Category Archives: Hardware

Palmpad?

Posted on by

You have to be kidding me.

So a few months ago, you may have noticed that palm was dying in the dust, and one of the most unexpected things happened: HP bought palm. When you look back on it, it was smart. The Windows 7 slate wasn’t performing well at all, and palm was a dying company with some really great technology.

We all knew that a slate with webOS was on it’s way. But what I’m trying to point out is it’s physical appearance and the name. It seems like HP might just be copying apple.

First, look at that picture. How can you tell me that doesn’t look much like a sideways iPAD? It just happens to be running an interface identical to Palm’s webOS.

Second, the name. Another PAD?! It seems like this:

iPhone–>iPad

Palm Pre–> Palmpad

But there’s one difference: Only one of those pads was an original idea, not a copycat.

But I’ve asked about the slate before. I had a chat with the CTO of HP, Phil McKinney and I joked that I had almost brought in my iPad to take notes (that would have been a lolz), and I also said that I would have brought my slate. He confirmed to me that the launch would indeed be in 2010. And I was definitely curious when people said that the slate was vaporware. Also, Phil had never said a thing about Palm. That came as a complete surprise. But here we have it, the no-longer vaporware previously known as Slate, now known as the Palmpad. I’m still a little unhappy about the name because it is a complete copycat…

[ad code=1]

Well, back to making fun of Microsoft

Posted on by

Unless of course you live under a rock, you have heard about the terrible antenna problems the iPhone 4 has been having. Basically, if you put your hand over the left black line, all of your signal drops. Apple was having a PR disaster, but today Apple held a press conference and it seems that the truths were revealed.

But I must say, Apple wasn’t playing fair here.

First, Steve Jobs ponts out how all of the smartphones antennagate. He showed test videos of many popular phones including the BlackBerry Bold. This is simply putting down the competition and saying “we can’t go against the laws of physics… yet.” [Steve Jobs]. Fine.

So I got curious and asked I wonder if my phone does this…

Well, I gutters its back to making fun of microsoft…

Swype

Posted on by

These days, to type on a keyboard, you press the touchscreen. This usually requires thumbs, which can get VERY tired after a lot of typing. It can also take a while…………

Swype is a way to replace typing by instead of touching the keys you swipe over the letters on the keyboard to create the word instead of typing them. It has already broken the world record for fastest typing speed.

Luckily, Swype is allowing beta users on Android. And thanks to my Droid Incredible I got the chance to try it out.

As you can see, it may take a little bit of practice, but there are other videos where people are much faster than me. I’ll probably be able to swype a bit faster when Im not in japan, as here it is so humid my screen fogs up and becomes sticky.

Swype is rolling out on many new phones and the beta seems to work just as advertised.

To get swype, you need to have an android phone, an internet connection (which it looks like you have), and an email address.

Just go to beta.swype.com and register. Make sure you can access that email address on your android phone. After registering, check your email on the phone and click the link. You will need to allow third party installations, which the process varies depending on your phone. Once it is downloaded, open it and login with the information you entered into the swype website. Continue through the rest (it is quite self explanitory) and once it is done installing, just long press any text field, select input method, and select swype. Tada! You’ve just installed swype on your android phone.

New betas are always on the way, and there are numerous tips for Swype here.

iPhone 4: Not as exciting as iPad

Posted on by

Today, the iPhone 4 was released. Of course it’s exciting, but it’s much less exciting then the iPad.

Why?

Because compare this picture from Gizmodo from 2 months ago:

Gizmodo's iPhone, April 19th

To this one on the apple website.

Apple's iPhone, Jun 7th

I think they’re pretty similar.

And that’s why the news of it during WWDC was.. well… almost outdated. Everybody had already seen the fourth iPhone, just unofficially. So nobody was in for much of a surprise today.

But for the iPad, nobody had a clue. People were sure it would run Leopard, have a CD drive, USB ports, and they gave us this whole different idea. Not a tablet per se, but this thing that just made sense. And who knew!

But everybody knew about the iPhone. I didn’t walk home that day grinning because of excitement like I did during the iPad announcement. Because I had already seen the thing. And I’m pretty sure you all have as well.

Bluetooth not available? Here’s a 10-step fix!

