Rather than read me banging on about the various features of the Motorola RAZR 2 check out this video from Shinymedia. Two lasses show off the new features on the RAZR re-incarnation although as they point out the vibrating touch screen feature - hauptics - is a bit difficult to demo in a video! A warning about the video is that your eye will be drawn away from the RAZR 2 by the garish ‘rose ring’ worn by the faceless presenter. Apart from the ring, enjoy!

Just in case after the last post you thought we were incapable of finding any decent videos on Youtube, we spotted this video review of the Motorola ROKR E6. Nice review by Phone Dog but as he says probably still best to wait until the iPhone is released in June.

A young Australian start-up technology company, MOR(F) Dynamics, is taking instant messaging and social worlds to new heights of interactivity and intelligence. Since 2005, the Company has been busy implementing advanced techniques in language technologies, artificial intelligence and real-time 3D systems into a next-generation public instant messenger, dubbed the Moji Intelligent Messenger™.

MOR(F) has created the first instant messenger client and social worlds application that dynamically responds, reacts to and understands human language. The technology works by extracting meaning and emotion derived from a user’s chat dialogues and blogs in order to trigger a range of visual responses within the applications, thereby introducing a brand new immersive and deeply personal dimension to the user’s online and offline experience. By utilising the power of language analysis, the application is able to detect if a user is sad or moody and to then dynamically change elements such as the user’s wallpapers, music or widgets to either reflect that particular mood, or to alter the state of the environment such that the user feels better.

The Moji Intelligent Messenger™ is a fully 3-dimensional system that features intelligent virtual pets that feed off a user’s language. MOR(F) CEO, Robert Fong, describes the innovations of this product best when he says that “…for too long, public instant messengers have been uninteresting with few innovations that fail to enhance and improve human to computer interactions. The massive adoption of concepts such as virtual worlds and MMOGs is proving that users are immersing themselves into products that can interact with them on a deeply personal and emotional level. Two people chatting to each other and slinging emoticons back and forth is one thing. But throw in a personalised virtual pet that absorbs, learns, lives and communicates to the users, and immediately, the dynamic changes. All of a sudden you are no longer merely controlling an avatar to mimic your expressions. Instead, the pet has now entered into your own dimension. It can communicate its desires and thoughts to you. It understands you and can react to the way you feel or the things you like and dislike. We are confident that this kind of technology will enhance a user’s experience by making the way we interact with computers more life-like”.

The Intelligent Messenger translates beautifully into the company’s social world, the MojiKan™. By utilizing the same techniques as found in the messenger, MojiKan™ is an online place where users can explore a world of interactive pets, meet other “virtual pet-owners” with similar personalities, purchase new accessories for their pets, download new language capabilities, create their own personal page and to write blogs. The difference obviously is that all content within MojiKan™ responds and reacts to users’ language. In addition, users’ pets feature on their personal page as widget-pets that can communicate with friends and visitors to a particular personal page (see related press coverage on MOR(F)’s I-Widgets). “By analysing and observing patterns in a user’s blogs or personality descriptions, we use that information in many diverse ways from changing a user’s online environment to reflect his or her current mood to matching users to other compatible users that match their personalities, interests etc.” said Project Manager, Harris Roland. “We do this to such an extent that users can feel the power and influence of their language on their online experience and in the existence of their virtual pets. This is a real breakthrough for us”.

Robert adds that the company is currently targeting the massive instant messaging and social world communities especially teenagers and young adults. However, he also believes that there is a tremendous amount of potential in child safety utilising language technologies and a kid’s version is not far off (see related press coverage on MOR(F)’s child safety system). In the future, the company hopes to expand into areas such as market research, product placement and advertising, as well as mobile applications.

MOR(F) is currently in the last phases of their development and says that a commercial beta launch is due out mid-2007. The entire team is excited of the new possibilities that will confront users with the Moji Intelligent Messenger and are keen to obtain feedback from the general public as soon as possible. As a result, they are releasing a teaser campaign that introduces some of their innovations in the form of interactive “widget-pets”. Users can download and insert these widgets into their blog or social network sites and are invited to head over to www.mojikan.com where they would also be able to pre-register for a beta tester account to test-drive the Moji Intelligent Messenger™ and to provide feedback to the company.

