Learning by doing: Prezi presentations

Last session we worked in teams and created six Prezi presentations on different topics, all related to technology and business. For most of you, Prezi was a new tool; although it had been introduced by Edgar in an earlier session, not everyone gave it a try. That's why we did this activity. As we commented in class, the objectives were several: to "learn how to learn" to use a new tool using a hands-on approach; to work in teams on a topic with a very tight deadline; to assign tasks and manage them; and, of course, to learn a little more about Prezi.

In this thread, add a comment explaining your experience working with this apllcation, and what you learned from this activity.

Wearable Mobile Device: Your hand is your new phone

Since the hand is the "most basic communication method," why not transform it into a cellphone? That's what designer Sunman Kwon has developed in this spectacular wearable mobile device for superior chatting purpose. It's like witnessing something from a sci-fi movie. It includes: Analogous to 3,5G, 4G communication standard, this device, worn on hand, lets the user communicate with utmost ease. It employs the inbred input method ‘finger joint‘ for simplified controls. Each finger joint except the thumb makes for the 12 buttons along with the ‘knuckle button’ utilizing the cell phone’s 3X4 keypad. That’s simply ingenious! Just goes to show you that you don't need umpteen millions of dollars to create something unique.

Could this potentially be the end of cell phones as we know it?

Crystal World

LG GD900 Crystal

The GD900 Crystal is a slider phone with a 3-inch touch screen, and a transparent keypad that lights up when opened. But it's more than just gimmicky, see-through goodness--the keypad is a touch-sensitive controller, too. That means you can use it to move through menus, navigate the Web, and even write using handwriting recognition.

LG has thrown in gesture support too, so you can launch applications with a swipe around the keypad. This includes multitouch, as does the main display, so you can pinch your fingers to zoom in to a photo or map.
If this is a touch-happy overload, you can also use it normally, to dial phone calls, and there's vibrating feedback to let you know when you've hit the flat numbers.

So what's the point of having two touch screens? The reasoning goes that if you're basking in the glory of the GD900's screen--watching a video, for example--you don't want to block the action by waving your sausage fingers over the screen to zoom or rewind. And it's pretty freaking cool, too.
The GD900 uses the same S-class user interface we've seen on the LG Arena. One of our biggest complaints about the Arena was that the touch screen wasn't as responsive as we'd like, but based on the phones we tried, it's running with more vim and vigor on the GD900. The little spinning cube is still useless, but there are about five different ways to access each feature, and adding gestures means there should be a user-interface option for every user, if they can be bothered to learn them all.
We found gestures and handwriting recognition were accurate and responsive, and although we wouldn't use it for long texts, we could see handwriting coming in handy when you want to enter a few words in a Web form without fiddling with predictive text on the alphanumeric keypad.
Like the Arena, the transparent handset is no slouch when it comes to features. There's also an 8-megapixel camera, expandable memory up to 32GB, Wi-Fi, and HSDPA for speedy Web surfing.

take a look of this video get to know more about LG GD 900







Sony Ericsson Pureness

Following the launch of the first crystal phone of LG, Sony Ericsson has also put their conceptual design into reality.

The Pureness is one of those crazy brand statements where a company does something just because it can. In this case, it's making a transparent-screen phone. The phone's screen is gray on clear, a monochrome 1.8-inch display that's actually quite readable in person and looks absolutely terrific outdoors.

However, this phone costs $1000, it's kind of weird.

Crystal phone in the future

Samsung AMOLED notebook

Samsung could be the first to introduce a production notebook with a transparent display.

After showing a 14-inch see-through AMOLED screen at CES this year, the Korean company now says that testing suggests the PC could be in shops within the next 12 months. Sullivan expects that "all" Samsung's AV hardware could use the technology soon.
The company has already tested out transparent AMOLEDs on a small scale with the IceTouch, a media player with a 2-inch touchscreen. Until now, such displays have often been cost-prohibitive due to the price of an AMOLED, but economies of scale have grown to make at least smaller screens reasonable. The IceTouch should sell in the US for about $378 within the first half of this year.


AMOLEDs by themselves are considered an advantage over LCD through their thinness, their color accuracy and the absence of an energy-hungry backlight. Transparency is likely to be just a cosmetic feature at first, but it allows for notebooks, players and phones that lift the isolation of the user and helps handheld users see what's in view.

Using transparent AMOLED display technology can give more advantages to LCD not just because it has thinness amount but also could view picture with high color accurancy and the absence of an energy- hungry backlight.

Well, to find out the real performance of Samsung AMOLED notebook, we must wait till they officially release them for worldwide market this year.





Will you join the crystal world?

PUMA PHONE

Some of us heard the rumor, and now it is finally become true. Puma has joined with Sagem to create the PUMA PHONE. This is a lightweight little phone that can boost an integrated solar cell for charging and charge indicator to let you know how you are doing on battery. The phone's 2.8inch capacitive touchscreen, plus a 3.2 megapixel cam with LED flash and a 6x zoom makes this phone quite attractive and interesting to have. It also provides users with GPS, a compass and a geotagging. Since it is a ¨Sporty Phone¨ it also features a pedometer, stopwatch and GPS tracker. If you like, you can also strap the phone around your arm when you are on the go! So, if you are into an active livestyle this phone sure suits you!

