Headworx

I tested the DeLorme inReach Explorer in really extreme conditions: flying over Pacific. To my surprise the communicator maintained consistent connection with the Iridium network and kept on reporting the location at regular intervals. I was able to send / receive messages too. Pretty amazing stuff, considering I was just sitting at a window in a coach class. Looking at the chart, you may see it dropped the communication after we crossed the date line at 180 longitude. I simply fell asleep and the device dropped to the aircraft floor, where it lost the signal. If it just works in a jet plane flying at 650 knots, it should really work anywhere in more realistic conditions. Wow!

Awaiting the Moto360 Android Wear, I bought two Wear watches (the Samsung and the LG) for our application development team. After spending few days with the LG, I have to say this is the first wearable device that is not a gadget, but proves to be well integrated and useful. It still does not address a simple scenario of charging both the phone and the watch via a single cable and charger (well... it seems like even the simplest industrial design ideas require geniuses like Yves Béhar ). But really the hardware is secondary in this experience. What constitutes a smart watch is the software. And Google delivers on the promise. Of course it has a strong foundation of Google Now, which has been developed and polished for years, and is the most important ingredient to the success of the Wear platform. It sounds simply stupid Samsung is playing a game here with Tizen . I had Pebble. I had the beautiful Gear Fit hardware. But the official Wear is a night-and-day difference. Yesterday w...

The world is flat. Finally. DeLorme inReach satellite communicator is a real breakthrough communication device. Not because it works anywhere on the Planet, talking directly to the Iridium satellite network. Not because it is an affordable, rugged, waterproof, GPS+satcom device with good battery life. But because it does not require a monthly fee (well, it does, but the fee is $3...). And because a decent monthly fee ($65) gives UNLIMITED two-way messages and tracking / location pings. It landed in my hands two days ago, so it is hard to fully judge it, but the first impressions are really, really good. The device itself is far from being an iPhone 6 or the next generation Samsung galaxy: it is thick, the screen is small, the GUI is awful, but it seems to be able to deliver in the three key areas: It is satellite based, so works where the cellular services do not. And it knows no borders / roaming. It works very well with a companion smartphone app via Bluetooth. The app most...

At the end of June Apple officially lost the smart watch race. Google is a year late (or my prediction was a year too early), but whatever Apple does later this year, they won't be able to turn back the clock. And anything else, including Pebble , Toq and Galaxy Gear is no longer relevant. Yes Apple will come up with an iWatch. But by the time they do, the Google Play Store will be full of applications supporting Android Wear. Google Now, which is most important, has supported the Wear since the day one, and other important updates are rolling out now. The Wear - enabled Google Maps was released last week. Yes Apple will make a beautiful iWatch hardware. And I know people will be wearing it just because is is so cool and beautiful. But by that time Android will have a decent selection of models that will be very practical (as the Android notification system is compared to the iOS'es) and not bad looking either (my personal favorite is the round Motorola Moto 360 ). I...

2014 is yet another Google I/O I missed. You simply cannot be everywhere. And I barely have time to catch up. Feedly more or less keeps me informed every morning when I browse through around 100 news items that keep flowing my way every day via subscribed RSS feeds. Yes I still use RSS, not Twitter, as my main information source. BTW: an idea for an app: offline reader for the most popular articles and news items referenced by given Twitter hashtags: subscribe to several #, hit refresh when online and it all gets sucked into the local cache (like in the Pocket). I'd pay $10 for an app like this one. So would probably a million other people. Does $10M budget seem interesting? But back to Google and the Subject Line. I am absolutely amazed with the Material Design presented by Google. When this is implemented in Android itself and in the most popular apps (of course it will be!), Android is going to be the most beautiful and desired OS on the planet. Material affects not only ...

The moment I plugged the new Samsung 4k monitor (the U28D590D - what a name!) to my 3-year old Lenovo X220 laptop and it booted with less-than-optimal 2560x1600 resolution I thought "I knew - it won't be capable of running this thing". But a short search brought me the Intel knowledge base article about setting custom resolutions with graphic adapters. My X220 runs the old (by today's standard) Intel HD 3000 graphics card. To my surprise I was able to enter 3840x2160@30p and it all clicked! My tiny old laptop is now running this 4k monster at full resolution. 30 frames a second is not bad, as long as it is progressive (can only do this via DisplayPort or HDMI 1.4, which the machine does not have). The experience of having more than 8 million pixels or screen real estate is awesome. I'm upgrading from Apple 27-inch cinema display and it feels like I have twice the space (which I have!). It also seems 4K resolution at 28 inch is maximum that makes sense. Anythin...

A water valve seems easy. Close when a flood is sensed. But that is reactive. I wanted it more proactive. Why not shut down water pipes BEFORE there is a leak? Of course I installed sensors (wireless) that detect leakage and close the main valve. This is easy in most home automation systems. But then I thought water should be shut down whenever the house is not occupied. Meaning when the burglar alarm is armed or there is no motion / presence detected for a certain time. It was almost that easy until I realized the washing machine is often programmed to wash when we are away. So the valve should open when a washing cycle is active. This has no longer been so easy, how do you detect a washing cycle? I never wanted to introduce a special extra user interface. The washing machine has a simple dial to delay the cycle by up to 8 hours. The UI is super intuitive and we use it almost every day, leaving for work in the morning, we set it to +7 hours, so the cycle starts just in time to fin...