Voici le second concours du mois de juin sur Fubiz avec cette fois-ci à gagner : l’édition collector de la souris Microsoft Arc Mouse en couleur blanche. Un tirage au sort aura lieu le 12 juin parmi les commentaires de cet article. Plus d’images dans la suite.
Cameron Sinclair’s got a nice (huff)post up on University of California Berkeley graduate Roland Saekow’s energy efficient graduation cap. Go Roland!
Nouvel iPhone 3G S très attendu, annoncé lors de la conférence WWDC. Un modèle plus puissant & rapide mais avec un design similaire. Doté d’un nouvel appareil-photo 3 megapixels, autofocus, mode macro et fonction video, un contrôle vocal et une meilleur batterie. Détails dans la suite.
iPhone 3GS en 16 Go et 32 Go, disponible le 19 juin en France.
Les autres annonces :
– iPhone OS 3.0 le 17 juin
– Snow Leopard en septembre
– mises à jour des MacBook Pro
A few weeks ago, the Neat company sent me their new NeatDesk for Mac scanner and its NeatWorks software to review. I have been a Fujitsu ScanSnap loyalist for the past two years, so I wasn’t super excited about doing the NeatDesk review. In fact, I tested one of their mobile scanners a year ago and was so disappointed with it that I didn’t even post the review to the site (why clutter up your time with an awful review?).
To my surprise, however, I liked the NeatDesk for Mac. Specifically, I really liked the NeatWorks software. (If you buy the scanner, the software comes with it. The software also sells as a stand-alone product.)
The physical scanner is basic. It was easy to assemble, simple to install, is speedy, and it has a streamlined, uncluttered design:
What I want to talk about more in-depth is the accompanying software. Like most other programs, it automatically straightens scans, has text OCR and a document feeder, can automatically generate PDFs, and has settings for color, black/white, and image-only. Where it stands apart from other programs is with its field mapping on business card scans (it generates a contact card in Address Book with the data populated straight from the scan), it supports third-party scanners (Fujitsu, Canon, HP), and it allows you to create custom field values (this is great if you scan both business and personal receipts on the same scanner, so you can have drop-down menus for different credit cards, etc.).
Additionally, I liked that I could create custom reports based on my scans. If I wanted to pull up only my receipts from May 2009, I can do that and have the cover page reflect that information. If it’s a nice receipt, the software will also map vendor, date, and amount fields, similar to how it does with business cards. However, I only got this to work twice out of 10 times because I usually crumple up my receipts when I stick them into my purse and the text wasn’t very clear on the receipt when I scanned it. (I think of this as user error, not the program’s failing.) Here is an example of a good scan:
My only real complaint is that color paper seems to throw off all field-mapping abilities. If a piece of paper, receipt or business card isn’t black and white, it won’t map the information well, if at all. Take for example, my business card:
My card is just white text on a green background, and the software program didn’t map any data off of it. Actually, the system initially thought it was an image, not a business card. I was able to type all of the accurate information in by hand, so it doesn’t completely mess up the system, but I still wish it were more accurate. That being said, a lot of document feed scanning software systems have the exact same problem. In my opinion, it’s not a reason to keep from buying the software.
I think the scanner is fine, but I strongly recommend the NeatWorks software for Mac to use with whatever scanner you own. The software was extremely convenient and performed very well. It is much better than the software that ships with the Fujitsu ScanSnap, is right around the same price as DevonThink Pro, NeatWorks is simple to use with Evernote, and it’s a great way to control paper clutter. It earns a big thumbs-up in my book.
And, my cat Charlie is a big fan of its storage box:
Motorola’s struggles with product design over the past few years tell a well-documented cautionary tale. The close observer can practically watch the monthly tides of design strategy ebb and flow, washing an occasional, gem-like RAZR or PEBL up on the beach, along with the more frequent seaweed-pile of a phone, too tangled up in its own confused strands to draw covetous eyes away from shinier competitors’ offerings. These variances of design success have been an ongoing topic on Core77 for years, swinging between high praise and scornful rebuke, and sparking some impassioned discussions on the boards as well. The upshot: Motorola’s clearly shown that they can do good design, so why don’t they do it more often?
