First Thought Controlled Prosthetic Arm Ready For Production

Christian Kandlbauer, the first man in Europe to have a thought-controlled prosthetic arm installed which is developed by a German company, Otto Bock Healthcare. The arm makes use a technology called TMR (targeted muscle reinnervation) where nerves that once controlled a lost limb are used to control a prosthesis.

Source: BCC

HRP-4C

With height of 158cm and weigh 43kg, HRP-4C reassembles the size of an average Japan girl. Sooner in the future, these humanoid robots will appear everywhere. They can be workers or even companions of many singles.

The Fourth Element in Electronics - Memristor

Researchers said that the fourth basic element (the first three are resistor, capacitor and inductor) has been found - it is called memristor.

It can remember the amount of charge flowed through it after power is switched off.

In short run, it can be used to build competitor of flash. It will happen in coming few years.

In long run, it can replace transistor as the major building block of chips.

In future, storage and processing will be in the same device. But it will only happen after a decade.

The discovery of memristor allows Moore's Law to continue as researchers are hitting the wall with transistors. Memristors allow them to continue to pack more components into the chips.

iPad is here

iPad is being shipped and now in the hands of many Apple-fans.

PCMag: Apple iPad video review from PCMag.com Reviews on Vimeo.

This is a super-fan who bought all major accessories !

There are 30,000 purchases on the first day of the launch on 3/4/10

A university even provides iPad to all new students.

References:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/05/apple-ipad-launch-weekend-roundup/

Let's Dance, Hexapod !

In addition to dance, the hexapod can also do arts.

and writing !!!!

Intel's New Atom Motherboard - D510MO

My old PC (Shuttle XPC SB61G2) was down, after serving me for more than five years.

I am a SFF addict so when I considered to buy a new one, it is a basic requirement. After the initial experience of atom PCs last year in working environment, I decided to build one for myself using Intel's latest Atom motherboard D510MO. My idea is to dispel the myth that Atom CPU is under power and not worth to take a look.

My initial testing system uses 2GB 800 DDR2 RAM and my existing 160GB Hitachi SATA hard-disk. I had also installed Windows 7 Home Premium and used Windows Experience Index as the first assessment tool.

Here is the summary (with the index from my old PC for comparison)

Tests	Shuttle XPC (32-bit)	Atom (32-bit)	Atom (64-bit)
Processor	3.2	3.4	3.4
Memory (RAM)	4.0	4.6	4.5
Graphics	3.4	2.9	3.2
Gaming Graphics	3.4	3.0	3.1
Primary Hard disk	5.3	5.3	5.3
Overall	3.2	2.9	3.1

As I transferred the harddisk to the new system, the primary hard disk performance is the same as expected.

I also added a second hand ATI Radeon display card in my old PC while the integrated graphic is used in D510MO, the performance of both Graphics and Gaming Graphics are thus inferior in the Atom box.

But excluding these two scores (you can always buy a better PCIe display with a few hundred), both the processor and RAM (DDR2 vs DDR) indexes are better in the Atom.

So it is safe to say that, Atom is at least as powerful as a P4 system (with HT), which was common when we are using Windows XP (date back to 2001). If Windows 7 works even better than Windows XP (given enough RAM), we should have a very workable system based on Atom processor.

Microsoft has also greatly improved their office suite. I found Office 2010 beta running smoothly in my new system.

Cost Considerations

Consider that I bought my old P4 bare-bone with more than HK$4,300 while I can get my Atom bare-bone (motherboard+RAM+case+PSU) with less than HK$1,500, it is definitely a very good deal for non-heavy users/gamers.

But you can probably get a system with double performance with the HK$4,000+ price tag like Dell Inspiron 560s :

Intel(R) Core2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz, 1066MHz, 3MB)

4GB DDR3 SDRM (2X2GB, 1066MHz)

640GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive with Native Command Queuing

16x DVD+/-RW Drive

Excluding the additional RAM (HK$300), 640GB HD (HK$500), DVD (HK$200) and the Windows OEM license (HK$700). It is around HK$2,300. So building a system like mine can only save you HK$800+.

It is not a big deal but if you have some usable parts want to recycle, it is still worth consideration:

Intel (R) Core 2 Duo E7500 ----- HK$800

2GB DDR3 (1066MHz) ----------- HK$415

A motherboard ----------------- ~HK$700

Total ~ HK$2,000

D510MO ------------------------ HK$740

2GB DDR2 (800MHz) ------------- HK$330

Total ~ HK$1,070

There is still around HK$900 saving (which is around 50% of the cost) which can be used to add more RAM or a larger harddisk to keep your photos.

At least you can a more green PC : )

Apple iPad

The greatest news in IT this month (or even throughout 2010) is Apple's iPad.

Not just it is another game-changing device made by Apple, but also a new series of debate between Apple's followers and PC ones.

Some comments say that the new device is merely a scaled up iPod. Others said that it lacks a lot of features like camera, SD card slot, multi-tasking, support of Adobe Flash. Some even complain it is 4:3 rather than 16:9 and it only allows applications, musics, movies and lately books to be downloaded from Apple's controlled e-shops.

All these facts are true but those mentioned these issues (or repeated others' comments) do not really understand the rationales behind these 'missing' features.

Those people will certainly complain their electronic cookers lacking of a SD slot for storing their custom recipes or access to internet so that they can browse the net while cooking in the kitchen.

When we judge a product, we need to know the intended purposes of it. We also need to aware the position of the product in the spectrum of existing products.

iPad is not just an enhanced version of iPhone nor a more affordable version of MacBook / MacBook Pro. As mentioned by Steve Jobs, it is something between them. It will be a new class of device.

iPad will be the netbooks killer. It fulfills what netbooks failed to do.

