• No one like to see fingerprints on their screens.
• No one like to see their expensive screen dirt and greasy.
• People have to stay at an arm distance of their screen.
• Typing in the screen isn't fun.

So what's the solution?
A keyboard that can show touchable images, the idea is not new to Artemy Lebedev and his team's Optimus Tactus Keyboard, besides the optimus are great several drawback on it's current design. They made a full functional screen capable of 32bits color and a good resolution, this makes the keyborad very expensive, my idea is a smaller (40x15cm) low resolution (around 20 pixels per square inch), 16bits color keyboard that are cheaper that the Optimus, it will still have the best optimus features:

• Multiple layouts at same time.
• Custom layout.
• Custom keys.
• Application specialized keyboard.
• Easier to clean (that the screen).

Think about it.

Acabo de ver una entrada de Antonio Ortiz donde especula sobre el sentido que podría tener para Microsoft, la compra de RIM y las Blackberry. La ocurrencia de ponerme a escribir me ha surgido al leer que:

«A pesar del solape con la propia plataforma móvil, para Microsoft sería un enorme refuerzo en el correo corporativo y la entrada en el mercado de dispositivos. Este último punto es estratégico, supone sumarse a la tendencia de "controlar la experiencia completa del usuario" y no estar a expensas de que terceros […] apuesten por tu sistema y articulen una nueva capa de presentación sobre el mismo.»

En un sistema económico cada vez más global y abierto (para lo bueno y lo malo), me intriga bastante que siga habiendo proponentes de enfoques de producción de bienes o servicios que defiendan la necesidad de estar perfectamente integrados para controlar la «experiencia de uso» (más allá de unas etapas iniciales de innovación).

Entiendo que haya admiradores de sistemas cerrados como el Mac o el iPhone promovido y controlado por Apple, que ha merecido mucha atención e interés del mercado. Ahora bien, debemos recordar que no deja de ser una opción bastante minoritaria, como los son los artículos que simbolizan lujo y distinción.

Lo que no comprendo es que Microsoft, un suministrador que se interesa por mercados masivos, pueda pretender conquistarlos de manera sostenible con soluciones propietarias de "extremo a extremo" en aras de tener un control que, supuestamente, logre la mejor experiencia posible para el cliente. Siempre he creído que el precio y la adaptabilidad juegan un papel considerable en su satisfacción. Entiendo que un proveedor así contemple estas opciones, pero no que se ponga seriamente a implementarlas gastando mucho dinero en ponerlas a prueba en los mercados.

Dejando a un lado los riesgos de eventuales acusaciones monopolistas, hay dos tipos de consideraciones que me hacen dudar mucho del éxito de este tipo de estrategias en los móviles (y en todos los mercados de cualquier tipo que no sean muy reducidos o incipientes).

Por un lado está el hecho de la naturaleza de internet, y de la requerida aplicación de estándares para sus interacciones. Es claro que los "corralitos" que han tratado de imponer algunos servicios, tipo Movistar Emocion o Vodafone Live!, no gozan del favor de los usuarios, y las empresas que los promueven han tenido que recular. ¿Qué pasó con las redes de suscriptores de AOL o Prodigy en defensa de una mejor experiencia frente a la apertura, gratuidad y variedad de la "internet fija"? La "internet móvil" no es más que una parte de "la red" (o de la "nube"), donde ya existen unos usos y costumbres que no se van a cambiar por mucha mercadotecnia que se aplique, ni siquiera influyendo o presionando a los reguladores. Las campañas y movilizaciones pro neutralidad de la red han puesto de manifiesto que es una materia que goza de un interés notable por parte de la mayoría de los ciudadanos.

