characters

Featured Freeware: DAZ Studio

From the makers of the popular scene-rendering program Bryce comes DAZ Studio, a powerful 3D-modeling and CAD program for Windows and Mac that looks great but is a resource hog and can be sluggish for the average user.

The publisher recommends having at least 256MB of RAM, but that's wishful thinking. The program runs choppily on anything less than 1GB, although some of the more complex rendering was processed more slowly than others. It also requires an OpenGL-compatible graphics card with at least 128MB of RAM onboard, so machines built before 2003 will certainly struggle. This isn't unusual … Read more

Report: Chinese character recognition on iPhone

A day really doesn't go by these days without some kind of news involving the iPhone. The latest comes from a Chinese blog called Wretch.cc, which posted screenshots of a Chinese handwriting recognition function in the handset. This function was reportedly included in the new iPhone 2.0 beta firmware and verified by MacRumors. The handwriting recognition software reportedly allows users to writer characters on the screen with their fingers. Suggestions for the character will appear on the right of the panel where users can then pick the right one.

(Source: Crave Asia)

A funny thing happened on the way to RSA registration...

Want to cause trouble at RSA? Register with any of a number of special characters in your name or business name and watch the badge printer issue blanks. That's what happened to me.

Monday morning when I registered for RSA 2008 (where I'll be speaking with Chris Boyd of FaceTime), I thought maybe I'd get a little VIP service. (Our talk on "How to Adapt to the Echo Generation's Social Media Hacking Game" is at 9:10 a.m. PDT on Thursday.) Instead, I was stuck in various registration lines for more than half … Read more

Podcast tip: Special characters will break your podcast feed

There are times when I encounter an issue as I'm producing a podcast that can either make or break the feed. Being that I've received some requests to share these tidbits of knowledge with some of the loyal Buzz Out Loud fans, I'll go ahead and throw a few pointers into the blog as they arise. I don't plan on assaulting this blog with millions of posts, but if I encounter something that might be valuable to budding podcasters out there, I'd love to help out. Having said that, welcome to my first "no-duh" tip.… Read more

A mouse that can write in Chinese

When we hear complaints about the lack of meaningful desktop innovation, the first thing we think of is the mouse. A lot of R&D seems to be wasted on this basic device, which doesn't really need fixing, as far as we can tell.

But a Chinese company called Hanwang is the exception. Its mouse doesn't just fold up or point lasers like so many others we've seen; instead, it has a built-in touch screen that can be used to write Chinese characters with a stylus stored inside. Then, according to Everything USB, the characters can … Read more