Computer Tech INFOblog

Unlike the change from USB 1.0 to USB 2.0, USB 3.0 brings actual physical differences to the connectors. The flat USB Type A plug (that goes into the computer) looks the same, but inside is an extra set of connectors; the edge of the plug is colored blue to indicate that it's USB 3.0.

On the other end of the cable, the Type B plug (that goes into the USB device) actually looks different -- it has an extra set of connectors, so it looks a bit like a USB plug that's been crimped a little ways down one end. There's also a new Micro Type B plug that has all its connectors laid out horizontally.
USB 3.0 plug

As a result, you won't be able to fit a USB 3.0 cable into a USB 2.0 device. However, you will be able to plug USB 3.0 devices -- and cables -- into your current computer; you just won't get the speed advantage. (Note: To get the most out of USB 3.0, the cable needs to be less than about 9 feet long, down from the USB 2.0 16-foot limit.)

The reason for the new connector is that the USB 3.0 cable contains nine wires (four more than a USB 2.0 cable); eight carry data and one is used as a ground. Despite the increase in wires, however, the cables should be no thicker than those used by USB 2.0. There will be a big difference in performance, however. USB 2.0 is like a single-lane country road that needs to handle the morning-commute traffic in and out of L.A. There are jams and slowdowns when too much data is going back and forth. With nine wires available, USB 3.0 has an additional two lanes of traffic in each direction to smooth the flow between the computer and the device. Read More..

When you're in front of your PC, waiting for something to transfer to removable media, that's when seconds feel like minutes, and minutes feel like hours. And data storage scenarios such as that one is where the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0's greatest impact will be felt first. As of CES, 17 SuperSpeed USB 3.0-certified products were introduced, including host controllers, adapter cards, motherboards, and hard drives (but no other consumer electronics devices). Still more uncertified USB 3.0 products are on the way, and they can't get here fast enough.

Glance Backward
The beauty of USB 3.0 is its backward compatibility with USB 2.0; you need a new cable and new host adapter (or, one of the Asus or Gigabyte motherboards that supports USB 3.0) to achieve USB 3.0, but you can still use the device on a USB 2.0 port and achieve typical USB 2.0 performance. In reducing some overhead requirements of USB (now, the interface only transmits data to the link and device that need it, so devices can go into low power state when not needed), the new incarnation now uses one-third the power of USB 2.0.

The theoretical throughput improvement offered by USB 3.0 is dramatic -- a theoretical 10X jump over existing USB 2.0 hardware. USB 2.0 maxed out at a theoretical 480Mbps, while USB 3.0 can theoretically handle up to 5Gbps. Mind you, applications like storage will still be limited by the type of drive inside; so, for example, you can expect better performance from RAIDed hard drives or fast solid-state drives (SSDs) than from, say, a standalone single drive connected to the computer via USB 3.0.

The real-world examples are fairly convincing -- and underscore USB 3.0's advantage for high-def video, music, and digital imaging applications. Our early test results are encouraging as well: We tested Western Digital's My Book 3.0, the first USB 3.0-certified external hard drive. The performance was on a par with that of eSATA-but the benefit here is that USB 3.0 is a powered port, so you don't need to have another external power supply running to the drive (as you do with eSATA; unless the eSATA drive you're using is designed to steal power from a USB port while transferring data over the eSATA interface).

New Entries
While the WD drive was the first to announce, a slew of other hard drive makers either announced products at the show, or discussed plans to release products in the coming months. Among them: Seagate (which is doing a portable drive), LaCie, Rocstor, and Iomega. Even non-traditional hard drive vendors like Dane-Elec and A-Data showed products they billed as USB 3.0 (the latter two even had USB 3.0-connected SSDs, the first external drives to use solid-state storage inside.

One of the things to look for in the coming months is the certified SuperSpeed USB 3.0 logo. Products are currently filling the queues at the official certification testing labs, but presence of that certification logo will give you some peace of mind that the product you're buying truly does live up to the USB 3.0 spec.

Given that the certification labs are jammed up, though, you can expect companies to release USB 3.0 products without official certification. (Buffalo Technologies' drive, released late 2009, is not certified; LaCie's drives are in the process of certification, but will initially carry LaCie's own logo for USB 3.0, and will gain a sticker on the box once certification is completed.) And in those cases, it will be hard to know whether the device truly lives up to its performance potential. Read More..

