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Stay Cool with USB gadget fans

The Thanko USB 2.0 Fan with USB 2.0 HUB comes with 4 USB 2.0 ports:

 

The Thanko USB Fan with Card Reader reads CF, MD, SM, MS, SD, MMC and MS-PRO: 

Both are powered by the USB cable and cost $49. The only problem I can see is the weight. 320g (0.5 pounds) for the card reader, and 280g (0.6 pounds) for the hub make them perfect for the office but too big to bring along if your bag is as full as mine.

I personally prefer this basic USB powered fan. It is tiny, only costs 9.90 euro and comes with a handy case:

Via [I4U News]

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Access Wikipedia from a PDA using Wapedia

I use Wikipedia a lot. Mostly to link to terms I use in my posts but also to look up subjects I am not familiar with. It is one impressive service.

Wapedia, contrary to what the name suggests, gives Wikipedia access from any PDA device, not only WAP devices. I have tried it with a Nokia 6630 (WAP 2.0) as well as a Pocket PC and it works like a charm with both devices. I did not try the more difficult WAP 1.0 devices, like the Nokia 6210, but the pages are short enough to work.

Accessing Wikipedia directly with a mobile device is a disaster. The Nokia 6630 downloaded close to 100kb of data but was only able to display the first few lines (what a ripoff):

Wikimedia needs your help in its US$75,000 fund drive. See our fundraising page for details.
We are over 55% there thanks to all those who have donated so far! Day 4 detail and report (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-February/002355.html)

The Pocket PC is able to display the entire Wikipedia page but it is not user friendly. Skweezer does a good job of rendering wikipedia on PDAs but I prefer the wapedia interface as it is lighter and works on more devices.

Wapedia is fast, free, without ads, and it does what it promises to do: give mobile accesses to wikipedia.

Via  [Pocket PC eBooks Watch - eBook and beyond]

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Cool Tools eBook

I waited a day posting as I wanted to post a review of the Cool Tools eBook, but PayPal decided it doesn't want my password anymore. Some genius added length verification to the password field so it must be between 8 and 20 characters. Mine is 22…

Anyway. The Cool Tools book is the equivalent of the Whole Earth Catalog (Amazon) for cool tools. It is from 2003, so it is a bit dated, but contains some pretty neat stuff. You can check out the the blank & white sample pages on Amazon. It costs $3.50 compared to the $17 of the paper version version and comes in full color with clickable hyperlinks.

I still can't believe I have to change my PayPal password to buy the eBook.

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News 10x10

A picture is worth a thousand word so the idea behind 10x10 is cool. It polls Reuters World News, BBC World Edition and New York Times International News and present a grid with 10 by 10 images showing the top words in the news at the moment:

Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input.

I particularly like the weighted linguistic analysis as it comes up with some creative matches like this image shows:


Michel Jackson linked to the bird flu pandemic… Somehow I am not surprised.

The site maintains an archive so you can either navigate to the hour you are interested in, or follow the rules described in the developers section to get the words and images for any given moment.

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Cool tool: Free PDF generators

Background

Printing reference material is a waste of paper and space so I save useful articles I find on the internet in my own digital knowledge base. With decent backups I am sure I don't loose my “papers“. Printed copies have a tendency to accumulate over the months before I throw most of them away to gain some space. I have tried different formats during the years:

• Save as single file (.mht) file in Internet Explorer


• Print with the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer.


• PDF

In the past I mainly used the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer. It is fast, free and already installed on my computer as it is included in Microsoft Office 2003. Both the Document Image Writer and the MHT file have one big problem: there are no readers for the Pocket PC or other platforms. This is a major issue for me as I want to synchronize important documents like ticket reservations with my Pocket PC instead of bringing along tons of paper.

Finding a PDF solution

The only multi platform option is PDF. Adobe Acrobat costs too much for my use so I have evaluated two free solutions for creating PDFs:

• PDF 995


• Cute PDF

Both solutions install a new printer on your PC so creating PDFs is a snap. No external converters. Just print your document the new printer, specify a file name and you are done.

The PDF995 and CutePDF printers do not go in conflict so I could try them both at the same time. The evaluation went a lot quicker than expected as there are virtually no differences. I suspect they use the same PDF rendering engine as the output of both programs are pretty much identical. The only real difference between the two programs is that PDF995 brings up a couple of Internet Explorer windows with sponsored links.

After using PDF995, and tolerating its sponsored links for a year, I have moved to CutePDF and never look back.

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Top 100 gadgets of all time

MobilePC has posted the list of The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

To qualify for the list:

• It must be smaller than a breadbox


• It has to have electronic and/or moving parts


• It must be a self-contained tool that can be used on its own

I started writing down the list of gadgets I have had at some point in time but quickly gave up 98. PEZ DISPENSER, 90. MAELZEL METRONOME, 89. RUBIK'S CUBE, 81. ZIPPO WINDPROOF LIGHTER, 75. LASER POINTER, ...

The top 10:
10. TIVO SERIES1, 1999
9. ATARI 2600, 1977
8. DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA RIO 300, 1998
7. U.S. ROBOTICS PILOT 1000, 1996
6. CASIO QV-10 DIGITAL CAMERA, 1996
5. CDI MECHANICAL MOUSE MODEL 4-101, 1970
4. MOTOROLA STARTAC, 1996
3. SONY WALKMAN, 1979
2. ZENITH SPACE COMMAND TV REMOTE CONTROL, 1956
1. APPLE POWERBOOK 100, 1991

I am glad to see that the U.S. Robotics Pilot made it to the top 10. That was one cool device!

Via [Pocket PC eBooks Watch - eBook and beyond]

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SanDisk releases the ULTRA II SD PLUS: a SD memory card with built in USB 2.0 support

SanDisk has released the Ultra II SD PLUS (the SD Card with USB connectivity I mentioned earlier)

It works in any SD card slot and comes with a built in USB connector so it can also be used as a USB 2.0 flash drive. No more cables or adapters to forget, just plug it into any USB port. A flashing LED shows when data is being transferred in USB mode.

The Ultra II SD PLUS should hit stores in April and will initially be available in 512MB ($109.99) an 1GB ($149.99) versions and offer write speeds of 9MB/sec and read speeds of 10MB/sec.

Colissimo!