May the force be with you..

As a kid, I was really fascinated with "Star Wars" in general, and the aforesaid lines from Master Yoda in particular. For the uninitiated Yoda is the famous Jedi Master in the 'Star Wars' universe, who is a strong proponent of 'the Force' (a binding, metaphysical and ubiquitous power in Star Wars universe).

'The force' might be a figment of imagination of George Lucas, but it was intriguing nonetheless. I was really fascinated about a particular scene in 'The Empire Strikes Back', where Master Yoda teaches Luke Skywalker on how to use your mind power to interact with 'the Force' and move mundane (and almost always heavy..) objects from one place to another, without batting an eyelid.... I wished I could do that..

But that was then..

Coming back to our real world, how about moving a real object by just thinking about it? fascinating?? There is a new start-up company named nuerosky, who have developed a technology called Brain Computer Interface (BCI). BCI let's you catch your brainwaves and translate your thoughts to actions!!! (well almost...).

Check it out... And may the force be with you..

Alternate iPhone native application development platform

Ansca - a start-up company, launched a new iphone native application development platform named 'Corona'. Corona uses a scripting language named 'Lua' (more in line of Javascript/ActionScript).

So far, one of the entry barriers for new developers was the steep learning curve of Objective-C (on Cocoa/XCode). With Corona, we are likely to see many more first time developers developing native iphone apps. Happy browsing the AppStore !

Opera unite: Reinventing the Web

Yesterday, Opera labs launched 'Opera unite' which claims to 'reinvent the web'. ..and how?

This new technology essentially turns every computer running the Opera browser into a full fledged web server. You can use Opera unite to share documents, music, photos, videos or use it to run websites or even setup chat rooms without needing any third party software.

As per the concept, i think it's noble, a bright idea and has potential to change the way we work. As per Lawrence Eng (a product analyst in Opera software)..."This technology is a radical first step towards addressing what I call “the Internet’s unfulfilled promise”, which is about our ability to connect with each other and participate meaningfully online—on our own terms, and without losing control of our data"

So far so good, but does it work?? I checked it out.
I downloaded and setup two services to explore those better.
FileSharing: - Pretty interesting, you can share files from your file system, directly with all netizens. You can specify security rules as well.
Fridge:- lets you put notes, stickies on your fridge. What's more, you can share your fridge will all, so that others can see your notes and put more notes also (if you permit). But this service was not very reliable. not sure if it works for you, but you can see my notes at http://office.lalatendu.operaunite.com/fridge/

My verdict. Concept: 8/10, Implementation 5/10 (see more idepth analysis on why Opera unite doesn't deliver what it promises to : http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/16/thoughts-on-opera-unite/)
Nonetheless, recommended for all.