Year: 2006

MyTobii P10 Eye Tracking PC

MyTobii P10Swedish company Tobii is about to release its MyTobii P10, a PC that can be controlled by tracking your eye movements using its own proprietary hardware and software.

Follow a calibrating dot on the screen with your eyes for 30 seconds, and then you’ll be able to control this PC without touching it at all. What’s even more remarkable tis that the company has figured out how to make this work in almost any lighting conditions, and even if you wear glasses.

The ability to mount the pc to a desk, bed or wheelchair should prove very helpful for people with disabilities.

The first version of this PC will cost around $17,000.
With that kind of money you could actually hire someone to follow your eye movements and then do whatever you want for you instead. But well it’s a cool technology and hopefully with time the price tag will shrink to something more reasonable and affordable.

[Via: Gizmodo]

Sony Mylo

Sony Mylo

Sony has gone along and unveiled a new handheld gadget called “Mylo”, which stands for “My Life Online”, that combines instant messaging, Web browsing, e-mailing, VoIP capabilities via Skype, music playing and photo viewing.
It features a slide-up 2.4-inch screen, 1GB flash, and a Memory Stick slot.

The device looks a bit like the PSP (PlayStation Portable), but less slick and slightly uglier, still better looking than some other gadgets out there.

The Mylo is aimed at the younger generation who spend a lot of their time on internet chat rooms or instant messaging their friends.

A drawback of the device is its reliance on wireless technology, there being no mobile phone service or plug-in connection options open, rendering it pretty useless in countries that are short on free wireless coverage.

Anyway talking of Sony devices, I have a friend who wants to sell his Special Edition Silver PlayStation 2, used but in good condition, modified to play burnt games, one controller, along with 35 games. The price: 280 Tunisian Dinars.
If you’re interested, send me an email and I’ll get you in contact with the guy.

Floating Magnetic Bed

Now this is cool…

floating_bed.jpgA young Dutch architect has created a floating bed which hovers above the ground through magnetic force and comes with a price tag of 1.2 million euros ($1.54 million).

Janjaap Ruijssenaars took inspiration for the bed — a sleek black platform, which took six years to develop and can double as a dining table or a plinth — from the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 cult film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Magnets built into the floor and into the bed itself repel each other, pushing the bed up into the air. Thin steel cables tether the bed in place.

[Source: Yahoo! News]

Real real cool, huh?

I remember back when I was in high school, in physics class, I was quite fascinated by all the stuff surrounding magnetic energy and all; I would keep thinking about all the different cool things we could do using magnets and electrically generated magnetic fields. In my head, I worked out ways we could use it for transportation (trains, cars), lifting and hanging stuff, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

So now when I see some of the things I thought about coming true in real life or even portrayed in movies, it feels great that I thought of them too quite a time ago and figured out how it all could be done.

Suspect Zero

Suspect ZeroLast night, I got to watch Suspect Zero, a crime thriller, featuring Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart and Carrie-Anne Moss.

The movie is about a mysterious serial killer, who belonged to a secret FBI program before he dropped out and started hunting down other serial killers, and one FBI agent who suspects there may be more to the vigilante than they imagine.

The movie reminded me of Seven in its style and ideas, even though I think Seven remains a slightly better movie than this one.

The name of the movie “Suspect Zero” is a reference to this theory that the main character in the movie has that a serial killer could go ahead and commit crimes all over the country without being identified or captured if he made sure not to follow a certain pattern in his murders.
This is something I too believe in, not out of experience of course, but it’s obvious that what gets a serial killer caught is the unique pattern he follows in his crimes which helps detectives read his movements and eventually get him.

The movie did feel like it had some loose ends and that it was being stretched a bit too thin, but overall it’s a good movie, which I do recommend to fans of this genre.

My overall score for this movie would be: 6.5/10.

More Players In The Tunisian Media Sector

After years of monopoly from the state-run TV and radio stations, Tunisia started opening up its media market just over a year ago.

Mosaique FM became the first private radio station in Tunisia, followed by Hannibal TV the first private TV channel.
Last year another private radio station Jawhara FM was launched in Sousse to cover the eastern coast region.

It seems the media sector will get more new players soon with two new TV channels being planned as well as another radio station.

Communication agency, Karoui & Karoui, are planning to launch a TV station under the name Nessma TV in September, on which they will be broadcasting the first season of Star Academy Maghreb among other programs.
They’re also planning to launch a radio station as well.

