T-Blog

VIDEO - assignment 3

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 May 2010 12:59:00 +0000

Here is a 3 minute video on how Technology helps our lives as a university student.

ENjoy!

Here is the REPORT Link.

3D-tise our world

noreply@blogger.com (wingy) — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:39:00 +0000

Theres recently been an influx on news on 3D movies, games and TVs. This trend is set to continue with upcoming sporting events that would be broad cast in 3D such as the State of Origin and the soccer world cup. The need for broadcasting them in 3D could be questioned and now we know it is outright dangerous.
SOURCE APC
SOURCE news.com

Samsung recommends pregnant women and anyone “with a history of epilepsy or stroke” should “consult with a medical specialist” before donning the 3D specs. Woa. And make sure you see a medical specialist if you experience lightheadedness, dizziness, nausea, confusion, disorientation, loss of awareness, convulsions, cramps and involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching. Thats not all-- they strongly advise you placing the television near stairs or trip hazards because “viewing in 3D mode may cause disorientation for some viewers".

Sounds deadly. Well your brush with death may look even more realistic with the next Underbelly set to be produced in 3d.

A shelf for you iphone... or is it?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:30:00 +0000

This minimalist shelf serves multiple practical applications. You can use it as a ... shelf for your ipod/iphone. Or you could listen to it... Yes its a speaker shelf! In disguise.

Source: Gizmodo -Finite Elemente Hohrizontal 51

With a name like that, and a price of $600USD to boot, I'm sure this would look great in my room. Furthermore, the shelf is also able to hold up to 25kg in weighted objects. Perfect to put those university textbooks, stationery, and books whatnot.

Also worthy of playing pranks on friends who may accidentally lean on it admiring its spartan appearance when it suddenly plays loud grunge metal at you. Yes very worth it indeed.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:48:00 +0000

ISYS100 Blog Report

Sony Dash - Shall we make a run for it?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:11:00 +0000

Interesting device this little 7" alarm clock. At first glance it appears to be some type of tablet, but in actual fact Sony claims it can only be for stationary use (regardless of the Dash name). Reading this article however will soothe your Justin Bieber Fever. Haha...

According to Bieber, provided by engadget in the picture above, this is the correct pose to be assumed when using the Dash. Very nice.

Specs of this device consist of:

500mhz processor and 256mb of ram - pretty fast!
7" capacitive touchscreen with 800x420 resolution which is good for movies - the operating system however lags too much which slows it down. Disappointing.
Has Sony's Bravia Internet Video platform to support streaming media services like Netflix, Pandora, and Slacker.
With WIFI and apps available this also means, Twitter, Facebook, Internet radio and light websurfing.
$200USD price point which is fairly cheap, 50$ cheaper than HP's DreamScreen
another use could be watching movies, or streaming Youtube.
Last but not least, screensaving pictures in background or the main function... Alarm Clock.

Heres a Video Review:

-courtesy of Engadget

Wrap Up
It has been reviewed as slightly sluggish due to the Chomby OS, maybe the Dash 2 will be faster with better processor and more ram. It does however beat other competitors out there like HP's Dreamscreen which although is bigger, is much much slower. Sometimes you may just need the worlds most complicated alarm clock. Another alternative would be using a stand for the new Ipad or even those speaker pod stands for iphones. But if Justin Bieber is using it, then I would not see why little teenage girls should not.

That is all. :)

Source: Engdaget

iRetrofone Base Dock for iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (jobbe) — Sat, 01 May 2010 08:20:00 +0000

If you find normal iPhone docks are too fancy and don't know how to work it, this retro iPhone dock is perfect for you. editor: Take that Telstra T-Hub

SOURCE Gizmodo
SOURCE The Australian

It only has one simple function, which is turning your iPhone into a desktop telephone! As long as the transmission line is connected to the iPhone, you will be able to use it just like traditonal telephone.

This retro iPhone dock combined with traditional desktop phones allows you to re-experience the thrill of the handset. In addition, this dock also come in colours, traditional black which is shown in the image above and a pink colour for girls. However, the price seems to be a bit insane, $195 USD... i would just go for a normal iPhone dock.

