Nokia 7380: Beautiful design, limited practicality

Nokia has taken “phone as fashion accessory” to a new limit – and for $700, you can have one. Read PCMag’s review here.

Will Wright's "Spore": Not a gadget, but coming to one near you very soon

Will Wright, the inventor of SimCity and related games, is, in my view, the greatest systems thinking educator the world has ever seen. His games are played by millions of people. Through the dynamics of simulation and the motivation of gaming fun, they quickly transition through metalevels of complexity and develop requisite variety in problem-solving that will serve them throughout life.

Watch this 35–minute film of Will’s presentation at a gaming conference and you’ll see why I think this is the convergence of CAD, simulation, UI, and transformative education.

Engadget: OQO under attack

From Engadget:

OQO to go vertical to fight UMPC

Posted Mar 14th 2006 5:44PM by Marc Perton
Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

Less than a week after the rollout of the first UMPCs, a pioneer of lightweight portable computing has announced plans to shift its business model. OQO, which produces a 14-ounce computer that includes both a touchscreen and a keyboard, has been beset by production delays, a lukewarm market response, and turnover in the executive suite.

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Asimo speeds up

Honda’s humanoid robot, Asimo, can now run at 6 km/hour. Watch this anticlimactic – but impressive – short video.

NS: Think and type

'Mental typewriter' controlled by thought alone

The "mental typewriter" could also be used as a games controller (Image: Fraunhofer Institute)

A computer controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated at a major trade fair in Germany.

The device could provide a way for paralysed patients to operate computers, or for amputees to operate electronically controlled artificial limbs. But it also has non-medical applications, such as in the computer games and entertainment industries.

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) – dubbed the "mental typewriter" – was created by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin and Charité, the medical school of Berlin Humboldt University in Germany. It was shown off at the CeBit electronics fair in Hanover, Germany.

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor. A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, and imagine moving their left or right arm in order to manoeuvre the cursor around.

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WIRED: Microsoft unveils tiny computer

Microsoft finally took the wraps off its mysterious Project Origami on Thursday, unveiling a computer that's about the size of a large paperback book but runs a full version of the Windows XP operating system.

The ultracompact, wireless-enabled PC is everything a full computer or laptop is, minus the keyboard. Weighing about 2-1/2 pounds, the 1-inch thick device sports a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen that responds to a stylus or the tap of a finger.

"It really opens up new possibilities for PC use," said Bill Mitchell, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Mobile Platforms Division.

The computer was unveiled Thursday at CeBIT, the annual technology trade show in Hanover, during a speech by Intel executive Christian Morales. Intel makes the Celeron M and Pentium M microprocessors that power the devices.

So far, three companies have built working models. Samsung and Asus expect to begin shipping by April. The Chinese manufacturer Founder is aiming for June, Microsoft said.

The computer, however, won't be called Origami — the name used in Microsoft's cryptic web-based marketing campaign that led up to the unveiling.

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PC World: MIT researchers extend computer life without batteries

Ben Ames, IDG News Service

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to extend the power life of mobile computers.

Instead of using batteries, they draw power from an electronic device called an ultracapacitor. The approach is still several years away from being used as the main electricity source for commercial laptops and handhelds, but is already used for backup power in many small consumer products.

"A number of electronic devices already use commercial ultracapacitors for specialized functions," said Joel Schindall, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Gadget Review: Apple Shuffle Beanie

Although the Shuffle is due to be phased out we continue to see products for the USB stick based MP3 player emerge. First it was the iPod Shuffle iShirt – fun by gimmicky – and now it’s the Shuffle Beanie with a utilitarian quality – keeps the cords and Shuffle neatly packed away. Available here in multiple colors and made of 100% acrylic for $22.

 

Gadget Review

Apple Shuffle Beanie Hat [Generationmp3]

Paint will stop cell-phone signals

The intrusion of cellular phone rings into theaters, schools and nearly every other nook and cranny of modern life may soon hit a wall.

Playing to the backlash against ubiquitous communication, a company called NaturalNano is developing a special high-tech paint that relies on the wizardry of nanotechnology to create a system that locks out unwanted cell phone signals on demand.

The paint represents a dream to those who seek a distraction-free movie or concert experience, and a nightmare to those who compulsively monitor their BlackBerry phones.

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The Very Best Gadgets!

