Kevin Whitman's Blog

Category: future

Dead and Dying Formats

The Apple iMac was one of the first computers to not include a floppy drive, and it used a CD drive. Current Macs you buy today has a CD/DVD SuperDrive, except the Air. No Macs has Blu-Ray. I think CD, DVD and Blu-ray are dead as the internet will replace them.

A iPad can’t watch a Blu-ray, nor can it run Flash or Java in the browser. So I think it shows both formats are dead. A iPad can’t have a disk drive, due to space limits. It can’t have Flash or Java due to poor performance and not being open. Most people will agree Flash isn’t open, but your like “Isn’t Java open”? I thought it was also, till I read this. People, Companies and the media don’t really care that the iPad can’t play disks, but they do seem to care about the Flash issue. You have lots of ways to get good content on to your iPad, buy them on iTunes. Watch lots of free and high quality content on YouTube like Smosh or DamonFizzy. Subscribe to a free Podcast on iTunes like Hak5 or Diggnation.

Flash isn’t open because i have to buy expensive authoring tools from Adobe, for example Flash Professional is 699 bucks! With HTML5, I can write my code in Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, which is free with your operating system. I can download or buy authoring tools. I can get Notepad++, a really nice code editor which supports several programming languages I use, and its free! I can even buy HTML5 tools from Adobe if I wanted to, they sell Dreamweaver. Other tools exist to help me write HTML5 apps. Like jQuery, CSSEdit or others. Continue reading

A social protocol

Adria tweeted “Google+, Twitter, Facebook are like ice cream. Everyone has a story about why their favorite flavor makes them smile.” at 4:14 PM eastern time. That got me thinking. I like Twitter and one of my Cousins likes Facebook. She won’t use Twitter but i share more on Twitter. Same thing with Google+, I like it more than Facebook and I’m using it now also. I think this is a problem.

I think we need an open social networking protocol, but i doubt this will happen anytime soon. When eating ice cream, me and Adria could be sitting next to each other. The flavor she or I picked doesn’t matter we can still sit and chat while we eat. Same with email. I like Gmail. Someone else might love Yahoo or even their free email from Road Runner. Email is an open protocol. Continue reading

Looking at the social web

2003-2006

The year is 2003-2006, MySpace is where you could just find about everyone your age. Everyone I knew in School had a MySpace, I had a MySpace. Teachers, Law Enforcement and adults would bad mouth and speak out against the website making it seem worser then it really was by saying it was unsafe. Maybe it was unsafe back then due to some hacks, but other than that talking to a random dude at a bus stop is kinda unsafe also, it’s a risk you can take, you could meet a creepy serial killer or some nice guy because you never really know till you try to talk to someone and get to know them. I remember one of my teachers got this crazy woman who seemed Anti-Tech to come in and give a slide show. She showed how she would hack in to MySpace and show all this set private information. At the end, where people would ask questions, people asked how she hacked it and she said she wasn’t going to tell because she knew we kids would do it.

I kinda think looking back now, she wasn’t really hacking as you would think. I looked up information on it before and all the so called “hacks” don’t work anymore. The way they would work is you would take the persons MySpace user id, not the username, but the number like say 10290292298(random number i just typed) and use that id with different urls because it didn’t check privacy in some areas. Also teachers and other adults would say privacy settings didn’t matter. I never understood why, maybe because of the hacks that got fixed. I always did and i do today trust privacy settings when they are set right and implemented by the social networking site correctly.

