Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Going tubeless
A while back I wrote about how my wife finally decided to join the 21st century by getting her first smart phone. Not only had I been shocked by the fact that the woman who barely had a use for her old dumb-phone now wanted one because she realized the world had gone App-centric and she could no longer get by without using any “Apps,” but that it had taken her a full decade to realize this.
Well it seems my reaction might have been a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
You see while I – “Mr. IT guy” – may have poked fun at her Luddite views surrounding technology and cell phones in particular, I was harboring my own, deep, shameful technology secret.
I was still using a “Boob-Tube” as my primary TV.
Yup, that’s right.
The TV at the heart of our living room’s “home entertainment system” was 27-inch Sony Wega CRT model from the turn of the century!
It’s not that I haven’t wanted a spiffy-new HDTV with all the bells-and-whistles all this time.
I did!
It was just when our last TV died almost 20 years ago, flat screen models were just coming out and were outrageously expensive. And being the frugal (not cheap!) kind of guy I am, I just couldn’t see dropping a couple of grand on a TV set.
So instead, I opted for the biggest and best conventional TV we could afford. And I have to say that the $600-plus we paid back then was well spent. That Sony Wega’s served us flawlessly for almost 17 years. Even today its picture looks and sounds as great as it did back then, so I’ve never been able to justify going out and spending $1,000 or more on another TV when the one we had was still perfectly good.
My plan was to always to replace it with a huge, hi-def, flat screen TV the moment it started going bad.
The only problem was, our old Sony showed no signs of breaking down anytime soon.
But this year, I’ve finally given in and joined the HDTV crowd and ordered a 55” 4K TV from Amazon.com during their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale
.
So what caused me to literally up my TV-watching game?
Why, “Mrs. New Smart-Phone User” herself, that’s who!
You see she decided it was time we renovated our family room, replacing the worn carpeting, doing some painting and other minor repairs. And as anyone who has ever embarked on one of these DIY adventures knows, these types of projects have a tendency to snowball and start encompassing other things…
… like replacing the worn our couch…
…and our easy-chair…
.. and getting rid of some furniture we really didn’t need anymore…
…and finally coaxing (goading?) me into building that built-in bookcase I’ve been planning on doing ever since we moved in 20 years ago.
A bookcase that, coincidentally, was to be designed around housing a large flat-screen TV.
So with that project underway, I started looking at Black Friday sales on new TVs, just to “get some dimensions” so I could leave the proper space for the future TV.
I, of course, had absolutely no intention of buying one. I mean after all we still had a perfectly good TV. But after having to lug that 100-pound behemoth around the room while painting and to get it out of the way for the carpet guys, I began to have second thoughts.
“Out of curiosity,” I posted it on Craigslist to see if anyone would want it, because I sure as hell wasn’t about to just put it out on the curb. And to my surprise in less than a day, I got a response from a guy whose kid likes playing retro video games. According to him, those old games actually don’t look good on newer TVs and needed an old-style TV like mine.
So with a clear conscience that I wasn’t being wasteful, I gave our old TV to him and freed my inner-geek who has been wanting to revel in all the 4K, HD glory that most of the world has known for a while now.
And to think, it’ll have only taken me almost 20 years to have done it!
Monday, May 29, 2017
Looks like you really do NEED an app for that ...
Well, it finally had to happen. Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff was finally and most reluctantly dragged into the modern era.That’s right folks, over the recent holiday weekend, my beautiful bride of over 20 years, finally gave in and bought her FIRST smart phone. A decade after Apple turned the world upside-down with its iPhone, she’ll finally be getting one herself.
It’s not that she’s a luddite or anything. She appreciates modern technology and has her own collection of electronic gadgets: a laptop, e-reader and even a tablet computer. It’s just that all this high-tech stuff and she aren’t exactly on a first-name basis. In fact, I’ve often said she tends to have trouble with anything more complicated than a toaster oven! Of course her standard reply to this is, “That’s why I married you. Built-in tech support.”
So about a month or two ago, when she first broached the subject of replacing her old dumb-phone with a smart phone I was surprised. She never wanted a cell phone in the first place and only got one because she drives a lot for her job and the one time her car actually did breakdown, she had a hell of a time finding a payphone.
For years, she just had clamshell-style phones, which she only used from time-to-time. (They probably spent more of their lives switched off in her car or in her book bag than actually on). Then a few years ago, she reluctantly upgraded to a phone with a keyboard because her boss was getting pretty upset at her because she could not text her during their workday (or after hours, which my wife absolutely hates).
That’s why I was shocked when she asked me if I thought she should get one.
“You hate it when your boss texts you at all hours now. With a smartphone, she’ll know you’ll have e-mail access too, and will probably expect you to answer that even after work. I thought you didn’t want that,” I said confused.
