Loosely Coupled

Chrome OS I'm excited about Google's announcement to release what sounds like an ultra lightweight OS to basically surf the Internet. I'm hoping this device will allow me (and others) to breathe new life into old, underpowered laptops, allowing them to essentially work as netbooks. This could also open up new and inexpensive opportunities for schools to recycle or prolong the life of expensive computing equipment and expand horizons of their students. I've been watching the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) movement for some time and I see this as another avenue toward their goal. I don't share the optimism that this OS will somehow replace Windows. Sometimes you need extra horsepower and functionality. I edit a lot of photos and create some simple video, but the web tools I've tried to do either task can't hold a candle to the four-year-old version of Photoshop Elements I own. I'm not sure CPU intensive apps like this will port very well to the web....

It's been a while since I had a post to talk about some of the new(er) technology I'm just hearing about. Here are three things that got me excited recently. First person user interfaces I came across this article on First person UIs . Basically it works like this: you have a location aware device like a smart phone with GPS and a camera. You're walking around and you see a historical building, business, or other point of interest (POI). You point the device's camera at the object and WHAMO - you instantly get a bunch on info about the object. This can include the name of the POI, how far it is away, a phone number to call, a history, and a bunch of other interesting tidbits. It will be like having a virtual tour guide in your pocket. This is very cool! This concept is also called "augmented reality". Google App Engine, Big Table, and more on the Cloud I recently watched this talk on Google App Engine . I've been watching Amazon's EC2 for s...

I haven't been doing too much development as I wait (and wait and wait) for our acceptance testing to complete. Here's a quick rundown of what I've been thinking about while waiting for that to complete.... I've been reading and participating in some of the discussions on StackOverflow . It's a great way to get a pulse on what others are thinking about and working on. I've also been able to pick up some things I never knew existed before. I've taken part in other question and answer type sites before and I had my doubts how helpful this would really be... I've been pleasantly surprised. I listened to these great podcasts on alternative energy. Grass as fuel?? Pretty cool. I've been thinking about maybe getting some solar panels for my house. I would never have thought that the Northeast would be a good place for these until I saw a cool episode of Nova sometime back where someone in Mass. had some installed on their house. Now maybe I...

I was glad to hear mention of OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) in a podcast I listened to early this week. OLPC (a.k.a. the $100 laptop) is an organization whose goal is to provide inexpensive laptops to children for education. Integrated collaboration is one of the key features offered in these laptops. The belief that information and ideas are meant to be freely and openly shared is a core principal of open source software... and it's revolutionized the software industry. Allowing children to learn the value of this openness firsthand, will hopefully lead to a more open and collaborative environment in other fields (government for one) when these children enter the workforce as adults. To help foster these ideals away from school, children will need access to the Internet at home. Fast and cheap, widespread Internet penetration needs to improve. In the neighborhood I live there is one broadband provider and it's rather expensive - making it out of reach for many lower inco...

I love TV. Granted there's a lot of garbage content, but there's also a lot of great content. Since the VCR, it's been possible (although clumsy) to time-shift your TV programs - watching the programs you want, when you want. Things like TiVo and DVR provide a cleaner interface to this functionality while adding useful new features like "pause live TV". The problem with these technologies is that you need to know the programs you want to watch in advance . If you've just discovered a new series and want to watch previously aired shows, you''ll need to wait for the TV network to rebroadcast (or for the episode to be released on DVD or iTunes). Enter Move and Joost . These new products offer the promise of time-shifted, on-demand TV, offered over the Internet. Both these products allow the owners of the content (networks) to control distribution, so there's no YouTube-like copyright worries. Joost works more like a file sharing system (think...

I wanted post a quick note about new technology I heard about today via podcast . The technology is freebase created by Metaweb . As you might guess from the name, freebase is a free database for the web containing all sorts of information contributed by users. In other words, it's a huge Wikipedia-style database that anyone can contribute or query to find interesting (and possibly little known) information and relationships between seemingly unrelated objects. For instance, assuming the information is in the database, I could query to find "all wooden roller coasters in the northeast longer than 5200 feet." That's pretty cool. Assuming I found some results, I could whittle down the set further, looking for which roller coasters have been ridden by Rock Stars or with lower height restrictions (so I could ride with my daughter). Because the data can be contributed by the average person, the breadth and depth of the information to search for will grow quickly (an...

One Laptop Per Child ( OLPC ) is a movement to create inexpensive, full featured laptops to be used by children for education. The design of this machine is geared at promoting creativity and collaboration. Each system features wireless capabilities for students to connect and communicate with teachers and other students. The user interface centers on activities that children participate in to learn. This differs from a traditional UI which focuses on tasks and applications. The laptop is enclosed in a durable case with a kid friendly handle. It also includes many power saving features, including the ability to charge the battery using human power (like turning a crank or pulling a string). This is an important consideration for areas with little or no access to power. The price of the hardware is very low (around $100). In addition, much of the software for this system is being developed in an cost friendly, open source model. I'm excited about the possibilities this ...

I've previously written about Rich Internet Applications and how they bring desktop-like functionality to web applications. The knock on this technology has always been "how do I work if I don't have an Internet connection?" Last week, Google announced Google Gears , a framework designed to address this problem. Google Gears provides 3 modules developers can used to make their web applications available offline. LocalServer allows web applications the ability to store, then serve, web content locally when a user does not have an Internet connection. These resources can be updated when the user is reconnected to the Net. Database provides persistent storage to the application when working offline. WorkerPool allows long running operations to be "chunked", and run in the background without blocking the browser. It's likely Google developed this technology to widen the appeal and availability of it's Google Docs & Spreadsheats offeri...

I'm pretty excited about the latest consumer tech products I've seen from Apple and Microsoft. Although they seem to target slightly different segments, both have new offerings which push user interface and interaction to a new level. iPhone Early this year, I watched the Macworld video where Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. I was blown away. It was easy to see the new possibilities offered by this device. I mean, the phone I have now offers many advanced features that are clumsy and frustrating to use (web access, email, text messaging, etc) . The iPhone makes these tasks intuitive (and it looks fun). As the average user gets a hold of this, I'm guessing we'll see a spike in web traffic as mobile computing goes mainstream (sort of like what the iPod did for digital music). It will forever change the way people interact with the Internet and our products. Microsoft Surface Computing Yesterday I watched a video demoing Microsoft Surface Computing. I don...

It's Friday and I don't feel like writing anything I have to think about too much. I thought I'd start a list of some of the online resources I regularly use for news and inspiration. I hope to add to this list as I go. Props to these great innovators! Kayak Kayak is a travel search engine. Kayak makes excellent use of AJAX, adding results as they are discovered, and allowing users to tweak results (times, airlines, stops, etc) without a page refresh. I love how natural this application is to use. I also appreciate how willing they are to share the technology they're using and other cool stuff . CSS Zen Garden This site really cemented, for me, just how powerful and flexible CSS can be. I can spend hours browsing designs and learning new techniques. I do not have an extensive background in design and this site has really helped me refine my user interfaces. Amazon I'm always impressed with the great innovations Amazon has developed for users b...