Nov 10

Now, computer software that can tell age

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Women who’re not comfortable revealing their age should stay miles away from University of Illinois-developed computer software that reveals a person’s age just like humans do—by looking at his or her face.

The software, developed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, could analyse an image of your face to verify your identity or run a commercial according to your interest.

“Age measurement is very difficult. If you use the face to estimate age we can really get the apparent age, or how old a person looks,” Discovery News quoted Thomas Huang, the lead developer, as saying.

For developing the software, the researchers trained their computer algorithm using 1,600 different people with five pictures of each person, for a total of 8,000 images.

The age of the people in the pictures ranged from one year to 93 years old.

While the computer was not told what to look for, it still searched the faces and used its own software to determine which features best determined the person’s apparent age.

One of the features the computer took into account was gray scale— it saw how dark or how light each pixel was compared to other pixels, and then guesses the apparent age of the individual.

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Nov 10

Opera 10 now available online

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Version 10 of the Opera web browser is now available. The biggest innovation in this latest product from the Norwegian software designers is its Turbo compression technology. It provides quicker loading of web content even for slow internet connections.

The developers have also redone the browser’s interface and provided spell checking and options for enlarging and reducing the tab bar.

The newest version can be downloaded for free at opera.com. Opera is available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

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Aug 09

CPU wars between AMD and Intel

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Two major comparies, Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), make CPUs for PCs. AMD’s CPUs cost much less, but lack the prestige of Intel’s name and high-priced chips. Both brands work equally well, although some say that AMD currently holds the edge.

Intel’s fastest CPU is the Pendium 4; Its top CPU for laptops is the Pendium M, designed especially to prolong battery life. AMD’s fastest CPU is the Athlon 64, and , for laptops, the power-saving Turion.

A few years ago, most people bought PCs based on CPU speed. Today’s breed of CPUs work so quickly that the other parts of the PC have to work to catch up. The biggest battles now take place among video card manufacturers, as they try to create cards that crank out graphics as quickly as the games can serve them up.

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Jun 15

Avast Antivirus 4.8 Home Edition – looks like Music Player!!

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avast 4.8

When the version number of a new software release is just 0.1 higher than the old one, I expect a ho-hum incremental update. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that Avast antivirus 4.8 Home Edition. adds significant functionality. It now protect against spyware, rootkid and other forms of nonvirus malicious software. Best of all, It’s free for personal use.

The $39.95 Professional Edition does include a few additional features. Its users can switch to an advanced user interface that allows more detailed configuration. It offers a command line scanner and the ability to schedule regular full scan. A script blocker watches for dangerous scripts on Web Pages, and its PUSH updates feature goes beyond the free version’s automatic update checking.

If you are using avast! in a business environment, you must purchase the Professional Edition. But the free Home Edition is 100 persent full-powered where it counts, clearing viruses and spyware off your system and preventing any new infestations.

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Jun 13

Ad-Aware 2008 Pro – Antivirus Review

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After some years of Lagging behing the market, Lavasoft got its flagship Ad-Aware 2008 Product back on track in 2007. Lavasoft’s new Ad-Aware 2008 Pro($39.95 direct) adds antivirus protechtion, and the combined virus/spyware scan is seriously effective at cleaning up malware-infested systems. But its real time protection module still doesn’t do a good job of keeping malwares from installing on a clean system. That component isn’t up to modern standards, which keeps the overall application, through much improved, from true greatness.

Ad-Aware 2008 Pro

Lavasoft licenses the integrated antivirus protection, new in this version, from Avira, makers of the AntiVir antivirus and Avira Premium Security suit 8. Confusingly, Ad-Aware’s settings dialogs refer to the antivirus module as Scanner Extension-don’t turn off that option!. Also note that Windows Security Center doesn’t recognize Ad-Aware as an antivirus program, so it will warn you that you may be unprotected.

The fully integrated virus/spyware scan runs on demand or on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule. You can select a smart scan to save time by scanning only critical areas. But even the full scan is relatively speedy. It requires about 15 minutes on my standard clean system, whereas many competitors take half an hour or more. I’d recommended striking with full scan.

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