Showing posts with label Wireless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wireless. Show all posts

November 20, 2019

Plea For A Wireless World

If anything screams wireless...

There has got to be a better way.

One day people are going to laugh their heads off at they way we did technology.

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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July 3, 2012

Better A Rock Than A Pebble



Pebble is coming out with a Smartwatch that connects via wireless
Bluetooth to either iPhone or Android devices.

It can be used for getting messages, including from Twitter and
Facebook, as well as for caller id, music controls, GPS, and more.

And you can download more apps from the watch app store.


Pebble uses a high resolution ePaper display technology, has a
vibrating motor, microprocessor, accelerometer, and the battery can run for up to 7 days.

It has been crowdfunded through Kickstarter website and has since
April sold, pre-order, approximately 85,000 watches at a $115 pop.

While I like the idea of being able to get information in more
convenient form factors whether as a watch, glasses (like Google is working on) or other device configuration, I think the Pebble has a way to go in terms of it's particular design.

Honestly. the Pebble looks cheap and chincy to me. The device looks
too plasticy. The colors seem more geared towards kids.

Additionally, the screen looks way too small to be very useful except
for the most basic alerts, but maybe this is all to make lighter and more mobile.

I plan to wait for something a little more substantial and with a
larger screen.

A ruggedized version would be especially appealing including water,
shock, and dust resistant and so on.

Perhaps the
crowdfunding model has worked for this smartwatch for people looking to get the latest technology or even make a fast buck, but I think a little more crowdsourcing, in terms of customer requirements and feedback, would make an even better product for all.
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March 12, 2011

Saved On The Battlefield By A BEAR




The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR) developed by Vecna Technologies in collaboration with the U.S. Army's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Centre (TATRC) is no teddy bear.

The Economist (10 March 2011) says this it is "a highly agile and powerful mobile robot capable of lifting and carrying a combat casualty from a hazardous area across uneven terrain." And when BEAR is not saving wounded soldiers on the battlefield, it can perform "difficult and repetitive tasks, such as loading and unloading ammunition."

The BEAR is a tracked vehicle that can travel up to 12 mph and has 2 hydraulic arms for lifting and carrying. It is controlled with a set of wireless video cameras and joystick control either embedded on the grip of a rifle or with a special glove that can sense the wearer's movements.

This is great concept and I imagine this will be enhanced over time especially with the advances in telemedicine, so that at some point we will see the BEAR or its progeny actually performing battlefield medicine.

One thing, however, in my opinion, the bear face on this robot undermines the seriousness of mission that it performs and it should be changed to look like a medic, it’s primary function.

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March 5, 2011

iPhone Plug Ins: The Possibilites Are Endless




I just love all the new plug ins for the iPhone--maximizing it's use as a powerful handheld computer.
Whether it's attachments for talking fingerprints and iris scans (from MORIS--that I wrote about in a prior blog) to running credit card payments (from Square), the iPhone has amazing versatility and almost endless practical use--as we are all coming to learn and enjoy.
With Square, the simple credit card reader plugs right in to the headphone jack.
Then by simply launching the app, users are ables to run payments through just as any professional business would.
Simply type in the dollar amount, sign with a finger, send a receipt via email, and even display the GPS of where the charge was made--all done by mobile device and wirelessly.
According to BusinessWeek (10 Feb 2011), smart-phone card readers will process $11 billion in payments this year and this is projected to rise to $55 billion by 2015.
"Square charges merchants 2.75 percent of sales plus 15 cents per card swipe," but in turn creates new opportunities to sell remotely and transact business seamlessly.
It is only a matter of time before hard currency becomes obsolete as electronic payments becomes easier and matter of course.
My pockets are already empty and I do not miss the greenbacks--bits and bytes registering securely in the bank are more than fine by me.
Next up as for attachments to the iPhone--medical scanners (the possibilities are endless, but some examples could be for diabetes metering, X-rays, and much more.)

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February 22, 2011

The Little Techno Bus That Could




In an accomplishment sense, I am very proud of what Pope County, Arkansas is doing in terms of advancing education with technology on school buses for K-12 through the Aspirnaut program (photos from their site), founded and supported by Vanderbilt University.


