handy

Handy Tools - Ruler is great to have on hand

We love utility apps that turn your iPhone into a Swiss Army knife of sorts (well, without the blade). Handy Tools - Ruler gives users a simple ruler for measuring objects on the fly. While not completely accurate, it's a great app for getting approximate measurements.

Handy Tools - Ruler cuts right to the chase and opens with an attractive ruler interface. The ruler has centimeters down one side and inches on the other; a simple tap of the switch button in the lower right corner flips the screen so you don't have to flip your phone. There … Read more

Start menu organizer

Start Menu enhancements are numerous, but most complaints about the Windows Start Menu boil down to this: there's too much stuff in it, and you have to click through folders to get to your programs. ChemTable Software's Handy Start Menu addresses these two issues by grouping Start Menu items together by category and by replacing folders with shortcuts that open the application in question with a single click. You can quickly toggle back to the regular Start Menu, too. Better still, it's free.

Clicking Handy Start Menu's desktop icon opens a dialog with an About section … Read more

Ripple effect of Japan disasters on consumer electronics (podcast)

While most Japanese wafer fabrication plants ("fabs") are located in the southern part of the country, hundreds of miles from the epicenter, at least one manufacturer is still shut down after last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami, according to Jim Handy, an analyst with semiconductor market research firm Objective Analysis. Some Japanese technology companies have curtailed operations.

But even plants in other parts of the country can be affected by rattling and, of course power glitches. "These are very sensitive plants because they are using extremely advanced optics to lay down lines as small as 25 … Read more

It's a mad cell phone world

While flying to Las Vegas for CES 2010, I came across a great article in "The Economist" that described how culture affects cell phone use around the world. Not a groundbreaking concept, I know, but the article gave a fascinating look at just how differently cell phones are used across the planet.

Indeed, as the number of cell phone subscribers worldwide climbs above 4.6 billion, culture plays a role in everything from where callers use the phone to how they use voice mail. Even the very word that cultures use to describe the device says something. For … Read more

Versatile contact manager

Too many address books fall into the trap of giving users a place to keep contact information without any options for using their information outside of that program. Handy Address Book solves that problem in an easy-to-use format. Although the interface is basic, the program includes some surprisingly useful extra features.

The program's interface is nothing fancy, but it's clean and quite intuitive. Buttons across the top give users access to the program's major functions, such as adding and editing contacts. The letters of the alphabet are displayed down the left side of the program, allowing users … Read more

Intel's 'Braidwood'--Turbo Memory done right?

Much has been made lately about the trend toward solid-state drives. Now a new Intel technology, code-named Braidwood, may delay that trend, blending the performance of solid-state drives with the economy of old-style hard drives.

Braidwood--like its predecessor, Intel's Turbo Memory technology (formerly code-named Robson)--is basically a solid-state cache for all the disks in the system.

I heard about Braidwood earlier this summer on CNET (see "Intel 'Braidwood' chip targets snappier software" by Brooke Crothers). But I shrugged it off, assuming it would be no better than Turbo Memory, which left a bad taste in the mouth of many PC makers, end users, and Microsoft execs. Turbo Memory (and Turbo Memory 2.0) wasn't cheap, and it definitely wasn't worth the cost. The PC industry operates on such slim margins that every dollar's worth of hardware has to earn its keep--and Robson didn't.

But then I read an EE Times article this week by Mark LePedus describing a new report from Jim Handy of analyst firm Objective Analysis.

The 62-page report is titled "Intel's Braidwood: Death to SSDs?"

Handy's report argues persuasively that Braidwood might actually be worthwhile, and that got my attention. I've known him a long time, and he's a very good analyst--he's been covering memory and caching technology a lot longer than I have. He wrote one of the standard references for computer system architects, "The Cache Memory Book."

So I sent Handy a note, and he sent me a copy of the report. And now that I've read it, I'm inclined to agree with his conclusions, assuming the information he's obtained about Braidwood is accurate. It does seem reasonable, at least.

The first thing to understand is why flash memory can be a good disk cache. This boils down to its much faster access times: microseconds, not milliseconds. Flash can actually take much longer to write than a hard disk. But for reads, it's really quick. So if you can be smart about putting the right hard-disk data in the cache, especially by choosing the right time to do those write operations, you can save huge amounts of time on future disk reads.

… Read more

Effective if redundant uninstaller

Handy Uninstaller is a free program that lets you manually uninstall and remove programs from your computer. It does its job well, but it doesn't offer anything that your Windows uninstaller doesn't already have.

The program's user interface is very straightforward and colorful. Menu and toolbar commands at the top of the window are easy to understand. The tree menu on the left side of the window lets you drill down by category (Audio, Games, Network) to locate a specific program. Otherwise, you can just scroll through the list of programs to locate an application for removal. … Read more

The Zoom H2: A heck of a stereo/four-channel recorder

When a friend turned me onto Zoom's H2 stereo/four channel digital recorder ($200), my first impression was that it looked like a man's electric shaver. It's not just for musicians, students can record seminars and conferences. I think it'll come in handy when I'm doing interviews.

The H2's selectable recording quality runs from 64-320 Kbps MP3 up to much better than CD quality, 24 bit/96 KHz linear PCM (WAV files). Four-channel, 360-degree surround recordings can be made in 24 bit/48 kHz format with the H2's two sets of built-in microphones--or … Read more

A computer in the hand

OQO has started to ship a new model of its handheld Windows computer. Now all the company needs is customers.

The new computer, officially model 02, is a full-fledged Windows XP computer that comes with optional broadband wireless from Verizon or Sprint. It costs $1,499 and is available here..

The trick is that it fits into a person's hand, similar to those devices from Samsung or Taiwan's Hi Tech Computer Corp. (Hi Tech announced a handheld Vista-based computer this week.). Sony has a few in Japan.

OQO, however, can lay claim to being in the market the … Read more