Information technology, gadgets, social media, libraries, design, marketing, higher ed, data visualization, educational technology, mobility, innovation, strategy, trends and futures. . . 

Posts suspended for a bit while I settle into a new job. . . 

Tuesday
Jan012013

To Learn in 2013

I love Gizmodo (and not just because the writing is so clever)! 

"63 Essential Things to Learn Before 2012 Ends" (go to this link for individual links to the below) -- 

 

  1. What Really Happens When You Get Blown Out of an Airlock
  2. Why There Are 24 Hours in a Day
  3. How Do Computers Understand Speech?
  4. Batteries: The Absolute Definitive Guide
  5. What Nuclear Radiation Does To Your Body
  6. Why Toilets Are Still Made of Porcelain
  7. How To Use Android
  8. Why We Yawn—And Why Yawning Is So Contagious
  9. Why Printers Suck (And What You Can Do About It)
  10. What Exactly Is That New Car Smell?
  11. Why Are There So Many Tornadoes This Year?
  12. Spicy Food, Oils, and Sex: The Myth and Science of WHERE THE HELL IS MY BABY
  13. What the Strange Symbols on Your Gadgets Mean
  14. Could an Explosion Really Knock You Over Like in the Movies?
  15. Paper or Plastic? Try Neither
  16. How Induction Cooktops Make Meals with Magnets
  17. Why Salt Water in the Subway Is So Extremely Dangerous
  18. What It Takes to Restore Cellular Service After a Hurricane
  19. How Hurricane Sandy Might Become a Snowpocalyptic Frankenstorm
  20. What Happens When You Flush a Toilet on an Airplane?
  21. Why the Snooze Button Is Ruining Your Sleep
  22. The Crazy Journey of an MMS from Your Phone to Your Friends
  23. Why You Have Bad Breath in the Morning
  24. How NASA Prevents a Space Plague Outbreak
  25. How 4K TV Works
  26. How Duct Tape Fixes the World
  27. Music's Wild Ride: From Sound Waves to Digital Files and Back Again
  28. What Happens When You Get Struck By Lightning
  29. What Happens When You Stare Directly at the Sun
  30. What Is Big Data?
  31. What Is an Atmospheric River?
  32. What Is Israel's Iron Dome?
  33. What Is Anodizing?
  34. What Is Friction-Stir Welding?
  35. What Is Apple Fusion Drive?
  36. What Is Pheed?
  37. Can You Work Out What This Thing Was Used For?
  38. What Is Intel Clover Trail?
  39. What Is Miracast?
  40. What Is a Frontlit Display?
  41. What Is MIMO?
  42. What Is Medium?
  43. What Is an App Launcher?
  44. What Is Intel Turbo Boost?
  45. What Is Cocaine Psychosis?
  46. Why Poison Oak Is the F&%*ing Worst
  47. What Is CISPA?
  48. What Is 4/20?
  49. What Is The New Aesthetic?
  50. What Is Temporal Noise Reduction?
  51. What Is an Earthquake?
  52. What Are Steroids?
  53. What Comes After 4G?
  54. What Is SOPA?
  55. What Is MHL?
  56. What Is a Hangover?
  57. What Is Carrier IQ? (Updated)
  58. What Is Distortion?
  59. What Is Coil Embolization?
  60. What Is A Gustnado? (Hint: It May Have Collapsed The Indiana State Fair Stage)
  61. What Is a Hurricane?
  62. What Is an RPG?
  63. What Is the LRAD Sound Cannon?

 

Sunday
Dec302012

2013: Future Technology

It is the time of year for "prediction" lists. Here are two from a source I respect -- IDG's TechHive (IDG is the publisher of PCWorld and Macworld) -- about mobiles (smartphones) and tablets. 

Future Tech 2013: Phones -- wireless charging (already have with my Droid 4), quad-core (http://www.william-garrity.com/blog/2012/12/27/quad-core-mobiles.html), bigger screens, and near field communication. 

Future Tech 2013: Tablets -- 

Tablets have evolved at a lightning-fast pace. And for 2013, we expect another year of rapid and significant change in areas ranging from performance and displays to battery life and price.

Just two years ago, the tablet market that is so large today was in its infancy, dominated by Apple’s first-generation iPad. Android tablets were barely getting off the ground, and were saddled with an inappropriate cell-phone operating system slapped into a tablet’s larger case.

Today, we have competition and diversity. Apple’s iOS-based fourth-gen iPad and iPad mini still dominate, but Android-based tablets are finally making inroads. Leading the way is Google’s own Nexus lineup, consisting of the affordable 7-inch Nexus 7 (which starts at $199 and goes up to $299 with HSPA+ mobile broadband connectivity), and the 10.1-inch Nexus 10 (with its crazy-high resolution). Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, a competing $199 tablet built around Amazon’s media and services and running Android apps sold through Amazon’s own store, has done well, too. And now Windows 8–based tablets are here, led by Microsoft’s own Surface With Windows RT tablet.

