Gearfuse

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make a digital copy of any of your DVDs as if it were an audio CD you wanted to import with iTunes? You can! I mean, you will once RealNetworks introduces it’s $30 software program: RealDVD. It’ll allow users to make a digital copy of an entire DVD, including all the extras and artwork from the box.

Let’s face it: Blu-ray is king these days and that sucks for all the loons who bought a library of DVD movies (which is everyone). Now that DVD is out the window, Hollywood could care less if you copy all of your DVDs and start selling them on your website. OK, that’s not true at all but at least it’s giving up the ban on digital backups. If you dare do it with Blu-ray discs, the peoples of Hollywood will hunt you down and kill you. Just prepare your hard drive beforehand, otherwise you’ll only be able to fit the first season of Dawson’s Creek on it, and we all know that the second season is way better.

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If you decided not to shell out the dough for Verizon Navigator, or some other equally useful GPS system, you might find yourself in a jam if you were to get lost ambling around a big city. At Microsoft’s annual TechFest, they displayed a new project which could save you the cost of a taxi fare or the risk of becoming even more lost. Imagine being able to snap a picture of any building in the city, and sending it off to a database, soon to receive a map and information of where you are. Microsoft can make it possible.

To make a working model of the project, Microsoft had to take millions of street level photos from Seattle, the first city to be tested thus far. Instead of making text the only source of a GPS directional system, Microsoft researchers figured it would be a lot easier to just make the camera the input. Using the millions of pictures obtained, and cross-referencing distinguishing features of the buildings, they can then compare these to the photos sent in by users. — Andrew Dobrow

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