TOP 5 VIDEO CALLING MESSENGERS INSTEAD OF SKYPE.

There are plenty of reasons to make use of Skype. Free multi-user audio calls between PCs, video chat with fast and straightforward connectivity, and (if you are willing to pay) multi-user video chat and PC-to-phone audio calls. Of work, there's also a few reasons why you might not require to make use of Skype.

Aside from its recent acquisition by Microsoft (possibly you have got something against the huge M who knows?), there is the fact that its chat service occasionally borks out for no apparent reason, the fact that it charges users for a service that others provide free, and the fact that its support is, if word of mouth is to be believed, nightmarish.

Google Hangouts

A feature of Google new social media platform Google +, Hangouts impressed me when I took it for a check run. Hangouts allows multi-user video chat for up to0 users and intuitively displays the face of the user who is speaking at any given moment in the midst of the chat window. Users can also share videos with another (linking a YouTube video in a Hangout will play the video for all users in the chat).

The issue with Google Hangouts is that it does not exactly permit for private chats. Someone in your circles can join of your hangouts. Still its speedy, it runs well, its convenient, and-more importantly, its free.

Tinychat

If you are looking for a tidy, simple multi-user chat application without any unnecessary bells and whistles, grab Tinychat. Its a flash-based video chat client that allows up to twelve users to chat simultaneously as another. The basic service is free and doesn't require a log-in load up the service, generate a chat and you are lovely to go. One time your chatroom been created, you can share the url you are given with other users to bring them in to the chat. You can also share your desktop with other users in the chatroom a great feature for developers.

FaceTime

I put plenty of focus on PCs (mostly due to the fact that I have), so here is a tiny something designed exclusively for Mac users. If you have got a Mac, your system going to come with FaceTime pre-installed. FaceTime offers free video chat of qualities up to 720p. Regrettably, while it's simpler than Skype, FaceTime only allows people to chat with folks who also have Macs, and doesn't support multi-user video chat.

Google Voice
Whether or not Google Voice is useful to you is directly correlated with whether or not you live in the United States. If you are an American, Google Voice is downright awesome providing multi-user video chat, a free phone number for personal use & SMS, & the ability to place free calls anywhere in the States. There is also voice mail, conference calling, call screening & voice message transcription.

Oovoo

Oovoo used to provide free multi-user video chat (with up to six people chatting simultaneously), but a while ago the company behind it decided to remove the free functionality of Oovoo's video chat. While its still a powerful, simple to make use of video chat & voice chat platform with clients obtainable for Mac, PC, & a immense spectrum of mobile platforms, in functionality its not that much different from Skype. , its Skype for individuals who don't need to make use of Skype.

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AUDIO SHARING WITH PICOSONG

In the realm of photo-sharing, we have got it made. There is Imgur, Minus and others than permit stupidly simple drag-and-drop-with-no-account-required to upload and share.

I had mentioned SoundCloud recently, and that's a nice audio-sharing site. Truly. My thought was, "Well, it can't get any simpler than this, right?"

This is what you will see when you load picosong.com:

There is that's even simpler, and it is called the "picosong".

Choose a file, upload, get your share-out link, and it is a done deal. Those you send the link to will be able to load up the audio file and play it all inside the browser. No bulky downloads necessary.

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USING WATERFOX?

People see "64" in lieu of "32" and think that because the number is doubled, the app must be better. Most of the time this is not true.
Just because an app is 64-bit does not magically make it better

In a browser application, 64-bit at this point has not proven to be any better than the 32-bit flavors. You can benchmark-benchmark-benchmark all day and spout out numbers-numbers-numbers, but the fact of the matter is that in practical use, you will notice tiny to no difference in performance compared to a 32-bit browser.

Now if we are speaking about, say, a video editing suite that requires gobs and gobs of memory to crunch and render video knowledge faster, then oh yes, 64-bit is better because that architecture can process and access everything faster.

Being that Waterfox is Firefox in 64-bit flavor, it still has the exact same memory-munching issue Firefox does. That's not fixed, and that's not Waterfox's fault at all. The way the engine works explodes in memory use by nature.

Think of it this way: Would you notice a difference between a 32-bit Microsoft Word and a 64-bit Microsoft Word? Nope. Document load time over a network would only be slightly faster on 64-bit (meaning you wouldn't notice any significant difference). Startup and shutdown would show no major difference in speed. You get the idea.
 

