5 All-Time Greatest Toys

The holidays come every year, and we stress over toys and gifts.  But some toys will always be the best...  follow to see the 5 all-time greatest toys ever.

FeetDog News

Windows Phone 7.1 SDK Error

I need your help! "GetCopyToOutputDirectoryContentProjectItems"

I went to a Microsoft Code Camp a few days ago and got all pumped up about the Windows Phone 7.1 release (Mango) SDK.  They handed it out to us. I installed it.  I have tried building many default projects but to no avail, I'm getting the following error:

The target "GetCopyToOutputDirectoryContentProjectItems" does not exist in the project.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???? I'm going to lose all my hair from this error.

I'm using the release candidate (not the beta 2, at least I don't think it is...) that was given to us at the Mango Code Camp here in AZ a few days ago.  I tried to uninstall, re-boot, re-install, re-boot.  And all combinations of the same.  Nothing is working.  There is something else I found strange:  Part of the install cannot install the XNA Game Studio plugin and some other XNA item.  I don't have the XNA Game Studio installed.  I' not sure if it the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK tris to install XNA GS or not, but I tried to manually install it and I' getting an error with that as well.  I think that it had to do with the live installer.  I uninstalled it too and tried to install again.  Still same error.  It seems like the project is fine (since this happens on ALL my Windows Phone Projects including one I've tried to target the 7.0 Windows Mobile.  Something seems like it's missing but I cannot figure it out. I'd be happy to send any log files if needed.

FYI, The 3 guys at MS that were there at the phone camp had never seen this error and didn't have any idea what to do other than re-install and re-boot.  No help.  PLEASE HELP!!!  Any other ideas?  Thanks!

Note:  I also uninstalled the Silverlight 4 SDK and even installed the Silverlight 5 SDK once it still did not work and both tries still did nothing to help resolve this.

Facebook and Android API Documentation

I recently integrated Facebook access into one of my android apps (My Missionary). It was the worst pain in the backside! Why, you ask? Because the documentation is not accurate. Documentation directly from Facebook! Its terrible. The only way I figured it out was through scouring the web all night long. And I mean all night. Then, I even had to modify some of the Facebook code (the library you can download from FB) in order to make it work! Oh well. I learned. I'll post my findings here so you don't have to waste a night of sleep...

EasyStar Flight cam 1.mov

A friend of mine (names are changed to protect the innocent) just purchased a camera for his radio controlled airplane. He took some footage of it and posted it. Check it out. It's a pretty good camera for a little plane.

SSE with SIMD for Particle Systems in Realtime

Intel has released a new library that can be included in your game/program that is designed to use multiple cores and threads. Checkout the video to see how this library will help. I have not dove into the architecture of the library, but you can download the source code and the binaries to include in your project. Happy threading!

Scientists experiment with liquid invisibility cloak theory

This is a direct copy from TechRepublic: original atricle

A team of scientists believe that silver-plated nanoparticles suspended in water could help make a real-life invisibility cloak.

A team led by Ji-Ping Huang of Fudan University in Shanghai, China has developed a fluid that contains magnetite balls 10 nanometers in diameter, coated with a 5-nanometer-thick layer of silver with polymer chains to help discourage clumping, reports the New Scientist.

With the introduction of a magnetic field, the nanoparticles self-assemble into chains positioned along the direction of the magnetic field, with lengths and widths that correspond to the strength of the field.

Oriented vertically in a pool of water, light that strikes the surface would refract negatively - bent in a way that no natural material can manage.

That would theoretically make the team’s fluid the first pliable metamaterial, a core ingredient in an invisibility cloak.

An invisibility cloak works by directing light around an object so that it appears as if nothing is there. The technology could also be used in lenses to capture finer details than an optical microscope.

A solid metamaterial that negatively refracts the long wavelengths of red light has already been developed. For now, the Fudan team has only simulated three wavelengths to confirm negative refraction for the red portion of the visible spectrum into infrared wavelengths - meaning a liquid invisibility cloak that refracts all visible light is theoretically sound on paper, but not yet in practice.

The question is whether the researchers can extend their technique to the rest of the visible light spectrum in practice. If any light is absorbed or redirected, “dark spots” would result.

Why so difficult? The smaller the wavelengths of light, the smaller the structures needed to control them must be, which in turn are progressively more difficult to build.

Paper Batteries... Welcome To Light Weight Techno World

This changes everything!