Find: textbooks, ereaders, and technology in class

Class is less about receiving information, more about connections and application. 

Future U: The stubborn persistence of textbooks



Future U is a multipart series on the university of the 21st century. We will be investigating the possible future of the textbook, the technological development of libraries, how tech may change the role of the professor, and the future role of technology in museums, research parks, and university-allied institutions of all kinds.

Future U



  • Future U: Classroom tech doesn't mean handing out tablets
  • Textbooks are a thing of the past, says the common wisdom. Well, the common wisdom of the Technorati maybe. The problem with that thinking is that the number one publisher in the world is Pearson, a textbook publisher, who brought in $7.75 billion in 2009.


    Pearson, as Tim Carmody noted in a January Wired article, owns 50 percent of the Financial Times, as well as the number two trade house: Penguin. The second largest textbook publisher, McGraw-Hill, owns Standard and Poor’s. To say textbooks are big business is like saying bullets are ouchie.


    So writing the obituary for textbooks would be putting the cart before the horse. But pretending like they are not changing their shape, if not their nature, is to proclaim, from one's buggy, that automobiles are a passing fad.

Find: Video clips of Apple ceo Tim Cook on Steve Jobs, Apple TV, patent wars, and more


Video clips of Tim Cook on Steve Jobs, Apple TV, patent wars, and more

So you've heard about Apple CEO Tim Cook's thoughts on running the company post-Jobs and how he feels about standards-essential patents. But what about all the other stuff he chatted about with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference on Tuesday night? You could read liveblogs, or you could watch some of the video clips that are beginning to be posted on All Things D's website.


Here are a few of our favorite clips from the nearly two-hour interview.


Tim Cook on Steve Jobs being a "flip flopper":

Find: US government to make data available through apis

Soon please. 

Open government reboot focuses on APIs instead of data



Issued by the Office of Management and Budget, the Digital Government Strategy is the basis of a new White House directive to expose "high-value" Federal data through Web APIs


Have you ever wanted a mobile app that ties your location to crime statistics, government environmental and health data, and weather and solar flare data to calculate the hourly probability of a zombie apocalypse?  While that may not be exactly what the White House has in mind, it’s the sort of mobile mash-up that a new Federal IT policy could make a lot less difficult to create. The Obama administration has added another twist on “open government”—open, as in open API.


On May 23, the White House issued a directive that requires all agencies to establish programming interfaces for internal and external developers to use, and make “applicable Government information open and machine-readable by default.” As part of an effort to push government toward a cloud-computing future, the White House is encouraging agencies to make their data more developer friendly, and to create a shared platform for providing mobile access to data for both citizens and government employees. And they have 12 months to start delivering.


The goal of the new policy, called the Digital Government Strategy, is to jump start the government’s three-year old open data initiative, draw more private developer interest, and encourage the development of mobile applications that connect citizens and government employees more effectively with data that has previously been public, but nearly inaccessible.

Find: Nice survey of mobiles and health


X-rays and iPads: The network healthcare evolution


Future of Bandwidth



  • How much bandwidth does your office really need?

  • Bandwidth explosion: As Internet use soars, can bottlenecks be averted?
  • At the rate technology has changed everything else in our lives, by now we should have the equivalent of tricorders in our smartphones—instant access to our health statistics collected by sensors in our clothes and pulled into our individual health history in the cloud. We should be able to Skype our physician, text our pharmacist, and get both a blood sugar measurement and an MRI at Starbucks while waiting for a grande latte.


    Except for the MRI part, all of that is doable today. Thanks to the big stick provided by the Affordable Care Act in the US, some healthcare organizations are pushing more aggressive use of network bandwidth and cloud technology:



    • Monitoring patients’ health more proactively with networked devices, ranging from wirelessly networked medicine bottle lids to worn or embedded sensors that report back on vital signs;

    • Coordinating care with the help of analytic tools in the cloud and a wealth of individual and collective patient data; and

    • Connecting physicians directly with patients over PCs or mobile devices for between-appointment follow-ups.
    • Those things can’t be pulled off without cloud technology, whether it’s hosted internally in a health organization’s data center or elsewhere. But ask any random sampling of physicians, technologists, and health industry observers. They’ll tell you technology isn't restraining the next big paradigm shift in health care. The bandwidth is willing.

Find: Google maps replaced in ios 6?

Google and apple haven't been best of friends lately, so....

Allegedly "leaked" photos show 3D features coming to iOS Maps

Wondering what the rumored Maps app for iOS 6 is going to look like? BGR claims to have received a number of predictably blurry photographs of the app, which the site has posted as a photo gallery. The photos show views of the maps and a couple of UI elements, leading BGR to try and piece together a composite image of what it believes the end result will be.


One of the UI elements shown in the alleged app photos is a button that says "3D" next to the button that allows the user to find his or her location. This would support previous rumblings about Apple putting some of its acquired mapping technologies to use as part of iOS 6—C3 Technologies, a company that Apple purchased in 2011, was largely known for its 3D mapping technology. Such technology has been widely expected to become part of Apple's complete makeover of the iOS Maps app eventually, it's just a matter of when.


Apple also purchased Placebase in 2009 and Poly9 in 2010—known for their APIs and Google Earth clones, respectively. With the C3 acquisition, Apple has a strong portfolio of mapping technologies that are just waiting to make their way onto users' iPhones. Will we finally get a chance to hear about those plans at WWDC in two weeks? According to BGR, the new Maps app is "currently being tested in build 10A3XX of iOS 6." Apple has been keeping mum on what it plans to discuss at its WWDC keynote, but OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6 are the most likely candidates, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Find: Nearly 1 million iOS jailbreaks over Memorial Day thanks to Absinthe

One click jailbreaks. Nice. Good intro to jailbreaking. 

