Richard Sprague WebLog

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Fingerprint reader on Windows 7: I upgraded my work laptop with Windows 7 a month or two ago (and I love it!) and most things are going smoothly. But one feature I’m loving a lot is the ability to swipe my finger across the fingerprint reader built into my Lenovo X60 TabletPC. Read More...
Posted 09 April 09 05:23 by sprague | 1 Comments
Filed under Cool
Write like me: I’ve hate handwriting. I’ve been using keyboards since I learned to write and my fingers just don’t want to use a pen. But there are too many occasions when people expect the “personal” touch of a handwritten document, so I couldn’t get out of it completely. Read More...
Posted 28 February 09 04:04 by sprague | 1 Comments
Filed under Cool
Recite on Windows Mobile: Sometimes the best speech apps don’t really use speech recognition at all. I mean, yeah, there’s an audio stream and yeah there’s some processing, but you don’t always need the computer to understand what was said in order for it to be useful. My favorite Read More...
Posted 18 February 09 03:33 by sprague | 1 Comments
Filed under speech, Cool, Mobile
Disproving the Qwerty effect: I still run into people who cite the “Qwerty effect” as evidence that sometimes a big head start will give an inferior technology unfair market dominance at the expense of “better” ones. This theory has been disproven historically (it’s not true Read More...
Posted 19 January 09 07:09 by sprague | 0 Comments
Filed under Cool
Do you know any scientists?: Now this is sad… Only 18 percent of us know a scientist personally, according to a 2005 survey (subscription required), and when asked in 2007 to name scientific "role models," the results were dismal . Forty-four percent of Americans couldn't Read More...
Posted 16 January 09 07:16 by sprague | 0 Comments
Filed under Microsoft, Cool
Tag it: Here's a cool new app from a sister team of mine: http://www.microsoft.com/tag/ First, download the free app to your Windows Mobile phone (takes just a couple seconds). When you run the app on your phone, it starts the camera automatically. Just aim the Read More...
Posted 08 January 09 12:13 by sprague | 0 Comments
Filed under Cool, Mobile
It’s Twitter’s Turn: Every great new social phenomenon has a "fad" phase , where zillions of people join in because, well, because zillions of others are joining. A few years ago I suddenly reunited with my old friends at Apple Japan because suddenly it seemed like Read More...
Posted 06 January 09 06:51 by sprague | 0 Comments
Filed under Cool, Future
Save hard drive space with Mklink: There’s no shortage of disk space in my house, but only a small amount really needs to be backed up. The music and photos -- yes of course you want that backed up, but why waste gigabytes on a database that can just be recreated later anyway. Read More...
Posted 03 January 09 01:41 by sprague | 1 Comments
Filed under Cool, Tips
Microsoft Startup Zone: I remember during the Tech Crash earlier this decade, a lot of my friends took advantage of the downturn to start a new company, many of which formed the seeds of what we now call Web2.0. Just in time for today's economic downturn, Microsoft has started Read More...
Posted 14 November 08 04:55 by sprague | 0 Comments
Filed under Microsoft, Cool
.NET Micro Framework at Maker Faire: Some colleagues in a sister group of mine have built an SDK that lets you build simple hardware devices to control all kinds of products, like thermostats that use weather information to control energy usage, They're doing a bunch of things at next week's Read More...
Posted 08 October 08 11:45 by sprague | 7 Comments
Filed under Cool
Live Mesh: If you haven’t tried it already, you’ve got to install Live Mesh . It’s turning out to be one of the most indispensible software utilities I own, and I’m wondering how I ever got along without it. It’s a small utility (currently released as a beta) I Read More...
Posted 23 September 08 09:17 by sprague | 4 Comments
Filed under Cool
Go ahead, try to break into my Bitlocker: This week I finally got around to protecting my TabletPC with Bitlocker . My laptop holds my entire life, and I take it everywhere with me, so I'd be hosed if if it were ever to fall into the hands of a bad guy. But not anymore. One piece I wasn't aware Read More...
Posted 30 August 08 08:31 by sprague | 4 Comments
Filed under Cool
Go directly to voicemail with Slydial: I've been testing out the new free service from Slydial that lets you leave a voicemail without ringing the other guy's phone. I called 1-267-SLYDIAL (267-759-3425), entered the phone number I wanted to dial, and sure enough I was soon talking to directly Read More...
Posted 02 August 08 06:46 by sprague | 3 Comments
Filed under Cool, Telephony
Digital pen and paper: Philipp Schmid, former API developer in the speech team (and my fellow Mercer Island resident), is now working at a Seattle company, Adapx , that's in the news today for their work on new new applications for digital pens and paper. The cool part of their Read More...
Posted 29 April 08 11:32 by sprague | 4 Comments
Filed under Cool
My new (virtual) PC: Wow, this is one of the coolest programs ever. The rest of you have been talking about Virtual PC and virtualization in general for a while now, but I finally had a chance to play with it for myself. The virtual PC is a real PC, about as perfect a simulation Read More...
Posted 09 March 08 05:35 by sprague | 2 Comments
Filed under Cool

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