• Turn ON/OFF/Vibrate ringer
• Turn ON/OFF Wi-Fi connection
• Kill an application.
• ‘Everyday‘ feature adds the ability to define recurring timer.
• ‘Kill Now‘ feature instantly stops selected running application.

Also works after reboot.

Install directly to your Android device scanning this QR code:

Click to enlarge

Kill me later is a simple application for Android mobile devices that kill an application by setting one or more timers.

Primarily designed to Kill MUSIC APPLICATIONS but is good to kill every kind of application,
it manage multiple timers and provide “kill now” feature that allows to immediately kill the selected application.

It also works on background even if your mobile phone is in standby mode.

Next release will include timed control over system services to shutdown/activate WI-FI, GPS, system volume / vibration and so on..

Install directly to your Android device scanning this QR code:

Click to enlarge

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

When to use Google Wave

There are tons of ways to use Google Wave–here are just a few examples to get you thinking

ORGANIZING EVENTS – Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event.

GROUP PROJECTS – Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.

PHOTO SHARING – Drag and drop photos from your desktop into a wave. Share with others. Use the slideshow viewer. Everyone on the wave can add their photos, too. It is easy to make a group photo album in Google Wave.

MEETING NOTES – Prepare a meeting agenda together, share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page. Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback.

BRAINSTORMING – Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm – live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discuss and then work together to distill down to the good ideas.

INTERACTIVE GAMES – Add a gadget to a wave to play live interactive games with your friends (we’re hooked on Sudoku!). See everyone’s moves as they make them in a fast-paced game or take a break and come back later.

What is the Google Wave API?

The Google Wave API allows developers to use and enhance Google Wave through two primary types of development:

Google Wave is currently available in a developer preview as the APIs and product continue to evolve. Accounts on the developer sandbox will be given out to people intending to build with the Google Wave APIs prior to the public release.

For more information about the capabilities and use cases for each development option, consult the Wave Developer’s Guide.

Google Wave homepage

Featured extensions – here

Request an invitation to Google Wave – here

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.
Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole.

Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668/1756
grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov, ashley.edwards-1@nasa.gov

Jonas Dino
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-5612
jonas.dino@nasa.gov

RELEASE : 09-265 NASA’s LCROSS Impacts Confirm Water in Lunar Crater

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. — Preliminary data from NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater. The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon.

The LCROSS spacecraft and a companion rocket stage made twin impacts in the Cabeus crater Oct. 9 that created a plume of material from the bottom of a crater that has not seen sunlight in billions of years. The plume traveled at a high angle beyond the rim of Cabeus and into sunlight, while an additional curtain of debris was ejected more laterally.

“We’re unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and, by extension, the solar system,” said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding.”

Scientists long have speculated about the source of significant quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question with the discovery of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected. If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Since the impacts, the LCROSS science team has been analyzing the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected. The team concentrated on data from the satellite’s spectrometers, which provide the most definitive information about the presence of water. A spectrometer helps identify the composition of materials by examining light they emit or absorb.

“We are ecstatic,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water.”

The team took the known near-infrared spectral signatures of water and other materials and compared them to the impact spectra the LCROSS near infrared spectrometer collected.

“We were able to match the spectra from LCROSS data only when we inserted the spectra for water,” Colaprete said. “No other reasonable combination of other compounds that we tried matched the observations. The possibility of contamination from the Centaur also was ruled out.”

Additional confirmation came from an emission in the ultraviolet spectrum that was attributed to hydroxyl, one product from the break-up of water by sunlight. When atoms and molecules are excited, they release energy at specific wavelengths that can be detected by the spectrometers. A similar process is used in neon signs. When electrified, a specific gas will produce a distinct color. Just after impact, the LCROSS ultraviolet visible spectrometer detected hydroxyl signatures that are consistent with a water vapor cloud in sunlight.

Data from the other LCROSS instruments are being analyzed for additional clues about the state and distribution of the material at the impact site. The LCROSS science team and colleagues are poring over the data to understand the entire impact event, from flash to crater. The goal is to understand the distribution of all materials within the soil at the impact site.

“The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich,” Colaprete said. “Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.”

LCROSS was launched June 18 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. Moving at a speed of more than 1.5 miles per second, the spent upper stage of its launch vehicle hit the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. PDT Oct. 9, creating an impact that instruments aboard LCROSS observed for approximately four minutes. LCROSS then impacted the surface at approximately 4:36 a.m.

LRO observed the impact and continues to pass over the site to give the LCROSS team additional insight into the mechanics of the impact and its resulting craters. The LCROSS science team is working closely with scientists from LRO and other observatories that viewed the impact to analyze and understand the full scope of the LCROSS data.

