Text messaging, instant messaging, and VoIP are all pretty hot ways to communicate these days. So a few weeks back, Technopedia’s editor, Abhinav, asked me to review the Gaim and Trillian IM (Instant Messaging) clients. Both are pretty cool, are skinnable, and support a number of other clients including MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and several others. So it’s easy to consolidate all of your IM accounts.

But I figure why use any of them when there are VoIP clients that can handle text, audio and sometimes video. One cool example is Sightspeed, a competitor to Skype and Gizmo Project. All three are both IM clients and VoIP clients. Thus, if you have a microphone and headset, you can make free VoIP audio calls to anyone running the same software.

In fact, Gizmo Project allows you to also contact people on specific other VoIP soft client networks. Unfortunately, Skype isn’t one of them, as they do not have an open interface.

On the other hand, if you want free video VoIP calling, free video email, and video conference calls with up to three other people, Sightspeed is the way to go. (Skype now has video enabled, but it requires a plugin, and their website does not make much effort to promote the video features.)

I’ve got ALL of the above-mentioned IM and VoIP clients on my laptop, and my fave at the moment has to be Sightspeed. While the free version does not let you do video conferencing, the paid plan is only US$4.95/m or $44.95/yr, which also gives you unlimited 60 second video mail stored for an unlimited time. The free plan gives you unlimited 30 second video mail store for 30 days.

Besides regular VoIP audio chats, you can do VoIP video calling, send video mail to one or more people - even if they are not Sightspeed members - or publish videos to a weblog. The latter two options are done by recording a new video message with your webcam and uploading it (free) to Sightspeed servers. If you are sending video mail, your recipient(s) will get an email with the appropriate URL link. If you want to publish the video for a weblog, Sightspeed will generate a URL link, which you can include in your blog.

Now if that’s not enough for you, anyone who is not a Sightspeed member can still have a video/ audio VoIP chat with you. Both the free and paid plans give you a free web page, where a plugin (IE 6+ only) lets them have a video chat with you.

I tried a cheapo USB “snake” webcam (< $100) on both Skype and Sightspeed and only Sightspeed picked up the signal. Neither seems to be able to receive video from my Palm Treo 650 - though I may have something on it configured incorrectly. (Skype provides a shortlist of Skype-certified webcams on their website.)

The interesting thing is that my laptop RAM is only 512 Mb and the webcam doesn’t function too well on it in other video capture applications (such as Snagit screen capture software). But the camera actually functions well enough in Sightspeed, even with my RAM usage maxed out. Still, I’d recommend either a gigabyte of RAM or dual processors, or both. (I have both on my desktop, and the videocam functions much better over there, but I kept that computer offline, so I haven’t tested it with Sightspeed.)

To put Sightspeed to the test, I called up their friendly Support Guy in audio mode first. I jokingly said that I looked really scruffy, not having shaved in days, and I wanted to see but didn’t want him to see me. He laughed and told me how to change my camera settings. I then called him back in video mode and it worked like a charm. However, I haven’t tested it in the other direction, where I’d be able to see the caller and they couldn’t see me.

I also recorded and uploaded a video mail and emailed it to myself. Very simple process. The email just contains a link, not the actual video. That’s true for blog use as well. I haven’t figured out if I can embed the video on blog, to make it viewable from there instead of having to go to the Sightspeed website.

I’m going to love this software, and you just might too. Now if I can only get my relatives across the world an Internet connection, I can see and hear them at the same time. The drawback is that Sightspeed does not currently allow you to communicate with other audio or video IM clients, so you may have to install several software packages like I have.

Sightspeed is available for Win 2000/ XP and for Mac OSX 10.3.9 and up.

There is an exciting new invention that everyone who smokes should know about. It’s called the electronic cigarette, also known as a smokeless cigarette or e-cigarette, and it is changing the legal landscape for cigarette smokers around the world.

The patented Electronic Cigarette offers to effectively simulate the experience of smoking an actual cigarette, without any of the health or legal issues surrounding traditional cigarettes.
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While Electronic cigarettes look, feel and taste much like traditional cigarettes, they function very differently. You see, electronic cigarettes do not actually burn any tobacco, but rather, when you inhale from an e-cigarette, you activate a a flow censor which releases a water vapor containing nicotine, propylene glycol, and a scent that simulates the flavor of tobacco. All of which simply means that electronic cigarettes allow you to get your nicotine fix while avoiding all of the cancer causing agents found in traditional cigarettes such as tar, glue, hundreds of additives, and hydrocarbons.

