1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
3. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade.
4. One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement.
5. A member of the Society of Friends; a Quaker.

Thesaurus.com
Entry: Friend
Function: noun
Synonyms:

acquaintance, ally, alter ego, amigo, associate, bedfellow, blocker, boon companion, bosom buddy, brother, buddy, chum, classmate, cohort, colleague, companion, compatriot, comrade, confrere, consort, countryman, cousin, crony, familiar, fellow, intimate, kissing cousin, little brother, main man, main squeeze, mate, other self, pal, partner, playmate, roommate, schoolmate, sidekick, sister, soul mate, spare, well-wisher.

I don’t know if this is a prototype for a future product or this is something Samsung did just for the heck of it, but they have a new 14-inch OLED laptop which has a transparent screen. I do have to give Samsung plus points for innovation. This may look like a totally impractical laptop to have, but you can’t fault them for not taking a risk.

To be fair though, since OLEDs don’t need a backlight and that would result in a much thinner screen. We’d get a more portable laptop than ever. I’m pretty sure that Samsung’s OLED laptop won’t necessarily be transparent or the transparency can be controlled. Transparent computer screens even have their uses.

That being said, Samsung claims to have created the world’s first transparent laptop. When the laptop is off, the screen’s transparency goes to forty percent – that’s way below than the industry standard’s below twenty-five percent.

However, I don’t think this would be an ideal laptop if you’re a traveller. Working with your laptop in an unfamiliar place where everyone is just looking at me isn’t really an experience I relish, and the paranoia of people peering into your work would definitely increase once people can actually see what you’re doing from behind the screen – not that there’s anything information-sensitive about writing a blog entry in WordPress, but still.

But the concept is pretty intriguing to me, and seeing how thin this laptop can get, I am pretty sure that this will be the future. Imagine lugging along a thin and lightweight 14-inch laptop. I’d kill for that. Make a non-transparent variant or let us play around with the transparency settings, Samsung, and I’m sold.

Fresh off the heels of the Nexus One announcement, it seems that Google is not yet finished pulling off another surprise in the hardware department.

Google has been working with hardware manufacturers in Chrome OS-related matters to ensure a good customer experience when the OS comes out next year. According to a Google FAQ, “The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.”

But now it seems like the big G is coordinating with a hardware manufacturer right now to create a Google-branded netbook. Ok, I honestly don’t see anything wrong with this. I’m guessing they’re doing this to prevent splintering of the OS – a trap that Android is in danger of falling into right now. A Google-branded netbook would keep hardware developers from changing Chrome OS too much. Just look at Android app developer’s frustration right now.

The thing is, I don’t see Chrome OS having apps being developed for it. Chrome OS is meant to keep all your data in the cloud in the first place. So it’s all going to be shortcut icons leading to the web app of choice. If the web app works for Chrome the OS, I don’t see how it wouldn’t work on Chrome the browser on Windows/Mac/Linux.

I’m sure the Google netbook will be way more unpowered than the current netbooks available. Anyway, it’s too early to see what Google has up their sleeve.

Google is in no hurry to release their netbook, by the way. People are predicting that Google is aiming for a late 2010 release.

[via]

A study done by Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) published by Core77 featured a variety of netbook usability factors on non-Windows surfaces. The study focused on a variety of factors including user interfaces, various use scenarios, and ergonomics.

Apparently, most of the popular ways of using netbooks are actually not comfortable. Most positions can subject your joints to stress and cause pain.

They discovered that a conventional small clamshell laptop is most comfortably used lying down in bed with the device on the thigh when the knees are kept up.

Take note, however that this study was done with a sample group of children 11 to 14 years old. I wonder if people in different age groups have the results applicable to them. Because, of course, ergonomics that applies to a 14-year old would probably be different for a 26-year old.

So, tell me guys, how do you use your netbooks? Do you put it on your thigh with your knees kept up and lying down, or is another position more comfortable for you? Give me your ideas in the comments!

I know, I know, one of the first things they tell you when you purchase a netbook is to forget gaming. You see, netbooks aren’t made to handle games. Sure, it can handle web browsing, watching non-HD movies, and maybe a little Photoshop (yes, I know of a few people who do that on their HP Minis), but gaming? No way, they say.

Well, we wouldn’t expect much from our netbooks in the gaming department. Most of them are running on a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 1 GB RAM, and of course no video card. Those specs alone could make Firefox choke in the middle of watching a video on YouTube.

