June 5, 2009 • 10:07 pm 0
Very interesting idea that a history prof in a Texas uni has begun doing. Using Twitter as a means of further debate on topics in class between students.
I feel this type of thing could work universities. Skynews say it’s a dump idea, I feel for after class discussion it would be brilliant – and if you’ve come to class to tweet on other things, then you’re wasting your own time.
June 2, 2009 • 2:34 pm 0
2009-06-02 13:40
A demonstration is given of Project Natal at Microsoft’s XBox 360 media briefing in Los Angeles. (AFP)
Los Angeles – Microsoft revealed on Monday that it has been secretly developing technology that lets people play videogames using natural body movements instead of handheld controllers.
The US software giant behind Xbox 360 videogame consoles revealed a prototype of a project codenamed Natal, a system that combines cameras and voice and face recognition software to recognise people and their actions.
“The gamer in me went out of my mind when I got to be interactive with this,” famed film director Steven Spielberg during a Microsoft press conference on the eve of a major E3 videogame industry show in Los Angeles.
“I got a feeling I was in a historic moment. What Microsoft is doing isn’t re-inventing the wheel; this is about no wheel at all.”
Natal lets people play driving games by simply moving hands as if turning a car steering wheel. In-game characters in boxing, skateboard, soccer and other sports titles mimic the body movements of real-world players.
The system scans faces and voices to determine who is playing, a demonstration showed.
Xbox 360 consoles equipped with Natal will be able to respond to spoken commands for actions such as playing movies or connecting online with friends for video chats.
Landmark in computer entertainment
An expected completion date for Natal was not disclosed, but Microsoft on Monday released a software kit for videogame makers interested in designing titles to take advantage of Natal’s capabilities.
“What developers do with Natal will change the way we play videogames,” said British videogame icon Peter Molyneux, chief of Lionhead Studios.
“This is a landmark in computer entertainment. This is true technology that science fiction has not even written about and this works today.”
Natal will work on all Xbox 360 consoles, according to Don Mattrick, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox and games business.
“I could suddenly envision a new way to personalise game play…and even change the paradigm of storytelling,” said Spielberg, who got to dabble with Natal in the weeks leading up to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). – AFP
- SAPA
Article taken from:
http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/19e7f360a898418b8b9477587829b9ee/02-06-2009%2001-06/XBox_Use_body_for_game_control
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News
May 20, 2009 • 4:24 pm 0
Office Suite
http://www.openoffice.org/ (recommended)
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Anti-Virus
http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-1…e-Edition.html
http://www.activevirusshield.com/ant…eav/index.adp?
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
Defrag
http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Power_Defr…GUI_d4647.html
http://freewaregeeks.com/UltimateDefrag_Free.html
Partition Managers
http://www.partition-tool.com/
http://www.ptdd.com/manual2.htm
CD Ripping
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
http://www.download.com/Free-CD-Ripp…-10212165.html
Audio Books
http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/home
http://www.audiobooktreasury.com/free-audio-books.htm
Media
Browsers
Operating Systems
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News , Free, Opensource, Software
May 12, 2009 • 5:08 pm 0
So, we haven’t sent average joe’s into space just yet, but we have given them the opportunity to get closer to the action via Twitter. The hype has come about thank to Mike Massimino, who is part of the STS-125 space mission. This is his (Massimino’s) second space flight, and thought it was time to bring Twitter along. There are currently 227,949 users following him on his space mission.
Another astronaut, Mark Polansky is currently giving updates on Twitter about his training for the scheduled June launch, and has said to his over 6000 Twitter followers that they can post questions via YouTube and he will respond to them from Orbit. Polansky’s Twitter account is Astro_127.
What an amazing world we live in.
May 6, 2009 • 4:27 pm 0
Now for something different, gaming…an article I found interesting from mygaming.co.za.
Top 10 games of 2009 so far
1. Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360 & PS3) 93%
2. Killzone 2 (PS3) 91%
3. Empire: Total War (PC) 90%
Plants Vs Zombies (PC) 90%
MLB: The Show (PS3) 90%
4. Peggle (Xbox 360) 89%
5. Braid (PC) 88%
6. Flower (PS3) 87%
7. Guitar Hero: Metallica (Xbox 360 & PS3) 86%
8. Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360 & PS3) 85%
Dawn of War II (PC) 85%
9. Skate 2 (Xbox 360 & PS3) 84%
10. Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (PC & Xbox & PS3) 82%
Halo Wars (Xbox 360) 82%
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News , 2009, games
September 22, 2008 • 7:54 pm 0
Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever.But tweak the right settings and you could make it faster still, more than doubling your speed in some situations,
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News , Firefox
• 9:20 am 0
The use of speech analytics in the contact centre environment is fairly widespread, but its use in a post-call survey is a new application with important benefits for companies wanting to raise the bar in customer service.