She doesn’t. In fact she said she doesn’t plan on putting e-mail on it.
“Then why do you want a smartphone?” I asked her now very confused.
Her answer surprised me not because it was something I’d never thought of, but because of its shrewd critique of our modern society.
She wanted one because more and more she felt like she was missing out and being excluded from taking advantage of everyday things that only people with smartphones could participate in.
It really hit her when she was at a professional conference down in Philadelphia. She wanted a schedule and map of the venue and couldn’t find one. When she finally got a hold of one of the event organizers, and asked for the info, they told her it was on their app, and she should download it. When she told the person she didn’t have a smartphone, they looked at her like she had leprosy.
Then there is the fact that at more and more of the stores she frequents, there are special offers she can’t take advantage of because she doesn’t have a smartphone.
“You don’t know how many free teas I’ve missed out on at WaWa because I don’t have their app,” she told me. “Pretty soon,” she continued, “I’ll probably need one for the grocery store” as they ditch their customer loyalty swipe cards for digital apps.
The more I thought about it, the more I saw she was right. It’s kind of just assumed that every man, woman and child above a certain age (which seems to be getting lower and lower each year) has a cell phone, and companies, professional organizations and even government are catering to the smartphone carrying public and forgetting about the ever-shrinking few who don’t have such devices.
If things keep on going the way they are, a smartphone is going to have to be “standard issue” item if you want to participate in society. If you don’t have one, you’ll be like the Dickens-esque pauper with his or her face pressed against a glass window peering and envying all the rich-folks enjoying a holiday meal.
Back when I was a kid, I thought all you needed to participate in society was a driver’s license and job. Now it seems you need a smartphone and an app for that.
* This column was approved by Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff and she endorses its content!
Saturday, January 28, 2017
You can't always get what you want in a car
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| Even Mick Jagger isn't thrilled that you can't get a manual transmission, moon roof and fancy touch-screen entertainment system in the same model of the new Honda Civic hatchback. |
Almost 50 years later, you’d figure that complaint would be obsolete. After all, with today’s technology, you can find just about anything on the web, or at least find someone who can make it for you.
Except, it seems, for cars.
Despite all the changes that computerized ordering, inventory and manufacturing have brought us, we are still pretty much stuck buying a car the way our parents and grandparents did.
Oh, sure, you can shop for a car online; get all its specs and details; compare and contrast different models without schlepping to a dozen dealerships; and even place your order with a dealership all from the comfort of your armchair.
But just try to get something other than what’s in a dealer’s inventory, and you can’t. They might as well have Ray Charles at the door telling you to: “Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.”
I’m sure this is true of other industries too. It’s just that I was rudely confronted with this fact last month, when my 10-year-old car developed a problem that wasn’t worth repairing and I unexpectedly found myself needing to go car shopping.
Now I’d been thinking about getting a new car for a while, and even had my eye on one: the new Honda Civic hatchback. My old car was a Civic coupe, but it wasn’t a hatchback, something all my previous vehicles had been. I prefer hatchbacks because of their cargo room, so my choice of replacement vehicles wasn’t hard.
I’d figured I just swap my old Civic EX coupe, for the all-new Civic EX hatchback.
Easy right?
You’d think so.
But I’m not like most people. (Just ask the long suffering Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff!)
Nope. I want things most “normal” people don’t. And one of those things I want, is a car with a manual transmission. I think it makes driving even a boring economical car like a Civic feel more sporty and fun. (Yeah, I know, I told you I was weird…)
All my other cars have been sticks ever since my Uncle Jack had me learn to drive one, and I had absolutely no intention of changing this now.
That was until I got to the Honda dealership.
Seems I couldn’t get that car with a stick shift in the same trim level as my old car.
At first I was a bit perplexed by this because the new Civic hatchback is being touted as a European sport hatchback and those types of car all come standard with a manual transmission.
Ok, I thought. No problem. I’ll just get the lower trim level that does come with stick and add the missing features – a moon roof and touchscreen entertainment system – as options. Sure it might be a bit more expensive, but, hey, I could afford it and it would give me the car I wanted.
Nope.
Those features are only available on the higher trim levels.
But I’m even willing to pay more and wait a while to get it!
Nope. Sorry. Honda doesn’t do custom orders.
Why? Why is this not possible? That’s what I want to know!
What I was asking for didn’t require Honda to re-tool its production line. The features I wanted were all available for the Civic, they just had to be put in one car. Computerized ordering and manufacturing systems should make this request easy to accomplish with minimal disruption. So why couldn’t they accommodate this request?
