Quite interesting. I love my Smartphone and all the developments on mobile technology. The one thing that really annoys me though is Battery Life on these new phones. I can access all my social networking sites all day long, as well as emails, phone banking, etc. Then when I need to make a call, it beeps at me saying its flat! Argh!!! Hurry up battery technology!!!! That is all….

You can check out the Zoomable image here: http://66.49.217.87/~remy/wp/?page_id=431
And below is a time-lapse video of Earth taken by Elektro-L No.1. Truly amazing!!! Enjoy!

Check out the excerpt below from the article. Full article can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/cnhdo7q

“Why might being intoxicated lead to improved creativity? The answer has to do with alcohol’s effect on working memory: the brainpower that helps us keep what we want in mind and what we don’t want out. Research has shown that alcohol tends to reduce people’s ability to focus in on some things and ignore others, which also happens to benefit creative problem solving.

Think about the flip side of the coin. Having a lot of working memory means that a person is good at screening out peripheral information. This screening can be very useful for solving analytical problems—problems that require the solver to grind out the solution by systematically working towards a goal, incrementally narrowing down the problem search space. However, being good at blocking out extraneous information may actually be a disadvantage in situations where gathering information only loosely related to the problem at hand, or even outside the perceived problem space, is useful. This seems to be even more true the more you know about a given subject.

When people with lots of baseball knowledge, for example, are asked to come up with a word that forms a compound word with “plate,” “broken,” and “shot,” they are pretty bad at this task. Baseball fanatics want to say the word is “Home” (home-plate, broken-home, home-shot ?!?). This isn’t correct. The real answer is “glass” (glass-plate, broken-glass, shot-glass). What’s interesting is that baseball fans who also have a lot of cognitive horsepower relative to their peers—those higher working memory baseball fans—are the ones most likely to dwell on the wrong baseball-related answer. It’s as if these guys (and girls) are too good at focusing their attention on the wrong baseball information. As a result, they have trouble breaking free of their knowledge and coming up with the correct answer that has nothing to do with baseball. Baseball fanatics high in working memory have problems moving beyond what they know.

So, could being intoxicated really help people to think more creatively? In a recent study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, psychologist Jennifer Wiley and her research group at the University of Illinois at Chicago set out to find an answer to this question.

They recruited people (ages 21-30) who drank socially, via Craigslist, to come into their lab and, well, they got some of them drunk. Some people were served a vodka cranberry drink until their blood alcohol level was approximately .075 and others were kept sober. The researchers then had everyone complete a creative problem solving task similar to the baseball example I gave above. People were given a series of three target words such as “peach”, “arm”, and “tar,” and were tasked with finding a fourth word, such as “pit,” that forms a good two-word phrase with each of the target words. This puzzle is thought to involve creative problem solving because the most obvious potential response to the problem is often incorrect, and people must look for more remote words in order to reach a solution.

What Wiley and her colleagues found was that intoxicated individuals solved more creative word problems, and in less time, than their sober counterparts. Interestingly, people who drank also felt that their performance was more likely to come as a sudden insight, the answer came all at once, in an “Aha!” moment of illumination.

Research has shown that the more working memory people have at their disposal, the better they perform on all sorts of analytical tasks that pop up at school and at work. But, interestingly, wielding more working memory may hinder performance whenever thinking creatively or “outside the box” is necessary. Simply put, people’s ability to think about information in new and unusual ways can actually be hampered when they wield too much brain power.“

Now this is a great incentive to see what Intel Chips can really do at their limit!!

Have you checked out the SpareOne Emergency mobile phone as yet?

The uses for this innovative device are almost endless! Perfect for camping, hiking and adventure sports where Smartphones are scared to go! Also useful to be kept in a First Aid kit or car glovebox for emergencies. If you haven’t already, check it out by clicking the link in the menu bar above or going to www.spareone.com.au

After using this product for a few weeks now I can definitely see its usefulness and uniqueness!!! Just don’t expect to use it as an everyday phone or try to message anyone!

Check out this video of the Galaxy S3 being unveiled in London:

Read more about the upcoming S3 on Extremetech

Enjoy!!!

Do you have a cupboard to stash your goodies, or are they all out on display proudly? What about your workspace, is it a custom built gaming setup, or have you got more of a professional looking desk and drawers?

Would love to see photos of what other people have for their Tech-Setup!! Feel free to post or link photos below in the comments section.

Check out this link for 20 great looking office desks, some are very exciting and some are just… weird!! – http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-story/363-office-desk-design-tech.html#xtor=RSS-998

One way to stay ahead of the game is to ensure your Web Browser is kept up to date, whether it be Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome or any other.

If you would like to check how well your current browser is handling new code and HTML5 standards, surf over to http:html5test.com and it will give you a point score and a rundown of where your browser failed.

If you are a web developer and interested in learning more about new coding standards as well as finding some new ideas, check out makeawesomeweb.com , w3.org and w3schools.com

Like a lot of other people, especially in the corporate world, Internet Explorer is the poison of choice, and sometimes not the latest variant. One way to accommodate this and still enjoy HTML5 and other new web standards is to install Google’s Chrome frame which will run as an addon. Have Fun!!

Speakers at WebDU Conference 2012 - Sydney

Adobe's Terry Ryan in action - Keynote Presentation WebDU 2012 Sydney

I should also mention the meal breaks were YUM!!! (As pictured below)

http://www.webdu.com.au/

some of the included pictures in this post were copied from Twitter with hash tag WEBDU

US-based firm Terrafugia said their production prototype Transition car-plane had successfully carried out an eight-minute test flight, clearing the way for it to hit the market within a year.
“With this flight, the team demonstrated an ability to accomplish what had been called an impossible dream,” said founder Carl Dietrich.
Terrafugia argues that the Transition offers unparalleled freedom of movement, with a range of 787km and without the need to check bags.
Spanning 2.3m as a car, it fits into a normal-sized garage, before unfurling an 8m wingspan.
To take advantage, would-be owners will need to have both a driver’s and pilot’s licence – with a minimum of 20 hours of flying time.
The craft needs 762m of runway for takeoff, meaning pulling onto the shoulder and escaping the traffic is not really an option.
While many companies have tried to market an aerocar, none have succeeded in producing more than a handful of models. “The Transition Street-Legal Airplane is now a significant step closer to being a commercial reality,” the company said on Monday.
The two-seater craft costs around $US279,000 ($A268,000) and some 100 vehicles have been ordered.

“Every day we aim to make technology so simple and intuitive that you stop thinking about it—we want Google to work so well, it just blends into your life. But sometimes it’s helpful to step back and take stock of what you’re doing online.

Today we’re introducing Account Activity, a new feature in your Google Account. If you sign up, each month we’ll send you a link to a password-protected report with insights into your signed-in use of Google services.

Knowing more about your own account activity also can help you take steps to protect your Google Account. For example, if you notice sign-ins from countries where you haven’t been or devices you’ve never owned, you can change your password immediately and sign up for the extra level of security provided by 2-step verification.

Give Account Activity a try, and tell us what you think by clicking on the “Send feedback” button in the lower right corner of your report. Over the next few months, we plan to incorporate more Google services. Meanwhile, we hope this feature helps you better understand and manage your information on Google.

Posted by Andreas Tuerk, product manager”

Original Post on the Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/giving-you-more-insight-into-your.html