Archive for 'Interesting Finds' Category
Ultra-mobile PC: Rounding up the usual suspects
31 May 2007I am down to considering the following four UMPCs. Right now I am leaning towards Samsung Q1 ultra which has decent battery life, decent processor (Staley A100), and large-enough harddisk. I was initially excited about Fujitsu, but the 20 GB harddisk is a real drawback.
- Pros: weighs only 580 grams, 8 hours of battery life (real usage would be 5-6 hours), bigger keyboard (14-mm key pitch and 1.3mm keystroke), Made in Japan
- Cons: Only 20GB disk, No builtin bluetooth, No IR (Can’t connect my Polar F55)
- Reviews: Reghardware
- Pros: 7″ screen, 20-80 GB Hard drive, Builtin GPS, reasonably priced ($900-$1200)
Cons: Short battery life (2-4 hours), Celeron processor
Review: Josh Bancroft, Gottabemobile-1, Gottabemobile-2, Gottabemobile-3
- Pros: 7″ screen, 60-80 GB HDD, reasonably priced ($800-$1200), decent battery life (3-6.5 hours)
- Cons: thumb-type split keyboard
- Reviews: Walt Mossberg, Gottabemobile, Wired blogs,
- Pros: Active digitizer
- Cons: Via processor, Expensive ($1700-$2500)
- Reviews: Gadgeteer, Mobility today, Gottabemobile, PC maganize, Laptop magazine, Cnet
Folkstreams.net: A national preserve of documentary films about American roots cultures
26 May 2007Heard about the site from npr, which contains lot of interesting documentary films about American folk or roots culture. More about folkstreams.net can be found here. The following are some blues-related videos:
Fujitsu ultra-mobile PCs
16 May 2007Its time to replace my 3 year old Fujitsu P5020 and I’ve been looking for something interesting. Fujitsu just announced new ‘U series’ of tablet-convertible ultra mobile PCs. They are scheduled to be released in Japan in mid June-July and cost about $1200. Hopefully these will be available in US soon. Most important along with small form factor and low weight is the battery life which is rated at 8 hours!
Weighing only 580g, with a thickneess of 26.5mm, and with a 5.6″ widescreen LCD in a small, light body, new ultra-mobile PCs offer advanced mobility and style for business users, […] Its ultra-compact size makes it easy to carry around at all times, and with a maximum battery life of up to 8 hours(3), users can catch up on e-mail, process documents, and do research whenever they need to, without being tied to a desk. The 5.6″ widescreen display and keyboard with a 14-mm key pitch and 1.3mm keystroke ensure user-friendliness. Moreover, since it can be used as a handheld tablet PC, users can edit simple documents or perform other tasks on the go, thereby improving productivity when outside the office.
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Blogging Chicago blues
2 May 2007Check out Today’s Chicago Blues for more on current Chicago blues scene.
Chicago blues festival
2 May 2007The schedule for Chicago Blues Festival (June 7-10, 2007) is available here (Click here for PDF of the schedule). Here are some of the highlights:
Thursday, June 7
- Koko Taylor: 6:00-7:00 PM (Petrillo music shell)
Friday, June 8
- Carey & Lurrie Bell: 4:00-5:30 PM (U.S. Cellular front porch)
- Billy Branch: 7:15-9:30 PM (Petrillo music shell)
Saturday, June 9
- Alvin Youngblood Hart: 3:00-4:00 PM (Mississippi juke joint)
- Magic Slim and the Teardrops: 8:30-9:30 PM (Petrillo music shell)
Sunday, June 10
- David Honeyboy Edwards:1:30-2:30 PM (Route 66 road house)
- James Cotton: 3:30-5:00 PM (U.S. Cellular front porch)
- David Honeboy Edwards: 4:00 - 5:00 PM (Louisana Bayou station)
- James Cotton, Hubert Sumin, Willie Smith, and others: 7:15-8:15 PM (Petrillo music shell)
- Bobby Rush: 8:25-9:30 (Petrillo music shell)
Formula for successful innovation
11 April 2007Dr. Tom Osborn of Proctor & Gamble gave a very interesting talk on “Views on Successful Innovation & Innovators” and he gave a formula for successful serial innovation:
where, the is effective communication,
are problem selection, working principles, passion, and persistence,
are managing fears, frustrations, and failure, and
are relationships (mentor/mentee, value colleagues/develop networks, value family) and knowing unwritten rules.
The talk was a part of the course, GE 498MTV, Creative Modeling for Technology Visionaries. Here is a Here related post at ETSI website:
Dr. Osborn is one of select group of Victor Mills Research Fellows at P&G. His inventions have helped generate sales in excess of $1.5 billion dollars/years, he is holder of 122 US patents, and his work has spanned many technologies and disciplines.
LaTeX math plugin for wordpress
10 April 2007X told me about this great plugin for writing LaTeX formulas in wordpress blog posts. Download the plugin here.
Note: To get the plugin to work unzip the file into your wp-content/plugins directory and edit wp-latex.php using your favorite editor. Replace “http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/cgi-bin/mimetexpublic.cgi” on line 21 with “http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi” (without quotes). Save the change and activate the plugin.
Now, I can write equations like the following in my posts by typing $latex
n \propto {\sigma_{bb}\over d} \cdot \chi^k \cdot m\log m $:
In case you are interested the above is an approximate form of a population-sizing model for genetic algorithms.
See related entry here and an FAQ on how to change the size and color of the formula (I wasn’t successful in either changing the size or the color).
Yahoo! pipes for RSS mashup
9 April 2007Xavier Llorà sent an IM about Yahoo! pipes. Looks like a pretty cool tool (check out the editor) to remix your favorite RSS feeds. An overview of pipes is available here. See a tutorial on how to use pipes here. Other tutorials are available here. One drawback, you need to have a yahoo login to use it.
Resources for scienfitic presentations
2 April 2007GECCO is coming up soon and it means it is time to prepare presentation slides and posters. I was looking around for pointers for making good slides and posters and found very good ones. Many of the guidelines were for business presentations, but I also found quite a few of them for scientific presentations:
Wordpress themes
1 April 2007I was looking for some simple looking wordpress themes for creating a webpage for an academic workshop. Here are some that I liked from SilentBits [Top themes, Non-blog style themes, 3 new wordpress themes], Smashing magazine [83 beautiful wordpress themes, 8 fresh wordpress themes], Scribez, and Wordpress theme viewer, in no particular order.
