The next DS Revision could be smaller than the GameBoy Micro

Check out the pics and the video - groundbreaking design! Yeah, I know - it's a fake. But it's cool!

read more | digg story

Here's a video of my Pandora GUI

Hi all - here's my "Tango" GUI "in action" so-to-speak.  It's just a slideshow on my N800 and my PSP.  But it kind of gives a feel (i hope!) to what it would look like on a handheld UMPC and a gaming device. Enjoy!

My Suggested GUI for the Pandora Gaming UMPC

With thanks to everyone who has helped me with advice on the GUI, Joppa, Sinbad, Chip, Rokdcasbah, and everyone else - as well as to the Tango library for their icons (which are free to anyone). Here is my concept of a GUI for the Pandora. Brief explanation to follow - but in-depth discussion was started here.

The home screen - user controlled widgets
Click for big.

The Slider Mode of the Emu tab
Click For big.

The Grid Mode of the Emu tab
Click for big.

The "Alt+Tab" Shot / Active App Picker
Click for big.

TABS, (from left to right):
Home (described below), Applications (OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, TuxPaint, PDF Viewer, ComicBook Reader, ImageViewer, Calculator, Calendar, etc.), Web (Firefox, Email Client, Chat, SIPPhone, Feed Reader, Contacts list), Media (Mplayer, VLC, Internet Radio, Podcasts, Voice Recorder), Emus, Pandora (Native Games - Native apps that don't fit anywhere else), Prefrences (Wallpaper, network settings, power save, control panel type stuff).

CONTROLS:
Shoulder buttons recycle among the tabs, which are on the bottom for easy tapping. All icons are tappable (touchscreen) or selectable through the D-pad and main face button (X, A, rhombus, whatever it is). Right and left on the D-pad scroll through icons on the Slider view, or among the icons in Gird mode. The extreme right and left center of the screen, when tapped, will move to the next screen in Grid, and the next icon in Slider. Analog stick scrolls through icons as well. Main button selects. Secondary button gives info about the selected icon. A keyboard shortcut can switch among selecting the icons in the main window - the fixed icons across the top (Options, WiFi, Volume, Battery, Help) - and the tabs. The Options menu is where users select from Slider, Grid, or List.

HOME TAB:
(Similar to the Home of the Nokia Maemo-powered N-Series Internet tablets, Apples Dashboard, iGoogle.com, etc.)
Widgets are user controlled. Using the touchscreen, they can resize and move the widgets on the screen. Widgets are selected and deselected using the options menu. Widgets could include News Feeds, Weather, Internet Radio, Media player, Search box, mini-games, (tictactoe, Sudoku, etc.), maps, contacts, chat, email, etc..
The boxes become solid when selected. (The Search box is selected in the picture.) This draws focus to the selected item. The Pandora Logo seen the bottom right would, if you click on it, take you to the Pandora homepage (assuming you are online) - http://www.openpandora.org/
The Search box has a drop down menu, just like the Firefox search box, hence the little down arrow. The current icon - the Pandora icon - searches your Pandora - the onboard storage, as well as any flash cards or USB drives that are attached, (assuming theyve been indexed). It would just be a name search - not a content search. So think Windows Search box from 98 - not Mac OS X Safari, or Google Desktop. You could select Google, Yahoo, Live, ThePirateBay, whatever search engines you install. But again, those only work while online - so it defaults to Pandora search, (maybe you can pick the default search).
The Weather automatically updates whenever you are online. I forgot to add the Currently info, but you get the idea. You type in the zip code (for US - postal code, city & country, etc - for other countries), and it tells you the weather.
The News Reader can be set to whatever RSS/Atom/Podcast feeds you want - again, automatically updates when online.

SLIDER MODE:
(Similar to the PSP firmware menu, and Apples CoverFlow)
On Slider, three icons are seen at a time, the selected icon is in the center. It is in full color, completely solid (100% opacity), drop shadowed, glowing, and larger than the other icons. Two other icons are visible on either side. They are 75% the size of the selected icon - the fade to greyscale as they approach the sides of the screen, and they are 75% opacity - no shadow or glow. *Note - the screenshot is representative of the last game played, or of a favorite game for that emulator. You're scrolling through emulators (systems) not individual roms (games). A couple dozen at most - not thousands. Perhaps screenshots should be replaced by shots of the systems, as pictured in the Grid mode shot.

