Tactus makes keyboards that appear out of seemingly flat glass touchscreen surfaces, thanks a fluid-based layer that reacts to electrical signals to create rises and bumps that serve as keys and buttons. It’s a magical technology, and one that you can see demoed on video in the clip below from CES this year. Soon, you’ll be able to get that tech on a range of devices thanks to a new… Read More
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Tactus Taps Wistron To Bring Its Magical Physical Touchscreen Buttons To The Masses
A&E Networks is regularly finding ways to make its programming more widely available, particularly by having on-demand options through TV providers and its own apps. To help boost these efforts, the company’s now bringing live streaming into the fold, at least with a couple of properties. As of today, viewers can now watch a real-time feed of A&E and History , via each channel’s website and their applications on iOS — no word on when, or if, the feature will head to Android . Naturally, you’ll need a cable subscription to enjoy this, as is often the case for most services that use the internet to broadcast entertainment content . Of course, TV Everywhere offerings like Time Warner Cable’s mobile apps already made live streaming A&E and History possible, so long as you’ve had access to the right channel package. By doing this, however, A&E Networks is essentially cutting out the middle man and, in the process, giving you another option for times when you might need it. A&E Networks Senior VP of Digital Media, Evan Silverman, told Variety that “this is just another stage in our evolution of TV Everywhere.” Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments Via: Variety Source: A&E , History
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You can now watch A&E and History live on iOS and the web
MediaPortal 1.7.0 Final We are very happy to present you the final version of MediaPortal 1.7.0 today. This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes. Please report any problems in the bug reporting sections of the forum. Highlights of this release Many of the changes in this release are things that you might not notice at first, but they are designed to improve the stability of MediaPortal moving forwards for the next few releases. Using SkinSettings/Expressions Skin Settings and Expressions are really powerful. Skin designers are going to be doing some amazing things with them in the near future. We have already been testing a home screen editor entirely within the MediaPortal GUI. Look for this in Area 51 very soon. Separate the WindowsPlugins to individual files This is one for the developers. Since MediaPortal started, the core plugins (My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, etc.) have been stored in a single file called WindowsPlugins.dll. This means that a lot of code has been loaded that isn’t always needed. Also, making a change to one plugin often resulted in another plugin developing a new bug. We can’t carry on like that, so the plugins are now in their own self-contained files. This will make things more stable and easier to fix/improve in future. Attention: This change made us ‘bump’ the plugin subsystems, so there is a chance you need an updated plugin to be compatible with the 1.7.0 Release. 1.7 Pre Release compatible plugins will still work fine with this release. Enhancements to the TV and Video OSDs TV recording thumbs and comskip markers were not properly shown in the TV and Video Info OSDs. This is fixed. Improvements to the Installer You probably have the LAV Filters package installed to get the best quality playback of most video files, and TitanExtended installed to provide skin files for your plugins. The installer correctly detects the installed version, and only offers to install these if a newer version is available. Wake On LAN MediaPortal can now wake your server if it is in sleep mode and you want to access your files. Add MediaInfo For Files in the Background We use a code library called MediaInfo to obtain certain information about video files when you play them. This information can be displayed by MediaPortal. Up to now, it has only been possible to obtain this information when you actually play a file. With this release, we have added a setting to allow all files to be scanned in the background. This is turned off by default, so check out the documentation for changes to see where this setting is and how to enable it. We also updated the library to v0.7.67. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for MP 1.7.0 by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.7.0 Compiled Plugin related changes Community Plugin Developers should have a look at the following page to find out about the changes which will effect their extensions. Some of these changes are mandatory to become 1.7.0 compatible: changes which affect plugins Additional Information: TVE3 Code freeze At the moment we are working hard on releasing a new version of our TVEngine – which is called TVE3.5. Development is still in early stage and some features are missing. To make a release of this happen in the future we have to put our current TVEngine (TVE3) on code freeze. This means only critical issues will get fixed. Everything else will have to wait for a TVE3.5 release. When we think it is ready for public testing you will find a testbuild in our Area51 forum part. Since we have limited resources we are not able to give you a specific release date. It is ready when it is ready! We’ll hope you understand that. Thanks! Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation With MediaPortal 1.6.0 we switched to .NET4 so you need to make sure you have .NET4 installed on your computer (not needed if you are on Windows 8 because it comes with .NET4, but you NEED the .NET 3.5 features enabled!). Otherwise you are not able to install MediaPortal and the installer just quits. Download-Link: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Aside from that when doing a clean installation of 1.7.0 there is nothing else special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0, 1.6.0 and 1.7 Pre Release to 1.7.0 All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0, 1.6.0 and 1.7 Pre Release installations can be upgraded to 1.7.0, without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.6.0 or earlier , then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.7.0 ! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. Skins: Warning ! Due to the new features and changes introduced in 1.4.0 , none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.7.0 ! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. Upgrading Extensions: The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the MediaPortal Extension Installer , and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version. Upgrading from 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier to 1.7.0 All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.7.0, without losing your settings. If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier, then none of your extensions (plugins and skins) will work after the upgrade to 1.7.0! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.7.0 compatible versions of your extensions are available before you start the upgrade! General note about Upgrades Manually stop TV-Service! On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.7.0 we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager (enable the “all users” option), that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade. Custom TV-Service properties If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service (like restart on error options) , then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service. Feedback Bugs If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our Bug Reports Forum . Make sure your report includes all the required information . Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean. Download Finally – the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes. If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release! .::. Download – MediaPortal 1.7.0 Final .::. :: Post a Comment ::
We’re thankfully long past the days when an emailed Word document was useless without a copy of Microsoft Word, and that’s in large part thanks to the success of the OpenOffice family of word processors. “Family, ” because the OpenOffice name has been attached to several branches of a codebase that’s gone through some serious evolution over the years, starting from its roots in closed-source StarOffice, acquired and open-sourced by Sun to become OpenOffice.org. The same software has led (via some hamfisted moves by Oracle after its acquisition of Sun) to the also-excellent LibreOffice. OpenOffice.org’s direct descendant is Apache OpenOffice, and an anonymous reader writes with this excellent news from that project: “The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 170 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today that Apache OpenOffice has been downloaded 100 million times. Over 100 million downloads, over 750 extensions, over 2, 800 templates. But what does the community at Apache need to do to get the next 100 million?” If you want to play along, you can get the latest version of OpenOffice from SourceForge (Slashdot’s corporate cousin). I wonder how many government offices — the U.S. Federal government has long been Microsoft’s biggest customer — couldn’t get along just fine with an open source word processor, even considering all the proprietary-format documents they’re stuck with for now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Apache OpenOffice Reaches 100 Million Downloads. Now What?
