Category Archives: Hardware Technologies

Jabra BT250v

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Every now and then you buy a product that really just works.  I recently bought a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone – a Jabra BT250v
– and I have to admit that I am truly happy with this product. 
I’ve always used a headset, but the wired type.  When I upgraded
cell phones and bought a Nokia 6820
one of the features that I wanted was Bluetooth for a wireless
headset.  But I stuck with wired headsets for a year or two.

After destoying the wired headset for the second time by jerking the
headset out of my ear or catching the wire on various things, and
having to untangle the wire one too many times, I broke down and bought
the Jabra.  It is now something that I would not go without. 
The sound quality it great, it has a ‘vibrate’
feature so that I have now turned off the ring on my phone, and the
buttons on the earpiece allow me to answer a call, and change the
volume.

I have had two problems with it over the last month that I have had the
device.  The first I was warned about … if I am outside and
there is any wind, the people I am talking to immediately complain
about the wind noise.  I have learned to mute the phone, or warn
people that I am talking with.  The second was that one time the
headset locked up and would no longer communicate with my phone. 
The on-line support indicated that I would have to ‘reset’ the Jabra,
and that meant re-inserting it into the charging base … which was at
home.  That did piss me off.

One other thing that I have learned is that every now and then it will
‘disconnect’ from my cell phone, for example if I set down the phone
and walk away with the Jabra on my ear, or hooked in the neck of my
shirt.  Its easy to ‘reconnect’ by simply clicking the button on
the Jabra.  Likewise, if I switch my phone to speakerphone, and
then back to ‘normal’ the Jabra will be disconnected.  One quick
click on the Jabra button and it reconnects.  I have to say it is
one of the best investments I have made related to my cell phone. 
A very nice design, and very easy to use.

The Gigapxl Project

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I just listened to a great podcast from ITConversations that was a
presentation at Pop!Tech 2005.  It was a wonderful talk by Graham
Flint about the Gigapxl Project. 
This is some amazing work where they are now taking pictures at extreme
resolutions – close to 4 Gigapixels!  That is close to 4000
Megapixels … a LOT more than the digital cameras that you can buy
today.  They are using some highly custom cameras to be able to
take pictures with incredible resolutions, built out of old U2 spy
plane parts.  These are still “film” cameras, but he also
discusses the work on fully digital versions of these cameras being
built.

In his talk he mentions some interesting things that they find when
they are able to zoom in on these extremely detailed images.  He
talks about this image of paragliders
on the coast of California.  When his wife was reviewing the
image, she found people watching with binoculars and telescopes … but
they were looking down
… not up!  When they followed the track of the people’s vision,
they found that below the paragliders was a nudist beach!  When
they put this particular image in a museum, the resolution was so good
that they had to mask the faces and heads of the nudists!  This
opens a whole new conversation about privacy … and continues to beg
the question “Is there such thing as privacy?”

The site has got a lot of very cool images, and examples of the
abilitty to zoom.  They even had a cityscape of my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! 

I’ll have to check which podcast had the Q&A, however they did
bring up the questions of privacy.  In this image of  PETCO Park
he talks about the fact that they have detailed images of ~15,000
people … and how would you ever get a release from all of these
people?  As a friend and I talked about this, it means that a
single photo of a demonstration or rally might give details images of
the people attending.  Uh … what are you doing in that hotel room on the 15th floor?

It is truly some amazing work, and the podcast was a great
listen.  I’ve attached the link to this post … we’ll see if it
works for you!

Apple and User Interface

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Anyone who has followed the entire life of Apple Computers knows that they have been involved in several User Interface disputes and lawsuits.  The whole desktop idea was born from a visit to Xerox PARC.  Now it looks like Creative Labs has quietly patented the way that music can be navigated using the ID3 tag information.

The interesting part is that the Apple iPod might be in violation of this patent!  It will be interesting to see what comes of this … I have to admit that I like my iPod!

After patent, Creative examines all options. Creative Technology is “evaluating all alternatives” now that it has received a patent for music player interfaces such as those found on rival Apple iPods. [Computerworld News]

[tags: ]

Motion Tracking with a Webcam

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In the worlds of ‘virtual reality’ and ‘augmented reality’ one of the
important technologies is ‘head tracking’ … knowing the orientation
of the users head.  If you want to create an artificial world, or
add an object in the field of view of the user, you often want that
object to ‘sit still in space’ allowing the user to move around the
virtual object.  In the past many of the systems were based on
gyros, or accelerometers, or even some ‘base station’ that the user is
near.

In recent years there is a lot more work going on with ‘video head
tracking’ or the use of a camera attached to the head of the user, and
using software analysis of the image being sensed to determine movement
and rotation.  I have seen some amazing demonstrations of using
this technique in the wearable computer realm, and the software is
becoming more and more available.

This article caught me off guard as the develop is now using this same
technique to create a virtual version of the ‘wooden labyrinth’
game.  This is an impressive application of the technology … all
implemented on off the shelf hardware!  What you can do with a
Tablet PC, a Webcam, and some software!

Casey hacked a Tablet PC with a Webcam to recreate wooden labyrinth game.

I had to get this one in. Phillip Torrone wrote me and said this Tablet PC hack is something I had to check out. I’m glad I did. Casey Chesnut did /cameraFlow. I wanna see this working.

Awesome.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Public Distributed Sensor Networks

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I remember talking with Phil Windley
about one of his ideas to leverage OnStar
as a distributed sensor network. He posited that all of these
cars tend to have temperature sensors, some form of GPS, and the
wireless communications … they could be used to create a nationwide
temperature map.