Posted on by

I’ve had this happen a few times where suddenly for no reason it appears, my bluetoth magic mouse stops working. I go to my bluetooth icon to see if it is connected and it is greyed out with a squiggly on it. Clicking it shows this text:

Bluetooth: Not Available

Usually when this happens I end up wiping out my computer and reinstalling snow leopard. but instead, I tried a little harder this time.

By instinct, I just restart. I go up into the menu and hit restart. The sad truth about this is that it never shuts down the computer, it never stops running. (If it did, how would it know to boot back up again?)

However this didn’t work. So I thought that maybe something on startup was consuming the bluetooth card, making it unavailable for the little menubar to see. To fix this, I just went into System Preferences under Accounts, Login Items, and deleted every single item there. I then shut down, unplugged the power cord, took out the battery, put back in the battery, plugged in the power cord again, turned off bluetooth in every other device I had laying around, and turned it on again. Tada! I had bluetooth again. So here’s an easier guide:

  1. Open System Preferences.
  2. Click on Accounts
  3. Click on Login Items under your username
  4. Select the top item and click the – until there are none left in the box
  5. Go to  in the menubar and click Shut Down…
  6. After it shuts down, remove the power cord
  7. Remove the battery (If possible)
  8. Reinsert the battery
  9. Reinsert the power cord
  10. Turn off bluetooth on all surrounding devices

Start back up and your bluetooth should be available again!

    Turn your iPad into display with Air Display

    Posted on by

    Well, you got your shiny iPad. It does everything as advertised. But it can do even more. You can turn it into a secondary display for $9.99!

    First, on your iPad, download an app called Air Display for $9.99.

    Next, connect your Mac (sorry PC users, this won’t work for you) and iPad to the same WiFi network (if you don’t have any available create an AdHoc network on your mac). Then, open the Air Display app on your iPad. It will give you detailed instructions on how to download and install the plugin for your Mac (free). I’ll walk you through it anyway:

    First, download the plugin at avatron.com/ad. Then, install the package and restart your computer. Make sure your iPad is awake and Air Display is open. Click on the Air display icon on your mac’s menubar and select your iPad from the list. Your screen will turn blue, then your iPad should be connected. By default, your iPad is configured to be on the left. So drag a window off of the left side of your main screen and it will appear on the iPad. cool! You can also touch on the iPad like a mouse (no right click though).

    Now that you have your Air Display configured, lets personalize it.

    Open System Preferences and click Displays. You will see a window show up on each of the displays. But the one we really want to use is the one on the main display (the main display is the one with the Menubar at the top). You will see that on this display there is a window that has an arrangement tab at the top. Click Arrangement and here you will see two screens: the smaller one is your iPad. You can click and drag you iPad to a different side of the main display depending on the physical position.  You can also drag the menubar to the iPad to make it the main display.

    Now this is cool and stuff, but a really cool use is that you can finally run flash on an iPad! the fps is less then 30, but it will do for the most of us.

    Now if you have a physically plugged in external display, this means that you could have 3 screens without having to buy something like the viBook for $120. Here’s how I set it up with the Air Display:

    System Preferences Arrangement

    As you can tell, I have the Macbook to the left of my monitor. I then put my iPad on top of my monitor and am using my iPad as my main display;. This eliminates desktop clutter, and when working in photoshop all of my tools don’t get in the way so I can work on a pretty big image.

    Here’s how it looks in real life:

    By default the wallpaper won't span

    As you can tell, it looks similar right? All of my icons are on my iPad along with the menubar, allowing more room on the main display. Sadly, the wallpaper doesn’t span across all of the monitors automatically, it just takes a lot of cropping in photoshop so you get three different pictures that eventually come together as one image. Also, cool picture right? It’s a portrait of me drawn by one of my friends. If you look on the iPad, you’ll see a thought bubble with binary.

    Sadly, you need to add the iPad as a display with the menubar icon every time you restart your computer. Also, it’s hard to use it while the iPad is syncing.

    There’s a cool way to impress your friends!

    [ad code=1]

    Droid Incredible: First impressions

    Posted on by

    You may have read the post about me getting a new phone. Well I got it, and after about a day of use I’ve gathered some opinions. First of all, the thing is high off of a 1 ghz snapdragon processor. Even with widgets and widgets running, the thing is still extremely snappy. Another great thing is HTC sense, which allows a cool interface with some added features. HTC also packed in their own keyboard instead of the defaultandroid keyboard and it allows easier typing. Only thing I don’t like is the haptic for the keyboard because if you type really fast you have a buzzer in your hands. Another thing I love is the notification system. It makes a sound and buzzed but unlike the iPhone the notifications are at the top if the screen and you can continue doing what you are doing. Another big plus is the built in gps with turn by turn navigation. Sweet! And that adds geotagging to the 8 megapixel camera with dual led flash. It is now officially my only camera. You can also broadcast live to ustream with it.

