Mini-Android Computer for US$74 only!

 How much it cost you the last time you bought your last computer or laptop? At least a few hundred dolars (more than RM1k) right? Would you want to buy a secondary computer or laptop for your family that just want to surf net and email that cost as much as your first computer? I don't.
How about a mini computer that cost about US$74? Of course this is come without screen/monitor.


pix source: http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm-img/563764893-New-released-Android4-0-IPTV-google-tv-smart-android-box-allwinner-A10-Model-MK802-Notice-just-wholesalers.html

Powered by a 1GHz Cortex-A8 ARM CPU, 512MB of memory and 4GB storage, this guy can run ICS (Android 4.0)! With WiFi b/g, expandable storage up to 32GB, a micro USB port, you can turn this this into your secondary PC just for net surf and email.
The website also claimed that the HDMI ports supports 1080p and 2160p. Come with pre-installed apps such as Youku, Tudou, QQ, Youtube, Twitter, AngryBird, Office, Gmail, Browser and Skype. However there are 4 question marks after Skype, I wonder that is some sort of fine print. You know what I mean.

It is free shipping via China Post Air Mail to most of the country world wide. I think it is a great deal for a secondary PC. And it is sold out at the moment, you can order now, but you have to wait for the supply to come in to the seller.

Go to this website to look for more detail and fine print :P
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/563764893-New-released-Android4-0-IPTV-google-tv-smart-android-box-allwinner-A10-Model-MK802-Notice-just-wholesalers.html

Update: EnGadget had land their hand on the actual product, see this video:

Please be patient for the video to stream, it was super slow for me yesterday.


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source: saw this at http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27867/?ref=rss

First View of Tizen - latest Mobile OS

Heard of Tizen? No, I have no idea which language it sounds like. Does not sounds like Chinese for sure. :)
It was created to replace Meego which being abandon by Nokia, then by Intel. So Intel work with Samsung for this Tizen. Rumors (not me) says that Tizen is to replace Bada, the mobile OS created by Samsung. Smartphone market is super dynamic market, what you making now, not necessary will be successful in one year down the road. But you can always depend on rumors to create the hype. Remember iPhone prototype always being left at some bar?

Anyway, this is a video of the reference design created by Samsung, the first ever working Tizen.


The hardware is some 1GHz CPU, but the video showing lack of fluidness with the interface, probably need more hard work on the coding. I hope Tizen would somehow create some stir to the current boring Mobile OS, such as iOS (yarn), Android (a mess), WP (becoming cheap brand), and BlackBerry (per-historic thingy?). :P



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source: youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ1y7CpIaVA&

Smartpet - Powered by Smartphone

Smartpet is designed by Bandai which created Tamagotchi, the famous keychain-sized virtual pet simulation game which sold over 76 million as of 2010.

Now, since it is called Smartpet, there should be a CPU inside it? Wrong. It uses Smartphone, a.k.a iPhone in this case to control it via an apps.

See the video demo of Smartpet:


More detail of Smartpet, again in Japanese, but the video is clearly show that how the Smartpet and iPhone with the apps works together.


The apps will be available on Mar 31, the robot dog body will be available one week after. The robot dog will be selling at ¥6,500 (~USD 79 or ~RM 240). I might get it if it accept android.
What do you think?


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source: saw this at http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27678/?ref=rss

Angry Birds Space is finally here!

Angry Birds Space is finally here!

See the story how Angry Birds Space started:


Example of the game play:


Available on all platform (iOS, Android, PC, MacOS). I am going to get it on Android and PC, hehehe.

Check out this website, the GUI is cool!
http://space.angrybirds.com/launch/


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source: angrybirds.com

AngelList - Angel for new startup companies

New startup companies, there is always the most important factor, the capital. Many people have good idea, brilliant ideas that cannot be put into reality because lack of capital or money in layman's term.

You have keep on looking and looking. Look for networks, get into some rich people club to meet with investors, do a lot of presentations, sales presentations to be exact. Most of startups need two years to get sufficient funding to start the real works. It would be too late into the market because nowadays everything move so fast that the hare in "The Hare and the Tortoise" story seems like not running as fast as we think. HAHA.

There is a new initiative where startup companies can utilize this social network to raise money, call it AngelList.