Government Technology Magazine reports in February 2011 that Aspirnaut is transforming school buses into mobile classrooms, so that ”idle time is transformed into extended learning time with laptop computers and Internet access.”


The Hector School District buses are now equipped with computer screens, earphone jacks with headphones, wireless Internet, and scanning devices to record bus activity.


“The five 19-inch customized computer screens stream math and science content from PBS, NASA, the Discovery Channel, CBS News, and the Smithsonian Institution for students to watch on their hour-long rides to/from school. The screens also include video-conferencing capability.”


Students are seated on the bus in groups by age and grade to listen to their specific curriculum by plugging their headphones into jacks beneath their seats. The content of each bus-seating zone is then correlated to what the students are learning in the classroom.


Dr. Julie Hudson, co-founder of the program in 2007, is looking to improve student’s achievements, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). These are learning areas where we have fallen dangerously behind in national rankings, and this is seen as harming our innovativeness and competitive capacity for the future.


On one hand, I think that this type of extended learning program is very valuable to our students and provides them the opportunity to get additional constructive learning time in. Also, it’s great to distract them from getting into potential trouble on the ride home. :-)


Yet, on the other hand, I am also concerned that we continue to put more and more pressure on our children to seemingly always be productive, learning, and competing. Some examples of this are not just extended learning days (on buses or off), but also extended school years, even summer school, AP classes, SAT courses, some wonderful volunteer programs, internships, oodles of extra-curricular activities, side jobs, and more. Certainly seems like it’s not easy to be a kid these days!


Now, even a simple bus ride to/from school/home is no longer a time to unwind, sleep, socialize, listen to music, play video games, or just be kids. Even the choice of video content on the buses is purely educational and there is nothing social, fun, or relaxing for the children anymore. How about an episode of The Brady Bunch?


While, I certainly understand the need for us to advance our education, skills, and competitive positioning, and the learning bus is a great concept to move us towards that. However, I cannot help but remember a more innocent and carefree time in my own childhood, where there was “a time and place for everything.”


Then (not that long ago!), we took learning seriously and worked hard—always with a focus on the future (What will I be…Where do I want to end up…How can I live up to my potential?), but we also made sure to have time for friends and fun—downtime and think time. Today however, with the high-tech, always on, 24/7 society that we are creating for our children and ourselves, are we losing a sense of balance, perspective, even our innocence (so to say)?


In relation to this, I wonder sometimes about the Kingdom of Bhutan’s concept of measuring Gross National Happiness instead of what we measure Gross National Product, and I ask myself, where is our school bus heading?


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February 18, 2011

You Can Run From MORIS, But You Can't Hide

There is a promising new mobile biometric recognition device for law enforcement called the MORIS (Mobile Offender Recognition and Identification System) by Biometric Identification and Intelligence Technologies.

MORIS units are a 2.5 ounce hardware attachment and software app for the iPhone that cost about $3000 each and turns the device into a crime-fighting tool.

The devices are able to take fingerprint, facial, and Iris identification and access criminal justice data wirelessly from anywhere using a common iPhone to match against existing criminal records.

Police are able to identify suspects on the fly in seconds.

Popular Science has named MORIS one of the BEST INNOVATIONS of 2010.

As of November 22, 2010, 25 Massachusetts Police Departments have been the lucky recipients of these futuristic crime fighting technology devices.

Say cheese! :-)

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December 12, 2010

3G, 4G, XG...Huh?

There is a huge need for speed on our networks—as we demand the latest and greatest download streaming of books, movies, games, and more.

The network generation (or mobile telephony) standards have evolved to soon to be 4th generation (or 4G).

While 3G standards require network speeds for voice and data of at least 200 kbit/s, the 4G-performance hurdle jumps (500x) to 100 mbit/s.

The chart from Wikipedia shows the various standards and how they have evolved over time.

What are interesting to me are two things:

1) Network carriers that are competing for your business are already boasting 4G deliveries even though they do not meet the standards set out by The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency of the U.N. According to Computerworld (22 November 2010), the 100 mbit/s standard is “about 10 times the performance that any carrier…can offer today.” Moreover, technologies such as LTE-Advanced and WiMax 2 that are expected to be 4G complaint aren’t “expected to go live commercially until 2014 or 2015.”

