The Geek The Ory

MyScript Calculator - Handwriting calculator What does it promise? T he MyScript Calculator app promises a very intelligent interface that recognizes equations written by the user and gives them the answer instantly. It allows you to easily edit and scratch out scripts that you need to replace. It promises an innovative way to solve math problems without having to punch equations into calculators. Does it deliver?  This app delivers with flying colors. It can be used by children ages four and up because of how easy it is to write using the simple interface. For younger children, they will be able to appreciate the fact that they can use their hands to write the equation and see the answer magically appear in front of their eyes. It's an app that will save students a lot of time but where it fails is in teaching students how to actually solve equations. It does all the work for you and that’s fine but when it comes to an app that teaches, this one falls a little short. F...

Thanks to a recent software update,  Amazon’s inexpensive Fire TV Stick —an HDMI dongle that works as a sort of mini digital media set-top box—has improved its support for Miracast wireless display. This means that in addition to its normal functionality, you should be able to use Fire TV Stick to mirror the display on your Windows Phone, Windows PC or tablet, or Android device. But there’s just one problem. And that problem is: it doesn’t work reliably. On the Windows Phone handset I tried—my Lumia 930—I was able to mirror the display, but audio didn’t work. This means that you can’t play music or audiobooks, of course. But you also can’t hear the audio in videos, like the TV shows or movies in Xbox Video. I also tried to test this with two Windows PCs, my Surface Pro 3 and another Windows 8.1-based laptop. In both cases, it successfully connected Fire TV Stick as a wireless display. But the video never worked, nor did the audio. According to one emailer, he was ab...

While Miracast was once an unreliable solution for replicating a PC or device screen to an external display, Microsoft’s newer Miracast dongles—in particular the inexpensive Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter—change all that. And I now bring such a device with me on family trips so that we can all enjoy TV shows or movies together on the big screen. We’re in Puerto Rico this week for the kids’ vacation—how we managed to get out of Boston and its historic snowfalls and low temperatures is still unclear—and I brought along the Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter for this very reason. It’s a simple and,  at $60 at the Microsoft Store , inexpensive solution: Just plug in the HDMI end of the dongle to an available HDMI port on the TV and plug the USB end into a USB port for power. (If there’s no USB port on the TV, you can use a standard cell phone-like power adapter instead.) In addition to its rock-solid reliability, there are a number of nice things about the Microsoft Wireles...

HP’s stunning new Spectre x360 gives Windows fans reason to cheer: It’s a premium transforming, multi-touch Ultrabook that doesn’t ape the MacBook Air’s styling but does deliver stellar performance and battery life. Best of all, perhaps, the Spectre x360 won’t set you back the $2000+ that other premium Windows Ultrabooks currently demand: it starts at less than half that heady sum. I’ve been using an HP Spectre x360 since last week, and it appears that HP has successfully done for the high-end of the market what Stream did for the low-end: Revitalize HP’s PC reputation by delivering an awesome combination of power, style, and value. Readers know I’m always looking for the best values in technology. And this Spectre delivers. Let’s start with the industrial. The Spectre x360 is precision milled and machine polished from aluminum and immediately presents the kind of understated elegance one might associate with Mercedes. It’s not a head-turner: indeed, on a recent trip I’...

hardware maker Acer is switching things up on its 2-in-1 notebook. Well, sort of. The company is expanding its Aspire Switch 10 series with two new models. Acer just rolled out two 10.1-inch machines that tote  Intel    Atom quad core processors and 2GB DDR3L memory. They also come with Office 365 pre-installed at no additional cost. The target audience: business users who want lightweight computing devices as well as students, and families. At the same time, Acer is also refreshing its Aspire Switch 11 series, adding an 11.6-inch model to the mix with a hinge design that promises better ergonomics and more processing power . If you buy any of the new models, you also get a free Windows 10 upgrade. Meet the Switch 10 E The Microsoft  Windows 8.1-based Switch 10 E 2-in-1 (pictured on right) sports latch-free docking and offer four modes: a notebook for productivity applications; a tablet for surfing the Web, watching digital content an...

We have seen 3D printers produce objects from plastic and even metal. But the Magic Kingdom is living up to its name with the announcement that it has designed a 3D printer capable of printing with fabric. A group of researchers at Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon and Disney Research unveiled the invention in a paper last weekend. According to the researchers, the device is capable of forming precise, but soft and deformable 3D objects from layers of off-the-shelf fabric. Among the objects the research team produced were a fabric bunny, a Japanese doll, a touch sensor made of fabric, and a smartphone case with an embedded conductive fabric coil for wireless  power   reception. Touch-Sensitive, Wireless Power To form each object, the printer uses a single sheet of fabric to create each layer of the object. The printer cuts this sheet along the 2D contour of the layer using a laser cutter and then bonds it to previously printed layers using a heat sensitive adh...