Thanks, Robert

As I was saying earlier Seagate was developing a hardware encrypted hard-disk to provide extended security. It seems the technology is now ready and the first hard-drive to use it is The Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (Full Disc Encryption) that provides up to 160 GB of storage via a sATA interface protected by hardware-based AES encryption.

The new hard-drives are supposed to be part of the new ASI C8015 system from ASI Computer Technologies. We’re talking about a laptop fitted with a biometric fingerprint reader and other security features like the Wave Systems Embassy Security Center’s Trusted Drive Manager software used for easily configuration of the Momentus 5400 hard-drive.

The whole system is design in order for Administrators to easily protect data, or delete it in such manner that it cannot be recovered. You might not need all this in your regular home-use laptop but there are many users in industries like finance, legal or healthcare that will be happy to pay the price needed to provide ultimate protection for they’re data.

For the moment Google is the biggest player when thinking of search engines. But although Google has a good head-start there are lots of search engines out there trying to make it. And I think that these new search engines, that are forced to innovate in order to stand any chance, are the future.

So what can be added to a search engine that Google hasn’t added already? Well some tried more relevant ads, or advanced search features, category searching and even tabbed searching but let’s be honest, how many of them are really successful? There is even a top 100 alternative search engine chart.

But when it comes to it, all that matters is how effective is your engine and how useful are the functions you provide to your users. Practically Twerq.com is not even a search engine by itself, it’s more of an easy way to search the web using existing services like Google and Yahoo! search. And this is where TWERQ shows its best, it has some functions I’ve found quite interesting and useful at the same time, as you can see in this video:

The simple syntax it uses enables you to create relevant searches in no time at all. But the true power of TWERQ comes out when you register and create custom search lists. In this way you can search images, blogs, news, etc in the same time with only one search. It’s really helpful to configure this kind of search domains for information you need daily, it saves lots of time.

So is this the search engine of the future ? Certainly not, but I’m sure that functions like the search syntax and tabbed searching will be part of future search engines.

Starting with the “3d bumptop desktop prototype” the new hype was 3D desktops for linux. From the most popular I mention XGL, Looking Glass for Ubuntu and of course Beryl-Compiz (based on XGL).

But the main features are the same:

• Scale effect - Using the scale effect you can see all your opened windows and switch between them. Not only that but this is live preview so the movies will keep rolling, sites updating, etc. This is really helpful for operations like drag&drop and others that require you working with multiple windows.
• The switcher - New way to visualize the windows when you ALT-TAB. It uses live preview of course, and it can be set to dim other windows besides the one active, it rotates the cube when you select a window in another dektop, etc.
• Desktop Cube - I think this was the biggest hit. That cool 3D Cube that uses live preview (also) and that lets you manipulate your default four desktops in any way you want. Add to this the window effects and you’ll get some pretty nice visual effects.
• Window Effects - There are dozens animations and effects for your windows. You can set your windows to fade in and out, to destroy themselves when you close them, to ‘wave’ when you move it, etc. Besides there are many attributes you can alter for each window, such as: Transparency, Brightness, Saturation, etc.

And these are only basic features enhanced and modified by each desktop, case by case. As you have seen the novelty is mostly visual, and the way I see it there’s little or no addition to usability.

I don’t know what’s your opinion on Alexa but I consider it to be at least a hint when you talk about site statistics. If we consider the data Alexa provides as a guideline you can easily see that the top three sites listed are: Yahoo!, MSN and Google. Not necessarily in that order.

First of all we must consider the services provided by the three giants. Yahoo!, Google and MSN have mailing services, search engines and ads services. So in some way we can compare the sites, but also it must be considered that MSN has a separated site for the search engine: live.com. Let’s take a look at the stats and then discuss it some more:

As you can see, it seems that MSN beats Yahoo! and Google by a long shot. What you should know is that the majority of MSN visitors are located in U.S. If you take a look on the same charts provided by Alexa you’ll find out that in most countries of Europe MSN it’s not only in the first three places.

The big surprise of this experiment is that Google doesn’t rule the charts, as I was expecting. I thing this is partially due to Alexa’s rating algorithms and partially due to sub-site system that Google uses. Anyhow it doesn’t matter, Google is the most prolific company of them all in the last period.