Miscellaneous

By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 08 March 2005, 07:45

HARRY POTTER fans are mightily miffed that the software giant Microsoft has spirited away an idea of their favourite author JK Rowling.

For the numberless hordes of you who have not read a Harry Potter book [what’s a book? Ed.] , there was a grandfather clock in the house of one of the main characters. Instead of numbers the hands pointed to locations, such as home, work and school, where a family member was.

However at last week’s so called Techfest, Microsoft’s internal research fair, the mighty Vole seemed to be exhibiting a clock that did the same thing.

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Harry Potter fans curse the VoleRead More »

John Halamka, M.D of Harvard, who has an implanted VeriChip, talks to Forbes:

Why I love it: I’m a mountain and ice climber, often hanging from rock and ice thousands of feet off the ground. My identity and medical information will be retrievable by any physician via my RFID chip, regardless of my ability to respond.

What I’d change about it:
I’d like the ability to add and revise data on it.

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Harvard Medical CIO’s favorite (and mostly useless) gadgetRead More »

12:35 PM – Friday, December 17 2004 ~Mobile PC

For our January issue, Mobile PC featured seven designers and their visions of the future of computing. No drab, text-based prognostication, our feature, “The Wonders That Will Be,” covers the products with huge, luscious images and an in-depth discussion of features, costs, and challenges of bringing the products to market. Here is a scaled-down discussion of one of the products: MicroMedia Paper. For the rest of the feature, pick up a newsstand copy of Mobile PC.

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The Wonders That Will BeRead More »

by Joseph M. Giordano

Though they cannot be called “toys” – because they saves lives – some of the high-tech gadgets use by the Baltimore County Fire Department are pretty fun to handle. At Eastview Station 15, what could be called the coolest piece of modern firefighting gadgetry is actually turned on by heat. To demonstrate, Lt. Denny Dembeck held out a thermal imager and pointed it at the ceiling. “It tells you where the heat is coming from,” Dembeck said, motioning the black gadget at a heating duct. “It can pick up heat through the walls, too.”

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Firehouses go high-techRead More »

By Michel Marriott

It is no longer surprising, he said, to see a child of grade school age carrying a $300 iPod, an expensive cellphone or a portable DVD player. “Children at a much younger age are asking for things they shouldn’t be asking for, products not designed for them,” Mr. Riley said. “But they are very good at using them, and by God use them better than I can.” It is a phenomenon often described by toymakers as age compression. Simply put, said Reyne Rice, the toy trend specialist for the Toy Industry Association, a trade group, “kids are just more sophisticated and have more sophisticated tastes.”

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Gadgets for KidsRead More »

By Andrea Coombes
Last Updated: 2/21/2005 7:55:00 PM

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — You don’t have to be old to find it a struggle to read the tiny type on your iPod, PDA or cell phone, but aging doesn’t help matters.

Yet despite the much-ballyhooed graying of America, tech gadgets seem to be going in a direction that’s bound to make the situation worse, with tiny keyboards and dimly lit screens.

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Are gadget makers shortsighted to ignore older buyers?Read More »

Mon Feb 28, 9:39 AM ET
By James Niccolai, IDG News Service MacCentral

Jef Raskin, the lead designer of the first Macintosh computer and a pioneer in the development of user interfaces, died Saturday at age 61. He had been diagnosed recently with pancreatic cancer, his family said in a statement.

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Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh, dies at 61Read More »

By Edward C. Baig

The 15th annual Demo conference in Scottsdale, AZ, featured lots of great inventions such as the Intellifit: a booth that scans your body and measures you for clothing. Demo has served as the launching pad for the Palm Pilot, Java and TiVo. This time, around 73 companies, mostly upstarts, were selected as demonstrators. Among the most interesting, MDA of Canada unveiled two breakthroughs: a three-dimensional “Ice Camera” used to determine when to de-ice a plane, and a 3D Instant Scene Modeler that can create three-dimensional images and serve such diverse purposes as mining, architecture, crime solving — and as background for 3D video games.

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New Gadgets and Inventions at the Demo ShowcaseRead More »