Google Voice Extension for Chrome

If you’re like me, you’ll do anything to skip having an extra tab open for a web application. There’s a tab for my GMail, one for Google Reader, one Wordpress, Google Voice, the list goes on!
Well, Google’s Chrome support for extensions can keep you from having a few tabs open, with the GMail checker and the Google Wave notifier.
But until now, there was nothing for Google Voice.

Click to Call with the Google Voice Chrome extension

With Google’s new extension for Google Chrome, making phone calls directly from your web browser isn’t science-fiction any longer.

Just install the extension from this website, and you’re all ready to go.

Google has listed the following as features for this new extension:

• Adds a button to the toolbar, which displays the number of unread messages in your Google Voice inbox.
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• Gives you quick access to your most recent messages with transcripts.
• Lets you initiate calls and send free text messages by just typing any number or contact name.
• Makes phone numbers on websites callable via Google Voice by just clicking on them.

What’s good about this extension is that it integrates your browser with Google Voice and saves you the trouble of having to keep an additional window or tab open for Voice.

The extension page also mentions that it might not work perfectly on Macs. Any Mac users who can tell us how it’s going?

Add or Remove “New” Menu Items from Explorer’s Context Menu

By Jyotiprakash

 

Everyone knows the “New” submenu that is positioned in Windows Explorer’s right-click context menu.

You use it to create a new folder, text file, image, spreadsheet, etc.

However, sometimes this menu can get very crowded as you install more and more applications on your computer.

ShellNewHandler lets your Customise Explorer’s “New” Context Submenu

ShellNewHandler is a small, open source, portable application for Windows computers that serves the sole purpose of customising Windows Explorer’s “New” context submenu.

ShellNewHandler provides a list of all the filetypes that can be created using the “New” submenu.

Each item on this list has a check-box that you can use to enable or disable this item from appearing in the “New” submenu.

Usually, doing such a thing would require you to hunt deep in the Windows registry and add or delete keys, something that will intimidate ordinary mortals.

Instead, ShellNewHandler gives you a simple, easy interface to handle your “New” menu items:

ShellNewHandler is an free and open source application. You can download ShellNewHandler from SourceForge.

ShellNewHandler works on any version of Windows, though the creator intended it for Windows Vista.

Visual Studio 2010

At the Visual Studio 2010 launch event, you’ll be the first to experience what’s next in Visual Studio. You’ll get a head start on tomorrow’s application breakthroughs in immersive lab. And you will enjoy all the deep learning and community interaction that DevConnections offers around the breadth of Microsoft development technologies.

 

Set your ideas free

Create what you can imagine, build on the strengths of your team, and open up new possibilities.

• New prototyping, modeling, and visual design tools enable you to create innovative applications for Windows and the Web
• Create a shared vision as a foundation for creativity with SketchFlow ,in Microsoft Expression® Studio , and Team Foundation Server
• Take advantage of new opportunities & capabilities offered by multi-core programming and cloud development tools

Simplicity through integration

A single integrated development environment that takes your skills further and adjusts to the way you work.

• Complete all your coding, modeling, testing, debugging, and deployment work without leaving the Visual Studio 2010 environment
• Use existing standards and skills to target a growing number of application types including Microsoft SharePoint® and Windows^® Azure™
• Work your way through multi-monitor support, partner extensions, and a new editor.

Quality tools help ensure quality results

Powerful testing tools with proactive project management features help you build the right app the right way.

• Use the new IntelliTrace debugger to isolate the point of failure within a recorded application history.
• Stay ahead of the curve with proactive project management tools including new reports, dashboards, and planning worksheets.
• Know that you’ve built the right application the right way with manual and automated testing tools.

Apple patents hint at tablet's technology

History looks set to repeat itself tomorrow when a US firm will attempt to reinvent personal computing and encourage us to use touch-controlled "tablets" in place of keyboards and mice – or so strong rumours suggest.

But can Apple of Cupertino, California, do it more successfully than Microsoft did when it tried the same thing in 2003? Many reports are focussing on Apple taking on the book, textbook and newspaper markets with the device it is expected to unveil. Others suggest a major market will be gaming. But anyone with experience of tablet computers past – I trialled one in 2003 – will tell you that the most important thing for the firm to get right is the user interface.

