Luke Janssen
Jumping off stuffArchive for August, 2008
My new iPhone
I have just bought an iPhone (my own one, not one that the developers can play with), and I have to say I am very impressed. Having played with it for 10 minutes I can see how it is going to be such a useful device for me. The best things are (and excuse me if I haven’t found the rest yet, this is my first impression, which we all know is the most important thing – as my Oma used to say “I only need to see my first 5 cards in Bridge to know what I am going to bid!… which used to really piss my Opa off!)
So, main good first impressions are:
- email is good, but I only have my personal gmail in there at the moment, I will have to wait for Johnny Makkar (our iPhone man in New York) to get to work and tell me how to set the rest of my iPhone sorted
- downloaded (and paid for!!!) 3 Muse albums from iTunes (including one I already own on CD – yeah I know, but who cares, I like Muse so they can have my money). I was about to buy a Nano, but this has saved me from having to do that
- set up world clock so I can tell the time at all our offices – Sydney, London and New York (believe me this will save me massive headaches, and I am watching it like a hawk so I know when Johnny is in)
- Google maps – just a good app that I liked. I get lost alot
- Carling’s iPint. Which is very cool. Simple. Good branding. It got so much good PR that I wish it was us who did it for one of our beer brands!
So those are my first impressions.
Luke
Mobile Implants
The mobile is becoming more of a device you look at than have at your ear these days. Those ear-pieces make you look like an idiot so we need to find a way of implanting our mobiles into ourselves while still looking a little bit cool (although you still look like a talking to yourself madman)
1st evolution
Implants will happen first as pieces of jewelry like attachments, an earring and a tooth crown or something. Motorola have been experimenting with mobiles in clothing for a years already… problem is you can’t wear the same Motorola jacket or sunglasses every day!
Voice recognition will make sure you don’t have to dial any numbers from your teeth.
2nd evolution
Soon mobiles will be implanted as organic computers. Scientists at Keio University in Japan have recently done a proof of concept (2007) by putting text onto a strain of bacteria DNA. The Israeli’s did something similar in 2004
Since talking is such an effort, why not use thought to controll your new computer. I have played a thought controlled game at an exhibition in Sydney… I felt just like Yoda!).
So anyway, look out for the telepathy brain plug in (in 5 to 20 years i’d say). The problem is that people with ‘voices in their head’ would think they had crossed lines.
And now for a relevant joke: Women could put the their mobile implants in their implants (this innovation should be ready today – chips and tits are both silicon after all), that way men could now listen to women’s breasts in addition to just talking to them 
mobile projectors
Olly was on the train a while ago speaking to someone from Oxford University who was working on putting mini projectors into mobile phones. Which I thought is very cool; you can project whole websites or watch movies on a mini-big screen. Basically it does away with the limitation of handset screen size, which is in turn constrained by pocket / handbag / convenience size.
Mind you I traveled from New York to London yesterday and flew BA instead of Air India (it was air miles, that’s why!). Before I went to bed I watched two films. 1: “hitched” or something which is ok actually for a chick flick, and 2: “Iron man” which is perhaps a wait for the DVD. Anyway I digress. The point is that watching these two films, although means that I am falling asleep at my desk right now, was a pleasurable and easy experience. This despite the fact that BA screens (which are smaller than Air India by the way) were only really a little larger than an iPhone screen.
So my two recommendations are:
- Travel Air India between London and NY. You save quite alot on the ticket price and your Bollywood movie selection is massive!
- Don’t start changing what you are doing because of the projector mobile for another 6 months minimum…
Predictive text
What pisses me off about my LG shine is that they don’t allow swear words in predictive text. How stupid are they? Shit, Bitch and Fuck are in the everyday vernacular of most, if not all young people… actually ALL people. Even my Grandmother once used the word “cunt” during a family scrabble game. What are they trying to do? shield us from the ‘rude’ words. If that is the case why do they allow “job”
Scrabble debacle
Ok for my second posting… So after the demise of Scrabulous I went to upload ‘scrabble worldwide’ so that I can play with my friends in Sydney, but because I am in NY I can’t use it, I have to use Scrabble Beta, but then when I am in London (I spend 50% of my time in New York and the rest in London and a little bit in Sydney) I can’t play it.
I don’t think that it is cool for the Indian dudes to copy scrabble exactly and make money from it… but actually I do! they built a better game (current rating of scrabble worldwide is 1.5), which actually works.
Hasbro / Mattel are so inept and backwards that instead of trying to embrace the popularity on facebook and for example do a deal with the Indians so that they can sell physical games to the millions of fans playing it, they shut it down and replaced it with something SHIT that doesn’t work. Old company thinking which I just can’t stand.
Licensing and copyright are crap outdated concepts, no wonder people are ‘stealing’ music. Good on them. I do too. Copyright is something that will look very different in 50 years time… it should do anyway.
