The Straits Times Blogs - Eve Yap

Laptops should be better

2009-10-29T22:20:00Z

Eve Yap comes up with a new, wrist-friendly laptop design.

TWO days ago, I went shopping for doodads on company time. No, I wasn't skiving. The trip was to source for gadgets for an upcoming issue.

But the contraption I was really looking for was nowhere to be found. It was an under-desk keyboard tray.

I found lots of models online in earlier searches but none of them were sold here.

You see, my search for the tray was to alleviate the tightness in my severely knotted shoulders — ligaments and muscles all tensed up from hours of daily hunching.

I sorely need my tui-na lady who will not only tug, stretch and unkink the kinks in the sinews but pinpoint the agony spots, too.

"Ah, here is pain, right?", she'd say in Singlish before I even gesture where they are.

Anyway, back to the under-desk keyboard tray.

Having one would mean a more ergonomic incline for me — forearms parallel to the floor, forming a sort of 90-degree angle at the elbows.

But then again buying the tray would simply mean treating the symptoms rather than addressing the source of the problem.

Yes, the fount of all aches and pains, as far as I am concerned, is the laptop. And the fact that from the first laptop to the current one, no one has thought to break the mould. (At least, I don't think so.)

The wrong mould: a base with non-extendable "legs".

Like how people tell bigger and bigger lies to get themselves out of the original one, a whole industry has come up to "support" the wrong cause.

There are laptop consoles that elevate the appliance so you don't develop a turtle syndrome (stick your head forward when you type); fan bases to whirr under the machine to prevent it from overheating; and cooler balls to stick to the corners of the notebook to tilt it for a better typing angle.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if, instead of fixed studs at the four corners of a notebook PC, there were extendable bumps instead?

The bump would look like a Magic Glide patch but it would be anti-slip instead.

Tapping twice on a pad would release a catch and you could then pull out the bumps and adjust each until the tilt angle was just right for your wrist.

Done for the day? Simply give each bump a light tug, and it retracts into its slot in the base.

Also, you could shape these retractable legs — made of flexible yet sturdy metal (that's for rocket scientists to invent) — to resemble the legs in the Fountain of Wealth structure at Suntec City.

That way you could place the laptop over your lap — finally, giving some true meaning to the word — with no fear of singeing the thighs (or other body parts for the guys).

So, that is my idea for the Worlds' Most Ergonomic Laptop for now. Anyone out there with suggestions to make it even better?

E-mail Eve Yap with your ideas for a better laptop computer or leave a comment below.

Touch me not

2009-10-17T12:15:00Z

Eve Yap wonders at the tap-happy trend of touchscreen gizmos.

BLAME it on the now dead O2 Xda Atom smartphone that has made me dead to the touch – of touchscreen gadgets, that is.

They are everywhere, these peck-it pleasers: cellphones, netbooks and desktops too. And don’t forget the touch-smart interface of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 7, launching next Thursday, Oct 22.

Windows 7 has neat pluses that make everyday computing easy. (Read Digital Life’s cover story on Oct 21.) But I won’t, er, touch any of the other gadgets with a 10-foot pole.

Not least, as I said, because of history. Four years ago, (2005) I bought my first smartphone – the Xda Atom – for about $1,000 but it turned out to be a horrible thing. The phone would hang, the screen freeze, and just getting to applications like the To Do liststook forever on the Windows platform.

True, these could be software setbacks rather than a hardware hindrance. Or that the particular piece I bought could have been a lemon: one colleague, who had the same model, had similar woes but they went away when he downloaded a software patch to his handset.

True, too, such bugs in smartphone software have by and large been fixed. But even now I wonder about the phone that started the whole tap-happy trend – the iPhone. Or rather, I wonder about at its adorers. And the adorers of other finger-navigated handsets for that matter.

How do they use these cellphones without throwing up their arms in frustration at the bother of surface upkeep? Two women I know (identities withheld for my safety) polish their handsets – on their pants or a piece of sunglass wiper – after almost every other call or text message they make.

And when they need to compose a text message? They hold the handset in one hand, and with a dainty index finger, go peck, peck, peck. Mamma mia.

If I already find it easier to flip than to scroll (easier to read a newspaper in print than on screen), then I will certainly find it easier to press buttons than peck at a screen. Texting on, say, a Blackberry is okay but doing finger calisthenics on an onscreen keyboard is not.

Worse, I imagine, when you transpose all that "caressing" to a bigger appliance like a touch-smart all-in-one (AIO) desktop. If typing on a keyboard already induces wrist ache, what would stretching out your arm for hours in a day – to get around all the applications like browser, Word document or PowerPoint slide – do to your poor limb?

There will soon be more touchscreen buzz when telco M1 when starts selling the iPhone later this year.(2009) SingTel, which had the first bite at selling rights, has already sold "tens of thousands" of the handsets since August last year. (2008) But I doubt that M1 can count me as one more digit to this tally.

On the matter of avatars

2009-10-11T07:52:00Z

Eve Yap rediscovers the fun in playing digital dress-up.

IF YOU ask me, the good folk who created avatars must have been baby boomers.

They must have been born sometime between 1946 and 1964, and they must have played with paper dolls. Must have. How else do you explain the close similarity in concept between paper dolls and today’s avatars?

Paper dolls were those sheets of paper you bought for a few cents when you were little. You then pressed out the doll cutout and hung clothes and put bracelets and shoes – via tiny fold-back tabs – on the dolly.

An avatar is your digital likeness of being. And you also tog her out.

But there are big differences.

It used to be that playing with paper dolls was a girl thing. Today, playing with avatars is a geek thing – that brotherhood of guys who shoot, slay and strum in game genres from first-person-shooters to music bands.

Also, the old inanimate dolly was just that – a hard copy Barbie. But today’s avatars represent you. And that’s the thing, I’ll wager, that hooks people into the avatar craze: vanity fuels the desire to make these mirror images of you look good, so you feel good.

Why, some avatar merchandise are highly sought-after items. For instance, as of Oct 8, you can buy NFL jerseys on Avatar Marketplace, the Xbox Live’s online mall.

Some people even spend real money buying an online wardrobe – from tops to tattoos and all sorts of headgear and footwear in between. (Read about it in Digital Life’s cover story on Oct 14.)

If it seems somewhat pointless - all this serious activity - just to soup up a visual icon of yourself, it probably is. Other than the kick you get from kitting out your likeness, I don’t see much else of worth to it.

But truth be told, I have an avatar too. Courtesy of Yahoo. It lets me dress me in my choice of a pale green polo T-shirt, white biker pants, a pink bicycle and a wink. For the background, I chose my most favourite place in the whole world – the seaside.

It’s been at least six months ago that I created my avatar; I had stumbled on the free service when I signed off from my Yahoo e-mail account. But after the initial experimenting, I got bored and forgot all about mini me.

Now, avatars seem hot once more: even staid British newspaper, Guardian, is asking its online contributors to use at least an avatar, if not a real photo, when posting articles.

So, I may visit my avatar again. Head to an Avatar Town (like a mini mall), and click on skirt or surfboard for a change of clothes or a new prop. Give myself a make over.

What can I say? Vanity calls.