The earlier tablets were fun, but the novelty wore off too quickly. Most of them were simply laptops that allowed you to twist the screen 180 degrees and fold it over the keyboard, making them heavy. And the stylus-centric touchscreen interaction just wasn't compelling enough. But a rash of patents filed by Apple suggest that going the next step beyond the iPhone's once-revolutionary touch interface may just be part of the plan for any tablet it launches.

How To Block Stealthy Malware Attacks

The spread of malicious software, also known as malware or computer viruses, is a growing problem that can lead to crashed computer systems, stolen personal information, and billions of dollars in lost productivity every year. One of the most insidious types of malware is a "rootkit," which can effectively hide the presence of other spyware or viruses from the user -- allowing third parties to steal information from your computer without your knowledge. But now researchers from North Carolina State University have devised a new way to block rootkits and prevent them from taking over your computer systems.

To give some idea of the scale of the computer malware problem, a recent Internet security threat report showed a 1,000 percent increase in the number of new malware signatures extracted from the in-the-wild malware programs found from 2006 to 2008. Of these malware programs, "rootkits are one of the stealthiest," says Dr. Xuxian Jiang, assistant professor of computer science at NC State and a co-author of the research. "Hackers can use rootkits to install and hide spyware or other programs. When you start your machine, everything seems normal but, unfortunately, you've been compromised."

Rootkits typically work by hijacking a number of "hooks," or control data, in a computer's operating system. "By taking control of these hooks, the rootkit can intercept and manipulate the computer system's data at will," Jiang says, "essentially letting the user see only what it wants the user to see." As a result, the rootkit can make itself invisible to the computer user and any antivirus software. Furthermore, the rootkit can install additional malware, such as programs designed to steal personal information, and make them invisible as well.

In order to prevent a rootkit from insinuating itself into an operating system, Jiang and the other researchers determined that all of an operating system's hooks need to be protected. "The challenging part is that an operating system may have tens of thousands of hooks -- any of which could potentially be exploited for a rootkit's purposes," Jiang says, "Worse, those hooks might be spread throughout a system. Our research leads to a new way that can protect all the hooks in an efficient way, by moving them to a centralized place and thus making them easier to manage and harder to subvert."

Jiang explains that by placing all of the hooks in one place, researchers were able to simply leverage hardware-based memory protection, which is now commonplace, to prevent hooks from being hijacked. Essentially, they were able to put hardware in place to ensure that a rootkit cannot modify any hooks without approval from the user.

Combining Six Photons Avoids Quantum Data Scrambling

In classical communications, a bit can represent one of two states - either 0 or 1. But because photons are quantum mechanical objects, they can exist in multiple states at the same time. Photons can also be combined, in a process known as entanglement, to store a bit of quantum information (i.e. a qubit).

Unlike data stored in a computer or typically sent through conventional fiber optic cables, however, qubits are extremely fragile. A kink in a cable, the properties of the cable material, or even changes in temperature can corrupt a qubit and destroy the information it carries. But now a group lead by Magnus Rådmark at Stockholm University has shown that six entangled photons can encode information that stands up to some knocking around.

Rådmark and his team proved experimentally that their six photon qubits are robust and should be able to reliably carry information over long distances. The technology to encode useful information on the qubits and subsequently read it back is still lacking, but once those problems are solved, we will be well on our way to secure, reliable, and speedy quantum communication.

Exotic Symmetry Seen in Ultracold Electrons

An international team, led by scientists from Oxford University, report in a recent article in Science how they spotted the symmetry, termed E8, in the patterns formed by the magnetic spins in crystals of the material cobalt niobate, cooled to near absolute zero and subject to a powerful applied magnetic field.

The material contains cobalt atoms arranged in long chains and each atom acts like a tiny bar magnet that can point either 'up' or 'down'.

When a magnetic field is applied at right angles to the aligned spin directions, the spins can 'quantum tunnel' between the 'up' and 'down' orientations. At a precise value of the applied field these fluctuations 'melt' the ferromagnetic order of the material resulting in a 'quantum critical' state.

'You might expect to see random fluctuations of the spins at this critical point but what we uncovered was a remarkable structure in the resonances of the magnetic spins indicating a perfectly harmonious state,' said Radu Coldea from Oxford University's Department of Physics who led the team.

As the critical state was approached the researchers observed that the chain of atoms behaved like a 'magnetic guitar string'.

Radu added: 'The tension comes from the interaction between spins causing them to magnetically resonate. We found a series of resonant modes. Close to the critical field the two lowest resonant frequencies approached closely the golden ratio 1.618…, a characteristic signature of the predicted E8 symmetry.'

