Author: Dr. Bill

Yep, scientists have developed a spray-on battery… cool stuff!

Scientists develop spray-on battery

“Scientists in the United States have developed a paint that can store and deliver electrical power just like a battery.

Traditional lithium-ion batteries power most portable electronics. They are already pretty compact but limited to rectangular or cylindrical blocks.

Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have come up with a technique to break down each element of the traditional battery and incorporate it into a liquid that can be spray-painted in layers on virtually any surface.

‘This means traditional packaging for batteries has given way to a much more flexible approach that allows all kinds of new design and integration possibilities for storage devices,’ said Pulickel Ajayan, who leads the team on the project.

The rechargeable battery is made from spray-painted layers, with each representing the components of a traditional battery: two current collectors, a cathode, an anode and a polymer separator in the middle.

The paint layers were airbrushed onto ceramics, glass and stainless steel, and on diverse shapes such as the curved surface of a ceramic mug, to test how well they bond.

One limitation of the technology is in the use of difficult-to-handle liquid electrolytes and the need for a dry and oxygen-free environment when making the new device.

The researchers are looking for components that would allow construction in the open air for a more efficient production process and greater commercial viability.”

iTunes now has the Podcast App that we said was coming. Well, it is here! Check it out!

iTunes Podcast App

“Podcasts app is the easiest way to discover, subscribe to and play your favorite podcasts on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Explore hundreds of thousands of free audio and video podcasts from the Podcasts Catalog, and play the most popular podcasts, organized for you by topic, with the all-new Top Stations feature.

Features:

• Enjoy all of your audio and video podcasts in a single app
• Explore hundreds of thousands of podcasts including shows in over 40 languages
• Try the innovative new Top Stations feature to find new podcast series in a variety of topics, including arts, business, comedy, music, news, sports, and more.
• Browse by Audio or Video podcasts, or see what’s most popular in Top Charts
• Tap subscribe for your favorites and automatically receive new episodes for free as they become available
• Stream episodes or download to listen while offline
• Skip forward and back using simple playback controls
• Turn on Sleep Timer to automatically stop playing a podcast while listening in bed
• Share your favorite episodes with friends using Twitter, Messages and Mail
• Optionally sync your favorite episodes from iTunes on your Mac or PC
• Sync your episode playback for seamless transition between devices”

Be sure to subscribe to the Dr. Bill.TV show, the Hand Held Hack, and VirtZine via iTunes’ new Podcast App!

Now, malware is attacking printers! It makes printers print tons and tons of gibberish! How wierd is that?

Thousands of office printers hit by “gibberish” malware

“Summary: What’s been dubbed as a ‘paper salesman’s dream come true,’ thousands of printers worldwide are spewing out garbled content as a result of a malware infection.

Thousands of office printers from large businesses around the world are churning out page after page of gibberish and wasting vast reams of paper.

For once it seems malware is to blame.

Dubbed ‘Trojan.Milicenso,’ it has been described by security researchers as a malware delivery vehicle ‘for hire’ through its repeated use since it was first discovered in 2010, according to security firm Symantec.

The worst hit appear to be large companies in the U.S., India, northern Europe — including the U.K. — and South America.

Symantec said there were a number of ways the malware can find its way onto PCs, including opening a malware-laden email attachment, through a compromised website, or posing as fake video codecs.

Once the malware is opened, it redirects the user to pages to serve up adverts; a common way for malware writers to generate quick revenue.

But one of the apparent ‘side effects’ of the malware affects printers.

The malware unpacks a file in a PCs printer queue, which Windows then turns into a print job. Because these files aren’t readable to ordinary folk without special tools, it churns out incomprehensible gobbledegook, and doesn’t stop until the printer runs out of paper, disconnected from the power supply, or is attacked by a peeved systems administrator with an axe.

It’s like dragging a system file into a plain-text editor: most of the time you’ll see garbage.

If your corporate printers are seemingly spewing out incomprehensible rubbish — it’s either an overworked intern who’s fallen asleep at the keyboard — or more likely a malware infection.”

There was an Open Source Web Editor that was WYSIWYG and was pretty nice! It was called Nvu. But, it is now dead. However, the same developer’s have created an even BETTER version called BlueGriffon! It is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. Check it out!

BlueGriffon – The next-generation Web Editor based on the rendering engine of Firefox

“BlueGriffon is a new WYSIWYG content editor for the World Wide Web. Powered by Gecko, the rendering engine of Firefox, it’s a modern and robust solution to edit Web pages in conformance to the latest Web Standards.

t’s free to download (current stable version is 1.5.2) and is available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

BlueGriffon is available in English, Dutch, Finnish, French, Czech, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Traditional Chinese

BlueGriffon is an intuitive application that provides Web authors (beginners or more advanced) with a simple User Interface allowing to create attractive Web sites without requiring extensive technical knowledge about Web Standards.

