No #$%$#$% Wires

Wireless charging is still in its infancy, but the idea is great: you have a mat or platform onto which you can toss your gadgets and let them charge. No tangled wires and fumbling around. There's a catch, of course, in that most of these chargers will require a special case or add-on to be hugging your device. And cost... they are pricey, not only for the mat, but for the adapter too. This makes something like the Powermat one pricey charging station if you want to charge each of your gadgets, but I like their advertising.

Currently, the mat will run about US$100, with about $40 per adapter. Pricey, indeed, but as the technology becomes integrated into the product, as inductive charging becomes more ubiquitous, that cost will decline.

Google Docs Works the Interns for Improvements

This is a great addition for students.

Google Docs, and online option to Microsoft Office, has added a fairly powerful equation editor this summer, super/subscripts, among other improvements. I've used GDocs with students many times, and for other personal uses as well. It may be a good option for students who don't have Office available. Best of all, it's free, and you do not need a Google account to access it.

Read more about the equation editor and summer improvements here

MIT Students Take Pictures from Space for <$150

Two MIT students have captured images from space on a severe budget of $150. Perhaps the most impressive part is they did it entirely with off the shelf items.

Gaining over 17 miles in altitude, they were high enough to see the curvature of the earth, the darkness of space, and the intense cold associated with severe altitude. Impressive.

Check the details here.

Next Phase of Netbooks

EeePC is coming out with the next revolution of the netbook. Asus is about to release the Eee Keyboard. An introduction is here:




This device will eventually be perfect for students. A full size keyboard (the biggest complaint of netbooks thus far), this is also smaller, lighter, and more portable than a netbook. By providing a small touchscreen on the keyboard itself, students can sit in class, take notes with the full-size keyboard, monitoring on the small touch screen, then return home, hook up to a monitor, and you have a full size computer at home. No need for clouds, no need for a PC at home and a netbook for class, it's a valid, all in one solution.

Keys are going to be the battery life, reliability of an exposed keyboard (unless some type of hard case is provided, and reliability of the touchscreen on the side.

None the less, this is an exciting blend of a smartphone, netbook, and PC, all in one. Once again, Asus is leading the way.

Project Natal Demo from Xbox

Lots of buzz post-E3 about "Project Natal" from Xbox.

Xbox has released the demo they played at E3. See the Xbox produced demo of Natal below.

Not to be Outdone, Playstation Kicks In

After yesterday's Microsoft "Project Natal" demo video came out, Sony launched their own new toy, the Playstation Motion Controller. Unlike the Microsoft 'no tool needed' model, the Playstation controller is more Wii like, with buttons. See the demo from E3 below.



We see the massive impact the Nintendo Wii has had on the other two major video game producers, and while the Wii was innovative and a massive shift in direction, the processor power was nothing compared to the Xbox 360 and Playstation3. With these new controllers on the way, new methods of interacting, many feel it's the end of the Wii's reign on the market, but the real test will be in game selection. If the game make effective use of the new technology, it'll work. If not, it's just another toy.

My guess if the former, and we'll see a whole new slate of combat games involving real time action. Get up off the couch, it's go time!

Get Rid of the Furniture - We Need More ROOM

Consider this is developmental, not an actual product, yet.

Calling it "Project Natal" (yet dubbed by most as Microsoft Mini-Wii), Microsoft has launched the following video that shows the future of broken furniture.



Project indeed, but if they have what they say they have, this will be interesting for sure, especially if it will still run Xbox games. No controller poses some interesting options, with facial and voice recognition.

Knowing how the Wii has lead to many broken lamps, TVs, and slaps/punches/swings of fellow players, this will result in a lot of fun and a lot of injuries. Let the games begin.

Google Wave looks to Change Online Communication

Google Wave made its debut today at the Google I/O developers conference, and took the conference by storm.

The buzz created has been compared to the iPhone, and conference participants can't stop talking about the demo displayed today of this revolutionary product.

Google is aiming to change the way online communication happens, by combining email, chat, media sharing, links, wiki type of format, and instant messenging (IM), all threaded in one format. Replacing not one but MANY various programs, the excitement about this development is palpable.

From Webmonkey's preview:

A user starts a “wave,” a new thread in the system. At first, it looks just like an e-mail. A wave usually starts as text, but photos can be dragged in, and videos or maps can be embedded. The user invites friends by dragging and dropping names from a list of contacts in a sidebar. New users can start leaving comments in line, setting a break point in the original text and adding a comment directly below the paragraph, photo or whatever piece of the wave they want to comment on. There’s even a built in spell-checker that’s context-sensitive.

As the new user is leaving a comment, everyone involved in the wave can see the comments being typed in, in real time, letter by letter. Edits can be made concurrently, so two or more users can see one anothers’ changes flowing in, even as they’re leaving their comments, making edits or uploading images.

And it really is instantaneous: Google is measuring Wave’s latency in the low milliseconds.

In the past few years, the use of email has depleted in favour of more short-burst communication via SMS (text messages), Facebook, Twitter, etc, but Google's Wave may bring those back to email, as it could contain all the messages into one location. Instead of communicating with someone via 5 different programs, all of these methods of communication could be contained within Wave.

Read more from Webmonkey here. Over the next few days much more is sure to be revealed, as conference attendees have special BETA access.

Amazon Kindle DX Revealed

As expected, Amazon revealed the Kindle DX, a larger, slimmer version of it's HIT e-reader the Kindle.

The new Kindle is squarely aimed at newspapers, a struggling industry that appears destined to move online. While the old Kindle came in with an impressive 6' display with amazing readability.

The DX comes in at an impressive 9.7" display with auto rotation, so it can easily resemble your comfortable newspaper or magazine. The larger display is aimed at better layouts and most importantly, advertising.

Many large newspapers are offering discounted online subscription prices aimed at recapturing declining markets, and it seems inevitable that escalating printing and delivery costs will move the vast majority of newspapers online. There are significant rumours of a Amazon deal pending with The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Serious contacts here.

Where things get even more interesting is the textbook market. It's expected (rumoured from reputable sources) that several large Universities and Colleges in the North-East US will offer textbooks via Kindle DX this fall, as an option for students. Faced with the choice of a back-breaking stack of texts at inflated costs, or an expensive Kindle DX with 4 years of use, the choice will be an interesting one, though it's anticipated this will be the first foray into electronic textbooks. It may be only a matter of time until textbooks for all ages are digital.

Read Fortune's article here.
Cnet's article here.
Wired article here.

Norway Leads the Way

The Norwegian Education system has furthered a project promoting digital literacy among the students, properly funding it unlike the North American systems.

When a Norwegian student turns 16, the Education Ministry provides them a laptop, to keep, to help them with their education. Now, they are further the implementation of these tools by allowing students to write final exams using these personal computers.

This opens up many doors for students, by allowing them to use devices they are familiar with in a locked format to write supervised exams. The University of Manitoba has also approved student-owned devices for writing final exams. Products like ExamSoft and LockedBrowser allow student-owned devices to remain secure during an exam setting.

As students begin to bring their own computers to school with them, following them from class to call, the education system needs to welcome them, allowing open Wi-Fi access, network access, and internet access, supporting their systems and encouraging students to use the tools to help their education. Norway seems to get it. When does Canada come along?

The BBC story about Norway's exam pilot is here.