Apple introduces the world’s first Muti-Touch mouse. Multi-Touch in a sense that you can interact with your portable devices — all using gestures. And while it comes standard with every new iMac, you can also add it to any Bluetooth-enabled Mac for a Multi-Touch makeover.


Surface. Magic Mouse has smooth and buttonless appearance. The Multi-Touch area covers the top surface of Magic Mouse, and the mouse itself is the button. Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.


Laser-Tracking Engine. Magic Mouse uses powerful laser tracking that’s far more sensitive and responsive on more surfaces than traditional optical tracking. That means it tracks with precision on nearly every surface without the need for a mousepad.


Wireless. Magic Mouse connects wirelessly to your Mac via Bluetooth, so there’s no wire or separate adapter to worry about. It has reliable and secure connection up to 33 feet away.


Indeed, an another milestone by bringing gestures to the desktop with a mouse that’s unlike anything ever before.


For more information, visit www.apple.com.

Tags: apple, bluetooth, device, magic mouse, multi touch, portable

ChartDirector is a professional chart component for windows and web applications. It is available for .NET, Java, ASP, COM, VB, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, ColdFusion and C++ application.
It has many features. Among these are the following:

• Layering Architecture
  Enables you to synthesize the charts you want using standard chart layers.
• Comprehensive Chart Styles
  Pie, donut, bar, line, spline, step line, trend line, curve-fitting and more…
• Flexible Axis System
  Unlimited number of XY axes per chart. Automatic, semi-automatic and manual scaling. Linear, log, date/time and label-based axis. Configurable axis margins. Customizable axis labels.
• AJAX Enabled User Interactions
  Full suite of mouse events for chart objects. Customizable hot spots on charts. Pop-up tool tips, drill-down, drag to zoom and drag to scroll support. AJAX enabled for web applications so charts can be updated without page refresh.
• Browser Compatibility
  Produces charts in PNG, JPEG, BMP, WBMP, GIF and SVG. Viewable by virtually all browsers, including mobile and hand-held devices.
• and more…

For more information on ChartDirector, please login to www.advsofteng.com.

source: www.advsofteng.com

Tags: .NET, AJAX, ASP, C++, chart, ChartDirector, ColdFusion, COM, Java, Perl, php, Python, Ruby, VB

It was just last week that I started reading and studying on how to use this JavaScript library, Ext JS. Ext JS is a cross-browser JavaScript library for building rich internet applications. It includes:

• High performance, customizable UI widgets
• Well designed and extensible Component model
• An intuitive, easy to use API
• Commercial and Open Source licenses available

It supports all major web browsers including:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• FireFox 1.5+ (PC, Mac)
• Safari 3+
• Opera 9+ (PC, Mac)

I didn’t have much knowledge in JavaScript that’s why I really had a hard time in understanding what it’s all about. By now, I’m still familiarizing and continue reading it because I find it very good in web applications. For those who are also interested, please visit their website, http://extjs.com.

Tags: applications, Ext JS, FireFox, internet, Internet Explorer, JavaScript, library, Opera, Safari

Want to turn your ordinary table into a vibrant, interactive surface? Microsoft just got one for you. The Microsoft Surface. It’s the first commercially-available surface computing platform that provides effortless access to digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Today, it’s a 30-inch diagonal display in a table-like form factor that’s easy for individuals or multiple people to interact with in a way that feels familiar, just like in the real world.


Led by Microsoft, surface computing is a major advancement that moves beyond the traditional user interface to a more natural way of interacting with information. It features four key attributes:

• Direct Interaction
• Multi-touch
• Multi-user
• Object Recognition

Microsoft Surface uses cameras to sense objects, hand gestures and touch. This user input is then processed and displayed using rear projection.


For more information, visit http://www.microsoft.com.

Tags: digital, microsoft, microsoft surface, table

AJAX is based on JavaScript and HTTP requests. It is a type of programming made popular in 2005 by Google (with Google Suggest). It is not a new programming language, but a new way to use existing standards. It is a group of interrelated web development techniques used to create interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object.

Ajax uses a combination of:

• HTML and CSS for marking up and styling information.

• The DOM accessed with JavaScript to dynamically display and interact with the information presented.

• A method for exchanging data asynchronously between browser and server, therewith avoiding page reloads. The XMLHttpRequest (XHR) object is usually used, but sometimes an IFrame object or a dynamically added <script> tag is used instead.

• A format for the data sent to the browser. Common formats include XML, pre-formatted HTML, plain text, and JSON. This data could be created dynamically by some form of server-side scripting.

