coordinates
Either infinite coordinates (where object unlimitedly keeps moving), or finite coordinates (where object moves to a constant point) are selectable. Within infinite coordinates, the object may choose shortest way to the target point.
•Serial Interface Model Added to Lineup
only 3 wirings needed for serial interface, where to 50 wirings for I/O interface. PC is directly connected as a host device. The host device can change and rewrite travel data and the parameters of points.

For further information on Sanyo Denki «SANMOTION R with built-in positioning function » AC servo drives, please contact us at +33 1 48 63 26 61 or email us at [email protected].

Google has its hands in a huge number of projects with wildly varied scopes and means yet they all center on one thing, the web. Weather it’s releasing a new DNS service or thinking how will people access web apps in five years time with Chrome OS it’s easy to forget one simple thing, for most people the web means what they can see in their browsers, everything else doesn’t really matter. Unsurprisingly, Google has people handling the more practical issues as well, and one of them has released a tool used internally to determine how many visitors actually see a portion of a web page.

“To help you understand how everyone sees your website, we created a tool called Browser Size in our 20% time. Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users,” Bruno Bowden, senior software engineer at Google wrote.

“For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it.”

Brower Size is a simple Labs project which can give web designers a lot of insight into what most people are going to see straight away on their … (read more)

Technology Review has an article on solar powered desalination in Canada – Sun-Assisted Desalination.

A Canadian startup has built a pilot desalination plant in Vancouver that uses a quarter of the energy of conventional plants to remove salt from seawater. The process relies on concentration gradients, and the natural tendency of sodium and chloride ions–the key components of salt–to flow from higher to lower salinity concentrations. If the system can be scaled up it could offer a cheaper way to bring drinking water to the planet’s most parched regions while leaving behind a much lower carbon footprint than other desalination methods.

“We’ve taken it from a benchtop prototype to a fully functional seawater pilot plant,” says inventor Ben Sparrow, a mechanical engineer who established Saltworks Technologies in 2008 to commercialize the process. “The plant is currently running on real seawater, and we’re in the final stage of expanding it to a capacity of 1,000 liters a day.”

Today most desalination plants are based on one of two approaches. One is distillation through an evaporation-condensation cycle, and the other is membrane filtration through reverse osmosis. But both options are energy-intensive and costly.

Saltworks takes a completely different approach based on the principles of ionic exchange. The process begins with the creation of a reservoir of seawater that is evaporated until its salt concentration rises from 3.5 percent to 18 percent or higher.

The evaporation is done in one of two ways: either the seawater is sprayed into a shallow pond exposed to sunlight and dry ambient air, or seawater is kept in a large tower that’s exposed to waste heat from a neighboring industrial facility. The second approach is used in the commercial-scale plant. The concentrated water is then pumped at low pressure into the company’s desalting unit along with three separated streams of regular seawater. At this point the most energy-intensive part of the process is already over.

Researchers found that adults who had a bit of help lowering their TV watching time also burned more calories. Any activity, other than sleeping, burns more calories than sitting idly in front of the tube.

The study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, is the first to measure the effects of a TV reduction intervention in adults. Researchers hope that a new focus on reducing sedentary behaviors may help to curb the obesity epidemic.

Some individuals in the study group received an electronic device that turned off the TV after a weekly limit of 50% of previously measured TV viewing time. The control group didn’t receive the device. An armband was used to measure physical activity in the groups.

Study participants with the lock-out systems burned 119 more calories per day during the three-week intervention period than during the previous observation period. The control group burned 95 fewer calories per day during same period than they did during the observation period.

The average adult watches five hours of TV per day. Have you considered what else you’d do with your TV viewing time? Even simple tasks like playing a board game or folding laundry burn more calories than TV viewing. With less TV, you may finally get around to organizing your junk drawer, putting together a scrapbook, teaching tricks to the dog, vacuuming under the sofa, exploring that new healthy eating book and much more.

Would you use a device to turn your TV off after a set amount of viewing each week?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Less TV Means More Activity

MONTEREY, CA – November 25, 2009 – Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility in Santa Cruz, California has chosen Sierra’s Immersible Thermal Mass Flow Meters for their ground breaking renewable energy programs. Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility generates their own electric power by using internal-combustion engines which burn a mixture of methane gas produced by the sewage digestion process and purchased natural gas, producing 7.4 million kwH of electric power per year. In the conversion of solid wastes to high-efficiency fuel in this application, digestion plays a critical first step in producing raw biogas. For Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Facility, Sierra’s Immersible Thermal Mass Flow Meters deliver critical readings indicating exact digestive status while controlling the final step of precisely blending the cleaned and compressed biogas with natural gas. Using Sierra’s thermal meters to harness this alternative energy saves the wastewater treatment money in energy costs and the planet by preventing CO2 emissions from polluting the atmosphere. Read complete application story here https://sierrainstruments.com/chronicles/stories/santa_cruz_wwtf.html

Complete technical information on Sierra’s Immersible Thermal Mass Flow Meters is available online at http://sierrainstruments.com/products/heavyindustry.html or free of charge from Sierra Instruments, Inc., 5 Harris Court, Building L, Monterey, CA 93940, phone 800.866.0200, fax 831.373.4402.

About Sierra
A global leader in flow measurement and control for over 35 years, Sierra instruments designs and manufactures high performance flow instrumentation for gas, liquid and steam applications commonly found in industries such as semiconductor, environmental, scientific research, petrochemical, energy, aerospace, and general manufacturing. With over 150 offices in 50 countries, Sierra is uniquely positioned to provide their innovative products and lifetime support for the leading companies of today and the growth enterprises of tomorrow.