Tech

Asus Tablet

Books, Tech, Thought Provoking

Now this is an interesting device which was reported by laptop mag has reported. The article also mentions a device where a 12 inch table can attach itself to a keyboard to transform itself into a notebook. However, I’m a fan of devices becoming as small as possible but also to be usuable. The iPad (which I saw for the first time yesterday) is too heavy and too big for my liking. That’s what makes the third device to interesting.

As a note-taker, the Eee Tablet could hardly offer more functionality. Its stylus uses Wacom technology to give it an incredibly smooth drawing / hand writing experience. But if writing down notes or drawing diagrams when you’re in a meeting or class is not enough, why not take a picture of the whiteboard? The Eee Tablet has a back facing camera that will take photos of anything and let you annotate it. You can also record sound while you take notes. So just imagine recording a college lecture and then playing it back while you read the notes and look at photos of the whiteboard.

It seems to me to be something business people would take to in droves. The iPad is notoriously unhelpful for productive tasks like writing, there is no camera and as far as I’m aware, there is no microphone. The ASUS tablet has all three. It seems that ASUS has stolen a march on their competitors yet again. Watch them try and catch up.

Many mobile phone applications spying on you

Tech

It seems that many mobile phone applications for both the Apple and Android platforms secretly extract data from the phone. Usually, I breeze through those warnings on my HTC Tattoo. Time to re-evaluate what I’ve installed.

Lookout Inc., a mobile-phone security firm, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple Inc.‘s iPhone and phones built around Google Inc.‘s Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users’ phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/28/financial/f121220D57.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0v44r2Vtn

Depending on the Cloud is dangerous

Tech, Thought Provoking, Web

This story in The Guardian got my attention. Imagine having 4 years of work removed at the drop of a hat? That’s what seems to have happened with Google’s decision to shut down some music bloggers. Apparently, they weren’t even give any warning.

In what critics are calling “musicblogocide 2010”, Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google’s Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.

This is not a problem of Google per se. It’s a problem of depending on any third-party to hold your data whether it’s Facebook, Salesforce, Flickr, Hotmail or any other site holding your data. I came across this problem during the initial internet bust when my files were deleted by a data hosting company and I was unable to retrieve them. If it’s important, always make local backups of your data and have workarounds in place so that if one provider kicks you off or goes bust, you have an alternative option to keep functioning. If you blog, get your own domain and hosting provider and backup your files. It’s much easier than remembering what you wrote 4 years ago…

Google Chrome sounds like a nightmare

Tech, Web

John Naughton’s column in the Observer yesterday analyses the impact of the coming Google operating system.

The flip side of all this, of course, is that Chrome netbooks will be the ultimate in tethered devices. You may own the machine, just as you may think you own your Apple iPhone, but in fact Google controls it, just as Apple controls the phone. If, for example, you’ve tinkered with the device overnight, and the Google server detects the change as you hook up to the net, then the operating system may be remotely deleted and a fresh version installed without your knowledge or consent. Google will argue that this is for your own good – that it’s an effective defence against the viruses, trojans and malware that plague current users of Microsoft operating systems.

And so it is. But it’s also a limitation on your freedom. In his 2008 book, The Future of the Internet – and how to stop it, Harvard academic Jonathan Zittrain painted a vivid picture of the dangers of a world in which most people’s access to the internet is via tethered devices controlled by powerful companies. If Chrome OS takes off we will have taken a giant leap into that nightmare. For 1984 read 2010.

Sony and the standardisation of the ebook format

Books, Tech

The Financial Times reports that Sony will standardise the format of their ebooks.
That brings up 2 questions for me.

  • Will they update the software on existing readers to allow the new format to be used?
  • Will this mean that for customers outside the US will be able to buy their books from more than one source?

I like the sony ereader but the whole experience of getting books that I actually want has been a frustrating experience. Customers from Ireland are restricted to the Waterstone’s site and the selection of books that I actually want to read there is really small. In addition, the interface on the Waterstones site is bad. I’m not interested in buying physical books from them. If they want my business, they need to have those books in ebook format. Otherwise, I buy from Amazon or physical bookshops.
If I can buy physical books from the Amazon US site, why can’t I buy books from the central Sony store? Sony, Waterstones and publishers in general need to wake up to make this experience as easy and straightforward as Apple can make it.

Party Shot

Photography, Tech

DP Review reports on a cool new product from Sony. The Party-Shot is a device where a (Sony) camera is attached and automatically takes photos in the surrounding area. The idea is that the party-shot is placed somewhere central and then using face-detection and motion sensors, takes appropriate photos. I would love to see this released for other cameras like my current compact, the LX3.