- Windows XP SP3 Adds 10% Performance Boost, Tests Show. Researchers said Windows XP Service Pack 3 delivers a measurable performance boost when compared with Windows XP with Service Pack 2. [via Information Week]
- Karaoke Groove Station fulfills the Idol fantasy .
American Idol fans who wish to live the fantasy while watching their favourite Idols sing it out may want to check out the Karaoke Groove Station. The multi-function plug and play microphone lets users plug into their television and have the lyrics to the chosen song appear on screen while the music plays from the TVs speakers. And savvy rock god wannabes will use their TVs picture in picture feature to have Idol playing at the same time.
The Groove Station also has controls for adjustments to tempo, pitch, and even a "sex change" button for those out of range falsetto's like Barry Gibb or Bass like Barry White. There's also a Spatial Effect mode which will make the singer sound like their singing in a huge sold-out arena, a harmony button that turns your voice into a perfect 3 part harmony, and Doubling effect to create a duet with yourself. And in a Guitar-Hero fashion, singers can keep score - the more accurately you sing, the higher your score.
Powered by 4 AA batteries and comes with ten free songs come in four cartridges and more for an extra fee. Cost is around $100 US from I WANT ONE OF THOSE.
Simon's snippy comments, Paula's incoherent babbling or Randy's uber-cool slang not included. [via Coolest Gadgets]
- Zenbe Invites: Revolutionize Your Email
CEO's Description: Zenbe provides users with a full featured email service, integrated with calendar, task list, Facebook, Delicious, and more. One of the most innovative features of Zenbe is "personal mashups", called ZenPages, that let users share their personal information, such as events, email or files, mashed up with public widgets such as maps, slideshows, IM or videos.
In a few seconds users can create an interactive website, and collaborate with whomever you wish. ZenPages offer an alternative to social networking, media sharing, or team collaboration services, but integrated with your email, calendars, and task lists.
Zenbe was founded by a team of successful serial entrepreneurs. CEO Alan Chung co-founded Lighthouse Design, Ltd. and iAmaze Inc. The iAmaze team build the first widely deployed AJAX webmail client for AOL.
Mashable's Take: Email has become a staple for communication, and a still highly ranked reason for even getting online. The very act of emailing has penetrated nearly every aspect of our lives, and is quite central to most of our online activity, across social media-sharing sites, notifications, event-planning and tracking appointments.
But the improvements made to the existing platforms out there have been far from revolutionary. They don't yet need to be revolutionary. That's not to say that there aren't those out there that are sitting around, dreaming up ways of making revolutionary changes to the way email is used. Yahoo and Google recognize the necessity to evolve email platforms for the sake of providing the basis of communication across the web, in the face of blogging, microblogging, file-sharing tools, social media applications, and the fact that every service emerging these days has an internal messaging system (all still tied back to your basic email client).
Nevertheless, Zenbe is hoping to completely change the way in which we email. Take all those services I just mentioned, for blogging, keeping up with friends, etc. and insert them into an email client. Instead of having plugins like Plaxo for seeing updates about your contacts, or having a separate (yet associated) calendar for events, why not make these peripheral services integrated into your email client from the very beginning?
In doing just this, Zenbe has created a tab for the calendar, and even your Facebook newsfeed, along with several other internal actions that do a lot of the things that email should do. File-sharing, for instance, can be done through a publicly accessible message page that can be viewed by non-members of the Zenbe service. Messages can be tagged, searched, tracked, and shared, as well as converted into events and tasks.
And the good thing about Zenbe is that it can import email from the major players, which include AOL, Windows Live, Yahoo and Gmail, and manages to pull all of these available actions into a centralized application that doesn't feel so unfamiliar from existing email clients that you're lost in its service. That's key for shifting people away from something that's become so permeated in our every day lives.
My only concern with this bottom-up approach to the way in which Zenbe was built is its ability to take on necessary changes in the future. If you'd like to give Zenbe a whirl, click here for a beta account (we have 500 to give away). [via Mashable]
- Alliance Creates Private P2P File-Sharing Networks
Alliance P2P, a free, open-source, cross-platform peer-to-peer application, takes nearly all of the security and privacy concerns out of peer-to-peer file sharing by putting you in charge of your own network. The dead-simple interface lets you add Alliance-using friends to your network and files on your system to share, and you can search, chat, and download like any other peer-to-peer app. The traffic between clients is encrypted at a low level, but you can apply an experimental SSL layer if you'd like a bit more protection from snooping. For trading files with co-workers or friends, it's a nice no-overhead solution. Alliance is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems. [via Lifehacker]
No comments:
Post a Comment