Computers

Coputer topics

Remote control with Dropbox

I some time ago wrote about phatIO file system based USB I/O and this is a continuation to this article. On weekend I successfully tested phatIO Dropbox Integration. The idea is the files on phatIO can be exported to dropbox allowing a cheap way of exporting the phatIO functionality to other computers or other devices

Google Arduino based IoT

At I/O, Google Will Be Tracking Things Like Noise Level And Air Quality With Hundreds Of Arduino-Based Sensors article tells that in the blog post, Michael Manoochehri, Developer Programs Engineer, outlines his team’s plan to place hundreds of Arduino-based environmental sensors around the conference space to track things like temperature, noise levels, humidity and air

The age of the password is over?

You have a secret that can ruin your life. It’s not usually a well-kept secret. Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore article tells that just a simple string of characters—maybe six of them if you’re careless, 16 if you’re cautious—that can reveal everything about you: Your email. Your bank

Unix box in pocket

Addressable markets for high-end phones article has some interesting statistics: There were about 5.2bn adults on earth at the end of 2012 and roughly 1.1bn of them had ’smartphones’ at the end of 2012. Around 900m of smartphones ran either the iOS or Android. Both iOS and Android are based on Unix technology (iOS is

Fixing a failing PC by cloning the hard disk

When a hard drive fails, there are many times that I’ve wanted to clone the data from the hard drive to a new drive to recover. I just recently had the situation on my home PC that the hard disk was starting to fail. It showed things like slowing down very much every now and

How USB drives are made

Hackaday article Hand placing flash die to make USB drives tells how boards inside USB drives populated. The article points to Where USB Memory Sticks are Born article that tells that once the bare die FLASH chips are screened for functionality, they are placed by hand onto a PCB (using some sort of tool made

Why You Suck at Making Estimates

Software development effort estimation is the process of predicting the most realistic use of effort required to develop or maintain software based on incomplete, uncertain and/or noisy input. Effort estimates may be used (and are often used) as input to many other business processes (project plans, iteration plans, budgets, investment analyses, pricing processes and bidding

The Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?

Finnish mobile game company Supercell has been on news lately with following kind of headlines: Supercell raises another round of funding at $130M on a valuation of $770M, sees revenues of $2.4M a day. The latest flow of news started when Forbes praises this Finnish game company in Is This The Fastest-Growing Game Company Ever?

Finland is number one ICT country

Tietoviikko reports that Finland (my home country) is the world’s best IT country according to World Economic Forum study The Global Information Technology Report 2013. According to the study, Finland is the world’s number one country when it comes to the economy’s ability to use information technology to competitiveness and prosperity. Finland has toppled Sweden

Free and Open—and Their Opposites

Free and Open—and Their Opposites article gives a a linguistic look at some tenets of Linux. I found it interesting reading because I have written articles to magazines on open source software to magazines and I have needed to think about the right words to use for writing. Here are some information picked from that