Because Gecko lives inside BlueGriffon, the document you edit will look exactly the same in Firefox. Advanced users can always use the Source View to hard-code their page.

BlueGriffon is tri-licensed under the Mozilla Public License 1.1, the GNU General Public License Version 2 and the GNU Lesser General Public License Version 2.1.”

Sounds like a plan!

Call for Ray Bradbury to be honoured with internet error message

Ray Bradbury’s fiction looks set to enter the structure of the internet, after a software developer has proposed a new HTTP status code inspired by Fahrenheit 451.

Tim Bray, a fan of Bradbury’s writing, is recommending to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which governs such choices, that when access to a website is denied for legal reasons the user is given the status code 451.

There are already a host of HTTP status codes, from the common 404 Not Found to 504 Gateway Timeout. The 451 idea follows a blogpost from Terence Eden, who found that his ISP had been ordered to censor the Pirate Bay when he was given an HTTP 403 Forbidden message, meaning that “the server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfil it”. In fact, Eden writes on his blog, it was not Pirate Bay that was preventing access but the government, after Britain’s high court issued an order to ISPs to block access to the filesharing site in April, so the response was “factually incorrect”, and a new code is needed to indicate “censorship”.

451, Bray believes, would work nicely, as it would provide a tribute to Bradbury as well as reminding users of the dystopian future predicted by the science fiction author. Bradbury died earlier this month, leaving behind an oeuvre numbering hundreds of short stories as well as the novels Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, which tells of a world where books are banned and burned and fireman don’t put fires out but start them.”

Pretty neat idea! I’d say, “Go for it!”

John from TechnoBuffalo, looks at the new Microsoft Surface Tablet. A first look.

Different for Microsoft, for sure! So, Microsoft “Surface” tablets are here. What do you think? Made entirely by Microsoft, they may be a real force to help Microsoft “get back in the game!”

Microsoft’s Surface Tablets Raise the Bar for PC Pals

“On a wonderfully bright Monday afternoon in Hollywood, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s (MSFT) chief executive officer, appeared at an art and film studio to deliver what looks like Microsoft’s finest, most controversial product in ages. In fact, it’s a family of products—a line of ‘Surface’ tablet computers aimed at both consumers and workers.

As it does with the Xbox, Microsoft has opted to make the Surface tablets—both hardware and software—on its own. This stands as a huge affront to Microsoft’s longtime PC partners. Making matters worse, the Surface products look far better than anything else the PC makers have shown to date on the tablet front. Even Apple (AAPL) has been put on notice, if the hoots and hollers from the event were any indication.

The first Surface device shown weighs about 1.5 pounds and is 9 mm thick. A second, the Surface Pro, is slightly thicker and heavier. Both tablets come with a built-in kickstand, so you can stand them up to watch movies and the like. Microsoft also did something innovative with its new tablet covers. It had them attach to the the tablets with a firm click and designed them to be keyboards. The Type Cover has keys printed into the cover while the slightly bigger Touch Cover has raised keys.

The keyboard/cover combo is a fantastic idea that immediately makes you question future laptop purchases. That’s yet a further blow against Microsoft’s PC buddies. When Windows 8 launches this fall, Microsoft will sell the tablets through its own online and retail stores and nowhere else. The company declined to reveal pricing details at the June 18 event.

In an interview afterward, Ballmer said Microsoft’s PC partners had been made aware of its plans. When asked to describe how they felt about Microsoft’s moves, Ballmer responded that he had used very precise language on stage and would not go beyond that. (He said nothing on stage that I recall as to how they felt.) As for plans to sell the tablets beyond Microsoft’s own channels, Ballmer again would not budge. ‘That’s all we are going to announce today,’ he said. That’s that, then.

During his speech, Ballmer talked about the push and pull of software and hardware: Sometimes the hardware makers can’t keep up with the software makers’ innovation. So Microsoft decided to take matters into its own hands and showcase all that Windows 8 can do at a time when the company is feeling tremendous pressure from Apple. ‘This is a tool to surface your passions,’ Ballmer said.

Steven Sinofsky, the head of Windows, followed Ballmer on stage and was visibly nervous. His voice shook, as did his hands—to the point that he wrecked a couple of touchscreen demos. Still, he returned again and again to the industrial design work Microsoft did to make the Surface products. Gushing about the kickstand, he said: ‘The hinged design is like that of the finest luxury car.’ About the cover, he said, ‘Click. You heard that. It’s solid. It feels great in your hand, like a book. It just fits there.’

Microsoft designed 200 custom parts for the tablets and said that if you tried to cram a piece of sticky tape inside the device, it would bulge with imperfection. Steve Jobs would be proud.”