I understand that big car makers like Honda, Toyota, GM and Ford can’t customize every car to each customer’s liking and still turn a profit. But if someone is willing to pay a small premium for it, and it just requires a bit of mixing and matching of parts and features they already have, then why not do it?
The technology to do this exists. All that appears to be lacking is the will to stop doing things a certain way because they’ve always been done that way in the past. Auto manufacturers need to embrace the future if they want to survive.
Like me, Millennials are accustomed to world where they can pick and choose the exact options they want. And if they don’t get them one place, they’re sure to either find another that will, or create a company that will give them exactly what they want.
So if today’s auto makers don’t want to go the way of big bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble, they’re going to need to learn to adapt — and quickly. Or else — to paraphrase the Rolling Stones — we all might just find, someone else to give us what we need.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Don’t shoot the messenger
I think it’s pretty safe to say that over the last 35 years the rapid advances in computer technology have revolutionized the way we live, and I don’t think that most Americans can imagine going back to the pre-digital days of the late 1970s and early ’80s.
I mean, how the hell did we manage to live with only four major television networks, telephones tethered to walls that could only make and receive voice calls and personal computers that for the most part not only couldn’t talk to each other, but required you to master a bizarre and arcane language known as DOS to get them to do anything useful?
Yet only a few short decades later, the things we used to think of as impossible are now so commonplace that it’s hard to remember a time when our collective knowledge wasn’t literally at our fingertips.
For the most part this technological revolution has been a good thing. It has allowed ordinary people to organize and raise money for worthy causes or start businesses in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before (Kickstarter.com); given an outlet to millions of aspiring filmmakers (YouTube), authors (via e-books or on blog sites like this one), artists (Deviantart.com) and musicians (iTunes) who otherwise would never have found a way to share their work with such a huge audience; and made finding information on even the most obscure topic almost as simple as asking a question (Google).
But I fear the instant gratification our new tech has brought us has come with a downside; it’s made us impatient and perhaps a bit self-centered.
As our gadgets have become faster and faster at serving up what we want, we’ve become less and less able to appreciate the millions of tiny things that have to happen in the background to get them to work. We’ve come to expect that our creations will be perfect and function properly all the time and when they don’t, we become easily irritated at it or any humans who fail to live up to our “I want it now” expectations.
Maybe the world has always been this way and I am only seeing it now that I am getting older and perhaps a bit more cynical in my “old age.”
So it’s almost poetic that I noticed this trend the week I turned 50. My wife and I were on a cruise in the Baltic, when the brand new ship we were on lost one of its engines because of a technical glitch with one of its cutting edge power systems. We limped into port on the remaining engine without incident and aside from having to spend most of the rest of our vacation stuck in Tallinn, Estonia, everything else aboard our floating luxury hotel was perfectly operational.
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Our cruise ship, the MS Viking Star, in port in Helsini, Finland
a few days before one of her engines failed. It was using the
latest high-tech power system and despite the crew's best
efforts to fix it, they couldn't.
|
Now I can definitely understand my fellow passengers’ disappointment when the captain announced the cancellation of the rest of our trip after several failed attempts to repair the engine. My wife and I were also terribly disappointed that we were going to miss six of our 10 ports of call.
But listening to some people carrying on like it was the end of the world, hearing their unreasonable expectations and watching them verbally abuse the crew and staff who were obviously bending over backwards and doing their best to try to help us just made me want to scream.
I’ve been in similar situations at my job where a critical server has crashed, so I understood exactly what steps the engineering staff was taking to solve the problem and could emphasize with the kind of pressure they were under. So when some of my fellow passengers began vociferously telling anyone who’d listen how the ships’ crew and/or cruise line were incompetent, it became gallingly obvious that none of them knew the first thing about technology or how to troubleshoot it.
At one point one I even heard one of these “know-it-alls” say that the ship should have been carrying a extra engine incase something like this happens. It took all my self control not to march up to that person ask “Oh really? And do you carry an extra engine in the trunk of your car, in case the one under the hood breaks?”
Sigh.
Now being Jewish, I understand a lot about complaining. My people have raised it to an art form and even coined a name for it – kvetching – and if all some of my fellow passengers had been doing was kvetching, it wouldn’t have bothered me, nor would I probably have noticed.
Only when they got indignant and started blaming the crew for things which they had no control over, did I really realize just how much our ubiquitous technology has made us so impatient.
I don’t think people really have any idea of just how complex all our gadgets have made our lives these days. Sure those slick little boxes with their touch screens and pretty graphics look cool, but does anyone in the general public really understand how they work?
Most people don’t care as long as they do.
But therein lies the problem.
Sometimes the technology behind these gadgets fails and the reason for that failure isn’t as obvious as it used to be.
