I've got a co-worker, our Oracle admin, who's blind. As things stand, with most cell phones he can't do anything except dial out and answer calls. He can't use the built-in address book to place calls for example, because all of the info is in text on a tiny screen.
He may be interested in a product we have been working on for a couple of months now: we added software to produce speech output to an off-the-shelf Nokia 9110 Communicator smartphone, giving access to essentially all the functionality of a "modern" phone (phone book, calendar, SMS, settings, WAP etc.).
Alternatively, output on a Refreshable Braille display can also be used.
At the moment, this is GSM900 only (so it is mostly a European thing for now), but with the arrival of the Nokia 9290 in the States by mid-2002, it will also be available in the US.
Interesting. After looking at the patent itself more closely (which is something that rarely happens on Slashdot...) it seems that what they are patenting is not WAP, as a lot of people suggested, but instead a phone that uses a browser as its *only* user interface. The standard phone functionality is just another set of (built-in) HTML pages that control the device's internal functions, so it can be easily mixed with downloaded pages. In a way, this is the exact reverse of current WAP-enabled phones, where the browser is part of the phone menu.
If anything, this patent affects WTAI, which are special URLs to control the phone from inside a WAP page:
would make a call to the specificed phone number. Interestingly, the first version of the WTAI specification is dated 30-Apr-98, while the Geoworks patent was filed 8-Apr-98...
Re:A useful feature to add to such a device...
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New All-In-One Nokia
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· Score: 1
GPS would not only be useful to track your position if you are lost - it also allows for applications that are sensitive to where you are at the moment. For example, when calling up railway timetables, it could allow you to select from a small list of stations nearby, rather than requiring you to type in (and possibly clarify) the place you'd like to be going from.
Another example would be traffic reports automatically filtered down to the road and direction you're currently on.
From a more abstract point, GPS (or similar location technologies) allow an application to be more aware of the meatspace context you're using it in, as opposed to just starting out by knowing you're "somewhere on this planet".
For the paranoid, GPS built into the phone would potentially give you more control over when to allow a remove application access to your geographical location.
I must admit that I haven't looked at the Transmeta design very closely, but there is one thing that seems to have gotten relatively little attention yet...
What happens if the code morphing cache is too small for the workset used by the benchmark or application, and how likely is this going to be, given the 16 MB cache used, I believe, by the Sony device?
In other words, can it be expected that the entire translated code of your average application fits into the code morphing cache, so that optimizations from multiple independent runs can really take effect? After all, this is what most reviewers seem to assume.
Also, does paging in and out of code through the operating system's VM manager influence the effect of code morphing in any way?
Records of failed DNS lookups?
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Typosquatting
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· Score: 1
This reminds me of an idea I had quite a while ago: it would be kind of interesting to see the logs of *failed* DNS lookups for the name servers of some big ISPs. This should give some pretty good suggestions for those still unregistered domains that could be worthwhile targets, because it tells you what people actually do type into their URL entry field, and allows accurate prediction of hits.
Did anyone with access to, say, a university's DNS ever look at this systematically?
Slashdot Mirror
Alternatively, output on a Refreshable Braille display can also be used.
At the moment, this is GSM900 only (so it is mostly a European thing for now), but with the arrival of the Nokia 9290 in the States by mid-2002, it will also be available in the US.
You can find more info on the device here.
Interesting. After looking at the patent itself more closely (which is something that rarely happens on Slashdot...) it seems that what they are patenting is not WAP, as a lot of people suggested, but instead a phone that uses a browser as its *only* user interface. The standard phone functionality is just another set of (built-in) HTML pages that control the device's internal functions, so it can be easily mixed with downloaded pages. In a way, this is the exact reverse of current WAP-enabled phones, where the browser is part of the phone menu.
p r-98.pdf
If anything, this patent affects WTAI, which are special URLs to control the phone from inside a WAP page:
http://www1.wapforum.org/tech/documents/wtai-30-a
For example, a URL like this
wtai://wp/mc; 5554367
would make a call to the specificed phone number. Interestingly, the first version of the WTAI specification is dated 30-Apr-98, while the Geoworks patent was filed 8-Apr-98...
GPS would not only be useful to track your position if you are lost - it also allows for applications that are sensitive to where you are at the moment. For example, when calling up railway timetables, it could allow you to select from a small list of stations nearby, rather than requiring you to type in (and possibly clarify) the place you'd like to be going from.
Another example would be traffic reports automatically filtered down to the road and direction you're currently on.
From a more abstract point, GPS (or similar location technologies) allow an application to be more aware of the meatspace context you're using it in, as opposed to just starting out by knowing you're "somewhere on this planet".
For the paranoid, GPS built into the phone would potentially give you more control over when to allow a remove application access to your geographical location.
I must admit that I haven't looked at the Transmeta design very closely, but there is one thing that seems to have gotten relatively little attention yet...
What happens if the code morphing cache is too small for the workset used by the benchmark or application, and how likely is this going to be, given the 16 MB cache used, I believe, by the Sony device?
In other words, can it be expected that the entire translated code of your average application fits into the code morphing cache, so that optimizations from multiple independent runs can really take effect? After all, this is what most reviewers seem to assume.
Also, does paging in and out of code through the operating system's VM manager influence the effect of code morphing in any way?
This reminds me of an idea I had quite a while ago: it would be kind of interesting to see the logs of *failed* DNS lookups for the name servers of some big ISPs. This should give some pretty good suggestions for those still unregistered domains that could be worthwhile targets, because it tells you what people actually do type into their URL entry field, and allows accurate prediction of hits.
Did anyone with access to, say, a university's DNS ever look at this systematically?