In this case my brain decided that “My cousin bought a really fancy aparat fotograficzny to take pictures of the baby…” was a perfectly valid English sentence and it wasn’t until my mouth tried to make the appropriate sounds that I realized I suddenly switched language contexts. I couldn’t find “camera” so I went the descriptive route and said “the, um… picture taking… thing”. My friend tried to guess what I had in mind and said: “Phone?”

It’s funny, but seeing how it’s almost 2015, yes phone is actually a pretty good guess. After all, the only people who bring dedicated photo camera devices to events are professional photographers and elderly grandparents. So it stands to reason that my friend, who happened to be slightly younger than me associated taking pictures with the exact device that is used for that purpose most often these days.

I remember that when I was an undergrad, we talked about technological convergence as a fairly abstract concept. It was something we presumed would happen, though we were not exactly sure how. We also thought that Neo’s flip phone in The Matrix matrix was like the coolest thing ever, and we would have never considered putting a computer onto it because that’s not what phones were for. Little did we know that this would be the device that technology would converge on.

Think about it, you phone has now replaced and superseded most of the electronic and non-electronic devices we have used in the 80’s and 90’s. Let me give you a few examples:

	The 90’s	Year 2014
Device you use to take pictures?	Camera	Phone
Device you use to check the time?	Watch	Phone
Device you use to take videos?	Camcorder	Phone
Device you use to listen to music on the go?	Walkman	Phone
Device you use to blast loud music on the beach or at a party?	Boombox	Phone
Portable gaming device?	Gameboy	Phone
Device you use to record your voice?	Dictaphone	Phone
Device you use to cheat in math class?	TI-83 Calculator	Phone
Device for receiving text messages?	Pager	Phone
Device you use to check your email?	Computer	Phone
Device you use to watch movies?	VHS Player	Phone
Device you use to connect to the internet?	56k Modem	Phone
Device you use to organize addresses and phone numbers?	Rolodex	Phone
What do you use to organize your schedule?	Pocket Planner	Phone
What do you use to write quick notes and reminders?	Notepad	Phone
Device you use to keep track how many steps you take in a day?	Pedometer	Phone
What do you use to find driving directions?	GPS Unit	Phone
What do you read on the bus / plane?	Paperback Novel	Phone
Place where you keep all the store loyalty cards?	Key Chain	Phone
What do you use to pay for your coffee at Starbucks?	Cash	Phone
What do you use to make long distance calls?	Phone	Skype

Ok, that last item is a bit of a joke, but not really. I hardly ever use my phone to make actual phone calls. The other day I actually had to do a search for the phone app because I stuffed it in some folder to make space on the first few pages for the apps I actually use all the time.

Here is another interesting thought: a lot of people today are very skeptical of wearable technology. Devices such as smart watches or Google Glass type eye-wear may seem silly and gimmicky right now. But in 1999 this was exactly how I felt about smart phones – all I wanted back then was a cool, thin, switchblade style flip phone like Neo had. I could not have imagined that mere 15 years later my phone will be several times more powerful computing device than my Gaming PC was back then. But here we are.

If you told me one of my students will bang out a the assigned essay an hour before the deadline on their phone while sitting in the quad, I’d probably be skeptical. Bu that happened, and mad props to that student because there is no way I could ever type that fast on a touch-screen. I guess what I’m saying is – right now our technology is converging on the phone. Younger generations are fully embracing the mobile lifestyle, and many use their phones as their main computing platforms(which does explain the surge of popularity for the large screen devices). But it is silly to think that phones is where it will end. This is just a stage in a much larger process. At the moment we don’t know where it will go, but we do know that screen size is a limiting factor. Decoupling computing from a touch screen and expanding the display into your entire field of vision does offer many interesting new possibilities. Especially considering that we are already getting pretty good at the augmented reality thing.

