Yep, as much as this gadget is loved and much anticipated by many, there is a select group of people on this earth who are not pleased with the way the new Apple iPhonelong nails. The touch screen technology that is used with such touch interface gadgets like the iPhone relies on capacitance technology which allows the device to interpret the touch or gestures of the fingers that is tracked and interpreted as commands by the microprocessor. All this is possible with high-speed microprocessors that does the interpreting and action seemingly without delay that is made possible by today’s high-speed microprocessors and microelectronics.
The problem has drawn much discontent that women with long nails have peppered the Apple website on the problems suggesting the inclusion of a stylus with the design. Apple has relied that there are several aftermarket stylus out on the market that would work with the iPhone and that the market share of women with long nails that do need assistance is negligible in their design of the popular device. Apple is yet to release an official statement on the matter but initial signs are that they are not planning any major re-design of the product to accommodate “long-nailed” people in the near future.
The release of the 3G iPhone has been quite a delayed reaction on the part of Apple for the capability has been available for quite sometime on other carriers and cellphone manufacturers. Good luck iPhone into the realm of 3G, and for those who have long nails, do consider this before getting the latest gadgets and gizmos for manufacturers can’t accommodate all factors in their design which is usually bound by trade-offs of pro’s and con’s.
No Comments Yet | Posted by Nick at 7:21 am under Cameras, Cellphones, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Laptops, PDA's, Toys
If you happened to watch Sigourney Weaver in the Alien film series, then you’d know about exoskeletons. In one installment of the series, she uses a robot suit used to load and offload cargo from spacecraft to beat the heck out of the alien predator she was trying to kill. That machine is now reality thanks to the efforts of a software engineer who has developed an exoskeleton that has the capacity to increase a normal person’s strength as much as 20 times. What does that mean for us normal people, well say in the construction industry, you could have one or two of these to handle heavy loads and helping the other guy’s position heavy members of the structures they are building. On the battlefield, suit up a soldier and surround him with enough protective armor that would allow him to go against a tank (with armament of course). He could also repair tanks and other heavy machinery on site without fear of exposing himself to enemy fire, allowing easy servicing of military hardware.
Developed for rescue work, imagine the combination of a human’s mind and the power of a bulldozer clamoring up to rescue survivors form disasters like the ones that the Chinese have experienced. The concepts and implications go on and on for augmentation systems is better than totally independent machines doing a man’s job (or a woman’s in Sigourney’s case). The development was spearheaded by the US Army in hopes of developing exoskeletons for their future soldiers. The current developers are still in the research phase for there is still no battery that can power up the machine for more than a couple of minutes. Other obstacles are costs which should go down as more materials are discovered to be as light as fabric yet stronger than steel in tensile strength. There may be more to this technology than what it has become so don’t be surprised to see one of these machines working at a construction site near you sometime soon.
No Comments Yet | Posted by Nick at 4:29 pm under General
During the annual “D:All Things Digital” media and technology conference that was hosted by Wall Street Journal in Carlsbad California, Sony unveiled it’s latest product, the thinner than credit card (actually thinner than a credit card at 0.3mm) OLED Display TV, that is the thinnest and most viable OLED product on the market to date. Sony is already selling ultra-thin LCD TV’s for almost $2,000 bucks for 11″ models but this one tops the charts by being the thinnest and most vivid display series of all the competing TV manufacturers in the world. Samsung, which is considered to be one of the best producers of LCD TV’s along side Sony has a huge chunk of the Digital HD TV market, coming up with the 41″ OLED that was showcased at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. Sony on the other hand has been selling small OLED displays for quite sometime is soon to follow.
Sony has excelled in the OLED TV area for OLED’s are low power, thus friendlier on the environment. They also claim to attain an unprecedented 1 million to 1 contrast ratio which many people find hard to believe for that would be sharper than what the eye can interpret. They are currently very expensive but as time passes by and more and more people begin to make them in huge numbers the prices would surely start falling. The company has announced that they would be rolling them out by the end of this year in the US with other countries still in the works. OLED’s use organic materials that do not need backlighting by producing their own light when excited by electrical current. The technology also offers faster refresh rates than current display technologies in use today. Tomorrow would be brighter indeed with innovations such as these and bigger better OLED TV’s are in the works form Sony and the many other consumer electronics manufacturers out in the market.
