Paper

Will tablets be a tweener?

One of the questions related to client computing that I've been exploring of late is whether we're likely to see a mainstream mobile device or devices emerge between a smartphone and an ultra-portable notebook.

My Illuminata colleague Jonathan Eunice and I debated this subject on a video recently--mostly in the context of long battery life, instant on/off mini-notebooks of various sorts. The HP Jornada 820 of the late 1990s is one possible prototype for such a device, suitably updated for a wirelessly connected world. The stillborn Palm Foleo is another take.

I'm perhaps more skeptical than … Read more

DSiWare, WiiWare, and Virtual Console releases for this week

This week brings us card games and paper planes for the DSi while the Virtual Console gets another Japanese import title. DSiWare Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics (Nintendo, 500 DSi Points): Enjoy five card games right on your DSi. Choose from Blackjack and Five Card Draw, or try out games we've never heard of like Last Card, Last Card Plus, and President. Paper Airplane Chase (Nintendo, 200 DSi Points): A minigame found in the WarioWare franchise, Paper Airplane Chase has you guiding a paper airplane through a never-ending maze of tight turns and close calls. WiiWare Cocoto Platform Jumper (… Read more

See how GreenPrint can help save paper

GreenPrint World scans print jobs before they hit the page to make them as tree-friendly as possible. It creates a print filter, intercepting your print jobs before they reach the spooler and checking them against a list of preset but adjustable criteria. You can have it grab by the number of lines on a page, for example.

In this First Look video, we'll show you how the program can help you prevent wasteful print jobs--and how it could be even better.

Turn the world upside down

And Yet It Moves is a cleverly designed, rule-breaking 2D platformer game in which you rotate the entire game world (basically, changing the orientation of gravity) while moving through increasingly complex levels and solving environmental puzzles. The game's interface is very simple: key commands let you move left, right, and jump, as well as rotate the game world 180 or 90 degrees, clockwise or counterclockwise--and you often have to time your avatar's movement precisely with the world's movement, as you navigate through tight passageways, walk off (and then onto and under) precipices, and avoid falling objects. In … Read more

Pencil and paper battle

Scribattle Lite is a free preview of Scribattle, a very fast-paced arcade game with an original look and interface that evokes pencil-and-paper games. You control three stationary warriors--stick figures drawn on graph paper--with a fixed amount of ammo per level (similar to classic games like Missile Comand), as they fire up at wave after wave of scribbled, fast-moving enemies. To fire, you touch a warrior and then quickly flick up to determine the speed and direction of each shot.

The multitouch controls mean that you can fire from one, two, or three warriors at once, which makes for interesting tactical … Read more

Hearst developing e-reader, charging for e-news

Updated at 12:25 p.m. on Saturday with notes about Hearst's plans to charge for some content online.

It looks as if the e-paper revolution is really about to start.

Hearst, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, announced on Friday that it has developed an electronic reader for newspapers and magazines, the way Amazon.com's new Kindle does for books. The publisher is also planning to put at least some of its online content behind a pay wall, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The e-reader news, first reported by Fortune magazine, … Read more

Berkeley cloud report gets mixed reviews

The University of California at Berkeley's RAD Lab, short for Reliable Adaptive Distributed Systems, has been studying the technologies and logistics of on-demand computing at high scale for about three years.

According to a 2006 Wall Street Journal article, the lab is focused on studying large-scale utility-computing infrastructures. With the backing of many of the largest companies in enterprise computing, many have been waiting anxiously to see what advances they contribute to cloud computing.

On February 12, the lab published a paper titled "Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing" (PDF), authored by Michael Armbrust, Armando Fox, Rean Griffith, Anthony D. Joseph, Randy Katz, Andy Konwinski, Gunho Lee, David Patterson, Ariel Rabkin, Ion Stoica, and Matei Zaharia. Intended as a broad road map for the future of cloud computing, the paper makes recommendations about everything from business models to hardware design to required software infrastructure.

The paper begins by setting a definition of cloud computing that will be considered controversial by many, as it is firmly in the "there is no cloud computing inside enterprise data centers" camp:… Read more

Check the train schedule while you eat sushi...in Japan

E-readers are all the rage (this week at least), so it should come as no surprise that another e-reader story is appearing on Crave.

Tech-On reports that Fujitsu is currently conducting a test of the Kindle-like Flepia mobile information terminal in Tokyo at the Termina Kinshicho Fujiya Restaurant.

The test is being conducted as a joint venture between SoftBank Telecom and Mainichi Newspapers.

Customers of the restaurant will be able to use the Flepia's (maybe Flepia is the plural?) to browse newspapers and advertisements wirelessly sent to the terminals.

Accoring to Tech-ON, the companies will verify whether the … Read more

Field goal for the win

Paper Football is a fun, free app that simulates the classic, two-player, football-like game that's usually played on classroom desks or school cafeteria tables, with fingers for goalposts and a folded-up piece of notebook paper for a ball.

Much as in real Paper Football (or Flick or Finger Football), you take turns flicking the ball across the table, trying to score a touchdown by going over the edge without falling off. Once you score, you go for an extra point by trying to flick the ball through a "goalpost" formed by the opposing player's fingers. Paper … Read more