Before we begin with this workshop are you wondering what the exact meaning of “OOB” is? Out Of Bounds (OOB) as it is known is a technique in which you manipulate a photograph such that it creates a three-dimensional illusion. How is it achieved? It is done by extending a part of the picture's subject beyond the frame. This is how a basic 3D illusion is created. The concept of OOB has been around for quite a while and its implementation can be seen in many day to day hoardings, magazines, newspapers and websites.

So what you will need before we even begin with the workshop is a basic knowledge of photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or even the free GIMP. For this workshop we will be using
Second on the list will be a suitable digital photo that can be easily manipulated. Last but not least you don’t always have to go by what this workshop says. This is just a guide that will help you understand how to go about creating your own OOBs. Use your imagination and creativity to achieve whatever effect you would like to create when experimenting with Out Of Bounds pictures.

The process

To start with open the image that needs to be OOBed.

Step 1: Right click on the background image, select “duplicate” and click on “OK”. Switch off the first layer's visibility by clicking on the Eye icon next to it in the layers palette.

Select the newly created background copy and click on the 'Add layer mask' icon. Once done you should be able to see a white box beside the main image.

Click on 'Create a new layer' at the bottom of the 'Layers' palette. Select the new layer and choose the rectangular marquee tool. Now create a box by keeping the left mouse button pressed and dragging the cursor.

Step 2: Switch to the paint bucket tool and make sure that the foreground color is set to white. Now place the paint bucket tool in the selection area and click. The box should now look like the image shown below.

Step 3: Now click on 'Select | Modify | Contract', change the setting to “35” and click on “OK”. Now hit “Delete” on the keyboard. You should be able to see a white bordered frame. Now, click on 'Select | Deselect' (removes the "marching ants" selection indicator).

Step 4: To change the perspective of the frame you will need to adjust it to a certain angle. To do that that click on 'Edit | Transform | Distort'. Click and drag the edge of the frame to give it a definitive perspective. Press [Ctrl] [S] and select 'Apply' to save the file.

Step 5: Click on 'Add Layer Mask' to mask the already selected layer. Select the newly created layer and choose the brush tool. Change the size to 40 and set the foreground color to black. Now paint over the area that needs to be erased. If needed, zoom in by using the mouse wheel while keeping the [Alt] key pressed. Remember: a black foreground will erase and a white foreground will do just the reverse.

Step 6: Add another new layer by clicking on the 'Create new layer' icon and reposition it just above your original image. Click on the paint bucket tool and keep the left mouse button pressed to select the gradient tool. Right click on the gradient editor and select a gradient with colors that will suit your picture. You can also adjust the gradient level by dragging the sliders across. Now, hold down your left mouse button and drag it horizontally across your screen to create the gradient effect.

Step 7: Select the pen tool and make a path along the frame. Keep in mind that to need to make the selection path along the subject if you want to achieve the OOB effect. Use the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys to make fine adjustments when using the pen tool. Switch to the [Paths] palette and double click the work path to save it. Now press [Ctrl] [Shift] [I] to select the inverse of the path.

Select the bucket tool while making sure that the foreground color is set to black. Click anywhere on the image to highlight only the image selected while removing the rest. Press [Ctrl] [D] to deselect the path once done.

Step 8: Right click on the image and select 'Blending options'. Choose 'Drop Shadow' and change the 'Distance' to 79 and 'Size' to 98. Now adjust to the angle that best suits your need. Click on 'OK' when done.

If you want to crop your image select the rectangular marquee tool again and select the area that needs to be cropped. Go to the 'Image' menu and click on 'Crop'. Save the file by clicking on 'File | Save as...', give a suitable name to the image and change the format to JPEG or any other of your choice. You can now decide on the overall file size and quality of the image by adjusting the image quality slider. Click on 'OK' to save the image. There! Your first OOB photograph is now ready.

Now that you've got the hang of it go ahead and see which other picture can be OOBed. Just about any picture can be jazzed up with this effect. All you need is a little bit of imagination and creativity to make it work! Read More..

It might sounds simple but there is a simple way to save a lot of time: use shortcuts!

Let me give you a few shortcuts that are really useful!

5 shortcuts for Firefox:
Ctrl-K – Takes you directly to the search box

Ctrl-L or F6 – Takes you to the URL field to type in a web address (really useful!)