Nearly 1 million iOS jailbreaks over Memorial Day thanks to Absinthe


The developers behind the iPhone Dev Team and Chronic Dev, among others, released a new version of their iOS jailbreak tool, Absinthe, last Friday. But is jailbreaking iOS devices still en vogue? It certainly seems like it: the latest version, which performs an untethered jailbreak of nearly all iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1—including the iPad 3—was reportedly used to jailbreak at least 973,086 devices over the Memorial Day weekend.


Jailbreaking skirts around the built-in security features of iOS, allowing users to install third-party software not approved by Apple, customize the user interface, and even access an iOS device's command line and file system. It can also enable unlocking a (GSM) device from a particular carrier for use on an alternate carrier, or using SIMs from local carriers when traveling abroad.


Jailbreaking can sometimes be a difficult process because developers must often find security holes that allow the jailbreaks in the first place. Apple constantly works to plug those security holes, and many times, new versions of iOS or devices with newer processors are difficult to crack. They may also require "tethering" to a computer with jailbreak software running in order to reboot.

Refs: more pencasts

Folks,

Here are more pencasts of our project work. It's getting pretty confusing to find all the summer 2012 only content for this course, so I'll make a page that collects it all for us soon. In the meanwhile:
Best,

Ben

Assignment: text reading for next Tuesday & post CityCamp ideas

Hey folks,

Don't forget to post your CityCamp ideas (or "problems", one per group) before tomorrow at 1p.

We'll discuss text and mobiles next Tuesday. Post your reactions to my notes, pencast, and the first two readings in the wiki by Monday @ 130p. React to all of this content.

See you tomorrow at CityCamp!

Best,

Ben

Find: Apple CEO Tim Cook -- Steve "taught me that the joy is in the journey"

Steve's approach to design and life continues.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Steve "taught me that the joy is in the journey"



Steve Jobs taught Apple CEO Tim Cook to "never ask what he would do," Cook said on stage at the 10th annual All Things D conference on Tuesday. "Just do what's right. And so I'm doing that."

Cook took the opportunity to reflect upon the lessons he learned from Jobs before his death last October, explaining that the founder never wanted Cook to dwell on what he would have wanted after he died. Instead, Jobs wanted Cook to avoid thinking about the past and instead look to the future, focusing on creating the next great thing.

"When he called me to his home to talk about being the CEO and subsequently the discussions we had, he told me, 'I witnessed what happened at Disney when Walt passed away,'" Cook said. "He said that people would go to meetings, and all sit around and talk about, what would Walt have done? How would he view this? And he looked at me with those intense eyes that only he had, and he told me to never do that, to never ask what he would do. Just do what's right. And so I'm doing that."

Find: Some publicity about CityCamp Raleigh -- turns out Raleigh has an sms email alert service

The Raleigh Connoisseur

Last year, CityCamp Raleigh raised the bar on the city’s adoption of open-sourced solutions and helped bring citizens to the problem solving table. This weekend, the gang behind the event are hosting it again with the same $5000 prize for the best idea and solution.

Within a year, has been at the root of a few accomplishments in the city as the website states:

Here are some of the ways the first CityCamp Raleigh was an inspiration or catalyst in helping to advance open government and create next-generation solutions locally:

  • The Raleigh City Council unanimously approved a resolution stating its intent to foster “open” government by encouraging the use of open-source systems and open access to data.
  • City Councilors agreed to provide $50,000 annually to fund an open data catalog. Raleigh city data will be digitally published and made ready for use by city residents, software developers or news outlets.
  • City of Raleigh website visitors can now sign up for a free service called MyRaleigh Subscriptions that delivers email and text alerts about topics such as street closings, public meetings, city projects, and events.
  • Help spur the TriangleWiki project – a free, openly-editable, community-owned website that gathers first-hand information on local history, events, greenways, parks and everything interesting related to the Triangle region.

CityCamp now sets up Raleigh for even more throughout the next year and everyone is invited to the free event this weekend.

Register for all or just parts of the CityCamp weekend.

Friday, June 1
Where: Vintage 21 (117 S. West Street)
Time: Doors at 12pm, Panel discussion and lightning talk at 1pm.

Saturday/Sunday June 2 and 3
Where: AIA NC (14 E. Peace Street)
Time: Saturday 9-5, Sunday 10-3 with group presentations to follow.

See and hear more about CityCamp.

Similar Posts:

Find: nearly half of us smartphones are iPhones

But android outsells ios two to one worldwide. 

Benedict Evans

(This is an extract from a report I published last week for Enders Analysis

A little observation and collation: 

All 3 US (major) operators that sell the iPhone report their unit sales, and AT&T and Verizon report total smartphone sales. The iPhone is utterly dominant. 

#more 

Even at Verizon Wireless, which has aggressively promoted Android, the iPhone is now over 50% of all smartphone sales. 

As time goes on, we can estimate what this is doing to the installed base of smartphones (which they also disclose):

Expanded distribution and the new iPhone 4S combined mean that the iPhone now has 42% of all US smartphones in use today, and growing. 

As should be obvious, this means that though Android is outselling the iPhone 2:1 globally, the iPhone is substantially outselling Android in the USA. 

(Note: the second chart is for the total US market, including T-Mobile and other smaller carriers)

Sent with Reeder

Find: IDC worldwide smartphone OS survey: market up 45% over year, android 58% share, iOS 23% share

IDC Press Releases
Smartphones powered by the Android and iOS mobile operating systems accounted for more than eight out of ten smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2012 (1Q12), according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

Find: Dataland -- 70s project leveraged the L in latch

dataland 1020

Notice the eames chair and the influence person the Mac. 
The Verge - All Posts
In research for our latest Future Passed piece, I came across the mention of "Dataland" and a spatial data-management system. Hardly the most exciting-sounding concept, couched in academic technobureaucratese from the late '70s, but I started digging around in old forums and email lists, with the hope of finding more about this photo mentioned in The Computer Age: A Twenty Year View. I eventually hit internet gold, finding the original spatial-data-management system study PDF deep in the MIT archives at the Speech interface Group.
Granted, MIT and many other academic and government institutions have come up with countless interface and computer design ideas over the years, but this one has a direct connection to the history of popular...

