Steve Purtee-Considerations

News: 90% Saturation by 2014 & VIDEO: Texas Instruments - Pico Projector Demo of DLP Chipset

2010-08-07T22:05:00.003-04:00

Mobile Captures 90% of Embedded “Pico” Projector Market by 2014 -Prediction of PICO Market

Oracle Exadata Architectural integration Delivers Superior Performance - Exadata Database Machine and Storage Servers are going to be tough competition for IBM and everyone else . . .

2010-07-27T14:34:00.001-04:00

- Breakthroughs of technology thanks to the realization of Moore's law has provided continued improvement in raw horsepower available under the covers. Oracle's acquisition of Sun's hardware platform gave them an inside track in to this fast moving domain of development. The Oracle Exadata machine is being specifically touted as being a Data Warehouse appliance. Certainly this can be true due to the robust configuration of even the entry level unit. However, I believe the advantages available of the same appliance device to OLTP environments cannot be minimized.

* CPU
Each Quarter Rack server contains 2 Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® E5540 Processors running at 2.53 GHz. There are faster clocked CPUs on the market both dual and quad core configurations. But the quad core configuration, even though under 3.0 Ghz, is still very good in parallelization activity. In comparison to other CPUs currently on the market, the E5540 lands in the top 20%.
In fact, that may be the good news that CPU upgrades are likely in the future boosting performance yet again at a machine level.
Each server carries 2 - 4 core CPUs.

* Memory
Historically increasing growth of memory structures in size due to changing price points in regards to speed and capacity.
The large memory structures provide performance improvement by providing an I/O free lookup to frequently accessed objects. The Exadata database server continues to provide ample head-room for most situations.
Each Exadata server contains 72 gigabytes of DRAM, 576 gigabytes for a full-rack configuration of 8 servers.

* I/O
Integrating flash memory (SRAM?) for read caching can eliminate some I/O entirely. Capable of using either SAS and SATA attached storage. The high-speed Infiniband interconnect between storage and database at 40 Gb/sec. The Automatic Storage Management feature (ASM) is integrated into the file system and volume management activities.

* Storage
Technological advances in speed and density of storage devices has increased dramatically allowing for increased performance and scalability. Sophisticated striping and mirroring strategies, along with parallelization and snapshoting create environments with great recoverability. The Storage Server role is expanded with the Smart Scan feature. This feature allows for data rows to be eliminated from the retrieval task at the storage level. This eliminates the retrieval of unneccsary data and likely should reduce the occurence of "throw away" rows identifiable in a 10046 level trace file.
The Storage Server continues to expand it's role through the use of Storage Indexes. This new structure basically contains max and min vaues for commonly queried columns. This new structure can basically be considered as a form of Histogram. Testing will be interesting to see how the impact of histograms changes, perhaps, in an Exadata world.
One of the largest contributors to the improved Exadata Storage Server performance is the use of solid-state disk (SSD) devices as non-volitale storage. These SSD devices are effectively placed between the memory and disk access for interim storage. Because this solution is devised as a hardware solution there are no complicated software requirements. The position of the SSD cells in front of the disk devices bypasses the disk controller. Because the frequently accessed elements are coming from the SSD, the disk activities are deferred. The overall strategies for maintaining the SSDs and disks is sophisiticated, and designed to reduce flushing and reload requirements. Tighter controlling cache management strategies can help reduce CPU load.

Each Storage Server contains an internal card with 384 gigabytes of "flash memory" SSDs. A complete rack of Storage Servers has over 5 Tb.

* Database
The optimization of database activity has traditionally been centered around the expectation of a workload of mostly writes and random reads I/O. In the case specifically of data warehousing the database patterns of activity might not be the same. In many cases query workload covers a much larger number of rows with fewer columns.
Oracle has introduced a new strategy that incorporates hybrid columnar compression. This option allows the system to be configured such that any table or partition may be marked for compression. In addition to the favorable use in DW environments, this feature is likely useful in regard to any archive areas. This is a point of integration between the database and the storage areas because of the Smart Scan's abilities to interpret the data requirements. DW tasks may only need to read the compressed data, based on columns referenced, sending the results without that column for subsequent processing. Certainly a significant workload with RT in many DW environments - nature of the query.

Tying the knot - benefits.
These sophisticated elements are integrated to together allowing a fabric the can flex to meet the processing requirements. Early benchmarks show Exadata as being dramatically faster than anything else on the market.

