Toyota has developed a mind-controlled wheelchair in collaboration with researchers in Japan. Basically, the chair uses Brain wave-detecting technology, or electroencephalography (EEG) to respond to human mind. A cap wired with sensors, detects a person’s brain waves and sends the detected data to a computer. The computer analyzes the information and delivers neuro-feedback to a driver which controls the wheel chair motion.

Scientists are working the technology for decades, and had difficulty achieving short response times. Toyota’s chair has the quickest response time yet: 125 milliseconds, or 125 thousandths of a second. Owing to its quick response, plans are under way to turn the wheelchair into a commercial health care product.

Toyota hopes the system could ultimately be applied to brain waves generated by emotions.

Brent Simmons, creator of NewsGator’s NetNewsWire iPhone news reader has been busy working on a new iPhone framework called TapLynx. With TaoLynx, even non-programmers can generate topic-focused media applications for the iPhone.

According to NewsGator’s Brent Simmons:

“The idea behind TapLynx is that you can take a collection of feeds and some artwork, make choices about colors and gradients and behavior (all in a configuration file you edit), then create an iPhone app. Without doing any programming.

But you can do programming if you want to — use TapLynx as the base and add more features. (In fact, that’s what I’m doing with NetNewsWire 2.0 for iPhone — it’s a custom app built on TapLynx.)”

The goal of TapLynx is to help agencies, developers and designers to develop customizable and unique iPhone apps quickly and easily, without learning Cocoa or dealing with messy code. The ‘All Things Digital App’ and ‘Variety.com App’ are build using TapLynx which is behind award-winning NetNewsWire for iPhone.

Toshiba has released its new satellite laptops in four models, namely, A500, U500, M500/5-5 and P500/P505, for range of users starting from casual users to multi-media users who need a bit more power.

The smallest model U500 ($849.99) is just 13.3 inch and more suited to on-the-go computing, while the A500 ($749.99) is a 16-inch multi-media machine. Newly announced models are, the M500/M505 ($699.99) has 14-inch high-definition LED display and the P500/P505 costing $799.99 comes with 18.4-inch desktop replacement with slot-loading DVD drive.

A500, M500/M505 and P500/P505 have the LED backlit keyboard which allows you to keep typing even when the lights are low. All the new Satellites include multimedia command keys, webcam, face recognition software, harmon/kardon speakers and, of course, the world renowned eSATA/USB combo port.

HP proudly announced next generation internet-connected inkjet printer on 22 June, 2009, which lets people to take printout of coupons, movie tickets, maps, and other items from Web sites without having to turn on a PC. It has a 4.33-inch touch screen for navigating to sites, and software for accessing Web content from HP partners, including USA Today, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Fandango, Coupons.com, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku, and Weathernews.

It can be connected to the Internet through a wired or Wi-Fi connection. The device also supports Bluetooth for printing directly from digital cameras and other devices.

“By giving people access to the content they want at the touch of a finger, the ability to customize their printing experience and create their own apps, and enabling easy one-touch wireless setup, we are driving a significant shift in how people will be printing in the future,” said Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP of the Imaging and Printing Group at HP.

HP has also launched HP Apps Studio, a site for downloading future applications for the printer. Also software developed by third parties available in the Apps studio can be used by the printer. Now it will be available in the market for $399.

MiFi is a card-like wireless broadband device that creates a personal cloud of high-speed internet connectivity that can be shared among up to five users and a variety of WiFi-enabled devices like laptops, MP3 players and gaming devices. It is both a wireless hotspot and broadband modem.

“You can hold the MiFi 2200 in the palm of your hand, slip it in your pocket, even place it on a beach towel if you’re lying under the sun and wirelessly connect your laptop, MP3 player and gaming device to the Internet all at once,” said Steve Elfman, president of network, wholesale and product, Sprint. “Now customers will be able to use one mobile broadband device – the MiFi 2200 – to connect multiple personal devices or multiple users. If I have a WiFi-enabled device, I don’t need to find a WiFi hotspot. The MiFi 2200 creates one for me.”

