The fundamental Boogie Board technology has been around for 20 years under
the name Kent Displays, but for the last two years the company has concentrated on producing touch slates which replace the need for paper notebooks.
The cholesteric liquid crystal display (ChLCD) screen was
developed out of the company's R&D, and the slates remind me of a darker
Kindle screen.
English: The Taj Mahal, complete with ripples in the reflection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The basic tool slate (£30), is a simple slate which when it
was launched, was thought that it would be aimed at children - think a modern
day etch-a-sketch, just write on the slate and press the erase button to wipe
away. However, the children's market only takes up 40% of sales. The Boogie
Board is very popular in Japan as electronic stationary, but 5% of the market
share actually comes from call centres who find that it is safer to write notes
regarding sensitive information and quickly erase it again.
The basic slate requires no power to generate or retain an
image, and only a small amount to erase (supplied by a small watch battery,
which will execute over 50,000 erase cycles).
The next stage Boogie Board (£80) connects to a computer via
a micro USB, and as you write on the slate it can be seen replicated on the
computer screen, alternatively it can be written away from the computer,
connected and saved before erasing. I also played around with a prototype of
the next generation device, which will be launched in Q4 2013, giving the Boogie Board
wireless connectivity via Bluetooth.
It's not particularly glam, or sleek like a tablet, but I
can definitely see the appeal in utilities, call centres and in health care.
This will be the eighth trip. Each trip is designed to
help successful early stage businesses accelerate their growth potential
overseas. According to the organiser, the chosen companies are all scalable, while offering profitable
solutions for low and middle-income populations in urban and rural India, while
also offering B2B opportunities.
"When you take UK and India, people think there is a lot of
trade, but this is miniscule in terms of start-ups, especially when in terms of
investments , eyes are drawn to Silicon Valley," said Guy Pattison, co-founder
of The Long Run Venture.
"You would have around 10 million people to pilot a project
in India, but a couple of thousand here. These start-ups have the
opportunity to get in there and scale up," he said.
The hand-picked companies will visit the country for seven
days, first heading to Bangalore to visit other big companies and universities and
then onto New Delhi which will provide a government perspective to venturing
into the country.
Start-ups on Web Mission 2013 include:
Audioboo - Audioboo allows users to record audio and post over social networks. With customers already including the BBC and The Guardian, the company claims to do to audio, what Instagram to did to photos. Audioboo is also delving into the audiobook and education sectors.
uMotif - uMotif is a telehealth company which builds attractive apps for users with health problems. The apps help users to comply with taking medicines, to improve treatment and reduce hospital costs of readmissions. The software works on various platforms, not just smartphones, by providing SMS services as well. uMotif is currently demonstrating an app to help people suffering from Parkinsons. The app, which was funded by the Department of Health and adminstered by the NHS Midlands and East, has an engaging colourful interface which encourages the users to "own their own data".
BuffaloGrid -Buffalo Grid provides mobile charging power to rural areas of the world, where it could quite easily take a quarter of a day's wage to charge your device at a local power station. BuffaloGrid uses solar panelling to distribute power and customers can pay via text message. The company hopes to pair with mobile operators, while any residual power is then sold back to the local people at highly competitive rates. There are around 650m off-grid mobile phones in the world, 300m of which are in India, proving the move into this market incremental for the company's future development.
Having created this blog and nurtured it for the past four years, I've decided to put the best blog posts/videos from the best on one page.
Diary of an outcast: Apple's Special iPad 2 Event I will start with my favourite post, the infamous Apple event. I had been invited to Apple events before but somehow started getting missed off the list. I hate Apple so it was no surprise that they didn't want me there. Safe to say that after this post not only was I missed off the list but Computer Weekly never received an invite from Apple ever again.
iPhone Vs N97 This was the first big video project that me and David (video editor) put together. At the time I was so happy that I'd got the N97 I decided to make a video pitting it against the iPhone while mocking Apple's advertising campaign. Little did I know that the N97 would prove to be the worst purchase I've ever made in my life.
HTC Desire HD Review David (who stars in this video) and I wanted to do something different and create a cool video review. This is what we came up with.