The investors are not necessarily come from Forbes Top 100, but they are from the same social network that get funding from here and they are on their way to success. Go to the website to see which startup companies benefit from this network, some of them might be the Facebook or Google of the future.

How do investors get their ROI (return on investment)? Simple, by getting 1% of shares in your startup. Imagine you are the Facebook of future, 1% of your share would worth millions of dollars.

After register, you can choose to:
1. Start writing a startup profile
2. Find startup for you to invest in
3. Find talent in this social network
4. Find a job in startups
5. Just surfing :D

If you have a good idea, go to AngelList to find out how you can make it a dream come true. Good luck!


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source: http://www.technologyreview.com

New usage of PVC - waste time post :P

Even though PVC has been slowly remove from certain parts of the world, it is still popular in many developing countries, because it is very cheap to manufacture and many other politically advantages.

When I was small, I did play with PVC to make some noise, but someone could make music out of it. Don't believe? Watch this Angry Birds music:


Kent Jenkins made the PVC instrument and play some nice music with it. See more music made by him:


And if you think you have time to waste on Tuesday, there is another one:


Go to his YouTube channel to see more:
http://www.youtube.com/user/snubbyj/

If you have notice, he has his faux-twin to play with him. Meaning not a real twin, but using video editing software to combine 2 separate video files into one and sort of create a twin for himself. There are a lot of powerful software out there that can do this thing, let me do some planning to write something about free video editing software. Stay tune!

To know more about PVC, go to wiki:
Polyvinyl chloride


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source: read the news from http://pvc-innovation.wonderhowto.com

PC that cost 25 dolar only

Would you buy a PC that just the size of a credit card (thicker than credit card of course!) and it only cost you 25 dollar? Yes, 25 US Dollar. Better still, this PC can connect to TV/monitor/other display via USB2.0 or HDMI, capable of playing Quake and 1080p HD video. I don't mind to try it out.

Raspberry Pi (Pi is π ) is being developed by a NGO which is called Raspberry Pi. Got you, haha. Anyway, back to the topic.

This ultra-low-cost PC recently won an award at ARM TechCon, which aim to solve most of the costly PC problem in this world (sort of).

They are not selling the PC for making profit, all the money being put back into the business. And they don't mind other copy the design with hope that everyone and every company could develop clone of Raspberry Pi.

Here is a video of Eben, the Executive Director of Raspberry Pi Foundation explaining the product:


Personally I would think this is a very good product for education since conventional PC until nowadays still more than 100 dollar. If going forward all school can get this Raspberry Pi or clone with cost less than 25 dollar, more school kids can benefit from that.

Go to the website find out more detail:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/


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source: saw this at EE times

Steve pass away

The silicon valley icon, Steve is gone. We will miss you, Steve. He create an apple kingdom for the world, people would just line up for days just to get the iPad and iPhone (not so hot for iPod and MacBook). With his past away, and also iPhone 4S which pissed off many Apple fans, will Apple share price drop? Where is my iPhone5? Now I can't ask Steve anymore. Too bad.


From WSJ:

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday.


"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

His family, in a separate statement, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family...We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief."

During his more than three decade-long career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry's innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the modern high-tech industry alongside other pioneers like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison, Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed intuitive products over the sheer power of technology itself and shifted the way consumers interact with technology in an increasingly digital world.

Unlike those men, however, the most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs' career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad fundamentally changed the PC, electronics and digital media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and its retail stores, in the meanwhile, helped turn the company into a pop culture icon.

At the beginning of that phase, Mr. Jobs once described his philosophy as trying to make products that were at "the intersection of art and technology." In doing so, he turned Apple into the world's most valuable company.

Mr. Jobs was 56 years old. After exhibiting significant weight loss in mid-2008, he took a nearly six month medical leave of absence in 2009, during which he received a liver transplant. He took another medical leave of absence in mid-January without explanation before stepping down as chief executive in August.

Mr. Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, and four children.

Although his achievements in technology alone were immense, Mr. Jobs played an equally groundbreaking role in entertainment. He turned Apple into the largest retailer of music and helped popularize computer-animated films as the financier and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co. He was a key figure in changing the way people used the Internet and how they consumed music, TV shows, movies, books, disrupting industries in the process.

