Originally from John Dvorak, here is a snapshot of a ‘beast’ that may one day travel the skies.

Casinos, gyms and double beds – but will enough airlines get on board?

A major frustrations of standardisation advocates is multi-media. Anywhere you go on the Web, Window$ is assumed to be your operating system and their specialised formats too. Arguably, a dominant impact of lacking standards is associated with audio and video. There is, however, a shareware GUI-based program that can convert a common video file into an animated GIF. Such files can be viewed on any platform with the most basic support for Web graphics. Included are my example of AVI2GIF conversion and a link to the convertor’s homepage.

Simply by serendipity, I came across a particularly surprising site the other day. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, still keeps his academic site alive. Very recently I heard that he drives a small Japanese car. I salute the young man who is destined to become one of the most powerful world figures, along with Larry Page. Financially speaking, he is not there yet.

Worth noting: Apparently, Brin cared enough to remove his family and personal photos off the page.

Here is Brin’s description of Google which was experimentally used in Stanford University

This image-to-text tool is possibly what you need to impress your friends. I produced a very small-scale example. A larger size was possible as well, but it would have taken up much of this page.

Here is the famous Lenna image:

Here is the result of translation/rendering. It is purely text.

Hard-drives are far more fragile and error-prone than computer users imagine. From my survey amongst friends and colleagues, it appears that almost nobody retains a remote copy of personal data. If errors were ever to strike, the result would be devastating. I have seen people losing their in-progress Ph.D. thesis, Masters dissertation and work documents. All it takes to prevent such tragedies is one of the following routines:

• Backup on CDR.
• Backup using a remote FTP server. To store only the recent differences, search by the last modified field.
• Free software packages like Rsync.
• Occasional hard-drive to hard-drive copy/mirror (volume sharing, redundancy).

Many of us undervalue the amount of data which is available owing to technology. Eavesdropping became only a time investment issue in a world where every event is recorded with the aid of brute-force. As an example, from the month of December I have a 20+ MB text file which contains everything one needs to know. Webmasters do not bother investigating such files and neither do I. I only suggest that everyone becomes aware of the following:

In cases where curiosity pushes its limits or even wrong-doing is considered, someone, somewhere will be able to retrace your steps. In this cyber-space where privacy is compromised, always be cautious and remember which Internet domain you go under.

Example: Whatever you search Google for will become visible to others; not only to Google employees, but also to sites you subsequently enter. Familiarise yourself with the rules of the ‘game’. Be suspicious.

CBS News bring some marvellous pictures from the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Here is one considerable step towards integration of home entertainment and mobile devices:

…Consumers have already shown an appetite for mobile e-mail, Web browsing, music and video games, but many experts view the public fascination with TV and movies as an especially potent lure for premium wireless services…