Asus VivoMouse announced
If you are mad about gadgets, then surely shows such as CeBIT, the grand daddy of them all, CES, or even a more oriental slant like Computex would capture your attention, as you lap up the different kinds of news as well as press releases that different companies come up with. Asus is one such company, using the opportunity of launching yet another computer peripheral in their own backyard in the form of the Asus VivoMouse. Just when you thought that a mouse is a mouse, is a mouse, Asus comes along to try and prove everyone wrong. Now the Asus VivoMouse is not any kind of gaming device, but rather, it will be oriented more towards the office and serious crowd.
Just what kind of goodies does the Asus VivoMouse come with? For starters, it is highly versatile, since it can double up as a standalone touchpad and wireless remote. In a nutshell, you can go around to claim that the Asus VivoMouse is the first wireless mouse with an integrated multi-touch touchpad in the world, delivering not only full desktop but handheld control as well.
Certainly the lines of normal hardware categories are being redrawn all the time with each successive generation of peripherals that enter the market. Take the smartphone for instance – this category of gadgets have moved on from carrying a QWERTY keyboard to being a full touchscreen device, and now we have the screen size getting larger and larger until they start to encroach on tablet territory. I guess you can more or less say that the same is happening with the Asus VivoMouse, where it combines mouse, touchpad, and wireless remote into a single device.
It is said to be an entirely new kind of pointing device, courtesy of its innovative combination of traditional desktop input and a wireless handheld remote for a more casual PC control. When you want to use the VivoMouse as a standard optical mouse, it will fit comfortably in the hand, although its top surface would also boast of a large circular...
Google to deploy wireless hotspot blimps in Africa and Asia
Google's long-term goal of collecting and contextualizing the all world's data is moving along nicely, but some regions are still not wired up enough to facilitate reliable Internet access, thus giving the search giant massive blind spots around the globe. To address this glitch, the company is apparently working on deploying a fleet of blimps that would deliver wireless access.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (citing a source familiar with the company's plans), the initiative is targeted toward parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. In addition to connecting users located in rural areas, the initiative would also be used to boost the connection speeds of those located in major city centers. The plan involves rolling out a combination of blimps that would act as wireless nodes, as well as structuring deals with local governments to use the airwaves reserved for local television broadcasts. Google reportedly believes that these techniques could connect up to a billion more people to the Internet.
In recent years, Google has quietly been working on raising its institutional IQ with regards to providing Internet access to the public. Currently, Google provides free Wi-Fi access to all of Mountain View, California, where its headquarters are located, and has recently introduced a new high-speed network called Google Fiber to cities in states including Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Utah.
While these test projects don't guarantee that the company will have the ability to successfully negotiate connecting a billion new users in underserved areas of Asia and Africa, the project will almost certainly serve as the perfect testing ground for Google to experiment with new ways to deploy its access model back in the U.S.
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