Mr. Jobs also pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in modern business history, returning to Apple after an 11-year absence during which he was largely written off as a has-been and then reviving the then-struggling company by introducing products such as the iMac all-in-one computer, iPod music player and iTunes digital music store.

The company produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ending September 1997. Apple has become one of the world's premier designers of consumer-electronics devices, dropping the "computer" in its name in January 2007 to underscore its expansion beyond PCs.

Although Mr. Jobs officially handed over the reins of the company to long-time deputy Tim Cook in August, his death nevertheless raises a high-stakes question for Apple of how the company—which has been in the vanguard of technological creativity for most of the past decade—will sustain its success without his vision and guidance. Other icons of American capitalism, including Walt Disney, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., experienced some transitional woes but eventually managed to thrive after their charismatic founders passed on.

But few companies of that stature have shown such an acute dependence on their founder, or lost the founder at the peak of his career. Several years after Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company began a steady decline that saw it drift to the margins of the computer industry. That slide was reversed only after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.

Mr. Jobs also leaves behind innumerable tales about his mercurial management style, such as his habit of calling employees or their ideas "dumb" when he didn't like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe's Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600 word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.

The CEO maintained uncompromising standards about the company's hardware and software, demanding "insanely great" aesthetics and ease of use from the moment a consumer walked into one of Apple's stylish stores. His attention to the smallest details in the development and design process were instrumental in shaping some of the most distinctive features of Apple's products, while his meticulously planned onstage demonstrations helped fuel excitement that was unmatched by his peers.

At event after event to introduce new Apple products, Mr. Jobs often puckishly proclaimed "There is one more thing" before revealing the most significant news at the very end of a speech. He enforced strict secrecy among Apple employees, a strategy that he believed heightened anticipation for upcoming Apple products.

Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in Palo Alto, Calif., was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group's Apple records label, according to the book "Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders" by Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton.

The pair came out with the Apple II in 1977, a groundbreaking computer that was relatively affordable and designed for the mass market consumer rather than for hobbyists. The product went on to become one of the first commercially successful personal computers, making the company $117 million in annual sales by the time of Apple's initial public offering in 1980. The IPO instantly made Mr. Jobs a multimillionaire.

Not all of Mr. Jobs's early ideas paid off. Apple's Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops. But the distinctive all-in-one Macintosh--foreshadowed in a ground-breaking TV ad inspired by George Orwell's novel "1984" that famously only aired once -- would set the standard for the design of modern computer operating systems, in which users point and click on icons with a mouse rather than typing in commands.

Even then, Mr. Jobs was a stickler about design details. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, once said that Mr. Jobs was adamant than the keyboard not include "up", "down," "right" and "left" keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens.

Mr. Jobs's pursuit for aesthetic beauty sometimes bordered on the extreme. George Crow, an Apple engineer in the 1980s and again from 1998 to 2005, recalls how Mr. Jobs wanted to make even the inside of computers beautiful. On the original Macintosh PC, Mr. Crow says Mr. Jobs wanted the internal wiring to be in the colors of Apple's early rainbow logo. Mr. Crow says he eventually convinced Mr. Jobs it was an unnecessary expense.

Many ideas in the Macintosh came from a visit in 1979 to Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research, where Mr. Jobs saw a machine called the Xerox Alto that had a crude graphical user interface and a mouse. The episode underscored his recurring role as a refiner and popularizer of existing inventions.

"Picasso had a saying, 'Good artists copy. Great artists steal,'" Mr. Jobs said in a PBS documentary on the computer industry from the mid-1990s. "I've been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Even in his appearance, Mr. Jobs seemed to cultivate an image more like that of an artist than a corporate executive. In public, he rarely deviated from an outfit consisting of Levis jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance running shoes.

As Apple expanded, Mr. Jobs decided to bring in a more experienced manager to lead the company. He recruited John Sculley from Pepsi Co. to be Apple CEO in 1983, famously overcoming Mr. Sculley's initial reluctance by asking the executive if he just wanted to sell "sugar water to kids" or help change the world.