So wrist mounted computation brick, coupled with Bluetooth connected eye-wear as a primary display is not necessarily a far fetched idea…

Aside of smart glasses, which are still very experimental technology, the other wearable area that is getting a lot of attention lately is your wrist. Smart watches are a big gamble, but one that at least has a potential to pay off. Google is aiming high with their Glass project, and quite a few fashion conscious individuals will have to grow into the idea of wearing a computing device on their head. Watches are an easier sell. People used to wear watches all the time before smart phones eliminated the need for wrist-bound time measuring device. Nowadays they are mostly worn as fashion statements (or “bling” if you will) but bringing back utility watches should not be extremely difficult. Especially since the precedent of wearing watches that do more than keep time has already been set by all kinds of stop-watch and calculator-watch devices in the past. I believe it is easier to get someone jumping on the smart-watch bandwagon than on the G-Glass train.

That said, I am already sold. I was waiting for wearable tech to start popping up on the market since Rainbow’s End. And it’s finally here. I am now a proud owner of a Pebble Smart Watch:

Pebble Smart Watch

So how is Pebble? It’s great, but it is not necessarily smart enough to warrant the “smart watch” tag. Without a smart phone to bind with, it is just a neat electronic watch with adjustable faces. Which in itself is really cool. Pebble comes with several nicely designed faces, and you can download many more from the interwebs or even create your own. That in itself is almost worth the price of the device itself. But other than that, the watch does very little else on its own.

By design the Pebble is a wrist mounted extension of your smart phone. Much like a Bluetooth headset which is supposed to give you hands-free auditory access to the device, the watch gives you almost “hands-free” access to visual cues generated by your phone: things like notifications, reminders and messages. This is the problem Pebble aims to solve:

Let’s say you are at a party or enjoying a meal with someone special and your phone suddenly blings, buzzes or makes some other unexpected noise that you think may indicate an important text message just came in. Without a Pebble on your wrist you may be tempted to immediately dive into your pocket to retrieve the phone, or start shuffling through the stuff in your purse to find it. Pebble allows you to just discretely glance at your wrist to see the message. While this may not be incredibly impressive, it is very convenient. The watch vibrates whenever it gets triggered so you will never miss that important communication even your phone is safely tucked away an out of your reach.

Pebble Menu Screen

That’s about the extent of functionality you get out of the box: custom watch faces, and phone notifications pushed to your wrist. Oh, and you can control the music player app with it. Pebble does have an API that allows developers to create apps that work with the device, but for now there are very few of them out there. Android users are actually much better off in this department since there are quite a few apps in the Google Play store. The iOS users do have access to some neat apps like Smartwatch+ but pretty much anything that isn’t advertised on the main Pebble website requires a jailbreak to work.

But I guess this is one of the downsides of owning an Apple phone: shit is locked down tight unless you are one of “special friends” with privileged backdoor access via unpublished API’s. For the time being stock iOS users have to set their expectations low when it comes to utility apps for Pebble which is rather unfortunate. I hear that iOS 7 is a little bit better about supporting complex third party Bluetooth devices but I’m not holding my breath.

Still, for the amount of utility it provides I’d say it is worth it. The e-ink display is great, the wrist-flick activated back light works amazing and the battery life is pretty decent. The Pebble website claims you can go about 7 days without charging, but it seems that number is closer to around 4-5 in real life settings. Still, this is rather impressive considering the fact it has an always-on Bluetooth transmitter in there. Anyone who used to strap an iPod mini to their wrist will probably be very happy with the device. While it doesn’t have the vibrant color display, you won’t have to charge it every night and it never goes to deep sleep mode when idle.

Would I recommend it? Yes, it is neat. I actually like having a time telling device on my wrist that also gets emails and text messages. Will it change your life? No, not really. Pebble is nowhere near revolutionary, but it is a small step towards true wearable technology. Consider it a training bra for the mainstream audience that aims to make them comfortable with the idea of strapping actual computer to their wrist one day. And as such it does a really great job.

I must ask, what were you expecting iPhone 5 to be like? Like just about all Apple users I followed the rumor mill, and read the descriptions of leaked designs. Before the big unveiling I had a pretty good idea what the new phone was going to be like: taller display, retina technology, faster cpu, more memory, better front facing camera, etc. Performance wise, it is noticeably faster and snappier than the old model:

I never really thought that the new iPhone was going to be anything but an incremental improvement over the existing model. And that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Apple released exactly what I expected, and in my book that is good enough. Barring the crappy map implementation you can hardly argue that iPhone 5 isn’t better than 4S. It is definitely a faster, more capable phone.

