APP OF THE WEEK: SNAPDAT LETS THE BUSINESS CARDS FLY
One of the coolest features of the old Palm organizers was that you could beam business cards to other Palms. The iPhone will soon add a similar feature, but in the meantime there’s SnapDat, a free application that lets iPhone users send virtual business cards to other people.
SnapDat has roughly 40 card designs as templates. Users can maintain any number of designs, making sure there are different cards for different occasions. To send a card to another SnapDat user, simply look up their username on the app. Cards sent between SnapDat members are automatically transcribed into your iPhone’s address book. People who aren’t members can also receive cards, which are e-mailed as a standard vCard attachment.
On the virtual card are one-touch buttons to dial, text or e-mail the person. There is also a link to any Web pages they have specified and a button to map the card’s address. You can mark on a map where you met (“Denver sales conference ’08”), and you can “flip” the card over to make a note on the back. (“Bob likes margaritas, but watch out after his third.”)
COMING TO SAVE THE DAY: A MIGHTY MOUSE, INDEED
Talk about the mouse that roared.
It’s not for the casual gamer — or the casual anyone — but the US$500 SpacePilot Pro, arriving courtesy of the Logitech subsidiary 3Dconnexion, is full of wow for designers and engineers who work in three-dimensional computerized environments.
SpacePilot has a built-in color LCD screen, which can display e-mail, messages and other customizable visual information, but the substance of the mouse is to expedite workflow and navigation through 3-D spaces like Autodesk Inventor, Microsoft Virtual Earth and SolidWorks.
Of course, mouse fans will have to have one, if only to gaze at sexy blue lights and the Darth Vader form factor — the buttons on SpacePilot make BMW’s confusing iDrive simple by comparison. The big knob in the center twirls six ways, and it tilts and rolls as well. In Logitech-speak, the device has “six-degrees-of-freedom sensor technology … by lifting, pressing and turning the controller cap, design engineers can easily pan, zoom and rotate without stopping to select commands.”
It adds up to a virtual nirvana for fingers.
HOW TO CAMOUFLAGE YOUR TWEETING AT THE OFFICE
Twitter fans face a hurdle: Can you use it at work without being caught? A British Web developer, Elliott Kember, has solved the problem with Spreadtweet, an easy-to-use Twitter client that looks like a boring Excel spreadsheet.
Each version of the program displays a fake Excel toolbar atop its window. But those buttons don’t work. The real controls are hiding just below as fake column headers: Home, Replies, Direct Messages, etc. On my Apple desktop, Spreadtweet mimics Excel to the point of placing an Excel icon into my iMac’s Dock, so anyone watching from farther away than a cubicle wall will be fooled.
The very existence of Spreadtweet suggests Twitter is headed for the same workplace showdown as Web browsers in 1993, or Facebook in 2006: Is it better to let employees play a bit with the latest Internet fad, or have early adopters found yet another way to goof off on the job? I think the answer is yes.
CAN’T WAIT FOR 3-D TELEVISION? NEITHER CAN PANASONIC
How important is the development of 3-D television? As far as Panasonic is concerned, it’s critical.
According to Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, Panasonic’s general manager for its Blu-ray Disc Group, 3-D television “could be as significant as the transformation from standard- to high-definition TV.”
If 3-D television takes off, it could fall right into the sweet spot for Panasonic’s products: large plasma displays that have received high marks for their picture quality. TV in 3-D looks best on large screens, and Panasonic thinks the technology could significantly increase sales of its sets, as well as a new generation of 3-D Blu-ray players (current Blu-ray players cannot be used to show 3-D content).
Panasonic has been lobbying hard for the adoption of 3-D TV standards by the end of this year, so that it can get 3-D ready TVs and Blu-ray players into the market by 2010. The company is concerned that if the technology doesn’t become available soon — within a year — the industry will miss an opportunity to sell the next generation of large-screen displays.
How big could the market be? Panasonic thinks 3-D could represent 10 percent of TV industry sales within two to three years.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built