Yes, this does mean by having the tabs open of webmail, Facebook and Netflix that Waterfox will explode up to half-a-gig of memory use by sitting there like Firefox does. Again, this is not Waterfox's fault. Its from the engine the browser makes use of.
Using unofficial builds of browsers is not exactly a nice suggestion

Major browsers release security updates quickly ought to any issues be discovered, and the unofficial builds are always second in line for them. Whatever team is building the unofficial build receives a notice from the official provider, they compile a version, then release but its always after that major provider releases it first. And sometimes this can take weeks or even months for this to happen. Why? Because unofficial builds of browsers are released by tiny teams that don't have the resources the major providers have. In other words, they "get to it when they get to it". No, this is not an accusation of laziness whatsoever. Like I said, smaller teams of programmers don't have the time and resource larger teams do.
 

Ought to you use Waterfox?

However if you are expecting the fact Waterfox is 64-bit to cure existing issues with Firefox primarily concerning performance and memory-munching, I seriously doubt someone who makes use of it will notice any significant difference.

I downloaded it and tried it out. Its a nice 64-bit browser, and the nice part is that it operates using the same profile as your existing Firefox installation as far as I can tell. Add-ons that work in regular Firefox appear to work in Waterfox with no issues, so that's nice.

But don't take my word for it. Try Waterfox for yourself and see if it works fro you.

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APPLE'S NEW GENERATION IBOOKS+TEXTBOOKS

Steve Jobs vision of the future has one time again fomented revolution in the media industry, this time in the type of a brand spanking new education-oriented iBooks package that Apple announced today at an event in New York City. Looking to take the textbook industry head-on, Cupertino has created a set of apps that will lead to the extinction of the physical textbook & replace it with electronic media while simultaneously increasing the market penetration of its iPad tool. Apple's aim is to get schools to buy an iPad to give to every student, a aim that after the announcement today could very well become a reality. impressively, Apple also announced today that it's secured partnerships with Pearson, McGraw Hill, & Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishers that make up 90% of textbook sales in the US & get this: e-textbooks will cost $15.

Apple has taken a three-pronged approach to its work to make a powerful move back to being the leader in desktop publishing. First, iBooks has received a major update to become iBooks two. Included in the book store is a brand spanking new textbook section that allows students to buy & download the titles they require for class. While this is nothing new in the world of e-publishing, Cupertino has added a wealth of interactivity that finally brings important features to using an e-reader for study. The most obvious being the ability to interact with the textbook through the iPad's touchscreen; students will be able to rotate & look at virtual 3D models, as well as getting descriptions & definitions that are associated with it. Videos & the ability to search online glossaries will truly bring a rich media experience to textbook study. of the largest gripes about e-books is the shortage of ability to take notes in an effective way: iBooks two has tackled that by giving you a highlighting technique that not only lets you generate visual cues when re-reading, but also gives the ability to generate electronic note cards that look like the actual thing for studying key ideas & terms.

Apple has thought of this as well by implementing the third part of its plan. Distribution will be handled through iTunes U, which historicallyin the past had been a separate section of the popular online music store. Historicallyin the past only offered to universities, iTunes U allows lecturers to upload audio & video content for students to make use of in study or to audit a work from home. Cupertino has now opened this process up to all schools, meaning that K-12 schooling districts can sign up to distribute materials created by teachers & other educators.

While interactivity is important, another major barrier for the success of the digital textbooks has been getting such content created by major publishers. Textbook companies have been dragging their feet because of the fact that the current model in place makes them a immense amount of funds. In lieu of trying to forge deals with each individual publisher, Apple has completed an end-around by generating iBooks Author, a free application that allows someone to generate an e-book for use with iBooks two. Teachers & professors can take Keynote presentations, text documents, videos, music, & pics to generate their own textbooks for use in the schooling arena. A amazing move on Apple's part, this busts through the content barrier by putting the power of creation in the hands of the user. But how are these created materials going to be distributed?

Today is going to be looked at as the time that marked the death of the physical book. Soon they are going to see authors that creatt works of written art that bring the tales they write to life in the hands of their readers. They are going to see a true convergence of media experience which will be seen as the end-times by some. I for am hoping that Wizards of the Coast will bring back the elderly Dungeons & Dragons choose your own adventure books in this format. I won't mourn the death of the physical novel, but revel in the evolution of the medium that will finally bring it in line with the way they are consuming other forms of media.

