Elephantsquared. » George P

Stantum Slate PC Multi-Touch

George P — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:26:50 +0000

Stantum recently showcased its new Slatum PC, with the most interesting part being the multi (or rather unlimited) touch screen.

The screen can accept any number of inputs using fingers, styluses, brushes (!), nails and probably lots of other stuff. It can also understand the amount of pressure applied to a point. Screen is also very responsive, with times less than 2ms.

All of these are applicable, according to the company, to sizes between 2.5″ and 30″, with 15.4″ proven.

Here’s a video with the demonstration.

[ via netbooked ]

A step ahead for open source

George P — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:55:52 +0000

Yesterday, while I was reading the news I came across two very interesting ones. Two OS kernels have switched and decided to show the world their interiors, and thus make knowledge available to every one (aka their released license has switched to an open source one ).

The first one was HTC’s kernel of the Hero device, which can be downloaded from HTC’s Developer Center. But the second one I find more interesting, it is Symbian’s kernel that was released, nine months ahaid of scedule, under the Eclipse Public License (EPL).

It looks like that no one wants to stay away from time’s trend, which hopefully will be de facto in the near feature, open source! Who’s coming next?

A Snow Leopard can eat your files!

George P — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:49:04 +0000

It is not any Snow Leopard that can do it. :P

Apple ‘s latest version of Mac OS X brought amongst many new and amazing features a new and extremely harmful bug. The bug is complete loss of all data in user’s home directory. For the bug to occur a user must log in as guest and then log out and log in as normal user.

Many users have been reporting the bug since September, but only yesterday Apple acknowledged it.

We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix.

The only solution currently available is if you have Time Machine enabled, via witch you can restore your files, otherwise, good bye my precious data.

Unfortunately this appears to be only one of the many annoying bugs that have been introduced to Snow Leopard. Let ‘s hope that most of the issues will be fixed in the next updates.

Open Android Alliance

George P — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:26:45 +0000

A few days after Google’s actions against the CyanogenMod project a group of Android developers formed the Open Android Alliance. Their goal is to replace all closed source and proprietary applications found in the bas Android install with open source applications that can be freely distributed. As they state:

We don’t have anything against the existing closed applications, however, we believe in open platforms and want all users to be able to modify their systems as they see fit.

Above all, remember, we are NOT “Anti-Google”. We are “Pro-Android”. Please act accordingly when posting on this project.

Code license is currently under GPL v3 due to familiarity and because GPL ensures that code based on project’s code will remain open source for ever. Although this is not a final decition yet.

If developers would like a different license, I’m open to suggestions.

Tickets for replacing Android Market, IM Client, Mail client and other application are already open.

Google wants to ban customised Android ROMs

George P — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:13:57 +0000

The CyanogenMod project, for offering customised Android firmware, has gone into trouble recently, since Google is taking action against the project.

The main reason is that the project is redistributing Google’s proprietary applications, like Google Talk and Android Market. The develop is currently trying to reach an agreement with Google. There is also a petition app available online for download, for Android users, to try and help save CyanogenMod.

[ via ]

Android anonymous surfing

George P — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:32:22 +0000

After a summer project of the Digital Technology Group, Android users can now surf the net anonymously using the The Onion Router (or Tor). Software required for anonymous browsing consists of two andoid applications, TorProxy and Shadow. Project’s web site as well as more information and FAQs can be found here.

IE6 support till 2014!

George P — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:42:16 +0000

Yes! It is true! Microsoft has announced that support for Internet Explorer 6 will get extended until 2014. Originally it was planed until 2010.

IE6 was launched in 2001 and it is estimated that 15-20% of people still use it to browse the web.

I already see angry web developers surrounding Microsoft’s HQ.

Full article can be found here.

Zune HD available for pre-order

George P — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:00:22 +0000

Microsoft has announced the release date of Zune HD. It will be the 15th of September but Zune HD is avaible to pre-order, from 4 retailers, Amazon (until now the link is pointing somewhere in amazon that doesn’t exist), Best Buy, Walmart and Microsoft Store .

As its name states, it will support High Definition Video playback. It will also support HD Radio, HD video output to HD TVs, wifi access to the internet and has a full featured web browser. Navigation is achieved through it’s multi-touch 3.3 inch OLED display.

It will be available in two flavors, 16GB and 32 GB, with prices at $219.99 and $289.99 respectively.