Asus gets futuristic with modular PC - ZDNet UK News

This has got to be the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while.

Asus gets futuristic with modular PC - ZDNet UK News
Laptop manufacturer Asus has unveiled its vision of the future — a modular PC that stacks on a shelf

Laptop manufacturer Asus on Wednesday unveiled a blue-sky design for a modular PC that stacks on a shelf.

The separate modules would both communicate wirelessly and be powered wirelessly through inductive charging — something that isn’t feasible today.

A row of laptop modules on a gray shelf

A user would build their own PC by stacking individual modules — such as hard drive, battery and card reader — together. Full-size modules, approximately the size of a CD, would stack next to half-size modules.

Wired News: Futurists Pick Top Tech Trends

The futurists are envisioning a pretty cool future, as usual. In this latest set of predictions:

Simplicity, Mobile Socialization, The end of the combustion engine, and a move towards greener living, capped with a 2006 Technology Explosion the likes of which we haven’t seen in like, at least 8 years. Fun stuff, but a lot of it seems positioned to be true.

Wired News: Futurists Pick Top Tech Trends

Simplicity: Over the past couple of decades, gadget makers have toiled ceaselessly to add functionality. As a result, your cell phone can now play games, do math and sound off like a barking dog when your ex calls. Your digital camera can shoot extremely poor-quality video. And nearly every device you own with a screen also contains a clock.

The problem, says Ian Pearson, futurist in residence at British Telecommunications, is that most people buy a device for a particular purpose. They neither want nor care about all the extra capabilities.

“We’ve done 20 years of adding functionality, and 99 percent of that functionality isn’t needed,” Pearson said. “There will be an enormous market over the next several years for really simple stuff.”

Jonathan Schwartz’s Weblog: The World Changes this Week

Sun is about to make a major announcement about a partnership with Google. This blog entry from Sun’s CEO is mouth watering for lovers of Open Source.

Jonathan Schwartz’s Weblog

But there are a couple of trends running counter to this looming force - especially among consumers. The trend is away from the upgrade cycle that benefits this traditional notion of distribution. For example, when’s the last time you upgraded your set top box? The answer’s probably never, and suggests that at a certain level, convenience has more value to consumers than the hassle of upgrading. Or ask a teenager which they’d rather have, a new iPod Nano, or a new PC, I’ll bet you money it’s the former (underlying the global trend that suggests more of the world will experience the internet through handsets than PC’s).

Or finally, as I did last week at a keynote, ask the audience which they’d rather give up - their browser, or all the rest of their desktop apps. (Unanimously, they’d all give up the latter without a blink.) All these trends show a slowing upgrade appetite calling into question the power of traditional distribution. In stark contrast to the value of volume, community and participation

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ACE CAD Product DigiMemo A501

I had a colleague contact me about what I thought about the following digital notepad [not a tablet pc, but an actual paper notepad that captures your impression] device. My response follows the blurb.

ACE CAD Product DigiMemo A501
The DigiMemo A501 is a stand-alone device with storage capability that digitally captures and stores everything you write or draw with ink on ordinary paper, without the use of computer and special paper. Then you can easily view, edit, organize and share your handwritten notes in Windows.

I said in reply:

I’ve seen these things around, but have not felt strongly enough about the benefit of digitized notes to consider getting one.

I have not heard anything in the way of reviews, good or bad, but the epinions sites and other online reviews can sometimes be slanted to the negative.

This would be especially useful for someone in a vertical market, like a doctor or a surveyor or something. That is also the niche where the tablet PCs are taking hold. It’s funny - I actually had a domain named tabletcomputing.org before tablets were widely available, because I thought that it would revolutionize the way people interface with a computer, in a ‘more natural’ way. After I saw them close up when Microsoft made that first big push a few years ago, I was immediately turned off, and the worst part is that I can’t tell you why exactly, I was so turned off. I just didn’t like the reality of a concept I had invested in a great deal. You may feel the same way about this tablet.

I would say if you feel very strongly that this technology is ‘missing’ in your toolset, that you should consider it. If you feel that you like the portability, damage-proof nature, and no-fuss simplicity of a notepad, this is likely just going to gunk that up. Also, it goes without saying that it wouldn’t be supported by OIT, and so if something went wrong it would be between you and the reseller/vendor/manufacturer.

If you’d like to talk about it some more, give me a call.

NewsForge | Tips for buying a Linux-compatible laptop

This article is specifically targeted at Linux Users, but most of the concepts apply to all laptop buyers. This guy knows what he’s talking about.

NewsForge | Tips for buying a Linux-compatible laptop
But if you’re going to buy a new laptop, the next step is to prevent yourself from over-buying. When I started looking at new computers, I immediately gravitated toward expensive, high-powered AMD64-based systems, because that’s what I use at work. High-powered systems are nice to have, but they’re painful to buy, with prices ranging from $1,200 to $3,000. I thought this was reasonable at first because I hadn’t shopped for a laptop computer in almost five years. Today you have far more manufacturers and CPU choices. You can buy a more than competent laptop for less than $1,000 and get the same amount of work done as you would with a system that costs twice as much (assuming normal desktop-related work tasks, not gaming or scientific visualization).

On buying a laptop.