Find: NCSU-led Android Malware Genome Project will catalog, share Android malware

NCSU is a leader in mobile malware. Primary in that group is Xuxian Jiang

Ars Technica

Amid rising concerns about mobile malware, a group of security researchers is launching an initiative to improve collaboration around mobile threat analysis. They want to encourage researchers to share their malware samples with each other and work together to identify and catalog the hostile software.

The effort, which is led by researchers at NC State, is called the . The name alludes to the scientific undertaking of gene mapping. The security researchers similarly aim to unravel the constituent parts of Android malware and figure out how it all fits together. They hope that this will eventually pave the way for coming up with better and more proactive defense mechanisms.

According to the project’s website, the malware research collected by NC State has already been shared with 27 other organizations around the world. The recipients appear to all be universities and technology companies.

Find: Nice camera intro -- Apple's options for the next iPhone's camera

As they discuss possible camera improvements, nice intro to various camera technologies. 
Ars Technica

Apple
Apple has introduced significant improvements to the iPhone's camera capabilities in nearly every iteration of the device. And while rumors about the next-generation iPhone have largely concerned screen sizes and exotic materials, very little has been rumored about the camera thus far.
We decided to examine some potential technologies Apple could incorporate into the next iPhone to boost its photographic flair. Because the iPhone's camera is a combination of sensor and lens hardware controlled with software, we'll look at each part separately.

Hardware

The iPhone 4S camera hardware is already pretty capable, especially given the constraints of the device's size. It currently features an 8 megapixel sensor with backside illumination and a "full-well" design, technologies used to maximize its light gathering capabilities and dynamic range. Its five-element autofocus lens is sharp and provides even illumination across the image. And its "Hybrid IR" filter helps maximize color accuracy and sharpness.

Announcement: don't forget your readings

Folks,

Just a reminder to do your readings for Tuesday, and post them by Monday.

Also, don't forget to give us permission to have you post publicly, this is the only way you will gain permission to post to our course site, as you will have to do for our example critique, and your final project post.

Best,

Ben

Brainstorming: project ideas

Folks,

Here's the pencast of the ideas we ran through today.

Best,

Ben

Announcement: our project teams

Folks,

We've just formed our teams, and assigned core themes. They are:

  • Sustainability
    • Lorena
    • Deepali
  • AR
    • Lawrence
    • Leonel
    • Fadi
  • Games
    • Alyssa
    • David
    • Jeff
  • Maps & stories
    • Kayla
    • Jason
    • Will 
Best,


Ben

Homework: brainstorm project ideas & register for CityCamp

Hey folks,

Your jobs for tomorrow's class are to:
  • Brainstorm some ideas for mobile apps benefitting the City of Raleigh.
    • These should intersect with one or more of our themes: story and place, sustainability, games, and augmented reality.
    • The ideas may use some of the civic/county/state data available online.
    • They may be inspired by some of the ideas suggested online at CityCamp and OpenRaleigh.
  • Register for CityCamp, for as much time as you are able.
You can find more information at our previous post.

Best,

Ben

Brainstorming: app pitch pencast

Folks, 

Here is the pencast for today's pitches of the apps that emerged from our brainstorming.

Best,

Ben

Find: Amazon Appstore lets you test drive android apps

Amazon Test Drive Android

The Verge - All Posts
Amazon has offered realtime demos of Android apps on its website for over a year through the company's Test Drive program. Now the online retailer seems poised to offer the same functionality directly on Android hardware, and has begun rolling out the feature to users who've installed Amazon Appstore on their device of choice. Rather than putting you up against the clock like Google — which allows users to request a refund up to 15 minutes following an app purchase — Amazon's solution lets customers sample an application without buying (or installing) the software directly.
Unfortunately, Test Drive is limited to select (and unspecified) handsets at the moment; we installed the latest version of Amazon Appstore on a gamut of devices...

Find: Tablet shipments grew 124 percent in Q1 2012, 63 of market was iPad

ipad smart cover

The Verge - All Posts
Early 2012 has seen the tablet market continue to grow, and Apple remains at the head of the pack, according to a new report from NPD DisplaySearch. In the first quarter of 2012 Apple reportedly shipped 13.6 million iPads, which was good enough to capture 62.8 percent of the tablet market during that period. Those numbers were no doubt bolstered by the release of the third-generation iPad in March, which saw brisk early sales. Samsung followed with 7.5 percent market share (1.6 million units), while Amazon came in a distant third with four percent (900,000 units) — an especially interesting estimate as Amazon is traditionally tight-lipped about Kindle shipment data. And all of those shipments have lead to a 124 percent year over year...

Find: Jony Ive on design inspiration

Jony Ive

Jony is the lead industrial designer for apple and a major force there. 
The Verge - All Posts
Apple's chief designer Jonathan Ive is back home in the UK today, preparing to receive a knighthood in recognition for his contributions to design and enterprise. Like most of his colleagues at the secretive Cupertino company, Ive is rarely seen or heard from in public, but his current visit to his homeland has been accompanied by a thoroughgoing interview with The Daily Telegraph. In it, Ive acknowledges the great debt of gratitude he feels toward his father, a teacher by trade who Ive describes as "a very good craftsman" that would build furniture and silverware all by himself. It was in watching his father work that young Jony developed an appreciation for the attention to detail and quality that would later come to mark his work —...

Find: Sonar, a people discovery app

sonar iphone

Like one of the apps pitched today. 
The Verge - All Posts
If you're not familiar with Sonar, it essentially takes data from Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and shows you people nearby you're friends with or might know. While Sonar isn't the buzziest member of the "people discovery" app category (which includes Highlight and Circle) that heated up at SXSW this year, it might actually be the most capable app of the bunch. Perhaps more importantly, it's trying to solve real problems and not just match you up with other Lost fans at your local Starbucks.
Sonar turned one year old today and launched a few big new features to celebrate. I've been testing the app's new features today, and they make Sonar a pretty compelling experience. The app contains check-in data from Facebook and...