    Although there us so much good, there is one big bad. Although it’s the Droid incredible, the battery life is not so incredible. I want to get an extended battery but $80? I don’t think so. I’ve never made it a full day even with it off for most of it. The battery life is indeed a failure.

    Good phone, camera, gps, and more, but not so good battery life.

    Expect more in depth reviews is everything mentioned above!

    P.S. I wrote this using the incredible. Sorry for typos!

    Are you a typist?

    Posted on by

    I know you can type.

    In fact, pretty much everybody can. But are you a typist?

    A typist is someone who is a skilled typer. Basically, it means you can type really fast.

    Pretty much everybody in my family is!

    But are you?

    Here’s something you can have a little fun with. It’s called typeracer.

    Typeracer is a site where you have to type a paragraph perfectly as fast as you can against your friends, yourself, or even other people on typeracer. Don’t worry, you all have to type the same paragraph. If you mess up, you have to correct the mistake before moving on!

    Another cool thing is that it will tell you your words per minute (5 characters/word) and rank you on their own scale depending on your speed.

    Depending on how tired I am, I can hit up to 77. I call above 65 a typist.

    Don’t worry, typeracer is free online and really fun. Only problem is if you look at your keyboard while typing and make a mistake, you won’t realize it until you look up to see the typing box red and you have to start over!

    Also, typing speed can depend on if you are tired.

    If you just drank three caffeinated pepsis and a jittery, it is likely that you will make a lot of mistakes and get a low score.

    If you are tired, you will be less aware and type slower just because your reflexes are slowed down. But if you are just fine and had a good night’s sleep, then you have no excuses!

    To play typeracer, just go to play.typeracer.com. You can create an account to keep track of your speeds and levels as well (free of course).

    Once you’ve started typing and you have made your account, comment and tell me what your level is. Im a typemaster. You can find this out by looking in the top right to the left of your words per minute. If it is really low, then do a few more races! Your WPM up there is the average of your last ten races, and your skill level is based off of that average.

    But don’t try to typerace on an iPad! Every time you hit the space bar it turns on the shift key, which will make a mistake unless you press the shift key to disable it. That means slower typing, which means slower average, which means lower skill level!

    Have fun and comment your skill level! 😀

    Play Typeracer!

    [ad code=1 align=left]

    New Phone!

    Posted on by

    It is time.

    You may have noticed that I got an enV2 a little while ago.

    It’s not a bad phone, and even after dropping it in a creek along with my iPod touch and HD camera it lived (unlike the others). The thing is incredibly durable but all it does is text and phone.

    But now that I’ve saved up a bit of money, it’s time for an upgrade.

    Sadly, I’m not upgrading to the new iPhone thanks to AT&T’s exclusive agreement with apple that says that the iPhone can’t be carried on any other carrier until 2012.

    SOOO,

    I’m getting the htc droid incredible.

    This thing is running android 2.1, with ht.’s sense UI. It has a dual led flash with an eight megapixel camera (pretty good if you ask me).

    I’m also gong to be getting a data plan with it, and I should be able to broadcast live from it (when I do, you can check out the feed by clicking live up there ^^^).

    The phone only costs two hundred bucks with a two year contract (the cancellation fee is more than the costs of the phone itself) on verizon. Many deem it as the best verizon smartphone and is the one to get instead of the nonexistent iPhone on verizon.

    Apple isn’t telling us everything…

    Posted on by

    We all know that apple doesn’t tell anybody anything.

    But you’d think theyd tell you SOMEWHERE (maybe on the web?) everything about a product that was already released, right?

    Think again.

    We all know that apple made an array of accessories for it’s new baby the iPad.

    One of which happened to be the camera connection kit. This costs $29 and comes with two things: A little dongle that plugs into the bottom of your iPad with an SD card slot, then a similar one with a USB slot.

    We all thought that the USB slot was for plugging in your camera. And it is! But…

    So many people have told me that they can’t use any keyboard other than apple’s. WRONG! You can plug a keyboard into the USB slot!