Did people thing the new iPhone will be Tony Stark’s super-phone from Iron Man? Did people expect it will have have a built in wall projector? That it will have the laser keyboard (that keyboard is terrible btw)? Holograms? 3D features? Cure for cancer? That it will have a drastically different look? That it will somehow change the world for the better overnight?

Or are Apple snobs just butt-hurt that the new device is not better than the Galaxy 3 in every conceivable way? That the Samsung could list more features on their bullet point list, and boast about their larger screen?

Sure, Galaxy 3 is a very nice phone, but I’m not really going to be switching to it. I have never been really impressed by bullet point lists of features. Those have always been the tools of marketing drones. The truth is that more features does not always automatically mean better. You have to look at a complete package to really see the value of a product.

For me Apple is still better value for the buck. For one, I rally like iOS. I think it functions well, and fulfills my needs quite adequately. Android is a great mobile system, and I’m really glad it exists. I want it to be as awesome and innovative as possible – I want it to compete with Apple on every step, because competition is a good thing. It keeps all involved players from becoming complacent and resting on their laurels. But, I have been using an iPhone for close to two years now, and I don’t really feel like jumping ship at this point. I know my way around the system, I know the little tricks, I have my favorite apps. The iOS works well enough and I don’t see any reason to switch right now.

I like the Apple hardware. Most of the Android phones that I held in my hands felt a bit cheep and disposable. The iPhone has always been a polished, high quality product. I have heard rumors that the new model is susceptible to scratches and chips, but I’m hoping they will correct that by the time I will be ordering mine – just like they eventually corrected the antenna issue on iPhone 4.

iPhone 5

I might be in a minority, but I don’t really think a large screen on a phone is such an advantage. I played around with a few big-screen Android phones and I found them cumbersome to grip and operate one handed. The width of 4 and 4S is about the right size for my hands, and I’m actually glad Apple decided to keep it that way. I have mixed feelings about the taller screen. On one hand, more vertical screen real-estate is definitely a good thing for most apps. Browsers and content delivery apps will be able to show more per screen, and 720p movies will finally be watchable without letter-boxing or stretching. That said, I’m a little concerned that the upper left corner of the iPhone 5 screen will become inaccessible for my right thumb. This wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t an iOS convention to put the back button in that corner on most apps. So I wouldn’t be disappointed if the screen size on the device stayed the same and apple just upped the effective resolution with the retina technology. Galaxy 3 screen size does not impress me at all.

To me a phone is an investment – it is not a toy, or a gadget that I will play around for a while and then discard. This device is to serve as an extension of my brain. It is my virtual limb, my sixth sense through which I experience the digital sphere. It needs to be stable and robust and hassle free. I love to tinker and hack things, but my phone just needs to work. The iPhone has been fulfilling this role for two years now, and I haven’t had a single complaint as to it’s function. My only issues were related to the app delivery model – or rather the closed nature of the iPhone ecosystem. But that was something I knew about going in. It was something I came to terms with and accepted before I plonked down the money for the phone.

Since I have gotten the phone, I have upgraded it’s OS twice and each time that upgrade was smooth and problem free. Each upgrade improved the phone’s performance, and made it more enjoyable to use (well, except the Apple Maps thing – that was a disappointment). My Android using friends on the other hand frequently complained about their phones running OS that was a version or two out of date, about lack of vendor and carrier support for updates, about memory leaks in core applications and etc…

This is the thing – I know that Apple supports their entire product line. I know that when I buy a phone, I can expect to be fully supported for the next 2 years. I can be sure that I will get not only security updates and bug fixes, but also full OS upgrades for free. If I was to switch to an Android platform, no such guarantee exists. Phone vendors support their latest and greatest model for up to 6 months at which point they usually switch their focus towards their new lineup of products. Cell phone carriers usually insist on crippling the Android OS and often want to be the sole provider of updates and bug fixes which they tend to be horrible at. It is a mess tat I don’t want to worry about when upgrading my phone.

So when my contract is up for renewal mid-October, I will be purchasing the iPhone 5. How about you?

Are you going to be getting the new iPhone? Are you mad at apple? Are you switching to droid? If yes, let me know in the comments.

