merlin_jim writes "Found this article on MSNBC about a new Cell Phone typing solution. It uses silicon sensors that can recognize the "shape" of each finger. The meaning of each key changes depending on which finger you use to press it; index finger for A, middle finger for B, etc. Unused finger/key combinations can be assigned to functions like ring volume." Watch out for those pop-up advertisements on your way into MSNBC. This is an idea I never really thought about for single handed typing input. A very cool idea.

nneul asks: "A few weeks ago I bought and installed a new Kenmore Elite dishwasher from Sears. A couple days ago, it stopped working, all the buttons on the panel would just blink when pushed, and pressing "start" would run this weird mini-wash cycle. Disconnecting the power to the unit had no effect. Turns out (after having Sears come out for a warrantee repair on it), through some sequence of keypresses on the panel, I had enabled "store demo mode", which required a completely undocumented set of keypresses to turn off. (Even the sears guy had to call to get the code). My question - has anyone else ever seen other appliance "easter eggs" like this? In this case, it was pretty annoying, but I wonder what other sort of interesting secret key sequences there are on ordinary home appliances/tvs/etc." Makes you wonder. If you start pushing random buttons on your microwave, don't be surprised if it suddenly starts up with a rousing rendition of Devo's "Whip It!"

Microsoft is holding some sort of launch event today for a pile of new Pocket PC devices. Pocket PC Thoughts has a bunch of news items; PDA Buzz has a report and pretty comparison chart looking at the different models, and I'm sure people will post more links in the comments. So, is this the mighty Palm-killer?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I was flipping through the new issue of Maxim and in the tech section they had a listing for the CyberBoy PDA. It is an MP3 player, camera, voice recorder, and PDA. After reading the website it looks like it uses Penbex OS. Has anyone had experience with these? and if so how are they?"

Cheeze asks: "I found a odd piece of hardware that is a USB LCD Control Module made by Toshiba. There is no info on this device anywhere that I could find, and there are no FCC numbers on the device to look up. The device is an embedded lighted LCD with 1 silver button on the left side, 5 non-labeled black buttons on the top, one volume knob on the right side, and 6 buttons labeled 'internet' on the bottom. When plugged in under Windows 2000 Pro, it shows up as a Human Interface Device, installs some basic windows software, but doesn't actually control the hardware. If something like this is programmable, that would be REAL nice, but if I could find ANY control software for it for any operating system, I would be happy."

call -151 asks: "A friend of mine has a nonworking central vacuum system in her house and I was offering to help her use the tubing as conduits and pull cable to distribute her network throughout the place. Has anyone done this and have any advice to offer? It should go smoothly but I'm sure there are some things I'm not thinking about." Of course, not everone can expect to have a CVS (pun intended) in their own home, but this was just odd enough where it deserved a post. Anyone have any URLs that describe exactly what a Central Vacuum System is, and how it worked?

MadCow-ard asks: "With the introduction of the new 160 GB hard drives there comes a problem: they only appear to work with the ATA/ATAPI-6, 48 bit-standard. This means not installing them into systems that I have already built with the de facto 28 bit ATA controllers. I build video editing systems that easily reach 800 Mb, and so the Promise solution with a 2 hard drive ATA controller card doesn't really help. Is there a way squeeze these onto my systems without dropping everything above 137.4 Gb?" 160 gigs on a single HD! How soon before terabyte drives become a reality?

Paladin128 sent us Tom's and Anandtech's respective reviews of the new NVIDIA GeForce3 Titanium series. DX8.1 compatibility (What is that anyway?), Shadow Buffers, 3D Textures, assorted other stuffs. Hey, but why is everything 'Titanium' now anyway? Laptops. Batteries. Video cards. I wonder if I can get titanium plating.

Moghedien writes: "This time a sturdy PDA, without a keyboard, but a big hi-res screen and it's designed for work in the field. Still runs the EPOC OS, 8 hour battery life time, probably a 200MHz StrongARM, 64MB RAM and MMC. It measures 215x85x28 mm. It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete. According to Psion, its purpose is to fill the gap between powerful PDAs for the industry and handheld machines for the professional consumer market." There's a blurb describing this device on Psion's site -- but does anyone see pictures? Update: 10/01 13:35 GMT by T : An anonymous reader says: "Here is the page for the NetPad. It has a small picture, but it's better than nothing."

