News for Friday, 9 January 2009

While wandering in the wasteland of North Hall (feels a bit like being in Fallout3), I stumbled on an interesting products that actually received a "Best of SHow 2009" award: the Pulse smartpen by Livescribe.
As you can guess from the name it's a pen and it's, erh, smart. But what does it do? Well, I tried it to find out...
First, it is a rather big and heavy pen, although if you are on the bling side and like massive-gold diamond-studded fountain pens, you'll be at home (apart from the style, of course). Plus, it has a tiny LCD screen along the top of its body.

So, simply write on the page and the pen does two things: it digitises what you write and at the same time records what you hear. Pretty useful for, say, jotting down notes during a conference, an interview or a lesson. But then, you can use a regular pen and a recorder (like an iPhone with its headphones on, the mike is absolutely superb). Yes, but there's more to the Pulse: maybe you are not exactly sure about what was really said about something you wrote down? Simply place the pen back on the first letter of the line you're not sure about, and a tiny speaker on the pen will play back the audio that was recorded at the exact time when you wrote said line. Impressive. I tried it, it does work really well. And the audio recording quality is quite good, although you can also use a pair of optional headphones that include a tiny microphone on each earpiece, to enhance the recording quality.
How does it work? Well, on the tip of the pen there is a tiny infrared camera that records what you write, and on the body of the pen, close to the LCD screen, there is a microphone that catches the audio.
So, there must be a catch, yes? Yes, indeed. You can't just write on any paper: you have to use special notebooks. The notebooks have a special paper, which is covered in tiny pale dots forming a hard to define pattern (they don't actually hinder writing or reading, they feel more like a solid light background color). This tiny dots pattern allow the pen to "know where it is" on a page.
The notebooks have a row of icons (yes, icons on paper) at the bottom of each page, that can be used to start/pause/stop recording, trigger audio playback (with FF/RW and playback speed adjustment), as well a "menu" arrow (more on that later). Note that you are not forced to buy their paper, you can print it yourself on a color printer with the deskptop app.
Once you are done with noting stuff, simply put the pen on its USB craddle (it fits snuggly thanks to a magnet, and the craddle doubles as a battery charger) and it will sync its content to your PC or Mac (the Mac app is really well done (it has just been released), using standard OSX widgets and all). Files saved on your computer can be read by both the PC and Mac versions of the software.
On the desktop app, you can do the same as on the paper, that is click on a word to trigger audio playback from that point, listen to the whole audio transcript, export the audio or your handwritten transcript...
On a side note, the first page of the notebook include a printed calculator interface, that let you do calculations by simply tapping the "keys" with the pen tip, and getting the results on the pen's screen. Livescribe has released an SDK that allows third parties to develop apps for the pen, and they demonstrated a couple, like a live translator: select the app on the pen (by using the "menu arrow" on the page, it acts like a 4-way gamepad) and a language, then tap a word on the page and the pen's screen shows you the translation. Another funny app was a "piano" app: the pen instructs you (via the speaker) to draw a bunch of vertical, then horizontal lines (so that it looks like a part of a piano keyboard), once done, simply tap on the hand-drawn piano keys and the pen plays the notes. Nifty...
Only thing missing in my opinion? Your handwritten notes can only be exported as PDF, there is no recognition software to turn it into text, but it does allow you to search for words, probably by doing speech recognition (but only in english, it seems).
The Smartpen is currently available in two versions: 1GB of storage for $149 and 2GB for $199, only in the USA and Australia for the moment.

During a keynote delivered at the CES 2009, Steve Balmer announced the availability of windows 7 public beta today. It seems that Microsoft is rushing to make current problems with Vista history, and expects to release a new version, aka Windows 7, as soon as possible. The final version of windows 7 is expected for 2010. Steve Ballmer promised that windows 7 will be different than Vista, and that Microsoft is listening to customers in order to make it better than the current OS:
- To accommodate with the success of netbooks, usually shipping with Linux as a light OS, windows 7 will be faster and more battery energy aware than vista.
- The GUI will be simplified, even though it will remain “a la Vista”. A new task bar will be added, with thumbnails-based presentation and refreshed/enhanced widgets.
- Support for multipoint touchscreens
- Windows should be less intrusive than Vista, especially with less alert message
However, despite announcement, and forced by a projected release date in 2010, windows 7 will massively use Vista architecture. Microsoft is even recommending to corporate to first move from XP to Vista, then to Windows 7. Regarding the minimal configuration to run Windows 7, it should be identical to the one recommended for Vista.
If you want to test windows 7, the version is most likely working on our Mac, and we will provide you with our first feedback over the week-end.

