News on the front

Although I was quite unsatisfied in "Tech tramples", I come with nice news for you who likes to customize your gadget, or simply point the direction in which we are going.

Microcontrollers. Or just uC for the closest (u stands for the greek letter 'mu').

They are the key to the new revolution that's reached us. Of course uC have microProcessors, but they are much more than this. uP have huge processing power, but low intelligence. Although they are very versatile, they depend a lot on the interfaces available to them, provided by the boards in which they work.

But uC... they are a lot smaller, power saving and... tricky to work with, but worth the time. All sort of new devices are embedded with them and soon enough there will be no more room for our monster QuadCore(C) PC's. Smartphones are in the brink of reaching dual cored uC, which is a lot of horsepower for experient or smart engineers. Netbooks are going the same path, as well as notebooks, and we can now easily foresee that those huge PC powerplants will be left only for hardcore gamers and designers. (I consider myself a game addict, but moved to a well equipped HP Pavilion, leaving my desktop days behind...)

Here are some novel designs by Freescale, although I'm 3 months late, they are still surprising:

http://www.slashgear.com/freescale-smartbook-concepts-arm-based-ultraportables-0546085/

I have seen even more challenging designs, like parchment-rolls notebooks (google D-Roll), and notebooks thinner than MacBook Air, with touchscreen keyboard, instead of our actual mechanical ones... Things like laser projected keyboards AND screens are not a far reality now.

I guess that in 5 or less years, everyone will be working like Tom Cruise in Minority Report and will be joking at the bulky netbooks of 2009 ;)

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Tech tramples

It has been a while since PCs have outnumbered the old Mainframes, and showed that technology becomes more useful when it gets personal.

Every day when I go check around the news on tech, a new model of portable all-in-one gadget is released, and continue to astonish people all around. And it says all-in-one, but not for long...

I see these advances in technology with two prisms: one points in the direction that we are coming through a technological revolution, linking all things together, and helping us get more productive and free of time-space constraints.

The other point of view is a pessimistic consumer view, as we can't keep the pace of the technology advance, by acquiring the newest gadget available. We all know that TI companies have been suffering and struggling hard to survive, due to the 2008 stock crisis, but the incessant waves of releases are bringing us to the edge of consumption. By this I mean that a cell phone life span is reaching ridiculous 2 months, maybe even less, which is nothing compared to the resilience of its design. What are going to do with so many high-tech-garbage?

That's why I posted "Tech tramples", and leave one question: can we keep up?

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ARM x Intel or Apple x Nokia - your choice

Cell phones have reached such a complex level of applications and usability that their present processors aren't enough to handle what si to come.
ARM and Intel are struggling to see who makes the most succesful move in the mobile area, making partnerships with Apple and Nokia, in the same order.
Are you going to take a side?
Hope these news are good for everyone.

Check it out at:
"New ARM chips headed for iPhone, Palm Pre?" - http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10263278-64.html
"How Apple Brought Nokia And Intel Together" - http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/23/apple-nokia-intel-technology-equity-chips.html

Let's wait for the outcome of this battle.

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Eclipse Galileo released

For those of you, fans of the Eclipse series (I'm not talking about those books), the new episode has been released: Galileo.
Those which were expecting Io, or any other famous moon of the Gas Giants, Galileo comes with a nice suprise for mobile device programmers: Pulsar.
Pulsar is part of an effort of the Mobile Devices Companies, such as Nokia, Motorola, RIM, and Sony-Ericsson, to help developers in their tasks, avoiding the boring conversion between different models and platforms.
One of the most interesting part of this release, at least for me, is the strong contribution of the brazilians of C.E.S.A.R. in the development of the MTJ plug-in, which is one of the major advantages of this release. And more to come.

Check it out at: http://www.eclipse.org/

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Google Squared - nice idea

If you were looking for more than one result for your query, that is the answer. Google Squared represents a new step on Web Searching, providing an interface that's different of actual standards in many ways, and yet is totally natural.
As you may guess, you type your topic of interest (by now I have only tested with single words in English), and go for search. If GS finds one or more topics, or variations, of the offered topic, it will display for you in a grid style, setting the different options as rows, and defining their characteristics as columns. In the picture goes my "shark" search result example (click to get a large version).


Voilá, you got many subespecies, a sample picture, quick description and classification tree... if you still think that's not enough, you may just go to the first column and type for another subespecies GS didn't find at first, as well as starting new columns for characteristics you find more interesting in that moment, going for the end of the header line.
So, inserting and searching for new data is as easy as removing them, clicking on their close icons. I think that your school research has become easier than ever, and much richer in depth and width, which is great, if you can select the information that matters.

Some stuff I've tried: Terminator, werewolf, planets...

Enjoy it here:
http://www.google.com/squared

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Natal - Xbox strike against Wii

I have been away from the game world for a long time, and when I come back to it, things are totally different. We used to play with joysticks and awful graphics, but now you won't even need a controller...

What? I'm not crazy yet, but that's what Microsoft's new project is planning: use your own movements, and even speech, as inputs to control the games.

One of the programs being developed to work with that new interface is this:



They use a device, that is usually placed under your display, which recognizes your moves, facial expressions and even voice. Some say that login will be made as soon as the device recognizes your face.

A funny guy said: "and how do I Ctrl+Alt+Del this thing?"

Well, take your own conclusions, wether this is good or awesome...

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