Epson Address Expert printer series are good postcard printer

What you are looking at here isn’t some miniature all-in-one desktop computer with printer, but the Epson Address Expert.

This is a printer that is set up to postcards, and that looks like all it can print. I have to admit that it has been a while since I have sent a postcard, but they are still popular in Japan, so I’m told.

The Epson Address Expert series come in two forms: the E-800 and E-600. Each of them have a 7-inch LCD display with 5760 x 1440 dpi resolution, and are PC and Mac compatible. The E-800 includes a wireless keyboard so you can compose your well-wishing messages.

Hands on Review of the Eye-Fi Explore Video

This isn’t the first time that we have reported on Eye-Fi products before, and chances are, it won’t be the last time. I finally tried it out for myself, and was fortunate enough to get my hands on the Eye-Fi Explore Video 4GB version.

For those who are not familiar with the Eye-Fi line, this is a memory card that allows the user to upload photos to their computer without any USB cable. You might be wondering how that is possible, and, truth be told, so am I. I can’t deny that it works, though. After a quick setup with my computer, I was able to view photos from my camera on my browser screen like magic. Of course, the user to be very specific about where the photos are to be sent, or it is very easy to wake up to find photos from your Eye-Fi floating all around your computer where you cannot retrieve them.

As for the video function, I found that it took quite a while to upload video footage. Not only that, it had to do this operation uninterrupted. That means if you have a video camera with the Eye-Fi Explore Video, then you better make certain you can leave it on for extended periods of time. Because if the battery runs out while the video is wirelessly downloading to your computer, then you have to do it again.

Textminator an arcade game for today’s youth

I realize that stand-up video games are practically a thing of the past, and there has not been a decent one since Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). Since home versions of the game along withGuitar Hero/Rock Band has pretty much eclipsed stand-up video game glory, its nice to see someone trying to renew it with Textminator.

As you can see, someone has even used the safety bars on the DDR game, but made the subject matter of the competition not dancing, but texting, something that the teens these days are really, really good at.

So why not make an arcade game where players must “face-off” with each other on stainless steel phone-like keypads? It sort of reminds me of MasterType, a very old-school computer program that helped me learn to type. In that game, the player had to save a spaceship by typing in the correct sequence of letters to shoot the guns to destroy the aliens. I am assuming the player does a similar sort of game in Textminator.

3D Rendering not difficult with ProFORMA

Whenever I think of 3D scanning, I think of this very complicated process of a multitude of cameras surrounding an object, taking pictures at every angle, and then blending them all together with a computer.

A PhD student at the Cambridge University Engineering Department named Qi Pan has made like Apple and “thought different”.

As you can see from the video after the jump, Pan took a detailed paper building and rotated it on an axis, filming it with an ordinary web camera. His ProFORMA (Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition) program scanned it, and he immediately had something ready for 3D model generation. He could even shake the real thing and move it, and the CG image would do the same. Wild!

Declutter for a healthy life

Clutter is often the result of having too much to do and too little time to contain everything— a pile of faxes to attend to, and post-it notes from the boss, stuck on the sides of the monitor, are but obvious signs. Similar signs can often be seen at home as well, such as a pile of unwashed clothes, messy closets and kitchen cabinets. Creating a mess is not a sin, but not clearing it probably is. Unless you are dealing with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, chances are, your daily grind often leaves your surroundings far from organised. But if ignored, the mess may start getting the better of you, impacting your overall productivity and thought process. We list the advantages of decluttering.

Flu Fear Goes Viral on the Web

News outlets will always try to amp up readership with provocative headlines about scary subjects, but they must remember not to bury vital bits of context too deep -- or leave them out entirely. A case in point involves some of the breathless online reportage about H1N1 we've been seeing lately. Meanwhile, some well-intentioned online public health projects may actually present more hindrance than help.

Microsoft vs. TomTom: Low-Level Hum or Drums of War?

Usually, there are topics of discussion galore to choose from in the open source blogosphere, but once Microsoft filed suit against TomTom, it seems you couldn't read about anything else. TomTom faces a patent challenge over its use of the FAT file system in its Linux-based GPS units. Some see the suit as an attack on Linux itself.

TomTom Slings a Shot at Microsoft

Microsoft doesn't sue very often, so its filing of patent infringement complaints against GPS gadget maker TomTom -- in two legal venues, no less -- created quite a stir. Now TomTom is striking back with a countersuit, alleging that Microsoft is guilty of infringing its patents. Meanwhile, the open source community is up in arms, fearing Microsoft is pursuing a larger, anti-Linux agenda.

Garmin Takes a New Tack With Linux-Based Nav Phone

Is there a market for a $300 proprietary Linux-based navigation device with phone capabilities? Garmin's Nuvifone will put that question to the test. Known for its navigators, Garmin might be following Palm's playbook by adding phone capabilities. Given the popularity of the iPhone, the advance of the Androids, Palm's struggle to push the Pre -- can the Nuvifone find a niche?

GPS Safety, Part 2: Which Products Get It Right?