According to a news published by our friends from MacUser.de, LED backlighted LCD panels used in MacBook Unibody might have different quality/rendering levels. Indeed, Apple is currently using 4 suppliers for such panels, most likely to avoid shortage and/or bring prices down by creating internal competition. Nevertheless, all panels are not equals, and have different range of contrast, brightness and view angles.
This is not new, as it has already been pointed out for the MacBook Pro for which 2 sources of LCD panels are being used, with one being also better than the other.
Most users will never see the difference, as it is visible only in certain conditions with both displays being side-by-side. However, if you really want to know which LCD panel is installed in your MacBook, hereafter is the procedure: go to system preferences/ monitor/ color, then open your LCD display profile, and look for the line 13:

In the case of the MacBook Pro used for this capture, the reference of the LCD panel is 9C85, supposed to be better than the 9C84 that is be used for other series of the same notebook models. As Apple is not communicating about the components used in its notebook models, you will not be able to use this info to request a product exchange.

OmniGroup can be considered as a historical company for Mac users, especially during the transition from OS 9 to OS X, with its web browser OmniWeb. We met Linda Sharps to discuss products from OmniGroup and future projects.
After the success of OmniWeb, this application slowly disappeared, especially after the release of Safari and Firefox for Mac, both being free applications, unlike OmniWeb even though it offers some interesting functions not available from competitors. According to OmniGroup, OmniWeb is not currently a priority as it is a small company with 35 employees including only 9 engineers/coders.
The key product is currently OmniFocus, a task manager application (based on GTD process) working on both Mac and iPhone, with synchronization via network (such as MobileMe). OmniFocus 1.0, then 1.1 and its iPhone app companion have been, and still are, very successful, and a new version (2.0) of both applications is being developed. The main goal is to further simplify the user experience and GUI for customers not used of the GTD process, while maintaining the performance level that made OmniFocus successful.

Concerning OmniOutliner (notes and document managing application), OmniGroup knows that there is a strong interest for an iPhone version, but there is "no official" announcement yet.
Two other applications from OmniGroup should evolve this year: OmniPlan in version 2.0 (project management) and OmniGraffle (diagram) in version 6.0.
When asked about DiskSweeper, the utility allowing users to browse their HD according to folder and/or file size, a developer from OmniGroup indicated that there is currently no project for further development, however, the company is considering to release it as an Open Source project.
Last but not least, OmniGroup plans to be present at the next MacWorld Expo, if there is any.

NVidia just announced 3 new mobile GPU dedicated to notebooks: GeForce G105M, G110M and GT 130M. They will support PhysX, stereoscopic 3D, parallel computing and CUDA.

To illustrate the gain of performance offered by those new GPU, the new high-end model GF GT 130M is 17% (only) faster than the 9600m GT currently used in MacBook Pro. Beside those specific new features, the new mobile GPU series gives an opportunity for NVidia to switch to another serial coding, and try to forget about the manufacturing problem linked to 8x00M GPUs era.

Yesterday we were reporting about the Asus computer in keyboard, featuring a design similar to the Apple Alu keyboard, but being nevertheless a completely different product, hereafter is a copy of Apple MacBook Air notebook unveiled by MSI during the CES:

To better illustrate why we gave such a title to the news, hereafter are a direct comparison with the MacBook Air, side-by-side performed by Slashgear



Beside the logo and the port side, the MSI X320 is a MacBook Air clone. The LED backlighted display features a higher resolution than the Apple model, with 1366x768 pixels vs. 1200x800, but it is only powered by an Intel ATOM CPU.As a consequence, it is much cheaper than the MacBook Air, and should be available around 900-1000 USD. Apple might react as this is obviously a copy of one of its key products.
Interestingly, MSI slogan is “Innovation with Style!”…

Sandisk have announced a new range of SSD disks that will be available in mid 2009.

Available in 2,5 and 1,8" sizes they will have capacities of 60,120 and 240 GB, for the prices of $149, $249 and $499; this makes them reasonably priced.
Sandisk states that they are 4 times faster than disks spinning at 7200 rpm, a pseudo equivalent of 40.000 rpm according to the terminology that they try to make us adopt.
They will be the first products to use the technologie ExtremeFFSTM that is supposed to multiply up to 100 times the random write speed on MLC chips.
A rendez-vous this summer to know what these products really have inside, but also to see what their competitors will propose. But it seems now that 2009 will be indeed be the year of SSD disk.

The Taipei Times reports that the Minister for Finance of the island has been shocked by the latest figures concerning exports.
Last December, the export of electronics products dropped by 43,4% compared to last year. Among these products, LCD screens are most affected, with a steep fall of 69,2%.
China should be also affected since they import many components from Taiwan to manufacture end products exported to the rest of the world. They have lowered their orders by 54%.
This does not obligatorily mean that the market of computer sales has stopped, but that all manufacturers are reducing to the lowest possible their product stocks in order to spare their bank accounts.