Tech For Life

Ever wanted a device that has a screen much bigger than the actual device?

Impossible? Not any more! The Readius from Polymer Vision is set to be just that impossible device!

The screen in the picture above folds out from the main body of the device. That’s right, a fully functional FOLDABLE computer screen!! The technology is Electronic Ink inside a foldable, rollable polymer screen. As with most E-Ink screens, it is only black and white at the moment, but even so,I think it’s another amazing step forwards.

Apolgies for the lack of posts over the last few days. I, along with much of England have been suffering from a really bad headcold, and it’s been painful to even look at a computer, much less concentrate and write!

Normal service will be resumed very soon, hopefully later today, or tomorrow, thanks for hanging in there.

Rob

There has been a lot of talk on the net about whether Steve Jobs will announce an updated iPhone during his keynote speech tomorrow. Hell, there has been a lot of talk on the net about whether he will announce everything from a touch screen macbook, to a new iMac, to his own brand of washing powder…ok maybe not the washing powder, but you get the idea. Macworld is always like this, it’s a crazy, frantic, rumour-a-go-go!

I for one do not think that Mr Jobs is going to be announcing an updated iPhone. It’s too soon! What will all those punters think that bought one of the sleek multi-functional beauties in the last six months think of Apple then? OK it has it’s faults, especially for those of us in the UK (Four letters…E.D.G.E….), but to expect a new improved version right now is, I think a mistake. It would alienate exactly the crowd that Steve and co are wooing - the early adopters, and the cool kids.

As to the other rumours, I am not sure about the touchscreen Macbook. If you say it quick it sounds like a great idea, but if you stop to think about it, maybe not so. Firstly, how much would it cost? Especially if it’s a ‘multitouch’ screen like on the iphone. I think this could easily bump the Macbook up well out of the range of competing laptops, and the touchscreen wouldn’t add enough functionality to allow it to compete amongst higher powered machines. More likely might be the addition of a touchscreen option on the MB Pro. If it’s an option you don’t have to have it, and percentage wise, it wont add so much to an MB Pro. I don’t know, the whole idea is still a bit odd to me.

Much more likely, especially given the recently rumoured/released information on patents submitted by Apple recently, is a new baby laptop. Since the 12″ powerbook was abandoned when the first gen of Intel Macs appearedthere hasn’t been a reall tiny Mac. Sure the Macbook isn’t exactly huge, but at 13.3″ it isn’t tiny either. There was something about that little 12″ square screen that gave the old powerbook a real ‘road warrior’ feel to it. Of course square screens are completely out of fashion now, and I am not convinced how useful a 12″ widescreen would be (I would go blind trying to squint at it!), but I think this is a far more likely option than either of the rumours mentioned above.

One thing I have just noticed is that the tagline for this Macworld seems to be “There’s Something In The Air” which might point at some kind of Airtouch revamp? Other commenters are think it may be hinting at adding 3g to the iPhone - as stated above I am not convinced on that one.

At the end of the day, one thing is for sure, Mr Jobs very rarely disappoints during his Keynotes. The one phrase that I, and millions of other Mac fans around the world are of course witing for is….

“Oh…just one more thing…”

Late last year I did a quick look over the Nooka range of watches. What attracted me was the way that they tell the time clearly without using either the traditional “face” or digital numbers a la 1982.

Well, I did it, I bought one!

Just yesterday a black Nooka Zub Zot 38 was delivered. I opened the box with a huge amount of trepidation. I had never seen one of these in real life, so what if it was huge (I have small wrists/hands), or really tacky? I had just dropeed £90 on this thing, so I really wanted to like it!

No worries ecessary, thankfully. The watch is just the right size, and made very very well. The strap is a rubberized plasic of some sort, and is soooo comfortable. The ‘face’ with it’s dotty way f representing the time is really clear, surprisingly so even for me, as I was already on board with the quirky way that Nooka show the hours.

I have taken some photos so I will do a full review soon, until than, take my word for it, it’s a great watch!

