Interfaces are the layers through which we humans interact with our machines. In my world of web design, interfaces are so important because regardless of a website’s content, if someone can’t navigate easily around your site, that great content may never be found. And the world may never know about the video of your seriously… cutest… kitten… ever. Read more here.
Microsoft released details on it’s new phone operating system on Monday October 11, 2010. What does this mean to the cell phone consumer? If one was to base one’s assumptions past versions you may just yawn and keep deciding between which droid you want or if you want to get the iPhone 4.
Most people will mainly remember the failed attempt by Microsoft, The Kin. I’m not exactly sure but after looking at data, I think a little known hauling truck company, Western Star, sales of Semi’s may have totaled more the number of Kins sold.
Microsoft says they are focusing on personalization of the look and feel of their phone’s operating system, but do consumers really want a phone that can look at certain way? I think most cell phone users want 5 main things out of their phone, talk, text, pictures, browse, and play. If we have learned anything in the past 10 years, two things that Microsoft sucks at, they are browsing the internet and making games. I still haven’t seen a successful version of Windows Media Player plug in for any browser lol.
We will soon see if they can live up to the hype, November 11th is the launch date for AT&T’s version of the Windows 7 phone. I suspect on November 8th there will be a line out the door at AT&T stores everywhere of people who still want AT&T to buy out their Verizon Kin contracts.
“MoboVivo is very pleased to announce compatibility with the Palm Pre device,” said MoboVivo founder and CEO, Trevor Doerksen. “Our business strategy and technology allowed us to begin distribution of premium TV shows to Pre users earlier this month.”
read more here.
- Hello!I am following your blog for some weeks now. I have to say ...
15
Oct
United States Patent and Trademark Office to Award 600,00th Design Patent on October 14
By admin | Filed in Green TechnologyGoal Zero, a subsidiary of Provo Craft and Novelty, a small business located in Spanish Fork, Utah will be honored for the 600,00th issued patent. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, David Kappos, and Senator Orrin Hatch will be presenting an award to Goal Zero honoring this great achievement . The USPTO Press Release states, “The patent is granted for the design of a battery system, which works in conjunction with a solar briefcase that recharges the system using sunlight. This patent exemplifies the blending of green technology and appealing design.”
read more here.
Wiredprnews.com reports, “T-Mobile Sidekick users may have lost all contact and other personal information stored in their phones.”
It seems due to a server failure, T-Mobile’s servers, which is operated by Microsoft, wiped all the data on the servers. While this happened many users thought it may be a phone issue and took out their battery to reboot their phone only to find out that it was now permanently lost due to a server wipe.
read more here.
Tuesday Google released their new Google Building Maker on Google Earth. Their press release states, “Today, we’re launching Google Building Maker, a new way to create geo-located 3D models of buildings for Google Earth. Building Maker is a tool designed to make it possible for anyone with a web-browser to make high quality, photo-textured 3D models. In many ways, Building Maker is like a very large, and very smart, collection of building blocks – if you can assemble the blocks to match the shape of your favorite building, you’ll be able to use the tool.”
View whole press release here.
Randy Pausch
Born October 23, 1960, Randy Pausch grew up in Columbia, Maryland before beginning his all too short computer engineering career at Brown University. After earning his bachelor’s degree from Brown University, Randy went on to get his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. He then went on to teach computer engineering at several universities including his alma mater.
In September of 2006, Mr. Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is one of the worst kinds of cancer to deal with. The prognosis is generally regarded as poor; less than 5 percent of those diagnosed are still alive five years after diagnosis. Randy Pausch succumbed to pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008.
Before his passing, he left a huge impression on computer science and the world. He was involved in highly envied projects, such as Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (makers of Madden Football and
The Sims). He was also a founder of the program ALICE, Alice is a free and open source object-oriented educational programming language with an integrated development environment. It is implemented in Java. Alice uses a drag and drop environment to create computer animations using 3D models. ALICE was originally designed help teen girls learn to program. All in a 3D programming environment so teens could learn how to create animation to tell a story or play an interactive game while learning introductory computing.
