Technology

What is technology doing to us? Between the digital skeptics and the wide-eyed utopians sit the authors of The Second Machine Age, two MIT scholars with an interest in consensus and moderation. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, both at the university’s Center for Digital Business, realized that things were moving way faster than even they would have predicted. Just as the Industrial Revolution saw machines replacing human brawn, the second machine age sees them replacing our cognitive faculties. These two, whose previous book, Race Against the Machine, took a cautionary look at the way computers, software development, and artificial intelligence were making human beings obsolete, now describe themselves as cautiously optimistic.

Searching With Images

In the past, we have searched with words but now software development has come so far that you can search with images. Curious? Well, armed with a smartphone and one of these apps, all you have to do is snap a photo and the app will try to identify the object or landmark and find information on it. No matter what kind of information you want, Google Goggles can help. This is a stand-alone app for Android, but it’s built into the Google Search app for iPhone (tap the search bar and then the camera icon to search by image). Take a picture of whatever you want to know more about, from a place to a work of art to a barcode or text (even in a foreign language), and Google will bring up more information. If the item is for purchase, you’ll also find shopping links and reviews. Looking for the perfect home? Homesnap is the app for you. If you see a property you like while you’re driving around looking at neighborhoods, take a photo using the Homesnap app to pull up the home’s complete real estate listing. You’ll get easy access to the property’s full details plus photos, all without having to get out of your car to grab a flyer.

Pressure Sensitive Phone Case

Canopy, a Minneapolis-based startup, thinks touch screens limit how we interact with our smartphones. And this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show here, the company debuted the latest version of Sensus, an iPhone case that transforms the back and sides of your phone into large, pressure-sensitive touch pad. This, Canopy says, has two advantages: It allows people to use their phones without touching the screen, increasing the viewable area (great for playing games). It also lets people use varying pressure to get different responses from apps and games. This could definitely open doors for mobile application development in so many different dimensions. I can just imagine the news ways in which people will be interacting with their phones. It seems like people constantly need a different interface and the tech companies are looking for problems to which they have a solution for. Interestingly enough nearly all windows phones already have a pressure sensitive screen.

Wink and Shoot

If this technology is going to go big, I better brush up on my winking skills. Google also asserts that the winking technology could be used for many other purposes. The wearable technology market is expected to grow from $1.4 billion this year to somewhere between $19 billion and $50 billion in 2018, according to Juniper Research and analysts at Credit Suisse. I think that the whole winking technology is still a bit far away and Google has some serious issues to fix. GPS and internet phones should stay in the media that they are in because it would be a distraction to have your glasses do all of that. What are your thoughts on the Google glass and winking instead of pressing a button? Or are we just creating a problem for this supposed solution?

Saving the World

Mark Zuckerberg, as part of a consortium that created Internet.org, believes that getting everyone in the world online is the only solution. Many question the true altruism of the idea, pointing out that he and his partners will derive great current and future monetary benefit from such a single-minded solution. But so what if they save the world, that's a small price... no? The concept behind getting everyone online is that there will be more links between research scientists and their data in ways that were never before possible, to drive collaboration and, ultimately, success in solving disease and other world problems. There needs to be more focus on basic human needs before there is the internet and software development for everyone because being online will not solve child survival or nutrition. Zuckerberg needs to go to some of the third world countries to get some perspective.

Limiting Screen Time

We live in a digital world, there is no denying it and our kids are growing up without knowing what it is like without technology right at their finger tips. Even our pets have apps designed especially for them. Although, I think that whole idea is rather questionable. Parents need to limit kids’ screen time to only two hours a day, according to a new policy released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The new report says that more kids are tweeting, texting, surfing the Internet, and keeping laptops in their bedrooms, and that usage is linked to behavior like cyberbullying. This idea is pretty much like saying that violent games cause violent behavior in adolescents. The limiting should include video chatting and sending pictures and for setting boundaries for media usage. Personally I do not think that the boundaries would work that well if the parents themselves are spending countless hours online or on their phones. The same goes for texting while driving. There needs to be an example that is there in the first place.

VoIP Planning

When implementing Voice over IP (VoIP), technical teams often overlook key elements. Without proper planning, these issues will come back to bite you. Here are three things to include in your plans to ensure a successful deployment. Make sure that there is a 911 emergency services location reporting. With VoIP, phones usually talk to centralized servers in the network and calls are often routed out of gateways not local to the site. This wreaks havoc on accurate 911 location reporting, so you must plan accordingly. Another important fact to consider is the compatibility with the current infrastructure that exists within the business. Sometimes the integrations are obvious, such as a voice mail server or an IVR that distributes calls from the main line. Some are less so, such as a paging system in a warehouse, a call accounting software package that only finance uses, or an automatic dialer that makes reminder calls to customers. Lastly, make sure that you are willing to take the time and money to train the users on these phone systems if they are not family with it.