The Coming Age of Cosmetic Cybernetic Augmentation

…This time the results were magical. As soon as I chose Bill Gates, a photo of Gates appeared on my phone’s screen. I was not aware of blinking or moving the muscles in my face. The phone seemed to have merged with my body, to be as much a part of me as a finger or a toe. I found myself laughing. I couldn’t stop saying, “This is freaky.” And it was.

NY Times: The Cyborg in Us All, via Big Think: Finding Your Inner Cyborg

The Re-Release of Palm’s Swan Song, Engadget Reviews the Pre 3

HP Pre 3 via Engadget
Years ago, when I was a much more frequent writer for Brighthand, I went through this long and protracted period of grieving for the loss of Palm as a notable mark for hardware and software innovation. First it was the incoming Handspring Treo device, and then Sony’s colorful/hardware-pushing models, and then the delay of version 5 of the operating system which turned into a longer delay and cancellation of version 6. And then the company being sold to private investors. And finally the DNA of the company being refreshed with webOS, then sold to HP.

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Pondering About e-Bike Concepts

Ford e-Bike Concept
If it can get an electric motor, then it will. At least that’s what it seems on one vein of bicycle concepts that I’ve seen lately. Not that I’m totally knocking the idea, there are definitely moments when having an extra pull/push of a motor would be great – espeically when the commute includes additional weight or deodorant-defeating hills. Are the concepts that I’m seeing indicative of a movement, or just a means of throwing research and development on a wall to see what sticks in the marketing department.
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The Atlantic: The Shame of College Sports

…Slavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as “student-athletes” deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes.

The NCAA today is in many ways a classic cartel. Efforts to reform it—most notably by the three Knight Commissions over the course of 20 years—have, while making changes around the edges, been largely fruitless. The time has come for a major overhaul. And whether the powers that be like it or not, big changes are coming. Threats loom on multiple fronts: in Congress, the courts, breakaway athletic conferences, student rebellion, and public disgust. Swaddled in gauzy clichés, the NCAA presides over a vast, teetering glory…

This article came out many days ago from The Atlantic. Its long. And I read it as a college athelete who was just injured and wondered about his prospects to continue down an athletic or academic path (RE: me in Jan ’99 when I tore my ACL). By the time I got to the end, I started wondered if I would encourage my God-kids (and soon niece/nephew) to play anything more than intramurals. Its really a shame. Really…

A Bit Intrigued at Google Wallet


I have to admit that there are technologies that when I see them do amaze me a bit. Sometimes because there’s a sense of magic that comes with it. Other times, its simply because its something that I’ve wanted in my hands for sometime and can easily see it as an every day part of life. That’s how I felt about Google Wallet, and it was Engadget’s recent contest to win a Samsung Galaxy S 4G that made me ask the question, "could I really get down with using a phone as a wallet?"

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My Evolving Mind Towards Spatial Computing

The other night I was sitting with my roomates talking some about computing and why I have taken the approach of connecting my N8 to one of the monitors. Its not so much that I think that a mobile’s screen isn’t good enough, but that I think we can do a lot more with both the screens and data that we go through.

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Revisiting the Projector-Driven Mobile Experience

As I sit in my new place of residence, I look at my roomates’ monitors that they connect to their laptops and start to connect my N8 to one of them. Then I stopped. Yea, I can connect to these screens and then using the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Zeemote joystick navigate my device (using Nokia’s Big Screen app at that). But, I stopped part-way into going to connect it. It didn’t make sense. I’ve got unused walls, and honestly would like to carve some of my own “screen space” into the residence. That’s when I thought again about getting a projector and adding that to the mini-bag of “mobile office” components that I should probably employ more often than not.
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A Missing Anna, An Upcoming Belle, Is It Still Good Promise of Mobile


Some time ago, long before I got tired of writing reviews for mobile devices, I became a proponent of the opinion that you aren’t entitled any software updates for your mobile device. Appreciated? You bet. But, are those things that I was guaranteed of when I purchased a device? Nope. And to that end, I’ve learned (for the most part) to be content with the blessings and niggles of whatever mobile device that I have. And whenever there is an update, if its really an update and not a security/bug fix of something that shouldn’t have been as broken, then I do my best to temper my expectations and simply treat the device as if it were a freshly detailed car – that is, glad that it has the bumps in the seat but with a newer-car smell.

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