Making waves on the internet…
Posts tagged future
Classic Gaming on New Hardware
Feb 6th
I fell further in love with my little netbook when on a whim I broke out Quake II and Driver. The joy of long late nights playing Q2 with my boys over a LAN game suddenly rushed over me. It was epic. Amazing to see that such a small machine just cranked out the video and 3d rendering that Q2 required. Such a perfect example of Moore’s law in effect. The machine I used to play Q2 on needed its own video card and lots of RAM and a great screen. Now all the same requirements can be met by a device that is a little bit bigger than a hardbound book. The same could be said for Driver. I used to have lag and get frustrated cause my computer couldn’t keep up with my speed. Now this little netbook puts me to shame because I am having to keep up. As they continue to cram more and more processing power on such tiny chips I am awaiting the day when I can rock Crysis at full res on a netbook. It’s not too far away.
iSlate = iPad
Feb 5th
The revolutionary internet device has been released and the better part of the tech world said “meh”. Unfortunately the hype surrounding the iPad made living up to said hype as improbable as Bigfoot actually speaking the queen’s english and inviting everyone over for scones. The reality is that Apple’s last few revolutionary devices were just that, revolutionary. The iPod was not the first harddrive based MP3 player on the market but the way one could interact with it (click wheel) was revolutionary. The iPhone with its iPod/phone integration was amazing. The apps made it groundbreaking, but even here iPhone wasn’t the first. Windows Mobile has had hundreds of thousands of apps available for its platform BUT it never had an easy way of finding all of them (i.e. App Store).
As for the iPad I am afraid it had some serious competition it had to face, its own family of products. Since the iPad was not on a custom OS and built using the same software as the iPhone/iPod touch it ended up seeming like a very large iPhone (that doesn’t make calls). The iPad offered users the ability to work on iWorks with Keynote and Pages but without the true power of a laptop some of the Keynote presentations could get laggy on the tiny 1 Ghz chip it is running. Even there the hardware though beautiful seems like it missed some key features.
If it was a true “pad” I should be able to just turn it on and just write onto it like a piece of paper and maybe do some handwriting recognition. That would have been revolutionary! Oh wait… no not really… that functionality was in Windows Mobile phones since the days of the HP Jornada and Windows CE. It was also in a previous Apple product, anyone remember the Newton, anyone, anyone? Plus a device like this would be awesome for video webconferencing and “couch computing” since it is more “intimate than a laptop” but Uncle Steve I guess decided he didn’t want to put the camera in. Maybe on version 2.0
I think the problem for the iPad was the enormous amount of speculation. People were researching patents that were submitted from a company called “Fingerworks” which was acquired by Apple. That company had some amazing gesture based patents in their filings, but Apple decided not to use it or decided to shelf it till they could work it in.
Now there are rumors of a second version of the iPad and there is no surprise there. I know that Jobs has a pattern of releasing something awesome and then soon after releasing an update that gives the proverbial kick to those early adopters.
Will I get an iPad… Maybe… Will I get in the boat and buy this 1.0 version? Probably not.
Avatar: A Masterpiece
Dec 21st
I just came home from seeing what can only be described as an epic master piece of cinema. James Cameron has once again created an amazing world that truly was tangible. Aside from the amazing 3D experience and filming in IMAX the emotions that swirl from the beautiful characters that inhabit Pandora really make the viewer feel for each individual. Not to mention the motion capture was so well-detailed that I could pick up on the slightest nuances of emotion that come with an actual human face.
The detail of course does not end there. Though the detail on the characters and the mechanics of those characters were well thought out and planned, the world itself was full of such detail. Pandora as a world was truly something remarkable. James Cameron not only created an expansive environment for the movie to play through, but he created a true ecosystem. A biology and anatomical system that was unique and absolutely detailed in all aspects.
Admittedly the story resembled some story themes that are common in other movies and literature. The truth though is the depth of that world and the creatures inhabiting it were so well thought out it once again shows the genius of James Cameron.
Rain from the Cloud needs filtering
May 27th
I love ubiquity. Especially across personal devices. With services like 
Google and the venerable Microsoft Exchange Server I can quite simply pump unified data up to the cloud and have it rain back down on me in a sea of data that holds my life together. There is however one big drawback. Does everything really need the cloud?? Ok so it is all easier if it is up in the cloud but maybe the rain from the cloud needs filtering?
As much as I love having access to files with Dropbox, E-mail (read as Gmail), Calendar info with Gcal or Exchange the ubiquity comes at a cost of often times redundant data. That redundancy is what impurifies the data and ends up making me want filtered rain water.
Of course many would say that data redundancy is user ID-10T error related. Maybe the data I am flowing up to the cloud needs to be purified before it evaporates into the ethereal plane of 1′s and 0′s. But really I think the cloud should be “intelligent” and could see the identical data. Then not only should it register multiple items and maybe merge the two as one but should do so and stream in related information that is in other parts of my cloud so as to enrich the rain with minerals. Nuggets of information that was caught from all the rest of the bit stream and placed when a pattern is realized.
Maybe what I am talking about is not really doable… maybe the stream needs to be purified before sent to the cloud… maybe I am not wanting to use my brain enough and am just being lazy…
Or maybe I could put my cousin’s birthday party on my calendar and contact, address, and shopping preference information could come up.
Maybe I am just crazy.
Down fall of UMPC – Cheap Netbooks
Apr 27th
I always wanted a UMPC and somehow never thought I would like Netbooks. My favorite UMPC was the OQO and its slick design. Well now it seems that the OQO is not going so well.
I think that the major reason for this shift is the power and affordableness of the new Netbooks. Lenovo, MSI, Dell, Asus, Acer, HP all have entries in this product category. I am sorry to see the OQO go but I am definitely interested in seeing the advancement of these netbooks.
Geotagging me anywhere
Mar 27th
I love that Internet and its barriers to access are so easily overcomed in the present. No longer tied to a phone line that locks out any other use. No longer tied to a desk via an ethernet cable. No longer tied to a building as I have a USB dongle that gives me excellent internet access anywhere I please with in good reception of a cell tower. I also have a GPS chip built into the same card and so I can also determine my location geospatially down to currently 6ft of accuracy.
I love that technology and data can flow so smoothly so seamlessly today in comparison to years past. I can only imagine what the future holds. And sorry if you do not enjoy that concept but for me things like Wi-Max and Google Latitude and other services flowing my information all the time is really cool.
