I Fell from the Moon

Until now I haven't been able to browse the web properly on my Samsung Omnia HD. The built in web browser is slow and cumbersome, Opera Mini 4 or 5 beta will freeze or slow down after a while, and Opera Mini 3... Doesn't support even basic stuff from HTML.

So it was a huge surprise to see the beta version of Opera Mobile 10 be released for S60 phones. Opera Mobile 10 Beta, brings Opera's speed and standards support from Windows Mobile and UIQ to S60 phones, coupled with the new user interface innovations in Opera Mini 5 beta.

A welcome feature from the desktop version of Opera is the new opera:config editor. There's a variety of settings available, but the most welcome for Omnia HD users might be the minimum font size setting. The default minimum font size in Opera Mobile 10 Beta is 11, which is common on phones with smaller displays without touch. But on the Omnia HD's 640x360 screen, it's hard to read and links are even harder to hit with your thumbs. Setting the font size to 15 will make text more readable and links easier to touch. Here's how:

• Go to opera:config in the address bar
  
• Type in font in the search field
  
• Scroll to the bottom and look for "Minimum Font Size"
  
• Type in 15 in the text field
  
• Click "Save"
  
• Restart Opera Mobile
  

Once you start Opera Mobile again you'll notice that Opera Mobile has become a bit more Omnia HD friendly. Enjoy!

Samsung released Samsung Omnia HD recently, and I jumped at the chance to buy one as early as possible. Samsung Omnia HD runs Symbian s60 5th edition, just like Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic and Nokia N97. It has a gorgeous 360 by 640 pixels 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen. It has an 8 megapixel camera and is the first phone capable of recording HD video. It has GPS, a digital compass and 16 GB's of built in memory.

Capacitive touch is not as accurate as resitive touch and doesn't work with a stylus. But because of the large screen, you won't miss resitive touch. Capacitive touch also feels snappier

Samsung replaced the default home screen with their TouchWiz widget interface, which allows you to add any of 31 pre-installed widgets to one of the three configurable home screens. Before you say wow, most of the widgets are huge disappointments. Some are pretty default home screen elements, and some are just shortcuts to web services or phone features. The music player and radio widgets are the only ones whom offer any interesting functionality. And the calendar widget does not display any information from your calendar, which makes it quite useless compared to the the s60 home screen. However, you can download new widgets from the More Widgets widget. The selection isn't that great yet, but anyone can develop and share their widgets.

The phone has a bunch of other goodies. Some applications have eye popping 3D and reflection effects. Some even make use of the built in accelerometer. When swiping left or right with your finger you'll switch to the menu or photo contacts via a 3D view. The photo contact viewer lets you assign contacts to photos from your phone, and browse through contact photos by swiping up or down with your finger, as if you were browsing through a bunch of polaroid photos.

The music player also have some nice effects. If you tilt the phone into landscape view while playing a track you'll see a cover flow-like interface with all your albums at your fingertips.

Another eye-popping feature is the MediaBrowser application. It displays your photo thumbnails in a horizontal list. Tilt your phone and the photos slide over the screen.

While I haven't compared the GPS on the phone to other phones, it's pretty good. The GPS software included on the phone is Route 66. It detects your position quite fast when in a car or outdoors. And it speaks the directions out loud while driving. It also shows information about businesses and gas stations nearby. But strangely enough I encountered several roads which weren't added to the GPS maps. There's lots of downloadable content as well, such as weather and traffic information.

The phone includes the s60 browser, based on webkit, the core of the Safari web browser. This version features an updated interface which works well with the touch screen. However, it's not as smooth or fast as Safari for iPhone, Opera Mobile or even Opera Mini, which is a shame since Opera Mini gets horribly slow after you've browsed a few pages on the web on the Omnia HD.

The phone comes with a few office tools as well. A calculator, converter, note taker, calendar, business card reader, dictionary, file manager, zip app, document viewer and PDF viewer. QuickOffice however, is a scam compared to the version you got with Sony Ericsson P1i. You have to buy a license key to create documents.

