Philips just released a new iPad 2 app called Vital Signs Camera that uses the camera to measure your heart and breathing rate. It detects subtle beat-to-beat changes in the color of your face to measure your heart rate.
We’re slowly living in the future.
Recently, we released the Android version of Meridian, our platform for building location-based apps.
We didn’t use one of these “Cross Platform!” tools like Titanium. We wrote it, from scratch, in Java, like you do in Android.
We decided it was important to keep the native stuff native, and to respect each platform’s conventions as much as possible. Some conventions are easy to follow, like putting our tabs on the top. Other conventions go deep into the Android Way, like handling
Intents, closing oldActivities, implementing Search Providers, and being strict about references to help the garbage collector.Now, our platform leverages HTML5 (buzzword, sorry) in many places for branding and content display, so we got a fair amount of UI for free. But there was much platform code written in Objective-C that needed translation into Java, such as map navigation, directions, and location switching.
So, we rolled up our sleeves, downloaded the Android SDK, and got to work.
People say that your dreams
Are the only things that save you
Come on baby, in our dreams
We can live our misbehavior
The Arcade Fire
In computer technology we are in period of divergence. The personal computer which was either a laptop or desktop now suddenly has three new forms, “smart phone”, “tablet” and “smart TV” (emerging this year). We don’t expect this divergence to stop. Check out this video, a vision of where we are headed by Microsoft.
This proliferation of computer forms has created a problem. We have to manage multiple personal computing devices: Desktop, Laptops, Tablets, “Smart Phones”, “Smart TVs”, etc. This takes time, know-how and results in a poor user experience.
How do we create a seamless experience across all of our devices?
Already underway is our integration into “The Cloud”. Using Web Apps and Internet Storage provided by services from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc, much of our computation and storage is already done by computer farms and provided to us as services. This includes webmail, video/image services and online application that allow you to do everything from creating docs to editing video.
Various devices can have a window into a common experienced through their connection with “The Cloud”. Some example from MS and Google.
There is another solution which may be superior/simpler then a software synchronization between multiple devices. Convergence of forms to the least common denominator. The smallest, most available computation device as the only device. All we need is a “smart phone” to serve as the “hardware brain” that can be displayed on any screen size, TV, desktop monitor, laptop/tablet shell, etc. The Motorola Atrix was demoed during CES 2011 and it gives us glimpse of this technology.
The vision of the future that I see is powerful pocket sized computers that can plug into many different screens sizes. Instead of having many computers all you need is one small power device that can be plugged into many different shells to give the laptop, desktop and “smart TV” experiences.“The Cloud” would still be harnessed to provide computational and storage intensive services that these handheld devices will initially lack.
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Much of the music I have been listening to lately is available for free download by the artist. Mixtapes, artist that don’t seem to care about going platinum, etc…
jj - the kills (mixtape)
Sample
download the full album here
M.I.A. - Vicki Leekx (mixtape)
Sample
M.I.A. - Get Around by tkharrison
download the full album here
Girl Talk - All Day
Sample
Girl Talk - All Day - 2010 by lilpeepee
download the full album here
Das Racist - Sit Down, Man
Das Racist - Shutup, Dude
The first serious interface without a controller, Kinect is being release by Microsoft soon (Nov. 4th). Its like the offspring of Nintendo’s ”Wiimote” and Apple’s touch interfaces. This may by a game changer for Microsoft and an interesting new interface for us to play with, bringing us closer to the 2002 UI vision of the Minority Report.
The Kinect may be the beginning of a new breed of interfaces that sense what you hands and body are doing. Hopefully this will lead to a more natural way to interface with computers.
Of course these device will have to go a long way to replace the mighty keyboard since content creation is still nearly impossible without one.
Update: There is a new commercial of Xbox Kinect. Its good because the background music is LCD Soundsystem.
