Posts Tagged ‘important’
The Most Important Google Announcement You Missed Yesterday
Author: James Cliff
Google showed off lots of new stuff yesterday . But this is the one thing you’ll use the most.
The concept is simple: money as an email attachment. And it’s not fundamentally more capable than PayPal, which has let you send money to other people for years. But in online payments, ease counts for a lot — preexisting iTunes accounts are a large part of why the App Store caught on so quickly, for example. Which is why this, which was buried among flashier announcements about Chrome, Glass, Android, Music and Maps, might be the most important thing Google's announced in months.
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Apps Are Important
Author: Christen Arquette
I had a little bit of time to play with the Chromebook Pixel today and I’m a regular user of the Acer C7, a $ 199 machine that is wildly underpowered but good enough on a bad day. I really like the concept and I really like ChromeOS – it’s a solid way to get a little browsing done, say, in a cyber cafe or hotel bar. It isn’t, however, an OS.
As Linus Torvalds notes, the Pixel is an amazing piece of hardware and it makes you wonder just what other laptop manufacturers are thinking. It’s pricey, sure, but the touchscreen works well, the display is striking, and the styling is on par with the MacBook. Even MG (the G stands for Grumpy) liked it, and he doesn’t like anything.
But then there’s the problem of apps. Torvalds writes:
The creator of Linux, the paragon of pure computing, wants to install a “real distro.”
Ouch.
What the Chomebooks can’t yet do is run real applications. I’m currently dual-booting my C7 so I can install Skype on Ubuntu and you get this sense, once you’re in a real environment, that ChromeOS is like one of those “pre-OSes” that they used to stick on laptops so you could browse the web and watch movies without booting into Windows. It’s not all there.
That’s fairly easy to fix: allow vendors to create real apps for the platform. After all, Google is the “open” company, right? There should be a way for me to jackhammer Skype and Audacity into the ChromeOS environment. After all, a beautiful big screen is useless when all you open on it is Gmail.
Apps matter. As much as everyone clamors that Windows Phone and BB10 will thrive, they can’t do it without lots and lots and lots of apps. They can’t win without a dedicated developer base and groups of users who go out of their way to learn programming just to program for their favorite platform. While web-based apps are fun, in theory, we’re just not there yet in terms of real value. In the uncanny valley of application programming, HTML5 and attendant technologies are too stiff and jerky, like the humans in the first Toy Story movie. We need a few more years to bake them into real usability.
Until then, we’re stuck turning silk purses into sow’s ears (or, depending on your opinion of Linux, silk purses into penguins). I can’t, for example, recommend that my Mom pick up a Chromebook because she’ll immediately hit a brick wall when she wants to, say, Skype my in-laws. We can regress the argument down to “Well, they can use Google Hangouts” but that doesn’t solve the problem. In human-computer interaction, there should be more than one way to do something. That way, I’m sad to say, is through the introduction of a full SDK.
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Why is contrast ratio important on a TV?
Author: Charity Woods
Question by Jake: Why is contrast ratio important on a TV?
Why is this important on a TV and what is the contrast ratio on the LG OLED TV?
Best answer:
Answer by Dallas
The contrast is important as it is the level of distinction between colors. This is very important when trying to show the deepest blacks while maintaining absolute color. I am not sure of the exact ratio but I have read somewhere that the LG OLED TV will have the highest contrast ratio ever.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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An Email Inbox That Knows Who’s Important
Author: Melissa Shroeder
It’s shocking what you can learn from your own email inbox: You’re slow to reply to Mom, you’re losing touch with a close friend, and you and your spouse often discuss the same old topics. If only these revelations could be used to help you organize your inbox.
This week, I tested Cloze, a free Apple iOS app that prides itself on being an inbox-analyzing expert. Cloze uses an algorithm to study emails and other social-network interactions, then sorts messages according to who sent them, prioritizing those from people it thinks matter most to you.
I tested Cloze on an iPad, an iPhone and the Cloze website. (An Android app is planned for later this year.) Its people-focused concept is smart, and everyone wants a better way to manage inbox clutter. By incorporating social-network interactions, like those from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Cloze makes sure messages from important people don’t slip through the cracks.
It’s a pleasure to use because of its minimalistic layout with a lot of white space, which never felt overwhelming—no matter how many new messages or posts I received.