That never stopped determined netbook owners from downloading and running them games anyway. Heck, on the Eee Wiki, we even have a list of games that’ll run with the Eee PC 701. FYI, that list came out mere months after the Eee PC was launched.

Over at Liliputing, Joe has posted a list of 5 recent netbook-friendly games. He names Torchlight, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, Sins of a Solar Empire, Trials 2 Second Edition, and, um, World of Warcraft.

Torchlight has been recommended to me by a lot of friends and I am going to give it a try once I finish this article.

I must point out, however, that he left out the insanely addictive Plants vs Zombies. PVZ runs very, very smoothly on netbooks. It killed a lot of productivity for me and my 701 until I forced myself to delete the game for the sake of my sanity.

What games do you run on your netbooks? Tell me about it!

So the world waited with bated breath this November for Michael Arrington’s much-awaited $200 internet tablet, the Crunchpad. And it never arrived. In fact, the way it just disappeared from the zeitgeist made people speculate about its premature demise.

Well Arrington came out and said that no, the CrunchPad is not dead. In fact, it’s going to be out sooner or later and it’s going to cost between $300-$400, with sponsorship (probably like Google sponsoring Firefox by being its default search engine).

Check out this video.

Okay, wait. $400 dollars for a paltry Atom-powered tablet designed to do nothing more than surf YouTube? Atom at a time when CULV netbooks are coming out? Something that doesn’t even have Windows on it? Seriously?

I’m sorry, but I think $200 is the sweet spot for something like this. I don’t think I’ll be seeing the CrunchPad take off, really. Not with its current state and price.

[via]

I know, I know, this isn’t laptop related news at all, but I would just like to let you guys running Symbian S60 on your phones know that Opera Mobile 10 Beta is out.

The new mobile browser borrows a lot from its java-based sibling, Opera Mini 5 Beta. However, from using the two browsers side-by-side for a while now, I can say that Opera Mobile 10 is the snappier of the two. It obviously benefits from being a native Symbian app. It features touch screen support, speed dial, and a password manager. However, it’s still a bit buggy. (Just now, Opera seems to have misplaced the upper half of mobile Plurk’s screen.)

Either way, when I’m on the go and I don’t have a laptop with me, I’ll just grab my E63 and open Opera Mobile. It’s awesome that way, really.

Download it here.

As you may have read in the news already, the Philippines has been hit by one of the strongest typhoons in over 40 years. Typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) has displaced hundreds of thousands of families and left hundreds of people dead.

Floods are still everywhere and people are left with no electricity, food, water, and at the worst, no roof over their heads.

Splashpress Media is running a donation drive in aid of the victims of the flooding in Metro Manila. We are starting the donation drive with $1,000 from ourselves. For those who can make credit card payments, you may directly send donations to the Philippine National Red Cross which is one of the bigger organizations organizing and handling aid. However, for those who might prefer PayPal, The Philippine National Red Cross can also accept PayPal payments through this address: give@redcross.org.ph.

You may link to our campaign drive using some buttons we have created:

You can copy and paste the code below, so you can add a link to our donation page on your blog, website, or social networking profile.

<a href="http://www.splashpress.com/2009/typhoon-relief-manila"><img src="http://www.splashpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ondoy-lifeline-125.jpg" title="Donate to Typhoon Victims in the Philippines" /></a><br />

<a href="http://www.splashpress.com/2009/typhoon-relief-manila"><img src="http://www.splashpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ondoy-help-125.jpg" title="Donate to Typhoon Victims in the Philippines" /></a><br />

We will list the names and links of all donors here in this post (please email us after you have sent a payment to the Red Cross).

Any help or form of support will be appreciated!

Now this is a must-have device for any discerning traveller out there. In the US, Verizon’s AD3700 USB modem will connect to Verizon’s EV-DO network. But if you’re on the go, it will work in 175 countries because the modem support GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, and UMTS.

For $80, this seems like a pretty good deal. Yeah, you might be cringing at the price, but it’s a small amount to pay for connectivity everywhere.

Will you look at that. We don’t even know how to define netbooks anymore. The Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T sports an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, and has a 1.4GHz Intel ULV processor and GMA 4500MHD graphics. It’s not an Intel Atom! It can also handle up to 4GB of RAM, comes with a 250GB hard drive, and HDMI out.

This kind of reminds me how far netbooks have gone. heck, 11.6 inches will provide us with the best possible option for portability (heck, us travelers need all the help we can get) without sacrificing screen space.