Using a GPS navigation unit in the car may not be as dangerous as texting, but some kinds of devices are safer than others. Voice-activated controls let the user make commands without taking his or her eyes off the road. Larger screens are easier to glance at while driving, and if you're using a cellphone-based nav app, investing in a dash or window mount is probably a good decision.

Planet too warm? Bury the CO2

Japan is the latest country to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it in deep geo logical formations, oceans or as mineral carbonates. There is good reason. The Land of the Rising Sun is the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. It faces the weighty task of cutting them by 25% by 2020 against 1990 levels.

The Japanese project, at Mikawa power station near Fukuoka Prefecture, is a sign of the increasing credibility of CO2 capture and storage. It is the latest in a worldwide foursome: Sleipner field in the North Sea where the Norwegian oil and gas group Statoily captures CO2 and injects it beneath the seabed; The Weyburn-Midale project in Canada; and, Salah in Algeria.

Potato, onion push up food inflation to 13.68 per cent

The country is reeling under the impact of steep 13. 68 per cent rise in a number of food items pummelled by a supply crunch in staple potatoes.

Official price data based on the wholesale price index (WPI) released on Thursday showed that prices of potatoes have doubled during the one-year period ending October 31, 2009, while onions were costlier by 42.58 per cent.

The rise in prices potatoes can be primarily attributed to poor monsoons and traders not willing to release adequate supplies in the wholesale market.

In August, 1.77 million quintals of potatoes arrived in the countries wholesale markets, a nearly 20 per cent drop compared to last year’s 2.2 million quintals.

Dinosaur whodunit: Is Shiva crater the missing link?

It could be the plot of a mega disaster movie. A huge asteroid, nearly 40 km in diameter, comes hurtling towards earth. It strikes the planet, off the western coast of India, near Bombay High, creating a vast crater, 500 km wide. Temperatures in the area rise rapidly, reaching several thousand degrees Celsius and releasing more energy than the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. Soon enough, this energy starts devastating the atmosphere, rupturing the thin shell of air, water, soil and surface rock that nurtures and sustains life. The result is destruction and mass extinction.

The scenario above is not the figment of some scriptwriter’s imagination. Instead, it is the essence of a theory put forward by Sankar Chatterjee, a professor at Texas Tech University, to explain why dinosaurs became extinct almost 65 million years ago. Chatterjee’s hypothesis is that the crater, named Shiva, fast forwarded the extinction of dinosaurs. The jury is still out on his theory. But it renews the focus on that great unsolved mystery: Why did dinosaurs die out?

American palaeontologist Gregory Paul, who has researched dinosaurs for three decades, says, “It continues to remain unexplained how all dinosaurs around the entire globe were lost when other animal groups including their avian descendants were not killed off.”

Dinosaurs were the dominant form of life on earth for 140 million years and suddenly disappeared sometime between the end of the Mesozoic era and the beginning of the Cenozoic era, nearly 65 million years ago. Scientists refer to this period as the K-T Boundary.

Capturing sun rays in space to light up Japan

It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan’s space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

The government has just picked a group of firms and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades.

Japan has long been a leader in solar and other renewable energies and this year set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

But Japan’s boldest plan to date is the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside Earth’s atmosphere. “Since solar power is a clean and inexhaustible energy source, we believe this system will help solve the problems of energy shortage and global warming,” researchers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the project participants, wrote in a report.

Raj Thackeray’s men assault colleague, suspended

MLAs belonging to Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navni-rman Sena (MNS) slapped their Samajwadi Party colleague Abu Azmi in the Assembly on Monday when he insisted on taking his oath of office in Hindi and not Marathi.

Later, four of the MNS’s 13 legislators were suspended for four years for unruly behaviour.

It was the first time the assembly was convened after the assembly election.

A tussle was expected because Azmi, a migrant from Uttar Pradesh, had insisted on taking oath in Hindi and Thackeray had demanded all legislators take oath in Marathi. However, none expected the MNS would resort to violence inside the Legislature.

The four suspended legislatures — Shishir Shinde, Ram Kadam, Vasant Gite and Ramesh Wanjhale were also charged with manhandling a woman MLA Meenakshi Patil (Peasants and Workers Party) who tried to save Azmi from the MNS brigade.

Even before Azmi could complete the first sentence of his oath, Wanjhale rushed through to the dais and uprooted the podium.

Record-Shattering Opening Expected for Video War Game

Both the video game industry and gamers are hungry for blockbusters, and a sure chart-topper is arriving next week: Activision Blizzard's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2." More than 10,000 midnight openings are scheduled for the title's launch in the U.S., and pre-orders are reportedly at an all-time-high.

Climate: G77 takes on West

The Barcelona talks on climate change saw further fireworks with the chairperson of one of the two parallel tracks of the negotiations coming under fire from G77 countries, including India, for directing the process away from the ambit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Bali Action Plan, which differentiates between rich countries and the rest.

The Indian delegation warned that the proposals being made by the chairperson and industrialised countries did away with distinctions between developed and developing countries and imposed new commitments on developing countries.

