Surface Computing

If you’ve not seen or heard about Microsoft Surface yet then you need to visit: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Prepare to be gob-smacked!

It’s slated to hit the high-street at the end of this year (2007 for future readers) and the rumour mill put the price somewhere in the region of 5,000-10,000 USD.  

If it works anything like the demos suggest, and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t with the functionality available in supporting devices (mobile phones, cameras, PDA’s, etc), then it will change the way we interact – no only with computers but with each other.

Intelligent VoIP Clients

A new post on Intelligent VoIP Clients bringing intelligent call routing to the everyday Joe.

2D Barcode Generators

There are a few 2D barcode generators out there.

I prefer the Kaywa generators – the Data Matrix Generator 

and the QR Code 

 have a nice clean interface and are easy to use.  They don’t however support some of the extended types (such as contact cards). Some other generators that I’ve experimented with:

• Siemens Generator 

  

• Nokia

  

• Active Print (very feature rich and supports contact and data type codes)

  

A blog focussed on VoIP and real world problems

I’ve started a blog:aside on VoIP and it’s issues in the real world on http://blog.sipx.ws - initially we’re looking at dealing with the problems of VoIP Peering. 

In ‘Plain Speak’ TM this is a way for userA@Boston.com to call userB@Rome.com.

Origami..

It’s a nice looking device, and if affordable and performant – would go down well.

I’m kinda diappointed with how it’s just another device (in addition to all the others) that you have. It would be great if more focus was put on getting things to interoperate.

I’ve a mobile phone that I carry for voice, data, contacts – why can’t the origami use the contacts on my mobile phone (without having to sync them). Can I video conf using the origami as the device – and it route via my mobile? I’ve a bluetooth headset that I use with my phone – can the origami take control of the bluetooth device when it needs to (simply without having to un-pair and re-pair the headset with the mobile/origami).

Contact management is a big deal – Outlook (on my home machine) is the master respository for my contacts (email/phone numbers/web addresses/etc) – is there going to be an intelligent solution to what goes where?

My mobile can provide GPS (depending on the operator) – so I can origami use the info from the mobile?

My mobile has t-Flash – it’s a good medium for storage (1GB storage) – but if there isn’t going to be a simple way to use it from origami (via the phone without having to plug/unplug/switch) etc – then it’s a PIA.

Likewise – I’d rather have a USB device that I can plug the origami into that will give me decent graphics (the graphics capabilities on the origami look great) – but I wanna offload intensive graphics work onto the USB device (which will drive my monitor) – wouldn’t this mean the origami device does less of the grunt work?

How hot swap batteries? Even better – how about USB batteries – that I can plug in to extend the battery life! If I have the origami – why not let that charge my mobile? That way – I can just have spare batteries for the origami – and feel I’m always covered.

All in all – it looks exciting.