After a long wait, Windows 7 is on sale now. Here’s a review (in English). Here are a lot more.

Many say that Windows 7 is “Vista done right.” In a sense, this is the first “good” Windows OS since 2001. One problem: the upgrade from XP requires you to erase your hard disk drive–which means backing up all of your data and re-installing all of your apps. The upgrade from Vista should be easier.

I was only there for most of one day, so I did not get to see everything. Nevertheless, there was some interesting stuff; though much was pre-existing tech, a lot was still fun to see and play with.

For example, this electronic whiteboard:

The projector they had was at waist-level, so it was hard to write without blocking the area you were writing on; this setup is intended to be used with a ceiling-mounted projector (which would not solve all of the problems, but would help). It’s not the sexiest system–having back-projection or making the whiteboard itself a display would be far better. But for $1000, it’s a relatively cheap setup–and I can imagine doing a lot with this in my computer class. The whiteboard software can call up any image or file on a computer and make it interactive with what the lecturer is doing. It can also call up saved screens with prepared content. A fun toy!

OLED screens:

Strangely, I had never seen an OLED in person before this. They do seem very nice–high contrast, rich colors. I hear they’re weak outdoors in sunlight, though.

One guy was pitching “the world’s smallest keyboard.” Um, maybe, if you mean one that’s a remote keyboard–I am pretty sure that smaller ones exist on portable devices. And I’m not really sure how he verified that no smaller remote keyboards exist, but OK. This device looks kinda fun, until you start trying to think of situations where you really need it. Like a lot of other tech at the show, this was more along the lines of “it looks cool but adds minimal functionality.”

Here’s another example of that ‘limited functionality’ thing: wireless upload of images from a digital camera to the computer. This was at Sony’s booth. Just place the camera on the pad, and presto! The photos download and display. Except that when it was displayed, it suffered from glitches (didn’t connect a few times; the rep had to fiddle with it), and was kind of slow uploading. Plus, there’s been an easier way to do this for a while: the Eye-Fi Wireless SD card, an SD memory card which will automatically upload your photos to a WiFi network as you take them, or when you come in range of a network. It was also at the show, looking for a distributor.

TDK had several tech items on display, including these 320 GB optical disks. Promises, promises. There have been tons of “coming soon” super-high-capacity media promised over the years, with very few actually making it to market.

This is cool: flexible solar panels. I am sure that they are useful somewhere. Not as cool as Solar Roads, of course!

Terminator-Vision!! No, actually, it was facial recognition software Sony was showing off.

This was more for industrial use, but was very interesting to see in action. As you can see, it tagged me as being 90% male, 100% adult, and definitely not a baby or a senior. It figured that I probably had both eyes open and had a hint of a smile, but didn’t see my glasses too well.

The use of this became apparent when the rep explained it to me: a camera would accompany a digital advertising display which would alter its content based upon who was looking at it. If mostly women were looking at the ad space, it would display ads aimed at women; same with different age groups. If a baby showed up, diaper ads might display. Presumably the smiling would help gauge the effectiveness of ads, and which ones should be displayed the most. One can imagine other uses for this as well.

Finally, there was the panel discussion on personal computing undergoing a transformation, which was, as I mentioned in the last post, mostly just PR pitches by the execs. I wish they had discussed advances in multi-touch and non-volatile RAM, the possible development of quantum computing, the implementation of facial and body recognition in UI development, specific timetables for adoption of wireless standards, and other stuff I hadn’t even heard of yet. But no, it was mostly about stuff they were actually currently doing, tame stuff like using cloud connectivity (heck, I use that now), with lots of references to how cool Windows 7 is going to be.

One thing that Fujitsu showed actually did seem pretty neat:

I think the name comes from the fact that the displays cover the entire surface of the devices, with no frames–and the devices communicate wirelessly to connect and make larger displays. The exec pulled out a non-functioning sample to show a netbook and a cell phone which both had the exact same depth, so that when you put the cell phone next to the side of the netbook, you essentially extend the netbook display by a few inches.

Then you could add any number of such devices to continue to increase the size of the display.

Pretty nifty concept. Once you think about actually using it, though, its value becomes less striking–maybe adding a few inches to one side could be nice, but when would you really get more than two devices together in a situation where joining them to make a larger display would be viable and useful? Hard to see that happening much.

But still, it’s cool. That’s the main point!