In neat package, Apple has implemented a content creation & delivery method that doesn't depend on partnerships with large corporations though it's secured the publishers that count & will without a doubt go on to sell large amounts of hardware to students & institutions similar. The iPad is now poised to make a significant alter like the iPod did on its release. Today's students have not known a world without computers or electronics to aid them in their everyday tasks. The classroom is of the last frontiers that has yet to see a significant advance that brings convergence between digital devices & learning. Until now. While Apple will be the leader for some time because of the announcement today, it won't be long before everyone else falls in line & begins to operate in the same method.

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MAGICAL PORTABLE FUEL BATTERIES

Transportable fuel cells have been billed as the final solution for several years now. Regrettably, early pioneers like Jadoo have had trouble achieving the little size & low cost needed to make their products ubiquitous. reason is that most current fuel cell products depend on hydrogen storage, often in refillable canisters. Direct hydrogen storage adds complexity & isn't practical for little units or truly remote applications.

Batteries & chargers are the bane of a high-tech lifestyle. For each new tool there is usually a new size battery, a new charger, & a new set of concerns about battery life. & then comes the quest for an AC power outlet to fire all of them up. For years the industry has been looking for some type of holy grail that would permit road warriors to travel freely without being slaves to power sockets & backup batteries. Solar was the first candidate, but transportable solar cells have limited power output, & naturally only work when the sun is shining.

Enter Signa Chemistry, which provides a smart way of using a powder, sodium silicide, and water, to generate hydrogen on the fly. The hydrogen is mixed with air in the fuel cell itself, combining to generate electricity & water. The hydrogen produced by SiGNa's fuel can be used to power a traditional fuel cell, from briefcase-sized models from Jadoo down to a small hand-held version from Swedish company MyFC. The hand-held model is being introduced to the US market this spring, under the name PowerTrekk & is designed for transportable re-charging of smartphones or other little electronic devices. The PowerTrekk can output up to watts, allowing it to directly power  any smartphone, even if it's dead.

The PowerTrekk will be obtainable from REI for $199 for the base unit. Fuel pucks will be sold in packages of for $12. Each PowerPukk has the equivalent power capacity of 6 AA batteries, at a similar cost but much higher power than alkaline cells. Compared to long-life rechargeable NiMH AA batteries that's not much of a saving, but compared to the throw-away high-power Lithium AA batteries needed as a power source for walking plenty of modern smartphones, it is a bargain.

In larger units, like its briefcase-sized DPS300, Signa can claim that its fuel cell-driven power supplies are more cost-effective than rechargeable Lithium batteries like those currently used to power computers & electric cars. They're also lighter. As an example, Signa provided this analysis of using its briefcase unit for 30 full charges:

For now, the PowerTrekk is clearly as much of a lifestyle product it comes in a choice of red, yellow or green as a practical alternative to rechargeable batteries. It'll take some improvements before it becomes a mainstream alternative although Apple has been reported to be taking a look at fuel cells to power future Mac models. But the DPS300 is already being ordered by organizations including USAID for vaccination clinics in remote areas. It is lighter & cheaper for it to make use of a DPS300 fuel cell & supply of sodium silicate than it is to drag along a generator & it is definitely more environmentally friendly.

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FreeDOS 1.1 IS BACK NOW!

The history of FreeDOS stems back to the summer of 1994 when Microsoft announced that MS-DOS as a separate product would no longer be supported. It would live on as part of Windows 95, 98, and (ugh!) Me, but for Jim Hall that wasn't , and so public domain (PD) DOS was born. Other developers quickly jumped on board, a kernel and utilities were made, as well as a usable version of PD-DOS began to emerge. It wouldn't be until 1998 that the first alpha build (version 0.05) was released, however; a slow trend that would continue, with a slew of betas culminating in a final one.0 build in 2006, some 12 years after the project begun. Finally, it would be renamed FreeDOS.

Some 17 years after its first release in 1994, and over years since one.0, FreeDOS one.1 the definitive, open source version of MS-DOS is now obtainable to download.

When I tell the story of FreeDOS to my friends the next query is usually: So, like, what's the point of FreeDOS? A fair query, given the maturity of Linux and its giant support framework. Well, for a start, FreeDOS is already extensively used by recovery disks. If you've ever made a boot disk for the sake of checking your hard disk or memory, or fixing a broken installation of Windows, you  certainly used FreeDOS.