Anyways, I have been doing a lot of writing and thinking about mobile technology. Clearly, portable computing is the future. The age of the desktop already passed, and traditional laptops are currently entering their twilight years. Pretty much everything that is not paper thin, and has a old-school spinning hard drive is to bulky to lug around.

I love my MacBook Pro but whenever I take it out “on the road” I find that it is not as portable as you would expect it to be. After about 4-6 hours of happy mobile computing I always find myself in a desperate need of a power socked to witch I need to tether myself. Compare that to the iPad which has a battery life of more than 10 hours. I charge that thing about once a week, and when I do I can stick the cord into any available USB port. The MBP needs to get plugged into a wall every day.

Clearly one of these devices was designed to be more “portable” than the other. A laptop (not just the MacBook – this goes for all the laptops out there) is more of a portable desk-top machine if think about it. You get to the office, plop it on a desk an start working. Then you fold it up, go home, plop it on another desk and work some more. Despite the name, keeping a laptop on your lap is not the most comfortable way to do computing. I mean, it can be done, but it will fuck up your hands after a while. The keyboards and touch-pads on those machines are not meant to be used from your lap.

A tablet, on the other hand was specifically designed for that type of work. It has the battery life, the form factor and the touch based UI instead of a mouse which prevents you from contorting your hand into a weird, unnatural position to click on things.

So a natural thing to ask is: could you work off your tablet? Could an iPad act as your primary workstation?

For me the answer was always no. An iPad cannot replace my laptop because it cannot run the tools I need to do my job. Even if there exist iPad versions of Vim and Python they do not meaningfully interact. Without file system, a working implementation of Git or the ability to install a web server I would not be able to do my job using it as a primary tool. I could use it as a lightweight email reader, but that’s about it.

For real work, I still need an actual computer. Something running a traditional OS. Something that can at the very least approximate the destination production environment towards which I’m developing.

But… Does this “actual computer” need to run on the machine I carry with me? Could an iPod be used as a thin client that connects to a remote system that lives somewhere else? Like at work? Or at my house? Or in the cloud?

Well… I don’t see why not. In fact, I’m not even sure why I haven’t done this already.

About a year ago a guy named Mark O’Connor has swapped his MacBook for an iPad and Linode. I highly recommend you read that article, because it is both inspiring and fascinating. Much like me, Mark is a user of Vim, and a person who is quite comfortable living on the command line. People like us run graphical environments mostly for stuff like Web and Email (because browsing the web in a text browser really sucks). We both chose MacBooks mostly because they had a fully functional Unix shell in a nice, hassle free UI package that surrounds it. Our real work happens on the terminal, and the other stuff (email, web, etc…) happens outside of it. They are basically expensive hardware and software shells that surround our primary work environment. But there is no reason why we would need to run said environment locally. There is no reason for the CPU that compiles and runs my code to be in the same physical location as me. As long as I can see the output, and there is no input lag, I don’t care where does that CPU live.

Mark has been using his iPad+Linode combo for close to a year now, and he reports no significant issues with the setup. At first he treated the whole thing as an experiment, but now it has become a way of life. Apparently the 3G connection by the way of a tethered iPhone is fast enough to run iSSH reliably and without much lag or hiccups. That said, he does live in a country with pretty decent cellular coverage. We Americans have to struggle with cell networks that barely approximate third world coverage. Still, this is quite impressive.

If you are curious about Mark’s setup, he described his entire stack and configuration here. For what it’s worth, I would use Tmux instead of Screen, would not need VNC access and of course use my own .vimrc. Other than that seems like a pretty decent set of suggestions.

Needless to say, I’m really tempted to try this. Probably not for work, but for my hobby projects. What appeals to me about it is that it marries the old school with the new. A perfect synergy between a command line / vim geekery and new and shiny ultra-mobile thin client. The way into the future, via the good old tried technology of the past.

What do you think? Have you ever tried a setup like this? Let me know in the comments.

I don’t drink that much Starbucks, and when I do I will usually go for the $2 coffee rather than the $15 frappuccino, and half the time I forget about the card and pay with cash so such a card would usually last me longer than a year. In the end, I collected about 10 of them. They were all sitting in different compartments of my wallet, and there was no way for me to determine which ones were depleted, and which had money still left on them. I desperately needed some way to organize. And wouldn’t you know it – there’s an app for that.

