The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘screen’

Google launched a new service today in from its Labs called Google Reader Play. It is a more visual way to browse through the most popular items being saved and shared on Google Reader. When you launch it, you are presented with a large photo, video, or text excerpt on the main part of the screen, and can flip through by clicking on arrows or selecting an item from the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen.

Google Reader Play doesn’t require you to sign in, but if you do then you can star, share, and like items, and it starts to recommend things to you based on what your friends share, star, and like in Google Reader. The user interface seems to borrow a lot from StumbleUpon, with its concept of randomly flicking through the best stuff on the Web. In particular, it’s very similar to StumbleVideo, except it includes more than just videos. It is very image-heavy. The user interface reminds me of some elements of enjosythin.gs as well in the way that it presents images and text excerpts in a blown-up manner. The arrows are very Fast Flip, another Labs experiment for the Google News in making magazine and newspaper articles more visually browsable.

Like many of its other recent efforts, especially with Buzz, Google Reader Play is an attempt to encourage more direct sharing and to capture that sharing data. More and more Website referral traffic is coming from sharing service such as Twitter and Facebook. Google wants to be in the sharing game as well.

Just 3.2 pounds, folks. That’s all. Jetsetting, globetrotting, running after trains and then jumping into that one open car with all the hay in it

Read more here:
Panasonic Toughbook C1 claims world’s lightest 12.1-inch convertible tablet crown

It seems a little odd that we first saw the Eee Keyboard at CES 2009 and it’s still not available. The demo that we played with at least seemed like it was nearly production ready.

More: 
The Asus Eee Keyboard will now be released in April 2010

Proof that the software that matches ads to content still needs a lot of work: Omaha Steaks pays good money to link their product to heart attacks. Free shipping! Thanks to Jon Finegold at Thinking Screen Media for sending this in.

Apple thinks of itself as a mobile device company. In January at the iPad launch event, Steve Jobs noted that “Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world now.” And responding to a direct question today at a Goldman Sachs conference, liveblogged by the WSJ, COO Tim Cook reiterated: “Yes, you should definitely look at Apple as a mobile-device company.”

Cook also pointed out that the majority of Apple’s revenues now comes from mobile devices (including laptops) or content for those devices. Indeed, if you look at the breakdown of Apple’s fourth quarter revenues of $15.7 billion, nearly $12 billion of that came from portable Macbooks ($2.8 billion), iPods ($3.4 billion) and iPhones $5.6 billion). And another $1.2 billion came from iTunes.

Apple isn’t abandoning computers. It is a mobile device company because computing is going mobile. What about things like Apple TV? “Apple TV is a hobby,” Cook says dismissively, echoing another sentiment Jobs has expressed before. Nevertheless, the company sold 35 percent more Apple TVs last quarter than the year before and continues to invest in the opportunity.

For more on what Cook said today, read the liveblog notes from the WSJ or the Business Insider.

If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance you have multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. And one problem you may face is pulling all of this information together to build a single online identity — be it for personal use, or to create a professional online profile. Flavors.me is a new site launching today that looks to make this as simple as possible, and it does so with flying colors. After a three month long private beta, the site has just launched to the public.

The service is as simple as they come. After completing a basic sign up form, you link your Flavors.me page to any of 15 online services, with options that include Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (as well as any RSS feed). Flavors.me taps into these services via their APIs (you generally enter your credentials using OAuth or Facebook Connect), and within minutes you’re ready to start customizing your site.

All of your linked content is pulled into your Flavors.me page so it’s easy to access, but it’s never overwhelming — the site’s templates are minimalist, and hide everything but your name and a list of your online feeds/profiles at first. If you click on one of these feeds, the content will smoothly transition into view; it’s all very slick. You can also tweak your page’s color scheme, backgrounds, and layout to suit your taste (though there are only a handful of layouts to choose from initially).

You can get a feel for what’s possible by checking out my Flavors.me page, which took me all of ten minutes to set up — keep in mind that it’s entirely possible to make a page that looks better than this with a little more time.

There are plenty of other services out there that let you list all of your online presences in one place, with options including chi.mp, card.ly, UnHub, and even Google Profiles. But Flavors.me really makes the process extremely simple, and the results look great.

Flavors.me is free for its basic features, and will generate revenue through premium subscriptions, which are $20 a year. Premium features include the ability to use your own custom domain name, real time statistics, and the ability to include a contact form in your page (though obviously you could just include your Email address in the standard ‘About’ field).

Flavors.me was built by HiiDef, an incubator started by former Vimeo exec Jonathan Marcus and his brother, David Marcus.


Flavors.me from Jack Zerby on Vimeo.

With the new popularity of touchscreen phones like the Droid, the Nexus, and the Hero, swipe gesture passwords are becoming more and more popular. Word of warning though, make sure you wipe off your screen after you lock your phone again. Or at least wash your damn hands

Continued here:
PSA: Swipe passwords might be hackable after all

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? And how many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand

Originally posted here: 
Lenovo brings new touch-enabled all-in-one to market

It’s not the first Hello Kitty TV out there, but this new Toshiba TV is perhaps the one with the most discreet design. Announced [JP] today, the Hello Kitty 19A800KT is a 19-inch LCD TV that sports the cartoon cat on both the device itself and the remote controller

More here: 
Toshiba to sell Hello Kitty Regza LCD TV

This isn’t a rumor, it’s just a wish. I’m hoping that the Apple Tablet that is announced tomorrow will have a capacitive touch interface that extends past the screen and to the actual case. Particularly the back of the device where the fingers will naturally rest during two-handed use.

Touch interfaces are something I’m sort of obsessed with. Like most people, the iPhone was what really opened my eyes to what it could do. I was one of the first individuals to actually buy a Microsoft Surface computer, happily paying $17k, including delivery and warranty. And I joyfully tested the Microsoft TouchWall, and still beg them to actually ship that OS and touch kit. I’ve also bought at least one of just about every touch computer out there, just to see how they perform.

Touch is awesome as a user input mechanism. But there are problems. One problem is that it doesn’t work well at all on machines sitting on a desktop because of arm fatigue.

Another problem, that also affects laptop and mobile devices, is the simple fact that you have to block part of the screen from your eyes while you touch it. It’s a real problem for a number of applications, particularly gaming. Touch is great, but blocking the screen isn’t.

That’s why I’ve obsessed over the 10/GUI concept and hope that something very similar to it comes to desktop computing soon. There’s touch, just not on the screen.

The Apple Magic Mouse is a variation on this, giving users a capacitive touch interface on the top of their mouse. My work efficiency increased dramatically when I started using that mouse, and I’ll never go back.

There are rumors that the next iPhone will have a capacitive touch case. That’s great for the iPhone, but there’s a far more compelling use case for a tablet to have a capacitive touch case. That’s because when you hold it you’ll naturally put your palms on the side edges of the front and wrap your hands around the back. And where your fingers touch the case is a really awesome place to put capacitive touch.

Lots has been said about the supposedly amazing way people will interact with the Apple Tablet. And while the new gestures look to be pretty awesome, that still doesn’t address the problem of blocking the screen with touch, or having to move your hands to do basic navigation like scrolling and clicking.

If I was building the tablet, I’d include touch on the case as well as the screen. Has Apple done that? We’ll find out soon.