Nice Oracle made it simple: Small, Medium, Large. Large is commonly referred to as Full Rack. So it's measured as Quarter Rack, Half Rack and Full Rack.

One throat to choke. Oracle provides the Database Server, the Storage Server and rumors are that there is a mid-tier Server in the works. With Sun's history of hardware deployment this would seem to be simple compared to the work done with first HP and now internal Sun.

IT Spend Management - A strategy for optimizing the money spent. Not only Operating Costs. Spend effort ($$$) as investment towards cost-reduction. A simple cost reduction can be gained by reducing the execution time of automated processing. Often the reduction in time allows the process to be executed with greater frequency.

2010-07-23T21:31:00.001-04:00

In any economic environment it is of critical importance to manage the expenditures of the Organization. In this current period where continuing to grow revenue levels may be difficult for a business, cost cutting options are often explored. Whether as a result of a survival instinct or standard business practice, the basic goal of the organization is to continually reduce the costs of the business, as minimally required to produce revenue in the attempt to increase the overall net income.

Cost cutting : Reduce costs to produce revenue – goal: increase net income

Service companies differ from Product companies in that typically the cost of Labor is the most significant. For Product companies it is often the Cost of materials for resale.

Spend management is the way in which companies control and optimize the money they spend. It involves cutting operating and other costs associated with doing business. These costs typically show up as "operating costs" or SG&A (Selling, General and Administrative) costs, but can also be found in other areas and in other members of the supply chain.

An organization has two discrete “buckets” to consider; revenue and cost. Costs are incurred by a Company during the course of business – selling something. Of the costs there are fixed and variable costs.

In hard economic times, when revenue is harder to come by, companies often turn to cost cutting initiatives. Cost cutting will increase net income. An increase in net income leads to a greater earnings per share and ultimately a higher market value (higher market capitalization).

Companies typically turn to the easiest cost cutting measures. This can be expressed with layoffs and product quality reductions due to material changes. However, most analysts agree that this short term tactic creates little long term value, nor any long term sustainable savings. This is why "Spend Management" has become a key long term strategy for companies seeking to maintain long term and sustainable value.

2010 Spending Priorities (SearchCIO.com, April 2010) mschlack@techtarget.com

Spend Management is a subset of Total Cost Management

Spend management as a subset of total cost management falls into a category described as the ePurchasing market. This is predominately due to the nature of software available used to analyze spending patterns. Forrester Research estimates that this market as a total of software solutions is expected to grow at rate over 3 percent for the coming year, $3.5 billion in 2009. This advanced software licensing is affected by the modest growth in the global recession and weak credit market conditions. The Forrester Reasearch work also identifies market leaders Emptoris and Ariba, while Oracle and SAP enterprise vendors encroach on the smaller players by making efforts in this market.

Tools Segment
Ariba	Oracle
Emptoris	MethodR – Profiler
	Hotsos – HAWCS

There are several primary benefits of spend analysis software. The software is often helpful in consolidating the view of information. The aggregated data can help the organization identify areas of interest regarding increase of cost controls.

Example Benefits:

• Aggregate buys to get best volume discounts;
• Efficiently handle multiple suppliers;
• Provide information and analysis to negotiate better deals;
• Reduce the associated paperwork and processing;
• Achieve accurate insight into spending patterns.

Source-to-Settle spending analysis

Procurement - Aggregate purchasing to get Volume discounts

Receiving - Efficiently handle multiple suppliers

Payment Settlement/Invoicing - insight into spending patterns.

Directly within the IT realm, Costs are often captured as the Total Cost of Ownership for the organization. This includes all the costs related to Software and Hardware acquisition and maintenance in addition to the Support Staff salaries.

In this time of Global business distress it could not be more critical to manage the Expenditures that describe the Costs. When considering the best way to reduce costs the organization must consider more than the “line items” on the Budget.

The overall Company budget will include items such as mortgage or rent payments for facilities as well as insurance, interest, taxes, utilities service and facilities maintenance. Other items such as cost of goods sold expenses, equipment, payroll expenses, raw materials may be split among the individual business unit cost structures involved.

Within the structure of a business there are many areas subject to Cost Management. Standard considerations to reduces costs may range from a distinct reduction in force option to a shared reduced compensation across a subset of the employees.

