For the billion or so Chinese around the world who are celebrating Chinese New Year at the moment (count me in, hence this later than normal post due to the feasting, cheers Al!), it can be a difficult time to stick to the diet resolution that you made just three weeks plus ago. Well, good thing there are companies out there who are looking for you, and one of them is Sensei Inc., a familiar name when it comes to mobile and Web-based wellness solutions, having made available its innovative weight loss program known as Sensei for Weight Loss at Apple’s App Store. This means tens of millions of iPhone and iPod touch users will now be able to take advantage of this program at an introductory price of $24.95 for 3 months of Sensei Anywhere, which offers unbridled access on both their mobile device and desktop.

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There’s just this thing about bringing your car to the mechanic – I don’t know about you, but I can personally vouch for the fact that my car was running fine for a couple of years until I brought it to the mechanic for a minor tweak. Throughout the first two years, I kept to the maintenance schedule religiously, and never had a problem. That is until, the fateful day where I drove my jalopy to the aforementioned mechanic to replace some cables whose time was up – shortly after that, my car started to experience all sorts of other weird problems including the air conditioning breaking down, a busted radiator and less mileage despite not changing my driving habits to that of having a foot made out of lead. Did the mechanic repair something only to jiggle and loosen a few parts without my knowledge so that I can be a repeat customer? I guess I’ll never know, but boy did I wish the iPhone was released back then along with the RepairPal software.

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Truphone has just let the cat out of the bag – proud owners of Android-powered cell phones will be able to take advantage of the TruPhone Anywhere application for free. Yes, free – something which is pretty scarce to come by these days considering the current economic outlook that shows no sign of good news in the forseeable future. This generous move by Truphone is now available on the Android Market in the UK and the US. The release of Truphone Anywhere for Android also marks another watershed moment – T-Mobile will be making available the G1 cell phone in March this year. Just to get the ball running, Truphone Anywhere for Android will be the first native language multi-communications application in the Android Market in Germany and Austria as it is launched at CeBIT 2009.

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One of the criticisms I’ve heard about Guitar Hero and the like is that you’re not actually learning to play an instrument, so you’re spending a lot of time and effort which is essentially wasted if you ever want to learn the real thing.

The idea of using a computer for assisted learning has obviously caught on though. Roland are doing it with drums and now US Music are collaborating with Disney to bring out a range of instrument / software packages.

The instrument part of the package will be a keyboard or electric guitar which looks pretty standard apart from some minor customisation (colour coding on the keys/strings, Disney branding etc). There’s a custom electronic module to connect the instrument to the PC via USB.

The software is what makes it stand out though and it looks really good – starting from first principles giving a “guitar hero” style layout it moves the player in stages through to actually reading and playing sheet music.

You can control the speed and complexity to learn at your own pace but the end goal is the same – once you master the high levels you’re playing the instrument for real.

A prototype of the keyboard is pictured, there’ll also be a guitar version and the end product will ship with a selection of Disney licensed tunes from popular TV shows and films. Look for it in the shops later this year.

The only downside from this bloggers’ perspective is that I’ll feel every so slightly foolish learning to play the keyboard to the sounds of Hannah Montana… so guys, get a grown-up branded version together and you’ve got a sale!

edit: Video of the guitar version here at Gizmodo, via Wired

“So what am I looking at?”

“Time machine for Windows.”

That was pretty much how the conversation surrounding the Rebit product went and I can’t think of a better description so I’m stealing it! (with apologies to Apple…).

Rebit copies any and all changes made to your PC onto a backup drive, silently and automatically. If you ever need to go back to a previous version of a file you can use the normal windows explorer interface to inspect the disk as it was at any given date.

The system manages space automatically – if you make a change to a file every day for example  then you’ll have lots of previous versions. As the drive gets low on space it removes the oldest copies automatically to make way for the newer ones.

Because it’s a complete system copy it can also recover a failed machine. You can boot up a machine using the recovery CD, pick a date and it will restore the PC to the exact state it was in at that time.

You can buy it packaged into various capacities of USB hard drive or as a separate software install if you already have spare storage. It can use any hard drive, built in or external as it’s backup store but not a network share (yet). Personally I quite like the idea of partnering it with one of these but that’s probably just because I’m looking for an excuse to buy a fireproof hard drive!

Coolest Gadgets readers, there may not be a reason to post another article on this site. You see, I have discovered the coolest gadget ever. Okay, maybe it is a little too early to say it is the coolest gadget ever, but it is easily the coolest thing that I’ve seen so far at CES 2009. And I saw the Live 3D coverage of the BCS championship, for crying out loud.

Today, while I was at a CES event known as Lunch at Piero’s, I saw a demonstration by a Total Immersion. This company uses Augmented Reality (AR) to make special effects in real-time.

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Steve Ballmer began his first keynote with a brief look back of the 15 previous during the Gates’ era. He then paid tribute to Gates work in Africa. Then, looking ahead, Ballmer acknowledged that in the short term, the economy is going through what he considers to be merely a speed bump on the road to technological advancement. Tech marches on and it’s drumbeat is convergence. Ballmer said that Microsoft is committing a considerable amount of treasure to research and development to what he considers are three main areas: 1) the Convergence of the PC, phone, and TV; 2) How we compute through new interfaces that will augment the traditional keyboard – being voice and gesture recognition; and 3) moving our lives from the hard drive to the cloud. The future will meld these three and we’ll be even more connected online and we’ll be all the richer for it.

To that end, Windows will become the hub, the lynchpin to what Ballmer refers to as everyone’s “personal solar system.” And it will transform that system from a PC OS to connected environment. To that end, Windows 7 has become streamlined with faster boot times, less alerts, and a modular design which will bring more features as they mature and become available. It’s quite the departure from the “all up” variants which became larger and slower and more security prone. But Windows 7 changes all that with the basic , stable and secure OS that Microsoft can build upon. And everyone can play with it now as Microsoft will release the beta version beginning Friday. Then, users who need options, like email, video editing, and instant messaging, can download Windows Live! Essentials and begin their connection to the cloud. Part of the Windows 7 advantage is that home networking has become easier and more connected with other PCs, Media Players, and even game consoles. There’s even what Microsoft promises to be – seamless integration to phones using an improved Windows Mobile.

Lastly, Microsoft announces two near Halo games coming this year and the new Xbox experience which will have custom avatars, “primetime custom programming,” and Netflix movie downloads. But the most fun could be “KODU,” an application that will let users, and especially kids, make their own social video games! Then there’s a new tablet PC turned into a collaborative digital text book for students, Microsoft Surface, of course with flexible 3D color display and interactivity.

I dunno. By comparison to the Schiller MacWorld keynote we see what we always see between these two platforms. Both competing, but on different roads as they face a future without their founding fathers (although Jobs is still in the Apple captain’s chair for the moment).

The short term may be a bit rocky, but the road to Redmond looks pretty smooth.

Hat Tip – CoverItLive! Photo Credit – The Gray Old Lady

It is inevitable in this day and age for software as well as games to be leaked on the Internet earlier than their official release date due to the carelessness on the part of the developer or snitching employees who decided that their Christmas bonus (or rather, the lack of it) just wasn’t good enough an effort by the company to keep them going for another year. There are a 1,001 explanations for a leak, but I guess most people are not interested in the “how” but would rather just play around with the leaked software itself. The latest victim to fall to piracy of the digital kind and leaks is none other than Windows 7 Beta, according to searches at some BitTorrent sites today.

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