Category Archives: Gadgets & Tech
Twitter – tech vs life
rofl=meh/teh
This one is filed under Tech vs Life. The clue’s in the name…. twit.
Twitter is a symptom of our “need to be famous/gotta watch the celebrities” society. People actually think that what their doing is interesting/worthwhile and worth sharing with the world. It wouldn’t be so bad if these boring people actually posted worthwhile stuff but its all “I’m having a burger”. Sorry, I don’t care how funny or famous you are, the boring bits of your life are just as boring as the boring bits of my life.
The only person in history who should ever have been on Twitter is Albert Einstein. At least he could say something worthwhile in 140 characters – not that he would have come up with E = mc2 if he was busy tweeting. The rest of you? Go do something creative or worthwhile.
Skype – tech 4 life
Filed under Tech4Life – the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) video-calling software Skype is one of those bits of tech that has made a real positive impact on my life. I recently relocated to Hong Kong to live but am working with a company in the UK and attending Monday morning management meetings. A few years ago that would have entailed a really brutal 12 hour commute or the use of a time machine. Now they take a laptop into the meeting room and load up Skype and we are cooking with gas. In fact the team in question are, as I type, attending GDC 2009 in San Francisco and we have just had a quick video update on various topics before I turn in for bed and they head out for breakfast.
I have been working remotely with clients for a number of years and I have to say that video conferencing makes a huge difference. It is so much easier to communicate when you you can hear and see the people you are talking to. This is especially true for distributed development teams where you need to give feedback (constructive criticism) to a remote team mate. Email and text based IM just isn’t as good in situations like that for transmitting the nuances of what you are saying. It’s far easier to take offence when a message is in email form than it is when you can see and hear the person offering up the critique.
Sixth Sense – tech 4 life
This video from Ted.com is a very interesting presentation given by Pattie Maes from MIT about a project being spearheaded by one of her students Pranav Mistry. The system is a wearable device that recognises what is in front of you (a person, a product, a newspaper) and can project meta data related to that person/item onto any nearby surface (including your hand). The downside with the current WIP technology is that everyone else around you needs to wear a plain white T-Shirt and everything needs a blank white space on it to project onto. Joking aside though there are some really cool applications shown in the video including the simple wrist watch projection and the photography/image sorting.
A Zen moment
During a recent trip to Hong Kong I went to Lantau Island to visit the Buddhist monastery (founded by three Zen masters in 1920) to see the giant Buddha. When I got there the cloud cover was so low that even after climbing up the 269 steps to the base of the statue I couldn’t actually see anything above Buddha’s knees.
Instead I walked along the Wisdom path (an ugly concrete track through the woods) to the Tea Garden Restaurant (a dilapidated concrete outbuilding), sat under a decrepit corrugated metal shack eating Shredded Chicken Stir Fried Rice (in which the Chicken was actually frankfurters) and drinking tea. The tea was delicious, as was the stir fried rice and the shabby restaurant in the middle of the woods was a strangely relaxing place to rest, as a brief but impressive thunderstorm unburdened itself upon the mountain top. I had a peaceful few moments sipping tea before wandering back along the wisdom path. Then, just as I reached the base of the stairs (leading up to the Buddha) an email pinged into my Blackberry from my Internet Service Provider (seems Buddha gets much better cell phone coverage than I do in the UK). The timing made me smile because my Internet Service Provider is called Zen Internet. I guess Buddha has a sense of humour. I have read his message and I am not sure how a standing order for my Internet access will lead to enlightenment. Maybe he just wants me to be connected so I can Google Buddhism.
Hell – tech vs life
After much consideration the devil has decided to add a new level to hell. This level will be a lake a raw sewage, topped with a scum of soap bubbles and washed by incessant rain driven by lukewarm winds. The main inhabitant of this foul domain will be the inventor of the utterly useless automated, all-in-one sink/soap dispenser/tap/hot air hand dryer. Not only is this device so badly designed as to be barely useable (when functioning) it almost always breaks down immediately upon being installed. The result is the one or other of the necessary functions fails to work or, better yet, they all start to work at the same time resulting in warm soapy water being blow all over you.
The half-wit who designed this obvious non-starter will be joined in their open sewer of damnation by the idiotic individuals who decided to have these devices installed in McDonalds restaurants and on new Virgin trains.
PSP launch games
The announcement of a new console is like a wave advancing on the beach. It rushes toward you bubbling and frothing, promising so much while developers, like magical sea-horses, ride the wave bringing with them the promise of dazzling new games for this wondrous new platform. So it has been since the announcement of Sony’s forthcoming PSP portable. Excited developers salivating over specs and offering the promise of great new original games for the format.
Unfortunately, soon after release, I predict that reality will set in. Another portable platform means another bunch of licenses and conversions for the publishers. While a few may sign some original titles for the PSP launch I believe that this will quickly change. Just as it did with the Game Boy Advance, the early promise will evaporate, the froth will dissipate and the wave of excitement recede down the hard stony beach, leaving nothing but empty broken seashells and a bunch of zero effort licensed games.
The reasons I believe this will be the case are as follows:
1. Management costs – to create original PSP games will require management resources exclusive to that game (as it wont be appearing on other platforms). Why would publishers make this additional investment when they can simply include PSP into a multi-format title release for little or no extra cost.
2. This is exactly what happened with GBA. There is no reason to expect anything different from the publishers this time around.
3. The PSP is being referred to as “a portable PS2″. That three word phrase is enough to doom the PSP on its own. Remember the launch of the GBA? “It’s a portable SNES, It has the same power as a SNES, You could do Mario Kart style games just like the SNES.” The fact that the GBA wasn’t actually a portable SNES (from a hardware point of view) didn’t matter. How many SNES games did we see on the GBA? Anyone care to open a sweepstakes on how long it takes the first publisher to sign a developer to port a PS2 game to PSP?
I shall take my shoes and socks off in preparation for a quick paddle in the advancing waves but I wont bother changing into my swimming trunks. I think the tide will have turned and the waves retreated, long before I have had time for a decent swim.