After Apple fell into a subsequent slump, a leadership struggle led its board's decision to back Mr. Sculley and fire Mr. Jobs two years later at the age of 30. "What can I say – I hired the wrong guy," Mr. Jobs brooded in the same PBS documentary. "He destroyed everything I had spent ten years working for."

Mr. Jobs then created NeXT Inc., a closely watched startup that in 1988 introduced a distinctive black desktop computer with advanced software that was initially targeted at the academic computing market. But the machine was hobbled by its exorbitant price tag and some key design decisions, including its use of an optical disk drive and a Motorola Inc. microprocessor at a time when Intel Corp. chips and floppy drives had become the norm.

NeXT eventually stopped selling hardware and failed to make money as a software company. But its operating system would become a foundation for OS X, the software backbone of today's Macs, after Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million in December 1996.

In 1986, using part of his fortune from Apple, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million to acquire the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. The company he formed out of those assets, Pixar Animation Studios, first sold hardware, then software, and later turned to feature films. Pixar went on to create a string of computer-animated hits, from "Toy Story" to 2008's "Wall-E." Mr. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in January 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal that gave him a Disney board seat and made him the entertainment company's largest shareholder.

Meanwhile, Apple began foundering. Computers using Intel chips and Microsoft software grew to dominate the market, a trend that accelerated after Microsoft's Windows emulated many elements of the Mac's visual interface.

Apple, by contrast, had to finance both hardware and software development internally. Fewer developers of application programs created products to make the Macintosh more useful. Apple would eventually decide to license its operating system to other hardware companies, but it was too late to reverse the swing to Windows-based machines.

By 1997, Apple had racked up nearly $2 billion in losses in two years, its shares were at record lows and it was on its third CEO--Gil Amelio--in four years. Eight months after the deal to buy NeXT in December 1996, Mr. Amelio was ousted and Mr. Jobs appointed interim CEO, a title that became permanent in January 2000. One former Apple employee recalls Mr. Jobs joking soon after he returned that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum and we can do anything we want."

Mr. Jobs, who was given a salary of $1 a year along with options to Apple stock, made a series of changes that started paying off quickly. He ended the nascent software licensing program that created Mac clones, killed the struggling Newton handheld computer and trimmed a confusing array of Mac models to a handful of systems focused on the consumer market.

In May 1998, he introduced the iMac, an unusual one-piece computer that sported a colorful casing in translucent turquoise and gray. The popular machine--which sent competitors scrambling to improve their own designs—was embodied by a bold ad campaign that featured the phrase "Think Different," with the picture of one of Mr. Jobs's heroes, such as Albert Einstein and Muppets creator Jim Henson.

While shareholders cheered the changes, Mr. Jobs flexed his power on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Within months of taking over, he had replaced four of the five top executive positions with former NeXT underlings. He issued emails forbidding employees on the famously laid-back campus to bring pets to the office, smoke even in parking lots, and threatening to fire anyone caught leaking company documents.

One personal assistant became a target when he failed to arrange the installation of a high-speed digital data line to Mr. Jobs's office fast enough to suit the interim CEO. The worker said Mr. Jobs fired him for the delay, but rescinded the firing the next day after he had cooled down. (The worker ended up resigning soon afterwards).

Apple had some stumbles during Mr. Jobs's second coming, including a cube-shaped Macintosh that failed to catch on and was scrapped in 2001. The failure was one reason that Apple posted a quarterly loss and warned it would miss estimates several times in 2000 and 2001.

But big hits followed. In 2001, Apple introduced a PowerBook laptop made from titanium, a metal more frequently found in fighter airplanes. The same year, it introduced the iPod, which transformed digital music players with features such as its smooth shape and DJ-like wheel for navigating through songs. As of Sept. 2010, Apple had sold more than 275 million iPod devices since its introduction, and it has more than 70% market share in the market for digital music players.

A key differentiator was the iTunes Music Store, opened in 2003. At the time, the music industry was largely sitting on the sidelines of the digital revolution, badly wounded by illegal downloads but unable to agree on an easy, inexpensive way to sell songs online. But Mr. Jobs helped convince major record labels to sell recordings for 99 cents each, along with antipiracy restrictions that most consumers found acceptable.

The store, which has sold more than ten billion songs, became the largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2008. It also became an incentive for consumers to buy iPods because, for much of its history, songs from the iTunes store could only be downloaded to Apple's music player and not devices made by other companies.

