March 28, 2004
Touchstream LP Keyboard Review
When I first saw the Touchstream LP keyboard in my daily Internet trawling my interest was peeked. I have always been interested in different methods of user input. Although the Touchstream is still a keyboard what seperates it from the rest are its gesture abilities.
My first impressions of the keyboard included comments like, wow, amazing, sweeeeet, huh, damn and crap. The mixed reaction was because the Touchstream is very different from other keyboards. Unlike other keyboards the Touchstream provides zero tactile feedback due to the use of two very large touchpads for the keyboard (like the ones found on laptops). This means that you have no feedback so if you slightly miss a key on the keyboard there is no tactile feedback to correct yourself. Therefore when I first started to use the keyboard I kept on typing the wrong letters, which was very frustrating. The keyboard itself tries to help by using a built-in dictionary and guesses what you are typing and tries to correct. Overall this works fairly well but you will still need to relearn how to use keyboard. As I can already touchtype the learning process for the keyboard did not take too long but was still a painful process.
What makes the re-learning process all worth it are the gestures that the keyboard provides. The two large touchpads are capable of registering multiple touch points to allow for quite complex gestures. Depending on how many figures and the motions used on these touch pads and arrary of different gestures can be performed. For a complete list of gestures possible visit the Touchstream website. Using gestures you are able to open applications, cut, copy, paste, switch applications. If you do not like the standard gestures the keyboard comes with a java utility to remap the gestures to whatever you would like.
Another great feature are the multiple modes that the keyboard can be set to. The most interesting mode is the gaming mode that changes the keyboards operation to allow its use in games. You can also customise the gestures so that they can be used within the game. Have you ever wanted to reload by just expanding your fingers well the Touchstream allows for this and many other customisable gestures.
If you are like me and use both mac and pc then you will be happy to hear that the Touchstream works on both systems the same. As some settings are actually stored in the keyboard there are a few problems when moving the keyboard back and forth between the mac and pc systems but I did not find this to be much of a problem. I actually found that the support for the mac was more integrated than PC.
Overall the Touchstream is a great piece of kit although most users will find the lack of feedback and need to learn how to use it annoying. I would only recommend the Touchstream to users who use computers all the time and will therefore spend the time to learn how to use the keyboard.
Rating: 8/10
BenQ FP591 LCD Monitor Review
I recently bought a BenQ FP591 monitor (visit site) for the display of my multiple digital photos. The LCD monitor has two optional accessories, a card reader and TV tuner. I only bought the card reader so this review will only talk about this component.
Overall the monitor looks great with a very stilish surround. It is only a 15“ display but for my purposes that was fine. The maximum resolution is 1024x768 which is perfect for displaying photos or basic computer operation. If you are to use this as your main computer monitor I would recommend getting a different monitor that can do at least 1280x1024 as this is a much better resolution for using your computer.
Basic computer operation was not the reason why I bought this monitor, its ability to display a slideshow of photos stored on cards stuck into the optional card reader was what attracted me. The card reader comes as a seperate module that is slid into a hidden compartment at the top of the monitor. Installation of the module was easy and problem free. The problems started when I started to put photos onto an SD card and stick it into the appropriate slot. The monitor did not easily recognise the card and it took a number of times turning off the power and back on again to recognise the photo. The next problem is that the monitor displays the photo at full screen and will stretch the photo to fit. This stretching distorted many of the photos I had. I therefore had to go through all my photos and scale them to 1024x768 resolution and then pad them with black so that they took up the complete screen.
Another feature of the monitor is that it can be connected up to your computer via the supplied USB cable so the cards inserted into the monitor can be read in your computer. The same problem with recognising the cards still existed when using the card reader in this mode. An added benefit is that by using the card reader module it is possible to conduct a firmware patch on the monitor. I am hoping that future firmware patches will fix these problems with the monitor.
One of the card slots on the monitor is a compact flash slot, I therefore enquired with the BenQ representative if this could read the Microdrives that are available is sizes >1gig. This would therefore allow me to store a large number of photos on the Microdrive and then just let the monitor scroll through the photos. When I tried to insert the Microdrive I discovered that it physically did not fit through the facia. After removing the facia by taking the card reader module apart and cutting a larger opening the Microdrive fit through and did actually work in the reader.
Overall the monitor looks great. Once it actually reads the cards inserted the monitor works quite well. With its firmware update feature hopefully many of these problems will be rectified.
Rating: 5/10
March 27, 2004
Web Services Standards
Interested in using web services for a new or existing systems. I have been using web services in my work projects for over a year. Over that time the standards have slowly progressed. Most people know about the three basic standards that make up web services (SOAP, UDDI and WSDL). This article discusses some of the lesser known web services standards that have been agreed upon or are currently in development.
Security Standards
SAML
When it comes to securing your web applications there may be the need to share your security setting with other systems, this is where the SAML standard helps out. SAML allows for security information to be packaged up in an XML document so that it can be transmitted between systems.
WS-SecureConversation
WS-Security
WS-SecurityPolicy
WS-Rel*
comprises: WS-Reliability and WS-ReliableMessaging
Web Services Choreography
WSRP - Portlet
WS-I: Basic Profile
WS-Addressing
WS-AtomicTransaction
WS-Attachments
WS-Context
WS-Coordination
WS-Eventing
WS-Federation
WS-Routing
WS-Transaction
WS-Trust
Search/Retrieve Web Service Version 1.1 together with CQL (Common Query Language)
Gizmodo Website
Ok this has got to be one of the best web sites that I have seen for a while. Int contains reviews on many different gadgets that are available. This site is a must for any fellow gadget freaks or you just want to see some of the new items available.
Go to Gizmodo
Welcome
Well here is the first of my entries. I will be posting articles about new gadgets, software, ideas and concepts that come to mind. I follow closely many different technical forums so I will try to keep an update of such technologies including XML, Web Services, Java Programming and web development. I will also announce any news for new entries on my personal site through this blog.