What a week! My day job has been sucking me dry these last few days, and it feels like Christmas never happened, or at best is a very dim and distant memory. How about you? Feeling those New Year Blues?

Well it could be that there is more to it than just being upset that the parties are over for another year (Or at least until you can find another good excuse…). Over at Dumb Little Man, they list 10 reasons why you might be feeling run down, depressed, short fused etc, and some suggestions on how to beat it. Here are some highlights, but you should really pop over and check out the whole thing.

1. Lack of Sleep - this is a biggie. It’s fairly common knowledge that we are grumpy when we dont get our full quota of sleep, but what can you do about it? I like Steve Pavlina’s tip on how to work out how much sleep you need. Set the alarm for the same time each morning, and vary when you go to bed. Note how tired you feel each morning, and when you wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day, that’s enough. Simple, but effective, just my kind of tip.
2. Caffeine - OK hands up, who drinks too much coffee? I know I do. It’s just so warm, and comforting, and invigorating. Well, there are a bunch of reasons why it is worth doing your best to break this particular habit, and Dumb Little Man covers them pretty well, so scoot on over to take a look.
3. Stress - Another obvious one, but there are a few little tips to help. First and foremost, and a trick that I learned only a few years ago, is to learn to say No. Not all the time, and always in the right way, but learning to let people know that their request just isn’t possible right now is one of the biggest keys to reducing stress. Another often overlooked stress-buster is meditation, by which I mean quiet contemplation, prayer, or simlar. Just going somewhere quiet, by yourself, and emptying your mind of as much as possible for 10 or 15 minutes can make all the difference.

There are 10 possible sources of Negative Energy in the article, and some great links to more articles that suggest ways to help you climb out of the Negative Spiral Trap and start radiating positivity again!

Personally, I am going to try meditation, and cutting caffeine. Well, cutting caffeine a bit…it can’t hurt that much…can it?

Browsing around Firebox.com today, I saw something that I just had to look into further, as it seemed like one of those “too good to be true” stories. The makers claim that this kettle can heat water, from cold to tea making, in three seconds. Think about that for a second (or three…). By the time you have read this sentence, the Tefal Quickcup could have made 2 cups of tea…starting from cold water.

My instant reaction was that no way could any non-nuclear-fusion-powered kettle possibly achieve this, and there must be a catch, and there is, but it’s a very very small catch. The way that this rediculous speed is attained is that it only boils one cup of water at a time. You fill the kettle with cold water, put a cup under the spout, and hit the ever so tempting red button on the top. At this point, the QuickCup Kettle sucks a cupful of water from the resevoir, filters it on the way, and squirts it up a very clever spiral heating element gizmo, before pouring hot (85 degrees centigrade) water.

Now tea bores will insantly comment that 85 degrees is not hot enough for making a cuppa to their standards, but for everyone else, especially those coffee drinkers among us, 85 degrees will result in a perfectly adquate hot drink, that doesn’t sear the inside of your mouth.

The resevoir is detachable, and you can also use the kettle as a cold water dispenser by pressing the black button rather than the red.

All in all, I think this kettle is a great idea. They even claim that it is more efficient than a slower normal kettle as you are only heating one cup at a time. This makes a certain amount of sense, though I would have to see the maths to be sure.

Pop over to Firebox and take a look for yourself, £49.99 is a fairly expensive kettle, but by no means extortionate.

Along with at least half the western hemisphere, I made a number of New Year’s Resolutions the other day. Now I will be the first to admit that I am not necessarily the best person at keeping to such promises, but I always make them with the very best of intentions, determined that “this year will be different”. With the help of joesgoals.com it just might be that this year actually is…

Joe’s Goals is a webapp that is simple and easy as your favourite flavour of pie. When you sign up, you can straight away start setting some goals. This is done via a very neat entry system that ensures you can always see what is going on. You can set the frequency of the goal, and whether the goal is positive or negative. Positive goals are easy to understand, you promise to jog 5 miles every 2 days, so you set up a Positive goal called “Jog 5 miles”, you select every other day, and hit enter. Each time you go jogging on schedule, put a tick in the box. You can also put multiple ticks in boxes, so if you jog 10 miles, put two ticks in, and get twice the credit.

