gadgets
iPad, ¿un iPod (touch) de 10 pulgadas?
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | actualidad, gadgets | Comments Off
Y hoy se desveló el secreto a voces y Apple presentó su iPad, el desembarco de la compañía de la manzana en la orilla de los tablet PC, mercado prácticamente inexplorado. Y a mi no me parece más que un iPod Touch crecidito.
Según las características indicadas, parte de un precio de $499 e inicialmente sólo tendrá WiFi y más adelante se lanzarán modelos con 3G. Tiene un procesador de 1GHz y de 16 a 64GB de almacenamiento, con un peso de casi 700 gramos y una batería que promete unas 10 horas de funcionamiento continuo.
¿Y por qué no lo veo más que como un iPod grande? Básicamente porque sólo ofrece por encima de un iPod la también lanzada biblioteca virtual, con una aplicación estilo Apple, que hace bonito el acceso a los libros, representándolos en una biblioteca. En este aspecto habría que ver cómo compite con dispositivos como el Kindle, mucho más sencillos, con más autonomía y con pantallas de tinta electrónica, mucho más fáciles que leer.
Me parece de todos modos un dispositivo interesante. Por el tamaño y las prestaciones, podría ser perfectamente el ordenador a tener en la mesa, junto al sofá. El dsipositivo para acceder a Internet por toda la casa, en la cocina y en el baño. Para leer las noticias, entrar en Facebook y mirar el correo electrónico. Con la ventaja además de tener prestaciones para ver vídeo y oir música. Si echo de menos una webcam frontal de forma que se pudiera utilizar para realizar llamadas con vídeo vía VoIP.
Si tuviera un precio más reducido, del entorno de 200€, la mencionada webcam y, por qué no, un sistema de pantalla híbrida para que funcione como una pantalla de tinta electrónica cuando estamos leyendo un libro y como una pantalla normal en el resto de situaciones, estaría encargando uno ahora mismo.
Innovation in netbooks
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | english, gadgets, howto | 3 Comments
After the release of Asus Eee PC and the discovery of the market that was eager to buy cheap and “wearable” computers every laptop manufacturer has jumped into the hype and released their own versions of netbooks, with different success.
But somehow it was a cloning phase. Vendors were just cloning what Asus did, with more or less changes, but without innovating. Now, it seems that the path has opened again, from the open source and open hardware front, and it has been released AlwaysInnovating’s touchbook. It is a netbook with a detachable keyboard (it is even sold separated) and built upon an ARM processor from Texas Instruments, and a 8GB microSD card. Thus they claim the battery last from 10 to 15h with the keyboard, and 3 to 5h in touchscreen mode.
As is said above, the whole machine is open source based. Software is based upon OpenEmbedded, and hardware schematics of the board are released under GPL on Beagleboard project. They say that you can also install Ubuntu, Android or even Windows CE on it.
Update: Just discovered that AlwaysInnovating is a Grégoire Gentil startup. Grégory is a Civil Engineer from École des ponts et Chaussées. We know how to build things 
Debian on Android phone
Saturday, January 17th, 2009 | debian, english, gadgets | Comments Off
A Debian installer and boot loader for Android based phones has been released. It uses Debian ARM packages from standard repositories, so it makes available t you the full plethora of Debian packages. Also, as a bonus, you can still your phone as it was, an Android based device, with all its functionality.
Update: This entry was pending of an update since I read Joey Hess’ entry investigating into the supposed installer.
It seems that the .zip file is a complete disaster: it is a Debian chroot and 100MB of it are cached .deb files in /var and the init process is no more no less than a script that echoes some lines making you think that something is being booted and a last command (the only that actually makes something) is a mere chroot $mnt /bin/bash.
What does this mean? That you can run Debian in your Android phone by simply creating a chroot from your nearest Debian repository, and that’s all. No need of any supposed installer, just run debootstrap on the phone.
NAS adapter
Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | english, gadgets | Comments Off
I have been always desiring to have a NAS adapter and printer server so I can easily share and use both my USB printer and a USB hard disk from every corner in the house. I was doing that when I had a home server, but when it died I losed that functionality. Once of the main reasons to buy a new one was to have this option again, but today I have discovered in Xataka a little device: Addonics NAS Adapter.
This is just what I wanted: NAS adapter, little size, can power 2.5 inch. HDD directly, and USB print server. Files are shared by Samba or FTP client, and can act also as DHCP server. As a bonus it has a little bittorrent client which can track 4 torrents at a time, and download them to attached USB device. The only thing I would like to know if is using an USB hub both a printer and a HDD can be attached at the same time. If that can be done, then for only $55 we have a winner.
The only last wish… that it uses Linux in their core (probably).
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