I’ve written previously on this blog about annotating PowerPoint slides and how you can use tablet PCs to take notes. Earlier today, Dennis O’Reilly wrote a similar article about the joys of marking-up Word documents in ink and of sending longhand e-mail messages. It makes an interesting read and, as expected, continues to make me jealous of the people who already have tablet PCs. Soon, soon…
The Collective for Social Science Research’s Dr. Kaiser Bengali recently discussed Pakistan’s recent economic performance with The News on Sunday. It makes and interesting read and, thanks to the basic grounding I got in macroeconomics in my MBA, makes sense too.
Earlier today, GBM’s Matt Faulkner did a live un-boxing of the Toshiba M700 tablet PC (via Ustream). What was really cool, though, was that I took part in it by asking Matt some questions which he then answered. And though that’s not quite as cool as having access to the M700 myself, it was certainly better than nothing. (Matt: if you read this, thanks a million.)
I’m now almost a hundred percent certain that this’ll be the tablet PC that I buy for myself a few months from now. The question I now need to answer is: what hardware configuration do I go for? Unfortunately, that doesn’t have an easy answer.
As Faulkner mentioned in his video, for example, going from the 2.4Ghz to the 2.6Ghz processor actually increases the price of the tablet by about US$300. On the other hand, when you went from the 2.2Ghz to the 2.4Ghz, that was only a US$100 price increase. I wonder, then, how much of a difference that additional 0.2GHz (to get to 2.6GHz) actually makes. This is something I need to investigate.
I also need to investigate Turbo Memory some more (the current consensus seems to be that it’s not worth it) and I wonder whether it’s worth it to get 4GB or RAM (or 3GB, or should I just stick with 3GB?). Fortunately, those questions — and their answers — don’t need to be addressed for another six months or so. And by then, things might be different (and someone may already have answered them).
Meanwhile, Aaron Hall just got his hands on the M700 and he’s posted a review of it on his blog.
So yesterday (Australia Day 2008), Nadia and I watched The Police live in concert at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds (MCG).
Nadia’s already written one blog post about it — and I suspect she’s going to write one or two more — so go there for most of the concert information. I’m just here to upload a few photographs. Oh, and for completeness’ sake, to document the complete set list:
Coming back to the photographs, here’s a photo of one the opening acts, Fiction Plane, performing (not that you can see the band clearly, but still). This is a couple of hours before The Police started their set, by the way, which is why it’s still light out. I took a photo of Fergie’s performance as well, but that came out all blurry.
Impressive stage, isn’t it? And it’s not even lit up yet! Here’s what it looked like from the side. Note the threatening rain clouds.
The Met Office had predicted thunderstorms for that evening but fortunately, other than it being a humid night, there wasn’t any rain in that part of the city.
Finally, here’s a photo taken during the first song (Message in a Bottle).
I didn’t take too many photographs after that, and the few that I did take aren’t all that good. That’s okay, though: I was there to watch and enjoy the show, not document it!
All in all, it was a fabulous concert. And, once it’s up, I’ll post a link to the concert review that The Age will inevitable publish.
Deputy Dog has a list of 10 Stunning Ultra-Geeky Home Cinemas. Being a geek myself, I fully intend to build me one of those as soon as I can afford it — though I probably won’t go as far as these people have. Mine will based on the bridge of the Enterprise D, of course — a bit like #5 on the list — but it’ll be a lot simpler and a lot more practical. Something like this, maybe:
Check back with me in about five years and I’ll let you know how it turned out :)
The Toshiba M700 — currently my first choice tablet PC — is now available in Australia from various Toshiba Resellers. Unfortunately, that’s an off-the-shelf unit that is less powerful, non-configurable (except for a RAM upgrade), and higher priced than the models available in the US.
Fortunately, you don’t have to order it from there. Thanks to the good folk at Tablet PC Review forums, I’ve discovered that you can order a higher spec-ed machine from the US and have it shipped to Australia for a considerably lower price from Portable One.
Also on those forums is a good hands-on comparison between the Fujitsu T4220 and the Toshiba M700 — one in which the Toshiba comes out in front. Mostly covered in that comparison are the five reasons why the Toshiba has recently trumped the Fujitsu as my first choice tablet PC: the M700 has (1) a faster processor, (2) a wide-screen display, (3) a backlit LCD display, (4) a touch screen, and (5) the option to upgrade to a 7,200 RPM hard drive. The inclusion of a webcam is a bonus.
