On NW-A845 (3) Operability

To be honest, I feel that the operability of old type Ipod is better than that of NW-A845. Pinpointing my thumb on the right position of the concentric circle on NW-A845 usually doesn't go smoothly. In particular, when operating in one hand, recognizing which part of the concentric circle my thumb is touching isn't so easy without seeing it, while Ipod’s slightly convexed circular dial is easy to identify intuitively only from tangible information.

In addition, the silver concentric circular dial allocation is too low-positioned to operate with thumb in a situation of gripping whole body. Little finger operation would be required if we anticipated Ipod-like operation.

As for Ipod, an idea of the combination of that slightly convexed, relatively big, nearly center positioned and circular dial opened the door to today’s Ipad fever.

However, in today’s situation, I think Sony doesn’t have to introduce the same method as old type Ipod into NW-A845. The next step required for NW-A845 is, in my opinion, ‘a slot-machine-like' menu operation on touch panel working in present screen size. Above figure shows an image of the screen.

As a matter of fact, in handycam series, Sony has been presenting drum-like configuration menu as shown in figure below.

Searching for unique PC related products. (2) Chair

In the realm of scientific measurement, handling multiple equipments is required other than PC operation. An operator has to change the target instrument from time to time. In such situation, assigning procedures for an optimal placement of various machines might be unavoidable by fixing instruments with multilevel rack. However, once some equipment is placed at high position in the rack, its operation may be tough for hands, which have to be kept raising. Therefore, something good has been needed.

http://www.komura.co.jp/products/odekake/index.html

By diverting above product which was originally developed for disabled persons, at least 6 instruments (above left, above center, above right, below left, below center, below right) might be able to be run by one operator.

The up-and-down stroke is 580mm and rotation angle is –90 to +90 deg. As its original purpose is for nursing-care, the up-and-down speed mightn't be enough for industrial use.

Searching for unique PC related products. (1) Outdoor-related goods

Outdoor season has already begun and a rainy season is getting near. During the rainy season, the procedure of data handling in the outdoor field can’t do away with the Note-PC operation inside an automobile. For such kind of purpose, I checked the internet and found three unique products that would help PC users to operate the Note PC in a car.

1) EEA-HBA-66: In-car attachment table for Note PC.

http://www.esupply.co.jp/syohin.asp?sku=eea-hba-66 EEA-HBA-66EEA-HBA-66

2) EEA-LD05: Foldaway table made of aluminum.

http://www.esupply.co.jp/tokusetu/EEA-LD05.asp?sku=EEA-LD05&bun_id1=0

3) EEA-LD09: Foldaway table with Note-PC cooler.

http://www.esupply.co.jp/tokusetu/EEA-LD09.asp?sku=EEA-LD09&bun_id1=1084

On the new model of Sony vaio type P.

Over the last year, I would frequently get access to the web page of previous model of Vaio type P (VGN-P70/80) and touch it in a PC shop many times. Certainly, the previous model was very attractive. Though I did not buy it, I frequently checked the trend of cut in price.

The other day, a new model of Vaio type P (VPCP119KJ) was announced. When I see it’s design first, I was reminded of the design of NEC MC/R320 and MC/R330. The designs of MC/R320 and 330 had given the appearance of ’cheaply-made’ plastic lunch-box, which had been far from high-quality image. Nevertheless, they are strangely attractive even today. Why? Perhaps, plastic lunch-box image is a typical symbol of day-to-dayness and casualness.

In spite of the fate that a commoditized product has to face the day-to-dayness and casualness, most of PC designs haven’t been able to exclude the high-quality image completely. Even Ipad, which strongly features the casualness still contains certain high-quality image. In the context of Japanese culture, Ipad’s design mightn’t able to give an impression of 100%-natural casualness, I guess. Therefore, in this Ipad-fever situation, Sony’s decision on adopting this design seems to get a point to some extent.

Of course, another interpretation on this design may be possiple, which means that Sony implies the fate of MC/R330 in the new model of Vaio type P.

Though I don’t own neither Blueray HDD recorder nor Vaio type P, I think that one-point improvement on moving image file’s transfer will make these products more attractive. The cycle paths of moving image file’s transfer shown in Fig above are immediately required to be completely two-way possible, smoother and more convenient. The path from Blueray HDD recorder to Net-walkman already seems to be perfect.

