Dell Adamo XPS details on October 22

Technology // October 18, 2009

Dell is about to reveal the skinny on its newest laptop, Adamo XPS, next Thursday, Oct. 22. Adamo is Dell’s top of the line, trying to compete with Apple, sexy line of laptops. Well actually, so far it’s been only one laptop, but now it’s gonna be a line. Apparently the XPS version is going to be thinner than Apple’s Air. 0.39 inch to be precise, which is about 9.9 millimeters, that’s less than a centimeter — just think about it. It totally blows my mind.

Adamo XPS

So far the exact specs are unknown but it seems that the price is going to be $2,000, at least according to Business Week, via Engadget.

That’s not to say I have any illusions about rushing out and buying it the day it’s up on the shelves. But it’s interesting to see what kinda specs this baby will have (for that price they better be really good), and hopefully they’ll show Apple that you don’t have to gimp your laptop to make it thin and sleek.

10-GUI Concept multi-touch desktop interface

Technology //

If you haven’t noticed, multi-touch is all the rage these days. From iPhone’s slick interface and gestures, to all the laptops and netbooks that are trying to get in on the game, not to mention Microsoft’s “subtle” approach to the issue with their Surface idea. Then there’s also multi-touch for desktops, and as always the case with any sort of rush to adopt new technology, most do it the wrong way — by adding multi-touch to the desktop monitor. Sure, it’s easy to slap a capacitive panel on an LCD and call it a day, but that’s not gonna work in the long run. How long do you think you can sit with your arm stretched all the way to the monitor (if you can even reach it comfortably), not to mention your hand obstructing the screen?

That’s why I’m glad to see that at least some people are still trying to think outside the box. Like take R. Clayton Miller for example, who came up with the 10/GUI concept multi-touch interface for a desktop. The idea in a nutshell is to separate the multi-touch surface from the screen and put it on the table in front of the user, like a keyboard or a mouse.

Multi-touch control surface

Multi-touch control surface

Right away this is smart in two ways: 1) it uses a familiar control metaphor — controlling the UI on screen through controllers on the table, instead of directly on the screen; 2) it puts the control surface in a comfortable location and without obstructing the screen. Read more »

Multitouch support demoed in Firefox

Technology // August 22, 2009

The never-tiring folks at Mozilla are already hard at work on implementing multitouch events in Firefox. Felipe Gomes has posted a short demonstration of very cool multitouch capabilities via a few simple use cases. Here is the clip and a few words from the man himself.

 

Multitouch on Firefox from Felipe.

We’re working on exposing the multitouch data from the system to regular web pages through DOM Events, and all of these demos are built on top of that. … We have three new DOM events (MozTouchDown, MozTouchMove and MozTouchRelease), which are similar to mouse events, except that they have a new attribute called streamId that can uniquely identify the same finger being tracked in a series of MozTouch events.

Read more »

Space saving, permanent Gmail and Google Reader Tabs in Firefox

Technology //

This very useful tip was sent by Harsha Kotcherlakota to Lifehacker.com.

The idea is to set up tabs for Gmail and Google reader that will always be open, but with a few extensions will have minimal impact on the interface while providing the information relevant to each app (site). For a full guide see the link at the bottom, but here’s the gist of it.
Using the Better Gmail 2 add-on turn on unread count display in the favicon. Then get the Faviconize Tab and the PermaTabs Mod add-ons. The Faviconize add-on will add an option in the right-click menu of the tab to “Faviconize” it, i.e. remove the text and only leave the favicon visible. The PermaTab add-on gives you an option (right-click tab) to make a tab permanent. This will prevent it from accidently closing and will leave it on even after Firefox is closed (to close the tab you’ll need to “un-perma” it). And apparently permatabs don’t load their content until they’re first selected, in other words, this setup will not cause Firefox to load up 2 extra tabs every time you open it.

This is extremely useful. I check both gmail and reader multiple times a day but don’t like leaving them open all the time because the tabs take space, but with this I can have the best of both worlds.

[Original Lifehacker Post]

Amazing footage of James May on a U2 spy plane

Technology // August 8, 2009

This is a bit of an old story but it’s just so amazing and mind-blowing and I wanted to post it. James May, from Top Gear, took a flight on a U2 spy plane.

The Lockheed U-2 is a wonder of engineering. It’s intended for very high-altitude flights — 70,000 feet (about 21.3km). The design of the plane leaves very narrow margin for error. At its top cruising altitude the plane must fly very close to its maximum speed without exceeding it — that would break the wings, or falling more than 18km/h below it — at which point it would stall and start falling.

And James May gets to take a ride on it — he’s got the best job in the world.

HTC Dream and Magic are $79.99 on Rogers

Technology // August 7, 2009

Wow, I haven’t heard anything about this but I was checking out the Rogers site and they are now selling HTC Dream and Magic (the Android phones) for $79.99 with a 3-year contract. It started out at $149.99 only a couple of months ago, and now it’s almost half the price. I’ve been thinking of getting myself a smartphone finally, and while I’m not crazy about either of these phones (Dream is old hardware and awkward looks, Magic doesn’t have a physical keyboard) $79.99 is awfully tempting.

[Rogers]

Engadget goes hands-on with Google Wave

Technology // August 6, 2009

The good folks at Engadget got a personal tour of Google Wave from the masterminds behind it — Lars and Jens Rasmussen — and lived to tell the tale. The full article goes into some juicy details about this new communication tool, and concludes that while there’s tons of great ideas in there, it’s still not clear how Google Wave will fit in with the rest of various facebooks, lolcats and tweets. I think that as revolutionary (or not) Google Wave is currently, once it gets into the hands of general public and, more importantly, 3rd party developers, that’s when we’re going to see some truly revolutionary things begin to happen. So I’ll be anxiously waiting for September 30th to roll around.

Weekend Highlights — Google Wave, HTC Hero, King’s Quest and Screengrab!

Technology // July 25, 2009

So this has been a pretty busy week. Of course the biggest news is me launching this site… <crickets>… or maybe not. I guess it all depends on your perspective. As for the other interesting stuff — Google is sending out 100,000 beta invites to Google Wave in September; HTC Hero has been reviewed by everyone except me; Steam is having a sale on King’s Quest and Space Quests collections, and you know I got it as soon as I saw it; and finally a small Firefox add-on that is going to change my life (not really, but it’s an attention grabber, ain’t it). Read more »

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