Beyond that, though, FreeDOS is actually an excellent surroundings for educational or simple systems. Linux, compared to MS/FreeDOS, is fat. When combined with QBASIC or DJGPP (a C/C++ development surroundings), FreeDOS makes a surprisingly lovely development platform. It's also important to point out that FreeDOS isn't actually an old operating method: It supports FAT32 (with LBA) and UDMA for hard drives and DVD players, and the FreeDOS distro comes with an antivirus scanner as well as a BitTorrent client. USB support isn't there, but USB keyboards, mice, and outside storage can be finagled in to working.

When it comes down to it, though, the reason I am liking FreeDOS is that I can run it inside VirtualBox and play Doom. With a burst of nostalgia, I can fiddle around with HIMEM and EMM386 and Autoexec.bat to eke out  conventional memory to play Cannon Fodder. Ultimately, though, with DOSBox providing a much better (if less actual) gambling experience, I would must admit that FreeDOS is mostly a curio for old-timer geeks.

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2012 3D TV REVIEW

CES 2011 was billed as the year of 3D, but this year's show also had dozens of offerings, lots of of which sound similar on paper. Here, ExtremeTech checks out the most fascinating prospects for no-glasses 3D in 2012 & beyond.

Stream TV's Ultra-D: Wide-viewing-angle 3D without glasses

After the rush to upgrade to HDTV, 3D was supposed to be the next giant thing. Propelled by the enthusiasm for a few well-crafted media properties like the blockbuster film Avatar, preliminary expectations were set high. But cost, a lack of compelling content, potential health issues, & the necessity for annoying & pricey glasses have kept 3D TV from getting far. Now, several firms are trying to break through by getting rid of those pesky glasses, offering glasses-free 3D experiences, while others are upping the ante by providing a premium experience with cheap polarized glasses or even new version of pricey, but now wireless, active glasses.

Until now, the most common way to accomplish 3D viewing without glasses has been with specially designed displays using what is called a parallax barrier where any viewer to the left of the display's middle sees the picture recorded by the left camera (& meant for the left eye) & any viewer to the right sees the right-side picture (meant for the right eye). As you can imagine, this only works if the person viewing the screen sits exactly where the parallax barrier is set up to divide the picture. As a result, it works well for personal display screens like the on the Fujifilm & Panasonic 3D cameras, & the LG Thrill & HTC Evo 3D smartphones, which permit capturing & viewing 3D. But a parallax barrier doesn't work well when you have over person in the audience, or in the event you require to move around at all while watching the media since it only performs properly if the viewer is directly in front of the direction for which the barrier is tuned.

 The Ultra-D method requires a small bit of heavy lifting on the hardware and program side. Existing LCD, LED and OLED panels can be used, but an additional microlens layer is necessary for the displays, as well as new firmware and program. StreamTV is aggressively licensing its platform to makers of TVs, tablets, and smartphones, with the promise of 42-inch and 55-inch LED TVs available in retail by this summer. The Ultra-D TVs will be bundled with Stream TV's SeeCube, which allows the realtime conversion of 2D to 3D and of traditional 3D content designed for use with glasses in to autostereoscopic content for display on an Ultra-D gizmo. Tablets and digital picture frames are also on tap, although details haven't been disclosed.

Several companies are using this year's CES to launch new solutions for multi-viewer 3D without glasses. StreamTV, best known for the Elocity tablet, rolled out an impressive platform called Ultra-D, which allows not autostereoscopic (without glasses) viewing of existing 3D content, but realtime conversion of conventional 2D images and video in to its 3D format. On paper Ultra-D slices through the major bottlenecks hampering 3D very nicely. By having displays that are autostereoscopic no glasses are necessary, and by allowing realtime conversion to 3D, suddenly a near boundless amount of content is available.

StreamTV is tight-lipped about how the method actually works, but from watching a variety of their prototypes and speaking to some of their researchers, it turns out that in lieu of the traditional glasses-free solution of having images for the left eye and for the right then showing to each eye Ultra-D creates 9 different images, each with a matchless angle on the scene. The specially built display has an array of microlenses in front of the conventional LCD that project each picture out in a series of overlapping cones. As a result each eye sees a combination of as plenty of as four different images all with a slightly different point of view and is responsible for integrating the total in to a coherent picture. Since your eyes are a few inches apart, at most viewing positions your left eye sees a different set of four images than your right eye (in essence your right eye is moved over by, so if your left eye sees picture two, three, four, five, for example, your right eye might see images three, four, five, and 6). This clever approach means that as you move around the viewing area, the picture you see actually changes.

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