At the same time, Mr. Jobs was building a deep bench of executives. He recruited former Compaq Computer Corp. executive Tim Cook in the late 1990s to straighten Apple's operations and promoted him over time to chief operating officer. Ron Johnson, senior vice president of Apple retail, was hired from Target Corp. in 2000 to launch Apple's stores worldwide. Apple's lead industrial designer Jonathan Ive took charge of the physical look-and-feel of the company's products and is said to share in Mr. Jobs's sensibilities about design.

In 2004, Mr. Jobs had to lean on this bench when he disclosed that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Apple revealed the procedure in early August 2004, but a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Jobs first learned of the tumor during a routine abdominal scan nine months earlier. The board and Mr. Jobs said nothing to Apple shareholders as the Apple executive, during that time, dealt with the tumor through changes to his diet, the person said.

In June 2007, Mr. Jobs made another splash when Apple introduced the iPhone. The cellphone pushed the envelope in the mobile phone market with features that included a touch-screen interface, allowing tricks such as blowing up images by spreading a thumb and finger on the phone's surface.

Mr. Jobs was typically hands on in the creation of the iPhone. People familiar with the matter say the CEO was the one that made a decision to change the screen of the iPhone from plastic to glass after he unveiled the product at the Macworld trade show in 2007. The iPhone team scrambled to procure glass that would meet his exacting standards, so the devices could be manufactured in time for the launch, which took place just seven months later.

Despite skepticism about Apple's ability to enter an already-competitive market dominated by the likes of Research in Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry devices, Apple quickly became a force in the mobile phone market, selling 92 million iPhones as of December 2010. The product kicked into a higher gear earlier this year when Apple said it would begin selling iPhones through Verizon Wireless in addition to carrier AT&T.

Last year, Mr. Jobs also unveiled the iPad tablet computer to great fanfare, billing it as "magical and revolutionary". In the first nine months of the product's release, Apple sold 14.8 million iPads as consumers snapped them up to use as a casual multimedia device for activities such as emailing, watching video and reading. People who work closely with Mr. Jobs said the project was so important to him that he was intimately involved in its planning even while recovering from his 2009 liver transplant.

A major selling point for both the iPhone and iPad has been the App Store, which allows developers to easily make application programs that users can download for free or for a small fee; the store meanwhile has seen more than seven billion downloads as of the end of 2010.

One cloud to Mr. Jobs's reign came in 2006 when Apple also disclosed that an internal investigation had discovered that stock option grants to Apple executives between 1997 and 2002-- including to Mr. Jobs-- were improperly dated. Apple became the most high-profile technology company caught up in a broad series of options backdating scandals that helped inflate the profits executives made from their stock awards.

Apple later disclosed that Mr. Jobs helped select the favorable option dates, but denied that he did anything wrong since he didn't understand the accounting implications of his actions. Apple's investigation ended up blaming two ex-Apple executives – former general counsel Nancy Heinen and former chief financial officer Fred Anderson – for their role in the backdating. Both were later charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They ended up settling the charges. Mr. Jobs was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Those who knew Mr. Jobs say that one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn't dwell on past accomplishments or legacy but kept looking ahead and demanded that employees do the same. Hitoshi Hokamura, a former Apple employee, recalls how an old Apple I that was displayed by the company cafeteria quietly disappeared after Mr. Jobs returned in the late 1990s.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.

—Pui-Wing Tam, Don Clark and Jim Carlton contributed to this article.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576410753210811910.html#ixzz1ZxKHQOai

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576410753210811910.html#ixzz1ZxKCh500


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source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576410753210811910.html#mjDropdown

Nokia cheap and good phone

Nokia recently has announced 2 cheap and good phone, Nokia 100 and Nokia 101. Target for emerging market, these 2 phone has to be cheap and good. Priced at only 25 euros (US$35) and 20 euros (US$30), respectively, still they are a huge investment for people from country that have average yearly income less than average silicon valley employee's daily income.

This reminded me on my 2nd phone (Nokia 2600) was also a cheap but good phone, it lasted for many years and still survive after countless times of "drop test". ;)



I think Nokia still good at making non-smartphone, and Nokia should stop making smartphone. :)


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source: I wrote this and video is from youtube!

