So we already know that HP is planning both a 9-inch and 7-inch tablet based on the webOS it acquired last year from Palm. We know the 7-inch Opal will be released in September, but the 9-inch Topaz may appear as early as March. The leaks are continuing, and more information about HP’s tablet PC push is surfacing.
First, the company may be rolling out the name HP Touchpad for these tablets, according to a trademark HP just applied for. It could be a ruse, but it could also point to a webOS future that furthers de-emphasizes its Palm roots.
In addition, Engadget has received more tips about the tablet specs themselves. They will be using the Beat Audio technology HP has been developing, and there could be a Touchstone charging dock that could turn the “Touchpad” into an alarm clock and digital photo frame. Another cool touch — literally — is the ability to tap an HP tablet and forthcoming smartphone together to share files.
Finally, HP could be using the cloud in a way that Apple hasn’t embraced yet. You’ll supposedly be able to wirelessly access your music collection, which may be a result of the “tens of gigabytes” of cloud storage that will be provided buyers. No details on whether this will require any kind of monthly fee, but it may force Google and Apple to speed their own music cloud services to market.
We’ll find out more during HP’s February 9 event, but what we’ve heard already, if true, is getting more and more interesting.
Picture it, early 2010 – everyone is awaiting this big announcement of some sort of tablet thing to be released by Apple. Since I like gadgets and electronics, friends at work are asking me, “So, are you going to get that new tablet to replace your Kindle?” “Are you so stoked for what Jobs is about to announce?” My reply, “Shut up, nothing will replace my Kindle any time soon, and who cares if this thing is color – it’s probably back-lit and would hurt your eyes if you read from it for a prolonged period of time.” In short, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”
April 2010 – the iPad is released. I realize that it’s actually called, “iPad,” so my friends and I start making maxi-pad and tampon jokes to go along with it.
Fast forward to October 2010 – my husband’s birthday is coming up, and I don’t know what to get him. Suddenly, his little netbook – aka: couch-machine – goes kaput. He’s talking about replacing it – it’s going to cost about $250. Then I start to think, “Isn’t that lame-o iPad pretty much a netbook, only sexier?” Knowing that my husband would totally poop his pants with excitement, I purchased the iPad.
Watching my husband open it was so rad. I had him open the iPad cover first – he looked confused, almost as if, “Oh, is this a joke?” Once he opened the actual iPad, I don’t think I saw him for another week. He was busy charging it, downloading apps, killing zombies, etc.
At this point, I’m thinking, “Ok, it’s kind of cool.” Then I started using it. Let me just start with my first helping of crow before I continue…
My husband set up my Twitter and Facebook on it, and I haven’t looked back since. It’s not that I couldn’t live without this device or that it changed my life, but it is just so darn sexy! It’s got a lovely screen, super easy and intuitive to use, charges quickly, holds a decent charge, doesn’t go through a boot-up/shut-down rigmarole, and damn…did I mention that it’s sexy? Functionally, it doesn’t do anything that our netbook couldn’t do; the main difference is that this bad-boy does it with style.
There’s the argument that, “Isn’t it just a big iPhone that you can’t use as a phone?” Yes, pretty much. And here’s the thing…wait for it…I don’t have a smartphone. I know, right? It’s not that I have anything against the devices, it’s just that I’ve been waiting for my dang phone contract with Verizon to end for like EVER, and it finally does in four days. I’m so excited, I could barf. I’m leaning towards a Motorola Droid 2. Reasons: lower price, husband has older version and loves it, dad has it and loves it, and I think iPhones are uber smug. Mr. Tom Duffy called me on this last week and asked how I could say that when I rave about my iPad. I guess it’s still the PC side of me fighting off Apple. Did I mention that I’m writing this post from my iMac while my iPod charges next to it? Le sigh…
What are your thoughts? Help me make this decision about my first smartphone – iPhone or Droid? Pros/Cons – let’s hear it.
Every Christmas, my wife and I make gifts for people rather than buying them…it isn’t that we’re cheap, we just love to make things. This year, we decided that she would make custom dish towels and I would make a color changing solar lantern. Here’s a video of the final lantern:
Now, just so you know up front…I didn’t “make” the color changing solar part of this project…I just took an affordable and existing product and modified the casing.
Materials Needed
3/16″ Diameter Wood Dowels
4″x4″ Blank Wood Coasters from Michael’s
Pack of 2 Garden Creations Color Changing Solar Yard Lights
A Dremel or other quick cutting tool
200 Grit Sandpaper
Thin Natural Fabric – from fabric store
Sewing Machine
Electric Drill
Wood Glue
A Pencil
Flat Black Spray Paint
SAFETY WARNING
Any time that you are using power tools you need to be careful. Make sure that you have a safe work area and always wear eye protection. Personally, I prefer these safety glasses from PlugsSafety. They actually have built in ear plugs which help when you’re in a small area with noisy equipment and tools! Also, I’m not responsible if you hurt yourself or others while doing this project. Just use common sense and you’ll be fine.
Step 1 – Preparing The Solar Light
The first thing we need to do is remove the part that we want from the yard light.
We just want the top solar part which is also attached to the LED. Carefully twist the solar top counter-clockwise until it unlocks from the bottom piece.
