Jun

16

Milwaukee to Madison 06/18/08

Filed Under Education, Google, Milwaukee, Smartphone | Leave a Comment

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This morning’s commute was much better than DOT’s suggested Milwaukee > Beloit > Madison. That route tacks an extra 105 miles one way. I cannot believe they are suggesting this route all the way down to Beloit!  This route was much better:

mil2mad

Here is the link to the Google Maps page. Lets hope flooding decreases over the next couple of days. Take this route and you will see flooded roads and houses under water in low areas with plenty of farm land underwater too.Tags: Milwaukee, Madison, I-94, commute, flooding

May

15

Bandwidth for Schools

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Media Players, Milwaukee, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Smartphone, Streaming, TED, Technology, Web2.0, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

A National Broadband Policy needs to be more than just a talking point. Schools in our country need to upgrade their internet bandwidth to 25 Megabytes per second. This is for every school — not just the K12 district who slices up the bandwidth based upon the total number of school buildings in the district. The technology and educational impact upon our schools: leaving them behind just when students from around the world are joining and benefiting from the broadband educational internet.

Playing catch-up
Today we find a majority of schools around the country in the educational slow lane. For some reason it does not matter if the school is remote or urban, many are connecting at just 5 Megabits/second. Its like teaching history with books that still recognize Russia as the old Soviet Union….oh how I miss Gorgachev.
Any college connecting at less than 10MB — shows a lack of understanding and vision for their students who enter higher education seeking not just a degree but an advantage to enter the global marketplace.

Read more

Jan

29

BMW integrates iPhone

Filed Under Audio, BMW, Design, Education, Smartphone, Technology | Leave a Comment

BMW has once again integrated Apple technology.

Although announced months ago BMW has recently posted details online. To date iPhones are compatible with the 2007 line of vehicles. Its another look at BMW and Apple, two of the most known brands working to provide a seamless integration of their respective products.

BMW was the first vehicle manufacturer to integrate the iPod in 2004. Expect additional auto manufacturers to follow their lead.

Tags: BMW, iPhone, advanced technologies, trends

Dec

12

NBC: Reconsider iTunes

Filed Under Education, Globalization, Interactive, Media Players, Network, Rich media, Smartphone, Streaming, Technology | Leave a Comment

NBC logoSo NBC has been forced to refund advertisers an average of $500,000 each due to low ratings. One hopes they will workout an agreement with iTunes to again sell their TV shows.  NPR news article here.
At some point someone at NBC Universal will realize all those millions of dollars really add up to something….What were they thinking?

Tags: NBC, iTunes, low ratings, trends

Dec

4

BMW implementing IPv6 ?

Filed Under BMW, Design, Education, Globalization, Network, Smartphone, Technology | Leave a Comment

Could BMW’s future cars support IPv6 before your next office network upgrade? Maybe. Work already underway confirms BMW developments in artificial intelligence have moved from the multiple flavors of auto-specific networking standards to internet protocol IPv6 for the next generation of auto (and person) communication.

bmw technology

Its no surprise engineers connect standard PCs to analyze engine and chassis control systems. But the opportunities to configure a multimedia server for the auto’s entertainment system is instep with tomorrow’s demands of mobile communication. Naturally it would be expected that your BMW’s diagnostics would be linked in real-time to your repair shop. Read more

Dec

3

Why DRM is failing

Filed Under Audio, Education, Globalization, Media Players, Rich media, Smartphone, Streaming | Leave a Comment

walmart amazonDigital Rights Management or DRM, has been a controversial snippet of software embedded into music files for a long time. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM wrapper or Apple’s FairPlay for iTunes it appears the coming death of DRM is from two powerhouses in online sales: Amazon and Wal-Mart.

Funny that Microsoft’s own DRM software will not run on their Zune product. Wal-Mart ditched DRM music in August and a month later Amazon’s site launched DRM free. With larger numbers of online shoppers, the control over digital rights now sit in the hands of the big resellers and not the music industry or even technology companies.

PS - The disappointment with Wal-Mart is their decision to NOT support Mac or Linux systems for downloading music.  Not a good sign for a lot of users.