2) While the carriers are touting their various breakthrough standards, most people really have no clue what they are talking about. According to the Wall Street Journal (4 November 2010) on a survey by Yankee Group that “of more than 1,200 consumers found 57% had either never heard of 3G or didn’t understand the term. [And] With 4G, the ranks of the confused jump to 68%.”

Some lessons learned:

In the first case, we need to keep in mind the principle of caveat emptor (or let the buyer beware) when it comes to what the Wall Street Journal is calling the “increased rhetoric underscoring the high-stakes games played by the carriers as they jockey for position.”

In the second, vendors and technologists should understand that they are losing the consumer when they talk “techno-geek.” Instead, all need to use plain language when communicating, and simplify the technical jargon.

The comic in Computerworld (22 November 2010) summarized it well with pictures of all the various GGGG… technologies and the people next it to it saying, “At this point the labels are ahead of the technology.” Of course, I would add that the labels are also ahead of most people’s ability to understand the geek-speak. And we need to fix the communications of both.


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October 8, 2010

You’ve Got An Alert

You’re all probably familiar with the capability of signing up for alerts to your computer or mobile device (phone, blackberry, pager, PDA, etc.).

By signing up, you can get notifications about severe weather (such as tornados or earthquacks), transportation troubles (such as street closures or metro incidents), utility disruptions (water, telephone, or power), government and school closings, Amber alerts, or breaking news and information on major crisis (such as homeland security or other emergency situations).

Unfortunately, not everyone bothers to sign up for these. Perhaps, they don’t want to bother registering for another site, giving and maintaining their personal contact information, or maybe they just prefer to rely on major news sources like CNN or social networking sites like Twitter for getting the word out.

The problem is that in a real crisis situation where time is of the essence and every minute and second counts—envision that tornado swooping in or that ticking time bomb about to go off—we need to let people know no matter what they are doing—ASAP!

According to GovTech (October 2010), the California Emergency Management Agency is planning to deploy a new system called Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) to “deliver warnings and safety information via text alerts to wireless phones in specified areas without requiring individuals to subscribe to the service.”

A pilot is scheduled to begin in San Diego in the fall.

With CMAS, emergency information can be targeted to an area affected and transmitted to everyone in the receiving area without them having to do anything. Just like your televisions receiving the emerging alerts (which is great if you happen to be watching), now your mobile devices will get them too.

I remember hearing the stories from my father about World War II how the German Luftwaffe (air force) would blitz (i.e. carpet bomb) London and other Ally cities, and the sirens would go off, blaring to give the people the chance to take cover and save their lives.

Well, thank G-d, we don’t often hear any air raid sirens like that anymore, and with CMAS having the potential to someday grow into a full national network of wireless emergency alerts, we may never have to hear sirens like that again.

(Photo: Courtesy Oak Ridge National Laboratory Emergency Management Center; http://communication.howstuffworks.com/how-emergency-notifications-work1.htm)


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October 16, 2009

Seeing things Differently with Augmented Reality

One of the most exciting emerging technologies out there is Augmented Reality (AR). While the term has been around since approximately 1990, the technology is only really beginning to take off now for consumer uses.

In augmented reality, you layer computer-generated information over real world physical environment. This computer generated imagery is seen through special eye wear such as contacts, glasses, monocles, or perhaps even projected as a 3-D image display in front off you.

With the overlay of computer information, important context can be added to everyday content that you are sensing. This takes place when names and other information are layered over people, places, and things to give them meaning and greater value to us.

Augmented reality is really a form of mashups, where information is combined (i.e. content aggregration) from multiple sources to create a higher order of information with enhanced end-user value.

In AR, multiple layers of information can be available and users can switch between them easily at the press of a button, swipe of a screen, or even a verbal command.

Fast Company, November 2009, provides some modern day examples of how this AR technology is being used:

Yelp’s iPhone App—“Let’s viewers point there phone down a street and get Yelp star ratings for merchants.”

Trulia for Android—“The real-estate search site user Layar’s Reality Browser to overlay listings on top of a Google phone’s camera view. Scan a neighborhood’s available properties and even connect to realtors.”