On the other hand, business man and journalist Tarak Bachraoui will be launching another TV channel under the name TT1 on Mars 20th 2007.
Mr. Faycal Habib will be the executive director of this channel, which will be intially broadcast on Hotbird and NileSat, before becoming available on the terrestrial hertzian network.
TT1 is currently in negotiations with French channels TF1, M6 and Arte, as well as Arab channels from the ART and Rotana bouquets regarding program exchanges.

I think it’s great to see the Tunisian media market growing, with new players making an entrance and trying new things, breathing more life into the audio visual sector.

Up to now, the most successful of the private ventures in the media sector has been Mosaique FM, which enjoys great popularity and has established itself quickly as a big player.
Hannibal TV was a bit of a dissapointment, and didn’t do as well as we all hoped it would, with quite average programming.
As for Jawhara FM, I personally only heard it once for a short while on my way to Monastir for a meeting with a client, and I thought it was pretty good.

links for 2006-08-05

Pedophilia: Sacred Ritual & Civil Right?

A man accused of sexually assaulting nine boys with physical or mental disabilities told a judge that having sex with children is a sacred ritual protected by civil rights laws.

Phillip Distasio, who said he is the leader of a church called Arcadian Fields Ministries, represented himself at his pretrial hearing. He is charged with 74 counts including rape, pandering obscenity to minors and corrupting another with drugs.

“I’m a pedophile. I’ve been a pedophile for 20 years,” he said in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. “The only reason I’m charged with rape is that no one believes a child can consent to sex. The role of my ministry is to get these cases out of the courtrooms.”

So he’s a pedophile and he’s proud of it!
He’s coming out of the closet and saying that he’s been a pedophile for 20 years and that it’s natural, even sacred and that it’s his right!
Now, I know all this reminds me of another “natural” thingie a lot of people have been going on about, but I just can’t put my finger on it 😛
This other thing was also considered, just like pedophilia, as some sort of mental disorder until quite recently, but now suddenly it’s quite normal, strange huh?, but well, I still can’t remember what it is.
Maybe you know what I’m talking about?

[Source: CNN]

Beaches For Muslim Women In Italy

Hotels at an Italian seaside resort are eager to act on the town’s decision to authorize the creation of all-female beach sections for Muslim women.

The city council of Riccione, a popular resort on Italy’s Adriatic coast about 90 miles east of Florence, has said it is prepared to authorize requests to set up partitions on parts of the shoreline to satisfy requests from the town’s growing numbers of Arab and Muslim tourists.

Supporters of the idea say that the separate beaches would allow observant Muslim women to shed their headscarves and long robes and enjoy the sun in privacy; religious restrictions otherwise oblige them to cover up if men are present.

In short, what they’re saying is: “Anything for your big money!”

[Source: Yahoo! News]

Hugo Chavez Withdraws Venezuelan Envoy To Israel

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday he has recalled his country’s ambassador to Israel to show his “indignation” over the military offensive in Lebanon.

“We have ordered the withdrawal of our ambassador in Israel,” Chavez said in a televised speech, calling Israeli attacks in Lebanon “genocide.”

“It really causes indignation to see how the state of Israel continues bombing, killing … with all of the power they have, with the support of the United States.”

So what do you think of that? Venezuela, which is basically continents and oceans away from Lebanon, have severed ties with Israel over what it’s doing, yet the Arab and Muslim countries next door who have ties with Israel have done nothing.
What a big big shame!

[Via: Beirut Lemons]

Subzero Blue Hacked

So as some of you might have noticed, Subzero Blue was hacked today, both versions too, English and Arabic.

Eman’s blog AquaCool which is hosted as a subdomain of Subzero Blue was also hacked.

Fortunately the damage wasn’t that bad, the English version of the blog was basically restored as soon as I noticed. As for the Arabic blog, it was offline for hours until I got home and restored some files from my backups.
Eman’s blog was restored pretty quickly too but without it’s design, which I had to get from my backups too when I got home.
Anyway, now everything is back to normal, without any loss of data.

The group of hackers who took the blogs down go by the name of TNT-Cagri, who seem to do it for fun, which explains why they didn’t do more damage, even though they could have.
A list of the sites they hacked can be found here.
And the actual page that records that they hacked this blog is over here.

A special thanks to Soly Z for informing me about being hacked before I realized it myself.

I hope it never happens again.

Now let’s go back to regular coverage, I guess…