OMG: HP Buys Palm

noreply@blogger.com (wingy) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:46:00 +0000

I'm lost for words. I swear I began writing my previous article, yesterday, about the direction mobile devices are heading, mentioning my favourite smartphone maker Palm. Just today its been announced that Palm is to be merged with HP.
Palm has been recently struggling in a highly competitive smartphone market, going against Apple, RIM (Blackberry) and Google (Android). Hopefully this merger will give palm the scale to compete with these much larger competitors. I also hope the brilliant webOS, some smart features which I previously discussed, will make it on devices sold in Australia.

The first thing i contemplated was whether I should start saving for a new possible tablet and smartphone. I guess my allegiance will be less strong with the new webOS devices if they don't carry the Palm brand but I'll still buy it if its a good enough product. Haha-- and the second thing was trying to imagine what my Company A loves company B picture, synonymous with Engadget, would look like.
Video of webOS in action after the break..

SOURCE Engadget
SOURCE Precentral

Discussion: Where are we heading?

noreply@blogger.com (wingy) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:28:00 +0000

Can you believe that its been nearly 20 years since the Palm pilot graced our world? When it was first released it dominated the pda market, with its monochrome lcd touch screen and its easy to use PIM (personal information manager) application. Back then, using a pda was the ultimate sign of geekness-- it was actually the first thing i brought with my newspaper delivering money. But over time the PDA has been rendered irrelevant with the advent of the smartphone (pda+phone combined) and now tablets. So what will your future mobile device look like?

SOURCE WMExperts

SOURCEPrecentral

Intuitive Interface
New smartphones and tablets are categorised by easy to use intuitive interfaces, such as the touch screen interface on the iPhone One of the latest must have devices is the iPad. I don't think it is as magical as Steve Jobs wants us to believe but it does dramatically improve the way we compute on the move. Through swiping, pinching and shaking actions, the apps on the iPad reflect the actions we do in the physical world. For example, in the iBooks app, books are placed on rows, resembling a book shelf and to change pages you swipe from the corner like you would if turn a page from a physical book.

Aggregated everything, Connected Everything
Its already happening with Palm's webOS. For example all your emails sms and messenger messages are threaded into a single screen, saving you from having to access each one separately. The devices will also behave smarter making use of external data and integrating with the apps and device better. Examples of this include locational search with Google or Bing, where the integration with the phone GPS means searches for restaurants will yield results around the local area. This smartness can also be seen in Fandango, a movie app for webOS. It further integrates with the phone by scheduling the movie in your Calendar app after you buy the cinema tickets.

Conclusion

Your device would probably much smarter and intuitive in the future. They have to be as we spend more time on these devices we expect them to match or even exceed the speed and capabilities of PCs. So therefore look out for more sensors touch screen and motion detectors that will further make use of natural human actions. And make your mobile data plans bigger as more data will go back and forth between your device and the net that will keep your device smarter and more current.
What do you think future mobile devices would look like? Comment below...

iPhone supports WIFI sync! Someone finally did it!

noreply@blogger.com (jobbe) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:19:00 +0000

Programmer Greg Hughes created a program using WIFI sync iPhone, the program is quiet straight foward and easy to use.

Source Engadget

Greg Hughes also ensures that the program will able to sync all information on iPhone or iPod Touch completly. Greg Hughes said he will soon be submitting the program to App Store for the public to download, which means we will be able to find something similar on Cydia soon as well. Hopefully Apple will allow the program to pass! Then we won't need to carry to annoying usb cable around with us!

Asus Eee Pad: coming soon

noreply@blogger.com (jobbe) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:33:00 +0000

According to Taiwan media reports, the chairman of AsusTek, Jerry Shen, is going to announce the launch of the Eee Pad Tablet PC during the Computex 2010, which will be held from 1st June to 5th June.

Source CNET

The source disclosed that, Eee Pad will launch by the end of July this year, in order to compete with Apple iPad, Asus Eee Pad enhanced industrial design, and collaboration with Google, using the Android operating system. AsusTek will also add some features that the iPad is lack of, such as:

Support for USB interface
Built-in camera
Support for Adobe Flash

The price of the Eee Pad will come just under the Apple iPad, approximately sold from $479.00 USD to $510 USD, which is going to be a tough decision for the buyers to choose from.

IPAD: Will we all need one?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 07:17:00 +0000

That above is definitely not the new Ipad from Apple. The new Ipad actually looks like a huge ipod touch with slightly more capabilities. In my own opinion I believe this device sits between a netbook and a laptop.