TAT’s Augmented ID— “Point your Android phone at a long-lost acquaintance for his Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube activity.”

Michael Zollner, an AR researcher, puts it this way: “We have a vast amount of data on the Web, but today we see it on a flat screen. It’s only a small step to see all of it superimposed on our lives.”

Maarteen Lens-FitzGerald, a cofounder of Layar, said: “As the technology improves, AR apps will be able to recognize faces and physical objects [i.e. facial and object recognition] and render detailed 3-D animation sequences.”

According to Fast Company, it will be like having “Terminator eyes,” that see everything, but with all the information about it in real time running over or alongside the image.

AR has been in use for fighter pilots and museum exhibits and trade shows for a number of years, but with the explosive growth of the data available on the Internet, mobile communication devices, and wireless technology, we now have a much greater capability to superimpose data on everything, everywhere.

The need to “get online” and “look things up” will soon be supplanted by the real time linkage of information and imagery. We will soon be walking around in a combined real and virtual reality, rather than coming home from the real world and sitting down at a computer to enter a virtual world. The demarcation will disappear to a great extent.

Augmented reality will bring us to a new level of efficiency and effectiveness in using information to act faster, smarter, and more decisively in all our daily activities personally and professionally and in matters of commerce and war.

With AR, we will never see things the same way again!


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July 10, 2009

The Microgrid Versus The Cloud

It’s strange how the older you get, the more you come to realize that life is not black and white. However, when it comes to technology, I once held out hope that the way to the future was clear.

Then things started to get all gray again.

First, I read a few a few weeks ago about the trends with wired and wireless technologies. On one hand, phones have been going from wired to wireless (many are even giving up their landlines all together). Yet on the other hand, television has been going the other way—from wireless (antennas) to wired (cable).

Okay, I thought this was an aberration; generally speaking technology advances—maybe with some thrashing about—but altogether in a specific direction that we can get clearly define and get our arms around.

Well, then I read another article—this one in Fast Company, July/August 2009, about the micogrid. Here’s what this is all about:

“The microgrid is simple. Imagine you could go to Home Depot and pick out a wind or solar appliance that’s as easy to install as a washer/dryer. It makes all the electricity your home needs and pays for itself in just a few years. Your home still connects to the existing wires and power plants, but is a two-way connection. You’re just as likely to be uploading power to the grid as downloading from it. You power supply communicates with the rest of the system via a two-way digital smart meter, and you can view your energy use and generation in real time.”

Is this fantasy or reality for our energy markets?

Reality. “From the perspective of both our venture capital group and some senior people within GE Energy, distributed generation is going to happen in a big way.” IBM researchers agree—“IBM’s vision is achieving true distributed energy on a massive scale.”

And indeed we see this beginning to happen in the energy industry with our own eyes as “going green” environmentalism, and alternate energy has become important to all of us.

The result is that in the energy markets, let’s summarize, we are going from centralized power generation to a distributed model. Yet—there is another trend in the works on the information technology side of the house and that is—in cloud computing, where we are moving from distributed applications, platforms, storage, and so forth (in each organization) to a more centralized model where these are provisioned by service providers such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM—to name a just a few. So in the energy markets, we will often be pushing energy back to the grid, while in information technology, we will be receiving metered services from the cloud.

The takeaway for me is that progress can be defined in many technological ways at one time. It’s not black or white. It’s not wired or wireless. It’s not distributed or centralized services. Rather, it’s whatever meets the needs of the particular problem at hand. Each must be analyzed on its own merits and solved accordingly.


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March 8, 2009

We Need A Grand Vision—Let It Be Smart!

We can build systems that are stand-alone and require lots of hands-on monitoring, care, and feeding or we can create systems that are smart—they are self-monitoring providing on-going feedback, and often self-healing and they help ensure higher levels of productivity and up-time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 17 February 2009, smart technology is about making systems that are “intelligent and improve productivity in the long run…they [makes use of] the latest advances in sensors, wireless communications and computing power, all tied together by the Internet.”