For information about LCROSS, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

Airic’s_arm is inspired by nature. Based on a combination of mechatronics and the biological model of a human being, it opens up new possibilities for future automated movement processes.

The Airic’s_arm is a robotic arm fitted with artificial bones and muscles. The bone structure, consisting of the human bones such as ulna and radius, metacarpal bone and finger bone, shoulder joint and shoulder blade – joints that do not occur as such in the technical world – is moved via 30 muscles.

The muscles are Festo products, which are already put to extensive use in industrial practice and known as Fluidic Muscle. Using this technology, in conjunction with Festo’s tiny, highly innovative piezo-proportional valves, it is possible to precisely regulate the forces and rigidity within the construction. These actuators can be coordinated using state-of-the-art mechatronic systems and software.

The possibility of enhancing the Airic’s_arm sensors in the future, for instance by adding cameras or tactile perception elements, is just as feasible as the possibility of a further development in the form of back, hip and neck. Enhancements of this type will also be useful in robotics, as they could be used to assign even more hazardous tasks to technology.

More on this an other products in Festo’s website

Detailed information on Airic’s_arm (PDF)

Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 is the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project that enables uncompromised Web browsing of expressive applications, content and video across devices. With support for a broad range of mobile devices, including smartphones, netbooks, smartbooks and other Internet-connected devices, Flash Player 10.1 allows your content to reach your customers wherever they are.

more on Adobe Labs website – HERE

NEWS!

Pre-release is now available for download! Try it NOW!
This is a developer prerelease version of the Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 software for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It is being made available for developers to test their content to ensure new features function as expected, existing content plays back correctly, and there are no compatibility issues. Consumers can try the beta release of Flash Player 10.1 to preview hardware acceleration of video on supported Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks. The Flash Player 10.1 prerelease is available in all supported languages; however, the prerelease installers are only in English and we can only accept feedback in English at this time.

Other video resources:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/videos/

Features and Enhancements:

Support for New Platforms

Flash Player 10.1 is now available for a broad range of mobile devices, including smartphones, netbooks and other Internet-connected devices, allowing your content to reach your customers wherever they are. Supported mobile device operating systems include: Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm webOS , and Symbian S60. This release also supports Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”) desktop operating systems.

The consistent Flash Player browser-based runtime is the most productive way to deliver content to users across operating systems and devices. Runtime consistency reduces the cost of creating, testing and deploying content across different device, software, network and user contexts and helps improve business results.

Developer Productivity

Global error handler

The new global error handler enables developers to write a single handler to process all runtime errors that weren’t part of a try/catch statement. Improve application reliability and user experience by catching and handling unexpected runtime errors and present custom error messages. When using the global error handler in a SWF running in the debug player, error pop-ups will not be shown.

Globalization support

New ActionScript globalization APIs allow Flash Player to use the values chosen in the operating system preferences to process text and lists and present information based on location context, without any knowledge of locale requirements. Choose a specific format independent of the currently selected locale on the operating system. Locale specific information and processing can include: date, time, currency and number formatting; currency and number parsing; string comparison for sorting or searching for text; and upper/lower case conversions.

Designed for Mobility

To make it possible to deploy SWF content on smartphones and other mobile devices that have limited processing power and memory availability compared to PCs, a tremendous amount of work has gone into to making Flash Player 10.1 “ready for mobility”. This work includes performance improvements, such as rendering, scripting, memory, start-up time, battery and CPU optimizations, in addition to hardware acceleration of graphics and video. Improvements in memory utilization and management, start-up time, CPU usage, and rendering/scripting performance benefit PCs as well as mobile devices.

New mobile-ready features that take advantage of native device capabilities including support for multi-touch, gestures, mobile input models, and accelerometer, bringing unprecedented creative control and expressiveness to the mobile browsing experience.

Mobile text input

Flash Player 10.1 provides support for use of native device virtual keyboards with TextField support if no physical keyboard is detected. A virtual keyboard is automatically raised and lowered in response to focus changes on text fields when editing text on mobile devices supporting a virtual keyboard to enable unobstructed and intuitive text editing. The focused text field is centered in the visible region of the page and appropriately zoomed/scrolled to ensure it is not obscured by the virtual keyboard. Upon screen rotation, incoming calls, or other system events, any already existing text input is retained. The virtual keyboard works with TextField but does not currently work with the Text Layout Framework or other Flash Text Engineflash.text.engine text.

Multi-touch and gestures

Developers can take advantage of the latest hardware and operating system user interaction capabilities using new ActionScript 3 APIs for multi-touch and native gesture events. Create multi-touch aware content for a wide range of devices and multi-touch capable machines running Microsoft Windows 7. Interact with multiple objects simultaneously or work with native gestures, such as pinch, scroll, rotate, scale and two-finger tap.