Starbucks App

Yes, Starbucks actually made an iPhone app that lets you register all your cards, and will let you pay from the phone via a bar-code that can be scanned in the store. So not only did this app allowed me to organize my cards, check their contents and re-load them if needed – it also freed me from the need to carry the cards with me.

I have quickly discovered that I can also get rid of my Dunkin Donuts cards, the same way. Since I got my coffee cards digitized, I started to slowly try to rid myself from all the unnecessary physical artifacts that I used to carry with me at all times. Or not carry with me.

For one, I refuse to carry grocery store loyalty cards with me, mostly because I’m a fan of minimalistic pocket inventory. The only thing I’m willing to attach to my key-chain are actual keys, or key like objects. The dangling grocery store scan tags are ugly, tacky pocket litter. So I was kinda happy when I found the CVS app. Now I can be like “yes, I do have a CVS card, now STFU” when I pick up my dad’s perscriptions at their pharmacy.

Of course this didn’t solve my grocery store tag problem, because not all of them had such apps, and I wasn’t really too keen on littering my phone with dozens of stupid “I display a bar code” apps. Recently I have found a perfect solution called Key Ring:

Key Ring App

That’s actually kinda what it is. It is an app that emulates that thing when you attach a hundred and twenty plastic bar code tags to your keys and can’t find the one you need at the grocery counter. Only this one is a virtual experience. Basically you lay out your card collection on the table, and scan them with your phone camera and the app does the rest. Then when you are at a store you tap the right card, and it displays a bar code.

Oh, and it also gives you some bullshit deals and promotions too (that’s how they make their money I guess) so remember not to let it Push notifications or else it will annoy you till you disable them out of frustration.

Feel free to laugh at my Blockbuster card. I had one in my wallet from way back when, and I was scan happy so it ended up in this app. I mean, why not. Maybe one day I will actually find a store that is still in business and rent a movie just to fuck with the employees there. Nah, actually that is not going to happen because blockbuster stores are about as easy to find these days as the fucking train to Hogwarts.

In the same vein, I also digitized my business card collection. I don’t get business cards often, but when I do I put them in the “very important stuff” compartment in my wallet. Coincidentally this is also the one compartment in my wallet with write only access. It works like a black hole – stuff goes in, but nothing comes out – not even the light. But over the years, said compartment started creating a bulge in my wallet and so I scanned all my cards in with Card Munch.

Oh, and if you sometimes take hand written notes that you may need later but you don’t want to be bothered with managing hard copies, go get JotNot Scanner Pro.

JotNot Scanner Pro

This is the app I wish I had in grad school. It lets you take pictures of paper notes, cleans them up (by automatically tweaking contrast settings for optimal readability), stitches them together into mutli-page documents and allows you to export the results as a PDF. It also integrates with DropBox, EverNote and bunch of other services. It’s possibly the most useful app on my phone right now, and if you are a student it is something that I would highly recommend buying.

This is my quest – I want to digitize my life. I want to free myself of physical clutter and artifacts of bygone era. If it can be scanned in, or photographed then I don’t want to carry it with me. How do you digitize your life? What are your favorite apps that help you make virtual copies of physical things you used to carry, or worry about managing? How do you manage and share your hand written notes with your peers online?

Why iOS? Because it is simple, sleek and rock solid. I like the idea of Android, but when I was shopping for a new phone to replace my aging Blackberry I’ve played with both, and iOS just seemed a better fit. It just spoke to me more, and it felt better in my hands. Usability and aesthetics won over the openness and I don’t regret it.

What kind of OS do you run on your phone and why? Do you root or jailbreak your device and why? Or conversely, why not? Are you currently locked into a contract? If so, what OS will you be changing to once you are able to?

Feel free to add other less popular operating systems to the poll. I just couldn’t think of any other ones that would be worth mentioning. I’d especially like to hear from people running unpopular or obscure OS choices. Or those three of you who still insist on using flip phones. Have you guys tried joining us on the dark side and just didn’t like it, or are you just settled in your ways?

Let me know in the comments.

Meet the mobile generation. Meet the next step in human evolution.