The phone excels on the camera. It's a eight megapixel camera and the first mobile camera that captures HD video. It features geotagging, facial recognition, smile shot, and blink recognition. And the panorama creator is fantastic as it snaps each part of the panorama after guiding you through the viewfinder. You can also upload your photos to Facebook, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, Friendster and MySpace. I was unable to log in to Picasa however, which means I'll keep using the Picasa software to upload my photos.

The phone also comes with some other nice software. Such as a motion sensitive version of Asphalt 4. Thanks to DNLA support, it's also a home media server. There's a easy to use podcast app, with a podcast directory as well. Omnia HD features the Smart search app as well, which allows you to search all your content on the phone and Google or Windows Live. The RoadSync exchange sync app is also available. I tried it on Google Sync without any luck however.

The Bluetooth settings interface is the best I've tried on any phone. It displays a radar view with the phone in the middle, and your bluetooth devices around the radar disc. Tap the phone to toggle bluetooth, tap a device to get a menu or drag the device to your phone to connect.

Samsung Omnia HD is pretty slick, and you can't mention all the features at once without losing your breath. But all the time while using it you'll have the feeling it would be the perfect phone if it didn't have these minor annoyances. But it looks expensive and the interface is fantastic. It'll make your friends go wow when they see the phone and their eyes will pop when they see the multimedia applications on the phone.

The poor of our "rich" society are often overlooked. Every now and then we hear about disasters or crisises in distant countries that make thousands, hundred thousands or even more people homeless and poor. But we in countries that look at ourself as "developed" also have our poor people with low standards of living. And we need to help them, as well as poor people in other countries. So we're going to look at several technologies that can improve the life of poor people or help them lift themselves out of poverty.

Homes

Some times people without homes might find themselves sleeping outside or in provisional rooms. The living standards of homeless people might be improved by using shipping containers as housing. Many companies have excess shipping containers that just take up space they could use for other things. And a shipping container is a standardised container that is easily stacked, and easily moved which makes for a easily and quickly established home.

But maybe you're thinking, "a shipping container would be cold, dark and ugly". Not necessarily. It can easily be painted and insulated. Windows can be mounted as easy as in a regular house. The container could even expand to increase space available inside. Shipping containers could become cheap, comfortable and good looking spaces to live for both the poor and the modernist.

Water

A common trait in some undeveloped countries is that many people have limited access to clean drinking water. Half of the world's poor suffer from water borne diseases. As much as 6000 of these, mostly children, die daily. But cleaning water would be too expensive, right? Not any more.

LifeStraw is a straw that filters water, removes bacteria and viruses and makes unclean water taste better. It'll clean drinking water for one person for one year. It's easily mass distributed where it's needed the most.

Education

A common cause of poverty is lack of education. Education material and access to knowledge in developing countries can be very limited. Computers with a connection to the internet could solve this problem, but computers are expensive and so is the infrastructure.

The OLPC XO-1 is built to solve this problem. It's built to be a cheap, yet powerful, state of the art laptop, tailored to childrens education, especially in developing countries. At the price of $188 it hasn't reached its goal of becoming the $100 laptop yet, but will hopefully do so during 2008.

It's a robust laptop that can be carried like a suitcase when closed. The screen can be rotated and will work as a ebook when closed over the keyboard. The shell is specifically built to withstand dust and moisture. It contains no moving parts inside and thus is rather resistant to shock. The keyboard is sized to fit the hands of children.

The XO-1 contains a set of technologies tailored for education in developing countries. It comes with lots of educational software, a offline version of Wikipedia, has a very low power consumption and can be charged by hand, or with a car battery. XO-1 can make a so-called "mesh network" where many laptops work together to form a network with eachother over a wide area. If one laptop in this network is connected to the internet, it can share this connection with the rest of the mesh network.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways we can improve the lives of the poor, both in both developed countries and in developing countries. These solutions are in no way a master cure for poverty in the world but can still improve the situation for the world's poor people and poor countries considerably. These solutions doesn't necessarily have to be paid for by poor people. We whom aren't poor can help the poor fund these solutions.

Thanks to...

