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I have a CHEAP digital pen (cost me 25$) called the "greenpoint mobile notetaker" (which i think is a pegasus notetaker rebadged).... its ultra simple. it works under linux and what the linux software gives you is a simple svg map of what you drew on a piece of paper. Its just a normal pen with a little tracking unit that somehow tracks everything you write... I dont use it too much, but the times i have its not failed me so far.

http://scratchpost.dreamhosters.com/software/Pegasus_Notetaker/ will pull svg's from the pens tracking device thing

but it looks very much like this http://www.gadgetvictims.com/2009/12/digital-note-taker-pen.html

I find it works ok, but i've not really used any other digital pens, so i have no point of comparison - but at 25$ (which was on sale at the time) i just went "sure why not" and later found out it supported linux (which was a nice surprise).

I had previously looked at things like livescribe and went "no linux support, wont bother". There are one or two i can see on aliexpress http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-USB-Digital-Pen-Digital-Mobile-Note-Taker-Digital-Handwriting-Capture-Device/519494331.html but i dont know if they're based on the same thing (and they're twice the price i paid) and hence will still support linux

It's not spectacular, but I have some basic classroom materials up here: http://seandiggity.dreamhosters.com/cll

You know what? I don't even need these.

The saint known by me as "St. Adywon" has cured all my original trilogy needs. Tons of graphics fixes (light sabers cmoother coming out, laser blasts all fixed), enhancements(better space landscapes, burning on reentry, death star scene makes sense now), audio cleaned up, cool stuff added, etc. I mean this guy does Star Wars right. Even better than Lucas

here are the various download links. For best quality burn it to a dual layered DVD, should be DVD-9. Make sure to get the NTSC\PAL version as needed.

http://fanedit.info/SW.html

Look for STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 Special Edition REVISITED by Adywan
http://fanedit.org/517/

(You can see the list of edits by clicking CUTLIST: >>>view: (its javascript so couldn't link directly)

This is the DL DVD NTSC
http://www.faneditfiles.dreamhosters.com/dlc/adywan/adywan_starwarsrevisited_NTSC_DL_DVD.rar

The download took us 3 days, we used this JDownloader software for it. http://jdownloader.org/download

This is seriously worth it! You can even watch side by side to see all the fixes. Adywon is my hero.

I have a 2005-era Mac Mini. I love it. However, it's getting a bit slow, and the new ones are barely faster, and cost twice as much. Apple's getting harder and harder to defend these days.

Your 2005-era Mini likely has a PowerPC G4 (7447A) processor, with one core, running at 1.3 or 1.5GHz. According to MacTracker, the 1.5 averages a score of 822 on GeekBench 2. Even a bottom of the line (2.26GHz) Mini from late 2009 (as MacTracker doesn't have today's update yet) averages a 3056 with an Intel Core 2 Duo.

The system bus has gone from 167MHz to 1066MHz, L2 cache from 512K to 3MB.

If your current machine works for you, then it's a good machine. But compared to what you have the new model is significantly faster.

The best guess is that Apple bought Fingerworks solely for it's patents and technology.

There's actually almost zero guessing on this point, although it takes some digging to find all of the facts. Much of the details were posted on the Fingerfans forum back when the purchase happened. Other useful info may exist primarily in the Internet Archive at this point.

Synopsis: Fingerworks as a company was a young venture founded based on Wayne Westerman's Ph.D. work relating to capacitive multi-touch interfaces. Fingerworks was one of the first companies to have useful (awesome, actually) multitouch based products on the open market. These included the GesturePad, a multi-touch pointing device not dissimilar to the recent Wacom Bamboo Touch; and the TouchStream multi-touch keyboard. The TouchStream was pretty cool: max typing speeds were slower than a conventional keyboard, but the whole surface was usable for multitouch pointer input and gestures.

