BradFuller

Engadget has a post about a leaked Acer nettop reportedly utilizing Nvidia’s ION chipset. If so, this could be perfect for a cheap MythTV HD frontend.

acer, ION, mythtv, nettop, nvidia

The idea of the FLEX Machine and a visit to Seymour Papert in the late 60’s encouraged Alan Kay to create “A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages.”  I don’t know how the name “Dynabook” came about, but it described an electronic book that could dynamically change. As the introduction says, the name was also about “the relationship of people to computers will itself also change.”

Come see Alan speak about the ideas of the Dynabook at the “40th Anniversary of the Dynabook“, on Nov 5th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

I’ll be there!

Panelists:
- Alan Kay
- Charles Thacker
- Mary Lou Jepsen

alan kay, computer history museum, dynabook, personal computer, smalltalk, squeak

ARM announced at their developer’s conference a collaboration called the Linux Mobile Platform to enable development of portable computing devices for browsing, multimedia, wire/wireless Ethernet connectivity and better battery life. Since one of the six partners is Mozilla, focus on the Firefox web browser is a given. The integration of GStreamer for the multimedia framework is targeted for multimedia. But, since the platform is Linux and is open, anything is game.

This is great news for me because it provides the world another potentially capable hardware platform to support Squeak mobile computing. It may also provide the computing power for the software being developed at Viewpoints Research in their quest to create a new personal computing model.

If ARM and partners follow through, with the Viewpoints’ new software paradigm the journey to a truly portable Dynabook may be measurably closer.

The six partners are: Marvell, MontaVista, Mozilla, Movial, Samsung, Texas Instruments

Other Links:

• Squeak already runs on Linux, RiscOS and many other platforms: Download Squeak here
• ARM-Linux Developer Wiki
• Connected Mobile Computing at ARM
• TI and MontaVista pair up on Linux mobile computing

ARM, CMC, connected mobile device, dynabook, linux, linux mobile platform, mobile computing, personal computing, squeak, viewpoints research

Almost a year ago to the date I posted an article about Microsoft’s Photosynth research software. I wondered if it would ever be a product. Well, I don’t think it is yet, but you can view a Photosynth experiment on the MSN site. It’s a trial between the Microsoft research labs, MSNBC and NASA called Space World, to chronicle the Space Shuttle Endeavour (which is set to launch tomorrow, Aug 7, 2007.) Microsoft divides the photo experience in 4 separate categories: Vehicle Assembly Building, Attaching the Rockets, the Launch Pad, and the 747 transport.

No surprise that Photosynth still does not run on MAC nor Linux. You must use Windows XP or Vista to view these pictures. C’mon Microsoft!

Also note that Microsoft Labs provides a video about the work.

3D photos, microsoft live labs, photosynth, space shuttle endeavour, space world

If you haven’t been following the news about Major League Baseball’s deal with Microsoft and the Silverlight technnology, then point your browser over to mlb.com to try it out.

While there’s not a lot of Silverlight content on the MLB site yet, you’ll get another idea of the video quality with the above link. See my previous post. (Still no Linux player!)

BTW, if you are not familiar with the real-time-during-game interactive features of mlb.com, you must try them out. They’ve done a fantastic job for hardcore baseball fans. The current site is not Silverlight and is a great example of interactive TV done well.

Other Links:

• Andy Plesser’s May interview about Silverlight and MLB
• Kevin Barnett’s blog on the launch (who apparently works for MLB… and states Silverlight is cross-platform.)

baseball, interactive tv, major league baseball, microsoft, mlb, silverlight