Web Phone

Cidoc's new invention may well change our lives .It is a phone with a recessable keyboard underneath . On top is the phone and an 8 inch high resolution black and white LCD screen (VGA) . With this one can access the net. It costs less than $450 One can even send email . Now when we enquire about train times etc. the whole timetable can come on the screen and one can work one's way through it. Ordering groceries , cinema listings, bank statements etc. can be done easily from the armchair. But the most important use may be to leave messages , important information on one's own web site accessible with a password to family and friends. More details www.cidco.com

Far off Dictation

Doctors in Washington DC now dictate their notes and send them by satellite voice mail directly to Bangalore in India. Here it is transcribed by typists on to their computer screens and sent back within a few minutes and the typed letter is back on the Doctor's computer screen much cheaper than can be done in the USA . Millions of new jobs are being created in the third world by computer and satellite technology.

Fast Internet

Ameritech of Chicago after succesful trials will roll out an ADSL service in a few months . This downloads information from the net at over 2 mbps - about a 100 times faster than the fastest modem now ! and uploads at 56K . The main benefit is that it uses ordinary phone lines and may suit third world countries . It is reported that customers loved it so much that they refused to let Ameritech take the box out of back.
In India VSNL has competition . New service providers it is reported will be licensed making it a local call from all over India . At present it can cost 40 rupees or $1 a minute to access the net. With local call access businesses will start to make heavy use of it as an email costs almost nothing .

International calls at local rates

Lucent an American company have developed new software which can digitise and compress phone calls in real times with good sound quality. A phone call is made to the centre where this compression is done and then the call is sent long distance over internet lines and decompressed at another centre in the receiving country from where it is sent as a local call. Neither sender or receiver needs to have a computer. This technolgy could send international calls at local rates ( plus a bit extra for what Lucent may charge) and make much more efficient use of phone lines in third world countries where the number of connections are few. MCI will start trials in a few months. More info on the Times web site.

Usenet Search

Language will probably improve markedly on the internet newsgroups , now that dejanews has started stroing every message ever put on the internet. Ukindia has a new link on the front page Usenet Search which will help you get any article by subject or author . Science , computer and other groups can now be searched for any topic -eg cold fusion will bring out all the articles on that subject.

n hand

This is a disc the size of two postage stamps which can hold 20 megabytes of information , enough for about 100 high resolution pictures. As it costs only $20 it should lead to low cost , high quality digital cameras , low cost solid state tape recorders and map readers . It is made by Iomega , who also make the zip drive -every computer owner should have one, and the larger 1000 Mb Jazz drives.

Email for all kids

One of the parties in the British elections has said it will provide individual email addresses for all schoolchildren. This will enable them to correspond with others in the world and to get help with homework from on site internet teachers. Very soon the Internet could hold a copy of the text and pictures of all the books and lectures in the world updated frequently. With another proposal of libraries being open all hours it could give children access to information about sciences etc whenever they want . Even in the third world one internet computer in each village could provide the latest teaching for bright children. A small fee could be given to the author by the govt each time somebody accesses their lecture. It would save a lot of trees . University students would of course benefit the most.

DVD Rom

Hitachi have released the world’s first read only DVD Rom drive at about $600. It stores nearly 5 gigabytes of data on a single layer -enough for a movie -but you need a high power Pentium and a special MPEG card to view the movies in resolution twice as good as VHS. With two sides and two layers it can store many more movies with dubbing and subtitles ,and computer programs on each disc.

Microdot

Police in England are starting to sell for about $25 a solution which has 1000 microdots of information that can be painted on to computers etc . Each dot is only the size of a full stop and the information can be read with a magnifier. There has been a marked reduction of theft of equipment marked with such dots. More than 60 letters and numbers can be put on each of the identical dots

Radio Control

Mouse which communicate with the PC via radio waves have now come on the market. While infra red needs to be less than 1 meter from the PC and in a cone of 30 degrees , radio controlled devices can be put anywhere in the room.

Sony digital camera

Sony have brought out a digital camera with good resolution costing about $500 which uses magneto optical recording called mini disc which can store 1000 images on a single small reusable 6cm disc.

CD Rom shopping

After successful trials in London , Tesco is expanding internet shopping into other cities. You get a free CD with all the products and prices listed and then select with the mouse , drop it into a virtual basket and upload to the internet site. Groceries are delivered for $7 (£5). Asian corner shops are under great pressure from Supermarkets but for busy customers they could store the products for later delivery for a small additional free when the customer is at home. Sainsbury will also launch home shopping in a big way in a few months.

