Headworx

Last week I have had plenty of time to think, during the long walks along the empty sand beaches of the Hel peninsula . Walking is so relaxing. I can go for hours and hours, sometimes listening to some music, sometimes to an audiobook, and sometimes just doing nothing but walking. And thinking. Unfortunately after a couple of days it gets somehow boring. At the seashore you can go either eastwards, or westwards. And the landscape, although beautiful and unique, does not change much when you walk. So on the third of forth day I felt like doing something more while walking along the beech. I had Internet with me. Everyone has it these days. In a mobile phone in a pocket. The trouble is, it is really hard to interactively operate a mobile Internet device, while walking. One thing is the screen. No way to look at the screen and walk. Sooner or later you will hit a tree this way. And equally difficult to use keyboard. Oh how I was missing the screen-less, keyboard-less system I envisioned i...

Mobile Internet occupies the headlines. No wonder. The 2001-2010 decade was ruled by desktop Internet, aka Web 2.0. Starting sometime around the year 2000, sitting at the desktop computer, we started our transition from humans to super-humans. Armed with a keyboard, a mouse and a screen, with fast broadband connectivity each one of us could win the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" show. Courtesy of Google. Things are different in the Mobile Internet decade 2011-2020. Broadband is either already here or is coming. But to mobilize our super - humanity, we need to break free from screens and keyboards. Screens and keyboards form cages keeping us from the real mobile freedom. Any screen you take is both too large (when you have to carry it) or too small (when you look at it). Ditto keyboard. Both screens and keyboards are dead ends in the evolution of human - machine interfaces. Imagine a powerful, connected mobile computer. One you can communicate with freely, without having to ...

The avalanche of posts mentioning the Gingerbread (aka Android 3.0) is running at a full speed now. The most intriguing news however point to Sony working on a PlayStation Phone . It will run the Android 3.0 on a Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor. Finally. It has taken them five years since my October 2005 call . Better late then never... Anyway the PSP platform is holding pretty well... Six years on the market... The UMD micro optical drives are gone and replaced by silicon, but the platform still sells well. As Mr Jfieb points out on our Domino Research Forum , the Sony / Android news can be paired with the recent Qualcomm's announcement of shipping the long awaited QSD8672 dual core 1.5 GHz Snapdragons. Most importantly, as I posted a week ago, during their last conference call QuickLogic mentioned Qualcomm about to ship 3000 reference design kits to OEMs Worldwide. There should be no doubt the kits are promoting the full capabilities of the latest Qualcomm processors. It is a...

Last week has brought us a number of news on the foldable displays. First, and probably the most important is the US patent application 20100064244 , submitted by Qualcomm. A multi-fold mobile device with a configurable interface is disclosed. In a particular embodiment, a method includes detecting a hardware configuration change from a first configuration to a second configuration at an electronic device that includes at least a first panel having a first display surface and a second panel having a second display surface. The hardware configuration change includes a change in a relative orientation of the first display panel to the second display panel. The method also includes automatically modifying a graphical user interface displayed at the first display surface and the second display surface at least partially based on the second configuration. In parallel there was the very interesting quarterly conference call by QuickLogic . During the Q&A session, there was an interesting...

It arrived last friday. And my impressions are far better than the last time with the first international edition Kindle . Small things first, when ordering it from Amazon.com, the description stated clear the international version was offered without a power supply, only with a USB cable. Fair enough. I added the EU power supply to the order and there was no disappointment. I decided to order the DX model for a reason. Or actually for two reasons. The first - I found out after a firmware upgrade, the Web browser built into the Kindle works quite well for text Web pages, including JavaScript. What surprises me though, at the moment Amazon offers 3G Internet connectivity at no cost. Worldwide. I've browsed the agreements and terms and conditions of the service and have not found any specific information. They say they may charge for data usage. They say they will charge for over-the-air delivery of personal documents to the device at $0.99 per MB. But the Web just works (remember, I...