RukhWunder asks: "I have two computers and one USB printer. Is there a USB splitter or something around so I can connect them both to the printer? Networking the computers is out of the question because they are on the university network already." There was an earlier question about USB on KVM switches that was done last year, however I too would be curious to note if there are switches for just USB devices.

Dragan Lazin asks: "I recently bought a couple of rounded ATA-100 cables from an online store; very ingenious actually and they have a nice color: blue ;-) Problem is, when I installed the cables, 16 capacitors on my motherboard blew - right between the CPU and the parallel port header. This is an Abit KA7-100 mobo. What the hell causes this kind of damage? I'm trying to get a refund and a new mobo from the company. Did anyone ever experience this?"

option8 asks: "Now that i have more components in my living room than I have room on the coffee table for their remotes, I'm looking into getting a programmable universal remote. I've looked at some of the spiffy touchscreen jobs, like the Philips Pronto and even some of the new color remotes, but it seems to me that spending more for my remote than I did on my DVD player is overdoing it somewhat. Also, all I've found are ones with windows support for building screens. Are there any out there that I can use with Linux?" There was a previous Ask Slashdot on this subject back in '99, anything new to report since then?

kfs27 asks: "One of my professor with some of his Java students would like to get into handheld devices and WAP interfaces. They want to first start with building pages which can be viewed on a WAP enabled device. How does one go about serving these pages. Is there a specific WAP webserver or are there modules to Apache? What are the choices and any other suggestions you may have regarding WAP programming."

TufelKinder asks: "Our company is installing a new network at a new building location. There don't seem to be many discussions that center on the best cabling systems, etc, to use. I'm wondering what /. folk have found to be the best brands/types of copper cables to use for 10/100BT networking and for gigabit over copper as well. Are there any specific types of cable or cabling practices to avoid?"

BlueQuark writes "I thought that this is cool. Everybody needs one. When I was liviving in Tokyo about a year and a half ago, Pioneer just released a DVD Recorder, which was quite nice. Now it looks like Panasonic will have one that does 52 hours. It's about 200,000 yen or about $1709.00 @ 117.76Tokyo's Y/$ rate. The blurb is a bit short, but can be found here. Or here is a more complete press release which is at Matsushita's site."

CtrlPhreak writes: "Anandtech has posted a review of an affordable AMD 760 based motherboard, the Tyan Tiger MP. It's basically the Tyan Thunder K7 without all the integration. For $220, it's a great deal. It has the exact same performance as the Thunder, and it is tested to run fine with those cheap and fast 1ghz durons. They say Tyan is putting out this board to compete with other offerings of a cheap 760 platform, we can only hope."

Jason Dunn sent us to a link on his site about the new new iPaq which is due out relatively soon. Aesthetic changes, more memory, and I assume Linux will run on it as well or better then the existing models.

rgarcia writes: "CNET has this story: Panasonic announced on Monday its first handheld computer, the Toughbook 01, which is designed to complement its notebook line of the same name. The consumer electronics maker has been selling into a niche in the notebook market by focusing on durable laptops that can withstand the shock of a fall and can resist moisture, dust and scratches. I know Ive dropped a few in my day. Damn things are fragile. Cool design, though I dont know if its actually better." And an unnamed reader points out that DALinux now has hardware available: "They claim it is Palm compatible, but it won't run palm apps - so what 'Palm compatible' means is anyone's guess. But it is a cool gadget, it runs Linux, and, most importantly, it is affordable." "Palm compatible" better at least mean painless address-book import.

CtrlPhreak writes: "The highly awaited NVidia nForce is finally here. Anandtech has a review of an nForce 420 reference board. This is the one with integrated dolby 5.1 sound, a GF2 MX core at 6x agp, and dual-channel DDR RAM! Go check it out."

manplusdog writes: "Dan reviews a couple of i845 motherboards here and lets just say he doesn't hold back! "Mainboards For The Stupid" is the verdict. I have no affiliation with Dan or his site (aside from being Australian) but found the review..... entertaining. Cheers"