Travel expenses are an appropriate general indicator of business activity. Increased travel means the company is out, getting more customers. Historically, travel has been under formal management. Scrutiny has been given to the review compliance process to address corporate abuse. Recent scandals and compliance requirements make this expense category a good target. The management can be articulated differently between companies. A consolidation of travel policies across business units is a good beginning. In addition to category limits and per diem approaches to expense control. Review of the paperwork processing requirements often allows for significant cost savings by process re-definition. Some form of on-line automation of manual processes is typically the avenue of greatest improvement..

Often times the automation improvements applied to the travel re-imbursement process can be expanded to address more payment area issues.

Define Case Study of Manual Expense Flow vs. Oracle/SAP T&E flow (interfaces, re-key, etc.)

Source-to-settle (spend analysis, sourcing, procurement, receiving, payment settlement and management of accounts payable and general ledger accounts )

Other options like WorkFromHome may allow for a reduction in facilities requirements. A progressive alternative of offering a work-from-home option may be able to treated as exchange compensation for a reduction in salary. Many studies have shown that employees would often accept an opportunity to work by tele-commute instead of a direct compensation increase. In addition to the advantages to the employee to work from home is the broader environmental impact of reduced gasoline usage and exhaust from vehicles that are no longer commuting to work each day. If this strategy were expanded to include a larger percentage of the workforce the impact would be even larger.

In a similar fashion, the continuance of this strategy would setup hoteling work-stations. This continues to allow for trans-location employees to be productive when on-site.

(Expand to include environmental repercussions)

As part of an Organizations Disaster Recovery plan, it is reasonably appropriate that the IT organization be prepared and capable of supporting the business’ requirements even if facilities are compromised in some fashion. When defining the Business requirements for disaster support certainly the Organization may have to be able to support anywhere from 30-70% of the work force. This requirement could last for an uncertain amount of time.

In some cases the IT Group does not have direct control over Salary budget items regarding direct-control and cost reduction options. Often this budgetary responsibility is predominately in another area of the Organization.

In order to yield the greatest impact from any cost reductions the level of contribution of that element must be considered.

THIS IS THE SAME METHOD USED FOR PROFILE TUNING

The computing costs of the IT organization are described as separate elements, hardware, software, salaries. These areas contribute an estimated 68% to overall costs. In order to properly measure costs the volume of activity or workload must also be considered. In general it is easy to understand that the more activity we can accomplish within the constraints of our computing capabilities without increasing direct costs the better. This means we must make things go faster.

The cost savings implications can be significant. When we consider that the simplest of performance reviews begins with considering the total volume of pre-scheduled, thereby predictable, tasks.

By review and identification of these tasks, the most critical task to the business may be identified. Determining the criticality can be tricky. For example, it is easy to recognize that the speed with which Orders are able to be entered is directly related to Sales. Increase the Order intake speed and revenue increases. Likewise, although maybe not as identifiable something like Invoicing may seem non-critical, however delaying the recognition of revenue is equally critical.

It is difficult to describe the situation simply . . . We cannot just consider a fixed workload volume, 10,000 transactions, requiring an hour to process. This information alone would yield a cost of over $34 per transaction using a $300,000 annual TCO. In order to use this method with such a limited task set we would need to be able to identify this tasks percentage as a statement of total computing requirements. If we were able to say the Order interface was 1% of our computing requirement this would reduce the costs to a vaguely more reasonable $.30 per transaction. Still quite high and incorrect.

My work in performance tuning from profile analysis has yielded great results. Typically my work can be described by a 10:1 ratio of “savings” vs. costs. Most engagements recognize from 45-95% improvements in Response Time yielding 100s of thousands of dollars in capacity utilization savings minimally allowing other tasks to execute with the recovered capacity.

Continuous process improvement and performance tuning requires continuous measurement and tracking

· Define

· Measure

· Analyze

· Improve

· Control

Improvement begins with defining the critical business tasks to be considered.

After identified, the current performance of the target task must be properly measured, as a base-line.

The measurement results are reviewed and analyzed for opportunities for improvement.

Establish the recommended changes to address performance findings.

Re-test and re-measure the performance after the recommendations are implemented. Implement as appropriate or return to step 2.

Conclusions

Enough is enough. Corporate leaders are properly raising the bar of expectation: the IT core mission should be expanded from mere cost-cutting to enable revenue generation within a short period of time. A significant question to sole is the HOW of encouraging such innovative behavior.

. . .

When making decisions – caution is advisable.

First, freeze. Stop and review your schedule spending activities.

Stop hiring activities – regardless.