Sadly once we started recording David (and the department he worked for) were made redundant. It didn't effect the video but it wasn't a happy time for us. Having cleared out his desk he set up at home the next day to finish it. This was our last hurrah and the last video I made. Very proud of it.
What is the best mobile OS around? At this point, no one wanted to be in any of my videos. The company was starting to cut back on them and so I tried to play four roles with four outfits and a moustache before I got told that what I was doing wasn't a productive use of my time. Honestly, how could they say that?
This video used to have a voting element that has since been removed because we couldn't afford to pay for the server the flash sat on.
The most ambitious video we ever tried.
Video: The future of business cards, I'm not taking the Poken There was a girl I was desperate to go out with at my work. I needed to do a video to have a reason to talk to her but the only thing I'd been sent was a Poken. No phones or cool gadgets. Somehow I persuaded her to help me make this video. We're still together :)
Video review of the wiimote like Gyration Air Mouse This video is pretty much when I realised that I can be funny. What people don't realise is that filming didn't take long but discussions between David and I on what was funny took forever.
He would stand there saying "That's not funny" every time I cracked a joke or did something stupid. Or one of my favourite lines of his was "You might think that's funny, but it isn't".
Video: Palm Pre vs the iPhone - The big debate I had 2 weeks before Christmas to do a video armed with my wit and a white wig that was left over from a very bad 'Back to the future' spoof I'd made where I played the Doc. That video was so bad that the company we producd it for sent us a letter saying that if the video ever saw the light of day, they'd sue my a** off.
David went on holiday with a week left of editing/filming to do so I didn't have anyone to tell me that what I was saying wasn't funny and some of the editing is a bit off. It's still a good video but we felt it was rushed.
Video: I heart iPad - Dating website matches man to iPad What
do you do when you get your hands on an iPad before the UK release?
Write a review. Then what? Make a video about having a special
relationship with it. Yep, not sure why.
The HTC and Google story: A love affair and a tragedy Lord knows what compelled me to write this. Had I taken more time to craft it, I think it could've been great but when I read it now I feel it's rushed. Still good, where the idea came from I'll never know.
Video: Flip Mino HD review This video took 84 takes. For no reason at all I couldn't stop laughing during recording. We got in trouble because it was meant to take a couple of hours but took almost two weeks.
It's 8.30 on a bright November morning and I'm guessing that
I'm the only blogger on the Computer Weekly site up and without a
hangover.Last night was the blog awards...
but while my colleagues were pouring champagne down each other's pants, I was
tucked up early in bed.Testing an alarm
clock.
One of the perks of being an International, jet-setting
gadget blogger (if occasionally jumping on the Transpennine Express counts as
jet-setting) is that you get sent gadgets to try.After blogging about the Lumie Visor the other
week, the company kindly sent me an alarm clock to give a go. My reputation clearly precedes me.
No ordinary alarm clock, this.It's a Lumie Bodyclock Advanced 200.Instead of waking you with the bludgeoning tones of Chris
Moyles barking inanities into your face, it gently nudges you from slumber with
a simulated sunrise.A strong bulb
gradually fades up until there's bright dawn in your bedroom.Perfect for early morning meetings.
The advanced version we've been testing also has a
nightlight feature that fades down when you go night night. If traffic and
drunken revellers are a problem in your area, or you suffer from tinnitus,
there's a built in white noise generator that'll mask any overwhelming background
sound.It has all the other bog-standard
features you'd expect from an alarm clock too - rude beeping to get you out of
bed if the light's not enough, configurable LED clock and snooze features.
I've been testing it for over a week - and it's certainly
converted me.You wake up slowly and
naturally, rather than sitting bolt upright with drool hanging from your mouth,
screaming for your mother.
The only issue I had is that I like an extra nudge - and had
to set a separate radio alarm to go off in tandem. Lumie also produce a model
with an FM radio built in.Last time I
checked, analogue radio was resolutely on its way out though. The digital
switch over for radio is rumoured to come in 2015 - and a DAB alarm clock can be
bought for under £50 these days.
Lumie Bodyclock alarms start at £58.67. The Bodyclock
Advanced 200 we tested is £97.82.
Having created this blog and nurtured it for the past four years, I've decided to put the best blog posts/videos from the best on one page. 
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