He is convinced that this is no coincidence and it reflects a subtle form of order present in the quantum system.

The resonant states seen experimentally in cobalt niobate may be our first glimpse of complex symmetries that can occur in the quantum world. "The results suggest that similar 'hidden' symmetries may also govern the physics of other materials near quantum critical points where electrons organize themselves according to quantum rules for strong interactions,' Radu told us.

The research was supported by EPSRC and Radu aims to use a new EPSRC grant to explore the physics of materials near quantum criticality.

'Universal' Programmable Two-Qubit Quantum Processor

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated the first "universal" programmable quantum information processor able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics -- the rules governing the submicroscopic world -- using two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be a module in a future quantum computer, which theoretically could solve some important problems that are intractable today.

The NIST processor stores binary information (1s and 0s) in two beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms), which are held in an electromagnetic trap and manipulated with ultraviolet lasers. Two magnesium ions in the trap help cool the beryllium ions.

NIST scientists can manipulate the states of each beryllium qubit, including placing the ions in a "superposition" of both 1 and 0 values at the same time, a significant potential advantage of information processing in the quantum world. Scientists also can "entangle" the two qubits, a quantum phenomenon that links the pair's properties even when the ions are physically separated.

With these capabilities, the NIST team performed 160 different processing routines on the two qubits. Although there are an infinite number of possible two-qubit programs, this set of 160 is large and diverse enough to fairly represent them, Hanneke says, making the processor "universal." Key to the experimental design was use of a random number generator to select the particular routines that would be executed, so all possible programs had an equal chance of selection. This approach was chosen to avoid bias in testing the processor, in the event that some programs ran better or produced more accurate outputs than others.

Ions are among several promising types of qubits for a quantum computer. If they can be built, quantum computers have many possible applications such as breaking today's most widely used encryption codes, such as those that protect electronic financial transactions. In addition to its possible use as a module of a quantum computer, the new processor might be used as a miniature simulator for interactions in any quantum system that employs two energy levels, such as the two-level ion qubit systems that represent energy levels as 0s and 1s. Large quantum simulators could, for example, help explain the mystery of high-temperature superconductivity, the transmission of electricity with zero resistance at temperatures that may be practical for efficient storage and distribution of electric power.

The new paper is the same NIST research group's third major paper published this year based on data from experiments with trapped ions. They previously demonstrated sustained quantum information processing and entanglement in a mechanical system similar to those in the macroscopic everyday world. NIST quantum computing research contributes to advances in national priority areas, such as information security, as well as NIST mission work in precision measurement and atomic clocks.

In the latest NIST experiments reported in Nature Physics, each program consisted of 31 logic operations, 15 of which were varied in the programming process. A logic operation is a rule specifying a particular manipulation of one or two qubits. In traditional computers, these operations are written into software code and performed by hardware.

The programs did not perform easily described mathematical calculations. Rather, they involved various single-qubit "rotations" and two-qubit entanglements. As an example of a rotation, if a qubit is envisioned as a dot on a sphere at the north pole for 0, at the south pole for 1, or on the equator for a balanced superposition of 0 and 1, the dot might be rotated to a different point on the sphere, perhaps from the northern to the southern hemisphere, making it more of a 1 than a 0.

Each program operated accurately an average of 79 percent of the time across 900 runs, each run lasting about 37 milliseconds. To evaluate the processor and the quality of its operation, NIST scientists compared the measured outputs of the programs to idealized, theoretical results. They also performed extra measurements on 11 of the 160 programs, to more fully reconstruct how they ran and double-check the outputs.

Mozilla’s JetPack Prepares to Take On Chrome Extensions

By Jyotiprakash

 

Mozilla Labs has announced the release of JetPack 0.7, an update to the new extensions framework for Firefox. It lets people use common web development tools like HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build browser add-ons.

Eventually, Mozilla plans to incorporate JetPack into a future Firefox release.�� JetPack will most likely make its way into Firefox 3.7, which is due during summer 2010, or Firefox 4.0, due at the end of next year. At the moment, however, interested developers can grab the JetPack add-on that allows JetPack to work within current version of Firefox. Yes, for now JetPack is an add-on for installing add-ons.

