Raymond Kurzweil, the man who made fascinating predictions such as the emergence of the Web and defeat to humans against the computer in chess, foresees artificial rejuvenation of cells by 2030. This essentially talks of inner-body maintenance, leading to longevity provided you can afford it. The article also states: “Given all of Kurzweil’s successes to date, it seems unwise to dismiss his forecasts for 2030 and beyond”.

Skeptics will point out that Kurzweil is reaching the age when his ideas should be taken with a grain of salt. It seems like wishful thinking which comes from a man who will be 82 in 2030. Nonetheless, the article makes an interesting read. The predictions, as the article phrases them:

By 2030, Kurzweil believes, biomedical technology will have advanced to the point where it will be possible to halt the body’s aging process.

…

Soon after that, around 2050, we should be able to reverse-engineer a human brain and upload it into a robot.

emonstration below is no screenshot. It is a fake composition which I pulled together under the GIMP, yet where are the spherical desktops? Where has this initiative disappeared? Microsoft are finally incorporating some transparency in Windows Vista, but why concede an attractive spherical environment? Surely in pragmatic terms, the gain from this graphical developments is nill; it is probably a loss. The heavy computational load, however, can be handled using graphical acceleration hardware.

Wallpaper from Houghi (click image above to enlarge; non-lossy PNG version)

Lars Rasmussen, a maps engineer at Google, has just published the following item in the Google blog:

Can’t decide between looking at a map of your house or a photo of your house? See both at once with Google Maps’ new Hybrid mode, available in the US, Canada, the UK and Japan.

Be the first to observe this new feature of Google Maps, which was already incorporated into Google Earth about a month ago. It is now all accessible via the server rather than a local installation of gratuitous software.

Spherical desktop – experimental demo

Longhorn beta – recent screenshot

Longhorn has just become Windows Vista (also see BBC and CNN reports).

The new name, which means view, reflects on the main point of emphasis for the operating system, namely looks. As mentioned before, Longhorn/Vista will be little more than Windows XP with new colours and — as more recently seen — will incorporate transparency. It has been pointed out that Longhorn/Vista will look slightly different from XP, but will offer little or no added value in terms of productivity.

One wonders if the change of names is due to the bad reputation and rumours that are accompanied with the word “Longhorn”. The name Longhorn was derived from the name of a pub, which certainly does not add to credibility.

Linux computer for under $255 in the UK (click to enlarge)

ithin this post lies my main argument as to why Linux (or complimentary Open Source streams or movements) will rise hugely in less than a decade. The cost of production continues to slide while human intellect (development) is among the more expensive commodities. The Zipit demonstrates that by using Linux, the leading free operating system, a PDA with WiFi, 320×240 pixels display and stereo DAC can sell for as little as $99.

$299 for the entire package

In Britain, Dabs are now selling a Mandrake 9.2 Linux box (quicklinx 3QV3WS, no monitor is included) for 140 British pounds ($245) excluding VAT. Elsewhere in the world, the fully-featured MOBILIS computer (shown above) goes for only $299 list and speculations are made as to why commercial software will perish once hardware costs equate to it.

Enterprises still need software, and lots of it, to run their operations, but they are buying few new licenses. Part of the story is that the market is mature and buyers have enough software already. Part of the story is that offshore outsourcing makes it cheaper to build your own. A big part of the story is the appearance of more efficient alternatives, such as open source.

With such low prices across the market, buying a larger number of computational units is possible for prices that are comparable with that of several Windows PC‘s or Apple Macs. Server rooms will benefit in terms of performance, as they do already. Homes will be able to offer a computer to each member of the family or exploit computers for otherwise remote uses like home entertainment, productivity and automation in the garden , the kitchen (see kitchen of the future) and even the car.

Google have introduced yet another ‘toy’ which re-uses the software from Google Satellite maps. This time, all data being used is imagery from NASA‘s past moon landings.

With nicer innovations and envious ad-free page layouts, is it truly a surprise when Microsoft executives migrate to Google? Tension is growing between these two camps as Miscrsoft recently acquired similar technologies and map data. These interactive maps have enormous value as they add a geographical aspect to the World Wide Web, which is presently in chaos. This has a huge advertising potential.

PDF‘s, text files, HTML‘s and
directories in the KDE Desktop with previews (click to enlarge)

ver had the experience of staring at a collection of files, wondering which one is which and puzzled by the best way of finding the text or images you are after? This was a wide-spread operating system deficiency in the nineties (there was a brute-force barrier). Nowadays, directories reflect on their content and file previews are generated on-the-fly, even over FTP, i.e. remote data.

With a large enough icon size as shown above (an example from KDE), even entire documents reflect on their content. Similar types of previews exist for animations and — oddly enough — sound.

By obtaining this reflection on content, there is no longer a need to open files in vain. Location of content becomes an easier task as it can be done visually rather than relying on filenames. Files are simply more recognisable since they express their purpose in the most natural way. If a pictures is worth a thousands words, the user is able to scan more data, more quickly.

Preview are not the only way of improving productivity. Work is being done on extending the “drag-and-drop” functionality for items, e.g. animated folding and dropping (videos included) and richer desktop interactions. As a matter of preference, I like keeping my Desktop clean, making it a ‘yet-to-complete’ list. Previews on files cannot resolve the issue of clutter and scale; they can, however, compensate for the expressiveness of filenames.

For those who do not know yet, Windows Longhorn was intended to introduce WinFS. This new filesystem, rather than using filetables (notably FAT32), was aimed at getting rid of traditional file management and filenames altogether. Nevetheless, Longhorn ended up incorporating none of the promised innovative features though.