Category: Uncategorized

Alright so everyday we use devices that have the potential to teach us nearly anything we want to learn through the power of the internet. Yet, we are unable to use these miraculous devices in our place of education – school. Yes, I am talking about cell phones, ipod touches, PMP’s, etc.

This problem can be solved through a changing interface called a Persona. Basically what happens is the UI of the device changes based on your geographical location. So, the second you walk into school, the device’s main interface changes into an educational device. The second you walk out of school, the UI allows the device to once again become your link to your favorite social networks and the open internet.

This concept can be extended upon. For example, the second you walk into  a store, your device changes into your own personal ATM. When you are driving, your device will turn into your tour guide. This is the first realistic step towards  augmented reality. This will be here soon. ….hey maybe i should patent this……. 😉

Alright so here is my idea/problem/cry:

Lets say I want to invite all my phone contacts to go see a movie. Right now this is only possible by sending a SMS message to all of those individual numbers. This is slow, inefficient, and annoying. Some may say the concept of broadcasting your status is worn out, overused, and already done. I, however, still think there is one huge area of development regarding status updates.

Yes Twitter and Facebook can broadcast your status to your Friends in a matter of seconds, but what if you only wanted a select group of people to see your status. What if your status was actually important and you didn’t want to just throw another sentence into the constant stream of status updates online?

There needs to be a way through cell networks to broadcast a “status” ,or pretty much a public text message, to just the people that you consider your closest friends. (pretty much the people who even have your number in the first place)

Alright so, I recently began the second semester of my junior year of high school, and one of my electives is electronics! I am very excited for this class, especially since i learned that the majority of the class with be programming an Arduino microprocessor. I have tons of ideas, and cannot wait to test them out. One of the first things I plan on doing is to do the next generation of the infamous “Cambridge Coffee Pot.” Basically, I want to create a coffee pot that sends me a sms message when the coffee is done brewing. Should be a fun challenge. I will also post the source code when I am finished.

As I continue to grow up and interact with more and more people, I have truly discovered that my entire generation has been shaped by the internet. If you really think about it, another world besides our physical one on earth exists. The digital world has new rules, new systems of governments(lawmaking), cultures, etc. The digital culture is known worldwide, and cannot be escaped. Some say this is an awful thing. I, however, feel that this digital world only improves our physical life and world.

Take a step back and think of how much the Internet impacts our lives. For me, I simply would be an entirely  different person without the Internet. The Internet develops us as humans, and is hinting at the next step in human evolution. Technology continually merges with everyday human life, expanding our accessible knowledge from whatever we learned from our family or in school, to trillions of ideas from trillions of sources in a second or two. We should stop thinking of the internet as a network of machines, but rather a network of human knowledge. We must begin to approach the Web like this.

Google, yahoo, and bing only take the web as an amazing network of machines. At the moment, this is perfectly fine for what we need. However, soon these search engines will not be able to really allow us to see the potential of what the Internet can offer. We will need a search engine that thinks more like we think, we need to be able to index the web as one might index their brain, we need to stop approaching the web as an idle mass of server data and rather approach it as a living, evolving body of human knowledge.

Imagine this. Picture seeing a person’s online facebook, twitter, or myspace profile as you talk to them in real life. Picture being able to see their interests they have listed and all their mutual friends. Now imagine this as soon as you see somebody in real life; as you walk by somebody, all of this information will just pop into your vision, or even into your head. Some find this absolutely terrifying. However, I find this extremely important and beneficial

Essentially what will happen is our physical surroundings will become our web browser. Think about this. Really imagine this. How awesome would this be. As we drive, walk, or ride a bike google maps information pops up around us. As we buy something in a store, we could compare prices with other stores instantly. As we read a book, we could read other people’s blogs and interpretations of the text. This, my friends, is augmented reality, and it will soon be here.

As we all know, facebook will eventually be replaced by something new. The question is when, and what the heck will it be. Here are my ideas/predictions:

1. This future social networking site must flow better into our normal lives; it must feel like a more natural stream of information. Right now, it still feels a bit “unnatural” to take time to sign on and check our page. In the future, online social networking will be a part of our normal stream of life.

2. All mobile devices, especially phones, will sync flawlessly back with our one centralized social networking site. Right now we have to take extra time to set up such things as sms notifications and status updates. Soon, everything will work together.

3.This future site must be able to portray a better image of who one truly is. Think about it.Right now, if you have a friend who decides to hate you one day (always a good reason not to give out your password) he/she could change your internet image in about 5 min; all they would have to do is change your info, pic, and write on a few people’s walls under your name. Then, to further anger you, they could post negative blog comments via blogger or wordpress and reference your facebook account. This would completely tain your name. Anytime somebody decided to look you up on google, all of this incorrect, harmful information would be displayed thus ruining real life job opportunities, relationships, and friendships. The “next facebook” will have something I like to call verified account; an unhackable, true online identity that is uniquely yours.

