Auditory illusion
Shortly I came across an mp3, titled the “Virtual Hair cut”, and believe me I was bewitched by the level of hearing illusion. By the time I finished the mp3, I got hold of my hair to assure that they are ‘there’ and It was just an illusion!!
So highly recommended, download and play it with the Headphones on!! (Headphones are a must).
Virtual Haircut
A Matchbox:
A Woman's Voice:
Auditory illusion?
Most of us are aware of the fun side of Optical illusion but auditory illusion is a less popular term. Auditory Illusion is the illusion of hearing sounds which are not present in the stimulus, or impracticable sounds. The illusion demonstrates our ability to locate sounds in space; by comparing the inputs to the two ears, we can work out where a sound is coming from.
For those who are interested in going into details of “Whats going on?”
Now The Technology Part!
So as its supposed to be a technology blog, the technology part:
The fact.co.uk reports that several projects are exploring the potential for creating an illusion of presence within virtual audio environments and researching ways to piece together illusory space onto an existing space through the use of a hyper real 3D audio system to provide an invisible but realistic “Parallel world” .
Researcher’s are looking forward to the prospects of transmitting a 3D audio experience live (in realtime) from one place to another via the internet. Other longer term project exploring various viewer tracking devices as a ‘hands free’ interactive model for realtime audio composition.
Really useful firefox keyboard shortcuts
1. Automatically complete .org and .net addresses
Yes, we know that if we type ‘google’ in the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter it directly goes to www.google.com . But what about .org and .net addresses? .
In Firefox, Shift+Enter takes you to .net
And Ctrl+Shift+Enter takes you to .org addresses automatically .
2. Alt + D or F6
You can use this to navigate directly to the browser address bar of firefox. Very useful.
3. Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T
Ctrl+T helps you to open a new tab and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab.
This comes quite handy in case you accidently close a tab. Another way to do this would be go to History -> Recently closed tabs.
4. Alt+Enter
This can be an extremely useful shortcut. It automatically opens a website in another tab when you highlight it in the autocomplete list. For example you want to go to Facebook and you start typing www.face…, in the address bar and it starts showing the list below. You just need to use the down arrow key to highlight the selection (facebook.com in this case ) and press Alt+Enter so that it opens in a new tab.
5. Use of Delete Key
The Delete key can be pretty useful because it helps you delete specific addresses in browser history or autocomplete forms. If I want to delete the 2nd entry from autocomplete history, I’ll just point to it and press Delete key. Simple, isn’t it .
6. Ctrl+Tab
Ctrl+tab helps you to navigate between different firefox tabs quite easily.
7. Ctrl+[1,2….9]
Ctrl+tab can help you navigate alternate tabs but if you are a heavy tab user like me and want to go to a specific tab then just use Ctrl+corresponding tab number. Ex:To go to the 3rd tab use Ctrl+3.
8. Spacebar and Shift+Spacebar OR PageDown and PageUp
Spacebar or PageDown key scrolls down the webpage you’re on and Shift+Spacebar or PageUp scrolls up the webpage you’re on.
9. The Middle Mouse Button
This is not a keyboard shortcut but it is an excellent shortcut. Just point to a link anywhere on a webpage and press the middle mouse(scroll) button. It opens the page in a new tab .Also middle-clicking a tab with the mouse closes the tab.
10. / Button
This (backslash) if you hit that once will bring a quick find option. We dont have to puch CTRL+F for searching.
I hope these shortcuts will enhance your browsing productivity with Firefox. Share your other interesting shortcuts which I may have missed....!
Communicate betwen C# and an embeded Flash application
The External API allows an ActionScript developer to easily interact with the container program that is hosting Flash Player 8 and vice versa. The majority of the time, this will most likely be a Web browser, but this does not always have to be the case.
As many C# developers know, it is easy to house an ActiveX control (the IE version of Flash Player) in a .NET Windows application. This means we can now load an SWF in our Windows application and easily send data back and forth. Keep in mind that the keyword in this statement is "easily;" although possible before, it was not nearly as simple as the External API makes it now!
