Plug Your iPod Into Your T-Shirt for Power?

Could powering an iPod or cell phone become as easy as plugging it into your tee shirt or jeans, and then recharging the clothing overnight? Scientists in California are reporting an advance in that direction with an easier way of changing ordinary cotton and polyester into "conductive energy textiles" -- e-Textiles that double as a rechargeable battery. Their report on the research appears in ACS' Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

"Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials with an array of novel functionalities, such as flexibility, stretchability, and lightweight, which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technology," Yi Cui and colleagues note. "High-performance sportswear, wearable displays, new classes of portable power, and embedded health monitoring systems are examples of these novel applications."


The report describes a new process for making E-textiles that uses "ink" made from single-walled carbon nanotubes -- electrically conductive carbon fibers barely 1/50,000 the width of a human hair. When applied to cotton and polyester fabrics, the ink produced e-Textiles with an excellent ability to store electricity. The fabrics retained flexibility and stretchability of regular cotton and polyester, and kept their new e-properties under conditions that simulated repeated laundering.

New iPhone App to Measure Carbon Intensity of UK Electricity Grid

As temperatures drop below freezing and demand for energy soars, engineers at the University of Southampton have launched a new iPhone application to monitor the UK electricity grid.

Dr Alex Rogers, Dr. Perukrishnen Vytelingum and Professor Nick Jennings, at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have developed an application, named 'GridCarbon', which when downloaded to an iPhone, enables users to monitor the carbon intensity of the grid -- the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when one unit (1 kWh) of electricity is used by a consumer.


"The app shows people how using appliances and machinery at different times of the day can reduce their carbon footprint; for example, at some times of the year, running washing machines and dishwashers overnight rather than at peak times in the evening, can reduce carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent," said Dr Rogers. "While developing this app, we were surprised at how much the carbon intensity of the grid varies at different times of the day, and between different days in the week."

The application, which can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store by searching for 'GridCarbon', is just one initiative being developed by ECS academics as they develop a vision of the Smart Grid.

They are currently researching the use of computerised agents to operate smart electricity meters in support of the Government's initiative to have smart meters in all homes by 2020, and are using a new building on the Southampton campus as a test bed.

"We are developing agents that can 'learn' how much energy a building or home uses and which can then make predictions and decisions about cost-effective energy use," Professor Jennings added. "We have already proved that agents can be used to haggle and resolve conflict, trade on the stock market and cope with disasters; our next challenge is to incorporate them into smart electricity meters."

Combined Approach May Be Better Way to Treat Autism

Children with autism would likely receive better treatment if supporters of the two major teaching methods stopped bickering over theory and focused on a combined approach, a Michigan State University psychologist argues in a new paper.

For years, the behavioral and developmental camps have argued over which theory is more effective in teaching communication and other skills to preschool-aged children with autism. Basically, behaviorists believe learning occurs through reinforcement or reward while developmental advocates stress learning through important interactions with caregivers.


But while the theories differ, the actual methods the two camps ultimately use to teach children can be strikingly similar, especially when the treatment is naturalistic, or unstructured, said Brooke Ingersoll, MSU assistant professor of psychology.

In the January issue of the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, Ingersoll contends that advocates of the behavioral and developmental approaches should set aside their differences and use the best practices from each to meet the needs of the student and the strengths of the parent or teacher.

"We need to stop getting so hung up on whether the behavioral approach is better than the developmental approach and vice versa," Ingersoll said. "What we really need to start looking at is what are the actual intervention techniques being used and how are these effective."

An estimated one out of every 110 children in the United States has autism and the number of diagnosed cases is growing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms typically surface by a child's second birthday and the disorder is four to five times more likely to occur in boys than in girls.

Ingersoll said the behavioral and developmental treatment methods both can be effective on their own. But historically, advocates for each have rarely collaborated on treatment development for children with autism, meaning it's unknown whether a combined approach is more effective.

Ingersoll expects it is. She is trained in both methods and has created a combined curriculum on social communication that she's teaching to preschool instructors in Michigan's Ottawa, Livingston and Clinton counties. Through the MSU-funded project, the instructors then teach the method to parents of autistic children.

Ingersoll said the combined method works, but it will probably take a few years of research to determine if it's more effective than a singular approach.

"I'm not necessarily advocating for a new philosophical approach -- the reality is that neither side is likely to change their philosophy," Ingersoll said. "What I am advocating is more of a pragmatic approach that involves combining the interventions in different ways to meet the needs of the child or the caregiver. I think that will build better interventions."

Most Funniest Article Ever Written on Infopioneer

I didn’t know what to call this article because I didn’t know what the article would be about. That’s just a fact of life with we hack writers. Writes write!

Anyway, I decided to call it Humor: The Funniest Article Ever Written!

That would get me started and I could change the article title later.

But isn’t it funny that:

You add an “h” to “hug,” you get Hugh. Since the “h” is silent in England you would think you would get “hug” right back again. In England is Hugh Grant called Hug? No!