1. Atomische.com for Shipping Containers
2. Mr. Kimberly for Shipping Container House
3. Trav and Nan for An African Classroom 1
4. Walter for Galadima0.jpg

Meet the Tesla Roadster. In the spirit of Nikola Tesla, the Austrian electric wizard whom dreamed of free energy for all, Tesla Roadster is a electric sports car more than worthy of that title. It's high-tech, looks quite good, and accelerates like crazy. Tesla Roadster is different from other sports cars mainly because of one thing... an electric motor. Thanks to its electric motor it does 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds.

Tesla Roadster comes in an era in great need for change. Gas prices soar and we're seeing wars for energy. Pollution is only increasing. So I'm hoping Tesla Roadster is the start of something new. A market of all-electric vehicles. This would mean cars that are cheaper to drive.

It does the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon and 220 miles per charge. That's 2 cents per mile. All thanks to its advanced lithium-ion battery. However, the price is less pleasant. It costs $109,000 USD. That's a bit more expensive than similar sports cars. Let's hope for cheaper EV's with a high range soon.

But why an electric vehicle? Why not a fuel cell, hydrogen, bio-fuel or hybrid car? They're all eco-friendly and go further. While these vehicles have the advantages of gasoline, they aren't as eco-friendly as a battery EV. They also have many of the disadvantages of gasoline. Some of them can even be worse for the environment than gasoline.

Fuel cells consume hydrogen usually. Hydrogen produces only water-vapor, also in hydrogen-combustion engines. However it's expensive to produce and energy will be wasted because it needs to be transported via trucks to gas stations. Large oil companies are also the ones who'll produce and distribute hydrogen, which means your money will go to the same hands as before.

Bio-fuels are derived from recently dead biological materials, unlike oil which comes from biological materials dead a long time ago. Bio-fuels are usually ethanol or plant oil. Since these plants consume carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere, they're carbon-neutral which means they don't pollute. But since these fuels are grown in fields, land suitable for food crops is used for bio-fuels instead. This means less food will be produced and food prices worldwide will increase. Bio-fuels are just as bad or even worse than fossil fuels.

Hybrid cars usually have two sources of propulsion. Gasoline and batteries. You can run a hybrid car off batteries only, but most hybrids have a very low range for their battery power, which means they'll switch to gasoline once you drive far enough with them. A hydrogen-battery hybrid could however be a good compromise until the range of battery driven cars improve.

A battery driven electric vehicle is still the most eco-friendly alternative. It's however not completely eco-friendly. Large amounts of today's electrical energy is produced from coal. Coal pollutes a lot more than other energy sources. However, it has been shown that you can run an entire home and an electric vehicle completely off solar power and still sell electricity back to the grid. Making such a home is expensive though because of the high production cost of solar cells. Recent advances in solar film might however make solar cells cheaper in the future. Let's also hope the world soon stops using fossil fuels for electricity too.

Tesla Roadster might signal a future with less pollution and more power in the hands of drivers. Advances in battery technology, engine technology and lower prices one these cars are needed however before the world can ditch solid fuels completely.

See more photos of Tesla Roadster in the Tesla Roadster photo album.

I've been running polls in my blog sidebar for a while. And the last time I asked, "What's your favorite posession?"

I recieved 26 answers. Here are the results:

Mobile phone (31%)

Personal computer (31%)

Games console (4%)

Portable media player (4%)

Garment or accessory (4%)

Vehicle (4%)

Pet (12%)

Computer peripheral (0%)

Toy (0%)

Home decoration item (4%)

Tool (8%)


This shows that you, my readers are of the kind that like technology, just like me. Although some of you really like your pets and tools too! You're all really cool!

This time I have a new poll. I would like to know what you think of my blog title and slogan. My title is "The Launch Site" and my slogan is "Launch into cyberspace with me". I've recieved some fairly unexpected comments about it. And now more of you get the chance to say what you mean. The poll can be found further down the page in the sidebar. It's a multiple choice poll, so get your clicky finger out! If there's not enough options, you could make a comment here. I really hope you all want to make a comment about your choices!