LaymansTech.com

The best household cleaner, germ killer, stain remover is… tap water?

Brian Roginski — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:41:49 +0000

I am about to introduce a household cleaning paradigm shifter in a bottle. The product you are going to read about is truly remarkable, innovative and game changing if you are into household cleaning or buy any household cleaning products that use chemicals. Using a deceptively simple technology (really it is highly sophisticated and complex) best showcased by none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy in the video below and by reading about it here, a company called ActiveIon has created a battery powered cleaning spray that get this… only uses tap water.

Here is a list of some interesting things this technology is capable of:

It doesn’t just break up dirt and make it easier to clean up but it actually sanitizes killing 99.9% of all bacteria without any chemicals like the ones used in the arsenal of household cleaning products all over your house.
Leaves no residue like soapy cleaners, the activated ions in the water actively break apart dirt molecules as the surface is saturated in the end you are just wiping up a water splotch.
Think of the environmental impact! If everyone adopted this technology think of the MILLIONS of plastic bottles and harmful chemicals that would stay out of landfills.
Because it is just water it is not harmful if ingested. This means you don’t have to lock away all those scary bottles from your kids and pets.

So you might ask, if this really works and if charging water really worked as a good cleaner, somebody would have created this ages ago… Well this is not the case, while the science of electrolysis is over 100 years old ActiveIon only began developing breakthroughs in this science beginning in 2008. The product most likely never took off because of the high price tag at initial release but the prices have since come down as it is more widely adopted and creating a greater economy of scale.

I will leave you with the video and this interesting fact:

The average household spends more than $78 a year on an arsenal of cleaning products like glass cleaner, surface cleaner, sanitizer, wood cleaner, shower cleaner etc… all of which can be eliminated by a single product that is ECO FRIENDLY.

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Intuitive computing using the objects around us

Brian Roginski — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:13:09 +0000

In a world where we are confined to machines for our technological and informative needs there is a paradigm shift on the horizon where we will actually be able to interact with the physical objects around us and the world of computing will be seamlessly blended with the world of technology and information. This idea of interacting with objects in this way is best described by seeing an example for yourself. In the embedded TED video Pranav Mistry showcases his SixthSense technology that will be used in the future to create a more interactive world. The most amazing thing about his technology is that he will release it as open source software so anything you could imagine doing with a physical object from projecting images on any surface to looking at a map in the newspaper and having real time weather projected onto the surface to pinching text from a physical book and pasting it to the surface of another object or dragging it to your computer screen all with simple intuitive hand gestures will be possible. After watching the video feel free to post useful ways you could see people using this technology in the comments section.

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Hypem MP3 track cleaning application

Brian Roginski — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:02:43 +0000

Here it is! The Hype Machine track cleansing application…

Now you can automatically clean up all your mp3’s you download using the technique in my article: http://laymanstech.com/?p=74 by simply selecting the input directory with all your dirty tracks and then a directory to output the clean tracks. This will work on any dirty mp3 files. It grabs the ID3 bits encoded into the file and translates them into Album, Title, Artist etc… then renames the song title and depending on the options you select you can output the file in a folder structure like Artist/Album/NameOfSong.mp3 or just NameOfSong.mp3.

Here it is! The Hype Machine track cleansing application…

Now you can automatically clean up all your mp3’s you download using the technique in my article: http://laymanstech.com/?p=74 by simply selecting the input directory with all your dirty tracks and then a directory to output the clean tracks. This will work on any dirty mp3 files in any input directory you specify in the app. It grabs the ID3 bits encoded into the file and translates them into Album, Title, Artist etc… then renames the song title and depending on the options you select you can output the file in a folder structure like Artist/Album/NameOfSong.mp3 or just NameOfSong.mp3. You can download the source below or the application exe.

Dirty Tracks (the tracks downloaded off Hype Machine or pandora):

Clean Tracks (Titles only selected)

Clean Tracks added to new directory structure:

Source: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/526440/HypeTracks.rar

Application: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/526440/HypeTracks.exe

Download The Songs You Listen To On Pandora! For all you Pandora fans out there, I have put...

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Why Should You Get Windows 7? Well, Make an Informed Decision.

Brian Roginski — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:13:28 +0000

Navigating the abundant new features of an operating system release like Windows 7 can seem a bit overwhelming, I mean, what do you need to pay attention to and how do you justify the upgrade expense? With that said our friends at Microsoft have released a product guide that caters to Laymen and professionals alike. Full of incredible details providing a look at the many new features that make new things possible, simplify your every day tasks and unlike Vista show how Windows 7 works the way you want it to. Aside from careful attention to detail and Layman approved explanations there are some great screen captures to give you a visual walk-through of all the amazing features Windows 7 has to offer. So, before you go out and jump on the bandwagon make an informed decision, sit down and take a look at what Windows 7 has to offer to determine whether or not you really need to make the jump. After all, your PC is a tool you use on a daily basis so if a half hour of your time to read through the guide is all it takes to be that much more informed, why not? You can pick up the guide here: Windows 7 guide

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Judgement Day? Religious Movement? or New Period of Rapid Evolution? What is Singularity…?