It is doubtful how accurate conventional post-call surveys are. A survey of 362 companies conducted by Bain & Company in the US in 2006 revealed a startling incongruity. Companies were asked if they were delivering a superior service, and 80% replied “yes”. Their customers were asked if they were receiving a superior service and only 8% replied “yes”. Clearly management did not have accurate information. Many people have an intense dislike of call centres but the companies believe that they are delivering a better service.
Speech analytics is able to detect a customer’s mood, monitor his/her tone and react to key words (e.g. swear words). Using speech analytics in a post-call survey, the contact centre can automatically detect how that customer is feeling – not necessarily from the content of their responses, but from the tone. That may not solve the call centre-dislike syndrome but it may give management pointers to what puts customers off!
“If the analytic software detects that a customer is upset, it is able to transfer the call immediately to a team leader or supervisor who can deal with the problem there and then. This is revolutionary for problem resolution”, said Dave Paulding.
Over the past few years, contact centre managers have woken up to the fact that they need to do more to get an accurate view of their customers’ experience of their service. As technology advances, companies are choosing post-call surveys over mailed questionnaires and follow-up calls as they have a relatively high response rate – 10 to 15% versus 2% in mailed surveys – they are cheap to implement, and companies can get the results quickly.
But while post-call surveys enable the company to get a view on service areas that could be improved, as well as input into agent training that may be required, the customer who received the bad service still leaves the contact centre with a problem.
“We are now working on interactive speech analysis with the focus on emotion detection. We have written algorithms that will set thresholds to detect anger, increase in voice speed and increase in voice pitch, all indicating that the customers are getting annoyed.
“One could pull a few recordings and analyse the reasons why customers are unhappy and perhaps intervene by giving the agent more training. But where does that leave the customer? For him or her the damage is done! We are now working on a system that monitors the conversation in real time and will alert the supervisor if a call handling is going awry. The supervisor can listen in and whisper-coach the agent as the call progresses or if necessary take over the call and rescue the situation.
“In the real time speech analysis process the system is able to monitor both sides of the conversation and provide the supervisor with the option to intervene if either side is getting hot under the collar.”
Talking to call centre managers it becomes clear that while the customer is king, some “kings” also do not know how to behave and bombard the agent with strong and unacceptable language, often becoming outright abusive. If a real-time speech analyses system is installed, the supervisor can come online and politely calm down the customer and explain that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable. Call centre managers in the telecommunications environment have their hands full to assist the agent in dealing with difficult and often unreasonable customers. A real-time intelligent speech analyses system will go a long way to win customers and keep agents happy in their job.
“We have incorporated all the facilities in our core system which means customer can buy the licences for the model they require and upgrade when one of the other inbuilt facilities are required”, said Paulding.
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News , Language
• 7:54 am 0
Computerworld Malaysia’s Broadband over Powerline (BPL) provider Velchip Sdn Bhd has formalised three major partnerships to advance the world’s biggest BPL (modems using existing electrical power lines to deliver the connection) project announced earlier in April 2008. The project intends to offer 60 million people un-capped high speed Internet at 224Mbps. The most amazing things though is that this is set to cost only (USD)$1.58 per user per month.
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News , broadband
September 21, 2008 • 5:00 pm 0
Blake Snow, GamePro
Sep 20, 2008 3:38 pm
Rock Band might be the critically darling at the moment, but most gamers still flock to Guitar Hero, says Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.
Speaking at an investor conference last week as reported by Kotaku, Kotick said: “We’re outselling [Rock Band] 6:1. When you think about the access we have to 30 percent of the world’s music at Universal, we have a unique advantage.”
Guitar Hero, often considered the original gangster of North American music games, first launched in 2005 for PlayStation 2, enjoying instant success. Two years later, MTV Games upped the ante when releasing Rock Band, replete with toy drums and a microphone in addition to guitar and bass.
“Our nearest comthe petitor [EA/MTV Games] has a couple hundred people working on these projects,” added Kotick. “We have close to 2000 people just dedicated to the Guitar Hero note tracking, introduction of new hardware, and introduction of new software, so we just have a lot more in the way of resources available to us to continue to dominate the category.”
This holiday, the rhythm wars will continue when Activision releases its response to Rock Band in the form of Guitar Hero World Tour, which features a song creation mode in addition to improved drums and instruments when compared to Rock Band. Rock Band 2 launched Sunday for Xbox 360, and will follow in the coming months on Wii, PS3, and PS2.
Filed under: For Fun, Industry News , Guitar Hero
September 11, 2008 • 2:06 pm 0
Some brilliant free SEO (search engine optimization) tools and sites I found and have used (I’ve tired to keep it extra simple):
In doing those 3 things, your site will be sure to appear on Google, though, the golden rule is, keep your site active and you’ll crawl to the top.
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