Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.
I've known my friend Jeff since I was 2 years old. He was one year ahead of me in school, but in everything else -- little league, school, girls -- we were extremely competitive. We both had two sisters and looked to one another as brothers and yardsticks for prepubescent success. He was better at baseball and I usually had better luck with the ladies. Being better at baseball helped him with the ladies and having a way with the girls made the baseball thing kind of irrelevant. In short, I was better.
I saw Jeff last week, and as we reminisced about the good old days of baseball and babes, he reminded me of what he called The Great Computer Cold War of 1982.
"The great what?" I asked him.
Think Nokia's all about Lumias these days? While the Windows Phone brand is still the company's primary point of focus, it doesn't mean Nokia isn't still cranking out millions of basic phones for emerging markets around the globe. With that in mind, the Finnish phone giant has outed two such handsets at its event at Mobile World Congress. Sure, they aren't much to look at, but Nokia feels it's still an important element of its strategy to dominate the lower-end market segment.
The first cellular telephone unveiled at this morning's event is the Nokia 105, which is about as simple as they come these days. Once it arrives on the market this quarter, you'll be able to grab one for €15 ($20) in either cyan or black. It contains such features as a flashlight and FM radio, and the noteworthy bullet point is its month-long battery life (standby time). The second half of the pair is the 301 (pictured above), which is a bit more fancy at €65 ($85). It will come with a 3.2MP camera with panorama mode, sequential shots and a clever little self-portrait mode that audibly prepares you for your next glamour selfie. Additionally, the 301 lets you take advantage of Mail for exchange, Nokia Xpress internet (which compresses data down by about 90 percent) and HSPA connectivity with video sharing. Dual and single-SIM options will be available in Q2 of this year.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Nokia
Ben Heck is well known as a modder extraordinaire, and this time he doesn’t let anyone down by cobbling together a pocket PC from an array of harvested parts, including a chatpad from an Xbox 360 controller.
The BASIC pocket PC uses the aforementioned chatpad, an Arduino Uno and a Hitachi LCD display. The handheld computer runs an appropriately tiny version of the BASIC programming language called TinyBASIC. Thanks to its built-in interface, this Franken-computer allows Ben to control real-world objects – for example, Heck uses it to control a servo-operated ghost on a pinball playing field.
Check out the full show where Heck shows you how he built the device and to see what it can do.
The whole thing is pretty neat, but you’ll need to brush up on your electronics skills if you want to be able to make one of these for yourself.
[via Ubergizmo]
It's great to see Ben Heck focus his efforts of do-gooder projects like that foot-controlled wheelchair, but we'll always have a soft spot for the modfather's more nostalgic undertakings, like this BASIC pocket computer. Heck created the device for the latest episode of his web show, and if you're following along at home, you'll need the Chatpad from an Xbox 360 controller, an Arduino Uno and a LCD display -- a Hitachi HD 44780, in this case. The modder-turned-host is quick to point out that the project's purpose isn't solely nostalgic -- you can also use it to control real world objects, which in the Heck's case means a ghost on a pinball playfield. Check out a video of the invention in action after the break.
Continue reading Ben Heck fashions a pocket computer with an Xbox Chatpad and Arduino Uno
Filed under: Misc
Ben Heck fashions a pocket computer with an Xbox Chatpad and Arduino Uno originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The web has an origin story, one that predates any cozy trip in the wayback machine. That's because where we're going, there is no internet -- at least, not as you now know it -- only Bulletin Board Systems. And to help guide curious digital natives on this journey back to the time tech forgot, a programmer by the handle of Proppelerpowered has whipped up a how-to that leverages nothing more than a microcontroller-based microcomputer and BASIC knowledge. The brief step-by-step, listed over on Instructables, requires intrepid geeks to build a Pocket Mini computer, which purportedly takes only "an evening," after which they'll have to tinker with some low-level coding to complete the connection setup, hitch a ride online via PC and then link up with any number of active BBSs around the world. For the purposes of this beginner guide, you'll have instructions for access to a Canada-based Commodore 64 clearly laid out. But the more adept are encouraged to swap out the standard setup for an ANSI terminal and wade into serious retro-gaming waters (Trade Wars, anyone?). Hit up the source below to peek the blow-by-blow and see if this hack's made for you.
Filed under: Internet
Back in the BBS days: how-to helps newbs navigate to a pre-internet playground originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Aug 2012 02:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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