Unfortunately, the end of my visit to CEATEC was marred by NHK, something I should have seen coming when I approached their booth. NHK is Japan’s public TV network–more like the BBC than PBS in that it’s driven by ‘required’ payments by everyone, and their door-to-door collectors are more or less universally disliked. Most people in Japan refuse to pay when the collectors come–technically, you’re supposed to, but I believe there are no penalties for not paying. NHK is kind of like a state-run, state-friendly behemoth which many see as outdated and unnecessary.

The only thing I really wanted to know about was their progress on the next level of HDTV. Pre-HDTV sets had a resolution of 480 (or 525, depending on how you count them) vertical lines; HDTV goes up to 1080 lines. The next generation quadruples that, going up to 4320 lines of resolution. Imagine taking 16 HDTV screens in a 4 x 4 grid–that’s the same resolution you’d get with one single “Super-Hi-Vision” TV.

I came to the NHK booth to ask for info on that, and the guy there said they had one on display, urging me to enter their booth and see it for myself. OK, cool, I though, momentarily forgetting who I was speaking to. So I joined the queue, and waited for 20 minutes, using up the last half-hour of my time at CEATEC. Finally, I got in, and walked past lame displays of this-is-what-a-living-room-looked-like-in-the-60’s, and past a mini-theater showing what 5.1 Surround sound was like. I kept asking, “Where’s the Super-Hi-Vision?” and people kept saying, oh, it’s right over down that way, check it out!

So naturally, when I finally got there, they were shutting it down. Unapologetically, the NHK rep had a “too bad” attitude, and was even a bit condescending about it, as if it was perfectly natural to urge people to wait in line for something and then refuse to extend a display for two minutes to show them what was promised. What kind of idiot are you?

That sour end note aside, CEATEC was a fun event and I did get some fairly useful intel from it. Not as much as I expected, but I learned some stuff. And seeing how CEATEC is free with advanced registration (easy to do), you might want to visit it too, the next time it comes around!

When I visited CEATEC Japan last Friday, I thought that maybe I could get a look at some of the upcoming technology and bring back the goods to the class. But while there was some fun stuff, it completely impressive–there was lots of stuff I know is in the works which was not shown, a lot of the in-development stuff they did show was pretty tame, and most of the stuff was just current for-sale technology that people were trying to sell. Well, it’s a trade show, so that’s par for the course.

Here are some of the photos I took of a few of the more interesting things to see.

This is an as-yet uncompleted project KDDI was showing off–a mini-robot pod which acts as a moving, motion-sensitive stand for your cell phone. It has built-in speakers, automatically closes or opens up (triggered by what I didn’t find out), and can roll about and do turns, presumably to face and be accessible to the user. It is also supposed to be able to interface with your TV or LCD, showing the cell phone’s data on whatever display you choose. Cool concept.

Nearby, they were demo’ing a cell phone with virtual overlays of data on what the phone’s camera displayed; in this case, when they pointed the phone (presumably outfitted with an electronic compass) in a certain direction, it would tell you what interesting stuff exists in that direction, with images of each point appearing in frames. Not revolutionary–this kind of stuff is being played around with on iPhone and Android phones. It’s called “Augmented Reality.” Still, it’s an interesting concept which will undoubtedly be smoothed out and will be quite useful in the future.

They had a lot of touchscreens there, but nothing knocked my socks off. The only ones I found were not multi-touch–it was nothing more than a trackpad could do, and not all that impressive.

One thing that surprised me: Tokyo has WiMAX, and has since July. I guess I didn’t get the memo. If you don’t know what WiMAX is, it’s a new-ish wireless Internet service. It’s kind of like WiFi, except it’s wide-area; the entire city is a hotspot. Think of it like 3G, except it’s a lot faster. Effectively, it’s an Internet connection that follows you wherever you go. Instead of getting broadband just at home, you get it everywhere you take your computer–except, presumably, in basement coffee shops or other areas where cell phone reception might also be spotty.

Tokyo’s service boasts 40 Mbps download, 10 Mbps upload, though such claims are always over-rated–I’m supposed to have 100 Mbps fiber-optic at home, but have never gotten anywhere near that speed. So figure that Tokyo’s WiMAX is at least a fair-speed broadband connection.