Negative goals take a few seconds to turn your brain around. For example, you might want to promise youself that you will only eat jelly on a Friday - type “Jelly only on Fridays” as your goal, and set it as a negative goal because you are effectively promising not to have jelly on any other day. Then all you have to do is select every day except Friday, and hit return. This will add the goal to your calendar, and give you a box to put a cross in if you are naughty.

Finally, you can also add a goal as a “logbook” which simply gives you a diary on the days you choose to make an entry.

All of this is pointless of course unless you can see how you are doing over time, and Joe has kindly set up some standard reports that allow you to look at the last 30, 60 or 90 days as a graph of success and (hopefully not…) failure. One other item worthy of note is that you can add weighting to your goals, so if you decide that “Jogging 5 miles” is worth twice as much as “Jelly only on Fridays” then it will take two days of jelly to drag down the one day of jogging, and so forth.

As with any system like this, it does rely on you being honest with yourself, but if you can do that, then Joe’s Goals could be just the motivation you (and I…) need to make this year different.

Happy Jogging!

On Tech For Life I am trying to concentrate on technology or gadgets (and the odd lifehack) that are not only desirable, but actually useful. Browsing the web at work today (Lunchtime…honest!) I found this, perhaps the single best gadget for a bycicle I have ever seen.

The idea is so, so simple. Its a set of indicators. That’s it. They are wireless (geek factor +1), easy to fit (clumsy geek (ie me) factor +1), and look ok, in a streamlined ‘Streethawk’ kind of way (80’s geek factor +500). You operate them in the same way as you operate indicators on a motorbike, with a push of the thumb to turn them on, and another push to turn them off.

Un-indicated turning is one of the largest contributors to cyclist death on the roads. I think that this cool gadget is a step in the right direction in trying to save a few lives. A set is £40, so not too hard on the wallet, and when compared to your life, or even having to ride along with one arm stuck out whenever you want to turn, I reckon it’s a good price.

Bycygnals from IWOOT.com (I want one of those).

I probably wont get to make a post today, but I have been productive. I have installed a new Wordpress template, which is responsible for this shiny new look.

I am a big fan of white space, and also of the image classes that this template uses so I hope you will be too. Please feel free to let me know what you think by adding comments. The template is called “Cutline” by Chris Pearson, and there are links at the bottom of each page to his site.

TTFN

…or at least the cables will, as one company is currently busy pushing fibre optic cable through Britains sewers. H2O has been rolling out (literally) its FOCUS (Fibre Optic Cable Underground Sewer!) since 2003 and with luck it is going to help stave off the broadband crunch that I, and a lot of other net users are expecting over the next 10 years or so. Very little messes up your life online than a slow connection.

The current network, based largely on copper cables carrying ADSL signals just can’t keep up with the 21st century demand for increasingly quick internet connections. As more and more of us cram onto this glowing spiders web, it just gets slower, and slower, and slower…and slower. Some observers are predicting that some areas of the country could be back to dial up speeds by about 2012. This is blatantly rediculous, how on earth can one of the most advanced countries in the world be grinding to a halt in this way?!

That’s a subject for another post, for now, back to the sewers!

I think this is a brilliant idea. No need for digging up roads, which is the main problem with expanding the existing network. Let’s face it, the UK’s roads are in a bad enough state without hacking them to bits in the quest for faster connections. Speeding up the superhighway at the expense of the ACTUAL highway, so to speak. Pushing the cables through the large tunnels that we have as sewers means that all you have to do is lift a manhole, poke it through, and off you go. Of course there is more to it than that, the cable needs to be very resistant to all sorts of gases and erm…effluent, and I for one wouldn’t want to be on the ‘poking through the sewer’ team.

So it’s quick, it’s easy, it’s cheap(er), and with 360,000 miles of sewer in the UK, there is no reason why this method can’t go a long way to preventing our slide back to the information superslow-way.