Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of “smart” charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan - unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go - all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They’d buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity - the minutes. 

There would be plugs in homes, offices, shopping malls. And when customers couldn’t wait to “fill up,” they’d go to battery exchange stations where they would pull into car-wash-like sheds, and in a few minutes, a hydraulic lift would swap the depleted battery with a fresh one. Drivers wouldn’t pay a penny extra: The ERGO would own the battery.

In 2007, Agassi quit his job at SAP. Many of Agassi’s colleagues from SAP joined him. They realized that what Shai was building was still essentially a software company. He needed a network that allowed cars to tell the grid how much charge they were carrying and how much more they required. The system had to know where the car was so it could tell the driver where to go to “fill up.” And it had to electronically negotiate with the local energy utility over when it could and couldn’t take power and how much to pay.

“For the car companies, we made it simple,” he says. “We separated the ownership of the car and the ownership of the battery. See, car companies don’t know how to assess the life of the battery. So they go through these complicated programs of testing them for a long period of time. And we told the car company, you know what? Just like you don’t sell a car with a card that says ‘Here is oil for the life of the car,’ you don’t sell cars with the batteries for the life of the car, because the battery is crude oil.”

Right now Agassi has a lot of venture capital, a company called “Better Place”, and an interest from the leaders of countries all over the world (not the U.S., of course).  It’s a novel and interesting idea.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this one might be the one to make it through the gauntlet.

Need a computer that will match your new outfit? Help is on the way. Researchers are working on a low-tech computer that would cost as little as $12.

You can get these already in India. They look something like the original Nintendo console that many of us played video games on as a kid in the 1980s.

Variations on that original console sell in India for anywhere between $10 and $20 and plug into your TV, complete with game controllers and a computer keyboard. The consoles eventually expanded their game repertoire beyond “Duck Hunt” rip-offs to very basic word processing software.

“Now, would you like a computer to go with your new purse?”

It’s like having your own personal composer, i.e., Hans Zimmer-in-a-Can; and you don’t have to be a Beethoven to use it. Its a new software product, called “Abaltat Muse”, from the Ireland based company, Abaltat (www.abaltat.com). They call it the “worlds first video-driven soundtrack composer”.

First, you import your video segment into the program. Muse can use several methods for formulating your composition; In the demo we were given at the NAB convention, Siun Ni Raghallaigh, the companies CEO, chose “color” as the key for the program to use in constructing it’s unique composition. Neuronets can also be used by the software to construct melodies (one primary, and one secondary melody), and other musical decisions needed to complete the composition. Using either of these techniques, in theory, will never give you two compositions that are exactly alike. We selected the color “red”, since the video’s main visual topic is a red sportscar. The software is also “smart enough” to take the time length of your video, and will adjust the composition to fit exactly in the video’s time frame.

You then select a number of other parameters, such as compositional “complexity”. The user has the flexibility to zero in on a particular time segment for the increased/decreased intensity, or use the same intensity for the entire composition.

Next, one selects a musical style, such as “classical”, “rock”, or “atmospheric”, the beats-per-minute (BPM), and the time signature (3/4 for a waltz feel, or the more typical 4/4 rock style).

Finally you set a parameter called “jingle”. This is slider that controls the degree to which the melody will repeat: set the slider to a low value, and the melody will repeat often, set it high, and it will will repeat rarely, if ever.

You are now ready to hit the “compose” button. With your selections made, Muse chooses the appropriate instruments with 4 “players” in all, 2 playing melodies, a bass instrument, and a rhythm player. The user can mute out, reduce the volume of, or add various “players” at any point during the video.

I was impressed by the results. The demo produced a composition that went well with the video, and would certainly compare favorably with any “off the shelf” soundtrack. And best of all, no royalties or other contractual paperwork to worry about - ii’s YOUR composition!

Once your are happy with your composition, you can export the project as a MIDI file, or AIFF sound file. This is a good feature, since, in my opinion, the sound samples used weren’t of the best quality.  In the demo, the “flute” sounded like a violin to me.  However, the MIDI export would allow you to enhance or otherwise change your composition further by using some of the pro-audio software tools, such as Cubase or Apple’s Logic Pro, as well some the high-end sound sample libraries available. The Abaltat Muse playout works with Mac’s own soundcard or with the standard editing third party cards such as Blackmagic.

The Muse software retails for around $480, is available on Apple, and will be available for Windows this year. Their “Express” version sells for around $220 (Apple only), and has fewer features than Muse but can still take you from A-Z resulting in a decent sounding track. For more information about the two versions, and other offerings from Abaltat, go to www.abaltat.com.