Por otra parte tenemos las muchas experiencias habidas en el último siglo. Los cien años transcurridos desde que arrancó la segunda revolución industrial han mostrado la enorme potencia de la estandarización de procedimientos, útiles, herramientas, máquinas, piezas, partes, conjuntos, subsistemas, etcétera. Ford, General Motors y Chrysler, empresas fuertes que comenzaron a producir masivamente con una organización empresarial e infraestructura física muy integradas verticalmente para controlar la productividad y calidad, hace tiempo que cedieron su liderazgo a esquemas industriales muy descentralizados (el JIT de Toyota). Como los humanos cambiamos nuestros principios y valores con mucha dificultad, el lastre de esas culturas corporativas integradas ha llevado a dichas empresas al borde de la quiebra mucho después de la aparición de los enfoques competidores más abiertos.

¿Será Google el Toyota de los Apple, Nokia y Microsoft?

Entradas relacionadas: Productos y soluciones de los clientes

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Handheld gaming console
Now Apple's an established mobile phone brand, why not go the whole hog by taking the games-and-mobile functionality of the iPhone into the world of gaming proper with a dedicated Apple branded console, à la DS Lite or PSP with an N-Gage type device that people might actually buy?

While the iPhone SDK has opened up the possibility for developers to bring games to the Apple mobile, the offerings released for the iPhone to date haven't been the stuff of gamers' dreams. A dedicated device could persuade the gaming big boys to get on board and bring their users with them.

What better way to woo the big-spending gamer market than with a dedicated handheld gaming device?

Tablet
Rumors of the Apple tablet have been doing the rounds for some years, fanned by the occasional patent filing from Cupertino which seems to suggest such a device is on the way.

Surely it wouldn't be too much of a leap for Apple to consider bringing this rumor to reality. When Apple got into the touch screen game with the iPhone, it introduced a whole host of nice touch screen touches - the ability to zoom in on an image by moving your fingers to either corner of the screen, for example - making a full screen tablet is an appealing prospect for Mac users.

Apple's also proved that thin is in with the Mac Book Air - and dieting skills could rather cleverly be brought in to turn tablets into the lightweight devices users always hoped they'd be.

iPhone nano
The iPhone earned its cachet with geeks and the average Joe alike by following the Apple 'reassuringly expensive' model - it speaks volumes about the device that a developer created an application intended purely to show off the wealth of the iPhone user that downloaded it.

While the strategy has worked a treat so far - sales of the iPhone are reckoned to be in the five million ballpark - it's only a tiny fraction of the potential mobile market out there for Apple's picking.

Good sense would dictate that the iPhone's future development will follow the historical path of the iPod's. After the first geek-love inducing, big-storage packing model, Apple debuted the nano, a smaller, less flashy item for those not weighed down by a massive wallet.

An iPhone nano might even go down better as consumers trim back their electronics spending.

The device called for here is a smaller, less feature-heavy device, with less storage and a daintier screen size. Admittedly, that would almost necessitate a removal of the touchscreen element that makes the iPhone so appealing to its users, but by the time such a device would be brought to market, the iPhone brand should be strong enough to sweep up would-be buyers into the type of frenzy that could make them forget that nagging feeling of touchscreen jealousy.

Netbook
Who doesn't love a good netbook at the moment? HP, Lenovo, LG, Samsung - the list of vendors scrambling onto the bandwagon goes on.

Apple, however, has resisted so far - but for how much longer? With many of the netbooks on the market at the moment bearing a distinct resemblance to the white plastic of Apple's traditional design, it would seem an obvious step for Apple to take on its rivals at their own game.

Apple, after all, has indicated it's not scared of the portable PC - its Mac Minis have been part of its hardware line-up for years and the One Laptop Per Child project could have had its XO machines running on Mac OS X if it had opted to take the closed source route.

With the company reporting its best ever quarter for Mac sales, it's time for the company to take on the low-cost, ultra portable market or remain a hardware also-ran.

Mac OS X for any machine
The last time Apple thought about opening up its software, it came up with Boot Camp - a method of running Windows on a Mac, a move that prompted wags to praise a combination that brought together the affordability of Mac hardware with the reliability of Windows software.

Surely what Joe Public is craving is the opposite combo: Mac software without the associated ties of a Cupertino branded machine. Yet, Apple hardware and software remain as inseparable as Doctor Who and the Tardis.