As we pour hundreds of billions of dollars of recovery funds into fixing our aging national infrastructure for roads, bridges, and the energy grid—let’s NOT just fix the potholes and reinforce the concrete girders and have more of the same. RATHER, let’s use the opportunity to leap forward and build a “smarter,” more cost–effective, and modernized infrastructure that takes us, as nation, to the next playing-level in the global competitive marketplace.”

- Smart transportation—the “best way to fight congestion is intelligent transportation systems, such as roadside sensors to measure traffic and synchronize traffic lights to control the flow of vehicles…real time information about road conditions, traffic jams and other events.” Next up is predictive technology to tell where jams happen before they actually occur and “roadways that control vehicles and make ‘driving’ unnecessary.”

- Smart grid—this would provide for “advanced electronic meters that send a steady stream of information back to the utility” to determine power outages or damage and reroute power around trouble areas. It also provides for consumer portals that show energy consumption of major appliances, calculate energy bills under different usage scenarios and allow consumers to moderate usage patterns. Additionally, a smart grid would be able to load balance energy from different sources to compensate for peaks and valleys in usage of alternative energy sources like solar and wind.

- Smart bridges—this will provide “continuous electronic monitoring of bridges structures using a network of sensors at critical points.” And there are 600,000 bridges in the U.S. As with other smart technologies, it can help predict problems before they occur or are “apparent to a human inspector…this can make the difference between a major disaster, a costly retrofit or a minor retrofit.”

Smart technology can be applied to just about everything we do. IBM for example, talks about Smart Planet and applying sensors to our networks to monitor computer and electronic systems across the spectrum of human activity.

Building this next level of intelligence into our systems is good for human safety, a green environment, productivity, and cost-efficiency.

In the absence of recovery spending on a grand vision such as a cure for cancer or colonization of Mars, at the VERY least, when it comes to our national infrastructure, let’s spend with a vision of creating something better—“Smarter”--for tomorrow than what we have today.
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January 1, 2009

Scraping the Landlines and The Total CIO

It’s long overdue. It’s time to get rid of the landline telephones from the office (and also from our homes, if you still have them). Wireless phones are more than capable of doing the job and just think you already probably have at least one for business and one for personal use—so redundancy is built in!
Getting rid of the office phones will save the enterprise money, reduce a maintenance burden (like for office moves) and remove some extra telejunk clutter from your desk. More room for the wireless handheld charger. :-)
USA Today, 20 December 2008 reports that according to Forrester Research “Estimated 25% of businesses are phasing out desk phones in effort to save more money.”
Additionally, “more than 8% of employees nationwide who travel frequently have only cellphones.”
Robert Rosenberg, president of The Insight Research Corp., stated: U.S. businesses are lagging behind Europe and Asia in going wireless, because major cellular carriers…are also earning money by providing landlines to businesses—an $81.4 billion industry in 2008.”
“In Washington, D.C., the City Administrator’s office launched a pilot program in October in which 30 employees with government-issued cellphones gave up their desk phones, said deputy mayor Dan Tangherlini. Because the government has issued more than 11,000 cellphones to employees, the program could multiply into significant savings.”
A study by the National Center for Health Statistics between January and June found that more than 16% of families “have substituted a wireless telephone for a land line.”
So what’s stopping organizations from getting rid of the traditional telephones?
The usual culprits: resistance to change, fear of making a mistake, not wanting to give up something we already have—“old habits die hard” and people don’t like to let go of their little treasures—even a bulky old deskphone (with the annoying cord that keeps getting twisted).
Things are near and dear to people and they clutch on to them with their last breath—in their personal lives (think of all the attics, garages, and basements full of items people can’t let go off—yard sale anyone?) and in the professional lives (things equate to stature, tenure, turf—a bigger rice bowl sound familiar?).
Usually the best way to get rid of something is to replace it with something better, so the Total CIO needs to tie the rollout of new handheld devices with people turning in their old devices--land lines, pagers, and even older cell phones (the added benefit is more room and less weight pulling on your belt).
By the way, we need to do the same thing with new applications systems that we roll out. When the new one is fully operational than the old systems need to be retired. Now how often does that typically happen?
Folks, times are tough, global competition is not going away, and we are wasting too much money and time maintaining legacy stuff we no longer need. We need to let go of the old and progress with the new and improved.

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