Tags: Amazon, Walmart, music store, music download, Fairplay, PlaysForSure, The Long Tail, trends

Sep

27

Amazon’s new music store

Filed Under Audio, Education, Globalization, Media Players, Network, Smartphone, Streaming, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Today Amazon opened the beta door to their new music store amazonmp3beta and as the name suggests, everything is available in mp3 format. In comparison Apple’s iTunes format is AAC for all those millions of iPods.

Amazon MP3 offers the top 100 songs for 89 cents each and the top 100 albums for $8.99, with most albums priced from $5.99 to $9.99.

 

amazonmp3

However I believe the breaking point will be what is available.
Search for U2 and you get:

Read more

Aug

18

Text Message your next pizza

Filed Under Education, Globalization, Network, Smartphone, Technology | Leave a Comment

dominos pizzaThe emerging and cool method to order pizza is via SMS by Domino’s. After a successful test run early this summer.

Sound interesting? Big pizza lover? You will need to register and establish a preferred menu…but just text message “gametime” will have your favorite pizza at your door within 30 minutes.

And by gametime I mean football….well actually I mean soccer. Domino’s is making this available only in the United Kingdom.

Tags: pizza, Domino’s, SMS, United Kingdom, trends

Jun

19

Designers: Core Animation

Filed Under Audio, Design, Education, Globalization, Interactive, Media Players, Network, RSS, Rich media, Smartphone, Technology, Web2.0 | 1 Comment

Lets face it: Today many graphic designers are programmers. They have been moving into the coding world for a number of years. Most cut their teeth on Web 1.0’s plain old HTML. With one foot in Flash’s ActionScript and JavaScript were clearly the sign to jump in with both feet. This acquired knowledge and new creative energies have paid off handsomely for many designers.

CSS was the next logical choice that continues today as designers create smarter webpages and blogs with strong visual impacts. Even WordPress‘ own website correctly states: Code is Poetry. These skills have proved to be required tools for today’s successful graphic designer.

falling pinsThe next step may well be Apple’s Core Animation. Look closely at the new iPhone commercials - you will notice a bit of Core Animation: Google push pins drop from the sky onto a map. Good bye static pins!

This small example should really open up the interactive space for designers. Core Animation clearly shows just the tip of the graphical/animation iceberg that will become more robust moving forward.

Designers will jump on this new technology and adapt the necessary code to implement designs on phone and webpages. Apple needs to empower more than their die-hard programmers. Give designers the right tool for the job and we will see amazing interactive graphic elements on the web and our iPhones.

Tags: Core Animation, graphic design, code, iPhone, information design, trends

Feb

4

Nikon and Nokia

Filed Under Design, HighRes, Milwaukee, Rich media, Smartphone, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Nikon announced it will actually stop manufacturing most 35mm SLR bodies. Moving forward the company will concentrate on building digital cameras and accessories.

In the UK alone 95% of their business is digital.  Which makes the statement of Nokia being the largest supplier of cameras no surprise…Nokia builds camers into most of their phones.  This should be a trend of where the image capture market is moving towards for consumers.

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Sep

26

Treo running Windows Mobile

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The power of mobile computing stepped up another notch today as Microsoft and Palm announced the new Treo device running Microsoft Windows Mobile.

Anyone still thinking mobile ‘acceptance’ is a long way off?

Jun

21

Movies on smartphones via 3GPP

Filed Under Smartphone | Leave a Comment

Wildwave, a mobile entertainment provider and Darklight Film Festival have combined to launch The Wildlight Channel, a channel aimed at mobile phones.

The channel will initially focus on short films. But with new compression standards and MPEG-4 video the optimum time is not yet determined.

Apr

8

Americans using cellphones in record numbers

Filed Under Smartphone | Leave a Comment

Enpocket reports more Americans use cellphones than use the internet.
Well….big deal.
There are more Chinese using cellphones than there are citizens living in America.   Wake up everybody!

Engadget website

Apr

5

7 steps for handheld browsing

Filed Under Smartphone | Leave a Comment

A nice article to help those of us using mobile devices (PDA & Smartphones) to access content on the web.

Collylogic website

Mar

13

Small Screen web layout

Filed Under Smartphone | Leave a Comment

How to develop webpages for handheld devices.  As more and more users obtain Smartphones and updated PDAs with internet access the job of creating accurate content for these small devices becomes more important.


WebMonkey Website

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