Jim Holden Blog

Dasher

I was watching some videos over at Google Code and I came accross Dasher which is an attempt to do away with the good old keyboard.

Now, I understand the idea behind it and I also like the idea of moving ahead with newer ways of getting information from our brains into computers but I just couldnt really get this to work.. at any speed atleast. The idea is good but for me the suggested letters start to take up too much of the view whilst the actual letters I wanted tended to stay hidden.

For instance typing “I am not going to be af” was easy and very quick but when I want to complete the last word to say “afraid” I am presented initially with options they think are more important thus loosing the focus on the letters I want and in turn making me slow down my approach. Now, next I wanted to write “of” but on entering “o” Im presented with N, R and U as priority letters and “f” is hidden away. I think this is an interesting idea but I would prefer the letter all FLAT allowing me to quickly shift into the correct location because I know exactly what direction to go given a symetric A-Z vertical list.

Im not sure this will take off as I dont really think its any faster and the keybaord is to … easy by comparison - I dont even have to look at the keyboard anymore to type so its not a hardship to write.

What are your thoughts?

Add comment April 26th, 2007

Creative Vision W

I have one Great device, good playback (note: this device has serious issues with supporting certain DIVX/XVID codecs and wont go near AC3 sound).

Anyway, I was at the pub, I stepped on mine and smashed the screen So! Creative offer a £125 price for exchange of the device - not a bad deal since a new one will set me back another £220.

Add comment April 1st, 2007

Apple iTV

I’ve seen one I’ve touched one I’ve played with one!

So what do I think? Not bad, small and descreet with typical Apple styling. They get hot, quickly, but overall I think they are a nice design and the plug and play straight into the HDMI of your nearest HDTV is quick and simple. I had a go on the 63″ Samsung Plasma (720p) and it was nice.

Connectivity to ethernet or wireless is easy (though the keyboard and nav stuff to enter passwords is… interesting . iTunes needs to be v7.1+ to work with iTV. I’ll play around more with it when I get the chance - so far the resultion of the media clips available via the web are.. poor when you consider that Apple is specifically aiming this product at the HDTV market where we expect HIGH resolution content.

Personally I’m going to wait and see. Ill only give this thing the slightest hint of my OWN money when there are reliable hacks for XviD, DivX, maybe H.264 and MPG. I have no interest in paying Apple a bean until the content I have plays without issue. Nice try, but eventually they WILL learn. It’s funny that Apple has no issue pushing out MP3 playback on it’s devices but denies XviD and such which are the most popular media codecs out there.

Ill post a pic when I get a chance.

Add comment April 1st, 2007