So back then All of us young people liked it. Teachers hated MySpace. I once taught people in my class in English back in middle school how to use proxies. About a few days later, after different teachers noticed people were on MySpace when it was blocked, our principle went to the class rooms in the eighth grade one morning to talk to us about it. He told us if any of us got caught from now on we would lose our computer privileges for the rest of the year. He said he would also report our MySpace name to MySpace so they would delete our account. I’m not sure if MySpace would really delete an account just because a principle told them to, i really doubt it. I think he was saying it just to scare us. Not all of us was under 13. But i don’t think the principle or any teachers really found out who showed people how to use proxies. Continue reading

Thoughts on ChromeBooks and the Cloud in genreal

I have a CR-48. I like it, but then again i don’t like it. I think something like this is too early. I currently use both Web Apps and Legacy apps. Like some 3D Virtual worlds like Second Life, won’t run on it. Also another issue i have with it, is what ever data you put on it, other parties have it also. Like me as being a programmer, not sure if I would want to trust some free cloud integrated development environment (IDE) company with my code I never even heard of till i found them in a Google search. Maybe my code isn’t worth a lot to others, maybe it is. I don’t want to risk it getting stolen. Back when the iPhone first came out, people laughed at it and was thinking wow, what a dumb device. Now everyone knows the iPhone is awesome. So maybe I’m wrong, but i think something like this is early.

I do think this is a great start for the idea of web apps, and we(as in Developers, Businesses and society.) have to start somewhere. More improvements will come, over time. I like the idea of a computer that updates, without much work or wait on my part. My CR-48 updates faster than my Laptop with Windows 7. The CR-48 has a weak processor in my opinion. My Laptop with Windows 7 is a Intel Centrino, Dual Core. CR-48 has 2GB of ram, my laptop with Win7 has 4. The CR-48 downloads your update in the background, then you reboot and login. Updates are seamless. My PC with Windows 7 is set up to ask me, so once i download the update. Then once i saved all my data, closed my apps. I can reboot to install the updates. Then Windows 7 makes me wait to config the update. Wait a few minutes or longer. Then login, wait for apps to start up and then do what i want. So i agree the CR-48 updates and boots up quicker than my PC running Windows 7 or Even my Mac and it does all that with limited hardware specs, that just amazes me. If you want a PC to boot up and update that fast, i think you will pay more than the price of a ChromeBook. Plus web apps are updated, done automatically on the server. Also new versions are free, no upgrade costs. Web apps have a subscription model, free or freemium, not buying them right out. So yes, the CR-48 is more end user friendly. Continue reading

Pizza Delivery in the future

About a week ago Google Announces they have played around with a self driving car. So this is my vision of how you would order pizza using this technology.

The Car i vision. Crappy picture i drew in paint.

 

We all know pizza sucks unless its Delivery. So the ordering process would be.

1. Call or visit the web like you would today. You would have to give your phone number also.

2. The pizza place makes your order and loads your order.

3. They send the car off to your location you told them when ordering.

4. The car goes to your location and you pay then get your order.

5. The car goes back to pizza shop.

So when after your order is done being made, on the computer that they put your order in via phone or you via web they pick a car, So say Car Id 7  is available. The computer loads the order information, The list of your order and price. They open the handle on the slot and put the pizza in and close it. It then locks it. They then back away and after it detects no one is close to it, it then starts driving to the house or place of business of the customer.

Then when the car gets to your location the car will then alert the pizza company computer system the car is at your location, how long it drove and triggers a phone call. It then keeps calling every 1 minutes up to 10 times and then leaves if you don’t pick up. Then once you pick up, it then adds 10 minutes to the timer. Once 10 min is up, it calls you and if you pick up it adds 10 more else if leaves. Once you get to it. The car will say your name (Jane Doe in this case and the price.) You pay it via credit card or put money in similar to how you would with a soda vending machine. You open the handle and take your order out. It also prints a receipt or maybe they could put it on the box. Once you close the door on the pizza vendor built-in to the side of the car, The car drives back to the pizza place after it detects if safe to do so. Also these cars would not have to be full size. Could be built-in to a smaller 2 door car.

Then maybe they can come up with a way to make pizza by robots and load them on the car. Then maybe we can have 24/7/365¼ Pizza ordering!

Copyright © 2010 - 2024 Kevin Whitman's Blog

Back To Top ↑