new printing technology, zink

the following technology looks really cool, i bet it will become mainstream in the next couple of years..



original post here:
http://venturebeat.com/2007/09/20/zink-offers-inkless-printing-raises-25m/

Impressive image resizing algorithm!!

original post is here:

TechCrunch

My Apartment view, hope you like it :)

where is it??

Power Challenge football

I was impressed (!) with this new online application (http://www.powerchallenge.com) that lets you play a 3D football game from your browser. The game is written in Java, and it has very decent graphics. It reminds me very much the EA sports FIFA 2000 game...


There are game rooms where you pick your opponent in real time (similar to Yahoo games, or MSN zone) and then the game starts. You can play absolutely for free at this point, and the top players have the chance to win prizes. It is amazing... give it a try!
For more details about this game look at this Techcrunch article.

Joost, P2P television

Today I downloaded Joost, the new p2p platform for watching TV channels online for free. The concept is similar to how Skype works, which means that most of the packet traffic is routed in a p2p fashion. The quality of the videos looks very good, and there are some interesting channels (my favorite is LX.tv).





To download Joost follow this link from GigaOM.

Creative projects..

This is a presentation of projects in a CS Stanford class from the previous quarter.. The demos are at least amazing (and those are just class projects, implemented in less than two months)..

New Shopping Experience on the Web

Trying to find the right thing to buy but you are bored to spend a whole day at the mall?
Do you have a product in mind and want to find something similar, but don't know where to search?

Those 2 new websites contain a new approach on finding products on the web and I believe they are absolutely COOL!

like.com

browsegoods.com

wireless internet on-flight

I was flying with Lufthansa yesterday, from Munich to San Francisco. The main reason I chose this company was that they claimed to have wireless internet on flight.

But, yesterday they told me that they have discontinued the service for the next few months.. so, let's see when it will be back..

Apple announces iPhone!

W-O-W!

This is cool, I can't wait to buy this thing when it is out. I hope they make a lot of phones, since I predict it will sell out in a few hours..

This is the most beautiful gadget I have ever seen...... with a 2 megapixel camera, and a GREAT web browser integrated with google maps you can find anything, anywhere!



not to mention the revolutionary touch-screen which makes navigation very pleasant without the need of unnecessary buttons or pen. The whole thing looks like an Apple PDA-phone, but 10 times more stylish than any other PDA I have seen before.

here you can find the complete info and video demos:

http://www.apple.com/iphone

Next generation toys

I was recently watching the videos in the latest DEMO conference in San Diego, and there was one which got my attention. It is about a new toy (a small dinosaur) named Pleo and it is developed by Ugobe.


It is an intelligent toy that learns through time how to walk and interact realistically with the environment. Here is the video:

http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2006/63039.php

I think they will release the product before Christmas and it won't be expensive so you can still buy it to your younger relatives, or for yourself!

My new website! (Athens Metro)

I have spent some time to develop this Athens Metro website using the Google Maps API. It was really easy, and I encourage everyone to try this API. You can do amazing things...

Firefox 2.0 RC1

Here is the link to download, it looks VERY nice...

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2.0rc1-candidates/rc1/firefox-2.0.en-US.win32.installer.exe

New Google Reader is out!

Guys, this is the BEST Feed reader you can find on the web! They have done a major redesign and it looks great.

http://www.google.com/reader

Google

This was the last week of my summer internship at Google. It was a great experience, I would encourage anybody to apply for next year. They also have internships during the academic year, so if your skills match with some of the company's projects I am sure they would like to have you there.

A few reasons why you would like to choose Google:

- you don't have to worry about food anymore. They have the best chefs cooking twice per day for their employees. The food is all organic with great quality. There are more than 10 cafes in the Mountain View campus. They organize BBQ's every week, and you can invite lots of friends for lunch or dinner. I would say I'd have to pay at least 50$ per day in order to buy or have the the same quality of food elsewhere.

- you get free Google t-shirts a few times per week.

- they have a very nice gym, the famous beach volley court, and two swimming pools you can use for free, and also you can have free massage on-site.

- you meet the most talented engineers and have the chance to apply your ideas to exciting projects. The atmosphere is mostly informal and people are very eager to listen to your ideas and discuss the best ways to solve problems.

- you do your best because you are self-motivated, not because somebody tells you what to do.

- you participate in projects that millions of people will use.

- you get free tickets for events and parties around the bay area.

- you meet hundreds of other interns and make great friends.

- after all, you are working for Google, so its cool!

Rojo feed reader, Web apps conference

Rojo is a feed reader for blogs and news. It has very nice features, you can organize blogs by tags, and in my opinion the interface is much better than bloglines.

For those who are interested of web apps and the current buzz around those new technologies, here is an interesting conference in San Francisco (sept 13-14), with a lot of pioneers participating in it.

Jajah!

Jajah is a new startup, just moved their offices from Europe to the Valley, and they have a service for making free phone calls across the globe.

I've tried it, it works very well, you talk from your regular phone or cellphone to any other phone on the planet (no headshet or microphone required). They have some premium services which you can subscribe, but the basic communication at this point is for free.

Best tech blogs

This is an excellent collection of blogs to read if you want to stay informed for the coolest new technologies and trends over the Internet. Things are changing pretty rapidly those days, and there are exciting new applications coming out every day!

Blogs for emerging technologies on the web

GigaOM

John Battelle's Searchblog

Techcrunch

Official Google Blog

O'Reilly Radar

Blogging Web 2.0

Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger

Shoutblog

SiliconBeat: News about tech money and innovation

The Web 2.0 Is Here (Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog)


Venture Capital Blogs

VentureBlog

Signum sine tinnitu - by Guy Kawasaki

Fixing Venture Capital - Joel on Software

Photosynth (wow!)

Microsoft Reasearch has recently presented a new prototype for merging images from the same geographic location to create a 3D representation of a place. The product is called Photosynth and it was presented recently at SIGGRAPH 2006. The idea is to take multiple photos of an object, or a building taken from different angles, and combining them in 3D space by putting similar photos close to each other.

You can see another demo here (from University of Washington) on how to use Photosynth to explore a famous tourist attraction in Paris... (?!)

Web 2.0 killer apps

This is a recent report from CRN about the best online applications such as mail, calendar, editors, spreadsheets etc..

Most of them are really cool, especially collaborative tools, and an online operating system (youOS) in which you can add individual modules and XML feeds from lots of web services. You can also program your own modules and add them there.

Another remarkable company to look at is zoho.com, they have developed a family of office tools with very rich functionality. They look very pretty, I have to say, and they are absolutely free!

Google Web Toolkit

Yesterday I downloaded the Google Web Toolkit. It seems it has very rich functionality, and a nice set of examples from which you can start developing your own web applications.

I have found this forum very useful too. You can post any questions/suggestions about GWT. It seems very active.

For all of us who are familiar with developing Java GUIs I believe GWT is a good starting point to learn how to create web interfaces fast. Additionaly, you can have all your code in Java and don't care very much about compatibility issues between different browsers, since GWT claims it takes care of this part.

I would suggest those who read my blog (at this point, maybe 2 people at most) to try it out :)