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Light enough to take with you.

350 Is The Upper Limit
"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted... CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Jim Hansen, NASA

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CeBit User Interfaces

Coming Soon To A PC Near You

Have you been wondering what the next generation of user interfaces will be like? The iPhone has already shown us some of it. If you’ve been following Wordout or Google’s Android, you’ve seen some more of it. But what if you applied that same thing to larger screens?

What if you plastered it across an entire wall? Below you’ll see such an exhibition, displayed at the annual Cebit in Europe. The demo here lasts less than a minute.



CeBit Wall Sized User Interface Demo

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If you liked that, you might this one too, but I warn you… it’s about 10 minutes long. Still, it’s worth checking out, even for a couple of minutes, before you go on to something else.



Jeff Han of New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

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I am Jon, and I’m ready for some “hands-on” access.

(edit) There’s a story on practically the same subject over at ReadWriteWeb. I particularly liked the “Bump Top” video over there… so here it is.



Bump Top – Your 3D Real Life Desktop

It looks like this is a popular subject. -jon

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March 13th, 2008 Posted by Jon | Computers, Developing Tech, Fun Stuff, The Future! | Leave a Comment

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This Ain’t Yer Futurama’s Farnsworth

The Real Farnsworth

Philo T. Farnsworth?

I love that name. It’s history. This guy changed our lives. For real.

And it turns out, he and I had something in common.

Imagine growing up decades ago. Some of you can remember it. No internet. A couple of TV stations and mainly it was radio that you kept up with. Oh yeah, the seventies, in North Carolina, growing up on the farm. Spending hours and hours going back and forth over pieces of dirt about 4 feet in width, and what seemed like miles long….

Philo grew up like that, too, only decades earlier than me. He had practically no radio, and any TV available was capable of only 15 frames per second. Anything less than 30 is a waste of time, so really, he had no TV. But he had the idea of TV. And one day, going back and forth across miles and miles of aisles of his very own plough’s making… he got the weird idea of dragging electron beams back and forth across a field of phosphorous. Well, maybe not quite that developed, but he saw a way to make TV actually work.

He changed his world, and he made this one possible. Without him, you would not be sitting there, reading this. Below is just a few seconds of video simulated from 1927, to show you what electronic television looked like when it was all shiny and new!


Okay, I just have to add this. He figured this stuff out when he was 14 years old… here’s a video of his appearance on TV’s fun and funny show from the 50’s, “I’ve Got A Secret”. To some of my readers, this will be a re-run, to other, younger ones… who are we kidding, they won’t bother to look at it. I wonder if they would if they knew it was one of the top rated shows for most of the 50s and 60s?


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I am Jon, and none of my monitors drag electron beams, anymore. I guess that’s progress…
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March 7th, 2008 Posted by Jon | Computers, Fun Stuff | 2 comments

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Asus and the Micro Laptop

Asus (pronounced: uh-soos) might not be a name you recognize, but it’s probably one you’ll hear more of in the future. Engadget has a story about the new Eee PC with a 9″ screen. This is the big brother to the model they already had with a 7″ screen. Look here for comparison pics of each. For a good bunch of photos of the 7 incher by itself, look here (it may say 9 inch, but I’m pretty certain that’s the 7″ model).

Asus has been around for quite awhile, making, among other things, some of the best motherboards in the business. Chances are good you’ve had one and didn’t know it. The new laptop should be available in mid 2008, hopefully in time for the “back to school” sales, and is rumored to have a retail tag of around $600US.


asus4g
This image gives you a sense of the sheer size, literally.

Many who know me have heard me extol the coming wave of micro-pc’s, small enough to carry with you in a pocket or purse. Throw a phone into one of these and you’re almost there…

I am Jon, and I would like 3 sevens, please.

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March 4th, 2008 Posted by Jon | Computers, Developing Tech | Leave a Comment

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