Though not quite in the context I had hoped, Microsoft today stated that they’re ready to stick a fork in Vista, the software giant’s next operating system. With the announcement, it’s clear that MS is well on it’s way to meeting it’s revised release schedule for the new OS in the Windows line. MS is boasting improved graphics, more effective search integration and a new internet browser which still sucks to develop for.

Read more: Vista is done

I’m stepping into dangerous nerd territory here, one which I think might expose my lack of true nerd abilities, but, here we go anyways. With Google’s recent launch of their nifty code search engine, hackers and coders from around the world are having fun finding all the great little surprises hidden in the source of some of our favorite open source applications. But, now someone has found more, the source to DOS 6.0, also known as the DOS to rule them all. Available for anyone to download and enjoy though I don’t really know what anyone would use it for, other than reliving the olden times before Windows took over the land and Mac was banished to the tower to hatch their plan to eventually rule the desktop computer (it’s coming, just you wait).

Read more: DOS 6.0 source available via Google Code Search (Via Kottke.org)

At first the inner environmentalist inside of me was screaming out, but then I read how the sticks for these cute little USB memory “sticks” were picked up from the forest floor, not taken from the actual trees and my inner nerd took over. The sticks come packed in a nice little white gift box and are available in 256 MB, 512 MB and 1 GB variations. Perfect for the architect who wants to have a little contrasting imagery in their clean, hip office.

Read more: Wooden USB “sticks”

Meet the Athens Display Series monitors from L-Computers, a publicly traded OEM manufacturer of computer hardware from Pakistan (I believe). It appears that L is working on prototypes of high-end designer computer hardware, no doubt attempting to market to the high-performance gaming and graphics markets with thier quad SLI components and high-spec pre-built rendering machines and servers. Their Athens Display Series are a beautiful collection of (3D rendered) ulta-slim LCD monitors in multiple configurations, from 2-5 widescreen LCDs with resolutions up to an amazing 19200 x 2400 pixels at 16.7 million colors. The concepts are beautiful and I’d most certainly love to have a monitor setup almost the size of my office wall, but they don’t appear to have any real information or screenshots featuring a full view of the system, which makes me a bit skeptical to say the least.

Read more: 5 panel LCD widescreen monitor by L-Computers

DNS is an essential system for the contemporary internet, basically translating domain names (ie. bunchofnerds.com) to IP addresses, making for easily recognizable names assigned to IP addresses. That’s about as deep as I’ll get into the networking 101, but you get the gist. The internet has gotten a shot in the arm last week, with the launching of OpenDNS, a new public DNS service which is faster, safer, and smarter than your ISPs DNS and best of all, it’s completely free to use.

OpenDNS gives the user a bit of extra security by automatically blocking sites which are determined to be Phishing site (you know those emails you get from PayPal or eBay asking you to login to www.bizserchsrvice.info/EbAY because your account has been blocked?), speeds up many of your connections by taking out several hops from your DNS lookups while surfing the internet, and even intelligently tries to route you towards your desired destination when you mis-spell the TLD (i always type in .cm or something similar). It’s extremely easy to switch to OpenDNS’ services, with the end user merely having to change 2 settings via their computer and/or router, a step that OpenDNS has documented to a tee to make it even easier. I’ve been using OpenDNS for several days and I’m now more than happy to encourage others to also give it a try, as I’ve seen noticable increases in speed and it’s pretty cool to see a Phishing site automatically being blocked before I reach it.

Read more: [OpenDNS - Free public domain name service | DNS entry @ Wikipedia]

Are we seeing the future of human computer interaction? Could we see this desktop replacement reviving the slowly dying tablet computer market? The brilliant mind of university student Anand Agarwala has created the prototype for BumpTop, a fully-featured, physics-enabled desktop replacement, which enables the user to ‘push’ around their documents using expressive and lightweight techniques found in the real world. While I could only try and explain how it works, I encourage you (all) to watch the video and be amazed (hopefully). As one of our resident nerds says, “revolutionary”, we agree.

[ BumpTop Prototype | Video demonstration | Via Google Blogoscoped]