Check out this website I found at twitter.com
Thursday, March 11, 2010
your Daily dose of Christina Hendricks
Christina Hendricks bustin’ loose at Sir Elton John’s Oscar after party - THE ZEITGEISTY REPORT
How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 RC after installation | ithinkdifferent
AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) enables native command queuing and hot-plugging through SATA host controllers (Serial-ATA) for your hard drives. In many scenarios it enables more efficient multi-tasking. Vista was the first Windows OS to support AHCI out of the box, where as Windows 7 does the same. But an issue with AHCI is that if you install the OS without enabling AHCI in the BIOS, enabling it after installation will render your OS unusable. This is because Windows disable the AHCI driver since it is not needed during the installation.
There is one way to fix this, although you need to have knowledge of registry editing. The detailed steps from Microsoft are as follows:
To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:
- Exit all Windows-based programs.
- Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
- If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
- Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesMsahci
- In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
- In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
- On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
After this you’ll have to restart your computer, go to BIOS and enable AHCI. When you log in to Windows again, you’ll notice the installation of drivers for AHCI. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation.
I’ve simplified the steps by Microsoft by exporting the registry key. Just download the following file and run it. You’ll still need to go through the steps of restarting your computer and enabling AHCI in the BIOS.
Hopefully, you’ll find a somewhat noticeable improvement in multitasking, specially if you’re a notebook user. Of course with the variety of PC hardware, experience many vary.
Disclaimer:
Beware though, you’re responsible on your own for messing around with the registry. This guide comes with no warranties if your computer blows up, gets angry at you, stops working or just shows a Blue Screen of Death.
via ithinkdiff.com
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Two keys to Google’s success: “paranoia” and “relentless brutality” | Good Morning Silicon Valley
Two keys to Google’s success: “paranoia” and “relentless brutality”
Posted by John Murrell on March 4th, 2010 at 6:57 am | Categorized as Uncategorized | Tagged as Google
With its daily presence in the tech headlines and its steady output of new products and features, we are well aware that Google never stands still, but who knew it was running scared? Listening to the remarks of John Herlihy, the company’s global ad operations chief, at a Dublin conference Wednesday, you might figure Andy Grove’s “Only the Paranoid Survive” is required reading around the Googleplex.
One of the fears driving the company right now, Herlihy said, is the possibility of upstart competitors gaining a beachhead in mobile search and advertising before Google is able to fully extend its hegemony. “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant,” he declared (perhaps a tad prematurely). “In Japan, most research is done today on smartphones, not PCs. … Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models — ubiquity first, revenue later. … The fear is the next Sergey and Larry will come up with a disruptive technology or service that will eliminate the need for Google. … There is a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs to end the need for Google. It’s our challenge not to let that happen by continuing to drive innovation and value. … Customers today have more choices and are more aware of our competitors’ offerings. Unless we can serve them 24/7, 365 days a year, competitors will eat our lunch. There is a level of paranoia there.”
So how does Google maintain its pace and sense of urgency? Through a Shiva-like dance of constant creation and destruction performed with “relentless brutality and execution,” said Herlihy. “Here’s an analogy,” he said. “The Roman legions used to send out scouts in different directions. If a scout didn’t return, the army didn’t head in that direction. We seek feedback at every opportunity on something — we either kill it, adjust it or redeploy resources. … We seek ubiquity and then pray for luck. We learn from bad decisions. If something is wrong, we kill it as soon as possible, take everybody out and move onto a different project as soon as possible.” And the process of regular and rigorous reviews extends to people as well as projects. “We measure people every 90 days,” Herlihy said. “We get 360-degree feedback on people every 180 days and that feedback is published to the whole company. People want reality. Ninety percent of the rewards end up going to 10 percent of the people.”
And indeed, the run of news out of Google on Wednesday provided evidence of this on-the-fly recalibration at work. About 15 months ago, Google rolled out a feature called SearchWiki that gave users the ability to re-rank and supplement search results so that that for a given query, their preferred sites would always show up at the top (see “Google: Here’s a new feature to help you serve us better“). Turns out, according to the feedback, that people liked the idea of marking certain search results available for future reference without adding to their bookmark clutter, but weren’t crazy about making extensive personal alterations to Google’s organic results. The result? SearchWiki is dead, replaced by a simpler “star” system that lets users designate favorite sites, then, in later searches, see their starred sites listed separately above the organic results. Considering Herlihy’s remarks, we can assume that if this approach fails to achieve ubiquity quickly enough, it too will be taken out behind the barn and shot.
Meanwhile, in other news from the Googleverse:
* Fresh out of Google Labs is a new app for mobile devices running Android 2.0 and up called Gesture Search, which lets you search for contacts, bookmarks and applications on your phone by drawing alphabet gestures on the touchscreen. Google says this should come in handy for times when existing search methods — tapping, typing or speaking — are inappropriate. Frankly, it’s hard for me to imagine running into to too many such situations, but the app is still pretty cool.
* Word out of the Search Marketing Expo is that Google is working on a system to let Web publishers of any size submit new content for indexing immediately upon publication, rather than waiting for Google’s spiders to come along and collect it.
* As part of its efforts in the area of smarter home energy management, Google has published an API that will allow manufacturers to build household devices able to communicate with the Google PowerMeter service, enabling plug-level monitoring of electricity consumption.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
How does Google Voice know who's calling?
Rather than using Verizon's voicemail, I use Google Voice to handle my voicemail. And I have really enjoyed the switch, overall I am very happy with Google Voice.
But here's my question: Someone will call me from a Private number, meaning their phone number doer does not show on my phone while the phone is ringing. That's fairly standard. Then they leave a voicemail and Google voice alerts me that I have a new voicemail, but it says "Unknown" for the caller, Again, that's what I would expect. Here's the part that confuses/amazes me. I have Google Voice set up to email me, alerting me to the fact that I have a new voicemail, inside the email I can view the transcript and play the play message. But here the thing, the email notification knows who called me. That Unknown caller that showed up in the Google Voice web app is now identified in the email. How is this possible?
Is google voice comparing the voice in the message to my other messages and figuring out who's calling me based on voice recognition? Is Google voice able to see through the 'Private Number' mask and see who's actually calling? Whats going on?
I don't suspect any foul play, and I don't believe in any nefarious Google conspiracy plots. But I am amazed at this. Further more, I always suspected that one of the by products of Google voice was that it would allow Goggles servers to get better at voice recognition. From storing thousands if not millions of voice mails on its servers, it would have the opportunity to analyze and learn the human voice. This in turn would help Google provide more apps and functions that rely on voice recognition. And as we have learned lately, Android 2.1 will add more voice functionality to its Android phones.
Am I crazy of does this make sense?
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Makers of the Dyson vaccuum have developed a new type of house fan
via dyson.com
It looks bizzarre but also kind of awesome. If its as good as their vaccuum then I will probably buy one.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
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