Microsoft KIN: MS's iPhone contender

Microsoft provides with it's KIN phones a good exercise in goal-oriented design. Its two proto-smartphone versions (KIN ONE and TWO) include three features targeted at the most common use case for a hand-held, cloud-connected communication device:

- The Loop is the always-on feed reader. In a twist w.r.t. other phones, they make it the default view so that the user always can review the latest feeds from their primary social connections. These can be grouped in several priority layers, which is a nice touch not provided by Facebook.

- The Spot can be a killer feature. It provides a 21st-century clipboard, a place where the various web clips, bookmarks and half-written musings can be collected until the user's ready to compose them into a published article. This provides a predefined and better workflow for this task that doesn't force the user to keep track in short-term memory of all relevant information pieces while composing a post.

- KIN Studio is a lightweight application that works as a end-user repository for captured data, with specialized tools to create metadata and categorize content according to content type, subject, people, geomapping, timestamp.

Each feature on its own provides a nice touch to enhance the blogging/feedback/social network experience. The three of them together can create a tightly focused environment for creating and sharing. I'd like to have it in my hands for 2 hours and feel how they work.

Maemo Nokia n800 alternate browser

Browser navegador alternativo para el n800, basado en Webkit.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=254590&postcount=133

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=862

The tipping point in open source

El año de Linux y el Software libre ha llegado: los grandes creadores de hardware apoyan seriamente el desarrollo de drivers de código abierto.

Slashdot | Major PC Vendors Push For Open Source Drivers

"Remember the heat the Linux Foundation took for allegedly not giving enough attention to Desktop Linux? The latest events at the Foundation's annual summit paint a different picture. Industry heavyweights like Dell, HP, and Lenovo 'announced on stage that they will now include wording in their hardware procurement processes to "strongly encourage" the delivery of open source drivers'. The move specifically targets desktop and mobile products."

Robot emocional (provoca emociones!)

Robot que baila y sigue la mirada. Robot social que parece un pollito amarillo ( o muñeco de nieve, según se mire ).

Cute robot gaze tracking - pose robot.


Keepon & the BeatBots

Keepon and Roillo
are two robots designed for non-verbal interaction with children.
Keepon is shaped approximately like a snowman, with two cameras for
eyes and a microphone for a nose. After one bar of music, he starts
getting down in his robotic-type fashion. (two videos that need flash
are the attraction here)



También: robot que hace gestos humanos.



http://www.dailytech.com/MIT+Develops+Advanced+Humanlike+Robot/article11364.htm

Tarjetas de memoria para la N800, cómo sacarlas y cuál comprar

The maximum capacity of compatible SDHC cards is 8 gigabytes, the
maximum capacity of the other types of compatible card is 2 gigabytes.

By
using SDHC 8 gig cards in both card slots, you can have a maximum
storage space of 16 gigabytes. This is enough for about 4000 to 8000
music tracks, or absolutely anything else you want to store such as
photos, videos, text, applications, games etc.

How to get the memory card out of the N800's external card slot

A
surprising number of people think that their memory card is stuck in
the card slot under the N800's stand. The card isn't stuck though, the
slot just isn't spring-loaded so the card doesn't pop out automatically.

To
get the card out, open the slot's door and put your fingernail or
thumbnail against the slot, perpendicular to the card. Press your nail
down onto the card, and you should feel a ridge that makes it easier to
pull the card out. Pull the card towards you with your nail, and it
should come out very easily.


Pruebas de velocidad

Code:

Test: time dd if=/dev/mmcblk? of=/dev/null bs=8192 count=30000
Speed in bytes => 8192*30000/time
Speed in Mbytes => 8192*30000/time/1024/1024

Card                Clock    Width     Time       Speed        Slot
1GB SanDisk RS-MMC     20Mhz   1-bits   107.29    2.18MB/s    External
4GB SanDisk SDHC C2    25Mhz   4-bits    31.41    7.46MB/s    External
4GB Transcend SDHC C2  48Mhz   4-bits    25.72    9.11MB/s    Internal
8GB Transcend SDHC C2  48Mhz   4-bits    19.54   11.99MB/s    Internal

Distro Linux para usuarios finales

Distribuida con el ordenador compacto de sobremesa KPC

The GNOME Journal: An Introduction To Foresight Desktop Linux

An Introduction To Foresight Desktop Linux

Why
a new distribution? There is a real need for a desktop Linux distro
that is easy to manage for new users, well integrated, modern, and
still appealing to power users. Foresight strives to fill that need.
Foresight is not just another Debian or Fedora distro, instead it is
something truly innovative. Foresight is still in a beta stage, but is
rapidly growing and stabilizing. Built on the Conary package management
system, Foresight has a bright future. Foresight focuses heavily on
usability and integration, therefore the latest GNOME release is always
the standard desktop.

What is Different

One
major difference is Mono; Foresight ships Mono as well as quite a few
Mono applications by default. The Beagle desktop indexing tool, which
is rather tough to get to work well on other distros, works right out
of the box on Foresight. This is just an example of the innovative
applications that have been included.

Conary takes the
headaches out of software maintenance. Conary is the brain child of the
guys at rpath, which is mostly made up of former Red Hat veterans. One
major problem solved by Conary is package upgrades. Conary always
upgrades from the repository it was installed from, not the one with
the version that appears to be the newest. This adds a tremendous level
of stability. Conary also enforces some package naming and version
rules. For more information, take a look at http://wiki.rpath.com.
Conary is an exciting new opportunity for Linux and package
installation both for users at home and for large deployments of
computers in an office setting.

Ease the Pain for Switchers

The
Foresight default interface is quite simple and easy for the new user
to get acquainted with. Featured is a mostly standard GNOME desktop,
with some beautification. The Foresight team includes extremely
talented graphic designers/artists with plans to make the desktop look
its best while still maintaining the utmost in usability.

Foresight
also includes a new tool for systems management, Oversite. Oversite
keeps your system up to date all of the time. In the future, Oversite
will provide a web interface to manage your desktop and make it trivial
to install any new application.

References:

http://www.foresightlinux.com/

http://www.gnome.org

http://wiki.conary.com

http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/

http://www.gnome.org/projects/f-spot/

http://www.beatniksoftware.com/tomboy/

http://muine.gooeylinux.org/

http://www.imendio.com/projects/blam/

http://appliworks.jondesign.net/

http://www.abisource.com

http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/

Pipeline del procesador Rock de Sun

Un pipeline con un nuevo sistema predictivo, capaz de suspender hebras bloqueadas. Competencia del procesador Cell de las PS3.

Sun: Can you smell what the Rock is cookin'?

A Rock core's pipeline. Source: Sun

In Sun's new model, instructions enter the front end of the machine, where they're decoded before being dispatched and reordered like normal. But if the instruction stream stalls for a long time while waiting on main memory to load data, Rock first saves the thread's state in a "checkpoint" and then launches a "scout thread" that runs ahead of the (now stalled and saved) main thread. This scout thread (ST) is a hardware entity that's totally invisible to the operating system, hypervisor, or whatever else has control of the processor, and in the course of execution it predicts and resolves branches, prefetches code and data, and saves its speculative state in a shadow register file. Most importantly, the scout thread can actually retire some of the instructions that it speculatively executes.