Next Saturday Nadia and I will watch The Police live in concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). While looking for news, information, set lists, and videos of the current tour I found two interesting things:
Tracking Tours
First, the place to go to for the low down on The Police’s 2007-2008 tour is this blog. It contains set lists, reviews, and videos and is, basically, the perfect way for us to get all psyched-up for the upcoming concert.
While I was there, by the way, I discovered that other bands’ tours have been documented in a similar fashion. And after going through those sites, I now really want to go to a Bruce Springsteen concert as well.
Wolfgang’s Vault
Second I discovered…well, a gold mine of live music in the form of Wolfgang’s Vault, the largest online collection of historical concert recordings (and musician interviews). Ranging from concerts performed between 1960 and the late 1980s (so far), the Vault lets you stream thousands of hours of audio for free over the Internet (though you need to register with the site first) and the number of artists up there is immense. I’ve just spent the last couple of hours listening to Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Police, Peter Gabriel, and Tracy Chapman to name just a few. This site is awesome! :)
FYI: Bill Graham (originally, Wolfgang Grajonca, hence the nickname which then became the site’s name) was a music promoter who virtually invented the modern concert business in the 1960s [1]. Graham died in 1991 and, in 2003, an entrepreneur by the name of Bill Sagan bought Graham’s entire archive of music and memorabilia for over $5m. He’s since starting putting all of the audio bits online (legally, of course) where anyone can access it. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.
If there’s only one website you visit this week — and assuming you’re a big music fan — make sure it’s this one.
There’s an article on Zeb and Haniya in this week’s Newsweek! And their long-awaited album is out next month :)
Tablet PC Review’s Tiffany Boggs has reviewed the HP tx2000 tablet PC and she likes it:
The tx2000 is going to be a hit with all the mainstream users. HP gave this model just what it needed. The active digitizer and touchscreen make this a true Tablet PC now, but it still maintains the entertainment notebook status unlike any other model on the market at this time.
I would agree with her completely: it sounds like a really cool machine. And yet…and yet, it is out of the running as the tablet PC that I will buy [1]. Why? Because it meets one of my deal-breaker conditions: no Page Up and Page Down keys on the bottom right hand side of the keyboard:
(Picture from the Tablet PC Review, er, review mentioned above)
And this from a wide screen laptop!
Why is this a deal-breaker for me? Because working with text documents (i.e. doing lots of typing) is one of my primary activities on my laptop and I simply cannot work without the Page Up and Page Down keys on the bottom right hand side of the keyboard (or even in a vertical line along right hand side). I know I can’t because I tried, with little success, for about a year on a laptop that I got from work. And so there it is: one more tablet PC eliminated from the running.
By the way, the other keyboard problem that has always irritated me, but I’ve found that I can adjust to, is having the Function key as the bottom leftmost key. I much prefer having the Control key in that corner, with the Function key immediately to its right — the way it is in the tx2000 keyboard, in fact — but I can live with it not being that way.
I’m also worried about having to use a track stick (like in the Lenovo X61t) instead of a track pad — since I’ve never used a track stick for an extended period of time before — but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. As it is, I generally use a separate optical mouse most of the time anyway. The issue only comes up now because I expect to be a lot more mobile with my tablet PC and so I won’t have space to use the separate mouse (and I can’t use my finger or the pen all the time either).
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[1] I’m nearing the end of my MBA (I graduate exactly four months from today) and, assuming I get a job within a month of graduating, it is highly likely that I will be seriously researching and preparing to purchase a tablet PC for myself about six months from now! :)
The Emergency Times is reporting that popular free blogging sites like Blogspot/Blogger and WordPress have been banned in Pakistan. That means those URLs have been blocked at the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), which is the only point of contact that almost all Pakistanis have with the ‘net since all ISPs are required to route their traffic through it. For more on this, check out the Wikipedia article: Internet Censorship in Pakistan.
Of course, as anyone who is familiar with the Internet knows, blocking (or filtering) URLs in that way is pretty much useless. There are always workarounds. In fact, The Emergency Times lists two:
And there are many, many more. Just search for “anonymizer” on any search engine.