I rubbed my eyes, believing that I was dreaming. I quickly stuck my hands into the trash bin to retrieve the screen. But as soon as I got near the bin, the glowing stopped. I took out the screen to inspect it. I quickly came to the conclusion that the glowing must not have come from the laptop screen. Maybe it was an old flashlight that still had batteries in it and the switch just got push on by other pieces of trash. Instead to putting the screen back in the trash, I put it next to the laptop, so I would remember to check it in the morning.
I woke up to the beeping of the computer.
“What is that horrible sound!?” cried Mike.
“That blasted screen-less computer from last night!”
“Well, shut it off!” I got off my bed, and ran to the family room. I held down the power button of the laptop and heard it turn off.
“Why did you turn it on?” I asked Mike.
“I didn’t touch it”
“That’s odd”
“Well, whatever. I’m hungry, let’s have breakfast.” I nodded in approval, and we went to the kitchen for breakfast.
After eating, I was still thinking of the strange events that occurred the night before, a spinning hard drive while the laptop was off, a sudden-appearing floppy disk, and glowing trash bins. Of course, there was also that unexpected morning alarm from the laptop. I decided to hook up the laptop to our LCD monitor and run a few checks. I began with a complete clean up with the program CCleaner (You can get it here), and then I ran a quick virus scan using AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (Get it here). Finally, I ran a spyware check with Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007 (Download here). The clean up, removed about 800 MB of stuff, and the two scans, nothing.
“What are you doing?” asked Mike.
“Oh, you know, trying to find out what is going on with this laptop”
“I see. So, did you find anything?”
“Nope.”
“Did you check what was on the floppy disk?”
“Not yet.”
“Check it, I want to know what is on it.” I opened My Computer and then the floppy disk drive. We saw that there were 11 files on it: 5 executables, 2 Text files, and 4 WAV files. The files are as listed: Start.exe, Sendit.exe, Tryit.exe, Help.exe, Find.exe, README.txt, NOTES.txt, Song.wav, Conversation.wav, Sound.wav, and Talk.wav. I double-clicked on the README file. Displaying the following: Open Start.exe. I close notepad, and clicked on Start.exe. A dialog box appeared, but before I could read it, the blue screen of death appeared.

To be continued…

Copyright (c) 2007 by Funknowledge Networks and Kevin Johnson.

The video above is of a new beta web-ware collection (invite only), called Aviary (Go to: http://www.creationonthefly.com). It will consist (when done) of over a dozen apps, named after birds. Each one will handle a different part of multimedia editing, such as vector graphics and audio editing. You’ll also be able to collaborate with other users like in Google Apps. Right now, there are only two released beta apps, which are Phoenix (An online image editor), and Toucan (A color swatch tool). Raven is next in line, as a vector editor, and more are to come.

See the CNET Webware article for more details at: http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9734050-2.html

Not too many days left until the release of the highly anticipated iPhone. On June 29th, 2007 the iPhone will be sent out into the world, probably at 6:00 pm. This is what PC World said about the release day of the iPhone: “On June 29, the day the Apple iPhone goes on sale, AT&T-owned stores will close early at 4:30 p.m. and reopen at 6 p.m. to sell the iPhone for the first time. Some Apple stores I spoke with said they were not planning a pre-6 p.m. shutdown before the iPhone goes on sale. Still, other Apple stores did say they were going to shut down as they got ready for the onslaught of want-to-be iPhone customers to fill their stores.

“At least one AT&T-owned store in the Boston area said it was going to be handing out bracelets to customers at 10 a.m. on June 29 when the store opened. The customer service representative I spoke with said that those customers could return at 6 p.m. and show their bracelets which would hold their place in line to buy the iPhone. That store was the exception. All the other Apple and AT&T-owned stores I spoke with said the iPhone would be sold on a first come first serve basis with no exceptions starting at 6 p.m. on June 29.

“People wishing to be the first to get their hands on the iPhone will only be able to buy the iPhone at Apple stores and AT&T-owned stores. The Apple Web site will also be accepting orders on June 29. And AT&T says it will offer iPhones through its Web site some time in the future. Authorized AT&T resellers will not be selling the iPhone on June 29. Many resellers I spoke with said they expected iPhones sometimes in August.

“One thing that was unclear from the Apple stores I spoke with was whether the Apple stores would be equipped to activate the iPhone for AT&T wireless services at the time of purchase. Apple didn’t get back to me with the answer to this question.

“Store hours for all the AT&T-owned stores have been extended to 10 p.m. and many Apple stores I spoke with said they would also stay open late to accommodate iPhone customers.”

(Read the article here)

Some of you might have heard that the iPhone may not have Flash, and will not have Java. So many of you will be disappointed not being able to watch your Youtube videos, but wait, the iPhone will come with a built-in Youtube application! Apple describes it as:” iPhone has a special YouTube player that you can launch right from the home screen. So now you can access and browse YouTube videos wherever you go. And when you find a video you want to send your friends, iPhone can even create an email with the link in it for you.” (See this).

This is the technical specifications of the Apple iPhone:

(Credit: Apple Corporation)

If you want more iPhone info, I recommend visiting CNET, or the Apple website. And if you are one of those people planning to get an iPhone, then good luck. You might not be able to get your hands on one, the first day.

Yes, you are not imagining, it’s here, 3D search, but wait before you fall off your chair. It is not perfect, yet. You are able to search Google and Yahoo (No Ask, or Microsoft Live Search yet), plus lickr and eBay. Right now, you can’t add custom engines but maybe in the future you will be able to. When you search, you enter a cloudy environment with your results displayed in a stack, which is similar to Windows Vista’s Flip 3D and to zoom into a page, you just double click on it. This web application is also pretty demanding the following are the minimum requirements.

	Operating System:	Windows 2000, Windows XP or Vista
	System Memory (RAM):	512MB
	Graphics Adapter:	128MB plus 3D Capable
	CPU:	Pentium 4 2.4GHz or AMD 2400xp+
	Screen Resolution:	1280 x 102
	Color:	32-Bit True Color
	Network Speed:	768 Kbits/sec

And even with these requirements, performance can still be quite sluggish. Although this service is quite visually appealing, the resources it uses and the slow search speeds make it undesirable.
But if you still want it you can get it at: http://www.spacetime.com.

The Google Image Search – “Van Gogh” in SpaceTime.

I’ve recently signed up for the Microsoft Popfly alpha build. (NOTE: You will need a Microsoft Account to sign up for the waiting list.) Popfly is a Silverlight (A web browser plug-in similar to Flash) based application to create widgets and mini-apps that mash up data from other online apps. You can join together services such as RRS Feeds, Yahoo! Answers, Twitter, Flickr, Digg and much more. Although you might think that this application is similar to Yahoo Pipes, it’s not. Microsoft has really done a great job developing this web-app and using Siverlight to its fullest potential (as far as I can see, I will be very surprised if Siverlight can do much more that this).

When using it, you quickly notice how simple it is to control things around on the screen, and the animations make it look quite cool. Not only can you create Mashups, but also a website without any prior HTML knowledge. I’ll be adding more posts about it as the program progresses into its final form.

Microsoft Popfly (Credit: Microsoft)

Yahoo Pipes (Credit: Techcrunch.com)