Recently in Technology Category

I've been using my Hewlett-Packard tx2500z Tablet for a little over two months now. I haven't found the time to learn how to make best use of the tablet features, but I'm happy with the machine -- especially now that I've solved an annoying problem with the audio, which would often stutter when I was playing music with PowerPoint slides or streaming audio from the web. One review of the machine noted the problem and hoped that a "more mature sound driver" would solve the problem. I would check periodically, but no new driver has appeared.

And then I found another review, from studentbuyingguide.com, whcih offered a solution that has worked for me:

Some people have reported issues with stuttering during DVD and MP3 playback, I also got a little of this.  There is a simple fix though, it turns out to be a conflict with the wireless card and to resolve just do the following: Wi-Fi. In device manager, go to Control Panel > System > System Properties > Hardware > Device Manager > Network adapters -> Broadcom adapter -> Advanced -> Disable Bands -> Disable 802.11a.

I don't use 802.11a wireless, so disabling it posed no problem. And my audio hasn't stuttered since.

[Image source: tabletpcreview.com]

With the help of Bill over at the LivingDot helpdesk, I have managed to fix the problem with the feed from ahistoryofnewyork.com.

Bill reported that when he tried to access the feed, he received an error message: "An invalid character was found in text content."

At first, I didn't know how to reproduce the error, so I scanned the entries since August 8 for anything that might look like an invalid character. I made a few changes, but nothing helped. Then I tried to recreate the feed widget with Feeds.App Lite, and the process failed. I was sent over to feedvalidator.org, which identified the word in the entry "FringeNYC" that was causing the problem. It turned out to be the word "Tuesday," which must have contained some kind of hidden character that wasn't showing up on my screen. So I deleted "Tuesday," rewrote "Tuesday," saved the post and -- voila! -- everything is working again.

So if you're having trouble with illegal content in your feeds, use feedvalidator.org to isolate the problem. Thanks again, Bill!

For reasons that remain mysterious, the listing of recent posts from "Patell and Waterman's History of New York" (ahistoryofnewyork.com) disappeared from my sidebar after I republished some pages last night. The listing was created using the plugin Feeds.App Lite, which comes with installations of Movable Type 4. I'd been thinking of upgrading to a paid version of Feeds.App so that I can list the authors of each post, but I don't think I'll do that until I figure out what's wrong with the widget I created.

With luck or perhaps a flash of insight, I'll be able to get it working again soon. In the meantime, I'll just note that the last post concerned Herman Melville and his father's description of him as "n honest hearted double-rooted Knickerbocker."

Here is a project that brings together two of my hobbies: building computers and assembling Lego creations. Well, Lego assembly is really my sons' interest, but I seem to spend an awful lot of time doing it with my older son and for my younger son. I found the project via Engadget.com. It's a mini-ITX computer with a case built exclusively of Lego parts!

This Lego Computer is the brainchild of Luke Anderson, a computer science major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has thoughtfully provided both an account of the project and complete instructions under a Creative Commons license on his blog. He used the MLCAD program to design the case and order the parts from various sellers at Bricklink.com.

Here's a YouTube video of Luke assembling the case. It's fun to watch even if you have no interest in either building computers or building with Legos.

There's a new laptop waiting for me in my mailroom, and this one is a tablet. Even though I'm still quite fond of the Inspiron 700m that I've used for the past three years, I've decided to make the move to Windows Vista: my desktop PC dual-boots Vista and XP, but I've recently made Vista the primary operating system. The 700m isn't quite up to the task of running Vista. It has a single-core Centrino processor, and its graphics are comparatively weak:
they lag behind even my wife's old Latitude D610 and won't play my son's Lego Star Wars game. I suspect that the machine won't be up to the video editing that I want to be able to do on a notebook in the coming months.

I've had my eye on tablet pcs for the past couple of years, and two of my colleagues have used them: one swears by them, the other threw up her hands in disgust and bought something more conventional after a year. My handwriting is terrible, so I hate taking notes on pads of paper, but I also don't like clicking on a keyboard when I'm attending meetings or listening to lectures. Plus I'm trying to decrease the amount of paper in my life: I've been scanning documents like crazy overt the past few months, and I'm subscribing to an increasing number of digital publications. I'm hoping that the tablet's portrait orientation will make it more fun to read digital magazines and perhaps also lead me to print out drafts of manuscripts less frequently. 

I was disappointed that Dell hasn't seen fit to release a consumer-oriented tablet yet: at two grand, their Latitude tablet is priced for corporations and is more than I want to spend on a machine that I'll be dragging around. Then I read a piece on my favorite tech blog, Engadget, about the Hewlett-Packard tx2500z Tablet, which the company bills as an "entertainment notebook." The tx2500z tablet runs on an AMD dual-core processor with ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics, and it feature both passive and active touchscreen capabilities, meaning that you can use a finger to navigate your way around but also use a pen for notetaking and handwriting recognition. I took a look at preconfigured model being offered by Circuit City. As some online reviews have suggested, the screen appears a little washed-out compared to a standard laptop as a result of the passive digitizer. It's certainly not as vivid as my current laptop, but it seemed quite usable.

When I discovered an online coupon from HP that offered $500 off a customized tx2500z priced above $1399, I decided to go for it. I placed an order on July 19 for a system with the following specs: AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-80 (2.1 GHz); 12.1" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) with Integrated Touch-screen; 3GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm); 320 Gb SATA hard drive; ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics; HP "Echo" Imprint Finish; Microphone; Webcam; Fingerprint Reader; Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n; Bluetooth; LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support; 8-Cell Lithium Ion Battery; Vista Home Premium SP1 with System Recovery DVD; and Microsoft(R) Works 9.0.

According to my confirmation e-mail, the order was sent to the factory and was expected to ship by July 31. Then, lo and behold, I received an e-mail on July 25, just as my famiy and I were leaving for a week of vacation, that my order had shipped. When I clicked on Fed Ex's tracking link, I discovered that it was shipping from "Shanghai, CN." It was fun tracking its progress. The tablet was in Anchorage, Alaska, the next day and Memphis, Tennessee, at noon on July 27. It arrived in Newark that evening and was in my mailroom before 9:00 a.m. on July 28.

I'm looking forward to testing it out on my return to the city this weekend and will post some first impressions then.

[Image source: tabletpcreview.com]

I've written a number of posts during the past week at my other blog, Patell and Waterman's History of New York (ahistoryofnewyork.com), a collaborative project with my colleague Bryan Waterman.

So I've added a feature that I'm calling "The Past Week at ahistoryofnewyork.com" at the top of the left-hand column of the sidebar. It'll display the titles of the last seven posts on the blog in the form of clickable links. We've resolved to put up a new post each day, so showing the last seven posts should approximate the previous seven days' work.

Click the continuation if you're a Movable Type 4 blogger and want to know how to include a similar feature on your blog.

After I installed the SP3 update on three Windows XP machines, I discovered that Microsoft Update no longer worked. The updates would be downloaded, but the installations would always fail. Click below if you'd like to know how I solved this problem.

I just learned how to schedule future posts on this blog, which uses Movable Type 4 blogging software. Click below if this subject interests you.

The latest issue of Wired magazine arrived today, and guess what caught my eye as I scanned the cover (click on the picture to get a better view):