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Archive for the 'products' Category

What happened to Transmeta Crusoe?

Published
by
Ken
on 9 December, 2006
in products and thoughts
. 0 Comments

I have an old Fujitsu LifeBook P2120 which I used now as a DVD player by connecting the S-video out to my TV. While was using it to play CSI today, I noticed the Transmeta Crusoe chip decal. I almost forgotten all about that.

Remember the secretive launch of Transmeta, much like the stealth Web 2.0 startups these day? Even Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, was on board.

Linus eventually left in 2003 and in 2005 announced they are getting out of chip business.

Is Transmeta out? Not quite. They were working on a secret project again, this time for Microsoft. The idea behind the project itself is very interesting.

7 years.

Donation this Month: cwRsync

Published
by
Ken
on 18 September, 2006
in 59ideas and products
. 0 Comments

In keeping with my plan to make donation from my online earnings to opensource softwares that I use,  this month donation goes to  cwRsync.

cwRsync is a packaged rsync client and server for Windows. Rsync is an open source utility that provides incremental file transfer.You may not be familiar with this application as it is not featured widely. I only found out about it last month as well.

For the last 1 month I had been using it in the background and am very happy with the result. cwRsync solves part of the backup solution that I had been looking for.

This project deserve more attention. I’m doing my little to give it a small donation and promotion. Check it out!

Would you use an abkey?

Published
by
Ken
on 3 August, 2006
in ideas and products
. 0 Comments

abkey keyboard layout (click to enlarge)

A new keyboard layout from abKey.

The idea is not new. It is common knowledge that the QWERTY keyboard layout is meant to be slow! Over the years many attempts had been launched but none had much success.

Would abKey succeed where others fail?

Supporting another freeware: BlogDesk

Published
by
Ken
on 1 August, 2006
in 59ideas and products
. 1 Comment

Payday! Another Adsense check, another donation.

It feels good to be able to give back to projects and efforts that had helped me make my income. As promised it will be a regular thing.

This time I am making a small donation to BlogDesk.

BlogDesk is an offline blogging tool. It allows you to compose your blog offline and upload it to the server. Some of its most attractive featues includes

  • can manage multiple blogs
  • resize and upload images
  • templates

Look out for a full review on it in Free Biz Waresoon.

While BlogDesk may not be as feature packed as other blogging clients, it is lite and does the job for me.

BlogDesk is developed by Johannes Oppermann, a very helpful guy. I counted in my mailbox 50 email exchanges where he tried to help me with an upload problem. Truely he deserves your support.

If you are looking for offline blogging tools, definitely give BlogDesk a try.

My previous donations

My Solar Charging Ideas

Published
by
Ken
on 24 March, 2006
in my ideas and products
. 0 Comments

I was so intrigued by the solar vest idea that I went further to look at the viability of some ideas based on this. It is relatively easy in China to get prototype done up by some factories.

Since I take my notebook around, I had the idea of solar charging for notebook.
The solar cell could go onto the notbook case ot even on the cover itself.

I did a quick mock up with my HP nc4000 and my ZeroShock cover.

Solar chargin HP nc4000 Solar charging Zero Shock notebook cover

Lover’s Cups - a new communication interface

Published
by
Ken
on 23 March, 2006
in ideas and products
. 0 Comments
Wifi Glass

Imagine, when you and your loved one are drinking at the same time, the cups celebrate this “virtual kiss” with a glow.

This is the Lover’s cup, an idea from Jackie Lee at MIT.

Not only for lovers, the idea originator gave a list of other applications. Most notably is the ability of the cup to remember other cup by the action of toasting.

Imagine toasting to a 100 person at a party. The cup will be vibrating non-stop the next day.

For the academically inclined, read the paper: Drinking Interfaces as New Communication Channels

Charge your gadget anywhere, solarly

Published
by
Ken
on 13 March, 2006
in ideas, offline and products
. 1 Comment

Saw this on TV today and I think it’s a great idea. Naturally I did a search and found it.

Solar vest

Can you figure it out?

Very simply the vest has some solar panels on the back. As you walk around, they charge your gadgets - mobile phone, ipod, digital camera, PDA.

Very handy for the road warrior. Wonder if this works well. Would be great if it charges my notebook as well.

Umbrella promotion

Published
by
Ken
on 1 March, 2006
in my ideas, offline, products and thoughts
. 0 Comments

It was raining the whole day here in Shanghai.

When it rains, umbrella sellers appears in force at the subway exit. (Ever wonder what they do when it is not raining?) Umbrellas were selling for 10RMB a piece. That’s a little more than 1USD.

Brushing aside one of the seller, an idea came to mind.

Umbrellas are pretty cheap to make (I reckon 15-30RMB in volume). So a company could simply make lots of promotional umbrella and distribute when it rain? Effective promotion that does not get thrown away like flyers.
Of course no one can guess when it will rain. So the umbrella will be sitting around waiting for rain. And where can you find people to distribute?

Why the umbrella sellers!

Assume we strike a deal like this:

  1. sell the promotional umbrella to the seller at an attractive price
  2. the seller then sells them when it rain and keep the profit as distribution cost
  3. Drawback: low distribution, company do not want to sell promotional item

or

  1. Give the umbrella to the seller
  2. Seller distribute the umbrella and claim from company
  3. Drawback: Control. Did the seller really distribute?

I will offer to do all the logistic leg work (from design, purchasing to getting people for distribution) if any company want to give this idea a shot.

If you have a promotion budget, sent me a note!