To a laptop…

August 29, 2009 — Daniel

This is my first blog post written from my new laptop, time for an off topic post – a note of thanks to my old tablet PC, retired after almost five years of service.

Tablet PC’s have remained a very small niche area of mobile computing, despite Microsoft’s earlier hopes that the platform would go mainstream. It seemed like touch computing was on a slow decline to extinction, until the recent iPhone success and the current rumours of a forthcoming Mac Tablet (see e.g. AppleInsider, which has been reporting tablet rumours for at least two years). If anything will help revive the fortunes of Windows tablet machines, it will be a better Apple user experience to copy from, or so it seems.

I’m going to reflect here a little on the special features of a tablet that I used and appreciated, and why after 5 years I’m ditching the format to move to a more traditional laptop.

The main uses I made of the tablet features were:

(more…)

Posted in Technology. Tags: . 1 Comment »

PowerPoint is 25

August 19, 2009 — Daniel

Celebrations or a time for sack-cloth and ashes? PowerPoint is 25 and there is a celebratory, fact filled and amusing presentation on the BBC for the big occasion. Things you might not know about PowerPoint include its origins as software for the Apple Mac. Head over to the BBC for more: The Problem With PowerPoint.

Posted in Teaching, Technology. 4 Comments »

Augmented Reality at home

August 19, 2009 — Daniel

Back from vacation… work piled up and overflowing. Just time for a quick post. My last post was a short round up of some handheld Augmented Reality apps, this time a wee mention of a forthcoming Augmented Reality game…

Sony’s EyePet (no, it’s not an affirmative statement from the north of England) is a virtual pet game for the PS3 due out in October this year. This extends the previous EyeToy offerings in allowing a much richer set of augmented reality interactions with your virtual pet. I saw this in action last week when I was along at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, and it was easily the most impressive thing on show (having said that, there were no live demo’s of anything Natal related!).

You can see the official demo below, and from what I saw at EIEF and from other comments and reports its a pretty accurate picture of EyePet in play – what you see here is what you get in the game:

For what it’s worth, I also grabbed a little video of my own – you can see the action on the big screen at the back, while some kids play around with the pet in the foreground. My own video is here on Flickr. This game is almost sure to be a hit – and I expect a lot more interest in console AR on the back of this. Actually, I suspect that Sony London already have some kind of follow-up in the works…

Posted in Augmented Reality, Play. No Comments »
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