OK, I admit it—it’s a trick title. Anyone who claims to identify the very best gadgets will get into a lot of trouble, quickly. Every class of gadget—music player, PDA, digital camera, cell phone, and others—has a coterie of zealous fans, each with their favorite brand and model.

But what I can tell you about is my favorite gadgets, and give you some reasons for my choices, with the hope that these insights will shed a little light on your path to happy and productive gadget use.

PDA
Apple coined the abbreviation “PDA” for “personal digital assistant,” when they released the groundbreaking Newton in the early nineties. But the breakthrough PDA was the Palm Pilot, which came out a couple of years later.

Your typical PDA has built-in functions—address book, task list, calendar, notes—and the capacity to run additional software you can buy. Today’s PDAs are as small as a pack of cigarettes, have color screens, 32 or more megs of memory, a memory expansion slot, and other functions, such as wireless communications.

My current PDA is a Palm Zire 72. It’s about 4.5 by 3 by .7 inches, and weighs 4.8 ounces. It has a 312 MHz Intel processor, and comes with 32 megs of usable RAM. It has a 320x320 color screen.

The Z72 comes with all the usual built-in apps, so it is truly an address book/appointment calendar/task list machine. In addition, it’s a great voice recorder, MP3 player, and 1-megapixel digital camera.

Of course, the only way I can trust all my thousands of contacts and other crucial information to a little electronic box that I might sit on is to have it synchronized with my desktop personal information manager. This baby talks to MS Outlook, Time & Chaos (my favorite), Palm Desktop, and others.

It also reads Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and—with extra software—Powerpoint presentations.

And it connects by USB wire, infrared, or Bluetooth.

My battery lasts all day, with my typical usage, without recharging.

I like this thing so much I’ve created a website about it: http://TheZire72.com.

Cell phone
I am a contrarian when it comes to cell phones. You’d guess I’d have the latest combined PDA/phone/camera/coffeemaker. But no – I like my phone to be just a phone.

I have a several-year-old Sanyo 4900. It has a color display, a really loud speaker phone, a nice variety of ringer tones, and buttons big enough for me to see and feel.

Periodically, I step into my local phone store, to see if there is anything I’d like better. So far, the answer is no. I don’t even know how to use many of the fancy functions on this one!

Digital camera
If I indulged my love of photography, I’d never get anything else done. So when I need a quick pic, I use my PDA. For slightly more serious photography, I have a 2-megapixel Canon PowerShot S100. It doesn’t begin to compare to some of the new models out there, but it’s more than adequate to capture family events and occasional forays into nature.

Digital recorder
Even though my PDA does a good job as a recorder, my Olympus WS-100 digital voice recorder is better. And since it is only about a third the size of the PDA, and considerably lighter, and runs forever on a single AAA cell, I carry it everywhere.

To get its contents—up to four hours of high-quality audio—onto my computer, I pop off its end-cap to reveal a standard USB plug. I plug that into a USB port on my laptop, and it appears to Windows (or to MacOS) like a memory drive.

When it’s in my shirt pocket, it records my talks and presentations better than far more expensive and fancy units. Powerful.

Laptop computer
This topic really needs an article all its own. So I’ll just note here that I use an HP tc1100 tablet computer, and have never been as happy with a non-Mac computer as I am with this one.

There is something about being able to write and draw—and type when I want to—that makes use of the tablet PC an engaging and even transformative experience. In my office, it’s plugged into a 22-inch monitor. It’s my only machine, and it is truly wonderful.

If you get a chance to try out a tablet, do so.

Music player
Even though I do not like to walk around “plugged in” to earphones, I cannot resist the gorgeous design of the iPods. Especially the Nano.

For now, I listen to recordings and podcasts on my Z72.

Conclusion
Most people, even gadget-lovers, never get around to exploring and using the full functionality of their devices. Life has simply gotten too complex for many of us, and learning one more set of button-pushes, one more menu sequence, is just too much—even when learning it would save us a lot of time in the long run, because we use the functions every day.

So if you acquire a new gadget, or have some on hand, invest some time in learning its proper use. It will pay off handsomely.
An important point about PDA use: If you decide to get one, do away with your paper notebook. Otherwise, you will never know if or where you recorded that appointment or phone number. My dad used to say, “A man with two watches never knows what time it