I have an interesting conundrum and an interesting proposition for a solution. I'd be interested in input from the two of you who actually read my blog... The Problem My daughter (henceforth referred to as "The Bean") was an early reader. She read early and often. As a result, she now reads at a level well beyond her school years. To be precise, she reads at a 9th grade … [Read more...]
“If all you have is a hammer…
... everything looks like a nail." - Abraham Maslow I ran into a colleague earlier today. While we were sharing war stories, he brought up a time that he was working at a defense contractor. He was working with IT to solve an issue where they were trying to get a particular piece of data out of a legacy system and have it appear in a widget on a dashboard. Nothing they … [Read more...]
Google Glass = Half Full?
Google has received a bit of press for it's announcement that its product, Glass, will be manufactured in the US (at least early runs). Google held a competition called #IfIHadGlass to identify eager early adopters. Winners will get the "chance" to pay $1,500 to get their hands on the product before the general public does. There are several reasons Google probably wants to … [Read more...]
I Had A Dream (Apple Television Update 2)
So, back in 2008, I wrote a post about a dream I had where I was interacting with my television through a tablet device that controlled and augmented the content on the screen. Remember that this post pre-dated the launch of the iPad, so it's interesting to see how things have been developing. This fall, I read the Steve Jobs biography and read the part where he said he had … [Read more...]
Technology and Spacetime: Then & There is Here & Now
A while back, I wrote a post in response to re-reading an interview with Marshall McLuhan. It described the way that the printed word created a portability of culture beyond the immediacy of face-to-face communication. However, print also introduced a coolness to the cultural exchange by removing many of the subtleties, like intonation and gestures, from the exchange. I argued … [Read more...]
Touch Me, Babe – Observations On History Of Touch Computing
All Things Considered over at NPR just ran a piece called The Touchy-Feely Future Of Technology. I suggest you read/listen to it because it's a great overview of the history, and a glance to the future of touch computing. However, I'd like to spend my time here calling out a few points that got only passing mention in the piece. Music & Technology: Friends With … [Read more...]
Making A Dent
I was at the inaugural gathering of ConvergeUS, an initiative to use technology to improve the world in some small measure, when I heard the news of Steve Jobs' passing. Biz Stone delivered a nice message to the group to use the gathering as an effort to celebrate the desire to make a dent in the universe, rather than to mourn the passing of someone who strove to do … [Read more...]
Web 3.0 Density with Clima.me
Over at Total Social Media, and as part of their Web 3.0 Lab, they've developed a pretty cool mashup of location and social/semantic data called Clima.me. Clima.me is a tool that measures the density of location-tagged data from a number of web apps (Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr, Yelp, and Foursquare) and kicks back a Web 3.0 temperature for your location or, for that matter, any … [Read more...]
Recalling Total Recall
It's been 2 years since I was poring over footage from a trip made to San Francisco to interview Gordon Bell about his book, Total Recall, and to discuss how computers were quickly taking their place as our surrogate memory. I recently went back and looked at the finished product and find the content more relevant today than I did then. I depend more than ever on Evernote and … [Read more...]
Melting Rock with RockMelt
I've been using RockMelt for a week or so now. For those of you unfamiliar with RockMelt, it is a new browser that functions as a social desktop. If you're wondering what that looks like, consider a browser with social functions built right into the chrome of the application. The far left border displays the profile pics of your Facebook friends online, while the border to … [Read more...]