Headworx

Offline seems to be finally coming to maturity. Which is a real joy to me, as I continue spending long hours either airborne or in places with spotty or no network coverage at all (such as high mountain treks). On one end increasing number of applications support offline mode for mobile devices, which is synchronized with the "master" cloud contents / configuration. Among them are: Pocket (great for offline reading and seamless synchronization with the a continuous flow of news through services like Feedly) Kindle (great for purchased books as well as private PDF documents) YouTube (with the recent introduction of the YouTube Red service that has the "save" option built in, exceptional for online courses and instructional videos) Lightroom (with the recently introduced offline edit feature) Netflix (introduced recently the "download" option) Gaia GPS (fantastic support for offline global topo maps) All these apps would be probably not that m...

With the advent of Bluetooth mesh networking, the evidence is clear on Bluetooth becoming the center spot for convergence of services and standards using low power radio technologies. Mesh is bringing the natural set of use cases such as lighting control and sensing. But Bluetooth has already been used in variety of other related areas such as (to name a few) location beacons or asset tracking. The recent announcement of the joint effort by EnOcean and Silvair to align the leading energy harvesting platform with Bluetooth Mesh is yet another evidence of this convergence really happening. We had a very interesting panel on this convergence subject at the DOE 2017 Connected Lighting Systems Workshop in Santa Clara last week. And to me is just crystal (pun intended) clear now. Bluetooth is THE low power radio of choice for indoor applications. And possibly for many outdoor too. Those who disagree, please give me a single reason to use different technology. Before Bluetooth mesh ne...

The Sony RX100-V is an unexpected beast. The key difference comes from the 315-pint phase-detection AF system. First ever in a compact camera. It is blazingly fast. And accurate. And takes 20MP RAWs at 24fps, enabling a completely new shooting technique: press the shutter and keep it pressed for a while while the camera takes some 60 shots. And keep repeating. Chances are, among the 60, there will be one just great, not possible with a standard single shot technique. It is enough to say there isn't a seasoned DSLR in the world that can accomplish this. The "only" drawback is that after an evening session you'll end up with probably close to 2000 pictures. And this is where the tedious part starts. Or was starting, because now it seems Adobe has finally closed the loop with the new "Enable offline editing" feature in Lightroom Mobile. So here is my workflow now: Keep the shutter button depressed creating hundreds or thousands of RAWs at will. Import ...

The alarm clock (app) did not ring. I started checking why after waking up a bit late. Clicked the Clock icon and it just briefly popped up the "Unfortunately, Clock has stopped." message without even giving me a chance to [Report] or [OK] it. Clicked the Clock again. Same thing. Clearly the Clock app was crashing and despite numerous attempts I could not make it run. What do you do? Reboot of course. It always helps. This time it did not. Same thing. Unfortunately, Clock has stopped. I solved the problem by going to the [Apps] settings and cleared the application data. Clearly the data was corrupt and the app was crashing trying to parse it. We live with such crashes. But some apps should just never, ever do that. Clock is one of them. You cannot manually fix an app that is supposed to be your watchdog. Because then is just fails to be that watchdog. It will not wake you up and you will miss your important flight / meeting / wedding / (insert your own). This is a fai...

Longer term hardware reliability in consumer and prosumer devices is still very challenging. This will drive people away from technology, as after several years dozens of their "smart" gadgets will start malfunctioning and falling apart. To me, when something fails, it is the most annoying moment, especially considering the busy schedule I have. Today, for example. it was two extra hours to rip the internet router apart and replace 5 dry electrolytic capacitors. Drying capacitors are probably responsible for 80% of home electronic products just dying all of a sudden. Software is usually unstable at the beginning of a lifecycle. Then it gets better and over time many software - powered devices we start considering like pure hardware - they just work. Until they stop, usually without warning. What is absolutely surprising, many of them being "connected" devices never monitor their own health and never indicate any problems until they happen. It could be as ...

Little things matter. I've been extremely happy using the Logitech Anywhere MX mouse since we installed glass desks at our office several years ago. In my opinion this is the best computer mouse ever. It works effortlessly on any surface. Including fully transparent glass. And is very precise. Actually it was the best mouse ever. Because there is the new kid on the block - the Anywhere MX 2. The name may not be very creative, but Logitech managed to address probably all remaining issues people might have had with the MX 1. Actually there were only two issues I could identify: MX 1 required a dongle. A small one, but still sticking outside and occupying a valuable USB port. MX 2 uses a dual - standard radio, so it still works with Logitech dongles, but it also may use Bluetooth. And it has a very good Bluetooth implementation: connects very fast and is very responsive. MX 1 worked on batteries. MX 2 is rechargeable. And unlike the Apple mouse you can still use it while chargi...

Increasingly more products today are defined by software that runs them. With the advent of IOT this trend accelerates. Yet the hardware companies still don't get it. We're getting evidence of this old school thinking on a daily basis. Take a light bulb. It used to be a very difficult hardware product. High quality glass required a huge glassworks factory. The tungsten wire required an ultimate hardware precision at a plant. And finally you had to produce vacuum in this sealed glass ball. There were only a handful lighting companies on the planet. Today the light bulb hardware is usually a commodity. LEDs from one supplier, plastics from another supplier and a couple of electronic components inside. No rocket science, at least for a standard LED bulb. The manufacturers have established their supply chain relationships with silicon vendors. It had all worked until they wanted to make the light bulb smart and connected. Which requires replacing an existing microchip with ...