Any Alternative Uses For The MySmart Pad? 20
TellarHK muses: "Thinking back to the CueCat debacle, and on the topic of 'soon to be abandoned-ware,' has anyone considered mucking about with the MySmart mousepads? I picked up one of these on sale at Best Buy for $5, figuring someone might come out with a way to use the 'Smart' card reader as a tool for other applications. Sure, I know this'll get a lawyer's underwear in a bunch, but I don't recall signing any license stopping me. Maybe someone's come up with a quick and dirty program or routine for it, under either Linux or Windows?" These are also at CompUSA. Smart-card access to the basement? One more layer of security on your workstation? These look like fun, if someone has a driver.
Google says... (Score:2)
The mysmart.com web site seems to be down at the moment, so the company might have gone belly up. Check later...maybe they're using IIS and just need to reboot? :)
Interesting note: There's some comment on the company considering Linux support. Likely? Nope.
Mouse button input (Score:2)
Does the pad do anything except for have extra little buttons on it? If that is all it does, you should just have to map them to some sort of x-input.
I know, I couldn't begin to do that either. But it looks fairly trivial. If it's that big a deal, find some developer and send him one.
off topic .....Bill Clinton Will Publish Memoir (Score:1)
"I did all them DC bitches." wow, that's over $1M a sylable
American Express smartcard reader (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:American Express smartcard reader (Score:2)
Hardly. First, that implies that people have a credit line that'll get you AmEx. And again, this comes across as just another example of Slashdot elitism. ''We all need to be making huge amounts of money to afford anything neat.'' There are a lot of things out there that truly are affordable, to people even with a lower level of income than what people may be used to with the high-paying (and rapidly vanishing) silicon valley lifestyle. For five dollars, I think something like this that doesn't require a whole hell of a lot of effort to pick up yet has the potential to become an actually useful item to people of all income brackets.
Posts like this, and articles saying that $2000 for a wearable computer is affordable really go a long way toward projecting the image that people that read here really don't have any interest in things that are actually truly affordable.
I'd like to hope we'll start seeing articles about things that are actually reasonably purchased on less than a $50/hr. income, but I doubt it.
Re:American Express smartcard reader (Score:1)
I just recently got Blue for Students - I'm a college student, and definitely not making > $50/hr. with my on-campus job :) I got the reader along with it, and have been toying with it.
The Blue reader is supported by MUSCLE (smart card initiative for Linux.) I got a couple of BasicCards cheap - they're EEPROM programmable in Basic (yuck! oh well, it works.) It's neat... I don't have a real need for high security but one of these days I'll get it to work.
Besides, I won't be able to afford a $2000 wearable, but it is certainly 'affordable' in the sense that previous wearables were much more expensive (or homebuilt.) I like to read about that kind of stuff, even though I know I can't afford it. It gives me hope that one day, I will be able to :)
Oh, and besides, I don't think that the smart cards are 'useful to people of all income brackets'. In fact, AmEx has been quietly phasing out the applications which support their smart chip... It doesn't have a whole lot of use right now. The cards are more expensive than their dumb counterparts, the readers are cheap but not zero-cost, and it's still an effort to get it installed and running. (Easy, but not plug and go.) It's a gimmick thing, and will be until someone dreams up an application which is not feasable by any other method.
-Karl
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"Smart Card" Readers (Score:1)
I can't tell you any specifics on the reader that comes with the mouse pad, but the card doesn't look like it has a CPU, as someone mentioned above. It looks like it is a flash memory card only.
it can be used... (Score:1)
A little late (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:A little late (Score:2)
Uhh... (Score:2)
On the other hand, this page [mysmart.com] mentions their 'smart card' which can be inserted into the pad. So yes, there is a reader. It stores settings for the pad, though. There's no guarantee, unfortunately, that there's a way to access the reader with the PC.
Then again, a quick disassembly of their software might prove me wrong.
The smart card. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, the real question is how smart the card itself is? Is it a simple serial number that lets the software do all the work, or can information be stored on it? If the former, that might be better for security applications, and if the latter, it might be better suited toward saving personalized data. As each card is non-numbered, on the outside, appearing to have no way to uniquely ID them, it makes the whole matter completely up in the air. I'd like this to get to the main page so we can see more input. :)
WTF?? (Score:1)
Something broken?
Re:Smartcards... (Score:1)
don't know why I think it's so funny though....
I've got one too (Score:1)