Find: Google continues its investment in design

T-Mobile G1

The Verge - All Posts
Amidst the news that Google's acquisition of Motorola was finally complete was another, smaller purchase — Google just bought design firm Mike and Maaike, a husband-and-wife creative team behind the design of the original T-Mobile G1. Of course, this device was Google's Nexus phone before there even was a Nexus program — it was the first handset to run Android. The G1 isn't the only iconic product Mike and Maaike has developed; they're also responsible for an earlier, portrait QWERTY Android prototype that never saw the light of day, Xbox 360 as well as a wide variety of other striking products. It's not yet clear what kind of work Mike and Maaike will be doing with Google, but we wouldn't mind seeing them take their skills to some...

Ref: On our projects (updated: pencast link)

Folks,

Here's the pencast for our introduction of the project themes.

Here are links to the many sites we looked at today:
Best,

Ben


Find: The folks fixing cell towers are dying at alarming rates

cell tower deaths

The Verge - All Posts
If Jesse Hicks' report into why working on cell towers can be one of the most dangerous jobs in America has you curious for more, the full Frontline and ProPublica investigation can now be watched online over at the PBS site. Nearly 100 people have been killed working on cell tower sites since 2003, a rate around ten times higher than construction workers, and Cell Tower Deaths reveals how a complex subcontracting system is shifting the blame away from carriers.

Find: $199 quad-core Android tablets -- Nvidia reveals Kai

Nvidia Kai $199 tablet platform stock

This might actually take some market share from IPad.
The Verge - All Posts
When Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said we might see $199 Tegra 3 tablets this summer, he wasn't speculating idly. Nvidia has revealed that it's working on just such a tablet: Kai. At the company's annual meeting of investors last week, VP Rob Csonger revealed the idea, and explained Kai isn't just a piece of hardware, but a plan to democratize its quad-core Tegra 3 system-on-chip. Nvidia wants to offer tablets that are more powerful than the Kindle Fire at the same price point, he said:
Our strategy on Android is simply to enable quad-core tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich to be developed and brought out to market at the $199 price point, and the way we do that is a platform we've developed called Kai. So this uses a lot of the...

Find: QuadHD phone cameras are coming

omnivision sensors

4xhd at 60hz, 8xhd at 30hz. 
The Verge - All Posts
OmniVision has unveiled two new sensors capable of enabling high-resolution video shooting on portable devices. The 1/2.3-inch OV16820 and OV16825 sensors, designed for compact cameras and "flagship smartphones" respectively, can shoot 60fps video at 4K2K (3840 x 2160, or four times 1080p) and 30fps video at the full 16-megapixel resolution of 4608 x 3456. The sensors also allow for 16-megapixel burst photography.
Whether the devices these chips are intended for will have the lenses to take advantage of 4K-beating video resolution is another matter entirely, but the specs do sound impressive on paper. While OmniVision doesn't tend to trumpet its clients, the company is a major supplier of CMOS sensors to device manufacturers — a...

Find: GitHub for Windows takes the pain out of using git

Also, for osx, and on microsoft's codeplex. 

Ars Technica

GitHub uses the git distributed version control system originally created by Linus Torvalds to help manage Linux's development as its backbone. It provides project hosting, bug tracking, and more, all wrapped up in a powerful Web interface. GitHub's most important feature is perhaps its trivial ability to fork projects. It takes just a few clicks to create your own version of a project to hack on and develop. Thanks to these features, GitHub has become the go-to place for collaborative open source software development. It's the home of projects such as Ruby on Rails and Node.js.

However, one developer community has found GitHub harder to use than others. Though the situation has improved, git and Windows are not the best of friends. After all, git was developed for Linux; Windows isn't anything like Linux. But that's where GitHub's new application, GitHub for Windows, comes in. GitHub for Windows provides a simple way to install and start using git on Windows, along with neat integration with GitHub's hosting and forking infrastructure.

The application, released on Monday, is an attractive, Metro-styled application. In addition to the GitHub for Windows application itself, it includes a self-contained version of git, the bash command-line shell, and the posh-git extension for PowerShell. You don't even have to manage any of these individual pieces yourself. The application uses a ClickOnce installer so it keeps all the bits and pieces up-to-date automatically.

Homework: elevator pitch on one idea

Hey folks,

Today we brainstormed lots of ideas (that's a link to the pencast). For tomorrow, you will focus on one of them, producing an elevator pitch about it. For some inspiration on what a good elevator pitch is, please see:
Some guidelines:
  • About 5 slides, about one minute each (different from Ignite)
  • You can include early hand-drawn drafts
  • You should include some wireframes (see our related post)
  • Walk through a brief scenario
  • Try to find some related apps, discuss why your idea is better/different
We will look at your pitches during the middle of class tomorrow.

Best,

Ben

Ref: On wireframing

Hey folks,

Here are the wireframing links to process, notes and software that we discussed in class today. The last is a series of visual examples:
In poking around these, I found a post by an old colleague of mine who is now Creative Director at Frog Design (!), Matt Conway. He makes some excellent points about why wireframes aren't great. But in doing so, he also says a lot about why they are useful.

Best,

Ben


Viz: Android fragmentation -- one developer encounters 3,997 devices

That's a lotta versions on android! 

Android fragmentation: one developer encounters 3,997 devices



A map of all the thousands of separate device models that downloaded OpenSignalMaps in a six month period.


Find: How to harden your smartphone against stalkers—Android edition

Security for mobiles will be more even important in the future.

How to harden your smartphone against stalkers—Android edition



Casey Johnston + Aurich Lawson

Stop phone stalking
Stalking via mobile phone has become a favorite activity of the mentally unhinged everywhere—jilted wives, jealous boyfriends, or any one person who cannot stop obsessing over another. Most smartphones today contain everything a stalker needs to keep solid tabs on their mark, and, in contrast to iPhones and iOS, the Android platform is much more open.