In addition to being healthier than traditional cigarettes, and perhaps most importantly of all, is the fact that electronic cigarettes are completely legal. Because Electronic cigarettes do not involve tobacco, you can legally smoke them anywhere that traditional cigarettes are prohibited such as bars, restaurants, the work place, even on airplanes. Furthermore, electronic cigarettes allow you to smoke with no fears of inflicting harm on others due to nasty second hand smoke.

The refillable cartridges come in a multitude of flavors as well as nicotine strengths. You can get regular, menthol, even apple and strawberry flavored cartridges and nicotine strengths come in full, medium, light, and none. While electronic cigarettes are technically a smoking alternative rather than a smoking cessation device, the range of nicotine strengths offers some obvious potential as an aid in the ones attempts to quit smoking and seems to be proving popular within that market.

The nice thing about electronic cigarettes as apposed to say, nicotine patches, is that e-cigarettes produce the same tactile sensation and oral fixation that smokers desire, while satisfying ones tobacco cravings as well. When you take a drag from n electronic cigarette you actually feel the your lungs fill with a warm tobacco flavored smoke and when you exhale the smoke billows out of your lungs just like regular smoking, however, as mentioned, that smoke is actually a much healthier water vapor that quickly evaporates and therefore does not offend anyone in the immediate vicinity.

While electronic cigarettes have been around for a while in various incarnations, it has been recent advances in the technology as well as ever increasing restrictions against smoking that have propelled the e-cigarette into a new found popularity. If you are interested in a healthier alternative to smoking, or if you simply want to have the freedom to smoke wherever and whenever you want, an electronic cigarette might be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Computing world was completely taken for a surprise by Microsoft when they announced the release of their virtualization software called Hyper-V.

This is clearly ramping up its competition against the leader of virtualization VMWare. Hyper-V will be a part of Windows Server 2008 from Microsoft which will allow users to run independent, multiple images in a physical machine of this operating system. Virtualization is being adopted widely in the market of enterprise computing which will help reducing the hardware amount that is required for the applications. This feature of Hyper-V makes it easier to deploy, manage and cut costs in the data centers. Microsoft has made it downloadable now from their web site and the current beta version of the same software works with the enterprise version of the Windows Server 2008. Microsoft also announced of adding provisioning and management of virtual machines through the system center tool of Virtual Machine Manager.

Boeing comes out as a winner when it succeeds to bag the contract of manufacturing of Avionics from NASA. This $800 million worth contract was won by Boeing over Technologies Corp and Ball Aerospace. 

The media representative of NASA was very positive while saying that Boeing made a very competitive proposal.  The ring of avionic will be placed on the Ares I, this would be delivered and manufactured by Boeing by August and would be worth $1.13 billion. The contract continues till 2016 and consists of three six production units, flight test units and ground test unit and would be worth $265.5 million The upper stage of the Ares I is filled with liquid fuel and the core stage is based on the shuttle’s rocket’s boosters. The additional work is not included in the first stages of the deal and can be of $420 million and this would be a landmark achievement for Boeing.

Availability of economy based personal computers has broadened the technology use in schools since the year 1980 to include the usage of tools like spreadsheets and word processors. Technology has given an advantage today of distant learning concept which allows two way classes with video and audio. Teachers are available remotely and thus it is possible for a lot of people to get high class education through distant learning. This is possible only because of the improved technology that we have since the early 1980s. Distance learning program takes advantage of the invention where information is passed through fiber optics, satellites and cables. This enables students to access instructions and even for the ones that are available remote and in communities that are considered undeserved. New technologies are not only powerful; they are more accessible and much easier in using. Keyboards are modified, head pointers and joysticks which allow physically disabled students to make use of computers. Even the impaired with speech can talk by synthesized speech and all they need to do is just type the words to the computer. Translators like speech to text hel

A big relief for music listeners all across Canada today. The Canadian Supreme Court won’t hear a case involving extra fees for iPods and other MP3 players in that country, ending a dispute over a so-called iPod tax, but rekindling debate over the legality of file swapping. With this new proposed tax by the Copyright Board of Canada, said in late 2003 that iPods and other hard-drive players were being used to copy music as well, and imposed a fee of up to $25 on the devices. In my opinion this would have further increased our already expensive MP3 players/ipods and promote more cross boarder shopping and hence would only hurt Canadian retailers in the long run.

