Technical Maturation of the Smartphone Market
I'm heartened to see stories like this: Windows Mobile to get pumped up on Nvidia (CNET). I've tried Windows Mobile many times and every time two things send me running as fast as I can away from the platform:
1) The god-awful user interface
2) The reliance of WM on Outlook
While the second problem probably won't go away any time soon -- Microsoft likes to link its products even when its customers don't necessarily want them linked -- the first problem will probably be greatly mitigated if we can get high-end graphics to speed up and beautify the UI.
I'm sure, however, that Windows Mobile won't be the only game in town with high-powered graphics hardware on board. Google's Android seems to be designed with that type of experience clearly in mind. This, plus the "open network" push we're seeing, means that the next 12-18 months should be a very interesting time in the smartphone space.
Posted on May 8, 2008 by Craig in Industry
and Phones
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In Search of a Quicker Demise
The industriousness and efficiency of humanity is really, really impressive if you stop to think about it. While lesser species sit around and wait for Nature to "happen," we devise new ways of accelerating our ass-over-teakettle tumble through new realities.
One particularly delicious example of this is global warming. "Oh, yes, we know all about that," you say, but wait...there's a cool twist.
For years, scientists have been telling us that the Earth's climate is changing, largely due to the burning of fossil fuels and other of man's activities that result in a hotter planet. And for years, scientists have been predicting the most dire of outcomes: dramatic loss of coastal land (and the cities that sit on them), increasingly violent and unpredictable weather, a huge decrease in biodiversity as scores of plant and animal species fail to adapt to what is essentially overnight change to their ecosystems, and so on.
One prediction that scared the US Defense Department so much that it put global warming on its list of top national security threats was the likelihood of widespread food shortages. Changing weather patterns, including increased drought and flooding, were going to wreck havoc on food production around the globe. This shortage would then lead to instability in parts of the world that weren't terribly stable to begin with and further fuel the anti-Western backlash that began sometime before this decade. This would generate new threats like terrorism, disruptions to our own food and energy supply chains, and increase the uncertainty in global markets. All told, not a very rosy scenario.
And that was all supposed to happen by the middle of this century.
But, humanity's unfailing inability to leave bad enough alone has created a worldwide food shortage well before global warming could directly. No, global warming (which, remember, is our fault) is motivating us to seek out alternative fuel sources, such as corn-based petroleum substitutes. These biofuels are diminishing the availability of food and driving up costs. This, in turn, is starting to generate unease in the world's poorest communities. And that is precisely the type of situation that the Defense Department warned us about...just about 40 years earlier than predicted.
It is indeed ironic that our efforts to stem global warming are resulting in many of the very same problems that global warming was itself going to cause, just sooner. When your best effort to avoid calamity only hastens its arrival, you have to wonder whether there's any hope of steering clear at all.
Posted on May 2, 2008 by Craig in Cars
and Industry
and Science & Nature
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Infochaining the Social Net for Personal Productivity
Yesterday at lunch I demonstrated for a colleague a rather ridiculous, Rube Goldbergian reminder mechanism consisting of Web 2.0 information management and communication tools.
I called Jott and told it to contact Sandy with a message to feed the parking meter in 30 minutes. A half hour later, Sandy sent my Twitter account a direct message, which ended up arriving to my phone via text message. I also had an email message waiting for me, just in case.
Sure, it's absurd to do something like that for a task so trivial as reminding yourself to refresh a parking meter, but it does demonstrate how amazingly interconnected these mobile/web tools are becoming.
Posted on May 1, 2008 by Craig in Computing
and Internet
and Mobile & PDAs
and Technology
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As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm now on Twitter [CRA1G]...feel free to add me to your follow list.
p.s., I've added a Twitter feed to the menu-bar (on the right side of GearBits' main page), but I'm not yet sure it'll be a permanent addition.
Posted on April 28, 2008 by Craig in Internet
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Consume or Produce: Reflections on an Earlier Post
Eugenio just read one of Clay Shirky's recent articles, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, and said it reminded him of a piece I posted here a little over three years ago:
The Great Decision: Consume or Produce
January 29, 2005Every time I sit down at a PC and every time I walk into my office at work, I'm struck with a fundamental decision: consume or produce.