Android users can easily root their phones, sideload apps, and use all of Google's services to communicate reams of information. This flexibility is great when used for good, creative purposes. But it's also very easy to turn them around and use them against someone. A stalker can place an Android phone user in a compromised position simply by getting their Google account password or getting access to the phone itself, even for only a minute or two.
What follows is a guide to taking ownership of your Android phone aimed mostly at less savvy users, especially those who many have had their phone set up for them by someone else. Of course, it's a bad idea to let something as sensitive as a smartphone leave your sight for even a minute, as physical access gives malefactors a lot of leeway. Someone who is your friend now might not be your friend forever—according to a 2009 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 75 percent of stalking victims know their stalker in some capacity. Most people with smartphones rarely give what the phone is doing or information that it is communicating a second thought beyond e-mails and texts, playing a game or two, and making phone calls. But given how powerful smartphones are, it's important for every user to take ownership of their device and monitor it carefully—stalking doesn't always mean direct harassment.

Find: Don Norman on the need for generalists in engineering design education

This need for generality is a big part of why we have created our mobiles courses, and the mission of our lab and UX effort. 

Video: Don Norman speaks out about engineering design education

This is a short, 3 minute video, that captures the dilemma of modern education. Engineering education has become narrower and deeper. We teach and train specialties and specialists. Practical applications require tying together the knowledge of the many specialties. They require generalists, people who have broad, integrated understanding of the world. We need an educational system that rewards those who are broad and knowledgable as well as those who are deep and narrow, even if the broad knowledge comes at the expense of shallow depth. Being narrow is just as big a liability as being shallow. We need both kinds of people. Alas, the university hires, teaches, and trains only the deep and narrow.

Find: rumors converge -- larger-screened iPhone

Ars Technica

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs allegedly "worked closely" on the design of the rumored larger-screened iPhone, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg. The publication corroborates previous reports that the iPhone is about to get a serious makeover this year, noting that Apple has indeed placed orders for a screen larger than the current 3.5-inch screen used in the iPhone 4S.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Apple is planning to begin production of an iPhone with a 4-inch screen in June. We have been highly skeptical of such rumors up until recently, but recent positive changes in the signal-to-noise ratio is changing our minds. Apple has stuck with a 3.5-inch screen since the iPhone first launched in 2007, and it has performed quite well in the market since then, selling 35.1 million iPhones last quarter alone.

Bloomberg points out that a 4-inch screen doesn't necessarily mean the dimensions of the iPhone itself will change—Apple could possibly fit it into the current dimensions if it pushes other elements of the front around (such as the speaker, camera, and Home button). But this is only speculation, and there is currently very little information available about what the next iPhone will actually look like. But we do agree that the iPhone will likely see some major cosmetic changes this year—Apple typically overhauls the look of the iPhone every other year, and the design of the iPhone 4S matches that of the iPhone 4 launched in 2010. What do you think we're in for when the next iPhone makes its debut?

Find: back up your texts. And watch out what you say on corporate phones

Ars Technica

A startup called Uppidy has unveiled a service that backs up SMS services to the cloud, making it easier for individuals, parents, or even your employer to read your text messages.
Uppidy was founded by entrepreneur Joshua Konowe, who came up with the idea after dropping his cell phone in the toilet and going through a difficult process to retrieve his text messages from AT&T. The small startup in Washington, DC launched almost a year ago with a free service for consumers. In the past few weeks, the company started selling to the corporate world.
So far, a few unnamed businesses are testing Uppidy on corporate phones, Konowe told Ars. One customer is backing up and monitoring text messages from 500 phones, and another is doing so on 200. Konowe said he was initially just going to sell to consumers (including parents who want to monitor their kids’ messaging), but interest from corporations led him to develop a business-focused service as well.

Ref: Pat's notes on creativity

Folks,

You can find Pat's notes on creativity here (class only).

Best,

Ben

Homework: topic reading due beginning of each week

Hey folks,

As I mentioned in class we are asking you to read and otherwise absorb some class content at home, then post your questions and thoughts to our forum, and also bring them to class for discussion.

We will discuss devices, menus, text and touch starting next Tuesday and each Monday after that, as listed in our calendar. You will have to post your reactions 24 hours before we discuss them.

You can find the information on each topic here (we will not cover all the topics listed), including readings, notes, visuals and pencasts. You should read at least the first two readings listed (you can do more for extra credit, in which case make clear that you did that in your reactions).

Best,

Ben

Homework: 10 app ideas

Hey folks,

Tomorrow early we will listen to your 10 1 minute pitches for an app, for each group.

You can find the brainstorming we did here.

We will be developing these into longer pitches Wednesday.

Best,

Ben

Announcement: please fill out and return the online permission form

Folks,

Welcome to the class!

To enable you to post publicly, the university requires us to ask for your permission -- and our course site is public. We will be asking you to post an assignment or two and your projects there, to showcase what you and the class are up to. Of course we will never post our course feedback or grades publicly.

You can find the form here. To turn it in you can just bring it to class, or sign and send via email. Once you have done this, we will give you permission to post on the class site.

If you don't feel comfortable signing, that is okay, just let us know so that we can arrange other methods of turning things in for you.

Best,

Ben

Find: Now less than an arm's length away: Wristwatches That Help Screen Your Messages, and More

I’ve been trying out some of the new watches that display caller IDs, text messages, Twitter and news feeds, and the weather, too — all beamed from a nearby companion smartphone.

The watches are intended for those times when it is inconvenient to pull a smartphone out of a backpack or a pocket to check messages. Instead, you just check your quietly vibrating wristwatch.

So if you’re riding your bike when your boss sends a text, or carrying a big bag of groceries when your mother-in-law fires off an e-mail, the snippet displayed on the watch face might help you decide whether to pay attention.