Source Engadget

In short, the main features are:

Ebook reader
Newspaper/Magazines
Web browser
Instant Messaging
Email
Calendar
Word Processing (iWork suite)
Movie/video player
Music player + Itunes
Games and apps which give it almost unlimited capabilities

A major improvement in this device worthy of mention would be multi-tasking and battery life. It manages to download heavy HD video, 3D gaming and downloading emails in the background swiftly. It also lasts for a quoted "10 hours and 43 minutes" which is a ridiculously good achievement compared to normal laptops which only last half as long.

Below we have a review video provided from Engadget detailing the capabilities of the Ipad.

The Verdict:
The bigger 10" screen is very useful for videos and navigation, however there are limits by the OS in becoming a serious laptop replacement. There is no Flash which creates a disjointed view in the browser even though it is blazing fast on most websites. It would appear to give a seamless basic user experience with good interactivity and internet surfing capabilities which will challenge more progress in the slate platform.

Android OS running on iPhone!!

noreply@blogger.com (jobbe) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:43:00 +0000

Two days ago, a Linux's fan produced a small revolution by putting Android OS into the iPhone 2G, he created a functional Driver which allow the iPhone to run normally with the Android OS, by using the home button as the menu button, switch on button as a return button. Many functions and features were able to retain, such as, high performance, WIFI Internet, listening to music, phone calls and more...

A special program called OpeniBoot was made, user will able to choose from iPhone OS or Android OS for booting up, so which turns iPhone into a dual operating system mobile phone, according to the actual situation of use.

With Android OS running on iPhone we can now do more things on the iPhone that were not supported by iPhone OS, such as, Adobe flash player (Stream videos), multi-tasking (have access to more than one program), PC compatibility (sync with PC without iTunes), Android market and more.

Welcome to our TB109: Redesigned

noreply@blogger.com (wingy) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:08:00 +0000

Hello Guys!! Just redesigned the TBlog. We hope you enjoy the new design, and make use of all the cool new gadgets we've added. If you love this blog so much-- of course you do-- then checkout after the break to see how we designed the blog and what the new features are.

Logo
We wanted a pretty unique and smart sounding name. We brainstormed names such as T_PO.T- Tech post and MRJ- The letters of our first names. In the end we settled for TB109. Get it? TechBlog. In addition the numbers sum up to the mark we want to achieve for our assignment-- okay I'm not that smart, I only come up with that reason just then.
For the design of the logo I wanted to integrate the letter "T" part of the name subtly. I was always concerned people would be scared off or disinterested by just hearing the word "Tech". So hopefully by creating an interesting logo a wider range of people will have a look.

Template
We had a specific design we were hoping to achieve as soon as formed the blog. We sketched a couple of designs with a pretty fancy top navigation bar but realised we didn't have the technical skills to do it. I decided in order to achieve a great design we had to use a template. The template we adopted is called maimpok. I would like to give a shout out to Padd Solutions the creators of the template and Blogging Templates the guy who converted it to a blogger theme. We tweaked the original template by changing the colours to a green theme in addition to editing the featured articles to show our blogs ones.

Gadgets
On the right at the top is the "about me" gadget which shows me and my buddy contributors. The next one if the followers gadget. Please follow us!! it looks really cool as the list grows. Below this is our blog's twitter feed so you can see the progress of our blog. The last two gadgets are the "Archive" gadget for finding older posts and the labels gadget to filter out stories you want to read about.

Well on behalf of all our contributors thanks again for visiting us. Hope you follow us, add comments and enjoy our blog

Microsoft Kin: coming soon

noreply@blogger.com (wingy) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:39:00 +0000

I just checked out the Microsoft Kin. It is the sucessor to the HipTop (SideKick in USA) which was highly popular amongst the x generation that took the motto always connected to new levels. Its a touch screen phone which has a slide out keyboard that's been built with social networking features in mind. So it has features such as the posting of status messages to sites like Facebook, Twitter and Live Messenger simultaneously.
Sounds interesting? read more and checkout the fancy UI (user interface) video after the break

Source Engadget
Source Kin.com

Although the Kin has been baged out my a couple of technology blogs I've read, i do believe it'll be pretty successful if it keeps the same formula as the old HipTop; fixed $30 monthly plans, easy to use, great keyboard.

Its a phone that is perfect for social networking junkies; the kind of person that feels the need to know as soon as their friend's status change.With an proper 8 mega-pixel camera that can take HD quality video (better then DVD quality) it can be used as a great video journaling tool... but not for this use.

