Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Posts category.
Technology Inside Touchscreen
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
We are in a big hype of touchscreen. Touchscreen not only eliminates moving parts in electronics, but also opens up unlimited possibilities for more intuitive interface. With rising of touchscreen technology, therefore, many electronics manufacturers have begun implementing it in exhaustive lists of new products. Consumers like them too, as they convince you that you’re in charge of everything just on a fingertip. We now see them on computers, cell phones, cars, refrigerators and even microwaves (can’t believe it?).
There are three different touchscreen technologies used to register the motion of your fingertips: Resistive, capacitive and surface acoustic wave.
Resistive Touchscreen
According to resistivetouchscreen.org, resistive touchscreen consists of two layers with small space in between. When a pressure is applied, the top layer touches the bottom layer, registering the combination of voltage and distance of the pressure point, and finds the X coordinate. And then, the same voltage gradient is used to find the Y coordinate.
Some of advantages of resistive touchscreen are:
- Low cost
- Durable
- Utilization of stylus
- Dust-resistant
Capacitive Touchscreen
An excerpt from HowStuffWorks.com says that capacitive touchscreen uses a layer with electrical charge on top of the glass panel of monitor. When the pressure is applied, some of its electricity is transferred to the epiderm of of skin. The decreased charge is detected by circuits located in each corner of the layer, and the amount of decrease is registered as the distance in each circuit, interpreted as coordinates.
Image via Wikipedia
Capacitive touchscreen generally transmits stronger signals than resistive touchscreen. Also, since it uses only one layer to detect pressures, it transmits 90 percent of light, providing better clarity of screen when compared to resistive touchscreen.
Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW)
The surface acoustic wave technology (SAW) is one of the most advanced touchscreen technologies to the date. It consists of two transducers each registering X and Y axis on the panel, which registers electrical signals from ultrasonic wave spread on the reflector on the panel, interpreted by the controller of the transducers.
Because SAW does not overlay on the glass panel of monitor, it provides unaffected clarity of the screen. Also, it provides the strongest touchscreen sensitivity today.
Group Project: Retrieving the History of NAMI Northern Virginia
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Northern Virginia is a non-profit organization that seeks to provide educations and resources about mental illness. Founded in 1979, NAMI has helped individuals and families who are affected by mental illness, raised awareness of mental illness in the U.S. and advocated the government for the rights of people with mental illness.
Celebrating its three decades of dedication to the communities of mental illness patients, NAMI asked us to create a history project to retrieve and preserve the history of NAMI. As a group project, the group members and I will collaborate with former and current staff members of NAMI to explore how NAMI has gone through its time.
I will be creating a slideshow to enhance the viewers’ experience with browsing through the recordings of interviews, and also contribute my pictures to a variety of parts of this project. I will tag along with as many interviews as possible, and will also help researching literatures to better understand the history of NAMI.
Dan Rather: ‘It’s My Job To Give People The Facts’
Image via Wikipedia
In the middle of the turmoil after the assassination of the president John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, millions sat in front of televisions to watch the announcement of the president’s death. There Dan Rather was in Dallas, Tx., suppressing all of his emotions to focus only on giving every little detail of the assassination to the audience. He was the first to announce the president’s death on television news.
“It was a hammer to the heart to each individual in America,” said Rather, reminiscing during his video conference on C-SPAN on Feb. 24, 2011. With participants from George Mason University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Purdue University and University of Denver, Rather shared his experience as a journalist and opinions on how the future journalism should evolve with the advancement of technology.
Regarding online journalism, Rather said that the coverage on the assassination in 1963 would have been different these days.
“Taking Egypt as example, social media has been tremendous tool public at large to use against power,” Rather said.
However, he was also concerned of its weaknesses.
“American journalism today needs a spine transplant,” Rather said. He said that ever-emerging new technologies often convey dangers of being manipulated by those in power or authority, and journalists should engage to help audience by verifying information floating around the globe.
He also said that today’s consumers of journalism needs to be more educated in order to “make more sense of our knowledge.”
“The public is now confused and politicians are taking advantage of that,” Rather said.
Rather advised the participating students to become responsible journalists and understand the basic fundamentals of democracy and checks and balances system that the American journalism has grown upon.
“The right attitude of a journalist is to say ‘let’s get the facts right,'” Rather said. “As a professional, you have to seal out all your emotions and focus on the job in your hand.”
Wikileaks as an example, Rather said online sources should be carefully monitored.
“[WikiLeaks] helps public service in many ways, but also risks many lives,” Rather said. He said that today’s journalists should account the duality of online sources, and always focus on verifying any information received.
However, Rather was hopeful that new fundamentals of journalism will solve the challenges that today’s journalists encounter.
“Hopefully a new business model will emerge for online journalism,” Rather said. ” The old business model is dead and shrinking.”
STAR Workshop: Adobe Illustrator CS4
Image by Dekuwa via Flickr
Yesterday I went to a STAR Workshop at GMU to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator CS4. Although I have never used any Adobe software before and it was the first time I have even heard of the program, I signed up for the third level course and expected to ask many, many questions in every step the class would go over.