The catch: it’s expensive. They charge 4,480 yen (about $50) per month to subscribe; that’s not too bad, I pay about that much for fiber. The problem is, they don’t give you the reception devices for free. If your laptop does not have built-in WiMAX (few do), then each laptop will have to have a $140 USB dongle. For home networks, a reception base that will distribute the connection to home devices costs about $170. To set Sachi and myself up with this, we’d have to shell out $450. No thanks on that; I’m OK as-is. They do have a free 15-day trial they offer, and I may take them up on that just to test out the system.

This was a nice little gadget: a video phone which doubles as a photo frame. Probably has features I didn’t sniff out while there, but it was evident that it was intended to take advantage of home networking.

The first of three large halls at Makuhari was dedicated mostly to the big home electronics firms, and it seems that every one of them had a 3-D HDTV system. They also had most of their good stuff inside the booths, all of which had long lines. I didn’t have enough time–the lines looked like they were about an hour long each. I figured I’d simply take their word for it. This is something that falls into the category of “fun luxury” rather than mainstream electronics utility.

This was a neat little gadget: a hand-held laser projector, which will take lots of inputs, including the iPhone shown here. For $500, this iPhone-sized dealio will project an image onto any surface you point it at–great for impromptu slide shows, when a TV or other projector is not available. The image was a bit weak, best in dark rooms or close-up. The American guys pitching it said that in a dark room, it was possible to use it as a “100-inch TV screen.” Uh, maybe. They said they can’t sell it in Japan yet, because the government made laser projectors illegal after some bad laser pointer incidents years back, and haven’t updated the legislation yet. This looks like a nice toy, but I couldn’t possibly justify buying one.

Still, this is something I expect will shrink in size and price over the years and may eventually become a standard feature in hand-held devices. It could be that in 5 years, your cell phone will have something like this built-in.

Before I finish for today’s post, one more–this gadget being one that I frankly pray to god will never become popular. I show it here as a screen shot from the manufacturer’s web site: a wearable speaker vest.

Yes, that’s right. If you think it’s bad when a-holes outfit their cars with giant speaker systems so the entire county can be massively annoyed by their poor taste in music, then you’ll love this. The user just plugs in their digital audio device, and the music gets blasted out of speakers on the shoulders. And it’s loud, too–they guy demonstrated it for me. It is designed for joggers, bicyclists, and motorcyclists–yes, it is intended to be loud enough to be heard clearly when wearing a full-head helmet, over engine noise. He said it was for people who could be endangered by using headsets because they can’t hear traffic coming. So instead, they blast the music for everyone in the area to hear–and they still can’t hear traffic coming. But now everybody is getting pissed off to boot. Whee!

The rest tomorrow.

A recent fad in photography and video is called “Tilt Shift.” It turns out that if you take a picture of something from a distance, and than blur the foreground and the background, everything looks like a tiny model set. Here is a video of Disneyland presented in Tilt Shift:

Want a nice font based on your own handwriting? Maybe make your own dingbat font? Or try to craft a more interesting font?

Font Capture gives you a way to do this–for free. You will need to have a good writing pen and a way to scan a piece of paper to a computer. But if you can do that, you can make a very nice font. Here is an example of my own font created tonight:

Here’s how to do it:

1. Download the blank form form from the web site (PDF file link). You will need a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit to read it (Mac Users can use the “Preview” app included with OS X).

2. Print out the form.

3. Fill in the form. Write all the characters as described above each square:

Remember, you can write anything you want in any square! You’ll probably want A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and most punctuation, but it’s easy to add little drawings or pictures in the other squares. When you finish, it might look like this:

4. Scan the form (above 200 dpi is best). You will need a scanner to do this; taking a photograph will not work well. If you need help, ask Mr. Poza and he will scan it for you!

5. Save the scan as a JPG or PNG; the site says PNG is best.

6. Upload the scanned file here. You can give it a name there, too.

7. Submit the font. After a minute, the site will show you a sample of the font. You can write test sentences and they will display in your font.

8. If the font looks good, you can download it and then install it on your computer!

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A few points:

When you fill out the form with your handwriting, you should be careful. Without using a guide-line template below the form, your letters might accidentally be too high or too low.

Each letter has important lines to follow:

• Ascender
• Midline
• Baseline
• Descender

They look like this:

Note:

• Capital letters fall between the baseline and the ascender;
• plain letters like a, c, e, or o fall between the baseline and the midline;
• letters like b, f, h, and k rise up to the ascender;
• letters like g, j, p, and y go down below to the descender

It is hard to keep the letters straight without a guide. I took an extra piece of paper, wrote the four lines on that piece, then slipped it under the form. The lines showed through enough to guide me.