A platform that's locked down is a strategy that's worked for Apple so far in brand building, but it's one that's confined the company to a niche. A fat and profitable niche but a niche nonetheless - by opening up the Mac OS X platform to other manufacturers, there's a huge growth bump to be had.

The screen slides up to reveal the keypad or down to reveal some multimedia keys.

The navigation keys on the front are now smaller to make room for the larger screen. I found the 2 softkeys are harder to press because they’re flush.

The display has a thicker screen compared to my n95-3. I can tell because when you touch the display it won’t cause ‘waves’ on the screen like it does on the n95-3.

Like I mentioned earlier, the screen is a little bit bigger (2.8″ vs 2.6″) though it has the same 240×320 resolution as previous n95’s. I wish the n95 had a higher resolution screen.

Build quality is good. The sliding action is solid.

There are stereo speakers; one on each side. They’re extremely loud.

There’s a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack on the left side - you can use regular headphones with it.

The right side has a camera, gallery and volume buttons.

At the bottom is a mini USB plus a Nokia charging port. You can’t charge the n95 via the mini USB port (boo!).

Connectivity wise you get Bluetooth, HSDPA, WiFi, IrDA and GPS.

Features:

The n95 8GB runs Nokia’s S60 software. I’ve reviewed a bunch of other S60 phones in the past so I’ll only talk about it briefly.

S60 multitasks and switches between tasks really well, it lets you cut and paste and it has a lot of 3rd party software available for it. You can switch tasks by pressing the menu button to the left of the navigation pad.

When you slide the screen down (as opposed to up like on most phones) the n95 will switch to landscape mode. This is useful for when you’re viewing webpages or watching video.

As far as phone related stuff goes, you get a nice phonebook which syncs up with your computer. The messaging app handles SMS, MMS and email (POP3 and IMAP). There is a detailed call log which includes info on your data connections. There is also support for internet calling and video calling.

The gallery lets you view your pictures and videos in a stylish sort of wheel. While my first impression was that it was kind of slow it’s actually pretty fast when you consider that it’s handling pictures that are 5 megapixel images. When you first view your images it thumbnails them. After that it’s faster. You can access the gallery by using the gallery button on the right side above the camera button.

One of n95’s best feature is it’s web browser. It’s about as good as it gets on a non touch screen device. It renders pages like they’d look on your computer but fits passages of text so that it can be viewed without having to scroll sideways. Pages render very quickly and there is this nifty feature which shows you a thumbnail of the page while you scroll which helps give you an idea of where you are on a page.

There is support for tabbed browsing (up to 5 tabs) but I can’t figure out a way to open a new tab. You kind of have to get a page to pop up and then you can use that new page as a tab. My solution was to create a webpage which has links that pop up a new page and then browse to it. Just use this when you’re writing a page:

<a href=”http://wap.howardforums.com” target=”blank”>HowardForums</a>

Replace wap.howardforums.com with whatever site you want (keep the http://) and replace HowardForums with the link text.

The music player is pretty standard; it lets you sort your music by artist, album, etc. You can control the player using the media keys which you can access by sliding the screen down - neat. There’s a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack on the left side so you can use the regular sized headphones with the n95 8GB.

There are is a speaker on both sides of the n95 8GB. They sound decent and are ridiculously loud.

You get a 5 megapixel autofocus camera. As far as camera phones goes, the n95 8GB’s is right up there with the best. It takes great pictures outdoors and decent ones indoors. Low light performance is good.

There are tons of camera related features. My only complaint with the camera (and it’s a pretty big one) is that it takes a while to launch and takes a second to autofocus. Maybe I’m used to something faster but I find the wait sucks a lot of the fun out of using the camera.

Video quality is also quite good. It can capture video with a resolution of 640×480 which is similar to what you get with DVD’s.

When you’re using apps that access the internet, it treats your HSDPA/EDGE connections and WiFi connections the same way. A pop up comes up asking you to choose how you want to connect (network or WiFi APN). It’s a good solution. You can tell individual apps that you want to only use one connection if you don’t want to be bugged each time.