4. Different people will be able to view your profile differently. For example, you would be able to tell this futuristic site that you want your boss to see a different profile pic, set of wallposts, and other info. This would preserve the personal privacy and freedoms we enjoy in real life.

5. New methods of online communication will be implemented. Whether you recognize it or not, technology is becoming “smarter” and more “multi-touch.” This social networking site of the future will be able to express our day to day moods and expressions. This maybe a hard concept to comprehend but, it actually makes a ton of sense if you think about it. If we continually change day to day, why shouldn’t we do the same online? Also, multi-touch environments will allow for us to imput and sent out more information and data to the web. This futuristic social networking site will reflect that.

6.  This idea struck me the other day. Human relationships will be reflected in the way that friend’s profiles work together. For example, each of my parents have a facebook page. They are linked via the little relationship status, and it says they are married. However, two of my friends could link their profiles in the same way. This is not right. Human relationships must be replicated online. For truly married couples, they should have separate profiles that somehow work together. This would reflect the true human relationship they have. Similarly, brothers, sisters, or other sibilings’ profiles would work together in ways different than just two friends’ profiles would.

7. These future sites will be recognized as much, much more than just a fun way to connect with friends. Rather the same site will interact with school, work, and for friends, just as you as person would. Imagine combining the power of google docs, facebook, twitter, your cell phone, wordpress, flickr, and every other social web 2.0 site together. Now take that image and introduce the few ideas i have just presented. This is the future of the Web and of our society.

I just have couple things I want to say about Twitter vs. Facebook, because I think that still many people do not understand which one is better for them personally to use. First, people must understand that Twitter is completely built upon the concept of PUBLICLY sharing info, thoughts, and ideas. Twitter is not the private status updating like Facebook. When somebody is “following” you on twitter, they do not have  to be somebody you have met before, unlike “adding a friend” on Facebook. If you cannot understand that concept, and if you are uncomfortable with all these “strangers” following your thoughts and ideas than please do not use twitter, and stick to Facebook. This is the main reason Twitter is not popular among most high school students. Twitter is not for you and your 20 or 30 friends to have quick convos. Twitter is open,and public, and you must remember that anytime you update your status. You should never be like “eww who is this guy and why is he following me?” Unless you change your privacy settings, it is your fault completely that these “strangers” are following your tweets. Stick to Facebook if you don’t want others you do not know following your thoughts and ideas.

When alot of people first learn about twitter, they think it is completely useless. These people just get the initial impression of “Why they heck do I care what my friends are doing every second of the day? ” However, people who just see this aspect of the site completely overlook the real usage and application of Twitter. Twitter is not just about telling people you are having coffee at 8:30 in the morning, rather the site is more about the sharing and transmission of information. Twitter is extremely useful when someone wants to find out something very specific, very fast. A very recent example of this would be the death of Michael Jackson. The people obsessed with celebrity sites would have most likely been the initial “tweeters” of the story, posting links to a site like tmz.com. From there, their followers would have become interested and started internal discussions using hashtags like #MJ #RIP #MichaelJackson, etc. In addition to all of those tweets, students on the UCLA campus (or other onlookers in L.A.) would be tweeting about the commotion and adding to the discussion under the hashtags. So, to summarize what I have just said, within (lets say like 20 min) millions of people know about the tragedy of Michael Jackson’s death, based off the sharing of information of millions of people. What really becomes cool, is that now (if your late to all the action) you can search twitter for the various hashtags involving Michael Jackson, and you are able to view thousands of tweets including links to outside blogs and sites along with original pictures of the UCLA hospital crowd and such. In essence, one cellphone picture of the commotion in L.A. can be instantly viewed by people interested in the developing story around the world. (A very small group of people who know something can relay that information to millions of people very, very quickly).

Twitter’s unique ability to share information can be applied in many ways. Just think of the usefulness of internationally sharing information instantly. There is a reason Twitter is growing so fast.

Today Apple announced the release of Iphone 3.0 firmware. It will be downloadable sometime in the summer, I believe. Today’s release includes some major features like the long awaited copy paste. It also has some other stuff like spotlight, a voice memo app for those who can use it and push notification. A landscape keyboard is also going to added to mail, notes etc. Iphones will get other features like tethering and bluetooth improvements…..

If you are an ipod touch owner (not Itouch) you will have to pay 10 bucks to update…

According to several different internet sources, the 3.0 version of the iphone os is going to be released either next week or in the near future. I am praying that this update will finally give me some of the features i had on the pre-2.0 jailbreaks.