Headworx

Last week I briefly mentioned an Android phone could be configured to broadcast a Physical Web URL beacon. Technically this is done by programming the Bluetooth controller chip to periodically advertise a Service UUID and a Service Data PDUs according to the Eddystone format . Practically, today this can be done with a help of the Beacon Toy app . To receive the beacons, either on Android or iOS, Chrome Browser v49 (or later) must be installed, with the Physical Web option enabled under Privacy settings. Physical Web supports only https:// URLs and they cannot exceed 17 characters (with some encoding ), so generally the links should be short, or a URL shortener (such as https://goo.gl ) should be used. Proper http forwarding is supported, but some services (such as LinkedIn) make tricks rendering their shortcuts incompatible with Physical Web (hey, LinkedIn, this is your wakeup call!). So with the Beacon Toy it is just a few clicks to have your URL of choice set up as a Physi

In my case it is a constant process / hobby: to optimize the set of travel accessories. It is also a multi-year, multi-million-mile experience. So here it is: the Headworx Cable Bag, 2016 edition: MicroSDHC card with an adapter. Handy for quick file transfers and backups. Apple Pencil charging adapter. Probably the weakest point of the Pencil. Micro-to-Mini USB adapter. Some things still use the old connector. MicroUSB-to-30-pin Apple adapter. Some things still use the old connector. MicroSD-to-USB adapter. Doubles as a pendrive. Fido security key. For Google 2-factor authentication, in case I had to use a public computer and my phone with the Authenticator App was broken. Zolt Charger . Being much smaller than the stock laptop charger, it has revolutionized this cable bag, as I could get rid of a phone / iPad charger and a power splitter - now I never need more than a single outlet, when charging a laptop, an iPad and a phone at the same time. Euro adapter for the Zolt. The

Here is what 12 years of evolution brings to pen / tablet computing. 2003 Compaq TC-1000 vs 2015 iPad Pro. Both are 12 inch screens. Both run 6 hours on a battery Both capable of running Microsoft Office. Both have detachable keyboards and can be used as tablets. Apple pencil is slimmer and longer compared to the Microsoft pen. But the pen has an eraser. The Compaq could be configured with up to 1.20 GHz processor, 60 GB storage, 2 GB RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and was running Windows XP Tablet OS with excellent support for pen input, including background OCR and indexing. Not that very much different than the iPad... For some reason we are running in circles... I have a feeling Microsoft has wasted most of those years... Because now very few remember how pen computing was on Windows 12 years ago. But wait, Windows Ink is coming back this Summer. And the Huawei MateBook seems like a perfect device for the Ink. Time to switch back?

I'm pretty happy with the battery life of the Blackberry Priv . It is not that I travel without a backup power bank, but generally I do not run into troubles. But from time to time the phone can drain a lot of juice even before lunch, just doing nothing. Chasing the battery draining ghosts I installed an app called GServiceFix and it seems to have cured the disease. Which is scary... Scary, because I've had this problem on other phones and other versions of Android. It probably started with the LG G3 running KitKat and continued on the G3 upgraded to Lollipop, was present on the Priv running Lollipop and now has been noticed from time to time after upgrading the Priv to Marshmallow. A strange plague rooted somewhere deep in the Android OS, popular enough that someone takes an effort to build an app that cures it. But looking around I'm finding more questions than answers about what the GServiceFix really does and why the fix, proven working by many, has not found i

I have not checked the status of a smart home landscape for some time. Wink went down a while ago, Revolv left their users stranded. Now I'm hearing SmartThings hubs playing random games with their users . At Silvair we had an ambition to develop a similar platform back in 2012. And we did deliver on a small scale having a trusted group of satisfied users. While the F&Home system is not running the most popular protocols, it has one simple advantage: reliability. I installed it in my home 4 years ago and it has been running now uninterrupted for almost 1000 days. No blackouts. No random behavior. Just doing the job. There is this fundamental difference between what it takes to build a system that works sometimes and a system that works always. An order of magnitude in time / money / effort. Or two orders of magnitude. It is almost like making software that behaves like hardware - rock solid and dependable. Happy path is easy and you can demonstrate it to the market, custom