Day: June 12, 2006

“It’s not just weapons, medicine and classroom pointers that utilize lasers anymore. Now, they are being used to make a kind of paper.Epson has unveiled a technology to create electronic paper using lasers. The requisite acronym is SUFTLA, which stands for surface-free technology by laser annealing. The process employed a super-thin film transistor LCD manufactured at a very low temperature to transfer data from its source to plastic film. The result is something that looks just like a piece of paper superimposed on an LCD. The resultion is 428×238.It is the latest development in a years-long effort by Epson to develop what it calls “e-paper,” which can be rolled up and folded. Efforts in this regard began back in 2004, and the company hopes to have a full version of the e-paper ready for common consumption a few years from now.” via mobilemag.com

“Nokia’s open source Maemo project has released a beta version of its next-generation SDK (software developer kit). The Mistral SDK beta aims to help developers port applications to Maemo 2.0 prior to the debut of Tablet OS 2006 for the Nokia 770 later this quarter.Today’s beta tools release also offers industrious developers, testers, and users an early glimpse of Tablet OS 2006. When installed on an x86 development system with a working scratchbox installation, the rootstrap included in this release can be used to cross-compile a beta version of Tablet OS 2006, albeit one lacking the VoIP capabilities most users are likely to care about the most. Specifically, today’s release does not include telepathy and farsight, the open source real-time communications applications that form the basis of Tablet OS 2006’s VoIP capabilities. For developers, the biggest changes in Tablet OS 2006 are a new EABI (embedded application binary interface) toolchain and several API changes that will require all Maemo 1.1 applications to be ported to Maemo 2.0. Today’s release aims to provide the necessary tools, documentation, binary rootstraps, and porting instructions to help developers port their applications.Nokia announced its Tablet OS 2006 release in mid-May. In addition to VoIP capabilities — the top feature request from early users, Nokia said — Tablet OS 2006 promises better memory performance and a “refreshed look,” along with a Google Talk client, and a full-screen “finger” keyboard.” Thanks to linuxdevices.com for this one.

“Getting to grips with GPS navigation is an exquisitely simple affair; press a button, and up pops VDO Dayton Mobile. The 2.2-inch, high-resolution QVGA display is highly legible and more than sufficiently bright, but expectedly has problems displaying more than basic information due to its small size. The numerical keypad – although decent in its own right – is hardly ideal for inputting addresses, however, rendering the ability to store favourites even more handy than usual. Meanwhile, the points of interest (POI) database seems to be reasonably up-to-date, automatic recalculation is supported and users can tweak calculation by parameters such as shortest/fastest, allow/avoid toll roads and more.” Read more here:

“Among the zillions of VoIP phones we came across, there are a few interesting ones, like the AMEX i-Talk Nano… Well guess what… if there are any similarities in the name or the design with a very famous MP3 player, that’s just pure coincidence… Anyway this quite good looking VoIP phone will work with almost any VoIP Software.” via akihabaranews.com