Yahoo personalised news

Yahoo - there is a link from the front page of ukindia Yahoo will customize news for you. If say you are interested in movies , computer , world news and cricket ,then you can set up a page on your browser and when you click on this in the bookmark it will get the headlines in these areas.

Internet via satellite

Gateway and others are selling a digital satellite internet system for less than $300 which uploads at the speed of the modem but downloads directly into the computer 30 times as fast . This makes possible download of songs and movie clips in almost real time.

Memory prices

These have fallen to record lows. 16 MB which cost four hundred dollars only about a year ago can now be bought for about a hundred. Windows 95 flies with 32MB total . Any less and the hard drive gets thrashed as the computer tries to juggle memory hungry applications. It is a much more worthwhile upgrade than a faster processor. Another useful piece of hardware is the Iomega ditto tape device now less than $150 which can back up a 2gbyte hard disk in minutes.

Talk to your computer

This months cover CD of Computer Buyer - Jan 97 has the Kurzweil voice pad a program which enables one with a $10 microphone to dictate letters to the computer. One has to spend a few hour teaching it the common words but it does work remarkably well. After typing in what it thinks you said eg ' for' , it will offer a choice eg 1.four 2 fore etc and if you meant four just say 'take 1' and it corrects the spelling ! The star trek computer taking voice commands is not far away . There is also an excellent Office forms program with which one can make invoice templates etc.

Psiwin

Any student who hasnt got a Psion 3a pocket computer should get one. Two thumb typing is fast enough to write in lecture theaters and it can store a whole three months on one set of batteries . In the evenings one can connect it to a desktop with a Psion link and can correct spelling mistakes and print out the notes.Most of the successful students at University rewrite the lecture notes on the same day in neat writing and then make essays on the topics for quick revision at exam time. It has a spelling checker built in , can store hundreds of names and addresses , has a spread sheet for expenses and one can buy foreign language phrase cards. It costs less than $500 and can even be linked to a mobile phone to download data on the beach. The new one even has an infra red link to type out letters on the printer

3D Scanner

Black Widow are selling a flat bed scanner for less than $300 which can scan in 3D and keep objects in focus. It is most useful in scanning books which cannot be laid flat . Keys and small objects can also be scanned by this 3D head scanner.

Trillion calculation computer

The worlds fastest computer has been made with just 7000 Pentium processors linked together . Each processor cost less than $500 so this is a very cheap way to build computers . The processors work in parallel ie each deals with a small bit of the information . This 1000 GHz ( pentium runs at 133Mhz) computer can be used in making very accurate weather forecasts and in understanding body chemistry. The brain uses parallel processing but it has trillions of cells all doing very simple tasks and computers are now being built which can emulate it. The main difficulty is designing software that can make the processors work together.

Web Scams

Its reported that there are over 500 scams operating on the Internet. Most of them have keywords like 'network marketing' etc. ie where you earn the money by paying a large sum upfront and then by recruiting other salespeople rather than selling the products itself. Water filters , herbal products etc are common items for 'sale'. Do not fall for any of these. Pyramid schemes are illegal and should be reported to http://www.bbb.org,

Flat Loudspeakers

Verity makers of wharfedale loudspeakers have developed flat panel ones only 3mm thick which can produce much better sound than current speakes.The panel produces sound in multitudes of phases called DML-much like the back of a violin which do not cancel themsleves and so do not need to be in an enclosure.

Free Agent

Those who enjoy the articles on the newgroups need to get this free software from http://www.forteinc.com . After setting it up , type news:news.aol.com or whichever your ISP is and for mail mail:mail.aol.com . It then goes online to get all the newgroups the service provider carries . Be warned some are very controversial and many have pictures!. Free Agent is excellent for compiling messages offline . The commercial version costs only $40 or so and has spelling checker and other facitilites.