Cloze will even rate the electronic relationships you have with people, depending on several factors. I had fun sorting through people to see my Cloze Score with them. Cloze scores six categories for each person: Dormancy, Frequency, Responsiveness, Privacy, Freshness and Balance. I learned my mother-in-law and I have a well-balanced relationship, with a Balance score of 82 out of 100. My husband and I only got a 41 in Freshness, which means we could stand to talk about different topics more often. Then again, Cloze can’t track the conversations he and I have in person every day. In some cases of friends who I talk with mostly on the phone, scores didn’t accurately represent relationships.
The different list options on an iPhone.
After a week, I found myself wanting to check Cloze several times daily. But it was hard to stop checking my more familiar email and social-network programs first. Once an email message is read on Cloze, it can be automatically marked as read in one’s real inbox, but Twitter and Facebook posts were often replicated in both places. Yahoo, Exchange, iCloud Mail and AOL email are supported by Cloze, but not POP email accounts, like Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail).
One of my favorite aspects of Cloze is how it made me feel in control of my correspondence with close friends and family. A group called Key People is created after Cloze finishes analyzing your inbox and social networks. In my case, this analysis took about two hours and included one Gmail inbox and my Facebook and Twitter accounts. My Key People list accurately represented 25 people who mean a lot to me, and I added others manually (it holds up to 100). Once this was set up, the number of unread messages appeared beside this list. Cloze’s aim is to help you get that number to zero.
To do that, I chose actions for each. These actions depend on the message: Email options include Reply, Reply All and Forward; a tweet includes Reply, Retweet, Favorite or Email the person who posted it. A clever tree branch icon appears with each message and can be tapped to see a fan-like display of actions.
Even if you don’t know what to do with a message, you can still do something: Each message has a small bookmark in its top right corner that, when tapped, displays options that include Now, Today, Tomorrow and Next Week. I really liked this aspect of Cloze because I’m often in a rush and can’t handle a message at the moment its sent, but I want a way of reminding myself to follow up.
An automatically generated list called Losing Touch points out long- or short-term relationships that have started to fade. For example, Cloze understands if someone is considered a long-term relationship even though you haven’t received inbound communication in about two to four weeks. Key People get sorted into Losing Touch faster than others and stay in the Losing Touch list for longer.
Other lists can quickly be manually created and friends can be added to them with a simple tap. This is helpful if you want to organize groups of people or all correspondence associated with one particular thing, like buying a new house.
Cloze is happy to share with you all sorts of tidbits it has about your social interactions. It will even give you tips in a side panel about what helps make good relationships, like “Relationships need depth, but they also need to evolve.” Some people, though, could understandably be creeped out by the thought of getting relationship advice from an algorithm.
If you’re hoping to improve a relationship with someone, you can set a Cloze Score goal for your relationship to move that person’s emails and social-network posts to a higher priority in the list where they’re displayed. It won’t automatically move them to Key People. On the other hand, if someone is too noisy, posting lots of tweets and Facebook updates, you can tap a button to mute him or her; on the Cloze Web app, this muting can be adjusted to do things like just seeing direct messages and emails, not social-network posts.
There’s a lot of data stored up in your email inboxes and social-network interactions and Cloze reveals all of this in an easy-to-digest, stylish interface. But it’s tough to break the habit of looking at email, Facebook and Twitter the traditional way.
Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com
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Apple lands important SIM card connector patent
Author: Jamie Colby
In some cases, a patent grant is less about the technology itself than just what it can suggest for others. Relevant instance: a recently granted Apple patent for a “mini-SIM port.” The design matches earlier work and represents an uncomplicated method to a SIM slot that prevents damages from inserting the card the wrong way and ejects the card with a plunger system. By securing the patent, nevertheless, Apple obtains a bargaining chip in phone technology disagreements, specifically for SIM-related tussles; business are less most likely to begin a fight if Apple could return fire. The claim doesn’t provide Apple a lock on subscriber modules by any sort of ways, but it could result in other adopters treading carefully.
Submitted under: Mobile phones, Mobile, AppleCommentsSource: USPTO
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Extremely important question regarding robotics/cybernetics?
Author: Dave Adams
Question by Diet Soylent Green: Extremely important question regarding robotics/cybernetics?
I would like to become an immortal robot that turns into a helicopter by the end of this month. How can I do this without spending more than $ 25.92?
