FUNside

At first I was with the ones that spoofed bluetooth keyboards, thinking they are practically useless since there are wireless keyboards with radio frequencies out there anyway.

But now I realize that adopting a more universal cordless technology (like bluetooth) for a dedicated device connection gives you far greater flexibility, once you have more than one computers you need to operate.

Especially if you have a PDA or UMPC, devices that really need an attachment keyboard if you are going to do some heavy-duty typing, you can just make a connection with the bluetooth keyboard of your desktop computer and use that same keyboard without any further setup. Effortless and money effective computing if you ask me…

I personally have a Q1 and was looking on the Net at the keyboard options I have for it. Of course there is the official keyboard that doesn’t look that promising as it seems I can’t use it for anything else.

There is quite a variety on small-factor bluetooth keyboards, some offering a qwerty interface that folds (1, 2) and some just saving space with completely weird key setups (primary example being the Frogpad – I mean really, will this gadget help me or make me feel like I’m typing an endless sms message??)

A couple of original ideas drew my attention. Specifically:

- The bluetooth fabric keyboard called RoKy² and released by Just Mobile (1, 2, 3, 4).

- And the all-time geek favorite the Virtual Laser Keyboard (which actually doesn’t make sense and should be re-named laser projection virtual keyboard).

I must admit this stole my heart the minute I saw it – I would buy it just for fun. It is also worth mentioning that both of these innovative ideas offer a full-sized QWERTY keyboard layout making the transition from traditional keyboards much easier.

But since I’ll be using it primarily on my multimedia PC (and secondarily on a UMPC) it seems a sensible choice to go with a full-featured multimedia keyboard, the Logitech diNovo Edge.

I think that’s what I’ll choose for now – what will your choice be?

I wanted to shut down my computer automatically at night so I wouldn’t have have to think about turning it off every day – one less action must be good right?

There is an internal dos command in XP you can run to shutdown a computer, even remotely. All you have to do is create a bat file with that command and have it run as a scheduled task (from the control panel).

I found useful information on the official website and some technology related sites 1, 2, 3.

Of course there are (free) programs that do that like Auto Shutdown for Windows, but why have one more program installed on your system if you can avoid it?

Additionally I removed the password prompt after standby, as described here. All these security measures have purpose when many people have access to the computer – but for a home computer (and especially a multimedia computer) some times quick access is more important than security.

I always had the search “gamepad with trackball” in my frequent list, visiting Goggle time after time until I found the gamepad that had a trackball on it so I could finally play FPS games properly from my couch.

Let’s face it, the analog stick will never have the precision of a mouse.

I had a link about a manufacturer that had such a prototype (saw a screen anyways) and he was accepting enquiries from his website (but not orders). After a full year of inactivity I deleted that link because I felt it was going nowhere.

Anyway, this time I stumbled on a game gear review, provocatively named:

Keyboard and gamepad’s unholy love child

It was about a new kind of user device called AlphaGrip. It’s supposed to be more than a gamepad – in fact it’s inventors promote it as the fastest typing machine even created!

The truth is that they’ve combined a keyboard and a trackball in one gamepad-like form, probably making the use of a conventional keyboard+mouse obsolete

In the video game arena, it provides a whole different experience. You can handle more complex games than the traditional gamepad – like strategy games that require many different keystrokes to accomplish your objectives. Even newer FPSs have started using the keyboard extensively, as a simulation of a physical control panel.

All this AphaGrip can handle with ease and you’ll still feel in control (while laying on the couch)

Did I also say that the keys are programmable? And that it costs only $99?

This would be a certain buy for me if only it was wireless. But it’s USB wired

Having a wire lying around across the living room is not a particularly good idea, and for this kid of device it feels such a natural decision to go wireless.

I saw in the AlphaGrip wiki that the creators have it on top of their list, in the features they want to implement in future releases of the AlphaGrip

Nevertheless, I wasn’t ready to give up so easily. So, I tried a search for any available solutions – to convert a USB cable into a wireless transmission.

Such a technology (as you might know) is well on it’s way and it’s calles UWB (Ultra Wideband). Some hubs are available in the market right now (not exactly what I want to attach to a game pad ) but there could be some more compact products released in the near future.

Either way, I’ll have to wait a while until I get my ultimate controller on my couch.

(weep)

While searching for a solution to make a wired device wireless (the AlphaGrip to be exact) I found that the only substitute for the plug-n-play nature of the USB can be the UWB – that’s why it’s developed anyway.

It’s supposed to be faster than Wi-Fi but slower than cabled USB. Find more information at the UWB Wiki-pedia page

At present there are only a handful of devices using this technology, mainly hubs that don’t connect physically to the host computer (like Belkin’s UWB hub.

People say they are still too expensive and too un-reliable. They are right. As they say, wait for version 2…

This is a radio transmitting technology that hasn’t been specified in an IEEE standard. It’s still too early to predict how things will go. I read a couple of articles to get a general idea, you might find something useful in these webpages:

• Making USB without wires work for consumers
• Review: Wireless USB Hubs Show Promise

I decided to give a go on Linux as a virtual PC for my multimedia center that is meant not re-boot and just go in and out of sleep mode… In that sense having Linux running on the side would be a good addition, right? Wrong…

First of all I had a series of problems setting up Linux – it was by far not a one click procedure. These online resources had proven to be helpful at the time:

• How To Configure Ubuntu For Microsoft Virtual PC
• Ubuntu 7.04 and Virtual PC 2007 – Mouse Issue Workaround (sort of)
• Sound Blaster 16 card
• HOWTO: change resolution/refresh rate in Xorg

Most importantly there was a significant impact on the performance of my computer running the virtual machine. And this is a multimedia center specifically beafed up with plenty of RAM and disk space for gaming and such.

Overall I’d say it was a lost afternoon trying to make things work. Now that I think about it, Linux has:

• Limited support for new hardware drivers
• A small collection of video games you can play, mostly outdated
• Nothing on the multimedia side Windows products can’t do better

Why would you use Linux as a multimedia center interface anyway? (Outch)