Part of the reason for this unevenness, compared with Nokia, LG and others, may well be the vision thing: Motorola was first to the dance with its Star-Tac 25 years ago, but has spent most of its time since then with little coherent sense of what its devices, and by extension its brand, ought to be like.
In conversation last week with Dickon Isaac, Motorola’s North American design manager, the possible explanation of a “design mythology” came up: the idea that a set of universal aspirations are crucial for an organization to develop the drive and coherence necessary for real innovation and a unified identity, much as engineers in the 50s and 60s looked to the gee-whiz sci-fi of their youth for inspiration in developing the space program.
iFixit’s been around for awhile, showing panicked people all over the world how to repair their abused and overused electronics by themselves. Occasionally, the iFixit team takes apart a new piece of hardware (like the Kindle 2 and Pleo pictured above), documents it, and posts it as a teardown, letting thousands of people take a look at what’s inside and disassemble it themselves.
Today, they’ve seriously extended this part of the site by launching a user-driven teardown platform. The new creation tools allow anyone to author guides, and, with so many people contributing, who knows what we’ll see disassembled? Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, is explicit about the variation they hope to see: “The deviation from writing Mac teardowns foreshadowed today’s epic announcement. We hope that people use our flexible teardown platform to create teardowns of devices of all kinds, not just Apple products.”
To introduce the teardown creation tool, iFixit has posted several user-authored cell phone teardowns and a step-by-step guide of exactly what’s involved in publishing. It’s all laid out for you, so show the world some gadget guts!
 | Whether your dad is all about the ever-updating gizmos and gadgets of the Internet Age or rather acts like he’s been living under a rock for the past decade (or thinks he knows his way around the ‘net, but really doesn’t have an inkling of a clue), this year’s coolest Papa-approved gadgets are sure to appeal to both techie and caveman dads alike! From a Laptop Essentials kit for the working dad on the go to a portable electric shaver that doesn’t even require electricity (what?!), there’s a whole array of nifty newfangled products that don’t necessarily need a word-for-word analysis of the manual in order to operate, if he even so much as glances at it at all! Even if your pops swears by the simpler times from back when he was your age, he won’t be able to resist the handiness of this digital measuring tape gadget that memorizes your measurements for you! After all, he can’t deny that his own memory could use a little assistance these days! Check out the slideshow for more of the season’s coolest gadget gifts for Dad, just in time for Father’s Day! |
One of my favorite productivity strategies is to set a timer and see how much I can get done before a buzzer sounds. I used to keep a timer from my days as a high school debater on my desk. It had a magnet on the back, and I just stuck it to my bulletin board when it wasn’t in use.
Then, I dropped my timer and the digital face distorted to only read 88:88. The thing was close to 20 years old, so I couldn’t be too upset that the $4 piece of equipment had failed.
To replace my beloved timer, I decided to download a program called Alarm Clock 2 by Robbie Hanson for my Mac. (A comparable program for the PC is XNote Stopwatch and you can find a review of the program on Texas-based professional organizer Lorie Marrero’s blog.) I chose Alarm Clock 2 because it is free to download and it does everything I want it to do.
There is an alarm feature (which I use to remind me to break for lunch), a timer (to help me stay focused on a task), and a stopwatch (to help me keep track of how I’m spending my time). I like that I can set the alarms and buzzers to be songs from my iTunes folder, and that I can have them change volume based on how long they have been “ringing.”
If you haven’t used a timer before to help you with your productivity, I highly recommend using one. After lunch, when my energy level takes a nose dive, I like to set the timer for 10 minutes and see if I can finish all of my filing before the music starts playing. I also set a timer during phone calls to help me stay on topic and keep the business call to under 15 minutes. I also like to make sure that I’m spending the majority of my day (close to 80 percent) behind my desk completing important tasks that help me to advance my goals. I know that I’m procrastinating or avoiding the big-picture items when less-important tasks start filling more than 20 percent of my work day.
Do you use a computer-based timer to help you be more productive? What program do you use and why do you like it? Share your experiences in the comments.
Après le Project Natal, un nouveau produit très attendu : le jeu DJ Hero conçu par la société Activision. Il s’agit d’un nouveau dérivé du célèbre Guitar Hero avec cette fois-ci, un accessoire en forme de platine qui sera disponible sur les consoles Xbox 360, PS3 et Wii.
DJ Hero et son édition spéciale seront disponible le 08 octobre 2009.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