C# to ActionScript Communication
As I said before, communication between Flash Player and its container has been made extremely easy. The new class that makes this process so easy is the ExternalInterface. We will begin in the ActionScript. First, we need to import this new class so we can use it (as2 only, in as3 it will work without the import):
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
Next, we have to register any function we want to make available externally:
ExternalInterface.addCallback("addText", addText);
Basically, the code above will allow us to call the addText function (which I will show in a minute) from the C# application.
The addText function is as below. Basically, it takes a string input and appends it to a text box
function addText(val:String):void { inTxt.appendText(val + "\n"); // append text recieved from c# }
That's it from the ActionScript side. Now all we need to do is call the function from C#. First, I add an instance of the Flash Player ActiveX control to my form and load the SWF we created in the form's constructor:
private AxShockwaveFlash player; public DemoForm () { ... player.LoadMovie(0, Application.StartupPath + "\\EITest.swf"); player.Play(); ... }
Next, all we have to do is call the externalized method when desired. In my case, it is in response to the user clicking the send button:
private void sendBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { player.CallFunction("" + outTxt.Text + ""); }
ActionScript to C# Communication
Again, you will need to use the ExternalInterface in the ActionScript:
function send(evt : Event):void { ExternalInterface.call("sendText", outTxt.text); // function to call and it's parameters outTxt.text = ""; // reset text box }
As you can see, I am calling a method sendText and passing the input string as a parameter. Now to receive the message in C#, we first have to subscribe to the FlashCall event. You can do this in the constructor or from the activex properties panel on events tab.
Now the call made in ActionScript will be received in the request property of the event argument. For my particular call, the XML will look like this:
<invoke name="sendText" returntype="xml"> <arguments> <string>some text message here</string> </arguments> </invoke>
So now all we have to do is parse the XML in the event handler and invoke the C# function locally:
private void player_FlashCall(object sender, _IShockwaveFlashEvents_FlashCallEvent e) { // message is in xml format so we need to parse it XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument(); document.LoadXml(e.request); // get attributes to see which command flash is trying to call XmlAttributeCollection attributes = document.FirstChild.Attributes; String command = attributes.Item(0).InnerText; // get parameters XmlNodeList list = document.GetElementsByTagName("arguments"); // Interpret command switch (command) { case "sendText" : resultTxt.Text = list[0].InnerText; break; case "Some_Other_Command" : break; } }
Viola!
I have made the simple example discussed available here.
Xobni Makes Life Easier. Really. It Does.
Xobni is a new plugin for Outlook 2007 users and it kicks your email capabilities ass.
Email search. Way faster than the current Outlook07 search. When I started typing in the first two or three letters in Xobni it immediately began pulling up emails with those letters used. It has been a time saver because Outlook takes forever to search through 2 years of emails. With Xobni, it's pulling them up in seconds.
Email Analytics. Fancy little graph showing you the frequency of email usage between you and your contact. Below the graph, it shows you the number of messages sent in and out and the contacts rank based on that number.
Click-to Functions. Click on their phone number, click to schedule time with person (creates a default email and pulls your availability from your calendar!), or click to email this person.
Network. Shows you all the people you and that person are associated with.
Conversations. Shows you the history of correspondence between you and that person. How easy!
Files Exchanged. Shows you all the files you and that person have exchanged. How convenient!
Fun Facts. Share fun facts with your contacts, such as who responds the fastest to your emails.
Unlike many Outlook add-ons, Xobni seems to add its functionality without dragging down Outlook's performance, or worse, crashing it. It's useful and it doesn't get in the way. There's no reason not to try it, but be warned: it's still in beta, so just because others haven't had problems doesn't mean you'll get away scot-free.
And the download link.
Enjoy
World Builder
When i first started this blog i said to myself I'm not gonna post dumb videos from all over just to keep visitors busy. But this video makes the exception. It's fantastic.
This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of '405'. World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.
In his own words: "A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves."
Hope you like it