You add an “e” to hop and you get “hope” but if you add an “e” to “to,” you get “toe.” That “e” can change an “ah” sound to “oh” or an “uuh” like in “you” to “oh.” Oh, yes! Add an “e” to “trip” and you get “tripe” and who wants that?

I like Spanish where vowels behave themselves.

And you can spell “rough” as “ruff” both of which are pronounced “ruhf.”

You know what your spell checker will do with “ruhf.

“Ruff” is that “stiffly starched frilled or pleated circular collar of lace, muslin, or other fine fabric, worn by men and women in the 16th and 17th centuries.”

Oh, you play bridge!

I think that we should spell “rough” and “ruff” “ruf”. See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ruff

Here’s a list of new spellings:

Mississippi Misipee

Utah Utaw (not oohtah, say the “U.”)

Southwest North Mexico


Italians don’t live in Eyetalee. They live in ITally! Theyare not EYEtalians.

Here is a funny article from http://www.iol.ie/~afifi/BICNews/Fun/fun4.htm

English is a Funny Language!

Color Picker, Color Code Generator and Color Wheel For Bloggers

The two tools below will help you get the six digit color code i.e hexadecimal value. These tools will help you a lot in customizing your Blogger templates and for writing more appealing posts. Kindly Follow the instructions for each tool before using it.

Color Code Generator

Instructions:

1. 
   
   First drag the bar on the "Hue" selector to the area of your desired colour palate. 
2. 
   
   Then click inside the Brightness/Saturation area and drag the cursor until you have achieved your desired colour. The "Swatch" bar shows you the final colour result.
3. 
   
   The hexadecimal colour code is generated in the "Hex" box. Simply copy the six digit code i.e #000000
4. 
   
   That’s it!

Color Wheel For Choosing Matching Palate Colors

This is a pretty useful tool to achieve matching or cohesive colours for navigation menu, background, hyperlinks, header etc.
Instructions:

1. 
   
   Simply paste the six digit colour code in the form below without the hash (#) sign and then hit Update
2. 
   
   The matching colour codes will appear inside the four boxes at the right side.
3. 
   
   
   You can then copy the hex values and start using them!

Top 30+ Funny Quotes About Twitter by Famous People

1.“Ask not what your twitter can do for you, ask what you can do for your twitter.”


-John F. Kennedy

2.“140 characters ought to be enough for anybody..”

-Bill Gates

3.“Hey, you! Get off of my twitter.”

-Mick Jagger

4.“You can stand under my twitter, twitter, twitter.”

-Rihanna

5.“The answer my friend, is twittering in the wind.”

-Bob Dylan

6.“My waking thoughts are all of twitter.”

-Napoleon

7.“Happiness is a warm twitter.”

-John Lennon

8.“There is nothing either good or bad but twittering makes it so.”

-William Shakespeare

9.“You should be retweeted and often and by someone who knows how.”

-Clark Gable

10.“I twitter my painting, and then I paint my twitter.”

-Vincent Van Gogh

11.“The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable consonants planted together in twitterations.”

-Galileo Galilei

12.“It is true that twitter is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.”

-Vladimir Lenin

13.“Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all with only 140 characters?”

-Marcel Marceau

14.“How tweet it is to be loved by you.”

-James Taylor

15.“There is no cure for twitter.”

-Dorothy Parker

16.“I still haven’t found what I’m twittering for.”

-Bono

17.“To err is human, to twitter is divine.”

-Alexander Pope

18.“Mankind naturally and generally loved to be twittered.”

-Benjamin Franklin

19.Men’s natures are alike; it is their twitters that separate them.”

-Confucious

20.“I think I’m an alright twitterer.”

-Todd Snider

21.“I type 140 characters a SECOND. But it’s in my own language.”

-Mitch Hedberg

22.“My intention was not to fascinate the world with my twitter.”

-Mike Tyson

23.“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be Twitter.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

24.“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating Twitter.”

-Al Gore

25.“Listen, everyone is entitled to my twitter.”

-Madonna

26.“I know how hard it is to put food on your twitter.”

-George W. Bush

27.“The only thing to twitter about is twittering itself.”

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

28.“I’m tired of twittering.”

-Harry Houdini

29.“You are what you tweet”

-Dr. Victor Hugo Lindlahr

30.“I tweet, therefore I am”

-Rene Descartes

31.“Twitter is mankind’s greatest blessing”.

-Mark Twain

32.“Twitter is reason gone mad.

-Groucho Marx

33.“Tweer is just another defense against the universe

12 Best Twitter Applications :: Software

When our desire to connect and communicate with one another crashed headlong in to the digital behemoth that is the Internet, we ended up with Twitter: a true 21st Century social phenomenon.
Like a chimerical parrot, each head squawking a different one-liner, Twitter can seem odd to the casual observer. Allowing users to post ultra-short updates, a quick tour ’round Twitter will find normal folk, celebrities and even politicians rubbing shoulders and swapping verbs (even TAB is tweeting away).
As a frequent tweeter, I decided it was time to identify the ultimate Twitter app for the iPhone. Diving headlong in to the App Store, I emerged from its murky depths with 12 different apps.
Read on for the definitive roundup of iPhone Twitter apps available from the iTunes App Store including a comparison table and screenshot gallery.