We already know Apple is working on improving Siri , but gosh dangit , the folks in Cupertino just aren’t moving as fast as some would like. That’s why a quartet of freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania decided to try making Siri do more on their own… at a hackathon, no less. They wound up taking third prize for the hack — called GoogolPlex — and after some fine-tuning, Alex Sands, Ajay Patel, Ben Hsu and Gagan Gupta are ready to help you make your virtual assistant do more. The setup process is trivial: you just have to change your Wi-Fi connection’s proxy settings (seriously, it’ll take five seconds). Once that’s done though, you can invoke Siri and ask GoogolPlex to play tunes in Spotify, crank up the heat on your Nest thermostat or even start your Tesla. Fiddling with proxy settings may not be your cup of tea, but it’s actually crucial to how GoogolPlex works. You see, Siri parses these voice commands and sends them along to Google as search terms, but Googolplex intercepts that text and chews on it so it knows what service’s API to interact with (don’t worry, Gupta says none of your commands are ever stored). Hell, if you happen to be conversant in code, you can cobble together your own GoogolPlex commands for other apps too. Case in point: the team was originally going to reveal GoogolPlex with a Venmo command to initiate payments by voice. The full, more technical explanation can be found here . Is it neat? You bet, especially since older projects that tried to do the same were a hassle to set up. Is it a totally polished way to expand Siri’s mind? Erm, not quite. You can bark commands at Googolplex all you like, but actually getting a response takes a little time since you’re always routed to Safari. Still, not a huge deal considering you can coax Googolplex into doing things Siri just can’t. It’s only a matter of time before Apple pushes out a shiny new build of iOS that makes some (or most) of what this hack does redundant, but for now, it’s time to get a-tinkerin’. Comments Source: GoogolPlex
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College kids gave Siri new powers and now you can too
House numbers on Google Street View can turn up as blobby, blurry things, so its engineers built a pretty crazy neural network to decipher them. Except this algorithm also turns out to be very very good at deciphering other blobby, blurry texts—like CAPTCHAs, which it cracks with 99 percent accuracy . Take that, human. Read more…
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Google Street View Accidentally Made an Algorithm That Cracks CAPTCHAs
We’ve all been there: You call customer service, get bounced around, transferred, and dropped. Or worse, your issue never gets resolved even after you talk to someone. You probably know you can escalate to a manager, or even higher, to “executive” support. But at that level, there’s an art to getting what you want. Here’s what you need to know. Read more…
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How to Contact Executive Customer Service and Get Your Problem Solved
As anyone who’s driven through Middle America knows, it feels like there’s very few places in the U.S. that don’t have at least a few inhabitants. But as a map by cartographer Nik Freeman proves, there are still some amber waves of grain and fruited plains that remain. Emphasis on some. Read more…
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Here’s a Map of the 47 Percent of America Where No One Lives
You wouldn’t think that a four-wheeled car would go faster if one of its wheels didn’t touch the ground. Or if its axles were bent. Or if it was designed to grind against a wall. But you’d be wrong, and here’s the science to prove it. Read more…
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The Science Behind Making the Fastest Possible Pinewood Derby Car
Image by Rene Walter A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a contempt of court ruling against Ladar Levison and his now-defunct encrypted e-mail service provider, Lavabit LLC, for hindering the government’s investigation into the National Security Agency leaks surrounding Edward Snowden. In the summer of 2013, Lavabit was ordered to provide real-time e-mail monitoring of one particular user of the service, believed to be Snowden, the former NSA contractor turned whistleblower. Instead of adequately complying with the order to turn over the private SSL keys that protected his company’s tens of thousands of users from the government’s prying eyes, Levison chose instead to shut down Lavabit last year after weeks of stonewalling the government. However, Levison reluctantly turned over his encryption keys to the government, although not in a manner that the government deemed useful, and instead provided a lengthy printout with tiny type, a move the authorities said was objectionable. “The company had treated the court orders like contract negotiations rather than a legal requirement,” US Attorney Andrew Peterson, who represented the government, told PC World . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Lavabit held in contempt of court for printing crypto key in tiny font