In the days gone by, if something broke, it was pretty obvious what part had failed, and the average person with some basic tools could fix most things pretty quickly.
But let’s face it, the days of the shade-tree mechanic are all but gone. Today you practically need a degree in electrical engineering and a computer just to retrieve the error codes from your car.
And things are only bound to get more complex from here on out. With computers designing more and more of our devices with little or no human input, it’s going to take us even more time to figure out a problem as first we’ll need to understand how the computers put the devices together before we can even start figuring out what went wrong. This, I suspect, is what happened aboard our cruise ship and explains why it took so long to fix.
Now I’m by no means suggesting that everyone needs to get a degree in engineering or computer science and start troubleshooting their own devices. (If they did, I’d be out of a job!) All I’m asking is for people to remember that our technology isn’t perfect nor are the people who design and keep it running.
Sometimes things break and sometimes my colleagues and I don’t immediately understand why it broke or how to fix it.
Yelling at us or constantly reminding us how you are being inconvenience by the problem doesn’t help us fix it any faster. Believe me when I tell you we don’t like having to work long into the night or through our weekends fixing a problem. We do our best to get everyone up and running as soon as possible so both you and we can get back to our every day lives.
Try and remember how you feel every time you upgrade your smart phone and struggle with all the new features just to get your e-mail and apps working again. Seems to take you forever, right?
Now imagine having to do that for billions of people on hundreds of different models of smart phones and you’ll have an inkling of what IT folks are up against each day.
So next time you have a tech-related problem, cut the people trying to fix it a break, take a deep breath and give us some time to figure it out.
Because despite what you’ve been told, not every problem can be fixed by turning it off and on again.
Friday, February 8, 2013
“Help me Obi-Wan. You're my only hope”
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| Back in 1977 stand alone holographic projections were just a dream. But now a company called iO2 Technology has turned that dream into a reality with their new "Mid-Air" holographic projector. |
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Did "Star Trek's" Communicator (left) inspire the design
of 1996's StarTACflip-phone? If not, then it's a pretty damn big coincidence. |
Next came the Tricorder, another “Star Trek” invention, which was a hand-held device used by the crew of the good starship Enterprise that was part computer, part scanner and part data recorder. If that doesn’t sound familiar to you now, you must not use a smart phone. There is even a free App for Android phones called “Tricorder” which uses your phone's real sensors to detect magnetic and gravitation fields and shows you environmental and geographic information. Add the multi-mega-pixel video and still camera on most models and a good sound-recording app and you’ve got a device that would even make Mr. Spock raise an eyebrow and utter “fascinating.”
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| It's obvious that Steve Jobs was a closeted "Star Trek" fan. How else to you explain how similar the iPad (left) looks to the PADD devices from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (center) and "Star Trek" the original series? |
But in my lifetime, I’d never thought I’d see any of the technology from the original “Star Wars” trilogy make it into the real world. After all, “Star Wars” was really more science fantasy than science-fiction, with space knights and laser swords and all that.
But the aforementioned e-mail proved me wrong.
Among the approximately 25 trouble tickets, 15 network traffic notifications and a dozen or so other business-related e-mails in my work inbox that morning was a message with this this subject line: “Help me Obi-Wan. You're my only hope.”
Naturally I was intrigued by the subject line, and since I recognized the sender, I opened the message immediately. Inside was a link to a company called i02 Technology, which appears to have a research and development division in a galaxy far, far away, because the link directed me to a page featuring the firm’s latest product under development: a “free-space” holographic projector that can be used “for full-size telepresence.”
If you are wondering what all that techno babble means, take a look at this clip from “The Empire Strikes Back” and you’ll get the idea.
According to the i02 Technology website, their new holographic projector “can be used under normal lighting conditions” and allows users to “reach out and truly grab, walk through, and engage real-time projections. IO2 systems allow life-size people to be displayed in free-space, and larger systems for greater sense of immersion.”
But what I really want to know is if they can shrink it down and integrate it into what should be their next obvious product, the Astromech droid. After all, you never know when you’re going to have to send an emergency message to a retired space knight after you’ve stolen the plans to some monstrous battle station.Even without an R2 unit, I’m anxious to see if this technology catches on and becomes affordable for the everyday person. If it does, then it means today’s video conferences will become as passé as making music mix tapes to play on your Walkman.
Just think, in a few years’ time, instead of your boss – or evil Sith Lord (who in some cases may be one-in-the-same) – video chatting with you to make sure you haven’t screwed up the plans for galaxy-wide conquest, you can behold his or her giant maleficent presence as if they were in the same room with you.
Which makes me think I should start practicing kneeling and humbly asking “What is thy bidding, my master?” right now.
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