Remove discretionary spending approval from everyone.

Firing people – although a direct cut – lay-offs have multiple secondary effects, including the reduction of morale and motivation by the remaining staff. Unless the RIF is an opportunity to rid yourself of a “bad egg”, it’s probably better to make a shared cut in compensation of all staff. Certainly a person facing a RIF might likely accept a reduced salary – versus a 100% pay cut.

Be creative – sure there are management skills required, but creativity doesn’t come with an MBA. Ideas are the true life-blood of a company.

Energy – there are a number of simple options. For example, unless your electricity is paid by the Landlord, put a common timer on the refrigerator in the Common Area. Set it to only run from 6am to 6pm. This will reduce the appliance consumption by 50%.

Parking lot lights are also an area where a small investment in motion detectors would reduce the use substantially. Add one or more motion sensors to each light pole in the parking lot, such that the lights only come on at night when there is motion. Four sensor will allow coverage for most areas. The sensors should be placed 10’-15’ above the ground. This motion detection helps alleviate most security concerns. This could reduce the related energy consumption over 80% depending on the traffic in the area.

. . . to be continued

Reference:

Forrester Research : Predictions 2009: ePurchasing Market, ./Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44129,00

BTRC Research Business Technology Research Center, www.btrconline.com

Spend Analysis: The Window into Strategic Sourcing, Pandit, Kirit; Marmanis, H. (2008), ISBN 1-932159-93-6

www.wikipedia.org/

2010 Spending Priorities, SearchCIO.com, April 2010, Mark Schlack, Editorial mschlack@techtarget.com

Chargeback - I was reading an article that asked the question: "Does IT chargeback pave the way to outsourcing?" A good question that misses some points . . .

2010-07-23T13:26:00.000-04:00

The article written by Linda Tucci introduces a "supply/demand" model for businesses as an tool. In this model description the Demand side is aligned with the Business community and the Supply side is entrusted with role of supporting the technology. As pointed out in the article, this does provide opportunity for the Supply side to be considered a commodity - IT IS THAT FACT THAT PAVES THE WAY TO OUTSOURCING !!!

Over simplifying the tasks and skills required to run an effective IT organization is a great dis-service.
The alleged Supply side is responsible for incorporating and maintaining all of the required hardware and software. In addition, this group must plan for Disaster Recovery. Certainly within the vast field of details regarding these activities some are very appropriate to outsource in some form. For example, email is one of the easiest Organization business applications that can be pushed into the cloud. Reducing the Staff requirements to support dramatically.

The segmentation of the IT workload into the Supply/Demand model does lend itself to making the support requirements for a system appear to be simple. Certainly there are main "CoreTech" tasks that are ripe to be outsourced where fractionalized labor provides low cost points. Some of these tasks are Installs, Patching, Backup and Recovery. These tasks by their inherent execution are very repeatable. Do one, and you can likely do any. The Supply/Demand model tends to identify those tasks deemed Generic and Simple as being able to be offloaded. Not a bad initial model depending on the details.

-- Disaster Preparation -- Keeping your powder dry -- How does an IT department with critical assets plan for business continuity in the face of a disaster? How quickly can the IT Geeks get 100 workstations and Servers setup? Did you lose email because you weren't in the Cloud? Figure it out.

2010-07-14T22:23:00.004-04:00

Many companies DR plans are deficient. Often there have been cases where the DR site selection was the basic flaw.
Of similar dire result, many companies email systems were unavailable - by itself great reasoning for moving this atomic business area into a cloud implementation - off site.

-- Keeping your powder dry.
When planning for disaster recovery site locations it is essential you consider diverse landscapes.
The 2005 Hurricane Katrina has many examples of companies who created their DR sites in what seemed like a reasonable location, but were proved wrong. In some cases the sites were over 250 miles away. And yet, when the disaster came to fruit these locations were also upset.

In a number of the failure cases the DR sites were located East of the primary facilities.
When the site location was selected, it appears that considerations for national weather patterns and ocean-side predictable wind patterns were not fully considered. As it happened the DR sites were also disabled due to the disaster's impact on the local infrastructures. In general, the global weather movement comes from a combination of pressure gradient forces between areas of different pressure and the Coriolis effect, caused by the rotation of the Earth about its axis. [1] The Coriolis force from the Earth's spinning is what causes low pressure systems to have a counterclockwise rotation in the North hemisphere. As the winds move inward towards the center of the pressure area it is deflected to the right. [2]

In reflection, it seems that NorthWest would be the most appropriate choice for the Southern coastal properties in the Northern hemisphere.