    You can also plg in USB headphones, microphones, headsets, and probably more. You can even connect your iPhone to get the photos off it, so you no longer have an excuse for no camera an the iPad! I mean, you took them on the go, and they are on your iPad, am I right?

    But why didn’t apple tell any of us? Comments welcome.

    MOO

    Posted on by

    Are we suddenly switching to farming poetry?

    No, my friends. I mean moo minicards.

    What?

    Yup, moo mini cards.

    I love them so much, I’m doing a review of em!

    So what are they?

    Business cards. But these are greets business cards. You can print in full color for only $20 for a hundred of em!

    These business cards are full color and printed on thick high quality paper. They were founded in London but if you are in the us they are printed in rhode island.

    For one side, you can either upload a picture or you can use their textomatic to create one out of text (which is what I did). A picture is at the bottom. Notice it is orange, but over the whole stack of 100 they change in rainbow (sweet!). Pardon the location, im at my school library with nothing to do.

    If you use the textomatic, everything is easily configurable. You can change the font, color, and pattern of the image (my pattern was set to dots). 🙂

    For the front, you can add six lines of text plus an image. But beware, if you are using a circle, you’ll have to cut off an edge of the image to make it reasonably sized. This is shown in the other photo at the bottom, but I think it kooks cool if you cut it off at a good place.

    You can also change the font and make things bold and underlines on the back. Your picture can also be in full color!

    And a I said, only $20 for 100 of em.

    But other than the great prices and great USA made quality, I love the service. Everything is in lower case. When you get the cards they come with coupons for 15% off promotionally (only works if it’s your first order). The whole thing seems pretty personal, and even the box you get the cards in asks you if you are excited in their nice lower case font.

    You can also get some other cool things.

    I got a holder for five bucks, because these business cards are a little on the smaller side if you didn’t notice from the picture down there.

    You can also get a leather holder if you are really on the fancy side when it comes to the containment of your business cards….?

    But the really funny thing is the mini card mosaic holder.

    You heard what I said.

    This holder can keep 30 mini cards in a picture frame with special slots for each one. Lol.

    For business cards, I would definitely recommend these to anybody.

    For putting in a picture frame, though, I think not.

    Get them for yourself at… You guessed it, moo.com (win!).

    Incase Neoprene Slip Sleeve Plus for iPad

    Posted on by

    Looks just like the one for my laptop!

    Yes, Apple did come out with a cool case for the iPad. It’s good for day to day use because you can use it without it being bare naked and exposed to the elements of dust and air. But it’s thin rubber construction will not help when you drop it. Also, when you put the iPad in the case it eels like the rubber is about to rip. Overall, it just seems like  crappy construction. It’s thin rubber and it’s NOT worth the $40.

    So I returned one of the Apple cases and got the Incase Neoprene Slip sleeve Plus. Now that I think of it, it might have been better not to get the slip sleeve and instead have gotten the zippered one.

    Like the Neoprene sleeve for my MacBook, it has a faux interior and side protection, but unlike the sleeve for my Macbook the Slip Sleeve has an opening close to the top where you can slip the iPad in, but then you have to pull the top part over the edge of the iPad which can become quite difficult. Here is a picture of the opening:

    Put the iPad in where the slit is and then pull the top part over the edge.

    The Neoprene is like a shock-absorbing gel, and I’m confident dropping it onto the ground from abut 6 inches. Past that, it’s not recommended. And just incase (pun intended) you drop it on it’s most vulnerable area (the sides), it has that extra protection.

    I must say that this case covers the whole thing up. I still can’t figure out whether to put it in with the screen towards the front or back. Hmm…

    Also, this sleeve is TSA airport security safe. HOWEVER, the iPad is not required to be removed from your bag at security because of it’s thin profile. I guess it is now posed as more of a traveler, now isn’t it?

    When you are traveling, this is definitely what you might want to put your precious iPad in. Luckily, the back is NOT Chrome, it’s Aluminum so it’s much less vulnerable to scratches and fingerprints. Only problem is trying to get the thing into the case, but try to do it gently and you’ll be fine.

    The Incase Neoprene Slip Sleeve Plus is sold for $39.95, and is available at your local Apple Retail Store. Click HERE to visit the Homepage. It is available in Silver and Black (I got black to match my laptop sleeve).