Well, the 3GSM World Congress 2007 is going full bore in Barcelona, Spain. Many new phones have been announced including the well spec’d Nokia E90 Communicator, successor to that aging brick, er, phone, the Nokia 9300.
While the E90 remains a brick, it’s now a better brick, with 3.6 Mbps HSDPA, GPS, 2 cameras and a better screen at 800×352.
The Nokia E90 Communicator User Guide is available at this link.
Nokia E90 - Nokia E90 technical specifications
Posted in Phones ~ 17 Comments
Perhaps not for everyone, but Simbionix has developed a simulation for laparoscopic incisional hernia repair. Would-be doctors can now practise the complexities of adhesiolysis as well as mesh placement & fixation without risk to humans.
The LAP simulator would make for a nice addition to Kidzania, that clever theme park located in Tokyo that lets children experience/play at various professions.
Laparoscopic Surgery Simulator - Simbionix
Posted in General ~ No Comments
iriver (yes, the company name is all lower case now) introduced their new Clix2 digital audio player at CES 2007 last month, and plans to start selling it in a couple of months. The Clix2 replaces the well-regarded, but not so well-selling Clix, and improves on the older model in a number of ways…
The display for the Clix2 remains at 2.2 inches and with a QVGA resolution but is now AMOLED instead of LCD…which makes for a nice/vivid display at 100% NTSC. Video frame rate has been doubled to 30 fps and max storage capacity has been jacked to 8GB from 4.
The Clix is/was CNet’s top-rated MP3 player, and the Clix2 might well improve on that, but still not go anywhere…shame really.
Posted in Music Players ~ No Comments
After nine years of development, Microsoft recently announced that it will be discontinuing FrontPage. I’ll explain what discontinuing means in a second but I want to make it absolutely clear that myhosting.com will continue to support sites developed and maintained with this application as long as possible. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in mail2web.com ~ 8 Comments
History of sorts will be made on Feb 13, 2007 in Mountain View CA when D-Wave Systems demonstrates a quantum computer powered by a 16-qubit quantum processor capable of performing 64K calculations at the same time. D-Wave is plannning to show off the system’s capabilities by tackling the complexities involved in solving a 2-SAT wedding seating problem.
While some purists sniff that the D-Wave approach does not result in a ‘true’ quantum computer largely because it doesn’t make use of quantum entanglement, the rest of us just hope that the promised quantum leap in computing power will be put to good use, like in a sick gaming console.
Quantum computer to debut next week – Techworld, 08 February 2007
IDC reports that sales of handheld devices are down 28.5% for 2006 as compared to the year before. Palm continues to be the segment leader, moving 1.9 million units in 2006 for a year-over-year decline of 28.3%.
Customers continue to migrate to integrated and converged devices like smartphones and WiFi-enabled notebook computers as well as GPS devices and away from handhelds.
The best-selling handheld seems to be the Palm Z22, introduced back in Oct 2005, which makes it a virtual vintage in Internet time.
Commentary: those seeking to put a positive spin on the IDC report could well point out that it’s merely a slump, and not a collapse.
Worldwide Handheld Device Shipments Reach 5.5 Million Units in 2006 – IDC, Feb 8 2007
Technology marches on and gives us new stuff like the Apple iPhone, and some measure of relief from hackneyed phrases such as iPod Killer. The newer term iPhone Killer may only be fresh for a short while, as a number of candidates have already come forward to challenge the device - such as the Prada Phone, as well as concepts such as the BenQ Black Box, Nokia aeon, Asus Aura and the Meizu M8.
And now we have the remarkably well-spec’d Samsung Ultra Smart F700 cell phone, which is to be shown at 3GSM World Congress in Spain in a couple of weeks. The SGH-F700 has a 2.78 inch 240×440 touch screen (albeit not multi-touch and smaller than iPhone’s 3.5inch 320×480 screen) as well as a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 5MP camera /w auto-focus, plays music and videos, has Bluetooth and HSDPA rates up to 7.2Mbps(!).
Will the F700 be the mythical iPhone killer? … probably not, as the QWERTY keyboard kills the cool…but stay tuned for the F900.
Samsung F700 Multimedia Phone – Samsung News Release, 2007 02 08
Posted in Phones ~ 2 Comments
If you happen to find yourself at the Olympics and discover that you’re competing in boxing or tae kwon do, then look down at the shorts that you were assigned - if perchance they’re red, then chances are as high as 65% that you’ll win your match. The positive effect of wearing red have been noted by many other commentators and seems to apply to soccer, war, business and even to other species.
The New York Times offers a brief survey of the benefits of red adornment and concludes that red is not like those wimpy colors, green and blue.
How Do We See Red? Count the Ways – New York Times, 2007 02 06
Posted in General ~ No Comments
Chateau Samsung, er Samsung Electronics, has just announced their 2007 Bordeaux Nouveau release – i.e. the new Bordeaux line of LCD TVs for 2007. We last made note of the Bordeaux series back in April 2006. Since then, Sammy’s gone and doubled the contrast ratio to 10,000:1, thrown in some HDMI (3) and USB ports. Response time is quite good at 5ms, up from 8ms; resolution remains at 1366×768, and color depth at 10-bit. They’ve also gone nice on the bezel with invisible curves, LED lighting effects and and a black pearl finish - wot, no Swarovski crystals?
The Bordeaux line seems to have sold well. Price-wise, the new 40 inch model LN40R81BD is expected to go for about $2500USD.
2007 Bordeaux LCD TV – Samsung press release, 2007 2 06
Posted in TVs & Monitors ~ 1 Comment
The New York Times has a new 6-pic photo essay of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at work. While we don’t learn a whole lot about the world’s 24th richest person, we do find out that Steve has a small-ish office, uses an IBM Thinkpad, what seems to be a Sony SDM-M81 LCD monitor and has chicken and broccoli for lunch. Steve’s approach to work seems similar to but perhaps simpler than that espoused by Bill Gates, as we learned from him back in April 2006.
Otherwise, we find out that the Microsoft Human Resources Dept is concerned about things like employee experience, recruiting great people and career development…join the club.
And a glance at the MS HR SVP’s desk reveals a copy of the Jan 2007 issue of HR Magazine and the book Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage. The book states that 1 of the biggest problems that workers have is information overload. Indeed, complexity management is a theme reflected by Bill Gates in the aforementioned link, and in the reputed 50M SLOC contained in Windows Vista.
Steve Ballmer, a Day in the Life – NYT, Jan 28 2007
Posted in General ~ No Comments
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