Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Shows Off Phone with Printable Faceplate
jonknee writes "Nokia is prepping a new phone that one-ups all the other attempts at face plates... you can print your own! Just place one of the template pages it comes with (you can buy more) into your ink jet, and make a nifty design that isn't mass marketed at every mall this side of the Mississippi. The template is perforated so you can get a nice fit around the keys. The phone looks pretty nifty as well: camera, flashlight, FM radio and about everything else." It might be fun to rename someone's keys as a practical joke, not that I've ever done it to anyone's computer keyboard.
With a Sharpie, any phone has a paintable face.
Does the ink run? Holding a cell phone in your hand on a hot day is a recipe for running ink... as is drinking a glass of water next to the phone and touching the glass to the phone accidentally. Is there some sort of lamination or waterproofing provided? Otherwise, I don't think the printouts will last too long in "real world" use.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
That mobile phones, one of the most useful applications of technology ever are so ubiqutious they are now practically being treated as fashion accessories rather than technology.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yes, I did a similar thing when I attended a computer course years ago. Xmodmap can be fun if you gain access to another user's X server. One of the guys in the front of the classroom got bewildered trying to surf the web with some of the most common keys subtly transposed.
:)
Shifting keys around as a joke reminds me of another story too, a bit more interesting.
Some guy called his network admin and asked for help with a "password problem". It seemed as he could log into his account when sitting down on the chair in front of the computer, but if he tried to log in standing up (!), he would get a "wrong password" error. The admin asked for the password and tried it himself. Sure enough, when he sat down, the system would let him log. When he stood up and tried logging in with the same name and password, no go. Now this is not the usual kind of problem you run into. So he checked if there was some kind of interference, like some cable being shifted when anyone stood up from the chair, but he couldn't find any such thing.
It turned out that someone, as a joke, had physically transposed two keys on the keyboard. Now, how could this cause the problem? Well, both the guy with the account and the admin were touch typists, and sitting down, they didn't need to look what keys they pressed. But standing up, they had to peek at the keyboard to get the keys "right". Which they didn't, of course.
Now I can't remember where I heard this story first (Slashdot?), and I've most certainly not remembered all the details correctly, but admit it's a cool story nevertheless!
Yeah, similarly I could put the phone's number keys the same way up as the keys on my calculator and the numeric keypad on my computer keyboard, with "7 8 9" up the top instead of "1 2 3" up the top.
Does anyone know why phones' keys are upside down compared to a computer keyboard and a calculator?
What's up with Nokia keypad layouts, anyway?
Go here and look at some phones.
The 3650 are in a circle. I gave up rotary dial decades ago, I don't want to be reminded.
The 3510 is like a spider web or something.
The 8910i doesn't have any keys at all! (Just kidding... I know they're under a cover.)
This 3200 looks like it doesn't have enough keys.
The 2100 looks like a smiley face.
With all these funky keys, how does Nokia expect me to dial a freakin' phone while I'm driving my SUV at 90mph in the right lane eating two cheese burgers and a Coke?
What I want in a phone, and no phone seems to have it yet, is some kind of public key system that encrypts the data. You would have your two keys, and you could send your contact info + public key to someone else. When they call you, it enrcypts all the data both ways..
But that's probably cause I'm a terrorist...
No thanks. I use a bluetooth headset and connect my phone to my notebook using bluetooth.
Until Nokia stop being total wankers and resume support bluetooth on their phones I'm not buying one -- no matter how many "features" it has.
People have been abandoning Nokia like hell because they've stopped making "professional" products. I mean, who wants an FM(!) radio (!) over bluetooth?