Computer Support Blog

This year, the blind will begin to see again. Well, no…that is not quite true. However, people who have gone blind from retinal degradation will be able to see light/dark, shapes, and faces if the FDA approves a new technology that was created to enable people to regain lost sight.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System from Second Sight Medical Products is a device that will allow some blind people to begin to see again. This technology only works for people whose photoreceptor cells have degenerated, but there are over 200,000 people with that condition in America alone. After 13 years of development, a few test patients have finally been fitted with the device. The company is conducting clinical trials and Second Sight is waiting on approval from the Food and Drug Administration before they make Argus II available publicly.

A small camera embedded into a pair of sunglasses sends an image to a smartphone-sized processor, which converts the image into a black and white picture. This picture is wirelessly transmitted to the receptors surgically implanted around the eye and finally sent on to the electrodes that the surgeon carefully attached to the retinas.

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Apple is not the only company that is working hard to fill in the last size gaps between the smartphone and the tablet computer.  While e-readers once had a niche of their own, with the emergence of the Kindle Fire and the growing rumors about the mini-iPad, it appears that every major mobile computer company is racing to create tablet computers or smartphones with screens in the 5” – 6” range.  One of the first to market is the Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Samsung Galaxy Note joins the Samsung Galaxy line as a smartphone with a significantly larger touchscreen – 5.3”! – than most and it is designed to impress.  With its HD Super AMOLED display, the Galaxy Note presents vivid colors in an incredible 1280 x 800 resolution.  This level of resolution is incredible for a handheld device and means that streaming movies and television will look about as good as they would on a high definition monitor!  With the display screen made of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, the Samsung Galaxy Note resists scratches and breakage.

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The idea of play is an ancient one, so it is a pretty ambitious goal to reinvent the wheel on toys.  In fact, given the billions of dollars that are spent each year producing, developing, transporting and marketing toys, the idea of trying to completely reinvent the marketplace is an audacious one.  When the casual concept for such an idea turns into a viable business unexpectedly, sometimes the innovators themselves are surprised.  That is exactly what happened with Outfit 7 and Samo Login.

Samo Login is the Founder and CEO of Outfit 7, a Slovenian mobile app company.  Outfit 7 is best known for the Talking Tom application, an animated cat that you upload to your smartphone.  The cat repeats phrases you say to it and interacts in a limited digital environment.  Samo Login’s concept for the figure was to create a toy for mobile phone users.  With more than two hundred million Talking Tom apps downloaded, Samo Login’s concept seems to have truly taken off!

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If you are a serious audiophile, or just love music and live in a noisy house or apartment building, there is one essential tool for you: noise cancelling headphones.  For those unfamiliar with the product, nose cancelling headphones operate on a principle much like earplugs.  Noise cancelling headphones eliminate overt loud noises as well as background white noise.  The theory behind the headphones – as opposed to earplugs – is that using noise cancelling headphones creates a clean auditory palate which will leave the music you play sounding extra clear, crisp, and unhindered by other auditory distractions.  For a long time, noise cancelling headphones were a Grail for audiophiles, now they are fairly common.  But arguably the best noise cancelling headphones are the new ones from AKG.

AKG’s new K 495 NC noise cancelling headphones represent the highest-quality headphone for listening to music from portable music devices.  With its 121 decibel sensitivity, you are much more likely to notice flaws in your digital music files than you are with the sound quality from the K 495 NC headphones.  To make that clear, most digital music is compressed and does not contain as much audio information as music does when you play it from a compact disc or over the radio.  With a basic pair of earbuds, though, you might never notice how much is missing from your favorite songs.  The K 495 NC headphones, though, are not a pair of cheap earbuds!  As a result, you will hear the full depth of sound that is in your music files.  When you hear how much is missing from your digital music files, you may feel compelled to upgrade your digital music service and player, just to keep up with your awesome new headphones!

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While virtual reality gaming is not quite available publicly for personal computers yet, the military has been making use of it for quite some time. In the Army, soldiers train both individually and as a unit using the virtual reality equipment. These specifically designed simulations mirror real-world situations that require soldiers to think on their feet and react as they would if the war game was real.

One problem so far has been that the in-game representations of the soldiers, called avatars, have not been realistic. Unlike in popular video games where the player has an avatar that usually has superhuman skills and amazing endurance, these soldiers need to train using a different type of avatar. That is why the Army has recently announced that they will be creating a custom avatar for every soldier.