These kids are growing up with multi-touch devices in hand. This is interesting, because it’s is unprecedented. Some of us grew up with mobile gaming platforms – gameboys and such. Sadly, none of these were fully fledged computing platforms. Smart phones and iDevices are. To do anything other than gaming, we had to strap ourselves to a stationary device with mouse and keyboard. These kids just need to reach to their pocket, or be within a range of Wifi. For them these are their primary computing tools, desktops and laptops being secondary.

I often talk about how multi-touch is not all that it has cracked up to be. How the pictures under glass paradigm is not really that functional. But you know what? The youngsters don’t have such hangups. They make it work. Just like our forefathers who were quite handy and efficient on ye old teletype machines, kids these days take the touch paradigm and work the shit out of it. When I watch them use their touch devices, I sometimes feel like an old man. For me, doing anything complex on my phone is a chore. Copying and pasting things between apps or editing text is just a pain in the ass, and I usually just crack open my laptop for that. Not everyone is that way. I actually have met a kid recently for created, and maintained active online presence (a popular Tumblr, Twitter, facebook, etc..) with nothing but an iPhone and 3G connection. And I only know this because there was some glitch in the Tumblr interface at some point that could only be changed via the web interface which just happened not to work properly in mobile Safari.

A lot of people these days consider touch devices to be mainly content consumption devices. But it turns out that people actually use them for content creation. Younger generations somehow train themselves to get good typing speeds on the iPad keyboards and actually maintain short form blogs without a need for a traditional computer. They edit and retouch photos, they create rage comics and publish finger doodles. And soon enough we will have a whole new breed of Photoshop artists who have never actually touched a mouse in an artistic kind of way.

Now to me, experiencing the web through the tiny screen of an iPhone is a tad limiting. It’s liberating, yes – I love to be able to browse Reddit while waiting in line at my favorite food joint at my lunch break, or while taking a stroll. But I would not use it as a primary computing device. It’s my backup – it’s something I use when I’m away from my full size electronic devices. But for many kids touch devices are the preferred internet platforms. They live in the digital world, experiencing it through their hand-held touch devices. And they are almost as efficient at using internet as we are at using our desktops and laptops.

I still maintain that pictures under glass is a dead end. But the future generations are likely to adapt and make it work for them, so it may stick around for a while. Or not. At this point it is hard to tell. Perhaps we will find new ways to explore touch interfaces. Perhaps we will forge ahead with smooth glass interfaces. Or perhaps Google glasses will completely revolutionize mobile computing later this year. Who knows.

According to fairly reliable sources, Google pans to start selling Augmented Reality Android glasses later this year.

Guys, I don’t think you heard me. I said:

Augmented… Reality… Fucking… Glasses!

This year!

I don’t know about you, but for me this is a dream come true. I always wanted to have a HUD. When I was a kid, I would walk around pretending to have a military grade head’s up display that notified me about diagnostic state of my hidden cyborg weapons and locked onto potential targets on the street. And later this year I might be actually able to buy internet enabled glasses that will make this a reality.

That's how they might look... Maybe.

The Scientific American article I linked earlier was exciting, but it talked about new technology that may or may not become a commercial reality. But here we have Google, developing technology that it is determined to bring to the market. This is something that is happening, and I couldn’t be more excited. The question is whether or not this will catch on. Are we ready for AR glasses?

I mean, I know I am. I was born ready. But is the average consumer ready and willing to invest in such a gadget. Or will it be viewed mostly as a gimmick. Would you buy one? How much would you be willing to pay for it?

Question number two is whether Google can actually market these things. Google is great at distributing software and services, but they don’t necessarily have a great track record when it comes to hardware devices. The original Google Nexus phone was a really good device but suffered from the lack of availability on the major carriers that were reluctant to ship it. Because of that, sales suffered and it was discontinued. Let’s hope they can do better for these magical glasses.

Question number 3 is whether or not the app writers will embrace this device. The glasses will be useless if there is little to no software that exploits it. We don’t want these glasses to be the next Wiimote – a gimmicky device that few developers know how to use well, and mostly include a simple shake action as an afterthought. Instead we want to see an explosion of free AR software that will make these glasses indispensable.

