Robo sapiens 2003

Ever since Isaac Asimov wrote his robot series of science fiction novels (though Czech writer Karel Capek coined the word first, in his 1920 play R. U. R.), people have looked at robots as both a threat and a blessing. The threat is that robots would be come conscious and act on their own volition; the blessing is that robots could accomplish many boring, repetitive and dangerous tasks for us.

Google Full Book Downloads

Google has begun offering full-text downloads of many older books. Google's Book search now has a "full view" option which lets people search for full-text books. Web surfers can flip through these one page at a time or they can download the books in PDF format. Google includes a copyright notice as the first page for downloaded books.

To view an examplare Click here

Zune Music Player

Zune Music player, the sole competitor of iPod is to be launched in october 2006. Toshiba will be doing the dirty work behind Microsoft's upcoming Zune portable player. The supposed iPod killer will allow users to share digital content via a wireless connection. Executive sources to Digital Music News have also pointed to those capabilities, which will enable "close range, face-to-face sharing." But there are limitations to the experience according to the latest information. Sharing can only happen between a maximum of ten different people within a WiFi range, and the experience centers around streaming content. If a user wants to purchase shared material, tracks can be bookmarked and later purchased when the device is synched to the computer. Unclear is whether users can share unlicensed MP3 content, though they probably will not have that ability. Meanwhile, interesting community aspects will be embedded into the device, including features like friends lists.

The wireless capabilities are designed to woo a younger crowd, though price points could scare them away. According to the sources, the device will offer 30GB of storage, though it will deliver the "same pricing, look and feel as the 60GB iPod". That would suggest a retail price of $399, the price point for the high-end iPod. Immediately, the sticker is likely to draw comparisons to the comparable 30GB iPod, which is available for $299. In terms of outward look, recent information points to three different colors, and a duotone approach on each. A scroll wheel will sit beneath an oversize screen, and menu options will include "Music," "Video," "Pictures," "Community," "Extras," and "Settings". Wireless synchronization with the PC will not be available in the upcoming launch, scheduled for November in the United States. A global launch will begin next year, starting with Great Britain and Canada, according to the sources and materials.

Make free calls to Europe and US

Came across these two VOIP (Voice over IP) messengers which allow free calls to landline phones in europe and entire network in US. They provide 300 minutes free talktime every week. Really great stuff.

A Site of all kinds of downloads (software, games, books)

This is one of the best sites for warez and stuff. It has a huge collection of softwares, a lot where everyone can find a software of their interest. Even has a lot of interesting s/w like photoshop, CAD and books on C/++ etc.

Splash screen for firefox

I somehow feel that having a splash screen before the start of an application adds to its appearance , but unfortunately firefox disabled the splash screen in the latest versions. Heres a tweak to include splash screen for firefox browser.


- Download this splash.zip file.
- extract the files within it to your Firefox program directory
- edit the splash.ini file (text editor, like Notepad, should work), so the file paths are correct
- change your shortcuts to point to splash.exe

If you want to change the splash screen provided above, replace the splash.bmp file with a BMP file of your choice. Just make sure you rename it to splash.bmp, thus replacing the included file.