I am bombarded by teknology all day, in almost every thing I do. Here is a collection of what I think about it all.
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Friday, 12 February 2010 01:41 |
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With the recent rollout of the new social stalking tool called Buzz, Google has enabled Google Nation to easily find out what the person next to them on the train is typing into their mobile smartphone, without even craning their neck. But that isn't what I am really planning to talk about here.
The funny thing I have noticed by checking out the Buzz layer on my G1 Google Maps app [with some random public buzz around Cambridge, MA] is that there are a lot of Buzzes asking stuff like:
- "Hello from buzz mobile. Unfortunately the gps is really inaccurate- i am really a half mile away, on [address withheld] street! iphone FAIL."
- "Buzz is unable to pinpoint non-building based locations. Fail. On the other hand, giving people the ability to fake locations is a great privacy boon."
- "Buzz is genius. I'm selling my equity in facebook n Twitter"
- "Checking out the buzz in MIT"
- "Buzz on iPhone? Ooooo"
- "Trying droid at Google"
- "Now I'm buzzing with droid"
- "buzz on google maps is pretty cool"
- "A lot of buzzing around mit"
- "Cool, Buzz shows you who's near you. Kind of creepy, but still cool."
- "Google Buzz? Why does everything try to be like Twitter/facebook?
- "Because Goole is taking over the world!"
- "Money"
- "I dunno, this seems cooler"
How funny. This new teknology has brought us back to the days when the web was used as a vanity by companies. Remember "Look, we're on the web" from the tops of Kelloggs cereal boxes? Well the initial content coming from a lot of people tied into Buzz seems to be in that same vane.
The second most types of Buzz I have read in my small sampling tend to be related to what people are doing at the moment, on the bus, still at home sick, happy hour at XYZ bar...
It seems like this type of content is shared with initial posts from new Twitter users as well. With that said, I figure that the lame-ness of public buzz should taper off, but are people going to ditch their other social broadcast accounts???
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Tuesday, 24 November 2009 18:41 |
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Just in time for the Holiday driving season: Google has released an update to Google Maps for Android (ver. 1.6). This update offers a number of great additions that Google Maps had been lacking. The one that stands out most is the built in turn by turn navigation. This means that my phone (G1) is now technically also a GPS, so I can nuke that from my gift list. One thing I learned when trying out the Navigation feature is that it requires a text to speech synthesizer app. You are taken to the Market and the app is right there, free to install. There is some concern about the size of the Text to Speech, whatever...
A cool feature is the integration of the text search that is part of the overall search tool on the phone. I fired in a few locations, and it found them right away. I choose Navigation and the nice robot voice told me where to go.
If you really want to invite trouble, make a Home Navigation shortcut so if you lose your phone (or it is stolen) so whoever finds your phone can find your place... But maybe I am just being a little paranoid now, huh?
I am not sure how much I will actually use the navigation feature, as it is quite draining on the battery. But If I needed to find some place I haven't been before, I might fire it up.
Learn More:
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Wednesday, 12 August 2009 19:00 |
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So, I was walking around Meijers in White Lake, MI the other day and while in line at the customer service counter I noticed a new card scanner. Nothing big, except that the usual card scanner to purchase goods was right next to this new scanner. The new scanner (if you couldn't tell from the title of this post) has biometric scanning capabilities, finger print module on the side with what appears to be a video camera. According to the Biometric Access Company website, their scanners are for a multitude of uses like check cashing, pharmacy, time and attendance.
I think it is kind of creepy to think that there are places that might use a fingerprint to clock you in and out.
Sorry for the blurry picture.
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Monday, 23 February 2009 17:42 |
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I use a G1 phone for my communications, and one night as I was finishing a pushed upgrade, I came across a screen that had me rather perplexed (see photo). I like the RGB striping on the crash screen, but the gibberish really makes no sense to me, as it wasn't Sep 2 2008 when this happened, it was Feb 2009. 
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teknology