One example of AJAX riched website is FACEBOOK.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/

What will your browser wear today?
Did you ever think of costumizing your web browser? Changing its font color or even putting your own artistic design in it.
Well, with persona, this is possible. Personas are lightweight, easy-to-install and easy-to-change “skins” for your Firefox web browser. It is the new Firefox Add-on for Windows, Mac or Linux. You can download it for free at http://www.getpersonas.com. After installation, you have a variety of skins to choose from or if you like, you create your own skin. Just create an account on their website and there, you can create any skin you want.

Virtualization. Sounds TECHIE, right? Well, virtualization is a broad term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources. In computing, platform virtualization is a virtualization of computers or operating systems. It hides the physical characteristics of computing platform from the users instead showing another abstract, emulated computing platform.

Virtual box is one of the “virtualization” product. When we describe VirtualBox as a “virtualization” product, we refer to “full virtualization”, that is, the particular kind of virtualization that allows an unmodified operating system with all of its installed software to run in a special environment, on top of your existing operating system. This environment, called a “virtual machine”, is created by the virtualization software by intercepting access to certain hardware components and certain features. The physical computer is then usually called the “host”, while the virtual machine is often called a “guest”. Most of the guest code runs unmodified, directly on the host computer, and the guest operating system “thinks” it’s running on real machine. It is not only an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD. It means that you can run multiple Operating Systems simultaneously without rebooting your system, well it depends on the capability of your system.

It is distributed by the Sun Microsystems, Inc. For more info on VirtualBox, visit www.virtualbox.org.

Tags: general public license, Linux, OpenBSD, Opensolaris, Operating Systems, os, Solaris, virtualbox, virtualization, Windows

At last, our project exhibit was done. This was happened last February 18-20. We were surprised when Sir Jerome Auza brought some friends from Provincial Government to see our IP PBX project because we were just expecting the CVSCAFT-TCC students and faculties to watch our projects. Maybe those officials are interested on our project. So we explained them on what is IP PBX and what is it for. Luckily, the exhibit was done without any major problems except for some minor bugs in our program.

By now, we are preparing for the coming project defense. We will be making some improvements and bug fixing in our program. We will search for the right voice codecs for our outgoing calls because voice signals were distorted. We are confident that this will be solved because we have Mr. Google on our side. -lol-

Tags: Auza, codecs, CVSCAFT-TCC, Google, IP PBX, Project Exhibit, Provincial Government

Every year, all the graduating students will have their design project. We, the BS Comp. E V are divided into 8 groups and 4 members in each. Every groups must have their proposals and we proposed this IP PBX.

IP PBX stands for Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange. It is a business telephone system designed to deliver voice over a data network and interoperate with the normal Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) gateways can be combined with traditional PBX functionality enabling businesses to use their managed intranet to help reduce long distance expenses, enjoy the benefits of a single network for voice and data and advanced CTI features or be used on a pure IP system which in most cases give greater cost savings, greater mobility, and increased redundancy.

An IP-PBX can exist as a hardware object, or virtually, as a software system. Because a major part of IPBX functionality is provided in software, it is relatively inexpensive and easy to add additional functionality, such as conferencing, XML-RPC control of live calls, Interactive voice response (IVR), TTS/ASR (text to speech/automatic speech recognition), Public switched telephone network (PSTN) interconnection ability supporting both analogue and digital circuits, Voice over IP protocols including SIP, Inter-Asterisk eXchange, H.323, Jabber, GoogleTalk and others.

We are using AsteriskNow as our SIP server. AsteriskNOW is an open source Software Appliance; a customized Linux distribution that includes Asterisk (the leading open source telephony engine and tool kit), the AsteriskGUI™, and all other software needed for an Asterisk system. AsteriskNOW is easy to install, and offers flexibility, functionality and features not available in advanced, high-cost proprietary business systems.

The following are some of the various features of IP PBX:

- Unlimited Extensions
- Unlimited Auto Attendants
- Unlimited Voicemail Boxes
- Remote Phones
- Caller ID Customization
- Extension Call Recording
- VoIP Ready
- Call Pickup
- Dial by Name Directory
- Conference Rooms
- Outbound Dial Map
- Analog and Digital T1 Ready
- Auto call forwarding

…and many more.

Now, we are finalizing our project for the preparation of our exhibit this coming February 18, 2009 and and for the project defense this coming first week of March 2009.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_PBX

Tags: Asterisk, AsteriskNOW, GoogleTalk, H.323, Inter-Asterisk eXchange, IP PBX, Jabber, project design, PSTN, SIP, VoIP