The many faces of a little green robot
Open Signal Maps has a report on Android fragmentation here where they point out just how many devices they have to check compatibility for becuase of the fragmentation that plagues Google’s OS.
Paul leaves the internet
The Verge intern editor Paul Miller has embarked on a journey to live a full year without internet access. He will be doing his job and living his life as normal, only he won’t be using the web or any sort of internet connectivity. Watch the video and let him tell you more about it. It sounds incredibly exciting and I am looking forward to his progress and the outcome.
Source: youtube.com
How Linux is Built by The Linux Foundation
While Linux is running our phones, friend requests, tweets, financial trades, ATMs and more, most of us don’t know how it’s actually built. This short video takes you inside the process by which the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing is organized. Based on the annual report “Who Writes Linux,” this is a powerful and inspiring story of how Linux has become a community-driven phenomenon.
(via joaaaaaaaaaaaan)
Source: youtube.com
Project Glass by Google
A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.
The project is being developed by Google’s top R&D department, and they are planning to start beta testing sometime this year.
Personally, i don’t really know what to think of it. For what i cant tell, it seems like a step into the future, but i don’t see how the HUD can be useful when it’s in your face. Clearly, there is more to it than the video suggests, so I’m excited to see how it all turns out.
In the meantime, check out this parody showing all the ways the Google Interactive Glasses can go wrong:
Matt Buchanan on things that should be better, or just exist
These are some of Matt Buchanan’s ideas for some things in apps that should be improved ASAP:
- Foursquare iPad app — my primary use for Foursquare isn’t to see where people are anymore, it’s to see where places to go are. This is something I’d like to do on my iPad. It’s something I’ve tried to do on my iPad, but it always make me sad, like a really insipid macchiato.
- Path iPad app — Path is supposed to feel cozy, and when I am feeling cozy, I prefer my iPad over my phone. Phone = speed and concision and smallness and genereal feelings of AGHGHHGHH. iPad = how’s it going, I’m feeling really great because it’s Sunday and sunny or at least the kind of grey outside that makes me feel very comfortable. Why yes, I would heart hearting your very cute photograph.
- Twitter direct messages — I tried DMing somebody I hadn’t DMed in a while last night and it took me like five minutes to dig up their profile and find the correct button to direct message them, which is the only way I will direct message people because I am so very paranoid about accidentally tweeting pictures of my third nipple to the whole world. It could’ve been one of the many Fabled SMS Killers, but now it’s just another broken messaging service and I feel like I’ve stepped over more of those than piles of dog poop on NYC sidewalks.
- Facebook messaging — It should be the Great AIM Slayer, but it isn’t. Nearly complete ubiquity and penetration (I truthfully know very few people who don’t have a Facebook profile), but it’s still not a very good IM service. I want to say it could be the IM service, but Facebook is so bad at making things sometimes, it is actually impressive in its complete incompetence. I mean, it couldn’t even crush Foursquare in its infancy with Places, when it so very clearly could have, since it was only 400 bajillion times larger. (I am glad it didn’t, though.)
- Pay With Square — I think out of half a dozen or so times using it, it has worked completely correctly just once. It is kind of the ideal payment service, a cyborg payment method, human and machine, but I’m about to give up on it because swiping my card is easier, and I still have to carry a million paper loyalty cards anyway.
- iMessage — Ahahahahahaha.
I agree 100% with him. Do you?
Source: mattbuchanan
MG Siegler on power
Battery technologies hasn’t evolved in the last few years, while every there technology has. From his recent trip to SXSW, we can see how it has become a big issue, and he calls on the attention of the issue, and with LTE on the rise, it’s time to do something about it.
Source: parislemon
Hardcore techies want every OS to act like good old Linux. The problem? There are 7,000 million people on this planet, and most of them don’t care.
With current release of the Consumer Preview of Windows 8, people have been throwing bad comments all over the web, mostly regarding they want the old desktop back. But this kind of commentary is nothing new. With the recent release of GNOME 3 and Ubuntu’s Unity interface for Linux, hardcore geeks that liked to customize every last bit of the interface and functionality of their OS have been harsh on the backlash they make to the people behind them.
