Trends (nothing's static)
Old computers never die, they just lose their chips, or relevance as the case may be. It was 1988 when computer scientist Mark Weiser realized that the personal computer, which was at that time still in its youthful years, was headed for obsolescence. His crystal ball revealed a digital future where the new world order would include, “Ubiquitous Computing.” Instead of sitting in front of a computer that’s sitting on top of a desk, the average human would interact with numerous, small, connected, electronic devices, and some large devices too, that perform a variety of computerized functions. Now with better computer chips possessing larger storage capacity, the personal computer, or the shape and form of it, may just disappear.
Weiser once outlined that the purpose of a computer is to help humans do something other than compute, be an obedient yet unobtrusive servant and be calm. And what exactly is this calm technology of which he spoke? This is technology that fades away into the background, not demanding of our immediate attention. And back in 1995 when Weiser described calm technology much of it wasn’t really around. But now in the age of iPods, Smart Phones and most recently with Google TV and a smaller version of Apple TV, we have seen Weiser’s ideas in motion, though he didn’t live to see the day. Beyond that, there are among others, smart refrigerators, smart clothes, smart houses and smart cars – not those smart cars. All of these combined with cloud computing allow us to unhitch and let our computers fade into the background.
However much we may claim to be self-deprecating, it seems that we humans don’t want to be portrayed in anything other than our best form. But somewhere in California, a group of officials neglected to attend to this basic fact of the human personality when they allocated money for a sculpture. The group in a town called, Cardiff by the Sea, aimed to honor the surfing passions of its locals by erecting an interpretive sculpture of a surfer. They commissioned an artist and possibly behind closed doors, approved the piece. But soon after the sculpture materialized, there arose a massive hue and cry from the townsfolk who felt they should have been consulted.
The artistic license resulted in a piece depicting a child learning to surf. But such limpness of wrists, such awfulness of form, such lack of a powerful wave being ridden, was soundly ridiculed. While many among the surfers may actually perform in this very inexpert pose, they did not wish to be publicized as such. They would have preferred a sculpted figure showing off top form, next to a powerful wave that was more in line with the stuff of their dreams rather than their reality.
And complaining was not enough. To date the innocent, inanimate sculpture continues to suffer much abuse at the hands of the town’s “artists.” They named it “The Kook,” much to the dismay of the artist who had named it, “Magic Carpet Ride.” They dressed it in clown’s clothing. Someone stuck a pumpkin atop its head. And possibly most insulting, someone created a paper mache whale that appears to be swallowing the sculpture. There are bumper sticker and e-mail campaigns to get rid of “The Kook.” No one knows where this will end but chances are the next sculptor, if there is one, won’t take quite so much artistic license.
Digital advertising is not like the advertising of old and as such it requires a different kind of creativity, perhaps even a different definition of creativity. While there could be mass quibblings about whether creativity by definition is more than one thing and therefore doesn’t need to be redefined, experts believe the digital age requires new definitions for most things, including creativity. Strategist Ana Andjelic says that what matters most in the age of Facebook friends and Twitter feeds, are relationships, connections and interactions. As a result, the best creatives are those who can craft strategies to capitalize on these types of media. In such a scenario, creating just for creativity’s sake is not really creative at all.
Gone are the days when a brand could simply put out a campaign with good copy or with a twist on popular culture. Those are static, analog style campaigns and unlikely to gain traction in the digital world. New advertisement needs to be interactive. The most effective ideas are the ones that lead to a chain reaction where people broadcast it to their Facebook friends. All of which leads to more brand awareness. Old fashioned ads are going the way of newspapers, magazines and the other print products where they once thrived. In this view, creativity is more strategy than art. Of course, it’s possible that without art strategy would be boring and therefore not very strategic at all.
Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as the Schminternet. All your little friends who say it isn’t so are wrong. They have been affected by the average person’s penchant for adding “Schm,” as a prefix to all sorts of concepts which they may wish to dismiss. Therefore they think that nothing can “be,” if it has a “Schm,” as its prefix because such a thing is not comprehensible by their minds. But in this great cyberspace of ours, such skepticism is the mere folly of those who do not have the boundless intelligence capable of grasping the whole concept of the Schminternet. A place that’s not the Internet with its YouTube Videos and Google searches. A place where device owners roam and browse freely, but not necessarily for free.