Ctrl-T – Opens a new tab

Ctrl-D – Bookmark the page

Ctrl-+ – Increase font size on any webpage

Ctrl-[-]- Decrease font size

Ctrl-0 [zero] – Returns font to original size

For Gmail:

c – compose a new message
#- delete (if a message is useless, just delete it!)
tab + return/enter – send message
u – return to inbox (or previous conversation list)
r – reply
a – reply all
f – forward
e – archive

What are your favorite keyboard or computer shortcuts?

You will save a lot of time by using shortcuts! Read More..

rumors about Google TV does not unfounded. The Internet giant, which is based in Mountain View, California, Google officially on television, the latest breakthrough that would lead to the full Internet.
http://gadget-devianty.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-tv-will-be-coming-this-year.html Read More..

Many users of Windows XP and Vista will want to try Linux at some point, often just to see what all the fuss is about. There are many different Linux distributions and it isn’t convenient for a non-technical user to set up dual booting alongside an existing Windows install. Thankfully, there are tools available which mean you can play with a full Linux install inside the familiar surroundings of Microsoft Windows.

There are several pieces of software that let you run a virtual PC within Windows, allowing you to install virtually any operating system in an emulated PC environment. There are two main solutions available, firstly the free Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is reasonably good and easy to install. The second choice is also a free piece of software and is called VMware Player, and features several more advanced features. For this article we will be using the MS Virtual PC virtualisation software as it provides more flexibility in the free version.

Step 1 - Install the Microsoft Virtual PC Software

This is a very straight forward installation, and the download is around 30-60MB (depending on components) at the time of this article:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/overview.mspx

Step 2 – Locate and download a Linux Distribution

Once Virtual PC is installed, you need to download a Linux distribution. Some popular choices are:

Ubuntu : http://www.ubuntu.com/
Fedora : http://fedoraproject.org/
Mandriva : http://www.mandriva.com/

Proceed to the download section of whichever distribution you choose, and if you are given plenty of options of types to download then look for a 32bit i386 ISO file.

This article will use Ubunutu, and the download URL at the time was:

http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/releases.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso

Once you have found the file, download it to your PC.

Step 3 – Setup a Virtual PC

Load MS Virtual PC 2007 from the start menu and begin the wizard to create a new virtual machine, the screenshots below illustrate this process using recommended settings. Click Next to begin the setup process:


Select “Create a new virtual machine”:


Call this virtual machine whatever you like, for example “Linux” or “Ubuntu”:


Select “Other” from the OS dropdown menu to customise the virtual PC:


Choose how much system RAM you wish to allocate to the virtual PC, if you can spare it, 512MB would be recommended. It does appear to allocate the whole amount of memory to the software, even if you are only using a small portion of it within the Virtual PC. 512MB should be fine for users with 2GB+ of Ram, but those with 1GB may struggle to run much else in the background.


Select create “A new virtual hard disk”:


Choose a location to save this virtual drive and assign a size (dependant on how much disk space you have left). You can make up to 3 virtual hard drives, but if you wanted more drives you can always partition them to as many drive letters as required.


Click finish to create the Virtual PC:

Step 4 – Install Linux

Select the Virtual PC listed under the name assigned during setup, and then click start:

This will start to boot up the Virtual PC, although there is no operating system installed at present. To install Linux, click CD > Capture ISO Image and then open the saved Linux ISO from Step 2. If you find that your mouse pointer is stuck within the Virtual PC window, press right-ALT to release it:

Once this is done, click Action > Reset to reboot the Virtual PC and start the Linux Install. During boot, the Linux install will automatically load and the onscreen installation steps must be followed. These steps will differ slightly for each Linux distribution, but it should be a straight forward process. If you use Ubuntu, select the “Install Ubuntu” option rather than running the Live CD:

This will start the graphical installer where you can customise your install options. This article will not cover each installation step, as it will vary for each install. However, in most cases it is just a case of filling in basic information and clicking “next” as there is only 1 possible installation drive. Unless you are an advanced user, allow Linux to automatically partition your virtual drive:

Once the installation is complete the Virtual PC will restart, at which point you should unmount the ISO file by clicking CD > Release CD. Once the restart is complete, you should now be at the Linux login screen:

Congratulations, you now have a working Linux install from within Windows! To boot in to Linux again simply load Virtual PC 2007 from the start menu and double click on the Linux name (as in the first stage of Step 4).

Read More..

After 10 years of dispute, the EU / Microsoft browser fight has finally ended with an agreement. During that time, the EU has imposed 1.68bn euros of fines! "Ms Kroes said Microsoft's pledge was an incentive for web browser companies to innovate and offer better browsers in the future.
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/news/3941004.php Read More..