Brian Roginski — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:55:16 +0000

Fully immersive virtual reality, mind uploading, extended life, cyborgs, Utopian society and pathogen killing nanobots…

First off, while you read through this article make sure you have your Terminator theme song playing on loop for the most transcendent experience possible.
Terminator Soundtrack - Classic

Singularity… the theory coined by renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil paraphrased in its simplest form is as follows:

“The functionality of the human brain is quantifiable in terms of technology that we can build in the near future.” When artificial or non-biological intelligence has the capacity to think like we humans do it will be able to access its own’ design’ or source code and rapidly redesign itself, essentially the evolutionary process would be sped up at an exponential rate and artificial intelligence would soar past human brain processing capability. AI would take over all further development at such an alarming rate humans would not even be able to comprehend what was going on…

Currently average computer processors can run billions of bits per second, thanks to the internet computers are also able to share information instantaneously… Now, imagine this; The inner workings of the Human Brain have been quantified. With a synergy between human intelligence and AI processing speed a ‘human’ could now have billions of thoughts per second and be connected on a conscious level with other connected ‘humans’ processing billions of thoughts at the same time and all this information can be stored and retrieved instantly… This unfathomable event is a lot closer to feasibility than you might think. With processing speed, bandwidth, capacity and many other types of measures increasing at an exponential rate, see Moor’s Law, Artificial Intelligence will completely take over the cutting edge of all scientific research and development, and will generate new advancements (including improvements to their own programming) so quickly that normal humans will not be able to follow what is going on. By this point, the Singularity will definitely have been reached.”

Courtesy of Wikipedia we have a timeline to walk us through this natural technological progression that ultimately leads to Singularity. When you break this timeline down, and put all the converging technologies in place it really does seem like Singularity is imminent:

Future technology predictions

Implications:

1. From Xbox graphics to fully Immersive Virtual Reality: Yes, 3D rendering will become so realistic it will be indistinguishable from the real thing. Add nanobots into the mix and you will be able to experience all of the human senses in a virtual world. Hello Smellivision.

If the word ‘nanobots’ is too Sci-Fi for you, guess what? the technology already exists and has largely been fueled by its potential uses for medical applications.

2. With nanobots and nanotechnology in general, we should be able to “explore and analyze living systems in greater detail than ever before considered possible”. Imagine nanobots injected into the brain allowing us to map the inner workings of the brain using a bottom up approach where on a molecular level we can paint a big picture of exactly how the brain works… Or, imagine nanobots programmed to identify and destroy deadly pathogens like HIV in a sort of inner body star wars.

“Autonomous molecular machines, operating in the human body, could monitor levels of different compounds and store that information in internal memory. They could determine both their location and the time. Thus, information could be gathered about changing conditions inside the body, and that information could be tied to both the location and the time of collection. Physical samples of small volumes (nano tissue samples) could likewise be taken.

These molecular machines could then be filtered out of the blood supply and the stored information (and samples) could be analyzed. This would provide a picture of activities within healthy or injured tissue. This new knowledge would give us new insights and new approaches to curing the sick and healing the injured.”

3. Once the brain has been mapped this makes room for other cool applications like “mind uploading” (Mind Uploading which would essentially be the ability to upload our thoughts to a computer for later retrieval. This is where the religious and cult-like concepts surrounding Singularity come in to play because if this happens the consciousness of an individual human mind could be literally ‘Saved’ and therefore you would exist forever, at least on a conscious level. Nanotechnology would also be so advanced at this point that molecular machines could find and replace deteriorating cells and rebuild our DNA so that we would appear to be ‘Forever Young’.

4. From a Terminator Judgement day perspective, we wouldn’t be overrun by giant human looking machines but rather by swarms of self replicating nanobots that can convert matter at an atomic level into intelligent computational substrate. See “Waking up the Universe” at the end of the wikipedia article on Future Predictions below.

5. Potential for world war? Absolutely, as technology begins to rapidly change accepted paradigms naturally a lot of people will be enraged by the emergence of new tech. therefore threatening the mentality of “the way things were” in regards to the nature of human life as radical life extension, genetic engineering, and cybernetics begin to reign supreme.

Even if this timeline is somewhat off, our generation is in for some incredible changes and amazing experiences within the next 40 years.

