The Digital Open, a new online community and competition for youth, is now accepting free and open technology projects from anyone 17 or younger. Free and open means openly licensed, with software licensed under a GPL license and content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. (See the Digital Open–approved Licenses for more details.) The competition runs until August, and they accept projects in all different languages. The competition aims to foster an online and open community of youth by encouraging them to see the benefits of open source and open licensing. Their announcement below, including a link to the Boing Boing video:

“What can you make with technology that will change the world—or even just make life a little easier or more fun?

Institute for the Future, in partnership with Sun Microsystems and Boing Boing, invites youth worldwide, age 17 and under, to join us as we explore the frontiers of free and open innovation. The Digital Open: An Innovation Expo for Global Youth will celebrate projects in a variety of areas ranging from the environment, art and music to the more traditional open source domains of software and hardware.

From April 15 until August 15, 2009, we’ll accept text, photos, and videos documenting projects from young people around the world who want to contribute to the growing free and open technology community.

But the Digital Open is more than an online competition. By submitting a project, you’ll become a valuable member of a community of creative young innovators working in the exciting world of free and open technology.

Collaboration is encouraged! In addition to a variety of prizes and achievements you can earn through community participation, the top project in each category will earn a fantastic prize pack and be featured on Boing Boing Video!

The future is yours to make! Get started at http://digitalopen.org.”

Smart Installer Pack Automatically Installs Your Favorite Software to a New PC

Hunting down application after application to fill a new computer with your favorite software can be a pain. Free application Smart Installer Pack makes it easy.

Just download the 227 MB application and chose from the applications contained within.

Smart Installer Pack is a free download, Windows only. http://smartinstallerpack.com/

An Unofficial User's Guide to Gmail

Think you know everything there is to know about the popular Web-based e-mail application from Google? Think again.

Five years in beta mode hasn't prevented Google's Web-based Gmail from flourishing. In fact, it's one of the few e-mail products continuing to innovate in any way these days. Desktop clients like Outlook and Thunderbird haven't changed much in years; Hotmail gets a new name every few months, but that's about it. Gmail, via experiments from the Gmail Labs team, is constantly adding new features.

Plus, Gmail is simple to use. At least on the surface. 

Eric Griffith at PC Magazine has put together a guide to highlight the features you may have missed. Clink on the following link to get all the info:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2346122,00.asp

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 released 28^th April 2009

Microsoft released Office 2007 SP2 which the company says boosts performance to programs such as Outlook and Excel. Has added broader range of file formats including PDF files.

In Excel, more control over the appearance of SmartArt graphics is available. The SP2 can be downloaded manually, or you can wait until Microsoft releases SP2 via Microsoft Update in August.

Link to download SP2:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en

Source – PC World

iphone apps, a billion to choose from, 9 must-haves

PC World has an interesting article about 9 essential applications for your iphone. James Hutchinson thinks the following are the most essential:

Facebook

Tweetie

Palringo

Tap Tap Revenge 2

Superball 3

Drop7

Wolfenstein 3D Classic

Boxee Remote

Multi-Photo Email

You can read in depth using the following link:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/163978/the_nine_essential_iphone_apps.html

If you think there are better applications, why not let the others know by putting down a comment under this article.

Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers

Scientists have made the fastest camera ever. It can take 6.1 million pictures in a single second, at a shutter speed of 440 trillionths of a second. Light itself moves just a fraction of a centimeter in that time.

The camera works by illuminating objects with a laser that emits a different infrared frequency for every single pixel, allowing them to custom-amplify a signal that would otherwise be too dim to see.

Source:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/fastestcamera/