Lastly, it will be interesting to see if Apple takes the bait and makes their own glasses to implement the iPhone. They could play it either way. If they choose to ignore the glasses they may potentially put a damper on the AR market. A lot of developers may become discouraged from developing AR apps for Android knowing that they would never be able to create ports for the more profitable Apple App Store. On the other hand, proliferation of AR software may be a kick in the groin that finally knocks Apple from it’s dominant position as the mobile market leader. If they don’t jump on it, they might give Google a dangerous advantage. Especially if Microsoft makes their own glasses for the Windows Phone – and they are so desperate to carve even the tiniest sliver of the mobile market for themselves, that they might actually do it.

If Apple comes out with their own glasses then the world may change forever. If both relevant mobile platforms have this technology, and are competitively trying to market and develop it, we might see it explode and completely revolutionize mobile computing.

We truly live in interesting times. I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on affordable, and functional AR glasses of some sort.

I have found both of these books extremely fascinating. Not just because they are really solid works of science fiction, but because I think both Stross and Vinge have a really good grasp at where our technology is heading. We live in the midst of a mobile revolution. Smart phones and ultra thin tablets are slowly pushing out traditional computing devices out of consumer space. The demand for ultra-portable, high fidelity computing gadgets is skyrocketing. Augmented reality is slowly making leaps and strides, limited not by software, or hardware but by the form factor of our current mobile devices. There is simply no way to deliver a persistent AR experience through the lens and screen of a smart phone.

So it is easy to imagine that these trends will culminate in popularization of virtual displays built into eye-wear – similar to the gadgets described by Stross and Vinge. It is almost inevitable, and unless we will invent something better in the next few years (like direct cortical interfaces) HUD eye-wear is bound to become a big thing soon. To wit, when I teach my class I like to show my students this slide:

One of my powerpoint slides

Granted, I always make sure the students understand that this is merely one of the many possible variants of the future. But, it is a damn likely one, considering we already have very complex augmented reality applications running on our phones.

I always thought that we will have to go through a Halting State stage, messing around with AR Glasses (a technology we already have) before we get to Rainbow’s End stage with contact lens displays. It appears that I was wrong. Or rather that both Stross and Vinge were right in a way.

Scientific American reports that AR displays built into contact lenses can become commercially available as soon as 2014.

Innovega researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation are developing novel contact lenses that can help view tiny full-color megapixel displays.

“Over the past months, we have demonstrated contact lens-enabled eyewear for mobile devices, including smartphones, portable game devices and media players that deliver panoramic, high-resolution experiences for entertainment and planned augmented reality applications,” Willey said.

The new system consists of advanced contact lenses working in conjunction with lightweight eyewear. Normally, the human eye is limited in its ability to focus on objects placed very near it. The contact lenses contain optics that focus images displayed on the eyewear onto the light-sensing retina in the back of the eye, allowing the wearer to see them properly.

Granted it’s not full Rainbow’s End tech as the lenses are said to still require some light eye-wear to accompany them, but it is an extremely promising start.

Despite my near constant computer use my eyesight has been pretty good so far. As a result I never actually used contact lenses, and the mere thought of sticking foreign objects into my eyes is giving me the shudders. But if I could get lenses that would interface with my phone and give me a real life HUD overlay I would immediately force myself to overcome this limitation. In fact, I might start training by sticking fingers into my eyes right now, so that I’m ready when these things hit the market.

Let me ask you a question? Did anything in that video impress you? Did anything in there made you go “wow, this is cool?” I personally was mostly shaking my head. The only neat thing in the whole video was the way separate devices paired up and exchanged data without any hassle. But it worked that way because it was a proof of concept demo. More or less this sort of thing is a bit of a pipe dream – primarily because different devices from different vendors simply do not interface like that. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, so this grand unified vision of swiping data from your phone onto your desk is a bit unrealistic. Even if both were made by Microsoft and were running the same type of OS, data transfer would still have to be more complex than that because of security concerns, authentication and practical issues. For example, today it is much easier to transfer data via Cloud based sync than via direct device-to-device connection which may seem counter intuitive to the laymen, but makes perfect sense to us programmers.

