Headworx

Being impatient by nature, I decided not to wait for car manufacturers to introduce Android - equipped models (which will inevitably come to market in the near future). I ripped away the old navigation system in my Subaru Forester and replaced it with the ViewSonic ViewPad 7 Android tablet. It took me good two days of work, and as you see on the photo on the right, there is still some finishing masking to be done. But the upgrade is working and it opens a new chapter of bringing together the Android OS and my car. "Why the ViewsSonic?", you may ask. Well, the choice has been driven here by the size factor alone. It simply fits the best the original Subaru dashboard console. I wanted it to look as close to the factory - installed system, as possible. Anything looking different always attracts unnecessary attention (you know what I mean...). Then there was the short list of other requirements: capacitive touch screen and built-in GPS receiver. And a few nice - to - have'

Humans fail. Computers do so too. But there is a difference. We are able to improve computers a lot. While we won't be improving humans that much. Aviation is the area where computers have been introducing the biggest changes. I would even say computers allow the modern aviation to exist. From design of aircrafts through handling the air traffic through handling the operations of airlines. Nothing would be possible today, have we turned the machines off. It is also impossible to fly a modern aircraft without a computer. The fact is pilots today operate computers that operate an aircraft. And in most cases the planes fly themselves. Humans are needed to go through a printed checklist and handshake some verbal commands with ground staff. Still verbal, because there is no unified digital plane-to-earth interface in place. Humans seem today like artificially introduced parts of the system. Almost unnecessary. And they fail. Human error has been by far the most common cause of a

Using USB as a power supply has been a theme on this blog since its inception back in 2006. At that time I coined the Universal Supply Bus term and have been watching the world adopting my idea. Well, not exactly my idea, as the idea of providing power together with signalling and data on a single universal connector has been invented long ago, and USB just made it widely popular. Designers went even to the extreme with products like AA cels charging directly from USB bus . What has helped recently was the EU and GSMA directives promoting the use of Micro USB as a standard communication and charging connectors. Powering mobile devices is a problem that has not been solved yet, despite being central to the wildly growing market of power hungry mobile devices. Today's standard is a day of work on a charge. It is the minimum that can be offered. Nobody will buy a mobile phone that lasts half a day. And we all assume devices have to be charged overnight. Which is acceptable, as lo

My BlackBerry Torch did not make it to the next generation. I am switching to Android. The decision is made. And some post mortem afterthoughts below. First, I have to be clear, my initial decision to make a BlackBerry my primary mobile device three years ago was in part driven by curiosity (let's try this...!), and in part (the more significant part) by the fact BlackBerry was the only smartphone platform back then supporting UMA, or calls over WiFi. I cried a river over UMA , especially after Orange decided to turn the service off last June. Something I can explain only by huge misunderstanding and mishandling by the MNO. But simply after UMA had been turned off, my incentive to continue with BlackBerry has significantly diminished. As most of the users, I started judging the platform without any UMA - derived handicap over the others. And the advantages did not and do not look that strong. Actually I have started seeing more disadvantages of sticking with the