PRESS RELEASE INFO:

¨The PUMA PHONE is an active smartphone. Beyond internet, messaging, and gps localization capabilities, solar charging, video calling and Bluetooth photo sharing are all designed to make the device engaging and responding to consumers requirements. The spin and scratch music player and integrated radio make the device a connected companion. Designed around an active lifestyle, its sleek shape factor makes it a wearable fashion accessory.
Key features of the PUMA PHONE include:

- Integrated solar cell, with charge indicator
- Touchscreen: 2.8 inch thumbable screen with 240 x 320 QVGA resolution
and TFT wide viewing angle
- Camera: 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash and x6 zoom; Bluetooth
photo sharing
- Video: VGA video call camera; full screen video playback, with video
recording and streaming and progressive video download
- Music: wide range of music formats with playlist support and FM radio
- Localisation: GPS, compass, geotagging, routing and mapping
- Sports: pedometer, GPS tracker and stopwatch
- Internet: Open internet browsing, with WAP Push
- Messaging: Mobile email client and mobile web mail notification;
instant messaging; MMS and SMS
- HSPA and W-CDMA/EDGE/GPRS/GSM connectivity; Bluetooth; USB 2.0
- Talk time up to 5 hours with 350 hours stand-by time; video call time
140 minutes; music player time 24 hours; video player time 5 hours
- Tablet form factor; 115g weight and dimensions of 102mm x 56mm x 13mm

"Just as PUMA is unlike any other sportlifestyle company out there, the PUMA PHONE is unlike any mobile phone on the market," said Jochen Zeitz, CEO of PUMA. "We want to engage with our community in a way that is consistent with everything PUMA stands for. Blending together the influences of sport, lifestyle and fashion, the PUMA PHONE reflects the joy, spontaneity and individuality that the PUMA brand is known for."

Stuff

Here's a little video on the bad side of businesses, creating conditions for consumers to never stop consume and just generate profits.

Future of the business world? Might it be sustainability?100% renewability?

What can you find in an damaged system? My answer is nothing else but possibility and progress.

Thanks for the link Antoine

5 Twitter Stars you've never heard of!

So i found this on CNN a while ago, and i thought this might be interesting for all the Twitteres and the ones that still have to discover it!

(CNN) -- Sure, everyone knows that Oprah, Shaq and Ashton Kutcher are huge on Twitter. They're famous -- they should be huge on Twitter.

But Heather Armstrong? John Dickerson? Adventure Girl? These people can stroll unmolested through a paparazzi convention, and yet each has more than 1.2 million Twitter followers -- enough to rank them in the top 200 overall and more than Stephen Colbert, Snoop Dogg or Paris Hilton.

To thrive on the popular micro-blogging site, celebrity isn't always enough. You also must have something to say.

"You can't be Moses shouting down the mountain on Twitter," says Brandon Mendelson, a blogger who has amassed almost a million Twitter followers. "You need to be that friend everyone wants to hang out with."

Here's a look at five Twitterers you may not have heard of. They don't show up in the tabloids or on Leno. But they have the power, through the viral effect of their retweets, to make things happen, and maybe even nudge the national conversation a little.

Che-

I think this is pretty interesting because its basically comepletly "normal" people that have something to say, and they just use a completly different channel. While some people write books and others make music these guys jsut Tweet, sure its not considered an "Art" but it does have an impact on millions of people as we can see!

Heres the Link for whoever wants to read more:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/26/unknown.twitter.stars/index.html

Google Buzz

Google Buzz is a social network and sharing product built by Google. Based within Google Profiles, Buzz offers a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. Updates from Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter can also be automatically imported into a Buzz stream. Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.

Buzz Features include:

Buzz Online:

• Auto-following – Buzz allows users can auto-follow the people you email and chat with the most
• Rich, fast sharing experience – Buzz uses Gmail UI and keyboard shortcuts easing the transition for some users. Buzz also focuses on sharing media (video, images, etc)
• Public and private sharing – Buzz includes both public and private sharing. Some things Google can index, but also private messages
• Inbox integration – Buzz integrates with a users inbox to keep it the center for communication
• Just the good stuff – Buzz filters noise to keep users from being flooded with too much information
• Public things are published to a user’s followers and Google Profile
• Buzz objects are conversations and appear in a user’s inbox
• Comments on Buzz objects arrive in realtime
• Autocomplete @ replies
• Recommended Buzz – suggests friends of friends and others as people to follow, and tells the user why they were suggested
• 
  

Buzz Mobile:

• Detect location using GPS
• Suggest places the user might be at
• Voice input available
• Mobile web app that works on Android or the iPhone

Fujitsu iPad vs. the Apple iPad

Looks like apple has done a strategical move here, issuing the iPad right after fujitsu's trademark had expired. As this is what we study in law, might be an interesting case.

Masahiro Yamane, PR head at Fujitsu, made an astonishing assertion by saying he did not believe the rights to the iPad trademark would belong to Apple. He outlined that Fujitsu had applied for an iPad trademark as early as in 2003 and also that its current business PDA matches perfectly the mobile communicator description used by Apple. Although Fujitsu has lost its trademark since spring this year, the company did not loose hope to use the name.

Yamane told the New York Times that the name iPad belongs to Fujitsu. The company is consulting its lawyers to see what could be done, although it seems that without the trademark there is not much legal basis to get satisfaction. In June, Fujitsu re-applied for the trademark but has been immediately contested by Apple at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Fujitsu neither can claim prior use of the trademark as another company, named Mag-Tech, had already applied for it. Apple has time until the end of this month to file eventual formal objection to Fujitsu’s trademark.

Link here!