It should now look like this:
Now would be a good time to mention that I ordered 5 pairs of these solar yard lights. Of the 10 total lights, only 3 of them actually worked out of the box. I discovered that of the 7 that failed, 4 of them had drained batteries and 3 of them still failed after a full charge on the batteries. So, I unscrewed the housing and had a look inside. All three of them had the same problem…the solder had broken free between the switch and the battery leads. I re-soldered them and sealed them back up.
Step 2 – Preparing the Base
The base of the lantern starts with the 4″x4″ blank wooden coasters that I got from Michael’s. They start out looking like this:
The first thing that you will want to do is give the whole piece a nice sanding with the 200 grit sandpaper. If you are really picky about finish, you can then go over it again with some 600 grit automotive sandpaper to make it really smooth! Next, you want to outline the shape of the solar top with pencil onto the coaster. I had a bunch of these and I know how to solder, so I just removed the LED housing from one and cut the wires:
Next, we will mark where we want to drill our pilot holes that our wooden dowels will slide into. I didn’t really need to measure since we actually DON’T want it to be exact. We aren’t going to be using anything but tension to hold the top piece onto the dowels, so our lack of accuracy in this step actually keeps the top piece securely in place!
Next we drill! The dowels are 3/16″ in diameter, so I used an 11/64″ drill bit. Go ahead and drill straight down all the way through where we marked our coaster.
Step 3 – Preparing the Dowels
Next, we are going to cut our wood dowels to the correct length. Here’s the dowels that I used:
The length that I used is 5″, but this can easily be changed…just remember that whatever length you use, you will need to adjust the size of your fabric wrap accordingly! I started out using my dremel to cut the dowels to size, but found later in the process that wire cutters were a lot quicker. Wire cutters also pinch the ends of the dowels a little, which makes it a lot easier to push them into the pilot holes in our base.
Step 4 – Getting The Dowels in Place
Next, just push the dowels into the pilot holes until they just start to appear from the bottom of the base…don’t let them actually poke through though.
Next, turn the whole thing over so the base is on top and let the dowels act like table legs. Add one or two drops of wood glue to each hole on top of the dowel. I personally let wood glue dry overnight, but if you are confident that it is dry before then, go ahead and move on to the next step when you are ready.
Step 5 – Preparing The Fabric Wrap
Okay, this part is hard unless you know how to sew or know someone who does! I don’t know the first thing about sewing, so my wife handled this part like a champion! Basically, the wrap will have a circumference of 13 1/2″ and the height is entirely dependent on your dowel length. All you really need to keep in mind is that when all is said and done, there should be 1/4″ of dowel sticking up above the wrap after it is in place. My wife managed to create a nice seam on both the top and the bottom to keep things nice and neat. Here she is hard at work:
And the finished wrap:
Step 6 – Put it All Together
Next, slide the wrap over the dowels and make sure that all sides are pushed all the way down flush with the base. Next, push the dowels that are protruding from the top of the wrap into the corners of the solar housing.
Step 7 – Paint it!
Next, remove the solar top and the fabric wrap. Go over all of the wood again with sandpaper to make sure it is nice and smooth. Place the piece base down on some newspaper in a well ventilated area. I wore rubber gloves for this part because you will have to touch the paint. Spray an even coat over all of the exposed wood. Grab the end of one of the dowels and flip the piece over so it is resting on the dowels like a table. Spray an even coat over the base. Let the paint dry for 24 hours. Apply more coats if needed. That’s it! You’re done! Now try it out!
Feel free to comment if you have any questions or if you get stuck on any of the steps. I wish I had better photo documentation of everything, but I did the best I could. I plan to make several more of these, so if there is a particular step that many people want photos of, just let me know and I’ll make sure to get some pictures. Thanks for reading!
In case you haven’t heard, Google is releasing a new notebook loaded with its cloud based operating system ChromeOS. It looks promising too!
In an attempt to demonstrate that your data is safe regardless of what happens to your computer, Google decided it better destroy some laptops! They did so in dramatic and glorious fashion to boot!
I am not completely sold on the idea of cloud based operating systems for a few reasons. The main reasons are performance, application limitations, and security. Google has done a fine job of trying to convince me though!
Found this over at Mozilla Labs today…What an amazing concept video! I really think the dual projectors will be too costly though! Cool IR tracking though!
My friend Mike asked me to install Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx as a dual boot with Win7 on his brand new desktop PC. The PC has an Intel i5 processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics. During the installation, the flicker/shaking of the graphics on screen was so extreme that I couldn’t read most of the text during the install. I’m glad I’ve done about a million and a half Ubuntu installs, so I knew my way around pretty well. I figured that once the install was complete and we rebooted, the problem would go away.
Well, the problem didn’t go away. I started searching for other users having the same problem and came across many who complained about the screen flickering randomly or occasionally. Well, that wasn’t the problem I was having. My flicker/shake was constant. It was also much more noticeable on the right side of the screen than the left side.
I will note that the problem doesn’t occur in Win7, so it’s not a hardware problem.
I have posted my question on UbuntuForums.org and now I must wait for a response. In the meantime, I will continue trying to solve the problem myself.
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