Now, with Sprint you can access the internet in a tea shop, sea shore or where ever you want and share the connectivity among your friends.

On 18th of June, Google added language translation service for Persian. It helps to translate articles, blogs, website content, or anything on translate.google.com, from Persian to English and vice versa.

This translation is not yet perfect. If the Google translation is incorrect, then users can give the correct translation sentence.

Also Google provides a set of translation bookmarklet for many languages. Drag and drop the required languages bookmarklet in to your toolbar for translation. Just clicking on the language bookmarklet, will translate the selected sentence(s) or whole page into the corresponding language.

Recently Li Yizhong, China’s Minister of Industry, and Information Technology, required personal computers sold in the country to carry software that blocks online pornography and other websites that people don’t like to see. Parents can get the tool to prevent computers from accessing sites with pornographic pictures or language. Apart from porn sites, they can also add their own sites to the blocking list. For instance, “If a father doesn’t want his son to be exposed to content related to basketball or drugs, he can block all Web sites related to those things,” Zhang said.

Trade organizations now criticized a Chinese mandate to require computer makers to install Web-filtering software on PCs. They raised questions about security, privacy, system reliability, the free flow of information and user choice and sent a letter to the China’s minister. They also urge the Chinese government to implement those requirements in the software.

Free-speech advocates and researchers worry about this new rule as it prevent people in China from viewing political Web sites, at some point. High-tech industry also worried about the extra costs and liability if they buy the software with PCs.

The ministry sent a notice to computer makers in May requiring that PCs in China must come with filtering software from July 1. After this issue, the government quoted that, Chinese residents will have a choice whether they install the software

Microsoft research center has come up with a new game creating tool christened as “Kodu” which enables users to create games of their taste. No programming knowledge is required to use Kodu. Just following the simple instructions given by Microsoft is enough to build your game.

Video games will lose its grace once it has been played for several times. So the research team at Microsoft bring forth with a new innovation in the game world. Now, video game lovers can give life to their imaginary games in this virtual world and start playing them.

Kodu has easy-to-use game creation techniques that help non-programmers build personal playgrounds, with the help of an Xbox 360 controller. The basic idea is that players can choose characters from a variety of visual building blocks and set special effects for selected character in order to develop their own unique creation.

“We’ve done everything possible to make sure that creating a Kodu playground is not only easy, but that it is also fun and engaging for people of all ages and backgrounds,” principal program manager for Microsoft Research and lead Kodu designer, Matt MacLaurin said. “Since Kodu ’s interface is intuitive and prevents common programming mistakes, we’re making it easy for everyone to enjoy the magic of game creation.”

In the Kodu blog, the team claims that the tool is headed into the final stages of production and scheduled for a release before the end of the month.

In general, an enterprise comprises of groups of individuals who have to collaborate and share knowledge for the accomplishment of collective goals. Task software helps the captain of the ship to delegate tasks, track the work status and get it done in time.

The main cause for losing any project or downturn of any company is improper management. So it becomes a must for any company to own a to-do list software. Task management software tools are available in plenty.

The normally expected features of task managing tools are smooth handling of tasks i.e. easy to check task list uncluttered with old completed tasks, access to to-do list software, categorizing tasks with keywords for easy grouping of tasks, deadline reminders and much more.

For achieving success, you have to have a strong leader setting a direction. Task management software is the a must use software for any organization to set off in the right direction.

MintDigital, a development shop in London and New York has released a new open source framework called Hemlock. It is developed with the richness of Flash with the scalability of XMPP, which facilitates a new class of web applications where multiple users can interact in real time.

Hemlock joins services like Notify.me that delivers notifications that interest you in real time, and Urban Airship helps iPhone and mobile developers focus on their core product in offering developers a way to build real time technology. From Facebook to Google, Twitter, Digg and countless little innovative startups, it seems like everyone is doing it. Some of these implementations are open source, like Hemlock, and some are not

Hemlock is obviously perfect for games, and also be used to create collaboration and education tools and other web apps that rely on instantaneous responses to input. Now the developer world is ready for some real time technology to build on.