I often get asked how to buy a great laptop. After I say get an Apple, and the person tells me all the reasons why that won’t work, and I explain that it doesn’t matter, and they say, well, what’s a nice windows laptop, and then I sigh a little, and then we talk about what makes for a good laptop universally speaking, at least for the next ten days or so, when things get faster and cheaper.

Upon being asked about this topic in an email today, I decided to share my answer with this blog.

This kind of topic really requires an interactive discussion because there are so many variables. I would prefer to discuss the topic with you over the phone, if only to get a better feel for your needs.

However, here are some guidelines:

Get as much hard drive space, processor speed, and ram as you can afford.

Hard drive should have 80 Gigabytes or more.

Processor should be 1.5 Gigahertz or more. Much more.

You should have 1 Gigabyte of RAM, but less is okay. The more the better.

Your screen size will likely be determined by the amount of weight you’re willing to cart around. 3-5 pounds is a heavy laptop. 1-2 pounds is ultra light. Some laptops are as many as 7-9 pounds. You can get a 15 inch, rather than a 12 inch screen, but it will add extra weight to your laptop. 17 inch laptop screens are typically overkill for the average user, but are great for photo and video applications.

The discounted Dell specials at Rider’s academic discount page often limit your choices.

You want wireless, definitely. You will want something that is compatible with the 802.11b wireless standard, since that is what we use at Rider. Most wireless setups in new laptops will work with this standard, also known as ‘wi-fi’

You may need to purchase an external cdrom drive, since smaller laptops often do not have the extra space for a built in drive. If you get an external drive, you might as well go all the way and get a DVD+/-RW burner, since that will give you a lot more flexibility. If you go this route, you will want either USB2 or Firewire [aka ieee 1394 or iLink] on your laptop, and the drive should have USB2 or firewire [aka ieee1394 or iLink] as well.

My suggestion? Get a 12 inch iBook from Apple. You may spend a little more, but the investment is a good one, and it will have all of the features you want.

Nokia debuts Linux-powered Internet tablet

Nokia debuts Linux-powered Internet tablet

Nokia demonstrated a compact, handheld tablet device powered by Linux at LinuxWorld in New York this week. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has a WVGA (800×480) screen, and is intended to offer convenient Internet browsing and email through built-in Wi-Fi, or via a Bluetooth connection to a compatible mobile phone. It will ship in Q3, 2005 to select European and American markets.

palmOne - Products - LifeDrive Mobile Manager

This thing is a pretty cool mix of good interface, functionality, and storage. Is it the device I’ve been waiting for? Well, the pocket device with built in WiFi is a pretty good start, and the 4Gigs aren’t bad either.

palmOne - Products - LifeDrive Mobile Manager

With a huge 4GB hard drive1 and built-in Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® wireless support, you can easily carry all the essentials of your busy life and use them as you will.

• office docs •

Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs from your desktop computer, 300 songs, 2 hours of video, 1,000 vacation photos, and more, are always with you.

• email & web •

With support for POP, IMAP and Exchange email accounts, you can stay on top of your email at any of the thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots2 around the world

• music, photos & video •

Plus, a voice recorder, MP3 player, and photo viewer keep your precious few moments of free time both more interesting and productive.

Technology-Enabled Teaching/eLearning Dialogue

When you can envision technology as an immersive tool, you’ve got it.

Technology-Enabled Teaching/eLearning Dialogue

‘What if’ Pervasive Computing?

By Stephen Acker

In April of 2005, I attended the Apple Digital Leadership Institute hosted by the University of Missouri (http://edmarketing.apple.com/adcinstitute/).

Each of the 140 attendees who entered the large ballroom on the Columbia campus owned, or was given, a laptop that connected seamlessly to the wireless network that bathed the facility. Two very large monitors flanked the presenters%u2019 dais at the front of the ballroom and the audience was organized in round tables of eight. A group blog, a radical departure from the typical individual blog, gathered the impressions and streams-of-consciousness of those in attendance, and University of Missouri journalism students roved throughout the assembly gathering interviews for podcasting and vodcasting (video podcasting). We had come together to explore pervasive computing, and for at least two days we were living in that future–a universally trained learning community with universal access to the information milieu–an amalgam of live utterance, typed commentary, Google searches, and sharable digital libraries. It was fabulous–we were all always there, always on, and always connected. Yet our individual takeaways were gapped by our individual distribution of attention, for among the constantly clicking keystrokes, many an e-mail was answered and many an IM session was conducted.

The New York Times > Technology > Technology Special > On the Horizon: Bandwidth Advance Hints at Future Beyond Wi-Fi

This is pretty cool. NYTimes gives a good overview on ‘the third wave of wireless.’

The New York Times > Technology > Technology Special > On the Horizon: Bandwidth Advance Hints at Future Beyond Wi-Fi
While traditional radio technologies have transmitted and received analog signals only on specific frequencies, UWB uses inexpensive computing power to send short radio pulses across much of the radio spectrum. Because it does not use a single frequency, UWB offers several advantages, including the capacity to send high volumes of information quickly and the ability to share frequencies and resist interference. It’s like breaking a truck’s cargo into loads small enough to be carried on bicycles that can weave through a traffic jam.