Headworx

Power supply is probably the last thing keeping our iPhones and Androids from being fully wireless. Wireless network connectivity has been there since the beginning. Then we got wireless headsets. And recently wireless displays. But there still is this final cord that requires a connector and has to be plugged in every day. This will change. The good news is Apple will introduce wireless charging for the iPhone 5. At least this is my prediction. The competitors have already embraced wireless charging. At the Mobile World Congress LG had their entire future handset line ready to be fully wireless by adopting inductive charging. Powermat marked a strong presence there as well. But I think again we need Apple to tell the World about this feature and then everybody will start to demand and expect wireless charging everywhere. The technology is mature, the bad news however is there is no single standard. Everybody tries to introduce their own. And the bad news is Apple will intro...

So it has been two weeks now since I upgraded the Galaxy Note to the Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich. Yes I am still using it. I found a workaround to the huge battery drain problem. It helps to turn off screen click sounds. There is a bug in the kernel (Samsung, I suppose) that prevents the CPU going to deep sleep mode when the screen click sounds are enabled. After implementing the workaround the phone is usable, but my mixed feelings remain. It still looks like the ICS has been rushed out of the door. And as it often is the case, the rush has been a bad decision. Frustrated users (the overall experience after upgrade is worse) and bad opinion about products. The Galaxy Note has been a fantastic phone. Almost ideal. Now it is not so ideal anymore. I experience occasional lockups or applications not responding. The same applications were working flawlessly on the Gingerbread (Android 2.3). And despite the implemented workaround the battery life is 20%-30% shorter, meaning th...

I have done many circles around this subject. And finally it dawned on me what is the difference between a dumb and a smart system. The difference is understanding, processing and communicating INTENTS. Dumb computers were doing what users instructed them to. The old era that has passed. Smart computers are doing whatever it takes to match the intents of their users. Everything is a computer today. A smartphone. A car. A house (I am working on the last one with my team at HomerSoft, which we still keep under a cover). And whatever we do with the computers when we interact with them, the more they understand our intents, the more we like them. Intents are loosely coupled. It is never a single press of a button or a command or a gesture. It is always a series of various loosely federated events, coupled with additional "environment" data. So it is difficult to correctly identify intents. It has always been, even without computers, just among people themselves. But I c...

Last Wednesday I rushed to install Android 4 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) as soon as my Samsung Galaxy Note notified me it was ready to do so. It took about an hour to download and upgrade and the process went smoothly. But my joy did not last long. First the update cleared all my home screen settings. Two dozen or so carefully selected icons and widgets went to the recycle bin and could not be recovered. I was presented with a new, empty home screen. Well... this is not how users should be treated with an upgrade. Samsung and Google, it seems you are too much in a rush! Then about early afternoon on that day the phone beeped signaling low battery state. It has never happened before. The Note had had no problem running the whole day on a single charge, before the upgrade. Of course the upgrade process itself required a lot of radio transmission and processor work, but still 7 hours on a charge meant it lasted about 60% shorter than usual. It is a bit better now, but according to my...