Robots Kicking Butt

Some people are convinced that the robots are going to take over the world in one way or another. And you thought that all that software development was just for good. Here are a couple examples of robots taking over. At the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, England, a robot made from a Samsung Galaxy 4 smartphone and Lego Mindstorms components established a new world’s record for solving a 4×4×4 Rubik’s Cube. The Cubestormer 3 needed just 3.25 seconds to align the colors on each side of the cube, breaking the old record (held by its sibling, the Cubestormer 2) by more than two seconds. The best time a puny human can muster? 5.5 seconds, by Mats Valk of the Netherlands. Earlier this week, researchers at Oxford published a report predicting that nearly half of all U.S. workers will eventually be replaced by automatons. The top occupations in danger of being replaced by software: loan officers, receptionists, and paralegals. Those with relative job security include chiropractors, choreographers, and the clergy. At least some of us have a prayer of staying employed.

Wireless Everything?

If the internet and phone services are wireless, why in the world do we still have wired electricity? It's not actually putting electricity in the air. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air. It works like this: WiTricity build a "Source Resonator" -- a coil of electrical wire that generates a magnetic field when power is attached. If another coil is brought close, an electrical charge can be generated in it. No wires required. In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet. If all goes to WiTricity's plans, smartphones will charge in your pocket as you wander around, televisions will flicker with no wires attached, and electric cars will refuel while sitting on the driveway. WiTricity have already demonstrated their ability to power laptops, cell-phones, and TVs by attaching resonator coils to batteries -- and an electric car refueller is reportedly in the works. Talk about exciting.

Technology Helping Expression

Many parents and teachers of children with special needs wonder if using technology to communicate is a good idea, or if it will stifle and get in the way of oral speech production. Application development has definitely come a long way in this area of technology. As children progress through typical stages of language development, they are usually quick to find oral speech to be the easiest and fastest way to get a message across. But for some children with a variety of speech, cognitive or physical impairments, verbal speech is not an effective way to communicate. It's important to remember that we communicate in many different ways. We use facial expressions, gestures and body language, writing and oral speech, to name a few. If verbal speech is impeded, assistive technology can help them discover the joys of expressing themselves. One of the best devices are the tablets where children can use apps that have pictures and sounds to get across whatever it is that they want to say. What do you think about the help of technology when there are impairments in either speech or other forms of expression?

Pay Attention

As you are reading this post, I bet that you have other things to do such as getting back to web development project or answer the emails that are piling up in your inbox. You are also probably chatting on Facebook, checking your phones, and trying to do something else. There is only one way to avoid this situation, which no one ever does because there's too much risk. The first is to all out shut down your phone and all forms of social media. This includes phone powered down entirely, not even glancing at Facebook for a second, and even avoiding Gmail because Google had the genius idea of making that social. The risk that exists in this situation is the fact that if, on the off-chance, something actually important happens, you will forever be blamed for not helping. I have found that because of all the technology and constant connectivity, people, myself included, have found it near impossible to even stay focused on the conversation topic. I have been in the middle of a sentence, and had friends start talking about a completely different event that happened. Try to keep track of the conversation and all you will end up with is a headache.

Daylight Saving Time

Though the biannual ritual of turning clocks might feel like second nature to us today, it is actually a fairly new phenomenon that has only taken effect on a global scale within the past several decades (though many countries including Venezuela, Kenya and Saudi Arabia still don't partake in it today). Benjamin Franklin suggested the idea back in 1784, as a way to economize on sunlight and burn fewer candles during winter mornings and nights, but the practice did not become steadily official in the United States until Congress passed the Uniform Time Act in 1966, with the same intention of saving energy. An increase in cyberloafing — the slang word for surfing the Web for personal entertainment during work hours while internet faxes should be answered — may not be as life-threatening as heart attacks and workplace injuries, but it can cost companies thousands of salary wages flushed down the Internet tube.

Personal Computing

Personal computing is becoming a lot more personal these days. This is not talking about the ads that are tailored to what is in your inbox although that aspect has a completely separate dimension of its own. In the era of handheld computing, the value extends beyond the hardware and into the software, which is something that the software developers have to take into account as well as the operating systems. When a product becomes personal and intimate, good enough is not good enough. Consumers want the best product for their needs, and cheap is not always the best choice. Due to its personal nature, this market will support a wide variety of choices. In fact, not only will smartphones will prove this true, but so will wearable computing. We will see a wide variety of wearable devices all focused on providing specific value propositions for segments of the market that value them.

Erase Yourself

JustDelete.me is a page full of links -- not ugly blue hyperlinks but links disguised as buttons. Each button represents an online service; anything from LinkedIn to even internet phone services such as Skype to Wikipedia. Click a button and JustDelete.me will take you to the page on that online service that allows you to delete your account. If you click the "show info" link under each button, meanwhile, JustDelete.me will tell you, in plain English, how to delete your account from that site. It does not get any better or easier than that. Buttons are color-coded: a green button means deleting your account is easy, a yellow button means it's moderately difficult, red means it's hard and black (uh-oh) means "it's impossible to delete your account on this site." Turns out some sites love your data so much they won't remove it. Ever. In addition to its primary purpose of teaching people how to delete their accounts -- and serving as a one-stop shop for people who want to pare down their online presence -- JustDelete.me publicly shames services that don't let users remove their data. And for those who haven't yet created eternal accounts on these types of sites, including Netflix, Pinterest or Pastebin, JustDelete.me serves as a warning that some sites will never let you go.