I've tried typing into the air, or onto a flat surface. It's weird. Good keyboards depend a lot on the responsiveness of the keys - the feel. Like the old solid but noisy clickety-clack IBM keyboards or (my personal favourite) the almost noiseless, light (as in "lightness of touch", not as in "light emitting diode") Honeywells.
Still, I'm excited by this technology. Now someone needs to marry it up with a similarly sized projection screen and we can have a computer with a full-sized screen and full sized keyboard that you can fit into your palm.
Nobody does the mix of far-out, weird but strangely plausible milieus (human/plant symbiotic lovers travelling the asteroid belt, a marketing campaign heralding the obsolescence of the penis, human nuclear bombs celebrating their birthday, to give a taste) with complex, touching, human characterisation better.
A lot of his stories take place in his "Eight Worlds" future history, both short stories (many collected in The Persistence of Vision aka In The Hall of the Martian Kings, The Barbie Murders aka Picnic on Nearside and Blue Champagne) and - to date - three novels (The Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach and The Golden Globe).
He's also written the Gaean trilogy (Titan, Wizard and Demon) which despite their titles are actually SF - wild romps of SF, expressing a real joie de vivre (as many of his stories do)... unless they twist the knife (as many of his stories do).
But some of his best works are standalone - like the Nebula/Hugo winning "Press Enter " (there's suppossed to be a blinking cursor after the 'Enter'), "The Pusher" or "Equinoctial".
Varley's been compared to Heinlein, though personally I never saw it. He's a heck of a lot better in my book.
Honourable mentions to Greg Egan (the earlier stuff like "Learning to be me" is better than the later stuff), Neil Gaiman (his comics, especially his run on Miracle Man, are better than his prose) and Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game and Lost Boys are his two best works IMO - the novel better than the the short story that spawned it in both cases).
...that the X-Men fight to have themselves accepted as human in their principle-driven comic book world, while their owners and masters fight to have the opposite declared in the dollar-uber-alles real world.
<comic geek pedant mode>
It's Spider-Man, not Spiderman
</cgpm>
And Superman was never human - he was always Kryptonian!
Quite simply, keep all your text in a seperate file which can be compiled completely seperately from the rest of your project. The goes for Dialogs, Menus, and Labels. This primarily makes it easier to allow users to switch from one language to another.
There really isnt that much that can be done other than that.
There's also the matter of ensuring that all strings will fit into the dialogue boxes, menus and labels in question. A 20 character instruction in English could easily grow to 50 characters in German.:-)
The highlighted website featured on the "talker panel" screenshot is slashdot.org with other Geek friendly sites prominent. A case of blatant sucking up or what?
Also: "...while you have your first cup of java..."
As every action (on a digital network) produces a copy, and every copy (under the current regime of copyright) is presumptively within the reach of copyright law, every use of a copyrighted work in cyberspace amounts to a copyright event. Thus, to give an e-book to a friend involves a copy; it is therefore regulated by copyright law. To borrow an e-book from an Internet library involves a copy; it is therefore regulated by copyright law. Indeed, to have the computer read an e-book aloud involves making a copy; it, too, is therefore regulated by copyright law. All these "uses" of an e-book are within the reach of copyright's regulation, while the very same uses of a book in real space would not be.
Arguably (and at a broad, conceptual level), having a computer read an e-book (aloud or otherwise) and having a person read a book (aloud or otherwise) both involve making copies - one in software/hardware, the other in wetware.
Of course there are differences, but I can imagine that these will become less obvious over time.
Slashdot Mirror
Still, I'm excited by this technology. Now someone needs to marry it up with a similarly sized projection screen and we can have a computer with a full-sized screen and full sized keyboard that you can fit into your palm.
A lot of his stories take place in his "Eight Worlds" future history, both short stories (many collected in The Persistence of Vision aka In The Hall of the Martian Kings, The Barbie Murders aka Picnic on Nearside and Blue Champagne) and - to date - three novels (The Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach and The Golden Globe).
He's also written the Gaean trilogy (Titan, Wizard and Demon) which despite their titles are actually SF - wild romps of SF, expressing a real joie de vivre (as many of his stories do)... unless they twist the knife (as many of his stories do).
But some of his best works are standalone - like the Nebula/Hugo winning "Press Enter " (there's suppossed to be a blinking cursor after the 'Enter'), "The Pusher" or "Equinoctial".
Varley's been compared to Heinlein, though personally I never saw it. He's a heck of a lot better in my book.
Honourable mentions to Greg Egan (the earlier stuff like "Learning to be me" is better than the later stuff), Neil Gaiman (his comics, especially his run on Miracle Man, are better than his prose) and Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game and Lost Boys are his two best works IMO - the novel better than the the short story that spawned it in both cases).
<comic geek pedant mode>
It's Spider-Man, not Spiderman
</cgpm>
And Superman was never human - he was always Kryptonian!
Seriously, this is very cool. Like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie...
The highlighted website featured on the "talker panel" screenshot is slashdot.org with other Geek friendly sites prominent. A case of blatant sucking up or what? Also: "...while you have your first cup of java..."
Wish my mom was that understanding...
Or is it just me....
Or is this old news?
Both Froogle and Catalogues Google are sales-oriented applications. Wonder if the development of these was driven by users/consumers or vendors?
A lot of people buy magazines - at least partly - for the ads.
The ad:editorial ratio in most magazines is about 50:50. Be thankful the net isn't anywhere near that ratio (yet?).
Arguably (and at a broad, conceptual level), having a computer read an e-book (aloud or otherwise) and having a person read a book (aloud or otherwise) both involve making copies - one in software/hardware, the other in wetware. Of course there are differences, but I can imagine that these will become less obvious over time.