You can view Microsoft Office documents using QuickOffice (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). If you want to create or edit them then you’ll have to pay extra. You can also view PDF files though PDF’s are pretty useless on the n95 8GB’s small display.

The best thing about the built-in Maps program is that you can connect your n95 8GB to your computer to download maps to the n95 8GB. It’s good if you don’t have a big data plan (maps can consume a lot of data) or if you travel a lot (data roaming can be expensive).

If you’re used to most nav systems (like a TomTom, Garmin, or one that’s built into your car) you might find the Maps program to be a different paradigm. It’s hard to explain but I just never found it to be that intuitive to use. It’s not to say that I couldn’t use it but it required more thought to use.

It does have guidance though it’s not very useful plus it can have spoken word directions (you have to pay extra for it).

You also get a built-in radio (didn’t use it), Podcasting app, calendar (the to do list is located inside it, both sync with your computer), calculator, alarm clock, bar code decoder, notes, etc. A converter program is also included (useful if you travel a lot).

Usage:

Sound quality is excellent, both incoming and outgoing. Maximum ear piece volume is pretty good.

RF performance is very good and the speakerphone volume is very loud.

Conclusion:

It’s hard to fault the n95 8GB. Of course if you message a lot you’ll probably want a phone with a QWERTY keyboard. Besides needing a higher resolution display and being a little on the thick side, there isn’t much to complain about.

About the only thing that really stuck out in my mind while is that some may find it to have too many features. Don’t get me wrong, someone like me loves a phone with a million features but there were times when even I felt overwhelmed having to write about all of them.

Still, the n95 8GB is surprisingly easy to use. If you’re someone who doesn’t use phones that much you’ll find the n95 8GB will grow with you as you learn to do more with your phone.

The phone line is connected to your house at a junction box. Phone geeks call the junction box a “network interface device.” It is usually outside the home near the foundation. A no dial tone problem will fall into two categories. The phone company is responsible for any problem with the junction box or the phone line beyond. The homeowner is responsible for anything wrong from the junction box into the home. That is true unless the homeowner has purchased a service agreement from the phone company. Part of the investigation will be to determine who has to pay to fix the problem, the homeowner or the phone company.

Determine if the problem is with one phone or all of the phones in the home. If another phone is working, unplug it and plug it in where the trouble phone was. If the new phone works, you know the problem is in the phone that was plugged in there. To check further, plug the dysfunctional phone into a working phone jack. It will not work there either. It is time to buy a new phone.

If no phone in the house has a dial tone, unplug one and take it to the junction box. When you open the junction box, you will see a phone jack. Unplug the wire from the jack and plug in the phone. Does the phone have a dial tone now? If it does, it means that the problem is in the wiring to the house. If it does not, it is time to call the phone company because the problem is theirs.

When a cordless phone has no dial tone, there are two additional considerations. Cordless phones do not work without electricity. They do not work in a blackout. Check to see that the power is on, and then proceed as above. Be sure to keep a phone with a cord to use during power outages. Another thing to check is the handset battery. A cordless phone goes dead when the battery does.

If a phone has no dial tone and is plugged into an answering machine, remove the answering machine and plug the phone directly into the phone line to test it. If the phone now has a dial tone, the problem is in the answering machine.

When some phones in the house work and others do not, the problem is most likely within the house. Assume that all the non-functioning phone lines connect at some point, probably in the basement or crawl space. By tracing the lines, you can find the junction where the problem is. Many home phone wiring problems can be repaired with modular wires and jacks that need only to be plugged into each other.

When the phone does not have a dial tone, do not panic. By following the steps above, you can find the source of the problem quickly and determine if you need to spend some money or if you just need to call the phone company to report the outage. With all the modular wiring and accessories available, most homeowners can fix their own wiring.

However folks at home, if you are like me and don’t have time to check these things out, or you don’t want to make matters worse, go to Repairfinders.com and find a qualified telephone inspector that can assist you in fixing any telephone problem that you may have.