What you expected from your netbook ?

Higher portability than an ordinary laptop ? iPad weighs only 1.5 pound. Better than many existing netbooks in the market.

Quick start up time ? many netbooks come with shortcut solutions based on Intel's Moblin OS so that you can power up your netbook and go to the internet in matters of seconds to read your urgent mails in a 10" LCD screen. Does it sound prefect ? iPad can wake immediately and do the same thing as it is based on iPhone OS.

You don't need to boot your iPhone to answer a call. It always stands by. Same as iPad. Its battery lasts for a month in standby mode but I think your netbook's battery will dry out within a few days if you put it in sleep mode, rather than power it off.

Surf the net anywhere ?

iPad has 802.11n and also supports 3G (3G model only). Plus a multi-touch XGA LED backlight IPS LCD which leaves all netbooks in dust.

Do Video Chatting with your Buddies ?

Sorry man, I never get a satisfactory video chat experience in PC world. They are all craps. A truly working solution requires better internet connection speed (I mean the real speed, not the claimed speed) and/or even hardware acceleration.

I guess that most people complain this have never really tried video chatting by themselves. You can only see this type of communications in TV shows or movies. IMHO, the net is not really ready for this yet. When it was, you will get a iPad with camera then.

Download photos from your digital camera during your trip ?

Netbooks are light-weigh and cheap. You wouldn't lose too much when they are stolen or broken during your trips. But I think a digit wallet will do a much better than a notebook. Some of them even allow you to play back on a TV in your hotel. They are more portable than a netbook yet have big hard disks as well.

iPad can do it as well though it requires you to purchase a separated SD (or USB) reader which connect to the 30-pin connector of the iPad. But as it has only 16GB-64GB flash memory, I will prefer buy several SDHC (say 32GB). It is more handy. If you take a 1MB photos, a 32GB SDHC can keep 32,000 photos. If you can take a thousand photos per day, it lasts for a month. Why bother copying them to your netbook ?

In addition, SDHC is more reliable than a netbook. It can survive from an accident drop but not a netbook.

Share Photos (and other documents) with Others During Some Gathering ?

If you are photographer, it is assumed that you have a desktop computer already. When you bring your photos home, you will probably download them directly into the desktop for backup.

If you want to share them during a gathering, you will transfer the photos to your iPad thru WIFI (or the bundled cable). You don't need to use a SD reader to copy the photos as iPad supports 802.11n which is fast enough to fill up your iPad in a comparative time frame as SDHC.

If you are using a mac, you can easily download selected events into your iPad and go.

Attend Training / Conference / Meeting to Take Notes / Conduct a Presentation ?

You can run iWork in iPad. Though Pages may not be as powerful as Microsoft Word, it is sufficient to take notes and open Word documents. Keynote is also a powerful presentation tool. Steve Jobs uses it in every presentations.

Continue the list by yourself honestly and you will get my point.

OK. Why I need a iPad when I have a iPhone ?

1. You can run more demanding software in iPad such as iWork suite. It doesn't make any sense to me to edit a Word document in a 3.5" screen. But it does when you have a 10" XGA LCD with you. It is possible to view the whole page without a magnifying glass as you get a 1024 x 768 resolution on par with your PC with 15" LCD (OK, I know many people using 24" now and use SXGA or higher).

2. Full desktop experience. With it's XGA resolution, many applications can be implemented and run in iPad. Do you know that there are already 140,000 applications written for iPhone ? With its 1GHz CPU and powerful graphic engine, you can do many things with it.

3. e-Book Reading. Don't tell me that you really read books in your iPhone regularly. It definitely can. But I would consider it is an inefficient way to read books with a 3.5" screen unless you don't have alternatives.

You are just killing your eyes. You can only read a few lines. If the book has illustrations, diagrams, charts or tables, you will definitely run out of pixels.

This kind of usage just make you feel more comfortable to spend extra bucks on buying a smartphone. That is why there is a room for Amazon Kindle / Kindle DX.

But iPad will change the game. Kindle and Kindle DX is black and white with a slower CPU.

iPad is more general purpose than them. You cannot play games in Kindle as it is designed to be a book reader which uses a minimal power during reading.

I envision one day in the future that all people will go paperless like this person. Devices like iPad is a facilitator to a practical paperless world.

Think about the future that every students have a iPad which weigh only 1.5 pound (or less in future models) and go to their colleagues and universities.

Think about the future that every staff in companies go to meetings with only their iPads (and stylus if you prefer. There are styluses specific for iPhone's LCD if you don't like to jot notes with your fingers). Any mails, reports, quotations or every online information about their companies are readily available at their finger tips.

Think about the road warriors bringing along iPads to visit their clients rather than a 3-pound laptops. Showing the images of their products by passing the iPad rather than a wrist-breaking notebook to their clients.

The device will get lighter and lighter as the technologies advanced. Its form factor will eventually replace netbooks (or even notebooks in some situations)

Its core will get more computing power when the ARM architecture getting more cores while consuming less power. It is a speculation that the Apple's A4 CPU has four cores.

This is the true "Information At Your Finger Tips" envisioned by Bill Gates more than ten years ago.

With the iTune Store, iPad will even have more applications than a Mac (or even PC in the future).

Just in the digit camera market, it is those consumer level models made film cameras obsolete rather than those DSLRs used by professionals, iPad is a kind of products that will bring computing to an even larger population and deeper in their daily lives.

I have a high expectation on this product and will be one in the line to buy one when it is available in my area. I am just wondering which model will suit me best.

When Arduino meets Initial D

This impressive self-balancing water tray can keep drinks from spilling while driving in a car. It is built using Arduino platform. Now everyone can drive an AE86 and try drifting !