On touch devices web browsing is cool. But, when you have lots of links and buttons in a small area, it becomes hard to tap at the right place unless you zoom the page in. Opera labs have come up with this nice and simple idea which surely is a great usability booster when it comes to mobile web browsing.
Check this:
Well we must accept that we are in a new world now where the GUI has become TUI (Touch User Interface) and this got hugely popular by the adevent of the iPhone:
Here is a video of the presentation that eminent interaction designer Dan Saffer gave in the NYC IxDA meet few months back. This presentation is about TUI ie; Touch User Interface and is called “Tap is the New Click”. Pretty interesting presetation. Please watch it sparing some time as it is aprroximately more than an hour.
watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/2761844
I am prety sure that most of you would have or are using Google’s chrome. Even I installed it the next day of its release but, alas! I had to uninstall it within a week and go back to my favorite Mozilla firefox. Now this new analysis on the PC World testifies to the decision of my uninstalling the chrome. Google being the undisputed choice for millions of internet users, the expectations from chrome were huge and quite sadly Google could’nt keep upto the expectations at all. I wish they come up with much better Chrome in the future releases. At least all that was announced should be visible
Just imagine yourself working without a mouse. The mouse is an integral piece of hardware in regular computing. It celebrates its 40th anniversary today. There is a nice article on BBC about this and it has the video of first ever computer mouse demo by Doug Engelbart in 1968. definitely a must watch.
One of the most common and regular warnings that we get on our cellphone is “Low battery!”. If unfortunately, the charger is not with us then we tend to borrow it from somebody or search for a charging point. If we are even more unfortunate then we have to stay paralytic till we get it going as the phone dies.
Think of a way by which you could charge your cellphone by using energy from something you primarily use your cellphone for. You talk!!! Look at this: Talk-powered cell phones? Nanoscale piezoelectrics could make it real http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/35879
Nokia officially took the curtains off its mystery Smartphone with large (640 x 360 pixels) touch screen today at the Nokia World 2008 Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Other key features to highlight:
Nokia press release: Desktop. Laptop. Pocket
Demo Video:
According to a new report, Microsoft is ready to take the smartphone set by the scruff of the neck and its hiring some muscle from NVIDIA to help bully the competition.
A post on the inquirer reads “WHAT DO YOU get if you take an Iphone, remove the clean UI, user friendliness, nice industrial design, battery life, cachet, functional OS, and in general everything else that makes it worthwhile? The new Microsoft phone, powered by Nvidia.”
Though, I dont think the phone would be like this but, here is a video that was posted some 18 months back on you tube – The microsoft oPhone
Have you heard of Alchemy?
Well Alchemy is a web-application tool, that enables developers to reuse hundreds of millions of lines of existing open source C and C++ client or server-side code on the Flash Platform. This was demoed in the MAX general session last week. They initially showed a few libraries (such as OpenSSL) compiled to run on the Flash Player, then they showed image manipulation and audio playback (Ogg Vorbis) running in the Flash Player. Finally they showed Quake(!) and a 6502 console emulator running Super Mario…
I think this is a breakthrough for the Flash Platform because it brings a large amount of pre-existing software to the Flash Platform. I have also heard that the compiled code runs asynchronously and that means that the long-processing C/C++ code can run independently as flash player updates its UI or renders objects.
How does Alchemy work?
Alchemy works by converting LLVM bytecode to ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) source through an Adobe-authored LLVM back-end. This AS3 source is then compiled using a special version of the ActionScript Compiler to ActionScript bytecode (ABC). This ABC output is then bundled into either a SWF or a SWC depending on your compile options. The resulting SWFs can be executed using Flash Player or bundled into an AIR app. The resulting SWCs can be built into a larger Flash, Flex or AIR application just like any other SWC.
For more Alchemy FAQs: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Alchemy:FAQ
The post at Automatastudious: http://www.automatastudios.com/2008/11/21/understanding-adobe-alchemy/
Vlingo has recently launched a new beta giving BlackBerry smart phone users control over mobile information and tasks with the power of their voice. Currently available on the BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, & 88xx series. Over the next few quarters they are planning to add support for Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm devices over time, on separate schedules.
Vlingo works on client server technology. Find the Vlingo white paper for more details.
Here is what Vlingo can do:
Have a look at the demos:
http://www.vlingomobile.com/demo.jsp
http://www.vlingomobile.com/demo2.jsp
Vlingo seems to be sister company for Yahoo Mobile Onesearch.
from the post “A Taiwanese research institute on Friday revealed a folding display on a smartphone that allowed its screen to double in size to 5-inches.
The mock-up smartphone, developed to showcase the screen, is styled like other smartphones and opens like a book turned on its side so when open the display is on the top half and the bottom half is the keyboard.”
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