Some of these new watches are already on the market; others are in prototype. Sony’s SmartWatch, which sells for $149.99 at Sony stores and at the company Web site, is optimized to work with Sony’s Xperia line of phones, said Stephen Sneeden, the United States product marketing manager for Sony Mobile. But it is also compatible with most Android-based phones running version 2.1 and above, he said. A list of smartphone models that work with the watch will be posted at the Web site.

THE SmartWatch has a sleek color touch screen that works by way of swipes, taps and the occasional two-fingered pinch. There is only one actual button — the on/off one tucked discreetly into the side. A rubbery black band comes with the watch; bands in five other shades cost $19.99 each.

The Sony watch has its limitations. If you’ve wandered off on an errand and left your smartphone behind, don’t expect the phone to relay messages to your wrist from afar. The range for Bluetooth wireless communication between watch and phone is about 30 feet, Mr. Sneeden said.

The touch screen has deep, attractive colors indoors but fades in direct sunlight. The watch has no voice capabilities built into it, and you cannot type replies on it, though you can send canned, prewritten responses like “Busy now.” Gmail is the main e-mail program it uses; attachments can’t be read.

But you may find that the watch has advantages, too. Vibrations on your wrist to notify you of messages are far harder to miss than fainter ones coming from a phone stashed in a coat pocket. And there are many times — say, when you’re sitting in a meeting, supposedly paying attention — when the wrist is a discreet spot to check Facebook updates along with the time.

The SmartWatch requires two apps for setup — LiveWare Manager and SmartWatch — both free on Google Play. Most Xperia phones have LiveWare preloaded, Mr. Sneeden said.

Another Android-based smart watch, the WIMM One, was created primarily for developers who will incorporate it into mobile electronic products, said Tim Twerdahl, vice president for product marketing at WIMM Labs in Los Altos, Calif. The watch is also available on Amazon for $199.

The WIMM One, a bit chunkier than the Sony SmartWatch, has a lot of built-in processing power, and two wireless communication modes — Bluetooth and Wi-Fi — so that it can work through a home network.

“It will sync via Wi-Fi to your home office network and run all the apps without being paired to a phone,” Mr. Twerdahl said. This allows a user to read news feeds and to check messages on the watch face even if the phone isn’t near.

The watch has a touch screen with two display modes. A power-saving black-and-white display turns the backlight off and uses ambient light to illuminate the screen. But holding a finger down on the watch face for a second brings a full-color screen to life.

WIMM One typically lasts about 30 hours on a single charge, Mr. Twerdahl said.

The watch comes preloaded with six apps. Other apps, all free, are at the WIMM Micro App Store Beta.

More smart watches are on the way, including the Pebble, now in prototype, which will display information from Android phones and iPhones. It has a black-and-white e-paper display and buttons, rather than a touch screen.

Many apps for the new watches can help owners with a range of practical tasks. One coming app for WINN One, Mr. Twerdahl said, will let a user draw a finger forward or back across the watch to change slides during a presentation.

Another app may be handy in shopping. With a few swipes,” he said, “you can check your credit card balance” to see if you are exceeding your limit.

These have a big future, since they are so damn convenient.

Find: It's "Pitch Day" for accelerator grads

n&o .biz

Think of it as final exams and graduation day rolled into one for the first crop of companies to complete the business accelration program at Triangle StartUp Factory.

The six companies in Triangle StartUp's inaugural 12-week class each will deliver 8-minute presentations to prospective investors and interested bystanders on Thursday, June 7, which has been dubbed "Pitch Day."

More than 300 attendees are expected for the free event, which also will include a panel session on investing, according to Chris Heivly, founder of Triangle Startup.

Earlier this year, Triangle StartUp raised $5.5 million in funding. It invests $50,000 into startups accepted into its program in exchange for a 7.5 percent ownership stake. After completing the program, the startup also will receive a loan convertible to equity ranging from $20,000 to $150,000.

You can register for Pitch Day here.

Announcement: your projects are up! Let me know if would like your names there too.

Folks,

I hope your summer is beginning well.

I've improved our project page to feature your work. Please have a look, and if you'd like me to add your names, or even to take down the project details, just let me know. Also if you'd like to edit your posts, feel free. Let me know if you have any difficulty accessing them.

This site will continue to be used for future classes, so I'll soon be removing its posts from your email boxes. But you can continue to use the Google Group for the course, and if you'd like to follow the class's posts, you can do so via RSS or by following it in Blogger.

Thanks for a great semester! I really enjoyed it, and think we had some great projects. I only hope future classes can meet your standard.

Best,

Ben

Find: Google data shows smartphone growth is global

Google
Last October, we launched Our Mobile Planet, a resource enabling anyone to visualize the ways smartphones are transforming how people connect with information, each other and the places around them.

Today, we're releasing new 2012 research data, and the findings are clear—smartphone adoption has gone global. Today, Australia, U.K., Sweden, Norway, Saudi Arabia and UAE each have more than 50 percent of their population on smartphones. An additional seven countries—U.S., New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland—now have greater than 40 percent smartphone penetration. In the U.S., 80 percent of smartphone owners say they don’t leave home without their device—and one in three would even give up their TV before their mobile devices!


We conducted this research to help people to better understand how mobile is changing our world. You can learn about mobile-specific usage trends, use this tool to create custom visualizations of data and more. There's plenty to discover in the latest research—to dig into new survey data about smartphone consumers in 26 countries from around the world, read our post on the Google Mobile Ads blog or visit http://thinkwithgoogle.com/mobileplanet.

Posted by Dai Pham, Group Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Project: Silver Bullet

Silverbullet is an Android version of the game Assassin.

Assassins is generally played with 10-50 people. Each player is assigned a target in the group. Your goal in the game is to "kill" your target in a pre-agreed upon manner often with a nerf or water gun. When you kill your target they are eliminated from the game and you are assigned your target's target. This goes on until there is only one person left.

These games go on for weeks some time so we implemented a way to keep track of everything and automate the assignment process. With Silverbullet you can create a profile:

Create and manage games, keep an eye on your target using google maps and location services, and send and receive messages. With Silverbullet you kill your target by tapping a button as many times as possible and your target gets the option to defend in the same manner.