Okay, here’s the deal:
I will not only pay for the cost of the tools needed for this operation (which SHOULD be under $ 25.92 if we go about this the right way), but I will also give all my earthly possessions, including my pet lizard Biggie, to you as payment, as I will not be needing any of these items anymore once I avhieve this goal.
To danielpauldavis:
DUH! That’s why I’m a robot SLASH HELICOPTER! Helicopters don’t have to listen to humans! Haven’t you ever seen those shows where they spin out of control and cut off people’s heads??
Best answer:
Answer by John Frusciante
hthththh
Give your answer to this question below!
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OwnPhone will only let you call the people most important to you
Author: Margo Tipton
While the majority of smartphones attempt to draw in individuals by including even more and even more attributes, OwnFone’s biggest appeal is its unique absence of choices– it can make phone telephone calls which’s about it. Not only that, but the credit card-sized tool is additionally created to only call the most crucial people in your life. Prior to acquiring you’ll should pick up to 12 different contacts, and the phone will certainly then ship with buttons committed to each number.
There’s no standard keyboard or even a display, though you can personalize it visually by selecting from a selection of colors and designs. The company sees the tool being utilized as a low-cost choice to present mobile phones, or even as an emergency data backup for those times your iPhone’s battery goes dead … Continue reading & hellip;
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The Most Important Gadgets Of 2012
Author: Sriram Reddy
Rather than looking back (which I’m sure we will), I thought it would be nice to look forward to 2012 and beyond and note some of the gadgets that will change the world in the next few years. I’ve included mobile, gaming, and computing gadgets but I think 2012 will also be the year of Windows Phone, 3D printing, and fitness technology that actually makes a difference.
I’m not expecting much in the way of massive change this next year, just more of the same, but better. Here are our picks for the best of 2012.
Autom and Fitbit – Fewer things sell more products than weight-loss claims. Luckily, thanks to some new devices designed to help us get fitter, those claims are no longer snake oil. Take a look at Autom and FitBit (and the other devices competing in the cyberhealth space). These devices promise what geeks crave – stats – and also promise better health and decreased body mass. It’s a desk-jockey trifecta.
While many fitness devices won’t make it past 2013, I think weight-loss systems like Autom and pedometers like FitBit are the future of fitness. You can’t change what you can’t measure, and these devices let you measure just about everything.
Nokia Lumia 710 – A year ago I would have written Nokia off as a dead company. They were rudderless, without product, and perceived, at best, a commodity feature-phone player in a very competitive smartphone world.
With the arrival of cheap Windows Phones, however, Nokia is looking to take back the low end and win the business of folks who are either too busy, too annoyed, or too cash-strapped to invest in iOS or, increasingly, the more powerful Android flagships. To the anti-Microsoft contingent, Windows Phone is too little too late. In reality, we’re talking about Microsoft: when have they ever been on time.
There are plenty of folks out there without smartphones and no one ever got fired for picking something from Redmond for their IT fleet. Sure, the $ 50 Lumia 710 requires a two year contract with rebat and all that rigamarole, but the key number isn’t “2-year contract:” it’s $ 50.
Makerbot – This small, Brooklyn-based company isn’t very big but it’s very powerful. The company just raised $ 10 million and is working on better ways to get 3D printing to the masses. While not many of us – myself included – can see the value in a 3D printer in the home, I see 3D printing as a technology that just hasn’t caught up with our imagination. A decade ago a laser printer was a distant dream machine that cost thousands of dollars and seemed out of reach for many consumers. Now you can get a color model for a few hundred and every tech-savvy household has at least one color inkjet that can produce better photos than almost any photo lab.
3D printing is in the same boat: the machines are prohibitively expensive and complex, but with a few UI and marketing twists, I foresee a day when the kids print out model car parts the way they print out book reports.
Ultrabooks – Thinking back on the great netbook debacle of a few years ago: the rise in popularity, the fall in pricing, and their eventual death, it’s not difficult to imagine the ultrabook is phase two of the hardware-maker’s lemming rush. However, ultrabooks are a necessary addition to the laptop ecosystem and should be taken seriously. I could definitely see a large buyer picking up a few thousand ultrabooks for employees rather than a few thousand fat-and-heavies from Dell and Lenovo. It makes sense in terms of power, price, and portability.