Emailing foreign languages

Scanners have fallen in price so much - the Primax 4800 flatbed for instance costs less than $200 and connects to the parallel port - via printer pass through if you dont have a spare slot- so that it does not need a card inserted into the computer. Scanning a letter or document handwritten or printed in a foreign language -just on line art and lower resolution does not take much memory. This is saved as a bitmap which is then converted to gif via Thumbs etc reducing its size tenfold. This gif file can then be sent as an email attachment to anywhere in the world. Photographs too can be sent in this fashion. Many firms now will print out the letter in the foreign country on a laser printer and post it locally so that it gets there the next day. Software such as Universal Word which is used to make ukindia language lessons can type in Punjabi, Hindi etc directly on the screen and this can be edited and pasted into paintbrush as bitmap .

Rama CD

A scientist working at NASA has developed what promises to be the next megahit computer game. It has 3000
3D scenes giving an almost infinite variation . He says that there is nothing novel in Doom after the first five minutes while his game will keep people entertaind for days.

56k Modem

US Robotics will be selling these in a few months. Download from ISP is 56k over ordinary lines while upload is 28k

Computer Channel

Britain will get a daily computer channel from this week . It is on the air between 6-8pm on Cable and Satellite. Other computer related programs are on CNN - computer chronicles weekly , on NBC Sat mornings and CNet on the science fiction channel. All are excellent . Readers also have access to Yahoo from the ukindia front page which now has news pages listing the latest world , science , computer and health news.

Magneto -Optical drives

Made by Panasonic and others these have become cheap enough at less than $500 - to install in home computers. They provide 650- 1,300 Mbytes of storage on one removable disc- which costs about $50 . The jazz cartridge stores 1,000 Mb but costs more and the optical media should be more durable. These high storage devices should lead to a new era in document and picture storage

Home deliveries by Internet !

Tesco has become the first supermarket in the world offering almost its complete range of goods -over 20,000 items over the internet. After selecting their purchase customers can either phone or order directly via the computer for home delivery at a cost of £5- $7. Now in Ealing , London but will probably be extended nationwide soon .Inner city residents who cant afford to travel to the hypermarkets will benefit the most as will busy professionals.

No email no job

Britain must be the only country where one comes out of the supermarket with more money in the pocket . Most give cashbacks of about $70 with a credit card purchase. Now some are refusing to employ workers without email. Other innovations include self scanning by selected customers as they put items in the trolley. The more the customers do their own work the more the savings.

Evolution CD

Professor Dawkins - Professor of Zoology at Oxford has brought out a CD Rom for about $45 on the Evolution of Life. One can define one's own conditions for the evolution of life and the computer will show them the life forms that will evolve under those conditions. It is being published by Notting Hill Publications .

Psion 3c

This new palmtop from psion communicates with a desktop by infra red . It has wordprocessor and spreadsheet functions and the batteries last for months. For those who like to type on full sized keyboards and need one mostly for wordprocessing a good choice is the Amstrad 200 and Amstrad 100 notebooks. The 200 has a beautiful backlit screen , weighs about 2 pounds and has a floppy and PC card slot . The 100 is about a pound and has a PC Card slot . Batteries last for months . The 200 is about $300 while the 100 is much less.

Hitachi video camera

Hitachi are bringing out a video camera weighing less than one pound which uses a 260Mb hard disk to store video information. A very powerful chip compresses to MPEG standards giving 30 mins of better than VHS video. It can also store 3000 JPG still pictures. Costing less than 2000 dollars this camera could lead to a revolution in document storage and film production as unlike tape it gives instant access .

Full Screen Video without card

Apple will release next month Quicktime version 2.5 which gives windows and other computers the ability to run full screen video as good as video quality. There is no need for an extra MPEG card. More details when available.

3D screensaver for free

From the Free Agent web page (www.forteinc.com) readers can download the free agent 3D screensaver for free. It consists of worm like figures going down the screen.

Advertise free on the net

ukindia which has its own domain now -http://www.ukindia.com has put a link on the front page to the magazine LOOT where readers can put in advertising for free. This may indeed be the killer application for the internet. At the moment it appears that only the London area is covered but soon it will be possible in all areas.

3D fax

This software makes text into bit mapped images. When installed into computers at either end multipaged text files can be sent in a tenth the time saving on long distance phone calls.

Radio Input

Many firms are finding that if they give the workers eg truck drivers hand held computers linked by radio to base they can key in data at the point of sale and update their records . Invoices can be printed. This system is much more efficient than sending all invoices from the office.

Super Nintendo

This new 64 bit system with the advanced chip built by Silicon graphics has gone on sale in Japan at $400. It provides shading and 3D graphics even Pentiums cant match and is proving very popular.