Feel free to post other implications you can think of in the comments below!
Make sure to check out the Q & A with Futurist Ray Kurzweil: Q & A

Videos

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How-To: Access Your PC Media and Stream From Anywhere on Any Device with Tversity

Brian Roginski — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:29:21 +0000

Tversity Walkthrough

Today I am going to show you how you can set up a Media Server to stream your music, videos, photos and playlists via the internet so that you may access your media content anywhere from almost any internet connected device. If you are not familiar with exactly what a Media Server is or how it works don’t fret. Essentially it is just software that allows for your computer to send out content when it is requested to do so. Whenever you click on a youtube video for example, you are requesting that the video be played and the server acknowledges that request and sends you the video which is then played in your browser. This system works the same way. We are going to be using a free software called Tversity to do this along with a few minor configurations to your home network. When configured correctly you will be able to access all of your media content on your PC either from another room in the house streamed to devices you already own like your Xbox360, Playstation3 and even the Wii (assuming these devices are all connected to your wi-fi). Or, if you are on the go you will be able to access your media from a web browser wherever you have an internet connection and even from your iphone! You can check out some of the other Tversity features here: http://tversity.com/download/features. Once we are all set up I will show you some of the other Tversity features like its ability to connect to your Hulu and youTube accounts so that all your videos and favorite shows are consolidated in one place alongside the content you already have.

For a brief overview of all this before you get started check out this link for videos and screenshots:

http://tversity.com/screenshots/

Lets Get Started!

Installation

1. Go to www.tversity.com and click the download button at the top of the screen to get the latest version. Make sure to get the Pro Edition , this is free but you are asked to make a donation if you enjoy using it.

2. Once the download is complete, run the installation.

3. Agree to the terms, and click next until you arrive at the following screen:

4. Make sure all the options are selected, especially the firewall configuration option as this is necessary to get access to your files through the firewall remotely.

5. If you have a youtube and/or hulu account go ahead and enter your login on the next screen and all your content from each service will be added to Tversity when the installation completes.

6. On the next screen go ahead and click finish to complete the installation. Once Tversity starts we will get down to the nitty gritty of configuring this thing.

Add your Media to Tversity

1. Click Library on the top menu.

2. From this screen you can add or remove your media folders that exist on your PC to Tversity so that they can be accessed by your devices or from the web. I created a folder for My music, one for My Pictures, and one for My Videos. You can do this by clicking the Add Item top right menu and clicking browse… to search for the folder you want to add.

3. Next we want our menu to look just like it does in our file system so click on the Media Library icon on the left side of the screen and under Media Library Menus select File System. Your will now be navigated the same way it would be as if you were using windows.

4. Up to this point, your media should now be accessible from your devices at home and Tversity should be automatically detected on your Xbox 360, your Playstation 3, and your Wii. For more information on configuring Tversity for these devices if you are having trouble go here: http://tversity.com/support/

Tversity Configuration for Web Access

Before we begin you, should click on the Settings menu option at the top, this is where we will do most of our setup so that we have access to our media remotely and from all our desired devices. You should now see a screen like this:

1. Our first option is to select a Media Playback Device, we will leave this as Auto Detect so that no matter what device we are trying to connect with, Tversity will stay compatible. You can see in the dropdown the list of devices that work with this service is quite extensive.

2. The next option, Media Sharing is basically what turns Tversity on or off. This should read “Tversity Media Server is running” in order for your files to be accessible.

3. The Temporary Media Files option can keep its default value of 8192 MB for now.

4. This last option, Home Network is very important for getting this up and running. To do this we will need to follow the guide below:

Set up a static IP address for your computer

This is necessary to uniquely identify your computer from other internet devices in your home. See the videos at the end of this article and visit the links for more information on how to do this correctly in either Vista or Windows XP. Once you have completed this you should now know what IP number can be used to connect to your computer. Now we just need to know how to connect to your home network , to do that we need to get your home network IP address.

If you are lost at this point think of it this way, your home network IP is like the phone number you would use to call a business. That business may have a lot of people working for it just like you might have a lot of internet devices in your home. Each individual in this business has his or her own extension number that can be used after you dialed in to the business to reach a specific individual, the same goes for connecting to your home network to access a specific device. That extension is basically the same thing as your static IP address.

When I finished this I set my Static IP Address to 192.168.1.50 , you may have specified something else but I recommend using the same as I did.

Now, back to the Home Network option in the Tversity settings panel, enter your Static IP number into the IP address box, leave the Port number as the default value of 41952 and check the box below, assign a username and password and click SAVE.

5. Now we need to configure our router to forward all requests to use Tversity to our computer, so please note the Port number from the previous step as this will basically say, any requests to use Tversity will connect to the computer with IP address {your IP static IP here} when port 41952 is specified, this will become clearer in the next steps.