Goodbye WebOS, Goodbye Palm

HP announced that they are giving up their PC business and WebOS and Palm. So goodbye Palm, goodbye WebOS. Now left iOS, Android and WP7. Did I miss out anyone?
Anyway, things like that keep on happening, during golden era of PC, there are thousands of PC manufacturer and hundreds of PC brand, but now left a few big names only.

Have a nice weekend. :)

Read the full article from pocketnow.com:
Today's news from HP marks what looks like the end of an era, with the company deciding to throw in the towel on webOS-based smartphones. The platform has only been around for about a couple years, starting with rumors of something called "Nova" that Palm was working on. We got a proper name for the project with Palm announcing webOS and the Palm Pre at CES 2009.
By summer, Palm had launched the original Pre QWERTY slider. The Pixi gave users an option with a non-slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

Early 2010 brought news of upgrades to the Palm and Pixi, both getting Plus designations as part of a hardware and software refresh.

That April, HP and Palm revealed that HP would acquire Palm, along with webOS, in a $1.2 billion transaction. Would the new owner be able to shake things up and make webOS a success? We were to find out over the next sixteen months.

After learning of the pending HP acquisition, we wondered about how HP would brand its new holdings. Ultimately, it chose to drop "Palm" altogether, putting that part of the line's history to rest.

As HP took the reigns, we started to get a little optimisitc about the new direction its leadership might lend to webOS. A contest announced by HP and Palm sought to drum up interest in development of webOS apps, but ultimately the numbers just weren't there to compete with Apple or Google.

October of 2010 brought us the announcement of the Pre 2, along with webOS 2.0 running on it. The Pre 2 showed a steady evolution of the original Pre's hardware, keeping the increased RAM from the Pre Plus, and boosting the processor to 1GHz. On the other hand, there wasn't much "wow" to the phone's specs, and incremental spec bumps may not have been what consumers were looking for.

At the time, webOS 2.0 was supposed to come to all previous devices. Later, HP revised those promises, severely scaling back its update plans. For users who had taken a chance with webOS as an alternative smartphone platform, this was a bit of a kick in the face.

For a little while, it looked like HP was ready to expand the reach of webOS, and rumors pointed to the company planning at least half a dozen devices, including both smartphones and tablets for 2011. In reality, we only got half that.

The first webOS phone to land in 2011 was the miniscule Veer. Even in a tiny package, HP was able to give the phone some decent hardware, with the processing power of much larger Androids. The magnetic adapters needed for headphones or USB might have been prone to loss, but they showed that HP was really thinking outside the box with webOS hardware.

Just like any other mobile operating system, webOS had its hackers pushing the limits of what was possible. If you were so inclined, you could even squeeze Android onto the original Pre.

It looks like webOS's swan song will be the Pre 3. Announced back in February, the smartphone is only starting to arrive now. The handset saw another of the line's incremental updates, boosting CPU speed but not doing anything about memory, with the same 512MB the Pre Plus had. If you're curious to see how webOS ended up (on smartphones, at least) after its short life, this is the phone to check out.


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article source: http://pocketnow.com/webos/the-life-and-death-of-webos-from-palm-to-hp

IBM is 100 years old

IBM is celebrating 100 years old birthday this year. Many things has been planned for the celebration, such as a dedicated website and many merchandise (T-shirt, mouse pad, etc). I hope they don't spend over a million dolar on just a facebook fan page. ;)
More detail after the jump......

The website here:
http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/

And to explore what has IBM been up to these 100 years, click the link in this box:

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source: IBM

Swype 3.0 - More Choices, More Power, More Magic

What is Swype? It is a on screen keyboard for smartphones and now they are going into tablets. You can type just like normal on screen keyboard or sweep your finger across the key that you supposedly typing. See the video to find out more after the jump......




You can purchase this apps from your smartphone marketplace, but some get lucky since some smartphone and tablet makers include this apps as default apps for the smartphone and tablet.

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source: internet

Die faster with iPad and iPhone

International Air Transport Association (IATA) posted a statement of using iPad, iPhone and other portable electronics devices on flight has could cause more death due to interference with electronics flight system. This mean that you have higher chances of crashing the plane if you use iPad or iPhone or smartphone or other portable electronics devices while on the plane.