India also strongly disagreed with US on the suggestion that areas of disagreement on crucial issues of a long-term agreement on climate change be sent to respective ministers to decide. India pointed out that it was not mere divergence of viewpoints but the fact that US and others were asking for a deal which fell out of the rules of the UN convention.

Climate history forces action -- after decades

US President Lyndon Johnson and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made stark warnings about global warming decades ago, but convincing evidence for action only amassed in recent years, experts say.

A 190-nation U.N. conference in Copenhagen in December is due to agree a new U.N. pact to curbgreenhouse gas emissions to slow a rise in temperatures to prevent floods, droughts, wildfires or rising sea levels.

Scientists have known for a century that greenhouse gases, for instance from burning coal, can warm the planet. But most experts say the evidence was thin until about the past decade.

"I don't think it (the world reaction) was too slow -- I think we have a very solid foundation for action now," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. "The sceptics are no longer derailing the process."

He noted it was only in 1995 that the U.N's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change blamed mankind for global warming, saying cautiously that the "balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate".

"In recent years we've managed to move light years beyond that" level of certainty, he told Reuters during talks on the new U.N. treaty in Barcelona. The panel says it is at least 90 percent certain that global warming is man-made.

SBI Q2 net up 10 per cent on good earnings

Bolstered by a healthy growth in net interest income and core fee income, India's largest lender State Bank of India on Saturday posted a 10.19 per cent jump in its standalone net profit at Rs 2,490 crore for the second quarter of current financial year.

The bank saw a credit growth of 16.39 per cent in the quarter and is optimistic about achieving a growth rate of 22 per cent for the full financial year, SBI Chairman O P Bhatt told reporters in Mumbai.

"If the growth in credit picks up, we should achieve around 22 per cent growth by the end of this fiscal," Bhatt said.

The bank will have to raise Rs 36,000 crore in the next five years to maintain a capital adequacy ratio of 12 per cent, he said. CAR, at present, stands at 14.11 per cent.

SBI will have to make an additional Rs 5,000 crore provisioning on bad loans after the Reserve Bank directed banks to increase the loan loss coverage ratio to 70 per cent, in its quarterly monetary policy review, Bhatt said.

"We have to provide up to Rs 5,000 crore (to reach 70 per cent coverage)," Bhatt said.

Climate change bill faces US Senate test

WASHINGTON: A key US Senate committee forges ahead Tuesday with sweeping climate changelegislation, as its backers nervously watch time run short before December's make-or-break global summit in Denmark.

President Barack Obama's Democratic allies have split on the issue, with some worried about the possible impact on home-state industries, while his Republican foes have mostly united against the White House-backed approach.

With uncertainty clouding the legislation's fate, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will open its critical debate on the plan at 9:00 am (1400 GMT) after last-ditch efforts to avert a threatened Republican boycott.

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the committee, said late Monday she was holding out an olive branch to Republican colleagues who say they are unsatisfied with the Environmental ProtectionAgency analysis of the bill.

"We really hope they will return to the table," said Boxer, who added she might take steps to move forward with or without Republicans but underlined that "we're going to be very, very patient."

Boxer said she would invite EPA officials to appear and take any questions after the agency based its assessment on largely similar legislation that cleared the House of Representatives in June.

No snow on Kilimanjaro in 20 yrs

WASHINGTON: The snow capping Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, is shrinking rapidly and could vanish altogether in 20 years, most likely due to global warming, a US study published on Monday said.

The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 1912 was 85% smaller by 2007, and since 2000 the existing ice sheet has shrunk by 26%, the pale climatologists said.

The findings point to the rise in global temperatures as the most likely cause of the ice loss. Changes in cloudiness and precipitation may have also played a smaller, less important role, especially in recent decades, they added.

“This is the first time researchers have calculated the volume of ice lost from the mountain’s ice fields,” said study co-author Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. “If you look at the percentage of volume lost since 2000 versus the percentage of area lost as the ice fields shrink, the numbers are very close,” he said in the study.

While the yearly loss of the mountain glaciers is most apparent from the retreat of their margins, Thompson said an equally troubling effect is the thinning of the ice fields from the surface.

Bharti Airtel Q2 net up 13 pc at Rs 2,321 cr

The country's largest private telecom company, Bharti Airtel, on Friday posted a 13 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 2,321 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2009.

The revenue, as per the US accounting rules, grew by 9 per cent to Rs 9,846 crore, Bharti Airtel said on Friday.

The company's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and ammortisation (EBITDA) margin improved to 42.1 per cent during Q2, against 41 per cent in the same quarter a year ago.

The EBITDA, a benchmark of profitability, was at Rs 4,142 crore in the second quarter, up by 12 per cent over the same period last year.

The company added 82.44 lakh customers during Q2, taking its market share in the wireless subscriber base to 23.5 per cent.

"Bharti continues to maintain the market leadership in the mobile segment, despite stiff competition," Bharti Airtel CMD Sunil Mittal said.

Shares of Bharti Airtel were trading at Rs 315.05 on BSE in morning trade, up 0.96 per cent over the previous close.