Vinko’s Thoughts On…

Having worked in the technology field for the past 17 years and an avid gadget guy, I am the first to admit that a technical solution is not always the best solution.

Some times a pen and paper is the right solution.

Take for example, a widow in Ohio, United States, rented a rotary telphone (remember those?) for 40 years and paid a total of USD14,000.00 for it over the period. AT&T was charging this lady USD29.95 a quarter for the service.

When her relatives found out, they helped her switched to the new digital service. Although the new service from AT&T saved her money every month, she insisted that she wants the rotary telephone back.

The moral of the story is that sometimes the best solution is not about cost savings. The right solution is what fits the needs and requirements of the end-user.

In my experience, the above concept is often very difficult to convince CFOs or Financial Controllers of companies. These individuals job is to reduce cost and increase revenue. It is human nature to take the shortest path or the path with least resistance.

I am not saying that all corporations are as I had described above but there are just too many.

Until more corporations figure out the balance the loser in this game are the end-users.

A senior Japanese researcher at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories outside Kyoto, has created a machine in his own image. A perfect thing for times when you need to go see a chic flick with your wife or girlfriend. Of course this also applies for the women who have to suffer through the ball games or action movies.

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The attached video shows what SUN OS R&D is thinking about.

Please note that this is not about OS war or comparing how great one OS over the other. Or whether one OS copied another.

Do note that this SUN OS experiment was done well before Mac OS X had its public beta and long before Microsoft “Longhorn” (aka. Windows Vista) was even a project.

My personal preference and computing tool of choice is Mac OS and had been for the past 21.5 years.

Ever went into a record store not knowing the name, artist or title of a song you looking for, and decided to hum to the store staff expecting them to know what song you’re looking for?

Well, the students at New York University may have a solution for record stores around the world.

They have created a system that allow one to hum into a microphone, the computer records it, analyse and extracts the melody and rhythm characteristics, then compares it to its database returning a ranked list of possible songs.

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Our counter parts on the Windows platform had been playing with Google Earth for almost a year.

As for Tuesday, January 10, 2006, Google made the Mac version of Google Earth public.

If you do not know or have not seen Google Earth, then I ask you to read Google’s description on the Google Earth home page, rather than me describing it to you. Better yet, download the application and check it out for yourself to see what the Mac community has been missing all this time.

BTW: Google had this well before Microsoft decides to launch their Live Local… Local Live… what is it called??

After playing with it for an hour. I can see that Google still have a long way before they are able to make Killer front end applications. The feel of Google Earth for the Mac is like that of the Windows version. The interface feels awkward and definitely not Mac app like.

I guess this opens up an opportunity for 3rd Party to build something more Mac like, that is if Google would release the API for Google Earth as they did for Goolge Map.

You may say, can you be a bit more specific about the deficiency of Google Earth’s UI? Well I can give you one example, since I do not want to get into the details for obvious reasons. The process of adding a Placemark is a bit cumbersome. It requires the user to bring up a web page (wizard) within the user’s default browser. This web page is simply for Google to ask the user to acknowledge the verification of any previous identical Placemark submitted; a manual and user honest process. The subsequent submission form does not copy the title of the Placemark from Google Earth to the form except for the description.

It is obvious, why Google is advertising for Macintosh Developers.

Please don’t get me wrong, this release of Google Earth is very welcomed, and the application fully capable of demonstrating the power and features of Google Earth. I just wish it was more of a Mac-like appliction. I am sure version 2.0 will be much better.

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Pandora is a new service by Pandora Media Inc.. It is essentially a very smart customized radio station. It is based on the work from the Music Genome Project.

It allows you to specify the music you like and based on the Genome of the music specified it will play other songs that it thinks you will like.

The great thing about this service is that it does not require any download, accept for the FLASH plug-in to be installed on your favorite browser.

Why do I think Pandora is great? Well we have to begin by talking about the problem with many of the current online music stores (iTunes Music Store, Connect, etc.) and similarly the brick and mortar stores (HMV, Best Buy, SAM’s, etc.). The fact that it is difficult to find what you (the individual) like. More importantly, what I may like based on my music preference. Pandora solves this problem by using the Genome of the music you specify to seek out other songs that you may like.

This is similar to the technology applied with Amazon.Com and other online retail, but this is done without other members’ input.

Pandora’s Genome library is built by professional musicians, each with at least 3 years of professional music experience, performing classification of a song.

Each song takes about 3 hours to classify and each musician participating had gone through extensive training on Music Genome.

You can check out My Radio Station at Pandora.

This Philips technology is exactly the type of device shown in the motion picture “Red Planet“. Remember the electronic roll-up map that the characters use to check their location after they crash on the Red planet?

It is not surprising that motion picture props designers spend so much time researching the technologies demonstrated in the movies, just to add a sense of believability to the movies that they are designing for. While at the same time the designers also offer the audience a bit of imagination for the future by extending these technologies to the edge of realism and practical use.

Similarly in the movie “Minority Report” Tom Cruise was moving objects around on the screen just by waving his hands in front of the screen using gestures.

Here are some photos of the Philips device from Engadget.

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