I have been using GNU Image Manipulating Program (GIMP). A free, what many would say ripped alternative of Adobe Photoshop. However, as I sat in the classroom and opened up the Illustrator, I quickly realized that I was already familiar with the interface, including the tool box with buttons that turn on different cursor functions, layer view, color chooser, etc. Some of shortcuts I got used to from GIMP were different in Illustrator, but for the most part, I never had to ask any beginner questions as the class went along. In yesterday’s class, the instructor Tamara Wilkerson went over how to use gradations and distort effects. It was fascinating to see how a simple copy-and-paste can create a reflection of a coffee cup on table, a distorted image of a logo can be adjusted for its color and gradient to look like a realistic shade, and a hexagon can be modified into a snowflake with 3D effect.
Some of differences I noticed between Illustrator and GIMP were:
Image by lewro via Flickr
- Illustrator uses vectors — direction and magnitude — to coordinate images, compared to how Photoshop and GIMP uses pixels
- Because Illustrator uses vectors, a simple shape can be modified into fascinating artwork as long as your imagination can go
- Artworks can be saved in many conventional formats, including PDF.
With excitation in mind, I ran to the computer store on campus after class to to purchase this awesome Adobe program. However, I was only to be disappointed at the price tag: $199 for a standard package of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat. Instead, I downloaded a free alternative, InkScape later that night to review some of techniques.
Great Search for Food (or Google) Lovers: Google with Recipe View
It seems like Google is never out of ideas to make Web-searching more interesting and intriguing. The following video shows how to use Google’s recent addition, Recipe View to search recipes for any keyword you type.
The search filter can narrow down the results with ingredients, cook time and even amount of calories per serving. I’m quite used to cooking for myself, but I never got to search for recipes to try new food by myself. As a big fan of Google, I am definitely going to try this one out!
Windows? Apple? Why don’t you try Linux?
I am a geek. I love electronics. When I have to buy an electronic device, I spend days and nights to research about each product to come up with the best one. I also like finding tricks and gimmicks to make things work better or just look cool. Although these temptations and attempts often came with bad consequences — setting aside burnt computer chips and abandoned music players — I have found joys in them.
Image via Wikipedia
When I first came to college, many students were still excited about their new laptops and busy with exploring about them. People talked about their laptops, and enjoyed showing off their laptops. The majority had laptops with Windows operating system installed on, some had Macintosh, and a friend of mine who I had known since high school had Linux.
It was a weird experience to do many computing tasks by typing on command line, instead of clicking on icons. First I thought it was weird and inconvenient, but ever since I gave it a try, I became addicted to it. Compared to other operating systems, I learned that Linux has so much to explore about and play with. Plus, it is free of charge for the most part — think about how much that Windows 7 disc cost you. Depending on what you want and what you do with it, you can set up a nice workload machine or a pretty working environment with many special effects (watch the video below). Since then, I still use Linux once in awhile to enjoy the fun in computing.
Linux is not really an operating system you put a disk in your computer and install. It is the backbone of many distributions that developers make out of. The following are some distributions that I have tried before:
Image via Wikipedia
This is the distribution of Linux that I’d recommend to anyone who wants to try out what Linux is without making any commitment. It’s easy, simple and flexible. There are more icon-clicking involved than command-line-typing, it can be installed with just popping in a disc in the computer and probably is fully functional without making any tweaks or changes after the installation. This product is newly released in every April and October, and the current version can be downloaded from here.
Image via Wikipedia
Some of you probably have heard about RedHat. It’s a paid Linux distribution that many corporates and businesses used. Fedora is a simplified, stipped-down and personal-oriented version of RedHat that is distributed for free. This is also the second-most popular distribution. When I tried it back in 2008, I found it sluggish and overweight compared to Ubuntu. However, as news are coming in that their new versions often perform better than Ubuntu, it must be worth trying.
Image via Wikipedia
This one’s a tricky one. I’ve tried only a few times but I haven’t really got much fun out of it. Some say it is the most polished business-oriented distribution among all, but it was just hard for me to get used to their package (Chunk of codes that make up a software) managing and it would often take too long to load up certain programs, so I often gave up on using it. However, if you want to step up and become a super-geek, please feel free to try this one out.
These are just a small, tiny little portion of Linux distributions available. There are tons of them out there, and they all have their unique advantages and disadvantages. If you want more information on what distributions are available, please visit DistroWatch.com.
I also bothered to search for an appropriate video to show you guys what Linux can do. Please enjoy, and happy computing!
Media Pyramid
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Here is the first entry to the first blog of my own. The image above is called Media Pyramid, made as an assignment in a journalism class that I am taking this semester for my minor, based on this article (Poynter.org – What Is Your Media Pyramid?). The names or logos of news organizations and sources are stacked up in the same order used in Food Guide Pyramid, which represents recommended daily proportion of each food category. I made some tilts on the traditional way of making the pyramid to better display how I consume media everyday.