A few negatives is a few reports believe notifications will have up to 15 minute delays to keep data usage low. Though this could actually be a good things if the cost savings are past on for users. Other things missing is a calendar app and IM. Pretty disappointing considering everyone uses these features now days.

Its an interesting device, the degree of Microsoft's Kin success will be down to price. If they can get that right, your friends, especially the younger generation, will enrich you with ~~more crap~~ more photos and videos for a more visually appealing journaling of their lives.

Google Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (wingy) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 03:02:00 +0000

Being uni students require allot of time management. Hey... we’ve got to make sure we study, finish assignments, turn up at work, ~~suffer similar “transgressions” as Tiger Woods.~~ This is why we use organisers to help remember each task and remind us when it’s due. The free ones we get at the start of the year won’t cut it anymore – we can’t waste our precious energy carrying it all day in our fashionable messenger bags. Besides, you can’t be automatically alerted to upcoming events, share your calendar with other people or change events dates without crossing it out and creating a mess. That’s why many of us use digital calendars on our smart-phones (mobile phones for the less tech savvy). One of the least used organising tools is Google calendar. If you would like to know how to create time out of mid air, know how to access the best computers in the uni :P -- hit the read more link to read my post...

SOURCE Google Calendar

Starting up

To use Google Calendar it’s as simple as opening your browser, direct it to Google Calendar, login with your Google account or create one is you don’t have one, and you’re in. Adding events is as simple as clicking on the time and day the event is due. You can check it out in the video below.

Calendar Sharing

Google Calendar gives you the option to share your calendar to the public or to a few people. This allows you to co-ordinate times for events with your friends, family or co-workers. A basic example is sharing your uni timetables so you can tell when your friends have lectures or free time. But Google Calendar has much more features up its sleeves. For my group assignment—this blog, I created a new calendar that was editable by my team members. Not only could we assign tasks such as blog postings around each person’s exam time we could set reminders a few days before each task was due so we don’t have to personally pester each other.

Add Calendars

You can add heaps of useful calendars, from upcoming Macquarie uni events (Macquarie Important Events Calendar) to public holidays-- they save you from having to type it up manually.

He’s something useful for Macquarie students that can use level 100 computers-- the only decent ones in Macquarie Uni. To practice what I preach, I’ve created a calendar for Level 100 computing labs (highly painful work). It’s not a perfect one but it’ll show when the labs are free. Please feel free to correct errors or help add in cancelled classes. View ISYS100 Lab Times calendar

By the way don’t worry about calendars events flooding the screen because you can hide calendars by just clicking on the calendar name on the left hand bar.

Synchronise

Don’t think your calendar viewing pleasure is restricted to a computer browser. Because your Google Calendar is stored in the “cloud” (on the internet) you can edit and view them on heaps of devices.

For the iPhone addicts out there, point your browser to http://calendar.google.com and an iPhone version of Google calendar will pop up. If you want to add it as an icon on your home screen, hit the + button in Safari, and choose "Add to Home Screen".

An even cooler way is to use your smart-phone to aggregate all your calendars. You can set it up so you can see calendars from Google calendar, Outlook, iCal all in one screen. It allows you to overlay the different calendars so you don’t have to open them in different applications and you can visually see clashes in your schedule. If you want to give it a go here’s the link to Google sync, it supports the iPhone, Nokia smart-phones and Blackberry.

For more info checkout Google's getting started guide

Apple iPhone OS 4.0 Announcement

noreply@blogger.com (jobbe) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:08:00 +0000

On 8 April, Apple unveiled plans for the most exciting iPhone software update coming this June or July. OS 4.0 will include more than 100 new user features, the major new features includes...

Multitasking

Users will have access to seven multitasking services, which will allow the program to be run in the background without hurting performance or battery life.

App folders

Apps can now be sorted into folders and putting app folder in the dock, instead of having apps over 11 pages.

Enhanced Mail

Users can have a merged inbox view and fast inbox switch

Benefits for students

Students will now able to do research on safari while keeping docuement, excel and pdf running in the background with multitasking, make themselves more organise by sorting school works and entertainments into different folders and switch between their personal and school mailbox quickly.

Name of this blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 03:35:00 +0000

Hi guys hope you have been having a great break. Now we should start designing our blog for ISYS100. Here is a start with the name t-b109 - it stands for tech blog. Hopefully it describes our purpose and point of topic.

We shall discuss the finer aesthetic details of this blog later!