A raíz de una duda que un usuario me preguntaba en los comentarios he decidido escribir este truquillo que tenía pendiente.

A veces, tenemos dispositivos que no funcionan correctamente, que están mal instalados o que nuestro sistema no los reconoce y por lo tanto no puede instalarlos.

Pues bien, en la ventana de Administrador de Dispositivos hacemos clic con el botón derecho sobre el dispositivo que no funciona bien (suele tener un icono especial para señalizarlo) y pulsamos en Propiedades.

En la pestaña Detalles nos sale la siguiente información:


Pues bien de ahí cogemos los datos VEN y DEV. En mi caso VEN 13F6 y DEV 0111.

Luego vamos a la página: PCIDataBase.com

Donde introduciremos en Vendor Search las cifras 13F6 o en Device Search 0111. Luego buscando, obtenemos los detalles del dispositivo y un enlace a la web del fabricante para descargar el driver.

En este caso, la información dispositivo es:

Chip Number:	CMI8738/PCI C3DX
Chip Description:	C-Media Audio Controller
Notes:	Drivers available at http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/driver

]]> http://telescopecameralens.wordpress.com/?p=79 Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:40:35 +0000 edwinmeade http://telescopecameralens.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/telescope-video-cameras/ Using Video Cameras With Telescopes

While most people have thought about using a camera with their telescope to get great astrophotographs, there is another option; the use of video cameras with telescopes.  With the video camera there is no need to worry about the camera lens being in line with the telescope. Read further  Telescope Video Cameras

The fact is, computer products/peripherals are often distributed with under tested device and system drivers, which can cause real mayhem including intermittent system crashes (one of the hardest problems to diagnose), poor system performance, or buggy peripheral performance.

Manufacturers of course, are not slackers when it comes to improving previously released drivers in order to fix bugs, errors and conflicts with other programs, (more common than you may think), or to increase peripheral functionality. For example, my HP home printer has had three improved drivers released in the past two years that have increased stability and functionality somewhat.

If you want to take a trip on the “Frustration Express” then you can try to update your drivers manually. Believe me; you’ll be in for a long and frustrating ride.

You’ll start by Googling the driver name, then investigation available drivers, many of which will have a disclaimer stating that it was not written specifically for your system/device, you’ll try it - then delete it and then your back to Googling again. Repeat the previous frustrating experience as many times as necessary and you might get lucky.

Uniblue Systems, a Microsoft Gold Certified provider and one of my favorite socially conscious software developers, who are noted in the computer tech community for freely providing, as a public service, the invaluable system tools ProcessLibrary, ProcessQuickLink, and ProcessScanner, has just released a terrific utility that takes care of all these problems for you.

DriverScanner will quickly scan your system, determine the drivers that have updates available, and will download and install the updated drivers which can provide you with increased system stability and more reliable system and peripheral performance. On my test bed system, DriverScanner found, in seconds, seven drivers that needed updating. Considering what I do for a living, and how fastidious I am in system maintenance, I was very impressed.

DriverScanner doesn’t stop there though.

Consider the last time you had to do a full re-install of Windows, (if you haven’t yet you will), and you discovered that the most frustrating part of the process was the installation of all those device drivers. The hassle you had searching high and low for the original install CD’s or worse, spending hours on the Internet tracking down those hard to pin down drivers.

DriverScanner makes it easy to backup and reinstall all your Windows drivers. Using DriverScanner, you simply backup and restore to and from external devices.

This is a great little application that should be part of your system and recovery toolbox.

Quick facts:

Driver scanner engine works via a single click

Identification of drivers requiring an update

Download of updated drivers specific to the hardware and OS

Comprehensive driver download history

Driver backup and restore to and from external devices

Triggering installations of the upgrades

Backup of current drivers and restore feature

Use of restore points as a backup plan in case of faulty drivers

Reporting of defective drivers directly from the interface

Clear and simple to use interface.

This is a great little application that should be part of your recovery toolbox.

Requirements: Windows XP, Vista

Download the scan at: Uniblue