Mozilla Seabird – A Community Driven Mobile Phone Concept

You may have seen a lot of mobile phone concepts, but the one you are going to see below will blow you away, seriously this is one of the best concepts ever made. The concept is made by the masterminds over at Mozilla Labs, and they are calling it Sea Bird. The Sea Bird is running on Android, and there are a lot of amazing features in the concept phone. Since Mozilla Labs launched the Concept Series with an open call for participation they have had thousands of people join in, share ideas and develop concepts around Firefox, the Mozilla projects and the Open Web as a whole.

Overview

The Mozilla Seabird, part of the Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series, is an experiment in how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technology advances. Drawing on insights culled from the Mozilla community through the project’s blog, a focus quickly developed around frustrating physical interactions. While mobile CPUs, connectivity and development platforms begin approaching that of desktops, the lagging ability to efficiently input information has grown ever more pronounced.

Interaction

Interaction Seabird

The Seabird, then, introduces a few possibilities into how user interaction might evolve with the advancing motion capture and projector driven innovation in the market. First out, the Seabird imagines how a multiple use dongle might augment the crowded gestural interface with greater precision and direct manipulation of content in 3D space.

Pico Projector

Pico Projector in Seabird

With mobile phone companies such as Samsung, LG and Motorola moving towards display applications for projectors, the technology remains open for expanding user interaction and input at the same time. The Seabird, on just a flat surface, enables netbook-quality interaction by working with the projector’s angular distortion to deliver interface, rather than content. With the benefit of a dock, each projector works independently and delivers laptop levels of efficiency.

Design

Design of Seabird

The form development took its cues from various aerodynamic, avian and decidedly feminine forms. Its erect posture intends a sense of poise while its supine conformity to the hand reconciles that with the user’s desire for digital control. The curvature of the back also serves a functional role in elevating the projector lens elements when lying flat.

So all that means does Mozilla have plans to produce a mobile phone?
As per Mozilla themselves the answer is “No”, The idea is to get Firefox on your Android phone, Seabird is not a Mozilla or Mozilla Labs project but part of the Mozilla Labs Concept Series. The Concept Series provides a place for the wider community to create and collaborate on projects which push the boundaries of the Web and the browser. To get the complete answer to this let’s wait and watch, in the meantime share your thoughts with us on this new concept phone…

Keep away from these Dangerous websites for kids !!

If you have kids today’s post is a definite read of you.. So you want to keep your children away from cyberbullying? Well, below are the names of websites that kids should never visit. Experts have suggested that parents can protect their kids from websites that abound with the worst of the Web: rampant insults, slurs, demeaning topics and ultimately cyberbullying. Here are the low websites experts say are the ‘dark alleys’ of the Internet.

Chatroulette.com

In theory, Chatroulette connects random strangers around the world for video chats, shortening the distance between them, but in reality, experts cited it as simply dangerous, a “predator’s paradise.” Gwenn O’Keeffe, the author of the new book CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Kids in the Digital World, said that Chatroulette has spawned a number of clones-including JayDoe and Zupyo and CamCarousel-all of which parents should watch out for.

What to do? You could disable your Web cam, if it’s external, but — contrary to reports that entering the site automatically fires up your camera — that won’t stop your kid from cam-off one-way browsing. So if you’re really concerned, simply block the site with a parental-filtering gizmo (for some good ones, see sidebar). Experts say, though, that it’s also advisable to talk to your kid about what they might stumble upon online, rather than laying down the law, no questions asked. To be fully informed, of course, you might have to visit ChatRoulette yourself.

formspring.me

Intended as a question and answer website with deep ties to such social networks as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s Blogger, formspring.me is anything but innocent.

Advise to parents is to steer their children clear of it. “It’s found that children could remain anonymous much easier on the site than on Facebook,” FoxNews.com quoted her as saying. “They would post questions and send them to others — and the only purpose of the questions seemed to be to hurt other’s feelings,”

Facebook

Don’t Believe me, hmm That’s right, Facebook. With more than half a billion users, it’s the world’s most popular social-networking site. But is it appropriate for your kids ? Just go look at there Terms and Privacy policies, It’s against the terms of service, and young kids online interacting with older kids places them at risk for content exposure inappropriate for their age and cyber issues such as privacy violations and cyberbullying,.. So just a cuation take care of it..

JuicyCampus.com

Sites that target college students can often be enticing to kids. And with lists like the top ten sluts and biggest idiots on campus,” they are often wildly inappropriate,..

txtspoof.com

A new startup seems designed to facilitate cyberbullying, ao TxtSpoof lets you send a text message that appears to come from someone else’s cell phone. So parents need to train their kids in the appropriate ways to send texts.

So there are lot more websites like this in one way the internet itself would offer danger online for innocent kids, As important as it is to hear that your child can find themselves in trouble online, if you do not know what internet safety steps can help to protect them, you may be looking for more information. You also may be curious as to what it is about the internet that can be so dangerous. For your convenience, five reasons why internet use can be dangerous for children and teenagers are highlighted below.

1 – False Identities Are Easy to Create

Making new friends online is easy and convenient, but it is much different than doing so in person. Why? Because you can’t see who is at the other end of the computer. The internet makes it easy for someone to be anyone else in the world. For example, if your child is using social networking websites online, they have to enter in their age. They could easily lie themselves or they could be talking to someone else who is.

2 – Internet Predators

As it was previously stated, the internet makes it easy to create a new, false identity. Often times, the individuals who lie about their ages are internet predators. They are the ones who target children, like yours. Unfortunately, many children, teenagers, and their parents cannot tell an internet predator until it is too late, like when the predators try to approach your child or contact them in person.