JetPack is designed to make it easy for anyone with basic web developer skills to build Firefox extensions. While JetPack was innovative when Mozilla first announced it, Google has since added an extension system to its Chrome browser that works on the same principles as JetPack — using web-based tools like HTML and CSS. It would be nice if Chrome extensions would work with JetPack and vice versa, but differences between the underlying browsers make such compatibility unlikely.

Jetpack is still an experimental Labs project, but the 0.7 release sees JetPack moving closer to a stable project. Among the new features in this release are a unified first-run API that explains JetPack for new users, as well as some improvements to UI elements like status-bar widgets. The latest version also restores the debugging features available through Firebug.

There are also quite a few more working JetPack extensions available than last time we checked in with JetPack. the new extensions include a very handy tool for web developers: CSS Refresh can refresh the CSS on a page without reloading the whole page.

High-carbon future

CARBON is a dirty word. We burn too much of it, producing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that threatens to wreck our planet's climate for generations to come. Before that it was the villain of the piece in the guise of the soot that poured from factory chimneys and turned cities black. It has a lot to live down.

Now our long-time enemy could be on the brink of becoming our high-tech best friend. As we learn to shape carbon on the nanoscale - into tubes and sheets, balls and ribbons - entirely new and unexpected vistas are opening up. The carbon atoms that were forged in the furnace of the universe's stars can be woven together into materials that may help gather energy from our own star. Similar materials promise to make our electronic world run with unprecedented efficiency, and may even hold the secret to eking out precious reserves of oil.

 

Carbon's potential stems from the fact that it is multitalented. Collections of carbon atoms will happily assemble themselves into a multitude of structures, from diamond to graphite, but these familiar forms are just the beginning. In the past few decades we have learned about the soccer-ball-shaped spheres called buckyballs, soon followed by the microscopic rolls of chicken wire we know as carbon nanotubes. Now they have been joined by graphene, sheets of carbon that are just one atom thick.

Of these many intriguing structures, graphene is causing the biggest stir. This is partly because of its unusual combination of properties: its two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms combines fantastic electrical conductivity with a strength tens of times that of steel in a material that is transparent to visible light. Best of all, we have finally learned how to make it.

Artificial leaf could make green hydrogen

HIDDEN detail in the natural world could hold the key to future sources of clean energy. So say materials scientists who have created an artificial leaf that can harness light to split water and generate hydrogen.

Plant leaves have evolved over millions of years to catch the energy in the sun's rays very efficiently. They use the energy to produce food, and the central step in the process involves splitting water molecules and creating hydrogen ions.

By mimicking the machinery plants use to do this, it is possible to create a miniature hydrogen factory, says Tongxiang Fan of The State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. "Using sunlight to split water molecules and form hydrogen fuel is one of the most promising tactics for kicking our carbon habit

Robot border guards to patrol future frontiers

A MIGRANT makes a furtive dash across an unwalled rural section of a national border, only to be confronted by a tracked robot that looks like a tiny combat tank - with a gimballed camera for an eye. As he passes the bug-eyed droid, it follows him and a border guard's voice booms from its loudspeaker. He has illegally entered the country, he is warned, and if he does not turn back he will be filmed and followed by the robot, or by an airborne drone, until guards apprehend him.

Welcome to the European border of the not-too-distant future. Amid the ever-present angst over illegal immigration, cross-border terrorism and contraband smuggling, some nations are turning to novel border-surveillance technologies, potentially backed up by robots, a conference on state security at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, heard in November. The idea is to scatter arrays of sensors in a border area in ways that give guards or robots plenty of time to respond before their targets make good an escape.

The need to secure borders is evident across the globe, from India - which is constructing a 3400-kilometre, 3-metre-high barbed-wire and concrete border wall to close itself off from Bangladesh - to Libya, where foot patrols are being augmented with new people-sensing technologies.

Libya has an agreement with the European Union to try to limit the flow of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa traversing its borders before crossing the Mediterranean and entering Italy. To help it enforce this deal, Libya is spending €300 million on technology for what it calls a "large border security and control system", made by Selex Sistemi Integrati, part of Italian aerospace firm Finmeccanica. Selex says its command, control and communication technology will include all the computers and software necessary to make sense of the data gathered by a raft of different sensors on the Libyan border. Project details remain under wraps, but Selex already makes acoustic, infrared and remote-imaging sensors, which could find uses in border control.