More detail here:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/06/13/electronic_device_pose_risk_to_airplane_safety/
And here:
http://www.ictransaction.com/201106/iata-ipad-threat-electronic-products-aircraft-flight-safety.html

Now, could you please leave your iPhone/iPad/smartphone power off while on flight?


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source: internet?

Touch-optimized Windows 8

Microsoft has announced more detail of Windows 8 recently with many touch-optimized GUI. Looks like Steve Jobs always set a standard for everyone. Microsoft has to follow Steve again. More info after the jump......

Here are some of the stuffs listed by the press release:

•	Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
•	Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
•	Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
•	Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
•	Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
•	Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Looks more like Windows Phone style than typical desktop Windows. Sounds familiar? Yes, there are news on the WWW that next generation of Mac OS would be more iOS than the original Mac OS. Mobile computing is really shaping up the future, including the desktop computing.
See the video to find out more:



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source: microsoft for the Win8 features, and me coz I wrote this!

Handphone is harmful to human after all

WHO (World Health Organization) finally admitted that handphone/cellphone is possibility harmful to human after all. I am too lazy to re-write all of them, here are some sources (that you can trust) for your reading:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/31/cellphones-are-dangerous-not-dangerous-the-who-changes-its-mind/

http://gizmodo.com/5807049/cellphones-deemed-possibly-carcinogenic-by-worlds-leading-cancer-experts

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/31/who-assessment-puts-cell-phone-use-as-possibly-carcinogenic/


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source: internet, where else?

Flock shutdown

Remember I blogged about Flock sometime back last year:
http://outdatedpenanguncle.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-is-flock.html
It is going to shutdown completely on April 26th, 2011.

 With RockMelt getting more popular, this flock have to go.

It recommend their users to switch to Chrome or FireFox. You can see my posting on browsers to choose your next favorite browsers:
http://outdatedpenanguncle.blogspot.com/search/label/browser


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Source: internet

Windows Phone 7 mango update

Microsoft have start to giving WP7 update to WP7, this update is called mango. I wonder why they want to use fruit name. Android is using cookie names. Well, at least WP7 is more healthier. :P Anyway, here is a video from Engadget captured at the annual MIX developers' conference, after the jump.





It is a very long video (~21mins), but looks like this is very exciting to have the update and iPhone is pretty lame compare to WP7!

The demo of HTML5 inside this video triggered me to write blogpost regarding web browsers that supports/not-supports HTML5. I have done the testing and snapshot, just the matter of putting them into blogger, please stay tune. :)


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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/this-is-windows-phone-next-developers-take-notes-video/

Who sells the most handset/handphone?

Who sells the most handset or handphone (can be smartphone or dump phone :P ) from 2001 to 2010?



Vision Mobile has gather some information and put it into a nice picture call infographic. Surprisingly (to me), Nokia still the top selling phone, this could be because of Nokia has very wide range of phone (a lot of dump phones!) and it market to lower income country. Siemen and Motorola has been kick out of top 5 in recent years. Click the picture to see it in full size if it looks too small on your screen.

What brand of phone have you used? Or do you still using your very first phone? Tell us. :)

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Source: http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/03/top-5-handset-oem/

LG Optimus 3D

LG is showing off their LG Optimus 3D at Mobile World Congress recently. See the video to get feel of it.



The boot Sequence not that fast compare to devices available out there, take out fancy animation please!


The phone is power by TI OMAP 4 dualcore 1GHz chip with PowerVR SGX540 graphics. [huh? never mind, just see the number compare to Nexus One and Moto Droid X]



Want to get one? :)

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Source: pocketnow.com

Table Connect for iPhone - extended screen for iPhone?

Ah...... I am just too outdated, because this Table Connect for iPhone news is out on Oct, and now it is Dec, so you see I am pretty outdated. :P
Anyway, I went to their blog recently and look at their youtube video. It is basically an extended screen for iPhone(?), they even demo playing a game on it on send video.






I wonder is the sensor from the table or you have to stick your iPhone to it so that it can detect your movement?

To know more go to their blog:
http://iphonetable.blogspot.com/

What do you think? What to get one?

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Source: