Friendly Web Tools Blog

Move over pens, it’s time to make room for a pocket projector. Yes, projector, not protector. The 3M Pocket Projector is a dinky $359 projector that takes the place of hyper-expensive LCD projectors that can run in the thousands.

Plug the projector into your laptop to access DVDs, presentations and photos, and project them onto your desk or wall or another blank white space. It’s definitely limited to a smaller room application in bright light - it displays around a foot across - but in a dark room, you can use it to project a much larger image on the wall.

Perfect tool for taking on the road for seminars or doing quick displays.

I like my keyboard, but it does have its drawbacks. It’s incredibly long, snaking down my desk with extra keypads and features and loads of shortcut buttons that I rarely, if ever, use.

That’s why Brando’s little keyboard, called the USB 2.4Ghz RF Wireless Multimedia Tiny Keyboard, is so appealing. It’s called “tiny,” and small it is, but still suitable for casual typing. It easily lays in your two cupped hands and can be pulled all around the room because it has no cords to restrict it. No wires to get tangled in your coffee cup.

It might not be the best tool for writing a full novel, but it’s small, portable and handy for taking in and out of meetings or workshops and costs less than $50.

My partner spotted one of these at the jQuery conference in Boston on Sunday. It’s a cheap ($249.99 on Newegg.com) and adequately powered (2GB) tiny (2 lbs, 7″) laptop. It’s the perfect little buddy to take with you to conferences, off-site meetings or other events.

It’s also got a solid-state disk, which means you can knock it around relatively worry-free, since nothing is going to come loose inside. It’s also got a built-in WiFi that that the manufactures claim “automatically detects and connects to the Internet at any hotspot.”

It runs Linux rather than Windows, which keeps it fast and cheap. But the downside is that you won’t have a copy of your Outlook for mail or other Windows programs you’re addicted to. Some report that it doesn’t handle video well, although the manufacturers tout sharing videos on YouTube and Flickr. It also comes pre-loaded with Skype, one of my favorite programs for the nonprofit.

The thing about weblogs is that they’re supposed to be quick and easy to put together. A theory that’s compounded by the number of people who “blog” live events. That’s to say they attend an event and bring their computer with them and provide nearly real-time feedback on what they’re seeing.

That’s of course the idea, but it takes much more work than that to actually crank up the blogging machine. That’s why I liked this posting by WebWorkerDaily about what one contributor takes with her to do live blogging. Her list of hardware includes:

• Computer
• Good, capacious computer bag
• Flip video camera (I’ve mentioned this before on my own weblog)
• Digital recorder

The software, well, that’s another big list altogether, and fodder for a future post.

A pen, you may say, is by default wireless. That’s why it’s called a pen and not a keyboard. But the Mobile Digital Scribe GPEN200N from Iogear looks like a pen but is effectively a portable computer.

This device captures 50 pages of your handwriting or drawings - using normal ink - and it transfers them to your computer as a digital document. You can sign checks with this thing, but it has enough digital juice to grab a whole day’s worth of meeting notes. When you’re done jotting, upload to any computer you want - without need of a digital notepad or special paper. The handwriting recognition software (OCR software) converts your notes into digital text.

This has a real benefit for anyone giving a presentation, because you can connect the pen to a digital projector to show your writing in near real time. Forget overhead projectors.

Pretty cheap too. You can buy it for $129 from the manufacturer or pick it up for less than $100 online.

Here’s a gadget that anyone who works with the visually impaired will love: karaoke in Braille.

It’s from a Japanese company called Nippon Telesoft, actually two companies that have teamed up to build the special machine. A PC plugged into the karaoke machine translates lyrics into Braille and sends them to a special display. The characters appear on the display slightly ahead of the music so singers can follow along in time with the tunes.

Now it’s not just your sighted friends who can get drunk and sing off-key to old Genesis songs.

See the machine in action.

Now you can look forward to Mondays - this week marks the beginning of Gadget Mondays on the Friendly Web Tools blog. We know that the Web stuff doesn’t work unless you have the technology to make it happen, so we’ll start to cover the hardware that will make your computing life less confusing.

On this inaugural Gadget Monday: the Flip video camera.

With this ultra user-friendly gadget, converting lectures, presentations and conversations into YouTube-ready movies is a snap. Keep this little guy handy so you can record any action and turn it into a simple presentation for your constituency or colleagues who can’t be there. One client of ours is already using the Flip to create quick videos and distribute them on YouTube.

The best part? These things start at $129.99 - more manageable than you might have thought.