Friday, February 27, 2009

ASUS Eee PC ‘Shell’

Initial thoughts on this news about an a new ASUS EEE device was that it would be just a keyboard, screen and battery ’shell’ that you could slot an Eee PC module into. I can’t help thinking about a high-end…

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

The all-in-one HP Mini 1000 MIE review post


I’ve just finished up the last section of the Mini 1000 MIE review. The review was done in rolling format, so each section came out at different times over the last few weeks. This post serves as a hub to…

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Long term software impressions — HP Mini 1000 MIE

It has definitely been an interesting testing experience with the Mini 1000 MIE [Portal page]. The netbook, as you have probably read, runs a custom Ubuntu interface designed by HP. They call it the Mobile Internet Edition of the Mini…

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Performance — HP Mini 1000 MIE

I’ve been testing the HP Mini 1000 MIE [Portal page] netbook for a few weeks now and I’m ready to give some performance information. As you’ll recall, the ‘MIE’ in Mini MIE stands for Mobile Internet Edition. This is HPs…

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Weekly Netbook Roundup 2/23

It’s that time again. Lets have a look at some interesting netbook content from this week.

Asus to Phase Out 8.9 Inch Screens in 2009 — Asus started with the 7″ screen, moved up to 8.9″ and now seems to be on…

Saturday, February 21, 2009

UMID M1 Thumb Typing Demo.

Thanks to Slashgear for this demo which convinces me that given a bump up on the font size, the UMID M1 is going to be extremely easy to ‘thumb’



Check out the nice gallery too, over at Slashgear. Thanks Chris!

UMID M1 MID…

Friday, February 20, 2009

Dell Mini 10 finally goes official for the US; hits February 26th


While the Mini 9 [Portal page] was pretty standard fare as far as netbooks good, the upcoming Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (which Engadget had some hands-on time with at CES) throws us a few welcomed curve-balls. Dell has finally made…

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Multi-touch comes to resistive touchscreens


Jkkmobile points out an interesting video from Engadget that shows some interesting multi-touch demos on a resistive touchscreen. Have a look at the video embedded below, but be sure to stick around for some thoughts below.


 

The demos are definitely neat, but I’m…

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

How To: upgrade RAM in the Mini 1000


I’m writing this post for target users of the Mini 1000 MIE[link]; those that might not have done a RAM upgrade before. And of course anyone who might be Googling “how to open the RAM door on the mini 1000″…

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Samsung SWD-M100 MID. Uber-Smartphone or PocketPC?

A surprise from Samsung at their Mobile World Congress WiMax display. The SWD-M100 MID running Windows Mobile indicating that they’ve chosen an ARM processor for the system. The fact that Opera is also highlighted tells us that this one is…

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Accelerated K12 Mobile Learning: Press Release

This press release continues the series describing school learning efficiency.


The first post described Learning Efficiency Scale; the second, Learning Efficiency Rating of Instruction; the third, Rationed Learning Interview; and the fourth, Learning Efficiency Scale Revision Update.


Readers should review comments at the beginning of previous posts for background about learning efficiency.


Thanks, Anonymous, for sending me a copy of this embargoed press release! I’ll post it without further comment. Here goes:



LANDGRANT UNIVERSITY, Office of Information, EduChoice Publications


CONTACT: O. N. Lyne, Information Officer


PRESS RELEASE: EMBARGOED UNTIL 04-07-2012 12:00 AM EDT


Normsville, CA Dr. W. E. Doynit, Superintendent of Normsville Unified Public School District (NUPSD), received approval last night from the school board to open New Era (charter) School Initiative (NESI) in Fall, 2013.


This approval followed a finding of support by the regional school accrediting agency.


The Normsville board also approved a contract with Landgrant University to provide supporting academic and evaluation services for this initiative. The university’s Childrens Center for Research on Mobile Learning will fulfill this obligation as well as coordinate efforts between NESI and software developers and publishers as well as hardware manufacturers.


NESI will offer a six academic year K12 curriculum. That means that students entering school at six years of age could earn a high school diploma by age 12. This rarely happens in public or private schools.


Instruction will follow a six cycle spiral curriculum with content that exceeds minimum state learning standards for high school graduation. Educators have monitored the development of this curriculum and its related instructional practices since they emerged into public view in the middle 1960s at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.


The number of students to open the school was not disclosed. School administrators estimate that 500 students will sign up to enroll across the 13 grades.


Parts of the NESI academic package have been available through commercial publishers since the late 1960s. Their introduction online in 2009 of parts of this instruction spurred the imagination of Doynit to begin planning NESI. Their attraction has been the relative efficiency of student learning.


Other NESI parts have subsequently demonstrated their utility for learning efficiency.


“Why should any student spend time waiting for slower students to complete any assignment?” Doynit asked in response to a board member’s question during the meeting. “NESI will demonstrate that more students will learn more in less time for less cost than through our regular school practices.”


“One of the stark realities in schools is that students respond to things in their own immediate best interest. Let’s give them a choice they can see and accept that’s also consistent with their world outside of school. They learn more when they see prompt individual consequences for academic behavior, and that’s what NESI curricula and instruction offers,” Doynit concluded.


