The developers of Firefox, Mozilla labs is currently working on a user interface that is rumored to be the next big step in Web 3.0 standards. Enter Ubiquity which is currently available as an open alpha test. The goal of the new service is to make the internet quicker and simpler for everyday use; by allowing user to control browsing with language based instructions.

Ubiquity will allow users to insert maps anywhere, translate on-page, highlight any code, and many other features that are just to numerous to name.

Here is a video with more detail

Here is the link to a Video About Mozilla Ubiquity

For more info on Ubiquity or to download it here is a link to the BLOG

Alexandria, VA (PRWEB) September 22, 2008 — Luxand, Inc. today announces BabyMaker 1.0, a fun computer program specifically designed to let couples morph their photos and see a digitally created face of the future baby.

To morph a child picture, BabyMaker relies on the revolutionary facial recognition technology from Luxand. The technology allows morphing two digital photos together to generate a high-resolution picture. To accomplish this, the program carefully analyzes the faces of the two would-be parents, detects their most prominent facial characteristics and applies some advanced mathematical transformations to generate an exact physical manifestation of a child. The quality of a source image doesn’t really matter. One can load in scratched, faded, or black and white photos and still get a color rich, high quality rendering of a baby face.

The software works like magic. To get started, the user should first load the digital image of a “father” and manipulate it - pan, zoom and rotate the photo to get a full frontal view of the face. The next step is to load the image of a “mother”. Once the photos are all in, the program makes some sophisticated calculations, and voila! In a couple of seconds, it shows a photorealistic picture of the future diaper wearer.

After the picture has been created, it can be shared with other people. To do so, the picture should be saved to a file. For more fun, the baby can be placed within a greeting card or a portrait frame in the other editor. Then the user can print the portrait and hang it on the wall, or email the greeting card to the beloved and have fun together!

BabyMaker is a fun program that becomes addictive after a little while. Once all the combinations with the spouse, partner and friends have been tried, users may find themselves spreading the genes throughout Hollywood!

For more information about the product or to download its free trial, visit http://www.luxand.com/babymaker

iTunes 8 finally hit the internet yesterday with all of the hype you would expect from Apple!

So What’s New?

Genius Playlists
Genius is one of the best features on the new iTunes8.  Genius allows users to add a song to a playlist and genius will find songs (based on statistical data from other users) to add to the playlist, hopefully saving you time and giving you a great mix of songs with little effort.

Genius also integrates (optional) with a mass audience by sharing your playlists, and selections to compare and add to the cloud of other playlists.  Thus giving Genius the ability to choose better matches.

Genius Sidebar
The Genius sidebar will recommend new songs to download/buy that are not already in your library based on what you are playing.  I love this feature, for me, this is huge, I always want to find ways to keep up with my genre’s and sometimes I am way to busy to listen to the radio, go to concerts, read on new artists, etc.  But with the music world changing quicker then ever, this is an AWESOME feature to stay “in” with the  tough “who’s hot” crowd.

Grid View
The grid view concept is nothing new to music management software.  Packages such as Windows Media player, WinAmp, and even Banshee (Linux) have been using grid view as a  way to consolidate space and provide relevant information about genres, artists, songs, etc for a long time now.

photo credit: mac_filko

HD TV Shows
The new agreement for Apple to sell HD TV shows is going over very well already. With competition from sites like Hulu Apple is stepping up the game with HD.  Most shows starting at just $2.99 an episode it looks like Apple has a real winner with this feature!  More and more people report every year watching more TV online then the year before.  With the Apple TV sales still doing very well, this new feature is going to further help the movement of TV on your PC!

New Visualizer
The new Visualizer will get you lost in a 3D-scape of spheres, ribbons, and lights that pulsate to the beat and tempo of the song you’re playing.

photo credit: mononexo

Conclusion

Certainly with all of the new changes iTunes8 have some awesome features that will makes you life much easier! Certainly this has to be one of the best things for iTunes since the iPod! iTunes is no longer just a music management/download platform but a full blow media center for your PC.  iTunes8 is taking desktop media to the next level once again with it’s easy to use interface and features which make it a delight to use.

I would recommend upgrading, I am glad I did, and certainly if Apple continues on this road to integrating multimedia into the PC as a center piece of usage we should see a consistant migration pattern to television on the PC.

Let the games begin!

Every year computer security becomes more of an issue then the year before.  As virus’ seem to pop out of the wood work more often, and seemingly are undetectable, many people are now investing more money then ever in anti-virus packages.

As the internet become more of a desktop application instead of a browser simply viewing files on a far-off server, users’ computers are more vulnerable then ever to attacks.  Free downloads, file sharing, and instant messengers are also to blame for the trend in virus infections.  For the business world virus’ cause upwards of $70-100 MILLION in damages and IT costs every single year, and the totals do no seem to be getting better any time soon.

The home computer is no different users need to be protected, and stay protected.  Virus infections are the number one software-related repairs problems among non-commercial users; and every year the total grows staggeringly higher as more internet users are skimping on Virus protection.

Below we will be reviewing the main players in the anti-virus world; so that you can make a much more informed decision next time you decide to buy security software.

We will be reviewing:
Kaspersky 7.0


Norton Anti-Virus 2008


McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008 with SiteAdvisor

What to look for?

There are so many things to look for when choosing your anti-virus program, but obviously one benchmark stands out from the rest; “how well does it detect virus’?”.  This is the major benchmark most important to most users but we will also be reviewing scan speed and boot speed; these three metrics are very important for most users.

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Scan Speed:
Kaspersky 7.0: 3
Norton Anti-Virus: 4
McAfee VirusScann Plus 2008: 3.5

Boot Speed:
Kaspersky 7.0: 4.5
Norton Anti-Virus: 2
McAfee VirusScann Plus 2008: 3

Virus Detection:
Kaspersky 7.0: 4.5
Norton Anti-Virus: 4
McAfee VirusScann Plus 2008: 4.5

Conclusion

All three packages have more then enough virus detection for 90% of users.  Users whom have kids which feel the need to download and install everything they find, file share over KaZzaA, Napster, and (Name your program) will probably need to go with Kaspersky 7.0 to get the top protection.  However it comes with a price, with slower scan and boot speeds this package will slow your computer down a bit when it’s running.  Also, it’s very typical of most “good” anti-virus programs to be a hit heavy on RAM when all protection features are activated, so which ever program you choose be sure to have adequate hardware resources.

Virus scanners are neccessary in todays world; there’s no getting around it.