They brought their booth and sales reps. all the way from Norway to Las Vegas, where they were demonstrating their latest interactive software solutions at the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB) annual conference. Their product, called “never.no Interactivity Suite”, is an interactivity enabling software solution. They describe it as “the world’s first platform for universal interactivity in broadcast media”. This suite allows consumers to influence a broadcast in real time, and conversely, allows media owners and advertiser to track consumers through various mediums, and allows them to tailor and optimize consumer content based on consumer response.

Feature this:

• User Bob is watching something on TV, and wants to interject some ideas about the topic of discussion.
• He fires off a text message that is subsequently passed along to the Interactivity Suite resident on your server.
• Your Moderator approves the message, and the message is then used as a “discussion point” on the TV show while Bob is still tuned in.

This system acts much like a call-in radio show, however Bob’s interest can be cataloged, and can, if desired, lead to future targeted marketing, or simply serve as the basis for real-time user-driven content for the TV show (or any other media).

The suite works with user interaction through channels such as SMS/MMS, WAP, web, e-mail and Windows Live Messenger, in addition to communicating with 3^rd-party solutions like Set-Top Box middleware, 3G gateways, DTMF, and IVR systems. The Suite can process text, images, audio and video. Rock On Norway!

“While Windows Vista provides the most advanced security and management capabilities of any Windows operating system, Windows XP SP3 will ensure PCs running Windows XP will have the latest updates, as well as compatibility with the Network Access Protection functionality of Windows Server 2008,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Lest anyone misread that as an endorsement, Microsoft goes on to say that “Windows XP SP3 does not bring significant portions of Windows Vista functionality to Windows XP.”

Beta of XP update made public | Beyond Binary - A blog by Ina Fried - CNET News.com

So for my 21st birthday my parents bought me a MacBook Pro, After a few days playing with OSX i found myself playing with the Boot Camp Assistant so i can play Team Fortress 2. I have installed windows at least 40-50 times on all different types of hardware and software configurations, so i thought installing it on a MacBook Pro would not be any different. A task that should have took just one hour turned into a two day adventure with support calls to both Apple and Microsoft.

The setup i was trying to use was a 15GB partition for Windows XP Home w/SP2, I have a OEM system builders CD that i bought from PC Club about two years ago and have used on a CarPC system that is no longer in use.

So i start the process by printing the 22 page manual that Boot Camp recommends printing, I start the Partition process and chose to make a 15GB Windows Partition and press next, It resizes the hard drive partitions and asks me to insert my Win XP CD.

OSX shuts down and i get the nice old Windows blue installation screen, So far so good.

I get to the partitions and pick the 15GB one labeled [BOOT CAMP] and then format it using NTFS (quick), all is good the files are copied and then the system reboots to complete the installation.

This is where it goes from good to bad, After it starts up it says 39 minutes remaining and thats where it just sits and wont move on.

I was reading the Apple Discussion Boards that this might be more of a common issue then i had thought but there was not one good answer to the issue.

I tried it at least four or five times.

So the next morning i gave Apple a call to see if they had any ideas why this was happening, after about one minute on the phone with them they forward my call to Microsoft support (kinda odd how they had them on auto dial) at this point my call got transfered to a Call Center in India, At first the call was going good until i mentioned that it was being installed on a Mac at that point my call got transfered to a Manager and they where explaining that they will support the installation after it is running but not the install process, So i was now back where i started.

So not having another Disk to install from i burned many different home brew Slipstreamed disks and had many failed attempts.

A few weeks ago we had a power outage and my HTPC got its hard drive corrupted, i was thinking that maybe the install media was damaged.

Working on a hunch i tried to install Windows with the same disk, but this time it would not format and it popped up with a message saying that the disk may be damaged. Finally some clues, so at this point with that being the only working disk i had i tired copying the disk using Nero 6.

After the disk was copied i popped it in and hit enter to retry the format and BINGO it worked, so i immediately took the disk out and put it in my MacBook Pro and restarted the installer. With my fingers crossed i got close to the 39 minute mark, it sat for about a minute and then changed to 36 minutes left. Success! The install completed with out issue at this point.

After i booted into Windows for the first time i inserted the Leopard Disk one and a Windows installer opened up, After running though the installer all the drivers where then installed and Windows was fully functional.

My first task now was to get Steam installed and TF2 downloaded and installed.

So now i am able to game on my MacBook Pro.

I plan on running some benchmarks on the MacBook Pro XP, and will make another post for that.

I found this wonderful Desktop Background and just thought it fit the bill perfect.

Once the plug-in is installed and configured it will quarantine the spam and only allow non-spam to be posted, I can then go back and verify that the spam is really spam but so far there have been no false positives and has stopped all the spam from making it’s way though to the site.

Here is a shoot showing that there have been 30 legitimate comments and 72 spam comments as the time of writing this.