6. In your browser window type 192.168.1.1 (this is the IP of your home router), you will be prompted for a username and password. If you never specified a username or password when you originally set up your router it will be the default of something like username: admin password: password. The default login information is usually on the bottom of the router. The following screen will differ depending on whether or not you are using a linksys router, a netgear router, etc… Somewhere in the menu there should be an option titled Port Forwarding.

When you click this option you should see a screen that looks something like the following, you will need to enter the port number for the service “Tversity” and specify your Static IP address 192.168.1.1 we set earlier:

for more information on port forwarding if you are having trouble please visit this site: http://portforward.com/

Secondly, not all routers have this setting but some do. If you see a WAN Setup option, click it and if there is an option titled Respond to Ping on Internet Port select it. WAN stands for Wide Area Network, by enabling this you are basically saying the following: “if you want devices to be able to connect to this router from the internet remotely (WAN), and you have services like Tversity set up with an assigned port number, enable connections”.

Assigning a Web Address to your PC

1. The last thing we need to do is create a friendly web address so that we can connect to our home network. To begin open your browser and go to www.dyndns.com and create an account, once set up correctly this service will allow us to enter something like www.BriansMedia.dyndns.tv into the browser instead of 192.151.12.45 to connect to our home network which is harder to remember. This service basically automatically detects the IP of your home network and assigns it to a website address you specify as seen above.

2. Once you have an account login and do the following:

a) click Services on the top menu.

b) on the following screen click the Dynamic DNS option under Domain Services

c) next select Dynamic DNS Free and when that page opens click the Get Started button on the right hand side.

d) Follow the instructions, chose a hostname (I chose myMedia.dyndns.tv), for the service type select Host with IP address and lastly click the Use auto detected IP address to determine your home network IP and assign that to your Hostname you specified. When finished it should look something like this:

3. Now that we have finished this step, we should be all set! You should now be able to open your browser and enter your Hostname followed by the port number we specified in step 4 that tells us what computer has been assigned requests originating from that port. Just enter your web address you created earlier (http://Mymedia.dyndns.tv:41952)

Your can now navigate through your pictures, music and video and play or view all of these files from your internet browser!

Alternatively you can also access the iPhone interface by adding /iphone at the end when viewing in your iPhones browser (http://myMedia.dyndns.tv:41952/iphone)

Setting a Static IP in Vista

Setting a Static IP in Windows XP

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Gadgets: Nikon Projector Camera

Brian Roginski — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:32:08 +0000

Now you can show off your latest photos easier than ever. No mess no fuss, there are no cords necessary to share photos on a big screen with this innovative point and shoot camera. The camera incorporates a built in projector that beams photos to any wall or flat surface. Boasting 12.1 Megapixels your wall-size photos show up in crystal clear quality. Even the Layman can handle pressing a single button to beam his photos in awe inspiring clarity!

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Print Any of Your Own Photos From Any Device… On Canvas!? What!??

Brian Roginski — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:02:24 +0000

Simply put this web service with the catchy name of www.canvaspop.com allows you to upload ANY photo from ANY device (yes that includes your Iphone), no matter the resolution and create works of art in ANY of their available sizes all in a matter of minutes and starting at ONLY $49, ’nuff said.

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Trim the fat with Facebook Lite

Andy Jaeger — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:49:56 +0000

New to Facebook? Long time user? Do you find the layout confusing and wish it were simpler? Facebook has listened to all of those complaints and created a light version of it’s site, so when all you care about is staying in touch with your friends and family and you don’t really care about random application invitations, or any of the extraneous stuff then lite is for you. You can use both the normal site and the light version side by side.

Check out Facebook Lite at lite.facebook.com

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Download The Songs You Listen To On Pandora!

Brian Roginski — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:55:11 +0000

For all you Pandora fans out there, I have put together a tutorial to show you how to keep the music you are listening to. If somehow you are not familiar with Pandora, I am not going to say anything about it other than please go check out www.pandora.com. The music you play from streaming services like these is actually downloaded on to your computer in a hidden folder called the cache, a cache is basically a temporary storage folder where files, web pages, images etc… are temporarily stored so when you re-vist that site or re-play the song, you don’t have to download it again the file is simply loaded from your cache folder. We are going to install an application that attaches itself to your internet browser (this only works in Internet Explorer) and installs a toolbar that grabs any music or videos you play on the net. So, in short this works for any music streaming site not just Pandora. Most sites use mp3’s but Pandora uses a Quicken format with a .MOV extension. Good news is you can convert these songs you downloaded from Pandora by getting a music converter that takes the song and spits it out as an MP3. Just type in “.mov to .mp3 Converter” in Google and you will get plenty of results. Feel free to post your favorite converter in the comments section.

Check out the LaymansTech walkthrough below!

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