GRID MODE:
(Similar to the traditional desktop of most user oriented operating systems)
A grid of icons that are spaced into two rows of 4 icons each, the name of the file underneath. Collected into pages that can be scrolled through by tapping the extreme sides of the center of the screen.

BTW - these are just mock-ups. so the icons used, like for the different systems, are not finished products. This is all just my suggestions (altered, of course, by people's feedback) in a visual form. I know the resolution / coloring sucks on some of the stuff. It's just a mock-up. If I were actually making the GUI things would be much better looking.

I want to add a mock-up of the List view, and maybe the options screen. Again, thanks to everyone for their comments, critiques, and suggestions!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Pandora Demo - the Linux Based Handheld Gaming System / UMPC

This is the spiritual successor to the GP2X / GP32, with a little Eee PC thrown in. It is designed as an ultra portable open source computer with gaming controls, a QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, & 800x480 4.3" touchscreen. It's very small, around about the size of a DS. It can easily fit in your pocket. For more info visit: http://www.openpadora.org

read more | digg story

N800 + Hard Work and about $35 = New Gaming system?

Ok - so here’s the idea.  Turn the Nokia N-Series N800 Internet Tablet into a handheld gaming device.

Yeah, I know, there are already games for it.  Emulators, too.  But touch screen without other controls sucks for all but a very select few games.

Take a USB game controller - slice and dice it until you can fit the N800 inside it like a cradle - (like the grips + battery for the PSP Lite) and build in a spare battery for it.

You would need a N800 (obviously) - games / emus / etc. - a program called USB Control which turns the N800 into a USB Host as well as a hard drive - a USB gender changer - a USB game controller - and a emergency charger.  (You would stick the emergency charger inside one of the hollow grips, and you’d have to remove the kick-stand for the N800.)

Oh, and you’d have to code a driver for the USB controller, since the N800 doesn’t know what to do with it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

All 120 Crayon Names, Color Codes and Fun Facts

For the last 100 years or so kids have been exploring and creating worlds of color with Crayons. For a lot of us, our life long love affairs with color began with these wax sticks and a blank sheet of paper. Here we go down crayon color memory lane with all 120 color names and hex codes, fun facts and photos.

read more | digg story

Build your own Portable NES

Yeah, anyone can buy a mod chip for your DS to play illegal NES ROMs on the go - but how many people have built their own portable NES that actually plays NES cartridges? Now you can be one of them.

read more | digg story

The Classmate 2 is here - and it's better than the Eee PC

Check out the latest version of Intel's Classmate PC. Improvements include a Webcam, improved keyboard, more responsive trackpad, better processor, a 9 inch screen version, and, oh yeah, it's going to be available to the public on Amazon.com under the name 2go PC, or the Netbook.

read more | digg story

Quiz: Moore's Law Revisted

View this quiz on Quibblo More quizzes on Quibblo

How seriously should we take Moore's Law?

I'm going to need some feedback on this one.

My neighbor's computer died. She's borrowing one of my old ones for the time being. She's on a fixed income and it will be a little while before she can buy a new one.

I'm the most tech savvy person she knows, so she was talking to me about what she should get. A little bit of back ground, she's retired, in her sixties, and uses her computer mostly for email, financial stuff, and some cheap mind-challenging puzzle games.

So - I told her, you can get a brand new desktop for $300 or less - actually $200 if you got with a gPC or similar. (And I explained what a gPC was.) She then followed up with a "Yeah, but I think I'd rather save up a little while longer and get what I really want."

I don't have a problem with that line of thinking - except I don't think she knows what she wants. I mean, the old clunker she's borrowing can do everything she wants to do, it may be a little slow in doing it, but it works. A new computer - even the cheapest on the market - would do it all and be faster than the 3 year old PC she had that died.

Here's my thinking. I'm not worried about how long she borrows my old PC. It's not like I was using it. If she wants to save up $600 or $700 and get a powerful desktop - that's her business. I just think you could save up your $600 - spend $300 of it now, and get a very useful machine - and set the other $300 in a cookie jar, wait a year, and get a more powerful computer for that $300 then than you could with your $600 now.

Questions:

1. Am I being too generous to Moore's Law? Would next year's $300 desktop be more powerful than this year's $600 one?
2. Keep in mind her basic uses of the PC - no hard core gaming - no terabytes of pirated movies to store - no video editing or 3D rendering taking place - no galaxies to map .... What could you get for $600 that you can get for $400?
3. Should I suggest her get a $600 laptop instead of a $600 desktop? She does travel to see family pretty often. (Read - several times a year.)