Accelerometer input

New ActionScript Accelerometer class provides a way to receive acceleration values in X, Y and Z axes from native device accelerometer sensors to ActionScript. Leverage accelerometer input on supported devices for user input control and to control screen orientation. Developers can specify the rate of accelerometer updates to conserve battery life.

Screen orientation

(Mobile only)
Automatically align the screen depending on the direction the device is held, i.e. switching between portrait and landscape modes, with or without the support of accelerometers. SWF content can adjust to changing screen orientation, consistent with built-in applications on devices. Event information gives developers the option to change the layout or format of their content when reorientation occurs.

Optimized SWF management for mobile

(Mobile only)
Flash Player 10.1 optimizes SWF loading and playback for mobile CPU and memory limitations to provide a better user experience. Instances are loaded or deferred based on SWF priority, visibility and available memory and CPU resources to enable more immediate browsing experiences without waiting for every SWF on a page to load. Developers can indicate SWF priority through a new HTML parameter, hasPriority. Deferred instances are loaded after the HTML page load is complete, and offscreen and invisible instances are started when they become visible. Flash Player will also automatically pause SWF playback it is not in view or the foreground application, for example when a call is received or alarm goes off, to reduce CPU utilization, battery usage and memory usage.

Sleep mode

(Mobile only)
The Flash Player timer slows down when the mobile device goes into screen-saver or similar mode to reduce CPU and battery consumption on mobile devices. The timer returns to the default setting when a wake-up event is triggered. There is no interruption in audio/video playback. Incoming phone calls pause Flash Player.

Graphics hardware acceleration

(Mobile only)
A GPU-based vector renderer replaces the software renderer on smartphones and other mobile devices, resulting in faster rendering performance for more expressive user experiences while consuming less power. Supports hardware acceleration of 3D effects, vector graphics, color transforms, alpha, device and embedded text, Saffron and surfaces.

Video hardware decoding

Flash Player 10.1 introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth, high quality video with minimal overhead across mobile devices and PCs. Using available hardware to decode video offloads tasks from the CPU to improve video playback performance, reduce system resource utilization and preserve battery life.

Adaptive frame rate

(Mobile only)
Flash Player will monitor and lower the SWF frame rate to provide greater processing power for rendering, which can improve content usability and conserve CPU utilization on resource constrained mobile devices. If the frame rate drops below the threshold, Flash Player will drop frames to achieve the defined default frame rate of the SWF.

Enhanced Browser Integration

Flash Player 10.1 offers enhanced conformance to consistent browser usability guidelines, ensuring optimized user experiences and improved user control over privacy.

Browser privacy mode

(desktop only)
Flash Player 10.1 abides by the host browser’s “private browsing” mode, where local data and browsing activity are not persisted locally, providing a consistent private browsing mechanism for SWF and HTML content. Private local shared objects behave like their public variants as long as Flash Player is in memory and local shared objects created during private browsing are removed when returning to public browsing mode. Existing shared objects are preserved but inaccessible until private browsing is turned off. Libraries in the Flash Player cache, like the Flex framework, are unaffected by private mode. Supported in Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. No developer action required.

Out-of-memory management

Flash Player 10.1 prevents out-of-memory browser crashes by shutting down instances where a SWF attempts to allocate more memory than is available on the device. When a SWF tries to allocate more memory than is available on a device, Flash Player 10.1 adds logic to shut down Flash Player to prevent the browser from crashing. Users will receive notification to restart the SWF, or will see a notice to refresh the page if all instances must be shutdown.

Expanded Options for High Quality Media Delivery

Flash Player 10.1 includes a number of media quality of service improvements and is ready to take advantage of upcoming media delivery technologies to provide new ways to deliver rich media experiences and create new business models. With new HTTP streaming and content protection features, premium audio and video content can be securely delivered within the browser. Streaming performance is enhanced with improved support for live events, buffer control and peer assisted networking. Network context-aware services, like adaptive frame rate, will enable smooth, uninterrupted media playback and improved resource utilization on mobile devices.

Content protection

(desktop only; output protection Windows only; requires Adobe Flash Access 2.0 SDK expected to be available the first half of 2010)
Media protected using the upcoming Adobe Flash Access 2.0 SDK can be played back securely in Flash Player 10.1 to support a wide range of business models, including video-on-demand, rental, and electronic sell-through, for streaming as well as download. Using industry-standard cryptography, Adobe Flash Access 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1 provides a robust environment to protect content so it remains safe from tampering or capture throughout its lifecycle. Flash Player 10.1 supports output protection on Windows, enabling content providers to specify requirements for protection of analog and digital outputs, providing additional safeguards against unauthorized recording. Note: Encrypted content cannot be hardware accelerated in this release of Flash Player.

