Hasta La Gadget!

Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal has a clever Dropbox-based solution for printing documents from a smartphone or tablet, whether your printer’s down the hall or thousands of miles away. The idea is so simple, you’ll be amazed you haven’t thought to try it yourself.

Dropbox is a popular utility that allows users to sync and share files on different computers. Native Dropbox applications are available for most smartphone platforms, giving you mobile access to all your files, and many mobile applications are now integrating Dropbox for remote syncing and storage. You can also add files to your Dropbox account via e-mail or the web.

In this solution, use any of those means to get the file you want printed into a shared Dropbox folder — call it “PrintQueue” — that you’ve set up for this purpose. Your print-capable computer uses a script to monitor “PrintQueue,” automatically print its documents and then move them to a different folder. (Agarwal calls this second folder “logs”; I’d call it “Completed Jobs”). If you’re a clever hacker, you could even add scripts to send a remote notification that the print job has been completed.

For Windows, Agarwal has a downloadable VBS script that will set this up for you; as he notes, there are different scripting solutions for Mac OS X or Linux too.

Once you’ve got this rigged, the immediate use case is to send a document wirelessly from a smartphone or tablet to a local printer. And it is kind of magical to stand there and watch the whole process unfold, as in the video above.

But think beyond that. Suddenly, your printer is capable of networking with any computer, anywhere — with any phone, anywhere — that you approve and authorize. This is potentially so much better than hooking up a computer to a wireless router or navigating the virtual bureaucracy of an office printer network. It’s way better than a fax machine.

This could be one future of social networking and file sharing: Instead of big, ad-cluttered feeds that push photos, status updates and Farmville notifications or anonymous networks that chop files into bits and reassemble them, imagine friends and acquaintances broadcasting to each other, wheels within wheels, each with different levels and fields of access. Designating someone a “friend” might not be worth very much in this cockeyed world, but automatic remote access to someone’s printer still means something.

Print Files from any Mobile Phone using Dropbox [Digital Inspiration] via Gizmodo

This article was written on September 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft just introduced a new mouse "with a mind of its own" -the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000. What’s unique about it is that the transceiver which you’d normally have to plug in via USB anyways to use the mouse includes 1GB of Flash Memory. It’s not going to be on the shelves until about October, and the price is set at $99. While it’s a great idea, especially for college students, the price seems a little high for only including 1GB of flash memory – especially when you take into consideration that you can buy a 4 GB Flash Drive for $35 and a 16 GB Flash Drive for $100.

Despite the fact that it may be a little pricey for the amount of memory you get, it’ll definitely be convenient for those who usually carry a mouse with them as well as a flash drive. Giga Om reviewed this mouse yesterday and said the mouse "doesn’t make much sense. I mean, who carries their mouse without a laptop?" I’m not sure the point of this mouse is for those who only want to carry a flash drive with them. When I was a college student, I always had my laptop, a mouse, and a flash drive with me. While a flash drive certainly doesn’t take up much room, using the Mobile Memory Mouse would just mean one less thing I had to carry, and one less USB port I’d have to use.

Other features that this mouse has besides the transceiver with 1GB of Flash memory include:

• 2.4 GHz wireless technology
• USB rechargeable with magnetic connectors
• High definition laser technology
• Battery life indicator

While the idea of a mobile mouse that includes storage is new, I think there will definitely be a group of consumers willing to snatch up the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 for $99 bucks. If by chance you’d like to pre-order this mouse, you can do so at Amazon.

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Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Android phone owners are in for some bad news. The company has delayed the rollout of the upgrade to Android 2.1  version of the operating system for Xperia phones in the U.S.

Instead of updating existing devices–the Xperia X10, Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro–to Android 2.1 at the end of September, Xperia owners will get new features added at the end of October and onwards.

“We are, of course, not happy about the change of launch timing but we have had to spend some additional time on the software to really makes sure we roll-out with the right quality and user experience,” says Sony Ericsson on its product blog.

The move is yet another example of how Sony Ericsson’s Android plans have been plagued by delays.

Despite the beautiful hardware Sony Ericsson’s phones have never enjoyed the same level of popularity in the U.S. as the company’s rivals. Last year, Sony Ericsson turned to Android in the hope that it would more effectively compete in the smartphones market. But it has been slow to bring Android devices to market.

Sony Ericsson worked for months on creating a skin for Android called UXP. The UXP skin brought in features such as Timescape that collects social networking feeds and presents them in a card-like view. It added a recommendation engine for music and a widget to access photos and video.

Though it was attractive, the user interface significantly delayed Sony Ericsson’s launch of Android phones. In August, the Xperia X10 debuted on the AT&T network for $150 with a two-year contract. The Xperia X10 launched with version 1.6 of the Android OS, as did the X10 mini and X10 mini pro.

Clearly, that version of the OS is extremely outdated and Sony Ericsson is trying to fix it with its latest update.

With its upcoming rollout, the company plans to offer Xperia users features such as HD video recording with continuous auto-focus, five homescreens for apps, widgets, shortcuts and folders and social phonebook that automatically syncs contact pictures from Facebook and shows when your friends are online.

Almost all of these features are already standard on most Android phones.

Sony Ericsson is struggling to catch up and along the way, Xperia users are finding themselves without the most current software and features. Even with the upcoming update, Xperia users won’t be on the latest Android platform. Current Xperia models are unlikely to see Android 2.2 Froyo for a very long time.

See Also:

• Motorola Droid Rules Android
• Bloatware Creeps Into Android Phones
• Nokia Phones Hacked to Run Android
• Want Porn? Buy an Android Phone, Steve Jobs Says

Photo: Priya Ganapati/Wired.com

[via Unwired View]

Alternate MS Office icons by talwayseb, via CrystalXP.net

Microsoft is a giant company working in many different fields, but in the consumer market, apart from XBox, it does one thing really well: software. After some high-profile, quickly-aborted misadventures in mobile, that’s what it’s going to focus on from now on.

Microsoft’s Tivanka Ellawala told the WSJ that the company’s done with smartphone hardware (beyond in-house prototypes, presumably): “We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused,” he said. That means no follow-ups to the Kin social media smartphone, definitely; no resuscitation of the Courier e-reader/tablet project, probably; and a new focus on making apps for other platforms, quite possibly.

What kinds of platforms? I don’t know — how about the iPad?

On Wednesday, Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott confirmed the rumors on Twitter: “Shhh…. It’s true: Microsoft is working on iPad apps.” Makes perfect sense to me:

• Microsoft was never fully behind smartphone/tablet hardware;
• Its mobile OS is battling stiff competition on all sides;
• They’ve always been a multi-platform company;
• And, um, they’ve already got apps on the iPhone. (Bing. For now.)

So besides search, what are we talking about here? Microsoft Office? (Which, remember, includes a LOT of apps, not just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.) Games? Messenger? Frontend clients for Windows Live? Specialized applications for enterprise clients? Virtual PC, to mix it up with VMWare’s anticipated virtualization apps? No one knows.

See Also:

• Could Microsoft Office Go Multi-Platform For Mobile?
• Microsoft's Mobile Strategy Takes Aim at Apple, Google
• Apple: The Microsoft of Mobile?
• Microsoft's Mobile Shakeup: Will It Unleash Windows Phone …
• Microsoft Blends Zune Media, Xbox Live Into New Phone OS
• Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two
• ARM’s New Chip Leaves Everyone Else In the Dust, Again

Didn’t you notice? It was just Nokia World! But with profits plummeting and executives fleeing—both at alarming rates—maybe it should have been a reckoning instead. More »