Apple apparently liked what they saw and bought the company up -- its patent portfolio as well as Westerman and their core R&D team. This was not even remotely public knowledge at the time. To outsiders' view, Fingerworks practically vanished. The release of the first iPhone was the coming-out party for this technology at Apple. Westerman and his team have continued to do multi-touch research at Apple, issuing a variety of patents under the auspices of their new company. I recall a few of those being mentioned on Slashdot in the past, specifically one about ongoing work to improve haptics (touch feedback) for multi-touch keyboards.

touch is junk and nothing out there that people buy uses it. MULTI-TOUCH caught on. multi touch was invented by two professors at the university of delaware, who founded a company that made the greatest keyboard of all time, the touchstream lp. jobs saw the inherent promise of multi-touch and bought the company and all its ip, in the process making everyone sign nondisclosure agreements and burying the company. the price of the greatest keyboard ever made, no longer available due to job's actions, has rocketed to over $1000 on ebay and keeps going up.

a lot of you are reading this and thinking of non multi touch products that are getting some sales; however they use the fundamental tech that makes multi touch work. multi touch was about figuring out the shape and pressure of the fingers being applied, in addition to distinguishing multiple fingers. this eliminates the "palm brush" problem that plagued early touch pads.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1039254,00.asp
http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=842

it took a long time for people to figure out what happened; in the end one of the delaware professors listed his profession as 'apple engineer' on a public political contribution and the mystery of the jobs touchstream "nuclear option" was solved.

the reason it's caught on "just now" is that it's actually brand new technology. hopefully someone someday will undo that damage that apple has done to the multitouch industry by buring it under NDA's and patents. in the meantime, they have usurped microsoft for title of tech company most damaging to progress. let's see how long they can hold the crown.

No, as he described, it's the Macintosh TV. Download mactracker for the full story.

....being in the top 10% of users using the most band width.

This is based upon ...

http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbthread.pl/amiga/expand/149695

Where Chris had gotten a call. The thing is, He is Blind and his work requires that he upload a good bit of data.

Blind of not, some will say to hime to get a business line or account. He has asked if one can be had for under $200 a month...

...produced bandwidth to make more room for TV?

http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbthread.pl/a miga/expand/149564

It's dead slow at the moment, even to get the torrent. Here it is

Several years back, Apple bought up a company that made multitouch keyboards and pads and employed the two professors who made it. It's not just software, the hardware is fundamentally different than single touch.

http://www.fingerworks.com/

Look under news:
http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/viewtopic .php?t=678

Until it propagates, you can start with http://q.dreamhosters.com/ which is an alias for the same wiki.

I have two and I won't sell them for 10.000USD :) BTW: Their website is still up: http://www.fingerworks.com/ Rumors say they have been bought by apple and the fingerworks team developped the two finger scrolling on apple trackpads. See there: http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/

It reminds me very much of Fingerworks technology with multi-touch technology with gestures of various sorts. More gestures here. On the surface, it looks like the exact same technology as the touchpads/keyboards but on the screen.

This company is now out of business (actually sold out VERY QUIETLY by Apple for the patents) and supposedly being used in the new iPod (I don't own one so I can't verify). It's really too bad, I always wanted their keyboard because it acts as a mouse too (on either side, plus has editable gestures plus a built in Emacs set plus a programming pad without moving your hand....)

Plus it has been suspected that Apple are using those patents now and applying for more patents for a Tablet that will have similiar capabilities.

Plus there's another company that has something for the music market that I find cool (but expensive).

It reminds me very much of Fingerworks technology with multi-touch technology with gestures of various sorts. More gestures here. On the surface, it looks like the exact same technology as the touchpads/keyboards but on the screen.

This company is now out of business (actually sold out VERY QUIETLY by Apple for the patents) and supposedly being used in the new iPod (I don't own one so I can't verify). It's really too bad, I always wanted their keyboard because it acts as a mouse too (on either side, plus has editable gestures plus a built in Emacs set plus a programming pad without moving your hand....)

