Tech
The Watch is the first device that’s encouraged me to spend as little time as possible with it, or with any of the other electronic sinkholes around my office, my home, and in my pockets. It’s the first product that lives in this world, offering a small, brief window into the digital one - instead of being a portal that envelopes us, pulling us into another place to be held hostage by our own need for novelty and trivial diversion.
Matt Gemmell
I love that line “first product that lives in this world.” From what we’ve heard, Apple’s intent was just this. Allow you to step away from your phone more. Be more present.
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Rapper, tech entrepreneur, and human URL Will.i.am says the world will need new "codes and morals" to deal with the ethical implications of 3D-printed humans. "If you can print a liver or a kidney, god dang it, you're going to be able to print a whole freaking person," said the Black Eyed Peas founder in an interview with Dezeen. "Now we're getting into a whole new territory. Moses comes down with the 10 commandments and says 'Thou shalt not.' He didn't say shit about 3D printing. So new morals, new laws and new codes are going to have to be implemented."
The Verge
Wow.
Will.i.am says he believes that the technology to 3D print humans will be available in "our lifetime," adding: "I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying what's fact based on plausible growth in technology and Moore's law."
Um. Not the same here. We’re talking about cells and tissue, which is infinitely more complex than any computer that we’ve ever built. We’re talking nerves, organs, vains, and much more that computer chips. 3D printing is pretty awesome, Will.i.am, but the likelihood of us printing humans, full humans, in our lifetime is slim to none. Now androids, yes. But we don’t even know what makes life, well, life at this point. What we will see is transplant organs printed, which we’re already seeing. Though, they don’t look like real hearts, real stomachs. No, they are mechanical. Which is fine, as they work. But this, just like normal transplants, creates no issues with the Mosaic laws.
There is no need to rewrite the 10 Commandments. No one pay attention to the crazy rapper with a weird name throwing out random, science-fictiony ideas and trying to usurp religious morality.
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For Christmas my wife got me a record player. It was on my list. I had been wanting to get away from Spotify for a few months and after doing the math, found it to be a better financial choice to leave Spotify and start buying my music again. With an iTunes library of nearly 2000 songs, I didn’t exactly have to start fresh.
As a Mac guy, I have my Apple TV, iPhones, iPads, and Mac all speaking the same language of AirPlay. I can quickly toss a video up to my television or stream music from my phone. Going analog is delightful, I’ll be honest. Many nights this year we have played Settlers of Catan while having some vinyl spinning. The speakers on my player are good. Not great, but good. Hooked to the television is a set of JBL speakers that I’ve had for some time. They’re better than nothing. So last night I decided to look into a way to make my record player wireless.
Following a lead from GeekDad, I took an audio cable (male-to-male) and plugged my record player into my Mac Mini. Using free software from Rogue Amoeba called LineIn, I can take that line-in audio coming from the player and send it to the Mini’s speakers or to any audio output, including AirPlay devices.
A simple setup that cost me nothing since I had an audio cable sitting around. Now I can play my vinyl through my JBL speakers wirelessly.
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Last week Samsung was accused of listening into conversations around televisions, a feature required for voice commands, and sending all data through third parties for processing. This week we have this gem.
There's been a string of complaints online by customers using third-party video apps such as Plex and Australian service Foxtel, with most referring to rogue Pepsi ads interrupting their viewing. "After about 15 minutes of watching live TV, the screen goes blank, and then a 16:9 sized Pepsi ads (taking up about half the screen) pops up," wrote a professed Samsung smart TV owner on Foxtel's support forums. "It's as if there is a popup ad on the TV."
The Verge
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[T]he feature that might give Swatch its biggest advantage is that the smartwatch won't have to be charged.
Swatch will release a smartwatch this spring
With the Apple Watch right around the corner, it’ll be interesting as more and more potential competitors try to carve out a piece of a smartwatch market, a market that currently barely exists.
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[T]he earliest watches lacked a minute hand because of the need to pack so much technology in to power them and also to drive the “display.” This wasn’t a problem since the accuracy was so poor they drifted off accurate timekeeping by up to hours every day! Their tiny springs and inefficient clockwork also meant they didn’t store much power. Thus they needed winding very regularly—at first with a key, just like traditional grandfather clocks and whatnot, which is self-evidently inconvenient.
Don’t Stress About Smartwatch Battery Life—It’s A 500 Year Old Problem, Kit Eaton
Great article about the history of watches and battery life, going back 500 years. It’s interesting to me that Apple is very much positioning their Apple Watch as a watch and not just a wearable.
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We must make a new browser. A browser for ourselves and a browser for our friends. A browser that is fast, but also a browser that is rich in functionality, highly flexible and puts the user first. A browser that is made for you.
https://vivaldi.com
The former CEO of Opera has a new browser. Worth checking out, though it is very green still.
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My time for a phone upgrade came last fall and I went with the iPhone 6 Plus. As Android phones got bigger and bigger screens, I sat by and mocked with much of the Apple crowd. But I got an iPhone 6 Plus within months of it coming out.
Let’s get this straight, had I thought them a good idea, I still wouldn’t have purchased one. I’m an iPhone user through and through. But I mocked because I didn’t get the shift of view yet. Any time I saw one, I thought of them held up to someone’s ear, engulfing their whole face, and I laughed hard. I didn’t see it.
But once Apple had one, a huge phone, I took the time to think. The Phone is just an app on my mobile device. An app I seldom used, especially when compared to the other apps I used. What once was a cell phone that had apps now had largely become a mobile device that had a Phone app. Could that larger screen help my other apps become more useful? Very much so. Easier reading of my feeds, easier typing of notes and posts, easier surfing the web. A bigger screen is better for all of that.
I had seen my iPhone as a phone all this time and now I had shifted. Did I look ridiculous with my large phone up to my ear? Probably. Once every couple of days when I’d take a phone call. But all the rest of the time, I had a screen the size of my face that fit in my pocket. And after a few months, I still love it.
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