I'm talking about information. Any minute can be reasonably and justifiably spent either consuming information, such as reading research papers, news sites, emails, blogs, etc., or producing new information, such as writing my own papers, putting up blog entries, leaving comments on blogs (hint, hint), composing an email, and so on.
Some people are very content to be primarily, if not entirely, consumers. They feel little or no need to share their knowledege, opinions, and thoughts with others. Some are more biased in the opposite direction, churning out an unending stream of content. ...
What's particularly serendipitous about Eugenio's note is that I recently signed up for Twitter and have been trying to figure out it can be the most useful as a communication tool. Twitter, as you likely know, is much more about production than consumption -- it makes creating and distributing tiny bits of information almost frictionless, thereby further increasing the load on us as consumers.
This is still an issue I struggle with every day. I doubt I'll ever resolve it.
Posted on April 28, 2008 by Craig in Internet
and Other
and Popular Media
and Society / Politics
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Famous Look-Alikes: Steve Ballmer and Peter Boyle
Why does Steve Ballmer (photo borrowed from Gizmodo)
keep reminding me of Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein?
Seriously...is it just me?
Posted on April 26, 2008 by Craig in Computing
and Industry
and Movies & Books
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Religious License Plates in Florida
If Florida gets the Christian license plates that some lawmakers there have proposed, this should be an equally justifiable plate option for Sunshine State residents:
Posted on April 24, 2008 by Craig in Cars
and Society / Politics
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U-verse multicasting collides with ISPs
I am no network expert, but I've dabbled in streaming content over computer networks at work. So I find it interesting to know how the various cable/phone/satellite companies get their digital goodness delivered to my house. Unique solutions, like this AT&T solution, pique my curiosity.
This wikipedia article summarizes the architecture:
Unlike traditional offerings from U.S. cable companies, video is delivered over IP from the head end to the consumer's set-top box. Broadcast channels are distributed via IP multicast, allowing a single stream (channel) to be sent to any number of recipients.
Multicasting rocks. This BBC radio page sums it up pretty well:
It's similar to Broadcast. If you think about your Digital Radio it's tuned into a specific station, it picks up data that has an identifier saying 'this is for the station you want', we just have to put one copy of the station on transmitters. Whereas Unicast is a lot more like us having to call each listener on the phone and play-back the station you request.
In the past I've mentioned to Craig that if my ISPs finally support multicasting to my home, then radio stations, like woxy, wouldn't have to pay a gazillion dollars for their internet bandwidth.
Multicasting isn't without it's share of complexities, of course. The U-verse details came to my attention when Comcast reportedly stated problems with U-verse multicasting traffic spilling out onto their network.
Posted on April 23, 2008 by Bob in Internet
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As Gas Prices Go Up, Driving Goes Down...Finally
Pundits figured it would take gas at $4/gallon to curb driving. Looks like they were about right, but with the overall economy in recession, it only took $3.50/gallon or so to get things started. BusinessWeek has a good article on it.
Posted on April 23, 2008 by Craig in Cars
and Society / Politics
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Have Fun Tweaking Your Gmail Email Address
I was perusing the Official Gmail Blog and found this gem of a tip: Google ignores periods and anything after a + in your email address, so you can use these characters to provide yourself with infinite custom email addresses that all route to your current account. Here's what they say:
• Append a plus ("+") sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.• Insert one or several dots (".") anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn't recognize periods as characters in addresses -- we just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com.
So, spammers, please send me a note at craig.froehle+i.hope.you.die@gmail.com ;-)
Posted on April 20, 2008 by Craig in Internet
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Earthquake?
I think we just experienced an earthquake here in Cincinnati.
At 5:40am, our house shook for about 20 seconds as if there was a huge wind gust, but there was no noise from outside and the trees weren't moving at all.
It's been about 25 years since our last one (there's a fault line in Kentucky) and, if this was another one, it certainly was a surprise.
Update: Apparently, it was centered in Illinois.
Enquirer.com
Posted on April 18, 2008 by Craig in Science & Nature
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Senator Charles Grassley Proclaims Himself World's Biggest Hypocrite
This story on InsideHigherEd.com describes the crusade that Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, is directing towards the scourge of industry-sponsored research. Apparently, Mr. Grassley believes scientists/physicians shouldn't accept money from companies related to whatever they're studying.