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If you are a serious vacationer, odds are you have a digital camera.  After all, if you are spending serious money on a vacation, you should absolutely get the best possible photographs of the experience.  But most people who have a good digital camera and go on a wide array of vacations are still likely to have serious gaps in their photo albums.  That gap comes from lacking pictures from underwater.  Odds are if you are a serious world traveler, you have spent many great hours in the water – be it swimming in the ocean, wading in a river or enjoying a new beach.  Given that most digital cameras cannot function underwater, it is hard to get great shots to capture your subaquatic experience.  That changes with the new Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX200V.

The Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX200V is a brand new digital camera that features an airtight and watertight shell.  Yes, one of the key selling points for this digital camera is that it is waterproof down to a depth of sixteen feet!  With controls and an interior that are protected from dirt, dust, grime and water, the Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX200V is ideal for shooting underwater.  The TX200V also features an 18.2 Megapixel Exmor R CMOS sensor.  In addition to being very easy to clean, this sensor provides the camera with exceptional image quality, even in very low light.  Low light image quality is especially important when you are photographing underwater and it is essential when you get down below ten feet underwater.

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Even as the recession in the United States persists, there are still some fields that are still employing highly-educated individuals.  In the tech sector, one of the most coveted and competitive positions for new graduates is the position of software engineer.  The online data storage company, Dropbox, continues to hire software engineers.  Just what are they looking for?  You have to be as smart, versatile and fun as Tina Wen!

Tina Wen is a software engineer at Dropbox and a recent graduate of MIT.  With her B.S. and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft quickly hired Tina Wen.  Intrigued by her thesis on bandwidth-sensitive oblivious routing, Microsoft put Wen on the team that developed Microsoft Outlook for Mac.  If you have Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2011 edition, you have some of Wen’s software!  Working as a software developer engineer was a nice step up for Wen at Microsoft; she had a summer internship there working on script tests for Microsoft TV the summer before she finished her Master’s.

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If you are an artist, or simply enjoy observing art in all its forms, then you have probably been to the website deviantART. For those who have not, deviantART is a website where anyone can upload their own art and receive peer reviews. It has been a popular site for amateur artists since its launch in 2000 and currently has over 18 million registered users who can view over 180 million pieces of art.

DeviantART accepts any kind of art, with any subject, in any medium that its artists want to submit. There is even mature content, but the site is very good about blocking it for any casual observer or those who do not wish to see that kind of art.

DeviantART has become not only an art-sharing website, but also a social networking site for artists. Many users will find and subscribe to an artist whose work they enjoy and eventually become friends with these people whom they have never met. The site encourages critiques and comments about each artist’s pieces because the artists want to become better at what they do.

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Learning a new musical instrument is never easy.  But, following the demise of Guitar Hero, there is – as one might suspect – an app for that!  Now, those who want to learn to play the guitar need only a guitar, an iPad, and Wild Chords to get started on a road to musical proficiency!

Wild Chords is an application, currently exclusively available for the Apple iPad, that helps teach you how to play the guitar.  In order to use Wild Chords, all you need is a guitar and an iPad; you do not need speakers or an amplifier if you are using an electric guitar.  In fact, if you are using an electric guitar, you have to unplug it from other equipment – like an amp – because the distortion from other equipment affects the program.  Even if you have never picked up a guitar before, Ovelin – the app’s publisher – is confident that Wild Chords can teach you.

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Brilliant ideas often need to come at the right time in order for it to be recognized.  Occasionally, there is an invention in the tech sector that fails simply because the marketplace was not ready for it or the supporting technologies did not exist to make it a success.  But the success of online digital photo editor Picnik is the result of a good idea hitting the marketplace at precisely the right time.  Much of the credit for Picnik’s success, then, comes from co-founder Mike Harrington.

At one point in his career, Mike Harrington was best known for the immensely popular video game Half-Life.  Harrington was the lead programmer for Half-Life and he was a co-founder of Valve, the software company that produced Half-Life.  Prior to starting Valve with Gabe Newell, Harrington was a software developer for Microsoft.  His work in the tech sector began in 1985 when he went to work for Dynamix as a programmer.  Following the success of Half-Life, Harrington took a sabbatical and traveled with his wife.

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