Recently, I’ve replaced my Macbook’s harddrive using Apple’s Timemachine. The whole process was indeed smooth. However, some of the applications did not run afterwards. Therefore, had to reinstall some of them. At that point, it seemed rather a good idea to keep a list of the Apps that I normally use, especially the Freewares. I’ve categorized them into few categories.
Web:
FolderPlus Browser – Web Folder
DropBox – File Sharing
Live Mesh – File Sharing, Equivalent to Dropbox from Microsoft
Vuze – Bittorent
Transmission – Bittorrent
CyberDuck – FTP
Multimedia:
VLC – Movie Player
PodBuddy(A.k.a. 팟벗) – Media Transcoder for iPhone/iPod/iPad
Perian – For smi captions, Divx, XviD, FLV, AVI, MS-MPEG4,etc
Utilities:
Lock My Mac – Lock Mac Screen
FontForge – Fix Windows Fonts
iPhone Explorer – iPhone Browser
QuickSilver – Graphical Shell, Equivalent to Gnome-Do
Remote Desktop Connection – Microsoft RDC
SMCFanControl – Fan Controller for MacBook
The Unarchiver – For Zip File Extraction
Chmox – Chm Reader
After more than 10 years of C/Java coding, you get attached to certain development tools that it is difficult to let yourself use other tools regardless of its efficiency and productivity.
Here are some of my favorites.
IDE: Eclipse, Visual Studio
Editor: UltraEdit, Source Insight, GEdit
Diff: Araxis Merge
Collaboration: SVN, VSS
Note: Evernote
▲ Eric Giler demos wireless electricity (via Ted.com)
It has been a while since we’ve seen Eric Giler presenting WiTricity, a technology that enables wireless electricity transfer, on Ted.com. The technology still seems to be in a relatively basic state, at least not at a stage where we strive for efficiency. It seems feasible for a short distance and, according Eric Giler, it is safe from radioactive. This is surely an impressive presentation considering the state where consumer electronic device are at present.
Dell Latitude Z600
Recently Dell has announced “Dell Latitude Z600″. It has caught my attention because it is said to be completely wireless, even removing the power cable. Although this maybe impressive to some people, it is no more wireless that what we see on electrical toothbrush dock. From my person view, the statement ‘COMPLETELY WIRELESS’ is an exaggeration unless the technology enables one to use a device without ever worrying of battery running out. I guess it’s still far for us to see anything close to ‘COMPLETE WIRELESSNESS’.
Palm Pre Touchstone
The Palm Pre’s TouchStone had been rather more impressive considering the design and usability. One of the cool features of TouchStone is the ‘Speakerphone’ feature. In midst of a phone conversation, one can simply put Palm Pre on the TouchStone and it will recharge the phone while enabling speakerphone conversation.
Nokia Beta Labs has recently released a beta version of a potentially helpful mobile application for the blind and the visually impaired. The beta application utilizes mobile phone’s vibration as an alternative feedback to the tactile experience of a braille. Personally I have always been interested in this field. I am also very glad that some company is showing some interest to add accessibility features to phones. However, it’s hard to agree with the approach and it doesn’t really seem to satisfy the needs. The software seems to be a derivative of a fund-lacking project that tries to come up with a next-best solution without trying to add additional hardware. Even the current TTS(Text-to-Speech) system seems like a perfectly better solution to me. Anyway, the software is vailable for download.
Touch screen interfaces are extremely popular nowadays. However, despite the hype, user satisfaction from using a touch screen device is not as high as it should be. Certainly there are many reasons behind this. However, one particular reason I am going to address here is the Response. When pressing a button on a touch screen, we can’t really experience the feeling of pressing a button. Samsung has tried to improve this by introducing Haptic Technology. However, from a personal point of view, this doesn’t really help the case.
In this year’s Wireless Japan Conference, NTT DoCoMo demonstrated a technology that actually delivers that tactile sense to users even at a remote distance. According to NTT DoCoMo, this technology can be used for users to actually feel the sense of touch from a remote distance before buying a product, perhaps like fabric from clothes.
Bump Technologies have came up with a new way to share personal contact information and photos utilizing iPhone’s Peer-to-Peer Bluetooth functionality and motion sensor. Simply run application on both ends, and BUMP one device to the other, the information is sent to the other side. Above all, the application is completely FREE.
Working at a company that makes consumer electronics, we often have conversations that are not exactly the same as above, but very similar. Perhaps it’s because, we share the same constraints, resources… especially money and time. It usually goes like this…
A: Our VOC(Voice of Customer) is very clear. It is our duty to deliver what they ask. Delivering something that is not 100%, is no better than useless.
B: That plan requires (blah.. blah.. blah..) which is costly, a burden in which we cannot afford.
New iPhone has been released and perhaps to a naked eye it’s difficult to find the ‘Hardware’ difference between the new iPhone 3Gs and prior iPhone 3G. After all, software can always be upgraded with firmware update.
So here’s a simple summary of the hardware specification on Apple’s Homepage.
- CPU: 412MHz ARM 11 -> Yet unknown. However, Apple promises it would be as twice as fast on average.
Here’s a new shocker from the E3. Perhaps a even more shocker for me than PSP Go. Hmmm. I take that comment back. I was very very VERY shocked with PSP Go, not because of its specifications, but rather the rumor of hideous, not-sony-like design turning out to be true. Anyway, unlike PSP Go, the motion controller for PS3 turned out to be more promising that expected. After seeing Wii Motion Plus and Microsoft’s Natal Project, we presumed it would be hard for Sony to bring up anything to match up. However, Sony has certainly proven us to be wrong.
It’s simply all too good to be true. The new XBox presented at the E3 yesterday seems to have included two controversial technologies, Full body motion capture and Voice Recognition. We have always presumed these two technology to be crude, unfit for the general customers. And of course, I’m very skeptic with the level of accuracy the voice recognition is shown in the video. Oh wait, what about the customers who can’t speak English?!
However, as long as motion capture is involved, Nintendo has proven with Wii that it does not take a perfectly accurate algorithm in order to please the general customers. And who knows, maybe Microsoft did manage to extend that to a whole new level. Enough with the technical details, I’m sure we’ll see a whole lot more to come.
Update!
It seems motion capture on Natal is light-independent. In other words, people can be detected even in worst possible light condition.