In fact, in the US the weather patterns can be predominately classified by region. The mountain ranges in the NorthWest area of the United States help to influence the movement of air masses. In many of the Western states the standard weather flow is from South to North. While often in the Central and Eastern portions of the country the patterns follow a North to South motion.

In most cases the weather moves from West to East. often with a Southerly drift nationally. Certainly on a regional basis there may be significant variations often based on different topographies and bodies of water. The West-to-East motion is due to the influence of the high-level jet stream on the pressure system. The jet stream activity above the pressure cell helps to direct the cells tendencies either North or South.

By giving consideration to the general characteristics of pressure systems . . . . .

Low pressure systems, like hurricane cells, have a counter-clockwise rotation to the body of air surrounding. It's this spinning action of the pressure cell that is a primary contributor to it's directional motion.

Identifying potential threats, assessing their potential impact, assigning priorities, and developing planned responses are the basic principles of sound business continuity planning.
Such reviews often categorize threats on a scale from high to low, according to both their probability of occurring and the impact each could have on the institution.

Certainly there are disasters of all sizes. An extensive list of potential threats should be developed.
A broken water pipe and a tornado differ by the extenent of the impact on the organization. Both need to have a defined plan of response. Each threat should be prioritized based both on the probability of occuring and the impact. The correct goal is one of business continuity. This includes facilities as well as the IT assets.

-- Where are you?
One of the biggest issues that has impacted those recovering from a disaster moment is communication.
Disasters by their nature may limit a persons ability to communicate with others. Often disasters causes disruptions in both land-line and cellular service. Establishing central points of contact outside the disaster area with toll free numbers to allow employees to advise of their situation. Text messaging is an alternative that has advantages over voice cellular services. Disruptions to cellular service may reduce the speed of delivery of text messages, but the delivery is typically persistent until complete. This is an important detail when service is intermittent.
Designating "recovery locations" for critical staff is appropriate. In cases where the staff must be together these facilties are essential. There will likely be some amount of staff that are unable to get to a facility.
All kinds of fun HR questions show up for sure - likewise I imagine the true Organization characteristics show true.

-- Restore civilization
Many of your employees may be dislocated from the offices for an extended period of time. All DR plans must include contigencies to support a large portion of the employee staff working off-site from the primary business location.
In a situation where the primary facitlity is unable to be accessed, the IT organization may have to support 50-100% of the staff with remote access to their business applications.
Certainly in the case of a facility shutting down, warehouse activities related to pick-pack-ship will have to be relocated. However, other elements like Order Management and Customer Service must continue uninterrupted.

Telecommute support is one element of the DR plan that can be easily tested outside of any disaster drills. Unless the Organization is able to have full scale facilities on standy-by outside the disaster area, alternatives must be devised. Since we have a RecoLoc for some portion of the staff, we must be able to create all the facilties required. Wireless is clearly a key component. The facilities don't necessarily need to be the same as the RecoLoc. The RecoLoc can be used as a point of departure.

When estimating the requirements for supporting a remote Workforce it is essential to consider the business activities distinctly.
Three primary areas come to front, Order Entry, Warehousing, Customer Service. These areas allow the Customer base to continue to order product, that may be shippable, but they can find out the status from Customer Service. Business units like HR, Legal, Sales, Purchasing may be running on a skeleton force in regards to their facilities requirement.

( To be continued ...)

2012 EOW? - MAYAN PREDICTION? Don't follow, Know better. Don't worry about 2012 just yet - there will be "signs" in the next 6 months of 2010 -

2010-07-13T10:36:00.007-04:00

Many people are vaguely aware of the prophecies described from the Mayan Calendar. As such, people seem to consider that this is a forecast of an End Of World prophecy. This couldn't be less true.

The calendar and the associated prophecies for the periods (typically 20 year cycles) do forecast turmoil. The suggestion is of great social change (for the better) and rampant shortages. Describes that 1/2 the world will be without food.

Certainly - this sounds DIRE ! BUT, the calendar continues. December 21, 2012 identifies the end of a major cycle lasting 5,400 years approximately. By Mayan tradition, we are currently in the 5th incarnation of the Earth. The belief is that each of the 4 previous periods ended in disaster that nearly extinguished the Human race. Another consideration is that this is a global cleansing - not unlike the Bible story of Noah's flood.

