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.

Space and Pyschology

How do you sit when you are having a phone conference? Did you know that your posture says a lot about how you feel about your self and how confident you are? And that understanding could be useful for furniture and office space designers, say researchers who documented the relationship between the space that people take up and the sense of strength they feel. They even exposed how potentially corrupting such expansive “power poses” — and the ensuing sense of confidence and self-importance they can trigger — can be, leading to dishonest behavior. Posture might even help for those all-important job interviews. A recent study found, for example, that practicing expansive, striking poses before high-stakes settings like interviewing for a job or giving a presentation can improve a person’s performance — while huddling over a desk or hunching over a smartphone may inhibit innovative and confident thinking and increase anxious reactions.

Quiet

Does it ever seem like when you are trying to concentrate on writing that internet fax, no matter how much willpower you have, different noises will demand your attention? We jerk to the tug of noise like sonic marionettes. There’s good reason for this. Among mammals, hearing developed as an early warning system. There has been a transformation in our relationship to the environment over the millions of years since the prototype for human hearing evolved, but part of our brain hasn’t registered the makeover. We are still sensitive to the noises even if it looks like we are able to stop paying attention to them and it wrecks havoc on our bodies including the cardiovascular system. Of course it is not always possible to completely put ourselves in a cocoon but it would be nice to be able to hear ourselves think.