It’s also a good idea to write the letters using a nice, inky pen than leaves a dark, thick line. Not a felt-tip (too thick!) but a heavy ballpoint or other pen that leaves a dark mark.

The service is free (for now!) so try as many times as you want!

It took me a while the first time, to get things just right. Now that I have practiced, I am sure I could make a new font in just 10 or 15 minutes.

Although Microsoft tells us that any video format which Windows Media Player can handle will play in PowerPoint, experience tells us differently. The best format is WMV files. The problem is, it is hard to find a good free program that does everything you want.

The best I could find is called Any Video Converter: Free Version. It is a type of software often called “crippleware,” in that it does not work completely–some features have been turned off and won’t work unless you buy the paid version. However, this software will do what you need for the PowerPoint project in this class.

What the program does: you can convert any video file into a WMV file which PowerPoint (hopefully!) can play. The program also downloads video directly from YouTube. Here’s how it works:

Download the software and install it, then open it. You will see a window, and there are four buttons in a toolbar near the top: Add Video, Convert, Stop, and YouTube. If you already have a video file on your computer but PowerPoint cannot play it, then click “Add Video.” The video will be added to a list of files in the main part of the window.

However, if you want to download the video from YouTube, you should first find the video on YouTube using a browser and copy the URL for the video. Then, in “Any Video Converter,” click the “YouTube” button. It asks for a YouTube URL; paste what you copied.

Again, you will see the video file in the list–but this time it will be red, and will say, “Ready for download.” You must right-click on it and select “Download selected online FLV.”

It will download the video.

Next, you Convert: check the box at the left for any “Added Video” or “YouTube” video, then click the “Convert Button.” It’ll take a short while, but at the end, it will have saved your video as a WMV file. Usually it saves everything in a special folder in “My Documents” in another folder called “Any Video Converter Professional.”

You can move these videos to your PowerPoint project folder, then add them to your presentation.

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In PowerPoint, you can change the start time and end times for the video. For example, let’s say you have a 2-minute video, but you only want the small part from 16 seconds until 24 seconds. In PowerPoint, open the “Custom Animation” pane, then select your video in the animations list. Click on the little-arrow menu, and choose “Effect Options.”

In that dialog box, under the “Effect” tab, you’ll see an option for “Start playing.” Enter the time that you want the video to start. When you give the slide show, the movie will start playing when you set it to.

In PowerPoint, you can set the start time for a movie or song, but you cannot set an end time; to end at a special time, just set the movie to end when clicked, and then, when presenting, click when you want the movie to end.

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If anyone finds a good, free video editing and conversion program, please share it with me so I can tell everyone!

Wireless networking, or WiFi, has made it possible to lose the Ethernet cable. Wireless USB, reportedly coming soon, would mean no peripheral cables–no cables to external HDDs or other devices.

Now, Sony has a TV set which not only has wireless audio, it not only has wireless video… it also has wireless power. That’s quite a trick.

The implications: in the future, no more cables from devices. No tangled mess of black, white, and blue spaghetti behind tables and under desks. Presumably, you could charge your phone and other gadgets just by placing them on a stand or a small table.

In some ways, GPUs (Graphic Processor Unit chips) are more advanced than CPUs, but mostly because their tasks are simpler. That allows for a simpler chips design–and in some ways, more power.

Graphics chip maker NVIDIA (where my sister’s husband works, as it happens) is releasing a GPU with 512 cores. See an article about it here.

Everyone:

I recently assigned reading for the CPU. Over the holiday weekend, I have taken the time to research and update the CPU Type chart. For example, the Pentiums have all but disappeared, and the i3~i9 CPUs have started showing up; also, with the advent of popular netbooks (you can get them in Japan for as cheap as ¥30,000, but remember they are very low-powered, almost ‘toy’ processors) have made the “Atom” chip a lot more prevalent.

Please check out the new chart.

If you’re interested, LifeHacker has a step-by-step guide, using a $29 (¥3280) copy of Snow Leopard–so they claim. It only is guaranteed to work on some PC models, and you will need to borrow someone’s Mac for a few steps. But they say it works.