Kindle Fire – Love it or hate it, the Kindle Fire is Amazon’s first salvo against the iTunes juggernaut. Amazon wants to sell you stuff. They don’t want to impress you with a tablet that runs Ice Cream Sandwich and can compute SETI@Home strings. The device is Amazon incarnate, an all singing, all dancing tablet for readers that will become, for many, the primary way to consume streaming video.
I’m not suggesting the Kindle Fire is great, but future Fires will be on the 2012 Christmas lists for many casual tablet users.
PSP Vita – I put the Vita here not because it will be particularly successful (handheld gaming is a hard business and phone gaming is making it even harder), but because it is the first of the next gen consoles to roll, inexorably, towards our living room. The Vita will ship in 2012, followed by E3 announcements by all the majors about updated hardware (I’m betting on a new Xbox announcement this year, but I doubt it will be released until 2014). The Wii U is next on the upgrade list while Microsoft and Sony are still trying to figure out what a next gen console is supposed to do and what it’s supposed to look like.
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Inside Nivarox, The Most Important Company You’ve Never Heard Of
Author: Jenny Zhao
In the strange, small world of watchmaking, there’s lots of money to be made on items that we would call, at best, totemic. To make those items, you still need small mechanical parts. That’s where Nivarox comes in.
Nivarox makes balance springs. The name stands for “ni variable, ni oxydable,” which translates to “neither variable nor oxidable.” These tiny springs swing the balance wheel in almost every mechanical watch and the goal of invariability coupled quality metals made Nivarox one of the most important companies in the world during the 20th century. Now they’re owned by the Swatch Group, a company that has a virtual monopoly on the high-end watch market. And, interestingly, most competitors are just fine with that.
Ariel Adams at ABlogToRead went to visit the factory where he saw how the smallest widget can make or break a mechanical watch.
It wasn’t always thus. In the 1980s, Nivarox almost dissappeared. Ariel writes:
If you’ve noticed I keep referring to the fact that the Swiss watch industry is kept together by a series of suppliers who produce the necessary parts that go into watch movement. There are zero totally vertically integrated watch makers in Switzerland even today. The whole system of manufacturing could be halted if just one supplier stopped supplying materials or parts. This is why Mr. Hayek instructed Nivarox to produce its own metal for the balance springs. Originally sourced from a metal producer in Germany, there was just too much fear that if the supplier didn’t want Nivarox as a client anymore (which of course could happen on a whim), the entire industry would supper as watches could not be produced. Hayek’s ongoing mantra to Nivarox was “product, product, product, product.”
Read the full article if you want to learn about one of the most important mechanical manufacturers in the world and how so much of the watch industry depends on one invariable hairspring.
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Inside Nivarox, The Most Important Company You’ve Never Heard Of
Author: Matthew Wilson
In the strange, small world of watchmaking, there’s lots of money to be made on items that we would call, at best, totemic. To make those items, you still need small mechanical parts. That’s where Nivarox comes in.
Nivarox makes balance springs. The name stands for “ni variable, ni oxydable,” which translates to “neither variable nor oxidable.” These tiny springs swing the balance wheel in almost every mechanical watch and the goal of invariability coupled quality metals made Nivarox one of the most important companies in the world during the 20th century. Now they’re owned by the Swatch Group, a company that has a virtual monopoly on the high-end watch market. And, interestingly, most competitors are just fine with that.
Ariel Adams at ABlogToRead went to visit the factory where he saw how the smallest widget can make or break a mechanical watch.
It wasn’t always thus. In the 1980s, Nivarox almost dissappeared. Ariel writes:
If you’ve noticed I keep referring to the fact that the Swiss watch industry is kept together by a series of suppliers who produce the necessary parts that go into watch movement. There are zero totally vertically integrated watch makers in Switzerland even today. The whole system of manufacturing could be halted if just one supplier stopped supplying materials or parts. This is why Mr. Hayek instructed Nivarox to produce its own metal for the balance springs. Originally sourced from a metal producer in Germany, there was just too much fear that if the supplier didn’t want Nivarox as a client anymore (which of course could happen on a whim), the entire industry would supper as watches could not be produced. Hayek’s ongoing mantra to Nivarox was “product, product, product, product.”
Read the full article if you want to learn about one of the most important mechanical manufacturers in the world and how so much of the watch industry depends on one invariable hairspring.