Peer-assisted networking

(requires Stratus)
The RTMFP protocol now supports groups, which enables an application to segment its users to send messages and data only between members of the group. Application level multicast provides one (or a few) -to-many streaming of continuous live video and audio live video chat using RTMFP groups.

HTTP streaming

Project Zeri (HTTP Streaming) enables high quality (H.264 or VP6), network efficient HTTP streaming for media delivery that is tightly integrated with Flash Access for robust content protection leveraging the Flash Player 10.1 release. This open format solution allows online publishers to leverage existing network and cache infrastructures to efficiently deliver media content to Adobe Flash Platform. The addition of HTTP streaming will enable expanded protocol options to deliver live and recorded media to the Flash Player.

Smart reconnect

(Requires FMS 3.5.3 server, available Nov 2009)
Smart reconnect allows an RTMP stream to continue to play through the buffer even if the connection is disrupted, thereby making media experiences more tolerant of short term network failures and enabling non-disruptive video playback. When a connection is re-established the stream resumes playback. Developers can add re-connection logic in ActionScript to re-establish server connection and resume streaming without any disruption in the video.

Smart seek

(Requires FMS 3.5.3 server, available Nov 2009)
Smart seek allows you to seek within the buffer and introduces a new “back” buffer so you can easily rewind or fast forward video without going back to the server, reducing the start time after a seek. Smart seek can speed and improve the seeking performance of streamed videos and enable the creation of slow motion, double time, or “instant replay” experiences for streaming video.

Buffered stream catch-up

Buffered stream catch-up allows developers to set a target latency threshold that triggers slightly accelerated video playback to ensure that live video streaming stays in sync with real time over extended playback periods.

Dynamic Streaming enhancements

(Requires FMS 3.5.3 server, available Oct 2009)
The Dynamic Streaming capability introduced in Flash Player 10 and FMS 3.5 is enhanced to improve switching times between bitrates, reducing the time to receive thebest viewing experience for available bandwidth and processing speed. Users no longer need to wait for the buffer to play through, resulting in a faster bitrate transition time and an uninterrupted video playback experience, regardless of bandwidth fluctuations.

Microphone Access

(desktop only)
Access binary data of the live and continuous waveform coming from the microphone to create new types of audio applications, such as audio recording for transcoding, karaoke, vocoder voice manipulation, sonographic analysis, pitch detection, and more.

]]> http://www.voo-doo.net/robotphobia/2009/11/adobe-flash-player-10-1-for-mobile-devices/feed/ 0 http://www.voo-doo.net/robotphobia/2009/11/commodore-64-for-iphone/ http://www.voo-doo.net/robotphobia/2009/11/commodore-64-for-iphone/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:44:54 +0000 admin http://www.voo-doo.net/robotphobia/?p=232

Commodore64 is back!

Now available for Iphone, it comes with 8 games for free:

• Dragons Den
• Le Mans
• Jupiter Lander
• Arctic Shipwreck
• Jack Attack
• International Soccer
• International Basketball
• International Tennis.

KEY FEATURES:

• Original Commodore 64 game graphics
• Original SID sound
• Auto-save, to continue exactly where you left off
• Realistic joystick
• Portrait and Landscape play
• Vertical and Fullscreen gaming (auto rotate for iPod users)
• and much more…

You can find it here

BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics robots. It is a rough-terrain robot that walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by an engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog has four legs that are articulated like an animal’s, with compliant elements to absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule; about 3 feet long, 2.5 feet tall and weighs 240 lbs.

BigDog’s on-board computer controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system keeps it balanced, navigates, and regulates its energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a gyroscope, LIDAR and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine functions, battery charge and others.

In separate tests BigDog runs at 4 mph, climbs slopes up to 35 degrees, walks across rubble, climbs a muddy hiking trail, walks in snow and water, and carries a 340 lb load. BigDog set a world’s record for legged vehicles by traveling 12.8 miles without stopping or refueling.

The ultimate goal for BigDog is to develop a robot that can go anywhere people and animals can go. The program is funded by the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA.

visit  Boston Dynamics website http://www.bostondynamics.com

PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the US Army. Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents. PETMAN will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.

visit  Boston Dynamics website http://www.bostondynamics.com

Using high-speed actuators with harmonic drive gears, this robot-hand can close in 1/10th of a second and perform skilful manipulation like dribbling a ball, spinning a pen, throwing an object, tying knots, grasping a grain of rice with tweezers, and tossing / re-grasping.

Robots from the Ishikawa Komuro Lab, you can find more information and videos about all products to their website