There’s been a lot of controversy over Apple’s decision to ban Flash (and Java for that matter) from the iPhone since the day it was released. Now, with the iPad about to hit retail, there’s been more debate on whether this was a technical decision or not, and whether it’s a severe limitation for the devices, or a blessing. Being both a Flash developer, an iPhone OS user an open source advocate, I thought I’d weigh in on the conversation.

Before I get started though, let me point out that I’m not a fan of Flash. I think it’s a real shame that there’s no open, official standard that lets web designers do the things Flash can. Adobe has the web in an awkward stranglehold right now, and I’d love to see that change. But the reality is that Flash is an integral part of the web today.
More My thoughts on Flash and the iPad

It’s been a while since I blogged about Chrome OS. Things have been pretty quiet around the Google-supported operating system for netbooks and tablets. But Hexxeh, a 17(!) year old developer who’s been supplying pre-built versions of the OS for a while now, released an new version yesterday, and it’s a lot more polished than earlier builds. It boots in seconds and runs pretty smoothly for a pre-alpha OS. If you’re curious about Chrome OS, this is the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

Not only is the ‘Flow‘ build very easy to use, there are complete setup instructions as well. The OS is installed on a USB stick or an SD card (provided your target computer has a card reader it can boot from). It runs off of that drive, so nothing is left behind on the computer’s hard drive. Simply take out the SD card and boot up to get back to Windows or whatever you were using before.

Remember my review of the world’s smallest ‘desktop’ PC, the Fit-PC2? I recommended it for use as a lightweight, energy efficient server, but apparently you can do much more exciting things with it. Matt Bunting, a University of Arizona electrical engineering senior, used it to power a very cool, spider-like robot. And it turns out Intel just bought two of them to show off the Atom’s potential. It uses other stock parts too, including a Logitech webcam.
More Fit-PC2 used to power amazing robot spider

A little over a year ago, I got myself the cheapest media center PC ever, on the form of an old refurbished office machine. It was fast enough to handle most of what I wanted it to do, but it was lightly too big for my AV setup, and decidedly beige. Ugh. But my main issue with it was that it was also making long hours. The Pentium 4 series of processors is notorious for its high power consumption, and I was starting to feel guilty.

I’ve had a couple of Atom based PCs in my home (a netbook and that really small PC I wrote about earlier), but found them to be slow, especially when it came to graphics. Intel’s ancient 945 chipset was a real bottleneck, and the newer US15W had terrible driver issues in Linux. That’s why I wanted to try nVidia’s Ion chipset. I decided that an ASRock Ion 330 would be the perfect little HTPC for me.
More ASRock’s ION nettop really rocks!

If you’ve not been living under a rock these last few days (or weeks, even), you’ll know that Google has just announced (and released) its first ever mobile phone. Called the Nexus One, it represents Google’s vision of what an Android phone should be. And I’m pretty sure the sotfware is OK. It’s just that I find myself not liking the phone exterior design. I know I’ve dismissed Apple products as ’style over substance’ in the past, but this thing looks like the HTC Touch from 2007. It might look a little better in real life, but the official stills look decidedly unexciting to me.

At the same time, HTC, who make the Nexus One, have a phone in their portfolio that looks a lot more like what I’d expect from a Google Phone. Its HD2 is a very sexy device that coincidentally has pretty much identical specs compared to the Nexus. It looks nothing like HTC’s other phones, yet runs boring old Windows Mobile. I’m telling you, these two devices were switched a birth. Somewhere deep inside HTC’s Taiwan development labs, a very sexy, top secret new Google Phone was designed, but delivered to the wrong software department. Meanwhile, the next boring Windows device was handed to the Android people.

Despite its bland looks, I’ll probably still get a Nexus One. I’ve been putting off getting an Android phone for way too long, and this is the new king of hill. But I’ll probably regret the terrible mixup for as long as I have it…

When I read Engadget’s “Ten Gadgets that Defined the Decade“, I was amazed by some of their choices. I could easily think of a few gadgets that changed the way we use technology, but weren’t listed. While I agreed with a couple of items on their list, like the iPhone, I couldn’t help writing my own top 10 of the most influential gadgets of the last ten years. Here are my candidates in random order.
More My attempt at the top 10 gadgets of the decade

I blame PayPal. They’ve made it far too easy to order stuff on eBay . When I saw the iPazzPort on Engadget a while ago and read in the comments that they were very cheap on eBay I couldn’t help myself. Two clicks later I’d ordered this little gizmo from a vendor in Hong Kong. It took nearly a month to get here, but I’m glad it did.

The iPazzPort is a small wireless keyboard with a built-in trackpad. It uses RF signals to communicate with the (included) USB receiver, which has a range of about 10 meters. I had been looking for something to replace my aging BTC 9019URF which is big, ugly and doesn’t quite work from my couch.
More iPazzPort -- the budget-friendly HTPC keyboard

CompuLab just released a new version of their tiny Fit-PC2, called the Fit-PC2i. My guess is the ‘i’ stands for ‘internet’, because the most interesting new feature is a second gigabit ethernet port. This allows the device to be used as a router or firewall, so it’s not a feature that helps desktop users much. In fact, in order to fit (pun intended) the second RJ45 socket they’ve had to eliminate two USB ports from the back of the device, leaving just two full-size USB ports.

But there’s some good news too. According to the press release, the ‘i’ can be ordered with a 2GHz processor (although not currently listed on the website), and a 2GB memory model is also available. This is more important than you might think, because the RAM chips are soldered onto the motherboard and can not be replaced or upgraded. Also new is an RS232 port on the front of the device.

So, if you’re looking for a tiny little computer with an astonishingly low power consumption and two network connectors, look no further. Be advised though that the current state of the GMA500 graphics driver is still ‘a bloody mess‘, and you’ll need a display with a digital (DVI or HDMI) input.

Back in the days when the first DVD players were introduced, I was employed by Europe’s biggest audio-visual facilitator. So naturally, we dove right in, and I even worked on the menus for a few major movie releases. I remember being blown away by how hours of great image quality could fit onto such a small disc. But recently, those same discs have started to really annoy me. They scratch, they’re easy to misplace and they take up a lot of space if you’ve got many. That’s why I’d been looking at the latest generation of network media players. I got one this weekend for the person in my household who has the most DVDs, my six year old daughter .
More WD TV Live first impressions

I believe that as some point in the future, digital cameras, mobile phones and GPS navigation devices will merge into one connected multi-purpose device. You’ll be able to put images and videos online as soon as your take them, and tweet about them without having to look for cables or having to remove the memory card from your GPS-cam-phone-gadget-thingy. We may not be there quite yet, but the Eye-Fi card definitely gives your current digital camera a head start.

Eye-Fi is a wireless SD memory card with up to 4GB of memory PLUS built-in Wi-Fi. Just turn your camera on to effortlessly transfer photos and videos from your camera to your computer and favorite web sharing site (like Flickr & Facebook).
More Eye-Fi truly makes your photos fly (and you can win one)