iNewton

CNET has recently published an interesting comparison of Apple Newton and Samsung Q1 UMPC. Ten years gap between the two devices should potentially result in an absolutely killing victory of the Q1 Windows - based UMPC, but apart from flash and hype, Q1 has very little advantage in terms of day to day productivity. It is very interesting to see what components of a mobile device got the most technological lift. Definitely LCD displays are much better today than before. Apple Newton is a gray scale unit (who can remember gray scale laptops today?). Q1 UMPC shines with active matrix colors. But overall the comparison is very sad... Especially when you look at battery performance. Q1 runs for 2.5 hours, while the Newton scores 30 hours (on a pack of AAs).

You probably remember I predicted the UMPCs would not hit the hall of fame. There was a reason - I have a Newton at home :). It shares the shelf with other vintage machines. I do not use it for just a few reasons: lack of USB port (for charging and synchronizing), lack of WiFi/3G (for wireless connectivity) and lack of a modern Web Browser (the reason number one).

So here is my personal petition to Steve Jobs. Dear Mr Jobs. Please make me an Apple Newton 2007. Call it iNewton. Give it all the features of the old one, plus USB, WiFi and Bluetooth. Please put in a color display and a Web browser. Keep the 30 hours battery life. You can stuff it with some iPod goodies (music, video playback) but to be honest, this is not necessary. I would rather prefer the local versions of Google applications - Gmail, Calendar, Writely, Spreadsheet

USB Cells

USB Cells (http://www.usbcell.com/) are the ultimate confirmation of what the USB standard is being really used for. The design confirmes the power (pun intended) of standards. AA battery: the most popular energy source, and USB plug: the most popular plug in the world. And you thought there was nothing innovative left to be improved in an AA battery.

MoGo: the most desired mouse

How much innovation can be unleashed around computer mouse design? For years we have been experiencing various designs, the old faithful rolling ball is gone and replaced by optical sensors with LEDs or even lasers. Cords are gone replaced by proprietary radio protocols or standard Bluetooth. Mice have wheels, multiple buttons, touch pads, but... let me as you a question? First, do you use a notebook? If yes, do you feel absolutely comfortable with its touchpad or pointer stick? Or do you prefer to use a mouse whenever possible? I guess the latter is the case. But do you carry your mouse everywhere where the notebook goes? Why not? Ahh.. it is bulky. OK. Other obstacles? I see... it is a wireless one and its USB transceiver is bulky. Fine, get yourself a Bluetooth mouse, you won't need any external transceiver. Anything else? Still too big to fit in your briefcase?

If you are a frequent traveler, you probably face the same dilemmas as I do. Despite using IBM Lenovo Thinkpad (that implies the best pointer stick on the Planet), I prefer to use a mouse. But my favorite Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for Bluetooth is too big to fit in my everyday briefcase and all the others I tried were not small and comfortable enough to carry around. Until MoGo.

MoGo is the most innovative mouse I have ever had. It is the size of a PC-Card and sits in an appropriate slot when not used (recharging its batteries). When needed, you pull it out, unfold it and... it is really hard to explain how comfortable it is (it definitely does not look like it was comfortable). I have been really, really surprised how well it fits my hand and how precisely it tracks the surface. Ordering the MoGo nine months ago, I thought it would be more of a gadget than the mouse I would use. The fact is, since it arrived a few days ago, I have used it a lot. Looks like the notebook mouse problem is solved for good now. The only thing I would suggest for version two is to incorporate a Synaptics ScrollStrip emulating the scroll wheel - same as in the Logitech V500. Other than that it is the perfect notebook mouse.

Headphone madness part 3

The saga continues. HTC, the most successful mobile phone manufacturer in recent years has just introduced another plug - see the picture on the right. To reduce space and BOM (Bill Of Materials), they use the mini USB socket on the phone to drive headphones. This is going crazy... Not only we are (again!) forced to use the headphones supplied with the phone, but it is impossible to charge the device and listening to the music at the same time...

Fortunately I don't care anymore... The new HTC TyTN supports Bluetooth A2DP and I am happy to use the SonyEricsson DS970 headphones, both for calls and for music. A2DP feels like freedom...

Browser Wars

Yeah, the old topic surfaces again. The best browser?.... I still love Opera. If you had your tabbed browsing done properly once, you don't want to go back. But unfortunately Opera has some incompatibilities, notably with Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server we use at work. So I used to have Internet Explorer 6 for those "special" sites. Then Internet Explorer 7 has come around and I fell in love with its ClearType fonts. That love proved to be short lived, as I found out ClearType can be turned on and fine-tuned by using the ClearType Tuner (BTW I still cannot understand why this feature is hidden so deep in Windows - Steve Jobs would make ClearType alone the key selling point and differentiator of Macs). Unfortunately many web sites are not compatible with IE7. Notably I have had several problems with Blogger itself when run on IE7, so I decided to use FireFox for publishing Headworx posts. This is a shame. HTML used to be so simple. And now we have true browser madness - pages incompatible with browsers and vice versa (reminds me the headphone madness...).

But headphone madness is finally (almost) solved by the arrival of the universal, invisible, swiss - army knife, wireless A2DP Bluetooth profile. I say almost, as in its infant age there are still some incompatibilities between A2DP devices - BlueSoleil plays silence on the Griffin BlueTrip receiver and iPod BlueTrip transmitter has to be paired every 10 minutes with the Nokia Audio Gateway.

So is there an A2DP-like cure for the browser problem on the horizon? May be not ideal, but solving many of the above mentioned problems is the IE Tab plugin. IE Tab can embed Microsoft IE rendering engine on one or more FireFox tabs. And you can define URL patterns to redirect FireFox incompatible pages to IE Tab - they will open in your FireFox, but will be handled behind the scenes by IE. Something like traveler plug adapter, only for web pages. By the way I hoped I would never need thing like IE Tab. Idealist...

Google Trends

I have not been written about Google for some time. They are making progress on many fronts. Recently launched Google Trends service is a significant milestone. Before Trends, Google was indexing external data. They were just an index to information created elsewhere. With the launch of the Trends, suddenly they added a lot of the information to the Internet. While Google does not own nor has any rights to the information they index, Trends is their own data. By using the Google services we all agree to their terms. And among other things be aware that "Google's servers automatically record information when you visit our website or use some of our products, including the URL, IP address, browser type and language, and the date and time of your request.". By doing that they are able to deliver great new product without touching your privacy.

Trends is really great and my perception is we are still far away from its full potential. Just give it a try. For example, look how the bird flu fever has been calming down. Or see how Windows Mobile is taking over Symbian. Or the Linux hype going down.

There are plenty of very, very interesting trends to be spotted. For example: what the Internet, tires and Poland have in common? In Polish "tires" is "opony". So let us try to execute this query: http://www.google.com/trends?q=tyres%2C+opony. You should be getting two trend lines. The top (blue) is the worldwide accumulated search for "tires". The bottom (red) is the search for "opony". Two exceptional behaviors can be spotted here. First there are significant red peaks. Second, the peak amount of searches for "opony" reaches the amount of searches for tires. Explanation? Not so difficult if you live in Poland. We have very long and harsh winters, so half year we drive on summer tires, and the other half on winter tires. The "pit stop" time is November and March. And it is much cheaper to buy the tires over the Internet. So a little bit unexpectedly, the Internet market for tires in Poland twice a year almost reaches the market of entire English - speaking population. Wow... What am I doing here writing the blog? I should be filling the warehouses with new supplies of Michelins and Pirellis...