There will be a December 22. It's certainly not going to come to an end over 24 hours. Regardless of the scenario dreamed, any disaster would linger.
The lingering effect does suggest strategies for survival - to be noted later.

The REAL important dates are in 2010. There is another prophecy that suggest a tremendous earthquake in the year 2010. An earthquake of magnitude not previously seen - predicted to be 9.5 or over. That's basically 200 times more powerful than the recent Chile quake.
Some predictions suggest September (9/3/2010).

SO - keep your eyes on the ball.
IF there is a 2010 earthquake, THEN maybe there is reasonableness to prepare for 2012 by stocking food and water - 6-12 month supply a good start.

*-- Changing It All - Think Pico. When I first saw this I had a "vision". I think this new projector technical design could change the functionality of virtually every device.

2010-07-12T21:26:00.001-04:00

Most everyone with an iPhone realizes the biggest limitation to a more complete enjoyment is a matter of form factor. The display screen is small. Argue about the Apps, how great the functionality is, but the bottom line is your watching a screen the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Sure, you can “upgrade” to a larger device with accompanying larger display area, but isn’t the whole idea kinda centered around miniaturization – classic shirt pocket question.

The cell phone by design typically doesn't allow a very large display. The area covered is typically well under ½ sq ft.; 5 square inches ( 1 1/2" x 3" ) is common. When your using all those fantastic Apps you really want to see more. That's a motivating factor to trying the App on your Laptop or Desktop. But doesn’t that make you flinch that it can be the same on the phone.

The new advent of pico-projectors can have a significant impact on us all. I am talking revolutionary.

The name PICO is an attempt to intimate the size. Pico is equal to 1 Trillionth, 10^-12, 0.000,000,000,001. Not a idea of branding, given the abundance of other descriptive names for projectors already in use: pocket, portable, conference room, large venue, educational are just a few examples.

In the simplest description of application, a small projector is added to a device as a display device similar to that of a standard monitor. Current products available can be 640x480 resolution and higher allowing for up to a 50" display of image. Maybe the resolution is a little low, but that will predictably improve.

Providing a larger display is a huge functional improvement. Considering the complete possibilities is almost over-whelming. Suddenly your "smart phone" becomes greatly more enjoyable. Expand it to other devices and suddenly everything in the world gets "bigger". The ramifications of this technology could have significant social impacts too. This advance could produce architectural changes in everything from coffee shops to libraries. Plus, if everyone is displaying their activity – what’s to keep another person from watching?

It’s worth it. The idea of having a big-screen TV in my pocket excites me.

With the ability to use a projector for display, the form factor options become wide open. I can see that virtually every device could be improved.

A new Apple concept developed as iWatch, but not released, is an interesting example of an early attempt coordinating a pico-projector and touchscreen. (cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Apple-iWatch3-150x100.jpg ).

One element that will likely be an issue from the beginning is power. The electrical requirements for running the projector will increase any battery life requirements. Typically this is reflected by an increased size of the item - bigger container. In fact, this is the same issue being faced by the automotive manufacturers regarding the adoption of electric autos -battery requirements. Space requirements are directly related to battery power characteristics. Noteably, they're not cheap either. $20,000 is a typical cost of replacing the “battery-pack”.

The projector idea can be supported on virtually any platform. No need for that 20" plasma monitor anymore.

Taken to the extreme a combination of projector for display and a virtual projection keyboard could nearly eliminate the entire desktop footprint.

5 simple elements: Camera, Microphone, Emitter, Projector, WiFi

Below is a simple mock-up of a device that incorporates the existing technologies into a productive device:

The top portion of the device turns to allow the projector to display in different directions, 270°. The middle section allows the camera to move to capture the preferred User’s image. Followed by the emitter for the virtual keyboard projection towards “the front”.

CONSIDER AND

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK

Current Projection Keyboard Productss (virtual)

http://www.virtualdevices.net/

http://www.vkb.co.il/

http://www.canesta.com/

http://www.senseboard.com/

Samsung, Galaxy Beam - Android-based smartphone with pico-Projector.

- 3.7-inch Super-AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode), an 8-megapixel camera and can be used as a wireless access point.

- standard communications features: Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, wireless Internet tethering, a USB 2.0 port, and GPS plus, as a bonus, TV out and an FM radio. Weight = 155 grams.

Samsung SP-H03 – weak entry into projector product line; too bulky.