Yes, Virginia, There is a Schminternet. It exists as certainly as Wi-Fi and phone companies battle for service plans. And we all know they do. Alas! How boring would be the world, if there were no Schminternet to distinguish itself from the Internet. There would be no way to distinguish what coverage you have when you and your iPhone are out of your Wi-Fi zone and into the great beyond of the mobile phone zone coverage. There would be no app store, no video libraries and no podcasts to make this digital age tolerable. But with the Schminternet there is eternal optimism that we will continue to create new and beautiful ways to deliver service and content in numerous forms and platforms. It may or may not have started out as a joke. And Virginia, you may choose to believe or not believe, but once the word Schminternet was spoken, it became a part of the lexicon and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. So Virginia, when you’re roaming but you’re no longer on the Internet, you’re on the Schminternet.
If you love your Android, your Blackberry or your iPhone, you can thank the engineers. If you love 3D, High Def and digital cinema in general, it’s the engineers. If you love cloud computing, virtual reality and social media – well, go ahead, thank an engineer. They’re the ones who make smart phones smarter and digital technology possible. They may not be the ones who put the social in social media but they’re the ones who make it happen. Yet it turns out engineering isn’t cool and young people are avoiding it like the plague – except, thanks in part to engineering, young people aren’t that familiar with plagues. In any case, engineers are a retiring breed mostly from the Baby Boomer generation. So along comes the magazine headline, “Boeing Enlists Hollywood to Make Engineering Cool.”
Boeing being a top U.S. defense contractor and also the people behind all those awesome jets has a vested interest in recruiting the next generation of science and technology experts. They are already seeing shortages of expertise as the old geeks head toward retirement. Boeing heads are among those who believe Hollywood isn’t helping their cause. While ten percent of characters in movies and television are scientists, 70 percent of those either kill or are being killed, or are portrayed in some sort of negative light. Just last month top engineering executives met with their top entertainment counterparts to forge a new understanding between the creative and the technical processes. So in the future we can probably expect Hollywood to eschew the whole mad scientist and deranged geek characters in favor of hot geeks with six pack abs. Is James Bond a geek or does he just benefit from geek friends?
Recent news that Apple has applied to patent app ideas for travel, hotel reservations and shopping set digital tongues wagging about the possible unfairness of such a move. The term “patent troll” bounced around as critics and proponents of openness decided that such patenting could be dangerous and scary. In theory, Apple would own the methods by which travel reservations are made or hotels are booked. It would directly compete with the idea of independent, mobile app developers who have brought their collective creative genius to the App store in ways that were previously unimagined.
Apple’s idea for a hotel app would give users the capability to check-in and check-out any time they want, and to leave for the theater or concert for which they purchased tickets via the app. It would essentially be akin to the universal remote control on steroids. But while at a glance it seems like a great idea, tech watchers aren’t pleased that it comes from Apple rather than independent developer. Additionally, some of the features of the proposed Apple patented app are done by others, meaning there could be trouble or on the horizon.
Regardless, the application for patenting the air travel app is intriguing. The app would function as a virtual assistant with GPS, clock, calendar and contact list all integrated. It would track the user’s plans for air travel and track the user as such travel is executed. It determine when the person shuts off the device, presumably to board a plane then when it’s turned on again, the app would already know the time and place and notify others as necessary. Plus it could say where to get breakfast since they no longer serve it on planes.
A sequel usually refers to movies or books, except in the Geekdom where it might also refer to Ruby Sequel and Sequel Pro for MySQL. As it turns out sequels are also coming of age in the world of apps. Or is it that the world of apps is coming of age? Either way, Mobilityware, the developers of the popular app Word Warp have now issued a sequel, Word Warp Xtreme. And who wouldn’t after the news that Word Warp was “allegedly” bringing in $10,000 per month in advertising revenue?
Anyone who has played Word Warp, an app store star performer, can attest to its completely addictive qualities. You’re given six letters and your task is to form as many words as possible, some words being more acceptable than others. You must also get the six-letter word or words to continue amassing points. And ultimately, it’s the chasing of points that probably drives us to keep playing. Word Warp Xtreme is the “on-steroids” version of this. There are numerous challenging aspects including seven letter words. And who would have guessed how much more challenging it is with just one more letter.
