Archive for category Tablet PC
Thoughts on iPad
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Gadgets, Tablet PC, iPhone on January 28, 2010
There was too much hype. Lot of Apple patents was associated with it. It was to be the greatest thing to come from Steve Jobs’ mind. Finally when it is unveiled, it is just a big iPod Touch. Here are the disappointing things:
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No camera. Would have been cool if the iPad supported video chat with a front facing camera. I would not use it to take photos so a rear camera is not a deal breaker.
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Third party apps can not run in background. Well no Pandora running in the background while browsing.
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No tethering to iPhone. I would have the iPhone where ever I take the iPad. It should just use the iPhone for data not another data plan.
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No USB. To connect a camera I need a $30 accessory!
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No Flash. This is the deal breaker! No flash means no Hulu. Or hundreds other flash based video sites that are useless on the device which is supposed to be primarily for browsing and media consumption.
Hmmm… When does that HP Slate come out?
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Gadgets, India, Tablet PC, Touch on November 27, 2009
One of the best demos I have seen. This guys in amazing!
Video review of Asus Eee PC T91
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Gadgets, Tablet PC on April 17, 2009
This form factor looks great for a Tablet PC. Touch should be great for browsing in this.
Microsoft’s Vision 2019
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Gadgets, Tablet PC, Technology, Touch on March 2, 2009
This is a nice video of how Microsoft envisions 2019 would be. I am ready for the Tablet PC they show now!
Tablet PC Conversation/Meme Tracker
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Software, Tablet PC on February 5, 2008
Loren Heiny has been teasing us with the Tablet PC Meme Tracker he is building for a few days now. Finally he has released a public preview of it. It is looking good. Check it out here.
I was looking for such a topic focused tracker for a while now. Thanks Loren.
Working on Ink Tweet
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Software, Tablet PC on January 23, 2008
I have just started twittering. I know I am late to the party but following CES tweets from the gottabemobile folks hooked me on to it. 
You can follow my twittering at http://twitter.com/vazz.
Anyway I was looking for a Ink enabled Twitter client. I found Incremental Blogger’s InkGram. But it was not what I was looking for. I wanted a Twitter client that would enable me to write my tweets in Ink and would recognize the text and post it to Twitter.
Well I thought this is a simple requirement maybe I could develop one. I was able to get a quick and dirty client shown above working with the help of TwitterLib from the makers of Witty. And here is the result:
Now I got the make the app configurable and tweak it a bit… I hope this ends up better than the InkRun.
Multi-Touch comes to Tablet PCs
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Tablet PC on January 17, 2008
Well this is not gimmicky like the Multi-Touch Touchpad of the MacBook Air. It is real multi touch! Hmmm… I had to say that.
Anyway check out the cool demo from N-Trig. This should be available to Tablet PC manufacturers in May 2008. Pretty cool.
But we do need applications other than a photo viewer with Multi-Touch to make this useful. [gottabemobile]
Ubuntu on my Thinkpad X61 Tablet
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Linux, Tablet PC, Vista on December 6, 2007
I am currently running Ubuntu on my Tablet PC. Well I usually try out Linux on my laptops just to check them out. This time I was forced to. I was messing around with Vista’s disk management features to repartition my hard drive.
To do this I first had to convert the disk volume from ‘Basic’ to ‘Dynamic’. There was a warning that I can have bootable partition in this volume. I blatantly ignored this warning. Big mistake. I will tell why in a little bit. Then I was shrinking the partition. But I think the drive was fragmented too much so I was able to shrink it only by 1 GB. 
So I thought let me restore the tablet to factory settings hoping it would help.
Thats when I realized the mistake I made by ignoring the warning. Since I could have only one bootable partition in the dynamic drive it rendered the recovery partition useless. All I get is the message ‘operating system missing’.
Anyway it was not a total loss after all. I had taken a backup of all my data before meddling with the disk management. And since my tablet is still in warranty Lenovo promised to ship a recovery disk right away.
Anyway there are three days till the recovery disk reaches me. So I took the opportunity to install the latest Ubuntu release on the tablet. I got most of the stuff to work with out much trouble: WiFi, Sound, Display, TrackPoint, Bluetooth (though not A2DP yet)… I still have to enable Pen input in this.
Let me know some cool Linux stuff I should try out…
TabletGoo: Search engine for Tablet PCs
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Tablet PC on November 10, 2006
Ed Holloway has created a search engine for Tablet PCs and Mobile computing. Check it out at TabletGoo.com.
It is based on Google co-op search. It is a nice resource but I am not too sure about the name though.
Google listens! Reader gets features I want…
Posted by Vasanth Dharmaraj in Software, Tablet PC on October 11, 2006
Since I moved from NewsAlloy to Google Reader, Reader has seen a major UI update. But changes are hard. I hated the new UI. The original Reader was simple and uncluttered. The new one looked more like Bloglines. Enough said.
With the change Reader lost the one feature I liked the most, the “Space Bar” shortcut. So I posted my concern to their Google Group. I also asked for a way to hide the cluttered left navigation pane. I said to myself if this were NewsAlloy I would get this request answered in a couple of days, don’t think Google will do that.
I was slightly wrong Google recently pushed out a few more updates, and surprise surprise both my concerns were addresses. Check out “Hiding the left side” and “Space is smart again”.
Well it took a bit longer for Google (10 days) and I am sure a lot more people had the same requests but I am happy with the changes and the fact that Google listens.
Whit these changes Google Reader has become just as good as NewsAlloy for use with my Tablet PC. I am still looking forward to NewsAlloy 2.0 this year end.