The introduction of the Tablet PC in 2002 into schools has demonstrated that students and teachers learn quickly how to increase individual learning efficiency beyond that accomplished through conventional group and project based instruction.


Educators know that research shows that students in parts of NESI programs learn more in less time than through regular instruction with teacher made and most commercial learning materials.


The district estimates that the total NESI program for each student will cost 25 to 50 percent less than regularly budgeted items for comparable school time.


“I voted for this project,” said Board member Ernest K. R. Full, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, “because it offers a state-of-the-art way for students to distinguish themselves academically at their own learning pace. That’s a valuable choice that public schools should allow every student to make without penalty.”


Each student will receive a Tablet or other mobile PC upon enrollment in NESI. They will use it at school and home to complete school assignments.


They will trade in their equipment for a new one every two years in order to continue using state-of-the-art communication equipment for learning. NUPSD will provide a maintenance and support program as do many private schools that require similar equipment.


Landgrant University has accept a relatively few rising teenagers as undergraduates. They did not pose unexpected problems.


Based on that experience, the university has appointed a joint faculty and administrative committee to guide preparation for an increased number of young undergraduates in the future.


“We will be prepared for them when they apply,” commented Dr. G. O. Forit, University President.


Interest in NESI among board members grew out of the university’s report Rationed Learning: A Conspiracy of “Yes, but … 2002 – 2012."


“We concluded,” said Dr. Gather Fisher, a senior research associate on the project, “that the ideological divide among educators about uses of mobile personal computers in classrooms distributed learning among students according to their use of advanced electronic communication technology in and out of schools.”


Board members listened to opposition from local teachers, their unions, and local community members to the proposal, but decided on a split vote of five to four to authorize the planners of NESI to proceed according to their proposal work plan.



Children’s Research Center for Mobile Learning

Landgrant University. Rationed Learning: A Conspiracy of “Yes, but … 2002-2012”.




Thursday, February 12, 2009

PCWorld pitches MID against laptop and mobile phone. (Bzzzt!)

Michael Gartenberg puts an argument forward against MIDs in an article over at PCWorld today but I’ve read his article through at least three times now and I dont get it. Michael says that consumers are willing to carry three…

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

ISSC Panel skeptical about MIDs

There are some classic quotes on this article over at EETimes. It looks like Intel didnt turn up for a panel on MIDs and the competition took the chance to highligh the major issues.


“MIDs were conceived by Intel because they…

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Mobile Internet, Cloud, Netbooks and Energy Efficiency: Fave trends at CeBIT 2009.

Could there be a clearer indicator that a mobile, Internet-connected, cloud-centric, all-day device is what everyone is expecting?


About 300 Journalists attending a press conference in January chose their top themes for CeBIT 2009 and here’s how the results came out.…

Monday, February 9, 2009

ARCHOS to merge Android and Media Stack in voice-enabled MID

This could be a great move for Andriod, TI and Archos as thay are getting together to build what could be a very interesting MID. A true crossover smartphone/web/PMP device. It will combine the Archos’ PMP charachteristics, its powerful OMAP…

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Who is the target audience for the HP Mini 1000 MIE?


After a short phone meeting with some of the guys who worked on the HP Mini 1000 MIE, it was clear that they had a difference target audience in mind than the XP version of the netbook.


Though the Mini 1000…

Saturday, February 7, 2009

‘Netbook’ banned from Google ad network

This appears to be a significant step forward for Psion in their quest to recover and protect their ‘netbook’ brand and a massive consideration for those running their business in this sector. According to Psion, Google have researched and accept…

Friday, February 6, 2009

HP Mini 1000 MIE unboxing and first thoughts

HP has been kind enough to send us a Mini 1000 MIE (Mobile Internet Edition) [Portal page] which is the HP Mini 1000 netbook running a custom Ubuntu interface that is targeted toward consumers that need a simple computing experience.…

Thursday, February 5, 2009

8 mobile computing devices and how I use them.

From the Nokia N82 to the Medion Akoya Mini Netbook. Its hard to imagine you can fit 6 more computing devices in the middle. Here’s the line-up of devices at UMPCPortal at the moment and in this 10 minute video…

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

10" Acer Aspire One inches closer to reality


It seems like we’ve known about the upcoming 10″ netbook from Acer for a while, but things just got a little bit more official. Netbook3G has found details about Acer’s second netbook at the FCC. Among the images are plenty of…

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Toshiba TG01 Snapdragon smartphone, MID, whatever.

Maybe 50% of people will be calling this a MID?


News is breaking about a new 4.1 inch smartphone (same screen size and res as the Nokia N810) that will be running on the Snapdragon platform from Qualcomm.


It’s another cross-over between…

Monday, February 2, 2009

UMPCs. Add WWAN, Sell more!

I have no problem agreeing with what InStat are saying in their latest report. "Embedding a wide-area wireless modem into devices addresses the frustration many users have with the coverage of Wi-Fi." For me, wireless wan connectivity is an absolute…