In creating the sequel app, the developers claim to have taken suggestions from fans. Perhaps the coolest thing about Xtreme is the social aspect of it. And we’re not talking just Facebook here. If someone next to you has a compatible device with the app on it, you could enable Bluetooth and play against each other. Additionally, while the app is free with advertisements in between games, Xtreme has an option for you buy the app and skip the ads. But if not for the ads how would you know about the next big app.
It seems the happiest state is Hawaii. The grumpiest states are on the East Coast. Some states are mad and they’re not going to take it anymore. And how would we know this? Twitter told us so. In a study of 300 million of the billions and billions of Tweets, researchers sifted the content for happy words and sad words and probably ambivalent words as well. But it’s usually the extreme words that make the news. The happiest words are diamond, love and paradise while the sad words are suicide and funeral among others. It isn’t known where ice cream, coffee and winning the lottery are. Of course there are certainly possibilities for messing with the outcome by Tweeting something along the lines of – I’m not suicidal, or I’m not in love with the idea of diamonds today.
In the big scheme of things such mapping has been used to measure all sorts of data, most notably Netflix movie rental habits by region. Now in addition to knowing what your neighbors are watching, you could also know how happy their Tweets are. Do happy Tweets mean happy people? In terms of the happiness index, it turns out that song titles and lyrics trended downward from the 1960s to the 1990s. Who would have guessed the 60s to be a happy music time? Researcher Sune Lehmann, who spearheaded the Twitter mood studies believes such mood mapping can be used to assess other things, such as the impact of a Presidential address, or public policy. Perhaps some day corporations can test customer mood according to Tweets about a certain brand or specific products.
By now it’s no longer breaking news that Thuat Nguyen and his apps have been thrown out of the iTunes store due to hacking and fraudulent rankings. Nguyen’s comic book apps managed to climb the app charts, occupying 42 of the top 50 book apps spots. But soon enough complaints came rolling in that iTunes users’ accounts were being hacked, racking up charges for app purchases not generated by these users. Apple executives and security experts were soon on the case, researching the fraud and shutting it down. They noted that only 400 of the 150 million iTunes accounts were compromised. While Apple has “stepped up security,” it emphasized that its servers were not “compromised.” Apple wants its customers to know, security is piority number one.
These developments got app focused, math experts all jazzed up. The 400 accounts would equal a miniscule 0.0003 percent of the 150 million iTunes accounts. Consequently, it is practically impossible to achieve the rankings with such a small number of hacked accounts. Such rankings would require at least 3,000 accounts. Otherwise Nguyen would need 100 purchases per app, for 41 apps per day for 30 days, and that’s not easy to hide. Instead the possibilities are that either the fraud was automated, the servers were compromised or that it’s some sort of organized app farm crime in motion. Apple’s credibility was on the line. Meanwhile, others begged to differ, saying the math involved is flawed. And by now it’s not clear what we should believe. Well, except that we should all work harder at creating secure passwords and be very vigilant over our online accounts.
A Cupcake CNC is not something you get at a bakery. It isn’t something you eat. It isn’t even something shaped like a cupcake, though it’s conceivable that anyone is free to re-invent the shape of anything. Regardless, the Cupcake CNC is “an open, hackable robot for making anything.” And just for the record, “hackable” in this context is completely acceptable and even encouraged. According to its originators, the Makerbot is a 3D positioning system with a toolhead that does the work and the electronics to drive it.
The point behind the Makerbot is that anyone can use it to turn “ideas into objects.” The process involves heated plastic that is forced through a tube that extrudes it into the shape of objects. Just as extrusion works for cheesy, corn snacks, in the case of Makerbots, the process can be used to fashion, say a knife for opening the bag of cheesy, corn snacks. Or a bowl for serving the aforementioned cheesy snacks. From the necessary to the whimsical, to the downright silly, if you can imagine it, you can build it with a Makerbot and a sheet of plastic or many layers of plastic.
The Makerbot is cheaper than other 3D printing devices because it comes in a kit and some assembly is required. Even better, the Makerbot’s CAD files have been released, fully downloadable from their site so that all willing participants might take a shot at designing things. It’s like an app developer for the physical world. Conceivably, the future will consist of a Makerbot in every pot – well, in every home. Upon discovering an urgent need for a tool, the homeowner would simply download a design, feed it into the Makerbot and print one or more.