Our code is not publicly hosted, but the apk is available upon request.

Spotted: charactering 3d mobile performance -- Performance and Power Consumption Characterization of 3D Mobile Games

Including some general optimization techniques. 

IEEE Computer
This paper describes a preliminary performance and power consumption characterization study on 3D mobile games. We choose Quake3 and XRace as the game benchmarks and study them on TI OMAP3430, Qualcomm Snapdragon S2, and NVIDIA Tegra 2 (three mainstream mobile System-on-Chip architectures) by selectively disabling different graphics pipeline stages in source code level. Our characterization results show that the geometry stage is the leading bottleneck and the game logic (application) takes a significant portion of power consumption.

Project: Crowd Farm


CrowdFarm is a mobile app designed to connect small farmers to potential buyers.  Buyers can range from chefs, to restaurants, to even chain supermarkets.  The app supports user registration and each farmer will have their own account.  After logging in, the farmer will be allowed to upload the produce they have available along with information about how long it will be fresh, how much produce there is, and how much it will cost.  Farmers can also view, edit, or delete the produce that they upload using easy to fill out forms.

There is still plenty of work to be done on the CrowdFarm project.  The app that buyers use has not been created, and the farmers app does make use of the notification system that is currently being built.  The app could also use some detailed examination by a member of the farming community.  Some of the terminology doesn't line up exactly and there are some places where the produce upload process could be streamlined by creating a personal template for each farmer.

Interested readers can download the source code at GitHub.

Project: Seeing Green

Seeing Green is a guide to the sustainability walking tour of downtown Raleigh, NC for iOS devices. It guides users through a circuit of 28 buildings and landmarks in downtown Raleigh that were sustainably built or promote sustainability in some other way. Stops on the tour include the North Carolina Capitol Building, the Cree Shimmer Wall, and the various electric vehicle charging stations in the downtown area.
Users can view the stops on the tour in three different ways:
  1. In an augmented reality viewer, which displays an overlay of information on top of the device's camera feed. Users hold the device up to view additional information about what they see in the real world such as the names and addresses of stops on the tour.
  2. In a map viewer, which displays the user's location and the location of all of the stops on the tour on a Google map. Users can tap on pins on the map to see more information about each point of interest.
  3. In a list, which displays the images, names, and addresses of all of the stops in order.
Each of these views link to a more detailed view for each individual stop on the tour that displays a description of the landmark as well as the name, address, and a photograph.
Check out Seeing Green on GitHub.

Project: WalkRaleigh

Our app enables a user to find the nearest landmarks in Raleigh to their current location. It presents these in order from distance away by walking time. The user may filter the results based on type of locations such as parks and outdoors. We feel that this app will raise awareness for how much quicker it is to walk around Raleigh, rather than to drive.

The code is available from: https://github.com/NCSUMobiles/Spring12-WalkRaleigh

Announcement: demo any new project functionality in a screencast

Folks, 

Please make sure you demo any new functionality not previously demoed in class in a screencast. If necessary feel free to use an emulator to make this possible. Send me a URL of the result, and ideally insert the same link into your project post!

Best, Ben 

Project: Arboleum

•ARBOLEUM•

Arboleum is the title of the game developed in collaboration with the department of BioFuels of North Carolina in addition the the NCSU department of Forestry.  The department of BioFuels of North Carolina approached Dr. Watson with a proposition to have an educational video game developed to help instruct the benefits of BioFuels.  Our team consisting of Daniel Morgan, Matthew Gray, Christopher Kampe, and Khiry Arnold have developed this video game.




Arboleum has received a slew of updates from the most recent presentation.  Arriving a long way from earlier demonstrations of the app which featured sexy block graphics for representing plots, Arboleum today features fully cultured graphics to go along with each of the in game themes.  Fully functional, the player is able to select from any of their nine plots in this Tutorial mode to select and grow their BioFuels.  Over the course of 3 years (12 turns), a player will be alerted to a variety of different facts in relation to BioFuels.  These informative pieces of knowledge serve to ensure that players leave the game play while maintaining something from their time playing the game.  In addition, there has been the creation of a Picture-based tutorial guide to get users acquainted the game's mechanics, in addition to the Silo feature which was previously discussed during in-class presentations having one of its features being a glossary of all the terms used within the game.



Overall, the game Arboleum is something our team members are proud of, and look forward to enhancing in the future.  Having learned plenty on the importance and impact BioFuels have on our world, we encourage others to play this game and share similarly enlightening experiences.


Github link.


Find: Google Plugin for Eclipse now provides richer tooling for Cloud SQL and Google APIs

Google Code Blog
Author PhotoBy Sriram Saroop, Product Manager

We are pleased to announce the latest release of Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE 2.6) with improved tooling for Cloud SQL and Google APIs. GPE 2.6 introduces the following features:

Tooling for using Java Persistence API (JPA) to access Cloud SQL

Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks are very popular in the Java community for accessing relational databases. The Eclipse Web Tools Platform offers a robust set of tools to configure and use JPA with an implementation of your choice. With the new Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE) 2.6, you can now take advantage of these tools with Cloud SQL and Google App Engine. In any GPE project, JPA can now be enabled and configured as a project facet. The screenshot below shows the JPA facet configuration for a GPE project.



Project: CarJuice

CarJuice


Our semester project is named CarJuice. Our team is made up of three members; Dan Perjar, Jason Brown, and Brent Parsons.

The idea for the app came from one of the proposed projects for the class that was eventually pulled or changed into the Seeing Green application. We decided we liked the idea enough to just continue on our own. In fact, the original project was only intended  to locate electric vehicle charging stations in the city of Raleigh, however we decided to take it a step further. Our application is capable of locating electric vehicle charging station across the entire country!

