A plastic film that turns any surface into a touchscreen
Posted by ts On 10.02.2010
source – venturebeat.com author – Dean Takahashi
One of our most popular stories in recent days has been aboutDisplax, a company in Portugal that plans to start selling a plastic film that turns any surface into a touchscreen.
By July, Displax said it is planning to begin commercial sales of its “multitouch skin” which can be thinner than paper. The ideal is to spread a nanowire-laced plastic film over any flat or curved surface — glass, plastic or wood — so that it becomes interactive.
The problem with our interview with Miguel Fonseca, chief business officer at Displax, was that he omitted a key detail. While Displax makes the controller that enables multitouch contact with the plastic film, it doesn’t make that plastic film itself.
The film is actually a product created in 2004 by Visual Planet, a London-based company. Mike Cole, commercial director at Visual Planet, contacted us and let us know that the company’s ViP Interactive Foil has been shipping for a while and Displax is one of its resellers.
“I think the core message is that what they are claiming about being the first to develop a flexible foil base touch sensor is incorrect and most of the press has focused on this fact,” Cole wrote in an email. “They have developed a controller only. They tied in our technology in the release so they could promote theirs and make more of a splash.”
Cole said that ViP would be happy to sell its foil to Displax to be part of its “multitouch skin” solution, but there is no agreement in place right now to do so. The two companies have been good partners for some time, but there is a point of contention. Displax is making its own controller to enable multitouch skins that use the plastic film. The controller is sort of the brains that takes the signals from the film and translates them into input signals for a system. It’s not a trivial thing, but the plastic film seems like the more interesting invention.
Cole said that Visual Planet is planning on doing its own controller to go with the plastic film. Hence, these two companies are kind of on a collision course. After Cole brought this up to us, a spokesman for Displax emailed the following message in response.
Handheld US rolls out rugged Algiz 7 tablet
Posted by ts On 10.02.2010
source – engadget.com author – Donald Melanson
It’s been quite a while since an Algiz tablet last popped up on our radar, but Handheld US is now back with another model: the Algiz 7. In addition to a fresh new white enclosure, this one packs a 7-inch touchscreen display, along with a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD, and Windows 7 Professional for an OS. To help you out in the field, you’ll get a hot-swappable 2400 mAh dual battery pack, built-in GPS, and optional 3G — not to mention ruggedization to MIL-STD-810G standards. No word on a price just yet, but this one will apparently start shipping next month.
[Thanks, Mark S]
Samsung’s first Bada phone with AMOLED announcement in February 14
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
source – engadget.com author – Thomas Ricker
By now you’re undoubtedly aware than Samsung has a new smartphone OS (Bada) and touchscreen technology (Super AMOLED) in the works. In this case, putting 2 and 2 together yields 14, a number that matches Samsung’s February 14th press event at Mobile World Congress. How so? Well, first of all, Sammy is promoting the Samsung Unpacked teaser page from its Bada site. The ocean-themed teaser (“bada” means “ocean” in Korean) says, “on 2.14 a new mobile from Samsung is born. See it first in Barcelona.” A quick look at the teaser site’s source reveals the keywords “Bada,” “smartphone,” and “AMOLED.” In other words, you can bet that Samsung will be unveiling a 3.3-inch, 800 x 480 pixel Super AMOLED (already rumored for a next week reveal) touchscreen Bada phone on February 14th.
P.S. The image above comes courtesy of GSM Arena. While the site won’t say what the device is on the left it’s clearly running Samsung’s Bada UI and is likely AMOLED judging by those deep blacks. The display is also slightly smaller than the iPhone 3G’s 3.5-inch display. Gee… what could it be?
2012 Mayan prophecy
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
A house with a view…
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
source – pixdaus.com author – jchip8
Evolution LADA and BMW 5 series
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
Excellence and perfection requires no modification!
Microsoft says Windows 7 is not to blame for battery issue
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
source – engadget.com
After Microsoft stated a week ago that it would look into reports of Windows 7 causing premature battery degradation, we’ve been staying up late at night with our frazzled lithium ion cells, reading them stories about Battery Heaven and generally trying to keep an upbeat tone around the Engadget HQ. Well, it turns out not everything is rosy in batteryville, but Microsoft says Windows 7 isn’t the one to blame. According to the company’s testing, the new tool, which reports when a battery is down to 40% of its designed capacity and suggests replacement, hasn’t reported a single false positive. Additionally, the tool uses read-only data from the battery, and is in fact incapable of tweaking the battery’s life span or internal data — it merely reports the data it receives, and stacks the theoretical design capacity up against the current full charge capacity. Microsoft attributes the reports of the tool dooming batteries to an early grave to the mere fact that many people might not have noticed the degradation already taking place in their batteries — most batteries start to degrade noticeably within a year. Of course, not everybody’s going to just take Microsoft’s word for it, and Microsoft itself will continue to look into the issue, but for now this sounds like a bit of a non-issue. The part about Windows 7 being less conservative with power use is a whole ‘nother issue, of course.
read entire article and comment on it on engadget.com
The Complete Guide to Windows System Restore (It’s Better than You Remember)
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
source – lifehacker.com
Most of us remember Windows System Restore as a lame-duck feature from Windows XP; when it seemed we might benefit from using it, it never quite worked how we expected. That’s no longer the case.
Windows System Restore is an awesome system recovery tool, and it’s included with Windows for free. It’s the ideal solution for rolling back bad drivers, fixing when buggy software breaks your PC, or simply rolling you back to a previous point in time. If you’ve still got a bad taste in your mouth from the lackluster XP version of System Restore, it’s time to take a look at it again if you’ve upgraded to Windows 7 or Vista.
System Restore in Windows 7 Is Better than XP
If you’ve ever tried the XP variety of System Restore, the uselessness of it probably left a bad taste in your mouth. Setting a system restore point was often agonizingly slow, and when it came time to actually attempt a system restore, it rarely did what you wanted it to do. But if you’ve upgraded to Vista or Windows 7, you should really give System Restore another chance.
Back in the XP days, system restore simply used a file filter and copied files around, but since Vista, it uses the Shadow Copy features built into Windows—essentially, Windows can create a snapshot of your drive as of a certain point in time, which can then be used later to restore your PC should anything go wrong.
Read entire article at lifehacker.com …
The How-To Geek deleted his system32\drivers folder for fun, and used System Restore to easily get the PC running again. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker,How-To Geek, and Twitter.
Egg House, A Fantastic Circular Residence in Prague
Posted by ts On 09.02.2010
source – freshome.com author – Lavinia
A69 is an architecture company from the Czech Republic. Contrary to a general belief, this house was not projected like this willingly. The site had many particular elements (a garden that needed to be preserved, an old building that was used as an adjacent support for the contemporary one) which made the development of the architecture plans rather tricky. However, the final results are stunning: a circular home built around a garden, which is also a space for relaxation. A roof garden is a particular feature of this house, which comes to increase its aesthetic value. Large windows are present all around, as an inner circular wall, separating the residence from the green area in the center. The interior was designed with minimalist furniture, but not leaving aside the contemporary feel.
BatteryBar Pro Anniversary, Pay Your Own Price
Posted by ts On 07.02.2010
After reading this on netbooked.net I bought the Batterybar pro myself and found it quite useful. Enjoy…
source – netbooked.net
Osiris Development, maker of BatteryBar, probably the best battery app for your notebook / netbook (which I intro’d in May last year), has a special one year anniversary offer.
You can pay the price you want to for a full upgrade to the Pro version. Pricing ranges from $1 – $10 though you’d be better off paying $6 – $10 and getting a lifetime license if you find the app useful.