I understand why they do this. They like the customization, and they are hardcore geeks for a reason. But with the release of the iPhone and subsequently the iPad, we have observed a dramatic shift on what people want on their devices and computers. Natural, uncluttered and easy to use interfaces. Technology, as ever changing as it is, aims primarily to make the lives of people easier. People have bought billions of iPads because they are so easy to use, kids and animals can use them. Elderly people love them, disabled people love them, kids love them, medical professionals love them, and I suspect artists will start soon. So why are you so adamant to understand that Windows and Canonical would want a piece of the action as well? Apple has made it clear, people want stuff that works, not to download a bunch of utilities and customizations the moment they buy a new device to that will become less of a hassle.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most fields of technology have seen a slew of drastic changes and revolutionary advancements in the past few years. Change and new features are introduced rapidly. New apps and services pop-up like hot cakes every two minutes. But people seem very adamant about change, and I don’t understand why. It has to become clear that this is how things work nowadays. OSes release a new version every year, some upgrades will be incremental, some will be drastic. Apps will refocus and improve as soon as a new feature is ready for the public. It’s time to get with the program and embrace it. In fact, take joy in it. Maybe spaceships are not too far ahead.
No Pulse: How Doctors Reinvented The Human Heart.
For years, doctors attempted to create artificial hearts that mimicked the real heart—using methods that recreate blood pumping. Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier instead developed a continuous-flow device that has worked on calves and some humans, including patient Rahel Elmer Reger:
The little quilted backpack held two lithium-ion batteries and the HeartMate II’s computerized controller, which are connected by cable through a hole in Reger’s side. Needless to say, she has never left her backpack on a bus. “My cousin once disconnected me, though, by mistake,” she said. “I was showing her how to change the battery. She disconnected one, and then—I was distracted for a second—the other. I yelled, ‘You can’t do that!’ and then passed out. The device blares at you. She reconnected it, and I came back. I was probably out for 10 seconds. She was completely freaked out.”
(via thisistheverge)
Source: lgrd.co
Another day, another TOS update gone wrong
This time, it’s Tumblr itself. Tumblr is trying to take away your freedom of using XKit, Missing E, Tumblr Savior or any other userscripts or extensions! But you can prevent this from happening!
Tumblr decided that they can interfere with what you can install on your computer. Their new, updated TOS doesn’t allow users to use extensions like XKit, Missing E, or Tumblr Savior. The new TOS is not yet in effect, butt when put it does, the new Terms of Service will be the death of XKit, Missing E and other extensions.
Send an e-mail to policy@tumblr.com and tell them to change their updated Terms of Service before making it official! Tell them that you like using XKit, Missing E or any other extensions you have, and won’t stop using them. Inform them that they have no right over what you can and can not install on your own browser. You can stop this new policy from being implemented. Because once implemented, we all know that they won’t be taking it back.
Source: findthecool
Ubuntu: you’re doing it wrong
An interesting critiqute to Ubuntu’s new approach to developing the Operating system, calling on them for their lack of true “opennes” and the recent direction they have taken. He raises some particularly strong topics, as well as draw a staggeringly accurate comparison with Apple. Definitely worth reading.
Apple shocks everyone again, unveils OS 10.9 “Mountain Lion S”
Today, Apple unveiled an even newer version of their operating system than the one they announced only days ago.
The newest version, dubbed “Mountain Lion S,” features marginal performance improvements and enhanced support for certain hardware accessories that don’t currently exist.
Apple’s OS X team is facing legal troubles however, as the iOS team has filed a lawsuit over several patents violated by OS X’s previous, still-unreleased version, Mountain Lion. The patents in question include those covering Notification Center, Reminders, and other features taken from iOS 5.
The iOS team isn’t the only group with a claim against the OS X team, though. Samsung is also suing Apple for violating their patent on releasing several hundred new versions of the same software in the same month. Samsung is also suing over the naming of multiple versions Apple’s OS, including Mountain Lion S, Mountain Lion S II, and the iPad- and iPhone-compatible Mountain Lion S II Touch. They are also suing over the speculated space-themed names of future OS X versions which have been announced by Apple in an attempt to unify their names with the various space-themes elements and terms within the OS. Those names include OS X Galaxy, OS X Galaxy S, OS X Galaxy S II, OS X Galaxy S II II, and OS X Galaxy S II Touch, which are all scheduled to be released over the next few weeks.
Lawyers for the OS X team went on the record earlier today as saying they may be “really screwed,” and that OS X team members “might want to start considering other job opportunities.”
In a statement to the New York Times, Tim Cook said nothing because everyone knows he hates the New York Times. He did give an actual statement to DigiTimes though, saying, “lolwut.”
This is hilarious.
Source: imikebeas
Content everywhere, but not a drop to drink
MG Siegler, as always, makes a pretty interesting case of how technology is going wrong in certain areas. This time, he states that the blogging and writing in the web is in a very dire state, and makes it a pretty compelling case to start taking everything you read in the web with many grains of salt. This article may make you hate yourself give up on blogging entirely, or encourage you to become much better at it.
Source: parislemon
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