If you were thinking about getting an ultra-portable PC or sub-notebook, you’ll have to gather information about a lot of new devices that have appeared in the last months. Brad Linder over at Liliputing.com wrote a great post which gives an overview of ultra-portable devices along with specifications. A great list that should be helpful if you’re still wondering what to get. The list includes:

• Asus Eee PC 701
• Dreambook Light IL1
• Everex Cloudbook
• HP 2133 Mini-Note (HP Mini)
• Asus Eee PC 900
• ECS G10IL
• Everex Cloudbook Max
• MSI Wind
• 2Go PC
• 3k Longitude
• ACi Ultra-mini
• Airis Kira
• Blue Digital Systems Deep Blue
• Elonex One
• Fukato Datacask
• HCL MiLeap X
• Jisus
• Kohjinsha SCC
• Medion Akoya Mini
• Noahpad
• Nohrtec Gecko
• Proview Handbook PC-81001
• Sungjut TangoX
• Gigabyte M912

So, there you go. This should you give a lot to think about before you buy.

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In the spirit of Acid tests for web browsers, now you can test your mobile web browsers for compatibility with web standards. The Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group at the W3C has published a test for mobile browsers consisting of twelve checks. The result is displayed as a twelve-square grid where each square represents a single check. If a square is green the mobile browser has passed that particular part of the test, and if a square is red or white, it hasn’t. Here is the checklist (taken from Ajaxian):

1. CSS2 min-width
2. Transparent PNG
3. GZIP support
4. HTTPS
5. iframe inclusing of XHTML-served-as-XML content
6. Static SVG
7. XMLHTTPRequest
8. CSS Media Queries
9. Dynamic SVG
10. The canvas element
11. contenteditable
12. CSS3 selectors

On the top right is a screen capture of Opera Mini (hifi ardentopium sr v.4.0.10406, 20080228) on my Sony Ericsoon P1i. The grid shows my Opera Mini doesn’t support “iframe inclusing of XHTML-served-as-XML content”, “Static SVG” and “Dynamic SVG” (I am assuming the grid layout is a standard matrix layout).

Here’s a screen shot of how FF 2.0.0.12 renders the test page:

Here’s the QR code (if you have a QR enabled phone):

or simply enter one of these URLs:
http://tinyurl.com/37e33p
http://dev.w3.org/2008/mobile-test/test.html

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For years now, every now and then when checking for a domain name, I tried using Google just to see if it will serve me a direct result pertaining to basic domain registration (registration and expiration date for starters). Somehow it seemed logical that a simple “whois …..” query in Google should do that. If queries like “define: …” return definitions for words, why not do the same for domains. Well, Google now returns basic domain information if you type “whois [domainname]” into the search box. I realized this a couple of days ago.

Today, I saw a post on the domain information query on Google by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land, and from the comments it seems other people are seeing this as well, but the feature is still sporadic, as some people are saying they aren’t getting domain info in their results. I’ve tried queries for .com and .co.uk and they worked alright. It doesn’t seem to work for .yu/.co.yu (now .rs/.co.rs), which are Serbia’s domain extensions for example. I wasn’t expecting this to work but thought I’d try anyway. Others are reporting they are still not seeing anything for domains ending with their own country extension. A post on Matt Cutts’ blog showed up a couple of days ago, which points out this new feature as well. It seems Google is using Domain Tools for domain information queries, and since this is still kinda fresh, bugs and limited availability are expected, until the addition is rolled out worldwide.

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Just read this on Webmaster Central Blog - Google is testing the latest approach to content discovery by crawling HTML forms on a selected group of sites deemed to be particularly useful. Googlebot will, upon coming onto an HTMl form, determine whether form method is GET or POST. It will actually proceed only if it’s a GET form, since they want to avoid crawling forms that may require user information input (such as usernames and passwords), which all use POST. The bot will actually “fill in” text fields with words (found on the site), choose options on radio buttons and select menus, and try to crawl resulting content, and index it if it determines it’s useful and hasn’t previously been indexed.

Anyway, the experiment is an effort to try and crawl/index, what has been called “invisible content” or “the invisible internet” for years, which is a previously untapped rich source of information which over the years has stayed hidden behind processes requiring human interaction.

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This is a great example of how JavaScript can be used to render graphics and games in browsers, at only 14 Kb of code (compressed). The demo is playable, using arrow keys, although it features only one (incomplete) level. No external images or files are used. Sprites are made using canvas or div-making tactics (for IE), and sound is embedded as base64 encoded data (URIs). All sprites have only 4 colors, which helps keep things small (40-60 bytes per sprite).

As the guys at Nihilogic said, this was a proof-of-concept exercise, but it’s impressive how much was achieved with a single 14 Kb javascript file.

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As announced earlier, the new HP 2133 or Mini-Note is here, except it’s probably going to be simply called HP Mini. I don’t want to get into too much detail about it (read the HP 2133/Mini specs here), so maybe this hands-on video from jkOnTheRun.com will suffice (it’s kinda long, a little more than 30 minutes):

I don’t know… I still like the design, but I was a little put off by the amount of time it took to fire-up from hibernation, and the one shown was the top model. The size is okay, but you still need a backpack to carry it around (although a small one at that). We need smaller.

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Google Earth and The New York Times have collaborated to produce a new layer in Google Earth that enables users to actually see news location origin, as they happen. According to Google LatLong, all you have to do is get the latest version of Google Earth, and make sure the “Geographic Web” folder is turned on. You then click on the New York Times place mark to see the lates news and features about that region. The news are updated every 15 minutes.

Mapped news are not that new a concept. Here’s an example (dating back from 2005), which is basically a mash-up of Associated Press news feed, Yahoo Geocoding API, Google Maps and GxMarker.

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I just read an interesting article on New York Times, which addresses the topic of exhaustion and stress in the world of online news coverage and blogging.

This got me thinking - is round the clock online action really the way we want our lifestyles to go? Sure, most of us dream of hitting it big and making enough money for a secure future with a relaxed lifestyle somewhere in the Bahamas, but how many actually get there, before they get to the hospital? It seems, not many.

I find blogging to be stressful at times, even though I’ve been making pauses lately (as you can see on date stamps on my posts lately), and I’m not even trying to follow most of the news all the time, but rather write whenever I feel the need to react or follow up on something. If you write on a few blogs at the same time, however, things can get quite stressful quickly. A release valve is needed. Personally, I chose to get away from things by going hiking, running, visiting places I’ve never been to before… But after a while that’s not enough, since you have to take time off to do these things, and blog content keeps coming in all the time. Eventually, you’ll want to get away more, but you can’t… the vicious circle starts spinning. Oh, almost forgot, how about friends and family? There are only so many hours in a day, so you need to take time to spend time with these guys as well :).

Some people I know cope with this by staying mobile all the time - using laptops, MIDs, smart phones, etc, and doing things on the go. I guess that’s one way - by changing places all the time, there is a sort of satisfaction in indirectly creating your own working environment, and feeling the vibes from the place and the people, and making it to dinner at your parents’ home once in a while. This kind of approach, however, has its drawbacks - mobility requires money, and time as you need to spend time moving from place to place.

It seems the best way to go is to take things as they come - if you don’t feel the need to get out, don’t; if you need a change of scenery, get the backpack out and off you go, and smell the flowers on the way, while blogging your ass off.

I’d be very interested in how you cope with these problems? Comments are now open, so fire away.

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