The basic function of the app is to provide users with information on nearby electric vehicle charging points. A user has two options to locate charging stations with the CarJuice application. First, the user can search for stations by entering a street address, a city name, a state name or even just the zip code in the search box and then clicking the locate button. This input is checked for errors and parsed using reverse geo-coding, returning an error message if the address is not valid. The user also has a second option to locate electric charging stations. They can simply skip entering any information in the search box and just go straight to clicking the locate button to search for stations near their current location. Users can select the search radius for the query in the settings screen linked as the gear icon on the application search screen. Upon a successful search stations (up to a maximum of 20) are listed in a list view for the user to browse. Clicking an item in the list provides extensive information about each station. It also provides the user with a link to either see the station plotted as a pin on a map, or get directions to it using the Google Navigator application.

Station info is provided by a public government organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
More information on the API can be found here: http://developer.nrel.gov/doc/api/alt-fuel-stations/v1

The application home screen


Spotted: Informal Information Gathering Techniques for Active Reading -- put them on my reader please

Ken always does great work. Looks like these techniques won't work well with e-ink though. 

The Past and Present Future

This is my latest project, which I will present tomorrow (May 9th) at the CHI 2012 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

I’ll have a longer post up about this project after I return from the conference, but for now enjoy the video. I also link to the PDF of our short paper below which has a nice discussion of the motivation and design rationale for this work.

Above all else, I hope this work makes clear that there is still tons of room for innovation in how we interact with the e-readers and tablet computers of the future– as well as in terms of how we consume and manipulate content to produce new creative works.

Informal Information Gathering Techniques for Active ReadingHinckley, K., Bi, X., Pahud, M., Buxton, B., Informal Information Gathering Techniques for Active Reading. 4pp Note. In Proc. CHI 2012  Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, TX, May 5-10, 2012. [PDF] [video .WMV - not yet available]

[Watch Informal Information Gathering Techniques for Active Reading on YouTube]

Project: Silence


Team members:
Giulio Frasca
Alton Walston
Spencer Guy

GitHub link

Silence automatically sets your phone to silent, vibrate, or ring based on a schedule you define. Using this app ensures your phone does not interrupt you during any classes, meetings, or wake you while you’re sleeping. In short, Silence makes your phone work on your schedule.

Once the user has set up their first event (using the button in the menu), the app will adjust the phone’s ring setting automatically as it runs in the background (initial field tests are showing that our app has a negligible effect on battery life). The app also runs on startup, so if the user needs to turn their phone off and on, they do not need to worry about restarting the app. Notifications are presented to the user in the Android status bar when any ring setting is changed. Events are represented in a list when the user boots the app, with a red check meaning the event is set to silent, a yellow check meaning the event is set to vibrate, a green check meaning the event is set to ring, and a gray X if the event is disabled. This color scheme is reflected in the app visualizer, accessible from the app menu.

Things we updated since our presentation:
-Events are now clickable on the visualizer
-Menu icons now represent the ring setting
-Disabled events are now represented by a gray X
-Changed “Update” button to “Save”
-Removed test data
-Clicking the ongoing notification toggles the service state between running and paused



Update: All updates made to Silence since the presentation are demoed in this video.

Nokia solves outdoor oled problem

The Verge - All Posts
displaymate

Nokia's Lumia 900 is the best smartphone in the world — in one important usability aspect, anyhow. The DisplayMate labs have been busy collating viewability data on mobile device displays and the results rank the Lumia 900 as the best performer. In particular, the DisplayMate tests were concerned with how devices handle increases in ambient light, a regularly-occurring challenge for anyone wanting to use a phone or a tablet while actually on the move.

Nokia's special reflectance-inhibiting polarizing filter, known under the ClearBlack Display brand, helps its handset to the top spot, even in spite of the fact it has an AMOLED display. AMOLED technology has for a long time been plagued by terrible readability when taken out in direct...

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Find and thoughts: Peapod 'virtual grocery stores' -- a gimmick? Or an improved experience?

Peapod is a holdover from the dot com bubble. It delivers groceries ordered online to your door. With this experiment, is it showings that its customers want more than an online shopping experience. What could be missing? And will these virtual shelves provide it?

Why do people still prefer brick and mortar? Several reasons: 

Freshness: traditionally store goods are fresher. Not sure that's still true now. 

Directness: you can see and interact directly with what you buy. 

Prompting: as do online menus, shelves remind you of what you want. 

Society: the grocery is a kind of town square. We bump into folks we know and don't know. We meet our community. 

Immediacy: you get what you want now. 

Will these "virtual" displays bring some of this experience to Peapod? 

Certainly not freshness: this won't change the quality of the food. Directness may improve a bit with larger images, but I'm betting that they aren't sharp. I have a hard time believing that these relatively small posters (in comparison to real shelves) will remind people of much, though it may remind them simply to shop. Meeting an acquaintance while pausing in front of a poster is less likely than when lingering in a separate store outing. And immediacy won't improve: the food won't arrive sooner, and ordering could always happen on the go. 

What this really is then, is a cheap vending machine without the immediacy. It reminds people to buy, makes it easy to do so, but you won't see it for about an hour. The idea is clever, but in the end, I think it's just a good ad. 

Maybe Peapod should get into the vending machine business. 

But seriously, how could Peapod deliver more of the grocery experience? Maybe with social features? And how could grocery stores improve? Perhaps what is on the shelf at the moment should always be online for delivery or at least pickup?

The Verge - All Posts
peapod grocery smartphone

Online supermarket Peapod is bringing its foodstuffs to Chicago's "L" transit system, with a new ad campaign that allows commuters to do their grocery shopping from directly within the city's train stations. Last week, the company plastered Chicago's State and Lake Station Tunnel with a "virtual grocery store" ad — posters of grocery shelves stocked with popular household items and food products. People travelling through the station can scan an accompanying QR code to download the free PeapodMobile app, which will allow them to scan barcodes listed on the products displayed in the ad. With the app, iPhone and Android users can place orders, manage their shopping lists, and schedule deliveries as they wait for the next train.

This...