No Comments Yet | Posted by Nick at 11:53 am under Gadgets, General, Home & Garden, Home Entertainment
Nope, it’s not a disease, but rather the stark realization that your old vinyl records, VHS Tapes and black and white photos are fast becoming obsolete and forever destined for the garbage can. There is help though for the many baby boomers out there who do need help with such conversions in order for most analog gadgets and gizmos to have their contents converted into the proper digital format that would allow them to be used with your iPod or saved onto high quality DVD’s for eternity (well, not an eternity but as long as the DVD retains it’s ability to hold the information safe anyway for even they have life spans or expected time frames before they fail). Many technologies such as voice recordings on cassette tapes, old video on reel tapes, Black and white photos of the days of old and many other older analog technologies that have long been overstepped by the digital revolution.
For photos there are scanners that allow you to digitize them and convert them to your preferred format for storage and viewing. Old photos are sensitive and some even crumble due to time and climate conditions. Digitizing them makes them available for manipulation and restorations as well as playback as a slideshow on your PC or TV. Old VHS tapes can be digitized through several appliances you connect to the video in port or through the USB port that with accompanying software allows them to be converted into digital video formats and even DVD’s (this you’d best leave to the experts for it takes almost a day to convert a few hours of video but DIY is still possible and widely available). Old 8″ vinyl can be transferred onto your multimedia players through similar appliances that converts them to popular audio formats.
Lastly, this world is ruled by the law of supply and demand and as long as people need help with such analog to digital conversions, there will always be entrepreneurs who would provide the services necessary. Whether you aim to do it on your own or to hire a professional conversion firm, it’s up to you, but do it quick for technology changes as a very fast rate that it may again render today’s technology useless by tomorrow.
No Comments Yet | Posted by Nick at 10:35 am under Cameras, Computer Accessories, Gadgets, General, Home & Garden, PCs, Portable Media, Software
They have long since faded as an advertising method of choice in exchange for more technology-based ad platforms which can be changed in the blink of an eye. Billboards have been called eyesores, distractions safety hazards among some but do you know that there are now some startup firms in advertising research and marketing that have begun to utilize billboards for market research studies with the use of embedded cameras? Cameras that look at you, spots an interested individual and times the amount of time they had their eye on the ad for ad research purposes. The plans is to have tons of these traditional billboards and turn them into smart marketing tools much like the CCTV camera’s of London and Manhattan are doing for monitoring of terrorist and criminal activities. But instead of watching out for the bad guys, they focus on the amount of marketing particular ads get from passersby and which ads are getting the necessary attention.
The technology is criticized by privacy advocacy groups who see it a as another way of invading of personal privacy even with the ad firms saying they do not store facial images of their subjects (Uhuuum?). But rekindling the visions of the movie, “The Minority Report”, where advertising is personalized and based on your preferences which follows you around through retinal scans from billboard mounted scanners and camera’s. No public place would be safe from the prying eyes, for all the reasons in the world, advertising, security, terrorism and the many other reasons they try to justify the use of technology to monitor and survey the land for potential threats.
All this to earn the best possible amount of profit through the maximization of ad space for commercial use and marketing studies. These firms have only begun implementation yet there have already been so much criticism on the invasive technology. Only legislation may correct such unwarranted intrusions into our privacy which must satisfy both commercial and personal gains.
No Comments Yet | Posted by Nick at 10:32 am under Cameras, Features, Gadgets, General, Home & Garden
If you are a true tech-junkie then you’d have heard about nano-technology and the benefits of these extremely small structures. First of all, products that are based on nano-technology have the advantage of building their traits on the molecular level hence making them more flexible in their applications. Bucky-balls are small spherical structures that have [...]
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