3 – So Many Websites To Choose From

What is nice about the internet is that you have so many websites to choose from. In fact, that is why it is a good way to research school projects. With that said, having so many websites to choose from can be dangerous. Your child can gain access to social networking websites, adult chat rooms, pornographic websites, and websites that are violent in nature. Unless you have parental controls set up, your child can easily access any type of website with a standard internet search.

4 – Not All Information Is Private

Unfortunately, many individuals, including both children and parents, do not know that the information that is posted online isn’t always private. For starters, most teens have their MySpace profiles set to public, as opposed to private. This means that anyone can view it. There are also online message boards that are indexed by the search engines. This means that others can view the conversations that were discussed, even years down the road.

5 – They Are In Control

When your child uses the internet, they are the ones who are in control. This can be okay if your child is older and mature, but you honestly never know. You may ask your child not to communicate with strangers online, give out their phone numbers, or share pictures with strangers, but that doesn’t mean that they will follow your rules. For that reason, if you do let your child use the internet, be sure to monitor their use.

How to run a PC without anti-virus !!

From within your operating system, there are tools you can use to help ward off evil software, too. All browsers today, for instance, provide some security tools, including anti-phishing filters or lists of Web sites that are known carriers of harmful software. Use these features — they won’t slow you down. Common sense is your biggest defense.

First things first: you should have some kind of antivirus protection on your PC, especially if you surf the Internet or trade files with anyone. There are plenty of people, though, who hate antivirus programs — and with good reason. Most of them are resource hogs, slowing down your computer; many of them throw up more false positive warnings than legitimate ones, slowing down your work and annoying you in the process. These days, most are leased on a yearly basis, meaning you must pay up every year in order to keep your antivirus signatures current.

All of that adds up to some pretty painful medicine to have to swallow to potentially rid your PC of some malicious software. Can you possibly just say “no” to antivirus software? The short answer is, “yes, you can.” But to remain virus and spyware free, you’ll need to adopt some precautions — and stick with them.

Use clean software

An antivirus-free computer should start and stop with legitimate, clean software. That means eschewing copies of programs that can be downloaded through warez sites or on newsgroups, borrowed from friends through file sharing, or found on shareware and freeware sites.

Remember that being without an antivirus program often means living without on-demand scanning, so a file you download online isn’t as easy to check for viruses as it would be if you had an antivirus program installed. Still, plenty of people can and do assemble systems solely with commercial, off-the-shelf applications, and you can, too.

Scan your PC remotely

If you have more than one PC, you can install antivirus software on one while leaving the other machine without antivirus software. If the two machines can see each other over a network — home or office — then you should be able to map the drives of one computer onto the one with antivirus software installed and check individual files or entire drives through your network connection.

Or you could take advantage of free online virus and spyware scanning tools. Trend Micro’s House Call (http://housecall.trendmicro.com) and Eset’s Online Scan (http://www.eset.com/onlinescan) will perform a scan of your computer right from the Internet. Such scans might not remove any viruses or spyware found, but they will at least tell you how clean your computer is.

Use built-in protections

Antivirus protection might not yet be a built-in feature of Windows and other operating systems, but security has long been of concern to everyone who uses computers, and the result is that you’ll find some malware protection already built in to the computer you’re currently using.

Before your computer even loads your operating system, it launches the code found in your system’s BIOS (basic input-output system), which initiates the hardware in your PC and enables your operating system to identify the components you have. Within the BIOS of most PCs — accessible by pressing F2 or Del during bootup — is an optional boot sector protection mechanism. Enable this, and you’ll protect against boot sector viruses without ever installing a single antivirus tool.

From within your operating system, there are tools you can use to help ward off evil software, too. All browsers today, for instance, provide some security tools, including anti-phishing filters or lists of Web sites that are known carriers of harmful software. Use these features — they won’t slow you down.

Free Operating System tools

In addition, there are free tools available that are less obtrusive than most antivirus packages. Microsoft provides Windows Defender for free on Windows Vista, and it’s available as a free download for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Windows Defender’s focus is on spyware, which can be among the most dangerous types of malicious software, since its primary purpose is to track what you do and, in some cases, steal personal information.

Watch those websites

Common sense will go a long way toward keeping your computer safe if you don’t use antivirus software. Stay away from sites that are frequent carriers of spyware. These include, ironically, many sites that purportedly sell anti-spyware software.

A list of such sites is at the Spyware Warrior Rogue/Suspect Web Sites page (http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm#sites). Porn and gaming sites are also to be approached warily if you have no spyware or antivirus protection.

Email with care

Delete any e-mail message from an unknown source if it contains an attachment. The majority of malware contracted through e-mail comes in the form of attachments that the sender tries to get the recipient to open.

Just say no. The large majority of viruses are contracted from unsolicited e-mail, so use an e-mail application with a built-in spam checker, if at all possible. Sometimes viruses are carried in Word documents from friends or colleagues who are not aware that the files are protected.

In such cases, without an onboard antivirus tool, it makes sense to run the file through one of the free online scanners mentioned earlier. Do this before you open the file.

The payoff for all of this caution should be well-known to anyone who has watched with chagrin as an otherwise speedy and trouble-free computer was made to feel like yesterday’s technology after the latest bloated antivirus software was installed. Less really is more, if you can get away with it. And for those intrepid computer users with a survival plan, doing without antivirus protection can be a giant step in the right direction.