Randy kept an online journal of his fight with cancer located here, http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html. A Carnegie Mellon Associate was quoted at http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml, “Randy had an enormous and lasting impact on Carnegie Mellon, a brilliant researcher and gifted teacher, he was a key member of our Human-Computer Interaction Institute and co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center. His love of teaching, his sense of fun and his brilliance came together in the Alice project, which teaches students computer programming while enabling them to do something fun – making animated movies and games. Carnegie Mellon – and the world – are better places for having had Randy Pausch in them.”
On his home page, he left his mark to do what he could as he fought the vicious disease himself. “Pancreatic cancer is a hideous disease; I am doing everything possible to raise awareness and research funding. You can support research into curing pancreatic cancer via the Lustgarten foundation, and/or the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN). A friend of mine has also set up a donations page at: http://www.firstgiving.com/randypausch.”
- Subject of your post is very interesting, bookmarked, regards hlonkoburg free mahjong download
- Fantastic website, must come back here , very interesting content, bookmarked your blog regards fuserarvh
This looks exciting!
See more here.
- Hi, cool post. I have been pondering this topic,so thanks for sharing. I will certainly be coming back to your ...
- Hi, interesting post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for writing. I will definitely be subscribing to your ...
14
Apr
Boston College Student In Battle Over Confiscated iPod
By admin | Filed in Education and Technology, UncategorizedAn article from Cnet News, wrote a piece about a student who is in a battle with Newton District Court over the seizure of his computer, iPod, and cellphone.
She wrote:
“Riccardo Calixte, a computer science student at Boston College, is petitioning the Newton District Court in Massachusetts for the immediate return of his property and is demanding that investigators be prohibited from any further searches or analysis of his digital data. The confiscation of Calixte’s property was spurred by an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list alleging that Calixte’s roommate is gay.
According to a complaint (PDF) Calixte filed April 10, the warrant issued is invalid because there was no probable cause to believe that a crime was committed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing Calixte and filed a memorandum (PDF) in support of Calixte’s complaint.
Kevin Christopher, a detective for the Boston College Police Department, submitted an application (PDF) for a search warrant on March 30 and was granted the warrant (PDF) that day.”
see whole article here.
Regardless of how immature the behavior of both the roommate or Calixte, I believe there is more useful things the police of Boston could attend too.
- i am regularly roaming around the internet most of the day thus I choose to peruse a good deal, which ...
- Nice services college students get interesting info from this blog keep on posting this type brilliant articles. thanks
Recession is hitting everywhere hard. The nineties tech boom is over. Silicone Alley reports about tech companies, “How badly has the economy whacked their business around the last three months? As you can see, Wall Street expects most companies to grow revenues much slower this year than last — and many to report that sales are down year-over-year. One exception: Netflix, which is blowing the doors off.”
Stats from their blogpost:
- Intel’s Q1 consensus: $6.98 billion, down 28% year-over-year. Last year, reported $9.67 billion, up 9% year-over-year.
- Google’s Q1 consensus: $4.08 billion, up 10% year-over-year. Last year, reported $3.70 billion, up 46% year-over-year.
- Yahoo’s Q1 consensus: $1.20 billion, down 11% year-over-year. Last year, reported $1.35 billion, up 14% year-over-year.
- Apple’s FQ2 consensus: $7.95 billion, up 6% year-over-year. Last year, reported $7.51 billion, up 43% year-over-year.
- Amazon’s Q1 consensus: $4.75 billion, up 15% year-over-year. Last year, reported $4.14 billion, up 37% year-over-year.
- eBay’s Q1 consensus: $1.95 billion, down 11% year-over-year. Last year, reported $2.19 billion, up 24% year-over-year.
- Microsoft’s FQ3 consensus: $14.14 billion, down 2% year-over-year. Last year, reported $14.45 billion, up 0.4% year-over-year.
- Netflix Q1 consensus: $390 million, up 20% year-over-year. Last year, reported $326 million, up 7% year-over-year.
Read more here.