Showing posts with label Screen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Screen. Show all posts

September 24, 2019

Magnificent Room Divider

Wow, this is a completely amazing room divider. 

The brilliant colors and the vibrant circular swirls make this outstanding to take in. 

So simple in a way, yet it brings so much magnificence to any space. 

Staring into this has an almost heavenly effect of traveling through that final tunnel before reaching the heavenly essence of light at the end of it all. ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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September 12, 2013

Apple Is Giving Us The Finger

As I always say, I love Apple--and they still have the best darn Smartphone on the market--but they continue to disappoint with anything new.

This week, with the introduction of the iPhone 5S, Apple had the opportunity to introduce something new and exciting, but instead what did we get?

- A faster processor and Touch ID fingerprint reader. 

In nutshell, since Steve Jobs untimely passing, Siri was a bombshell, actually just a big consumer product bomb.

And now with the fingerprint reader as the big newcomer add-on to the iPhone, it's as if (sorry to say), Apple is giving us all the proverbial finger. 

While the fingerprint reader is cute and a faster logon, it is really not a must-have or a game-changer.  

The only thing less exciting than Touch ID is the new Yahoo logo.

In the last two years, Apple has taken a mighty innovation lead and squandered it. 

Still, no one can touch their highly integrated iPhone product.

However, if much more time goes by without something meaningfully new and innovative, they will be in trouble. 

Rumors of an iPhablet (iPhone/tablet) with a significantly larger screen (ranging from 4.8 to 6 inches) will be more like the Samsung Galaxy S4 with 5-inch screen rather than than iPhone 5S 4-inch screen, and would have attraction for people who like to read or watch on a larger, better display. 

Of course a significantly better camera would be helpful too--need I say more?

Some interaction with wearable technology, like a Google Glass with augmented reality would also be a winner. 

And a fully ruggedized smartphone, similar in concept to a Panasonic Toughbook--and up to military grade specs--that withstands drops, spills, dust, and lots of everyday field use punishment, would be way cool for the action-adventurer in all of us--and maybe then we wouldn't need all the silly looking cases.

In the meantime, put your index finger on the home bottom, while Apple puts their middle finger up at you, the consumer.

Steve Jobs, where the heck are you? ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to CNET)
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September 6, 2013

They Aren't Smartwatches...they Are Dumbwatches

The Wall Street Journal asks "Is it Time for Smartwatches?"

With the arrival of the first generation of smartwatches--Samsung Galaxy Gear, Pebble, and Sony Smartwatch--we have hit the rock bottom in innovate and design thinking. 

These watches look cheap--flimsy plastic or ultra-thin aluminum or even stainless doesn't cut it as a fashion statement when larger and substantial is in. 

The screens are too small to be user-centric--let along there being any room for a physical or soft keyboard. 

You can't really read on it and you can't type on it (any significant form of email, texting)--except by voice command.  Ah, let me talk into my wrist, no!

Also, for videos or gaming, the small rectangular screens aren't of any useful function--how much of Madonna's new wild getup can you see or how far can you fling that angry bird on your wrist? 

Downloading music on the Gear, uh, also no.

Taking photos with a 1.9 megapixel camera on the Galaxy Gear at a time when the 8 megapixels on the iPhone is running way short is good for maybe a James Bond, but not anyone else. 

Plus for smartwatches like the Gear, you still need to pair it with a companion smartphone for it to work, so you now have added expense (between about $150 for the Pebble and $299 for the Gear smartwatch) with no significant added benefit.

For the Gear, you also have a separate charger because the watch only has a battery life of about a day, while for the Pebble and Sony Smartwatch 2, you have between half a week to a week. 

And believe it or not, the Galaxy Gear is not compatible with their own Galaxy S4 smartphone--oh, so very smart.

My 16-year old daughter said, "If they had this 10 years ago maybe, but now, who needs it!"

No, Google Glass has it right--concept yes, fashion still to be worked out--and the smartwatches for now, have it wrong, wrong, wrong. 

If you buy it, you've bought yourself a very dumb watch.

Maybe the iWatch can save the day? ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Nathan Chantrell)
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May 26, 2012

Hey, Gesture Like This!


This new gesture-recognition technology from Leap Motion is amazing. 

"For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimension with your natural hand and finger movements."

The closest yet to get us to the vision in the movie, Minority Report

"Leap is more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard, and more sensitive than a touchscreen." 

Scroll, pinpoint, pan, play, shoot, design, compose, fly--just about everything you do onscreen, but more in sync with how we generally interact with our environment and each other. 

I like when the guy in the video reaches forward and the hands on the screen reach right back at him!

I'd be interested to see how this can be used to replace a keyboard for typing or will it be augmented by a really good voice recognition and natural language processing capability--then we would have an integration of the verbal and non-verbal communications cues.  

In the future, add in the ability to read our facial expressions like from a robot and then we may have some real interaction going on mentally and perhaps dare I say it, even emotionally. 

According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek (24 May 2012), the Leap is just the size of a "cigarette lighter that contains three tiny cameras inside" and costs just $70--"about half the price of a Kinect."

The Leap is so sophisticated that it can "track all 10 of a user's fingers and detect movements of less than one-hundredth of a millimeter."

At their site, I see you can even preorder these now for estimated shipping at the end of the year.  

I think I'll put this on my holiday gift list. ;-)

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