So what lies ahead? Big growth, for one thing: Research firm IDC expects worldwide tablet shipments to hit 165.9 million units in 2013, up from 117.1 million in 2012. And by 2016, IDC says, worldwide shipments should reach 261.4 million units. This growth will come at the ex­­pense of traditional laptops and desktops, and it will foster a growing acceptance of tablets as tools in everyday life, whether as a “second screen” to accompany your TV viewing, as an e-reader, or as a productivity tool.

 

Continued at link

Friday
Dec282012

Facebook and Its New "Poke" App

This piece by Brittany Darwell in Inside Facebook about the new Poke application actually serves to describe Facebook's constant aesthetic over the years. 

Too close for missiles, Facebook switches to guns and has some fun with Poke

Dec 23rd, 2012 

Facebook’s new Poke app seems in many ways like a departure for the company.

While most of Facebook’s products are meant to preserve memories and save interactions, communications in Poke disappear after a few seconds. Facebook emphasizes functionality over flair and tends to put a lot of structure to how and what users share, but Poke lets users doodle over their photos with different colors and send virtual pokes to their friends. Most of all, Poke is playful while the rest of Facebook is very much a utility. If you haven’t tried Poke, you can get a quick sense of this by listening to the app’s silly notification sound — reportedly recorded by Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Although some aspects of Poke might seem out of character for the Facebook most of us know now, it’s actually a fitting addition to the platform with roots in Facebook’s past.

Continues at link 

 

Thursday
Dec272012

Quad-Core Mobiles

By CNET's Jessica Dolcourt, a medium-simple primer on mobile (smartphone) processors -- specifically, what multi-core processors are, and how the new quad-core processors are (or may be, or may not be) more capable than the current mainstream (more-or-less) dual-core processors. 

"7 myths about quad-core phones (Smartphones Unlocked)

Smartphones with quad-core processors are always faster than dual-core processors, right? Only if you believe the myths.

by Jessica Dolcourt  

April 8, 2012 3:14 PM PDT Updated: December 19, 2012 9:48 AM PST 

Editors' note: This article originally posted on April 8, 2012, and was updated on December 19, 2012.

Open up your wallet today and there are no fewer than five smartphones you can buy running on quad-core processors. Seven months ago, there was one, the HTC One X, and only if you bought the international version, which lacked the 4G LTE speeds coveted by U.S. phone-buyers.

(Credit: ARM)

After CES next month, expect the number of announced quad-core devices to double as the core war continues to heat up.

By summer, you may turn up your nose at perfectly fast devices running on dual-core chipsets, wondering if you should saddle yourself with something so "slow." After all, the more processing power, the better the phone, right?

Continued at link 

 

Tuesday
Dec182012

Sulia: Social Network Discovery

Sulia is a social network of social networks; that is, it is a social network that tracks various social networks, and other sources, on your behalf and aggregates information relevant to you. 

From http://sulia.com/about

Sulia is a subject-based social network that connects you to the top social sources on subjects you care about.

We all have interests that we're extremely passionate about. Whether it's our family, a sports team, breaking news, Hollywood gossip, a hobby, a career or a political issue, we obsess over our interests everyday.

However, with an endless number of sources talking about an endless number of topics, it's nearly impossible to find the best sources to follow across your interests. And, even if you were able to identify the top sources, sifting through all of their content is maddeningly time consuming.

We built Sulia to address these problems (which were driving us mad too).

Sulia's subject-based structure of social channels connects trusted sources and enthusiasts on shared interests across thousands of subjects, including breaking news and events. How?

We use a combination of network managers and sophisticated algorithms to identify the best-regarded sources across thousands of topics. We then dynamically filter content from those sources, regardless of where it's created (a blog, a social network, a media site, through Sulia's publishing system, etc.), into high-quality, realtime social channels. The result is streams of timely content from trusted sources that is always on-topic, readable, and relevant.
People use Sulia everyday to discover new sources and engage with their interests. We hope you do too!

It has a number of "buckets" -- Android, Microsoft, Information Security, Open Source, etc. -- and for each presents columns for "Live," "Featured," and the "Leaderboard." There is also "Suggested" trending topics (right now, the top three are Newtown Massacre, Daniel Inouye, and Royal Baby). 

En toto, for the interests I picked, there are still too many items for me to stay on top of; there is a daily email summary, but it's too selective (too few) for my purposes. 

The idea is promising; it would be the bee's knees if I could tune the email summary.