Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: Technology

Shiny gadgets and clever computers

  • Blackberry Storm: better than the iPhone?

    If you do a lot of typing, it could well be.

    the BlackBerry Storm, Research In Motion’s first attempt at a touchscreen device, is a triumph. It’s a really powerful device with plenty of clever features, but let’s set that to one side for the moment and focus on the question people really want to know the answer to: what’s it like to type on?

    A revelation, is the short answer. RIM has managed to develop a touch-screen keyboard that’s as close to typing on real buttons as you’re currently likely to get. Every time you touch a key, the whole screen feels like it’s pressing down under the weight of your finger, and a sharp clicking sound is emitted. You can switch between a full Qwerty keyboard layout in portrait or landscape mode, or opt for BlackBerry’s SureType keyboard configuration (where two letters appear in a single Qwerty keyboard button), and best of all, you can copy and paste between applications – a simple feature sorely lacking on Apple’s iPhone and many other touchscreen devices.

  • How Apple can make iPhone developers love it again

    John Gruber hits the nail on the head:

    Here is a complete list of what Apple must do to increase developers’ trust in the App Store system:

    State the rules.
    Follow the rules.

    That’s it.

  • Better e-book readers are coming

    Excellent news. We’re not quite at the point where I’d want to dump my daily paper for a digital Daily Me, but we’re getting closer.

    The iRex Reader 1000 offers a 10.2-inch diagonal E-Inkscreen, far larger than Kindle’s 6-inch screen or even iRex’s own 8.1-inch diagonal iLiad, its last e-book model. That stretched display is designed to work with any file format, be it an e-book, a full-sized PDF, a Word document or HTML. Like earlier iRex devices, it sports a stylus and touch screen for taking notes and marking documents.

    …Business-targeted readers also come with business-sized price tags. Though Plastic Logic won’t yet reveal the price for its device, iRex says its basic reader will start at $650. (By contrast, Kindle sells for $360.) Adding a writable screen to the iRex reader will cost another $100, and equipping it with wi-fi, Bluetooth and a 3G cell connection for downloading documents will raise the price to $850.

    But nonbusiness consumers, take heart: Cheaper, book-focused e-readers are also likely to be revamped soon.

  • Techno arse

    Great post on Broadstuff:

    If you read Techmeme, the aggregator of news in the Technosphere, you may not have noticed that the world’s financial markets nearly collapsed yesterday and that the world is again looking at a 1930’s style Great Depression scenario. You would not know that artist Damien Hirst flogged off £70m of “fine art” including the Formaldehyde Shark above – nor will you know that art prices nearly always reach top levels at the same time that commercial property development hits the point where it implodes, which is the guaranteed signal of recession.

    You will, of course, be very well aware of the latest Apple, Blackberry, Google etc shiny shiny stuff though.

  • Plastic Logic’s e-book reader: I want one

    Details and video at TG Daily.

    Manufacturer’s blurb:

    Differentiated by a stunning form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it’s thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience – better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market today.

    The Plastic Logic reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. It has an easy gesture-based user interface and powerful software tools that will help business users to organize and manage their information. Users can connect to their information either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device. The reader incorporates E Ink technology for great readability and features low power consumption and long battery life. The Plastic Logic reader is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2009.

  • Got a Sony Vaio? Don’t like fires? You should probably read this, then

    Sony’s recalling a whole bunch of Vaio TZ laptops because of an unfortunate “burny burny” feature that’s slipped into some of them. The recall includes these models:

    • All model numbers beginning “VGN TZ1” (e.g. VGN-TZ11XN/B)
    • All model numbers beginning “VGN TZ2” (e.g. VGN-TZ21WN/B)
    • Certain model numbers beginning “VGN TZ3” (e.g. VGN-TZ31VN/R)

    Full UK details here. [Via Engadget]

  • Thoughts on using Apple’s Time Machine as a remote wireless hard disk

    Nope – at least, nope for iPhoto and iTunes libraries. This is a job for Captain Ethernet.

  • Google Chrome: that’s no moon

    Google’s much-anticipated operating system turns out to be real – but it’s built into a browser.

  • Ubiquity: this could be awesome

    Sorry, on deadline just now so this’ll be quick: Mozilla’s Ubiquity could be amazing. More on MetaFilter.

  • Baby-proof my iPhone

    An unusual request: does anybody know of a crystal case for the first-gen iPhone that *doesn’t* let you use the touch screen? I want to use it as a portable video player for baby bigmouth, but the touchscreen means she turns off the clips in seconds and then beats me around the face with the phone. Any ideas?

    It’d be great if there was a preference that turned off the touch interface during video playback…