Now here is another article about taking this further to use cell
phones as the source of distributed sensor information. Very cool
idea. Everyone carrying the right kind of cell phone could opt-in
to providing sensor data to one or more servers. A huge variation
on SETI@Home!

Let’s see … what would someone pay me to participate in this? And protect my identity …

Saving the World With Cell Phones.
Scientists work to turn mobile phones into a distributed network
capable of measuring pollution levels — and possibly detecting
biological weapons before they can be launched. By Rachel Metz. [Wired News]

iPod is an experience, not a product!

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I now own an iPod … and I can now understand a lot of the buzz about
them. It really is amazing. Not the product, but the experience
that Apple has created. I have to admit that I underestimated
what Apple has created. I kept thinking “Yeah … another MP3
player, but a little cooler looking.” But after having it and
using it for one week I am thoroughly impressed.

I’m working on ways to integrate the iPod with our product, and so I
got one to begin to do the research. I wasn’t sure if I would use
it much or not, but I am now hooked. It is so well thought
through … again, not the iPod device,
but the entire solution of iTunes and the iPod. I am now using
both of these on a daily basis, and the synergy between the two
products is well thought out and polished. Apple has done a lot
of thinking about all of the details.

I do have a few complaints … but they are very few. What I did
like is that I can now add iCal and vCard objects to my iPod and they
are accessible via the UI. I found a lot of information from this link about iPod synchronization sent to me by a friend.

Anyhow … expect me to post more about my iPod experience … so far it’s amazing!

Tablet PC and Children

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This last weekend I was in California and spent some time with my
family.  My sister brought up the question about buying a laptop
for teens … my nephew has the opportunity next year to get one as a
part of a school program.  She asked, and then also mentioned that
she has the freedom to choose … as long as it’s an Apple iBook!

I do have to say that I don’t have that much issue with an iBook … it is
funny that Apple is the company that finally creates a UNIX laptop with
real adoption!  The issue that I do have is that I now see some
real amazing value with the Tablet PC.  This isn’t to say that
Apple will never create a Tablet PC, however they do not have one yet
…

To show my sister what a Tablet PC is like, I brought out my new HP
tc4200 and showed her some of the Tablet PC enabled applications. 
Of course I showed her GoBinder, and then Ink Art, and the Physics Illustrator. 
When we called my nieces and nephews into the room to show them the
Tablet they immediately thought it was cool … and of all things they
began to play the most with the Physics Illustrator.  It was
amazing!

The kids jumped up on the stools and started playing on the kitchen
counter … and didn’t want to leave!  They began to draw and
experiment with physics … and my sister was amazed.

The next day I went to visit my sister at her house, and I figured that
I would throw the Tablet PC in the car … just in case.  When we
arrived the kids all grabbed my son and went to play.  Not too
much later by nephew came over and asked “Did you bring your cool
computer?”  I gave him the computer again and it immediately
became the center of attention.  Which application?  Physics Illustrator. 
What was amazing to me was that the group of boys *and* girls were
creating shapes and objects that I would have never though of. 
They were using the pins, rods, ropes, and springs in all sorts of
combinations.

I think that eventually Apple might understand and embrace the Tablet
PC concept – primarily the digitizer and recognizer technologies – and
incorporate them into a future iBook.  Until then, I have to say
that it is a major limitation of the Apple product line … and is
still not well understood even in the PC world.

Carver Mead @ Telecosm

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Carver Mead is an amazing speaker … I always love to hear him
speak. Here at Telecosm he is the after dinner speaker, and the
title of his talk is Science and Society: timing the crests and troughs of opportunity in life and science.

His talk started with a conversation about the vacuum tube, and how
Edison created the foundation. He elaborated and explained the
next series of experiments with vacuum tubes, and how they progressed,
and eventually how this research led to the creation of the
transistor. From there he progressed into a discussion about the
discovery of the first superconductor. What makes his story
telling so amazing is his presentation of the subject, his in-depth
knowledge of the subject, and his ability to communicate so clearly.

It’s funny to hear his mild disdain for Bohr and others who, in his
words, discouraged alternative views of quantum physics. He jokes
about how students today are not taught collective quantum systems, but instead a strange model of photons. He refers to his “little green book” as the source of learning about collective quantum effects. His little green book is titled: Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of
Electromagnetism … I’m going to have a buy a copy.

He closed his presentation by referring to the few people, from his
perspective, that are truly thinking again about physics at a different
level … from a different perspective … instead of just blindly
following the directions that were laid out decades ago.

Dell sales and support

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I was again impressed today by Dell.  I bought a new laptop a week
or so ago, due to problems with my old one.  I order a Latitude,
however when it arrived I could not believe they even put the Latitude
name on it!  This thing was HUGE … and it weighed a TON.  I
know … I could have read the dimensions and weight when I ordered,
however I have been buying Dell Latitiude laptops for a long time.

I really didn’t like the new machine, and so I called to see what the
return process would be … no big deal … they first offered me $300
to keep the laptop!  When I declined, they quickly gave me the RMA
number and an address to ship the unit to.  No big deal … 
return it and just pay for the shipping.

I like working with Dell …

Accelerating Change 2005

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I’ll be going to my friends conference – Accelerating Change 2005
– again this year.  John Smart
has again put together a great
line-up of speakers and it looks like it’s going to be drinking from a
fire hose … I’ll be working to blog the event as best as
possible.  The Acceleration Studies Foundation
is John’s contribution to the world, and to
exploring the rapidly evolving world that we live in.

If you read through the Conference Schedule
you can get a good idea of the caliber of speakers.  If you want
to listen to last years conference for examples, go visit
ITConversations and browse through the Accelerating Change 2004 Archives.

I missed last years conference, and have to admit that some of these
ITConversations from last year just blow me away … I can’t wait for
next week.