.::REALITYRECALL::.

Being able to remotely control your computer is an age old geek trick. But what about changing BIOS settings or installing an operating system remotely? With Intel AMT KMS this is within reach for any geek with the right hardware.

Intel vPro is a management platform built into Intel processors and other hardware that allows companies to manage their desktops and laptops out-of-band (OOB). That means the computers can be managed no matter if the computer in on or off, and even if the operating system has failed or there is no hard drive present.

With Core processors Intel introduced Active Management Technology (AMT) 6.0 which introduced a slew of new features including Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) Remote Control. This means that with the right hardware configuration you have full remote access to your computer no matter what state it’s in.

Most geeks are familiar with VNC software that runs inside your operating system, but Intel AMT KVM runs at a hardware level which allows you to go remote with your computer in the case of a total system failure or even without an operating system installed. Let’s get started and set up Intel AMT KVM so you can go remote with your computer.

How To Use Clipping Masks (And Not Layer Masks) in Photoshop	How to Remotely Control Your PC (Even When it Crashes)	Use Windows 7’s Previous Versions to Go Back in Time and Save Your Files

Previous Versions is an incredibly useful feature built into Windows 7, which allows the OS to record and view earlier versions of files without a flux capacitor. Here’s a detailed guide to using this excellent feature.

This feature goes beyond the functionality of the Recycle Bin as it allows you to:

• Recover files you may have permanently deleted.
• View or restore a version of a file which you have saved over.
• Allow you to compare current and/or previous versions of a file side by side.

With a little bit of dedicated hard drive space, an automation script and scheduled task, you can leverage this feature to guard against inadvertent file deletions and overwrites which traditional backups may not adequately cover.

How To Use Clipping Masks (And Not Layer Masks) in Photoshop	How to Remotely Control Your PC (Even When it Crashes)	Use Windows 7’s Previous Versions to Go Back in Time and Save Your Files

If you’ve ever worked in a library, you’re familiar with the drudgery of shelf reading. That’s the process of verifying that all the books on a shelf are in the right order, based on their call numbers. Books get out of order fairly easily, when they’re taken off the shelf and examined, for example, or when they’re just stuck in the wrong place.

Miami University’s Augmented Reality Research Group (MU ARRG! – that exclamation point, I confess, is my addition), led by Professor Bo Brinkman, has developed an Android app that could save librarians a lot of time and hassle. Using the Android’s camera, the app “reads” a bookshelf, and with an AR overlay, quickly flags those books that are misplaced. It will also point to the correct place on the bookshelf so the book can easily be re-shelved correctly.

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The app can also aid with inventory, generating a report of what a library really has on its shelves.

There are a few drawbacks. Thin books, such as those found in the children’s section, would be difficult to tag. Also, this prototype only uses 16 bits on the tag, but Brinkman says the group is working on a version that would allow them to put around 72 bits on a tag, allowing the system to scale up to work with any library collection.

The app was developed by undergraduate research assistant Matt Hodges, and it will be demoed next month at the Association of College and Research Libraries 2011 conference.

via Reddit; photo credits: Flickr user Stewart Butterfield

Discuss

This is an ongoing series delving into which smartphone OS is for you? Already an iPhone user? Obsessed with your BlackBerry? Need your Android fix? Read on for a taste of them all, and maybe you’ll learn whether… Is Android Right For You? We’ve have already looked at Windows Phone 7, and according to the […]

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When Amazon’s Appstore rolled out last week, we glossed over one detail that merely seemed neat. Today, we’re inclined to say that Test Drive may be the most significant part of Amazon’s announcement that day. Basically, Test Drive allows US customers to take apps for a spin at Amazon.com, with all the comfort that their tried-and-true desktop web browser brings — but rather than sit you down with a Flash-based mockup of the app, Amazon is giving you a taste of bona fide cloud computing with an Android virtual machine.

In other words, what you’re looking at in the screenshot above isn’t just a single program, but an entire virtual Android smartphone with working mouse controls, where you can not only try out Paper Toss, but also delete it, browse through the device’s photo gallery, listen to a few tunes, or even surf the web from the working Android browser — as difficult as that may be without keyboard input. Amazon explains:

Clicking the “Test drive now” button launches a copy of this app on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers. When you click on the simulated phone using your mouse, we send those inputs over the Internet to the app running on Amazon EC2 – just like your mobile device would send a finger tap to the app. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to your computer. All this happens in real time, allowing you to explore the features of the app as if it were running on your mobile device.

Today, Amazon’s Test Drive is basically just Gaikai for mobile phones — its purpose is simply to sell apps, nothing more. But imagine this for a sec: what if you could access your own smartphone data, instead of the mostly blank slate that Amazon provides here?

[Thanks, Ryan]

Amazon.com lets you play with an Android virtual machine, try apps before you buy them originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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…but it's actually very safe! And yes, NASA has a railroad. It's been around since 1963, actually—so apologies to space nuts who've known about it for a while—but only recently has the agency uploaded an expose to YouTube. More »

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world…

In this week’s app roundup: photos, automatically shared; pictures, wirelessly synced; fantasy baseball drafts, prepared; live wallpapers, personalized; disasters, alerted; movie clips, single served; your drunken night, erased from social networks, and much much more. More »

Looking for a little bit of Tron with your motorcycle racing? A group of French design students, in what is sure to go down as the coolest final project in history, has put together a concept bike that has clearly been stolen from the future via time-traveling DeLorean.  The Saline Bird concept bike has a carbon-fiber frame and uses a compressed-air engine to hit speed-record level quickness. As part of the bike’s sleek, smooth style, the body work is just a leather slip fitted over the internal parts. Switching it out just means taking one bit of leather off and putting another on.

The bike is made for the group Les Triplettes de Bonneville, who already hold four world speed records. Judging by their website, the team hits these mind-bending speeds on the Bonneville salt flats, regularly attending the SpeedWeek competitions. So, if you want to catch a glimpse of the closest thing to a light-bike, Nevada is a lot easier to get to than The Grid.

[via DesignBuzz]

Philiana Ng
After Fox greenlights a fourth season earlier this week, ratings for the sci-fi drama go up.

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Just doing my bit to spread awareness for this common, but little understood condition. Thousands around the world are affected by chronic bitchface, with sufferers having to endure being told to “SMILE” and “cheer up” by well meaning, but irritating strangers. There is no known cure.

As a reminder, these are the three countries who don’t use the incredibly sensible metric system: Liberia, Myanmar and of course, the United States of America. U-S-A! U-S-A! Hell, we should all form some sort of alliance! Non US-people, feel free to tell us why we’re dumb for not using the metric system. [Wikimedia via ZME Science] More »

Now that Fringe is miraculously renewed for a fourth phenomenal season, the show is back to blowing our minds. I counted four clever misdirections in last night’s episode. More »

The Motorola XOOM W-Fi tablet was announced earlier this week. It’ll be available via TELUS, Best Buy and Future Shop. The no-contract price point is $599.99 and no official release date was announced but the pre-order page for both Future Shop and Best Buy showed “Estimated release date: 04/08/2011″. Well, if you’re holding out for […]

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Watch Your Thoughts…They Become Words!
Watch Your Words…They Become Actions!
Watch Your Actions…They Become Habits!
Watch Your Habits…They Become Your Character!

Stephen Harper on Saturday will ask that an election be called, after opposition MPs voted together to defeat the Conservative government.