Last August, in advocating for a national reporting system of drug company payments to doctors to help ensure that patients know about potential conflicts of interest for doctors who might prescribe medications, Grassley singled out DelBello, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Cincinnati, for what he said was her failure to accurately report her outside income in 2003 and 2004 from Astra Zeneca, a pharmaceutical company whose drug Seroquel she had studied in 2002.On April 2, Grassley stepped up his criticism. He took to the Senate floor to "report on the actions of one physician" -- DelBello -- "to explain how industry payments to medical experts can affect medical practice."
Don't think for a minute that his efforts are limited to "a national reporting system." It's clear that he feels industry money shouldn't go to not-for-profit and academic researchers.
While it's obvious that conflicts-of-interest are bad, most researchers that receive corporate support, either directly or indirectly, do not let their results be influenced by that funding. Beyond that, eliminating or further restricting industry support isn't a viable solution. Or is this Republican going to fill in those funding gaps for science with government money? I seriously doubt that.
What's even more ridiculous is the sheer hypocrisy of the Senator's statement:
He said, harshly: "This situation is unfortunate on so many levels. It is unfortunate...for patients who once believed that their doctor was not for sale..."
It takes guts to stand up and criticize a state university researcher for "being for sale" when he, himself, has accepted nearly $1,000,000 in campaign contributions from medical organizations and related companies since 2003.
Is it possible that Senator Grassley feels that if he makes it too difficult for the healthcare industry to fund research that it will simply divert those funds to their lobbying efforts instead (and, therefore, into Grassley's hands)? Talk about a conflict of interest.
Posted on April 15, 2008 by Craig in Society / Politics
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Reason #194 Why Dr. Phil is the Antithesis of Mental Health
Remember that pack of teenage girls behaving like lunatics and videotaping the beating they planned and dished out on another girl?
Well, the supposed "ringleader" of that group has been bailed out of jail (for $30,000) by...Dr. Phil! Supposedly so that the Dr. Phil Show will have exclusive rights to interview her.
It takes a lot of gall to glorify adolescent violence (purely in the name of ratings) and then decry it as a social evil.
I don't know if there's a TV Personality Scumbag award, but if there is, I'm sure Dr. Phil is a shoe-in.
Posted on April 12, 2008 by Craig in Health & Medicine
and Popular Media
and Society / Politics
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In Defense of Email
Over at Gizmodo, I came across this entry musing about the pervasiveness of text messaging (apparently not written by a European):"...I began to wonder about the phenomenon of text messaging as a whole. Sometimes it seems that it would make more sense to call or send an email, but that crap is for old people."
Perhaps I'm mistaken in believing the merits of email should be obvious and that nobody can honestly believe that texting is superior for all, or even most, occasions. So, I thought I'd put together a brief table outlining what I consider the advantages of each technology:
Near-instantaneous delivery |
Delivery can be delayed |
A clear advantage for texting | |
Included in all phones |
Increasingly common |
Not as much of a difference as even a year ago | |
| Good mobile email clients are no harder to use than most Texting interfaces | |||
160-character limit |
What can't email do? |
Attachments, long messages, and rich text are all things email does easily but that texting doesn't do well, if at all | |
no long-term storage |
email archives are forever |
Some messages you don't care about referencing in the future, but can you be sure when you send it that you won't care? | |
$0.10+ apiece when not bought in bulk |
Free with any Internet service |
Some may find this contentious, but I pay extra for texting on my cellular account whereas email is just part of my overall Internet connectivity fee |
I think the biggest drawback I see to texting is the whole temporal retention issue. I rely extensively on my ability to search through my emails, both professional and personal, sometimes going back years to look up something. In contrast, I don't know anyone who saves their text messages for even more than a few months. I asked a classful of college seniors how long they kept text messages on their phones. Less than 10% keep them longer than a week!
Do I txt? Yep, everyday, but I still use email a lot more. I'm not going to pull the "age = wisdom" card and claim that "old people" (per the Gizmodo story) use email more because they're wiser (I'm not even sure I'd be considered "old"), but my perception is that email offers a lot of advantages that texting just can't match right now.
Posted on April 3, 2008 by Craig in Computing
and Internet
and Mobile & PDAs
and Phones
and Society / Politics
and Technology
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It's a Boy
Introducing the newest addition to our family:
Born: April 2, 2008 at 3:18am
Weight: 7 lbs, 3 oz
Length: 19.75 in
Everybody's just fine. :-)
Posted on April 2, 2008 by Craig in Family
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