Plastic Logic

My first view of the Plastic Logic reader:

The touch sensitive net on the screen is visible, as well as spurious lines of dead cells. These were promised to be removed in production. The discussion of e-book readers is here. Read more!

International Space Station

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Ugly Little Boy

You might have heard of the mapping of DNA of the woolly mammoth. Now there's talk of cloning an actual Neanderthal, maybe in a not too distant future. Reminds me of the Ugly Little Boy. (nothing extra below fold) Read more!

e-book Readers

I have been thinking for a while about e-book readers since the time that Kindle came out. The currently available models accomplish a lot, but even with the ones on the horizon, much still seems to be desired. Here's the best comparison of various models available right now (will keep changing over time of course).

So what features do I want in a future e-book reader? (more below the fold)

Basically a fantastic tablet:
1. The size should be very slightly bigger than a letter paper, probably half and inch thick, almost like a note-pad.
2. Should have wireless internet access, and an interface like the iphone, should be able to bring up something like one-note, a touch sensitive screen.
3. A full sized keyboard should fit nicely on a letter paper in the landscape mode, and the screen should be able to recognize double handed typing.
4. All with colored e-ink, and should be able to play video as well. The refresh rate will have to improve considerably for this to happen. The OLEDs can already do this, so e-ink should not be too far behind.
5. Of course, mp3 player, GPS etc are a given, but probably not too large a hard-drive (solid state).

So let's see how much of this is available in the existing models.

The Iliad I-Rex comes close, as you can see in the following video. Dimensions are slightly smaller, but will do. Refresh rate is a real problem, and the internet browsing needs a clunky hack.


Jinke, the Chinese company making the less flashy Hanlin e-book reader had announced the V9 which would be the perfect size, but since then they have withdrawn it from the website, so probably not happening. I might have read somewhere that the company which makes the e-ink screens canceled, couldn't keep up with the order flow.



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Indian Lunar Mission

For about $80 million, India has launched it's first lunar mission on 22nd Oct. In less than a month the craft has entered lunar orbit, and launched a moon impact probe, basically just something to crash into the moon. A few thoughts:

• The main craft will orbit the moon for about a couple of years at a height of 100km and map the lunar surface, not sure if the Apollo mission did this, but the imaging will use modern equipment. Of special interest will be the poles which might have ice.
  
• The craft is carrying several European and American instruments for free, so this definitely fosters cooperation for future missions.
• The impactor is just a fancy name for a dead weight carrying the Indian flag. This "experiment" was designed with the thinking that one day India can claim at least some part of the lunar territory. Kalam (the previous President) was thinking ahead, a lot ahead!
• The mission also displayed precision control, guidance and communication. Think missiles? Probably this technology is more advanced?
  

(Nothing extra below fold) Read more!

Tablet PC

John Vesey was visiting during the week, and I saw his Dell tablet PC, the onscreen writing abilities reminded me of Hector's tablet PC from way back when, but seemed much sleeker. So I was browsing for tablet PCs (if I still have a job, these days everything has to be predicated with that), and found 3 contenders:

1. Electrovaya Scribbler SC4000 [about $2,000]
   
2. Lenovo ThinkPad X61, [about $1,000 right now] and
3. Dell Latitude XT [about $2,000]

From some of the reviews it seems to me that Lenovo is the best deal here. Electrovaya is the slimmest, Lenovo has all the advantages of IBM while remaining slim. Pen has an eraser, and right now its the cheapest. (Nothing extra below fold) Read more!