Surface computing coffee table

Well I am pretty sure this is an attempted re-hash of an idea I saw about 2 years ago, but even so it is still very cool. A finger driven coffee table computer allows you to send and manipulate data between devices that are resting on it. Although the product itself may have a short and not so useful lifespan. I do think the ease-of-use visualisation that this device has is worth a lot. One of the problems with software development is when you have to communicate technical ideas and business processes with a group of non-technical customers. The ability to build models of data or business processes and then have a multiple customers at once be able to see, reach out, touch and manipulate them would be very helpful indeed.

And the trekkies have got to love it.

Arstechnica has some more in-depth info

New Bendy Screen = Magazine on a stick

I always thought that it would be long before you were taking your memory stick to the video store instead of taking away dvds. ( I bought a 1Gb SD Card the other day for $A18 so it can't be far away). Well now it looks like we might be taking that same memory stick to the newsagency to get our magazines and newspapers, and then reading them on our nice new bendy screens.

Sth Korea's LG has developed the world's first A4-sized colour electronic-paper -- a paper-thin and bendable viewing panel.

The e-paper -- which measures 14.1 inches (35.9 centimetres) across its diagonal
and is just 300 micrometres (0.3 millimetres) thin -- can display up to 4,096
colours, the world's second largest liquid crystal display maker said in a
statement. It is designed to be energy-efficient, only using power when the
image changes on the display, it said. "This represents the next generation in
display technology," Chung In-Jae, chief technology officer and executive vice
president, said in the statement. The new display product's potential
applications "are incredible and will allow our customers to create new products
that are not only convenient to use but also save natural resources," he added.
LG Philips said it developed the world's first 10.1-inch flexible
black-and-white e-paper in October 2005 and a 14.1-inch follow-up -- which
matches the most common copy size -- in May 2006.

Cash Cow of the Universe

Microsoft recently announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion.
In other words, Microsoft’s daily net income is about $55 million.
That’s $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours, or $2.291 Million an hour or $38195 a minute.
In comparison microsofts profit is 8 times the world wide income (yes income, not profit) of McDonalds. You can see the MS Office and Windows are the biggest cash cows in the universe.
Hell I am happy when I receive a royalty cheque for $20. I am not sure those stories about being under "pressure from competition", seem that true now.

Korean Keyboard Overlay.

I am trying to improve the speed of my Korean typing and have finally got around to getting some korean overlay stickers.

The pic at the top shows the keyboard placement. I have to say that the Korean keyboard seems far more intuitive than the English one. On the Korean keyboard all the vowels and double vowels are on one side in nice groupings, and all the consonants and double consonants are on the other. For some reason this seems much faster to pick up than the English “keys all over the place”(qwerty) keyboard.