http://www.labnol.org/internet/send-self-destructing-messages/26125/
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http://www.labnol.org/internet/send-self-destructing-messages/26125/
Sent from Samsung tablet
Robots Help in Aftermath of Hurricane
Published on robots.net | shared via feedly mobile

Expect to see a lot of robots helping in rescue, repair, and cleanup efforts after Hurricane Sandy. These days, even smaller organizations have access to robots. For example, Vernon, CT Emergency Management Department will be flying a Parrot AR Drone to provide live HD video feeds for damage inspection. Larger cities now have multiple emergency robots at their disposal. Consultant Mark Merritt expects power utility companies in the area will be deploying drones to speed inspection of infrastructure damage, though he notes there may be "sensitivity" about using drones due to their recent politicization. A recent New York Times article describes power utility drones such as the Aeryon Scout pictured above. No word yet on whether Robin R. Murphy or CRASAR’s Roboticists Without Borders program will be sending in search and rescue robots but we’ll keep you updated. While not ready in time to help with Hurricane Sandy, NASA has been prepping a pair of Global Hawk UAVs for hurricane tracking duties. The autonomous Global Hawk has a flight time of 30 hours and can reach much further than NOAA’s WP-3D Orion manned flights. The robot planes are part of NASA’s Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) program If you see more stories about local robots being used to help after Hurricane Sandy, send ’em our way!
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Facebook Testing Sound Notifications
You hear that? It’s the sound of Facebook’s next feature experiment, and it looks like it’s already starting to annoy the test user group.
More About: Facebook
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When you upgrade to Windows 8, the program files and folders of the previous Windows installation are moved to the Windows.old folder.
If the Windows 8 upgrade happened smoothly and all your programs are working as expected, it may be a good idea to get rid of the Windows.old permanently as it could be holding tens of Gigabytes of precious disk space.
The Windows.old folder is huge.
How to Delete the Windows.old System Folder
Windows.old is a Windows System folder and hence it cannot be removed using the good old Shift+Delete keyboard shortcut. However, Windows does include a utility to help you get rid of this bulky folder forever. Here’s how:
- Press the Windows key + R shortcut to open the Run box. Type cleanmgr here and hit Enter to open the Disk Clean utility.
- Select the drive letter where your Windows 8 is installed (most likely C: drive)
- On the next screen, click the button that says Clean Up System Files.
- The utility will rescan your C: drive but this time, it will add a new option that says “Previous Windows installation.” Select that option and click the OK button.
Remove the previous Windows installation in Windows 8
The Windows.8 folder will now be deleted giving you plenty of extra disk space for your programs and documents. See more ways to recover disk space in Windows.
Helpful to know.
This week’s WSJ column answers some common questions that you may have around upgrading to Windows 8.
I also did a little Q&A with Microsoft India which is shared below:
Q. I am planning to assemble my own PC from scratch. Where do I get a full license (System Builder Edition?) of Windows 8?
A: You can buy a retail copy of Windows 8 for Rs. 11,999.
Q. If I buy a Windows 8 machine, can I downgrade to Windows 7 or Vista later?
A: PCs purchased preinstalled with Windows 8 Pro will have the option to downgrade either to Windows 7 Professional or Windows Vista Business.
Q. I have a laptop computer and a desktop computer at home. Do I need to buy separate Windows 8 licenses?
A: Yes, you need separate licenses.
Q. Can I deactivate my Windows 8 license and transfer it to another computer?
A: Yes – by completely formatting your drive.
Q. If I buy a TechNet / MSDN license, am I allowed to use them on a personal computer?
A: The TechNet/MSDN license is for the developers only and can be installed on a machine used for coding.
Q. I am a student and don’t have a Credit Card or PayPal. How do I buy an Windows 8 upgrade license?
A: If you have VISA or Master Debit card, you can pay through that. Alternately, if you are a current Windows user, you can buy a retail copy of Windows 8 Pro for Rs. 3,499 at retail stores. The promo is available till 31st January 2013.
Q. Windows 8 ships with Windows Defender. Would you recommend installing any other anti-virus program to better secure the computer?
A: Windows 8 provides enterprise-class security capabilities that help keep PCs more secure against malware intrusion and better protected with easy-to-deploy data encryption as well as strong access control to resource. If you wish, you can choose to install your own third-party anti-malware products with the ability to turn off Windows Defender. That said, if Windows 8 senses that the device is unprotected for a length of time, Windows Defender will automatically start to ensure the device is protected.
Q. Is Surface coming to India anytime soon?
A: Currently, Surface is only available in eight markets including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Interesting to know.
The official Windows Themes directory at windows.microsoft.com hosts some beautiful themes for your Windows desktop. Some of the newer themes – like these dual-screen panoramic images – are however compatible only with Windows 8 machines.
If you aren’t planning to make the upgrade to Windows 8, the good news is that you can still extract the wallpaper backgrounds of these Windows 8 specific themes and use them on older Windows PCs.
Also see: Use Windows 7 Themes on Windows XP or Vista
The Windows theme files have a .themepack extension but the Windows 8 specific themes are distributed as .deskthemepack files. Internally, this is just another archive format that you can easily open using the free 7-zip utility.
Install the 7-zip utility and then download any of the .deskthemepack files from the Windows Themes gallery. Press F2 to rename the theme file and change its extension to .7z (you can just append .7z to the file name). Now you can right-click this files and extract the included wallpapers to your desktop.
Now you can either use these background individually or put them in one folder and then open Desktop Background under the Control Panel. Browse for the folder containing these pictures and select the ones that you would like to use on your desktop.
Interesting to know.
Search Gmail messages by Size using the undocumented “size” operator
Wondering what email messages are eating up all the Gigabytes of space that you have in your Gmail mailbox? There are Google Scripts and external web apps that let you discover all the space-hogging email attachments but you don’t need them anymore.
Gmail supports an undocumented “size” search operator that will let you quickly find all the big emails in the mailbox whose size exceeds a particular threshold. The search syntax is:
size:[size in bytes]To give a real example, a Gmail search query like size:5242880 will list all big emails who size is 5 MB or greater while size:10485760 list messages that are bigger than 10 MB.
The size operator requires size in bytes (1 MB = 1048576 Bytes) but to make things a bit easier to remember, you can also think of the number as 1 followed by 6 zeros.
Once you have spotted the large emails attachments that are taking too much space, apply the #googleDrive label to directly save those attachments to Google Drive before deleting them from your Gmail mailbox.
The “size” operator was first discovered by TechSmog [via Lifehacker.com]