In cloud scenario both devices are individually authenticated against the cloud and can access the data directly – there is no transfer necessaryu. In direct transfer scenario, they would have to locate each other, authenticate, establish encryption, etc.. So the whole swiping your graph onto someones screen is basically just pointless eye candy. Yes, it looks cool but in real life it would actually be much, much more efficient. One engineer edits the graph on his tablet, and the other one sees the changes being applied in real time on his desktop because they are both using a cloud based colab software. There is no futuristic swiping – it just happens. And we already have this technology right now. It’s called Google Docs, Office Live, etc..

My problem with this video is that it basically shows us our current technology, throws in some absolutely pointless visual effects and pretends like it is the future. No it is not. What is the utility of having 3D holographic overlays hovering over your phone / tablet display? They look cool, but how do they improve your workflow? How do they make your life easier? They serve no purpose other than aesthetics. And while aesthetics are important, they must go hand in hand with functionality. This is something Apple has nailed in the recent years – their UI’s are pretty, but also very solid. Micrsosoft in their fervor to catch up, has completely missed this point and so far has been building pointlessly flashy overlays on top of their traditionally clunky interfaces. This video is a proof of that. If this is the future, then we have actually gone backwards in terms of productivity.

There is absolutely nothing inspiring in this video. It is dull, boring and needlessly flashy. It does nothing more but showcase technology we already have right now. We can already do everything that was shown in that video with our current generation mobile devices – it is just not as effortless. Why? Because we are using multi-function, real world operating systems and not clinically clean mock-ups designed for a TV spot. It is obvious that in real world scenario, getting things done on your phone will take a few more clicks. It is also obvious that finding a recipe for a cake is not going to involve flipping trough a virtual, touch interface driven picture gallery, but browsing the actual web, with an actual web browser. Not something you can easily do with one finger, but arguably much, much more flexible and functional.

Have you noticed that the most common interaction in this video are finger swipe, click and pinch gestures? You know, the same gestures employed by all the devices we have right now? What very common interaction is conspicuously downplayed in the video? Typing. Why? Because typing on touch devices really sucks. Yes, modern tablets and smart phones are really good at predictive suggestions and use adaptive floating hit-boxes but touch typing on a smooth glass surface is still inefficient and inconvenient. Typing on touch screens is almost always hunt-and-peck affair, simply because we can’t feel the keys under our fingers. And this is a huge problem with current touch technology – it provides no haptic feedback. Making fully functional touch interfaces that you can actually feel would be a huge breakthrough. In fact, we already have the technology to do it. It’s just very immature, and has not had much of mainstream media exposure. Perhaps because it is difficult to wow the audiences with haptics using a video showcase. Tactile feedback simply does not look exciting at all when you watch it on the screen. Swiping graphs between monitors on the other hand kinda does.

Brett Victor wrote a really insightful deconstruction of this video, explaining why the “innovation” shown in this video is essentially a dead end. He calls this mode of interaction “Pictures Under Glass”, and he in neither excited or inspired by it. He finds it rather ironic that the interfaces of the future are going to be less expressive than what we have right now.

Let’s face it – despite being around for over 40 years now (first mice prototypes were designed in the 60’s), a standard mouse is still much more comfortable pointing device than modern multi-touch screen. Why? Tactile feedback is a big part of it. Pinpoint accuracy is another. Our fingers are simply not designed for detail work – that’s why we have developed precision tools – tweezers, pliers, blades, needles, etc. Smooth, glassy interfaces attempt to turn the cock back and try to convince us we can solve our precision problems with simple poking, prodding and sliding.

In essence this video is not showing us the future, but the present, just with a prettified Hollywood style veneer. If we want to actually improve our UI’s we need to go beyond pictures under glass. We need to look into haptics, tactile feedback and virtualizing precission tools. We need to research interfaces that revolve around eye tracking, brainwave pickups that interface with HUD displays. We need efficient ways of delivering tactile feedback, preferably without using auxiliary hardware – so neural stimulation, subdermal implants, etc.. That’s the future.

But hey, what else did you expect from Microsoft funded initiative. These guys wouldn’t know future if it jumped out of the bushes and slapped them in the face. You need proof? Just look how well Microsoft is doing in the search and smart phone markets. Those are the technologies that completely blindsided them and caught them with their pants down. They are not the kind of company that will lead us in the mobile revolution. Not by a long shot.