Robustness of the entrance gate into Customize mode

When I input bare text, I usually use Hidemaru text editor. Hidemaru's operability is so simple that there has not been any trouble around its usability so far, but a strange behavior of the application was observed the other day. At that time, after starting up Hidemaru text editor, I noticed that menu bar style was different from the usual familiar one. I had not conducted any customization operation related to Hidemaru before then. In fact, I've never felt the necessity of customizing Hidemaru, of which the basic mode contains enough functions at least for me. I tried to reverse-customize back to usual state but in vain. To be honest, even the discrimination between two possibilities, Windows' side setting matter or Hidemaru's side setting matter was not clear. Perhaps, other application's setting changes might have caused the Windows' side setting change and it eventually affected the Hidemaru's side setting, I guessed.

After spending some time for various operations, however, when I decided to uninstall and reinstall from the clean start, the state of the menu bar style returned to the usual familiar one without any specific manipulation. After all, the reason of the appearance and disappearance of unfamiliar menu bar remained unclear.

After summing up this small trouble, I concluded that at least four points should be remarked, which I hope would contribute to the theoretical generalization approach in the field of software operability.

1. The pathway into Customize mode should be assembled into one unified gate. If customization entrances are dispersed on various tail ends on menu trees, the process of finding right pathway brings an irritating time to us. Of course, major softwares have already concentrated customization switches onto the 'Tool-Option-' menu-trees. But some customization switches don't exist there and were dispersed on various places.

2. Windows' applications software had better include the menu items about the status change caused by Windows' side setting change and display the description on it even though the setting change can't be attained by commands contained in the application.

3. The entrance gate to customize mode should be independent of menu-bar's optional style change. The entrance gate should not disappear under any user-interface state. Furthermore, this matter should be discussed with the problem of returning path from full-screen mode. In case key-input to return from full-screen mode is complicated and forgettable, I tend to reset PC before finding documents describing the returning procedure from full-screen mode.

4. Unintentional shifting into Customize mode should not be allowed. It may not be such a serious problem that users in need of customization have to pass through the pathway with confirmation process presented by the application. In the end, this means that basic mode should be designed following the statistical evaluation derived from research on average users, as the least requirements for customization may occur.

2D-nization of text character code: How we can insert virtual spaces or delimiters between not-separated Japanese phrases

After writing previous entry, my concern about word separation problem converged and focused into an image (Fig). This image is merely one of various possibilities. At any rate, I think information about word separation may have to be added to the files.

Word group theory (2). Front-end processor's paradigmatic change.

When writing in Japanese, I usually use ATOK front-end processor. As ATOK's usability is excellent for me, I still can't step out for using Google's Japanese front-end processor. Nevertheless, I usually feel that Japanese front-end processors are now facing a time for paradigmatic change.

When I write a Japanese phrase '検索する' by using ATOK, a set of the Kanji & Hiragana character codes corresponding to '検’索’す’る' are finally recorded on the document file. But the alphabetical keyboard-typing process of characters 'kennsakusuru' is not included in the file. It means that only the result of conversion, Kanji code (or Hiragana or Katakana code) translated from alphabetical characters has been the important information so far.

Conversely, in search engine's era, conversion process & its embedding into document files will become more important due to the fact that Japanese (Chinese) sentences are not separated by spaces between words.

Every word in English is separated by spaces. The power of Google-search, I guess, seems to be strongly supported by the existence of spaces between words, the structure of English language itself. Meanwhile, when analyzing Chinese language (or Japanese) sentences, computer algorithms have to tackle with the word-separation problem at first.

Let me take an example from a Chinese web.

A sentence '那麼胡錦濤你面臨了利用百度訴江案這件詭異的事情' was found on a Chinese web page.

As I can't understand Chinese language at all, I'm not able to separate above sentence into words correctly except for the well-known word '胡錦濤 (Hu Jintao)' and '百度(Baidu)'. A few other words like '利用' and '事情' seem to have the same meaning as those of Japanese, but this guessing is not conclusive level. Owing to these words, I can at least guess the meaning of the sentence roughly. 'Hu Jintao said something about peculiar situation related to using Baidu search engine.' If the spaces are deleted, this sentence become 'HuJintaosaidsomethingaboutpeculiarsituationrelatedtousingBaidusearchengine.' This expression contains the words like 'Ted' 'sing' 'use' 'arch'.

If Chinese language front-end processor can embed the alphabetical keyboard-typing processes of 'Hu Jintao', 'Baidu' and other words in the document file, it may help search engines to decide correct word separation.

Of course, corpus-based dictionary of Chinese language may be the basic approach to solve this problem in the Baidu era. But on another front, front-end processor's paradigmatic change also may become important in the Google-era.

Though Google has decided to leave China, the possibility of producing a new kind of Chinese language front-end processor based on a quite different approach still remains.