Smartphones war and power to the users

"The Coming Apple-RIM Battle: Some analysts predict a brawl between iPhones and BlackBerrys; others say the real fight pits the smartphones against open-source handsets"

I'm not sure if open source handsets will have such a big upsurge, yet. The beauty of open source is for others to change the code to fit custom needs which is why we have zillion flavors of Linux distributions. We don't have zillion flavors of Firefox but I hope that will change soon. Nonetheless, to have open source phone (a real one), there needs to be openness to what can go on the phones by the users of the phone (not just programmers). Which means that infrastructures needs to be in place for the phone (OS) to handle change by the users (even if it is simply as changing the widgets like you can on google home page). However, as people get comfortable with changing things, I expect people to start programming, just like how a whole industry of Excel macros have taken off.

How about: Programming by Dummies? PBU (programming by Users)? User programmed? Dummies are in power (DAIP)? I AM IN CONTROL (IAIC)?

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Portable Ultrasounds: Media behind the curve

I saw the AP article on today's edition of our local paper, but here's USAToday's version: "Market grows for portable ultrasound".

As I've proposed before with USB ultrasound, we're still not at home level Ultrasound. If you look at the photo in the above article, it seems you need a specialized machine but I believe the same functionality can be implemented with video game controller (Wii might be really cool) and USB Ultrasound wand. Or better yet, how about Wiimote + Ultrasound "nunchaku" (on Wii, there is a secondary controller, called "nunchaku," which is attached to the main Wiimote and allows for extra controls). This will allow the user to stick the Ultrachaku to the body part in question with one hand and manipulate the image on the screen with the main Wiimote controller with the other hand. Any game player could do this: hmm, a pre-teen ultrasound tech?

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Tech: Automated and computerized frustrations

"The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products: Obtrusive behavior, irritating habits, constant nagging--crummy products have bugged you for years. Here are the ones you say have bothered you most." Which has a great list of bad tech products. But my favorite is a section called "14 Surefire Ways to Annoy Users." I could add more to the list but much of that you can read in my older blog entries.

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this problem since human factor is more of an art than science.

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Everlasting Tech Boom?

Fortune has: "This tech boom has legs: For several reasons - especially growing demand in developing countries - tech's run most probably will last many years."

Let's take their two points apart:

"First, everybody wants technology." Just because they want or desire tech, it doesn't mean people can afford to. Not just the developing nation but developed ones too. For example, yours truly would love to buy a new computer [especially one with virtualization hardware built in to play with full virtualization], now that Fedora Core 6 is released with Xen support. Unfortunately, we had to spend a lot of our savings to move and settle down in SoCal. So no tech purchases for a while!

"And second, technology has become radically easier to create." I don't think so. Some things have improved [ipod is a good example: I use it every weekday on my walking commute to/from work] but computers are so hard to use still. Just today, I had to reinstall wifi driver to restore network access to my notebook. What a pain since I had to try to restore system few times to make sure something else didn't go wrong. Probably wasted about one hour of my time. Software is all wrong: not only is it buggy but also hard to use -- I'm not talking about specific GUI but the basics like having to explicitly save files or not having infinite undo/redo.

With the economy tanking, both developing and developed nations will struggle to continue the tech growth. And until things become so easy that people "have to have it" (like the ipods), it won't take off in the way that will continue growing.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.