Tweetie ($2.99)

Everything in one app, including multiple accounts, favorites, deleting, following, trends, location, re-tweets, photos and more. Notably, Tweetie is also blazing fast. The interface is lacking in visual-flair, leaving it feeling a little empty, though. Still, it’s robust, quick and all the features to tweet on the go are present and correct.
Tweetsville ($3.99)

Although there’s no location-based functionality or multiple accounts, everything else is present and correct, from retweeting to trends, and search to favorites. The overall presentation is polished yet refined, with a simple box-style list layout or the option to change this to a Tweetie/iChat style bubble design. For four bucks though, Tweetsville has either got to step up to the plate with some new features or back down and drop that price a little.
iTweets ($0.99)

With its iPhone SMS-influenced design, iTweets is an ultra-simple solution, perhaps most appropriate for the infrequent tweeter (with few friends). There’s no photo-support, no trends, no search: just one stream of tweets. Put simply, there are better apps than this available for free. And the app icon is, frankly, a vile blemish on the vibrant and youthful face of my lovely iPhone.
Twittelator Pro ($4.99)

As the name suggest, this is the Pro version of Twittelator (a free app). The app is painfully rich in features, unfortunately to its detriment: it feels cluttered and confusing. The app may be rich in functionality (there’s even a help button, perfect for those Jack Bauer emergency situations), but it’s poor in accessibility and, ultimately, a disappointment.
Twitterrific Premium ($9.99)

The premium version features an alternative theme and is ad-free. The adverts in the free version, though, are unobtrusive and serve as handy bookmarks when scrolling through unwieldy streams (which helps as scrolling is very jerky). Light on features, the appealing, functional interface design and super-cute tweeting sound are plus points. Certainly not worth ten bucks, especially compared to the competition.
Twinkle (free)

From the guys behind Tap Tap Revenge, comes a gorgeous looking Twitter app. It was the first one I used for iPhone but I eventually abandoned it due to various unsolved issues with the obligatory Tapulous ID. Like Twitterific, it’s light on features but has bags of character and also includes an impressive tweet-stream from nearby strangers.
TwitterFon (free)

The focus in this app is on basic features delivered in a speedy, stable package. There are only four screens in the app: a stream of tweets from the folks you follow; replies to you; direct messages; and search (including location-based search). TwitterFon feels a little bare but for purist tweeters, it’s the perfect little package.
NatsuLion (free)

An iPhone version of a functional and compact desktop Twitter-client, NatsuLion is robust and smooth with a simple feature-set for light tweeters. Like TwitterFon, there are four main screens, although instead of search, NatsuLion incorporates a somewhat useless unread tweets page.
Twittervision (free)

Twittervision incorporates an almost useless but nevertheless impressive world map feature: watch people tweet live across a map of the planet. Strange, hypnotic and downright fun. This app is the weird guy at the party who insists on showing you his magic trick — a little odd at first but ultimately amusing and impressive.
Gyazickr (free)

Perfect for iPhone tweeple with a penchant for amateur photography, this app is focused purely on posting pics. With its curious name, Gyazickr allows users to take a photo using the iPhone camera or pick one from the camera roll. Plus, there’s a funky little slideshow that displays other images recently posted to Twitter.
JustUpdate (free)

Forget those sheeple and the constant blah blah of their dreary monotonous lives. The world needs to know about all the important things that you do. This app has no follower feed, no friends, no features: just a text box for you to post directly to Twitter. That’s right, this app is the most efficient way to tell the world about the sandwich you just ate for lunch.
Twitfire (free)

Like JustUpdate, Twitfire is focused solely on getting your message out to the Twitterverse. The app incorporates a mini-browser for posting links, GPS-button for location tweets and access to the iPhone camera for posting photos, all wrapped up in a minimalist icon-driven interface.

iPhone Twitter App Comparison Table

Twitter Apps for iPhone Comparison Table (Click to Enlarge)

Before I began my epic journey on the trail of the ideal iPhone Twitter app, my tweeting tool of choice was Twitterrific (the free version, not the vastly over-priced premium edition). Now, after trawling through all the available apps, I’ve moved over to Tweetie. It doesn’t look as fabulous as its more stylish counterparts, but it’s rich in the features I require and easy to use too.
However, maybe Tweetie isn’t right for you. You could be a globe-trotter on the search for new pals, in which case Twinkle’s nearby tweets feature will make you a social star. Perhaps you’re a power-tweeter and want every feature imaginable, Twittelator Pro would be perfect for you (although it’s so ugly it’ll make your eyes sting). Or, maybe you want to get down to business and just tweet, for which Spitefire is the appropriate choice.
In conclusion, there is no perfect Twitter app for the iPhone, however, there’s such a range on offer in the App Store that there’s bound to be something that suits your own particular tweeting habits. With that settled, it’s time you pick one of these fine apps and then go find your place in the Twitterverse.
And by the way, make sure to drop by the comments and let me know which iPhone Twitter app you have chosen.