Category : gadgets

in gadgets

Sony’s new e-reader, featuring free library ebooks

New Sony eReaderSony announced their latest e-reader device today, the “Reader Daily Edition.” Although there’s a growing amount of interest and activity in the e-ink-based reader market, I’m inclined to chalk this fight up as “won before it started” by Amazon with it’s Kindle.

One interesting element of the Sony announcement is their partnership with OverDrive, whose download service is used by some 9,000 libraries and schools to provide digital media downloads for their patrons. (My two local library systems both offer MP3s and e-books through OverDrive.)

I’m a big fan of the public library tradition, and if using the library were as convenient as clicking a button on a device, I’d be a much more frequent user.

All that said, I think that readers based on e-ink are a passing fad. My money is on the next generation of devices like the rumored forthcoming Apple tablet and/or TechCrunch’s CrunchPad. These devices are more of a convergence play, offering full color and downloadable apps, while serving as digital readers, Internet/cloud clients, and gaming machines all-in-one. Based on my brief encounters with e-ink devices, they only perform the first of these with any competency.

(via Engadget: .

in gadgets

Drive Dual Monitors with your Single Output Laptop with this Full HD Dongle

USB-to-DVI-Full-HD-and-QWXGA-Dongle

usb-to-dvi dongle

I’ve been meaning to write about my recent switch to a Mac Book Pro, which I love, but I haven’t quite gotten to it yet. About the only thing I miss from my Dell XPS m1330 is that laptop’s ability to drive two external monitors, one via the  HDMI interface and one via the VGA output.

I came across this dongle today by Logitec (no, not Logitech) and it looks promising, offering the ability to drive that external screen at QWXGA resolution (2,048 x 1,152).

The revolutionary USB to DVI Full HD and QWXGA Dongle offers virtually perfect video quality and turns your USB port into a true DVI-I port, making it the first external video card that truly performs like a standard internal video card. With the included adapter you can add a VGA monitor.

[Note: MAC OS X: Maximum Resolution is WUXGA (1920x1200)]

Anyone ever try a product like this?

via Geek Stuff 4 U – For Geeks By Geeks USB to DVI Full HD and QWXGA Dongle.

in gadgets, hacking

First attempt at enabling tethering on my Pre

My home Internet service was down last night, and I don’t yet have a broadband card for my recent Macbook Pro acquisition. (Any thoughts on the mifi?) To pass the time away till I was “back on the grid,” I spent the evening trying to get tethering working on my Pre.

I’ll cut to the chase… Not only was I unsuccessful, but in the end I somehow killed the Internet on the phone as well. Actually the Internet connection was still there, but the phone wasn’t able to resolve any DNS names.

In any case, here are some notes from my little experiment:

  • Trying to hack a phone when the phone is your only Web connection *is* pretty hard. Firefox and tabs and multiple windows and cut-and-paste to Terminal is really necessary for this kind of stuff. Not recommended. Dig your well before you’re thirsty!
  • There are some great resources out there for hacking the Pre, and to Palm’s (and maybe Sprint’s) credit, they have not been wasting good resources–and good will–fighting the community. (I’m giving Palm the benefit of the doubt on the whole PreDevCamp debacle.) The first stop for any aspiring Pre hacker should be the webOS internals wiki. There are lots of good resources posted there.
  • “Rooting” your Pre is the first step for many hacks and is pretty easy to do. After rooting you get unfettered access to the Pre’s Linux operating system. Maybe I’m old-school, but it still amazing me that I can get a real Linux bash prompt from a device this small and sleek, and with such a good looking UI.
  • I found some nice instructions on tethering here, but they didn’t work for me. After restarting the connection manager you are supposed to check to see that IP forwarding is enabled. When I checked it wasn’t. Not sure if this is 1.1 thing. Or not. It turns out in this case that the first Google result isn’t event the best way to go about tethering anymore…
  • In search of answers, I found that a very cool homebrew tethering app has been developed, and I tried that out. My Tether can be found over on the preCentral forums (another great resource for Pre hackers) and is very slick. Installation is straightforward on a rooted device, but I can’t yet recommend it since it was at this point that I lost my connectivity. I’m not yet ready to blame my problems on My Tether, but proceed with caution.

My Tether for Pre

It’s about this time, having lost my 2″x3″ portal to the Web, that I gave up. Earlier this morning, I went back into my rooted Pre, restarted dnsmasq, and rebooted the device. I could swear I did all that last night, but that’s all it took to get my on-device Internet working again.

I’m sure I’ll be trying this again sometime soon.

in gadgets

Palm WebOS goes to 1.1… Let the games begin!

palm-pre-webosOne of the things I’m most excited about with the Pre is Palm’s demonstrated commitment to frequent incremental OS updates distributed OTA. I upgraded my Pre to 1.1.0, the fourth update in less than two months, and I’m happy to report that it fixes a couple of issues that have been bugging me recently:

  • Exchange updates now happen instantly like they’re supposed to; for some reason this stopped working on my phone (if it ever did)
  • When you press the Photo library button from within the Camera, the photo you just took is brought up automatically (though it doesn’t seem much faster as claimed by the release notes)
  • They added a “Forward” gesture that works in the browser

I’m also seeing greater snappiness moving from page to page and opening new apps, but that could be my imagination or wishful thinking.

Also very interesting is the fact that this update restores iTunes sync, which Apple disabled via the 8.2.1 iTunes update. Let the game of cat-and-mouse begin!!!

Check the release notes for additional details: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/na/pre/p100eww/sprint/solutions/article/50607_en.html#11.