The Nuclear Age

The Earth exploded into the nuclear age on 16 July 1945. On that day, the US tested a completely new type of weapon in the New Mexico desert. Crafted from a tennis-ball-sized plutonium sphere, the Trinity bomb produced an explosion equivalent to 20,000 tonnes of TNT.

Sixty years on, tens of thousands of tonnes of plutonium and enriched uranium have been produced. The global nuclear arsenal stands at about 27,000 bombs. Nine countries very probably possess nuclear weapons, while 40 others have access to the materials and technology to make them.

But nuclear technology has also been used for peaceful means. The first nuclear reactor to provide electricity to a national grid opened in England in 1956. Now, 442 reactors in 32 nations generate 16% of the world's electricity.

Nuclear power has been championed as a source of cheap energy. But this was undermined at the end of the 20^th century by high-profile reactor accidents, the problems of radioactive waste disposal, competition from more-efficient electricity sources and unavoidable links to nuclear weapons proliferation. Nonetheless, growing evidence for global warming had led some to argue that nuclear power is the only way to generate power without emitting greenhouse gases.

How touch screens could shrug off shoulder surfers

THE touch screen is fast becoming our favourite way to interact with computers, from sleek smartphones to the upcoming tablet PCs. Brightly lit, responsive screens are certainly pleasing to use, but they also make it easier for "shoulder surfers" to spy your secret pass codes.

Cellphone users typically spare little thought for such security issues, but as handsets become better equipped to deal with mobile banking and e-commerce applications, shoulder surfing will only increase. New methods of secure pass-code entry for touch screens aim to tackle the problem.

It's not just a question of finding a dark corner and shielding the screen with your hand as you punch in your codes, says Paul Dunphy, a computer scientist at Newcastle University in the UK. For one thing, this is often unpractical. "You need one hand to hold the phone," he points out. But since smartphones are used in all kinds of scenarios, the bar needs to be raised so that even if someone is watching you enter a code, they can't make use of it, says Patrick Olivier, also at Newcastle University.

Reinventing the trusty four-digit PIN is well-trodden ground and already includes a range of alternatives, such as gaze-tracking or fingerprints, but such efforts often require new hardware, says Olivier. Now, with screens that can detect multiple simultaneous touches becoming the norm, new possibilities are emerging, he says.

microbes are smarter than you thought

The vast majority of species on Earth are single-celled. Most of these languish in obscurity – many have never even been named – but some of the relatively few species that have been studied exhibit remarkable abilities.

Many of these are physical: some micro-organisms are amazingly strong; others can hibernate for hundreds of thousands of years or thrive in environments so extreme that they would kill off most other life forms in a flash.

But many bacteria and protists also exhibit behaviour that looks remarkably intelligent. This behaviour isn't the result of conscious thought – the sort you find in humans and other complex animals – because single-celled organisms don't have nervous systems, let alone brains.

Computer Viruses

Any computer connected to the internet faces a daunting range of electronic threats. Perhaps the biggest single threat to any computer is the humble software bug. Seemingly innocuous programming errors can be exploited to force entry into a computer and also provide the weak spots that allow computer worms and viruses to proliferate.

Many software bugs will simply cause a computer to crash. But an expert programmer can sometimes figure out how to make a computer malfunction in a creative way, so that it provides access to secure parts of a system, or shares protected data.

When a software vulnerability is revealed, it is often a race against the clock to apply the correct software patch before an attacker can convert the bug into an "exploit" that can be used to cause major damage.

SmartBook

There's been no shortage of new mobile computer designs being shown off at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week. For established categories such as laptops and their pared-down alter ego the netbook, the advances are largely predictable: thinner, lighter and more powerful. But grappling for attention in the thronged conference calls, several computer makers have been loudly proclaiming that what consumers really need is a new class of device altogether: the smartbook.

The smartbook, its promoters suggest, will fill a gap in the market between smartphones and netbooks. But does such a gap exist?

The smartbook makers are betting that netbooks – small laptops optimised for mobile internet browsing – are still too large and too slow to boot up for users to carry everywhere they go, whereas existing smartphones are too small to run rich media satisfactorily and not powerful enough for serious applications.

However, judging by the Cambrian explosion of devices tagged as smartbooks at CES, there is little agreement about what constitutes such a device.

The form factors range from the familiar – swivel-screen netbooks and over-sized cellphones – to the novel, such as a dual-screen device from Virginia-based Entourage, which combines a touch-sensitive e-reader with a multi-touch netbook-style screen.