Plus it has been suspected that Apple are using those patents now and applying for more patents for a Tablet that will have similiar capabilities.

Plus there's another company that has something for the music market that I find cool (but expensive).

It reminds me very much of Fingerworks technology with multi-touch technology with gestures of various sorts. More gestures here. On the surface, it looks like the exact same technology as the touchpads/keyboards but on the screen.

This company is now out of business (actually sold out VERY QUIETLY by Apple for the patents) and supposedly being used in the new iPod (I don't own one so I can't verify). It's really too bad, I always wanted their keyboard because it acts as a mouse too (on either side, plus has editable gestures plus a built in Emacs set plus a programming pad without moving your hand....)

Plus it has been suspected that Apple are using those patents now and applying for more patents for a Tablet that will have similiar capabilities.

Plus there's another company that has something for the music market that I find cool (but expensive).

I think they are trying to redo their touchstream patents or something. They already bought the company, why reapply?
 
  See http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/ for more on their buyout that we have gathered.
 
This is what has led to the halt of production of our great keyboards. We have full 10 fingered gesture control, which is why I don't use a mouse or trackball for input, let alone any of the usual shortcut keys. Hope to ot get RSI or any of that crap either...

Actually, Apple bought Fingerworks.

I personally hope that Appple is spending money researching inovative ways to replace the traditional keyboard and mouse with a better input device. For this reason, I hope that Apple bought FingerWorks. I really enjoy using the TouchStream. I am typing on it right now, and I first read about it here on Slashdot.

http://www.the-rye.dreamhosters.com/familiars/Fami liar%20Strengths_files/familiar11.gif

Maybe it's a new keyboard/mouse combo, like the recently bought-and-silenced Fingerworks keyboards?

Waaah!

This is the ultimate geek keyboard. I've been trying to find an ergonomic keyboard for the last couple weeks and fell in love with the Touchstream last week. The keyboard is thin and flat, with no actual keys, just two large multi-touch sensitive pads. This allows for gestures based on multiple keypresses at once.

The gestures can be interesting, like pinching your fingers together to 'cut', twisting counter-clockwise to open a file. Shifting can be done by putting four fingers down on home row. Mousing is done right on the keyboard, with three fingers used for dragging.

The key locations (positions, sizes and mappings) are in an xml file. Software allows you to remap gestures based on the current application.

The Touchstream has won several awards, was developed by a professor at the University of Delaware, a few years ago. They also made a low power version that replaced the removable PowerBook keyboard (called the MacNTouch).

The Touchstream forums knew since April? that Fingerworks had been bought by a large corp, and rumors abounded. By late May, all the mainstream resellers had sold their last keyboards, snatched up by fans who couldn't bear to switch back to regular keyboards.

On June 10th, their website announced that they had discontinued manufacturing, and ebay bids jumped from $400 to $800. (Retail price was around $350)

I'm so annoyed. I find the perfect keyboard, and the company dies right in front me. If I'd done this a month ago, I could've gotten one from Thinkgeek.

The forums are still active. The official forum is now read-only, but before it died, someone setup an announced a fan-driven forum which is going strong.

Their mouse replacement, which has the mousing and gestures of the keyboard, but not the keys, is still available. It's called the iGesture. I bought one last week, and am waiting for it to show up.

FYI, I switched to Dvorak last year.

I'm wary of switching because I would then have problems using other people's computers.

...which is why I held off until I could be a fulltime sw developer (on my own workstation) instead of doing onsite support (on other people's (broken) computers).

Your point is very real, though I guess you can always do like my brother and bring your own keyboard wherever you go (which is not because he uses Dvorak, but because he uses TouchStream).

This is a rumour only:

This patent might be the outcome of the purchase of FingerWorks, Inc http://www.fingerworks.com/ that has some pretty neat heat sensors for keyboards and mice. Something that might very well be used in that tablet Mac. Read the FingerWorks story here : http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/viewtopic .php?t=9