Kaspersky Lab reports that is has seen a new variant of the gpcode ransomware. Gpcode.ak is an encryptor-virus which uses 1,024 bit encryption to lock down all data on an infected hard drive. The infected machine then shows this popup:

Translation - if you get infected, you are, um… in trouble. Kaspersky has cracked previous variants of this virus in a relatively short period of time. However, this encryption is twice as strong as previous versions, so don’t hold your breath waiting for it to be cracked.

Ransomware is not a new phenomenon, but this one is the worst threat to date. As we have warned before, BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN OPENING E-MAIL ATTACHMENTS. Especially .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg, .png, .cpp, .h. Kaspersky also has some guidelines to follow if you do become infected by gpcode.ak:

Contact Kaspersky Lab using another computer connected to the Internet. DO NOT RESTART or POWER DOWN the potentially infected machine.

Write to Kaspersky at: stopgpcode@kaspersky.com with the following information included in the email:

* Date & Time of infection
* Everything done on the computer in the 5 minutes before the machine was infected, including:
o Programs executed
o Websites visited

Kaspersky will then try to help.

Make sure you have a strong anti-malware program running and that you keep it up-to-date (ie. daily). Do not turn if off because it makes your computer run slow and do not run more than 1 anti-virus program on any one machine.

The latest and most annoying piece of spyware released is called SpyBossPro. This piece of software is pretty sneaky and could cause plenty of headaches for the end user. As a piece of spyware, SpyBossPro will actually record your keystrokes (like when you type in your credit card information), record all web sites visited, take screenshots at regular intervals, as well as send all of this information to a predetermined email address. It does all of this in the background, so you will not even know it’s happening.

So please, keep your Anti-Virus programs up to date. They will detect this nasty piece of software if it is on your machine, or trying to enter your machine and save you many headaches in the future.

Personal Information Managers, short PIMs, become increasingly popular especially in the young and hip Internet user group that tries to do everything electronically instead of using the pen and paper approach of previous generations. It’s only logical that life is organized by one, or multiple, applications as well and Total Organizer is one of those programs.

As with every Personal Information Manager Total Organizer combines a calendar, an organizer, a to-do list, notebook and contact management software. Total Organizer uses a tree view that contains categories and subcategories with all those information. A category work could for instance contain different project subcategories each with their own calendar, notes, to-do list and contacts.

The main category combines all information from its subcategories which is important for the schedule obviously. The root category finally contains all information from all categories offering an overview of all activities, notes, contacts and the like.

Keywords can be assigned to every information that is being added to Total Organizer which can be helpful when searching for specific information. Popup reminders can b

While this is not a book for beginners in the ASP.NET world I found the book to be very informative.  Joydip Kanjilal has taken a section of data handling and display, dug into the internals and brings it to the pages of his first book.  Even though I’ve been in the ASP.NET world since it’s inception I’ve never been a strong UI type developer.  With this book I have the essentials for using Win UI data display components.

Now, for the little nits:  While all the bits and parts were covered the book and the author displays a very clear understanding of the subject it was a little rough in parts.  Some of it was due to inconsistent indentations in code examples, some code bits that would obviously (to a seasoned developer) not compile due to syntax errors (using upper ASCII instead of quotes, line wrap issues not marked, etc).

For a first dive into LINQ Joydip did an excellent job.  While many people are trying to determine if LINQ is the right fit I see many uses for it in current and future development.  While some are against writing inline SQL in their business objects and others are all for it I think LINQ is the middle part of data <–> business that has been missing.  Yes, you can go directly against a data store with LINQ but I think the versatility of LINQ will shine in the middle layers.  Joydip does a good job of tickling your creative juices with his samples and helps open up some possibilities that have been lacking for a long time.  Not only can LINQ go directly against data sources like SQL and XML it can be a querying object against arrays, lists, generic collections and more.  It makes a great data source for a Model View Controller/Presenter approach as well.  Check out the LINQ Forums for more ideas.

Overall I liked the book.  I would recommend anyone interested in displaying data in ASP.NET to at least peruse the book and determine if there is enough for what they need.  I look forward to more books by Joydip.