About Controllers

After CES, I had the lofty ambition of writing about some of the new and cool electronic gadgets that I saw. I never did get that blog post published. There were tons of large, flat panel displays. 3D was a big topic. And there were dozens of tablets.

One meta-theme I interested me was the ever-expanding range of controllers and input methods. In the past few years, we have gone from keyboards and mice to capacitative and resistive touch screens. The popularity of the iPad is proof that touch screens are fantastic for lightweight computing.

There are two other technologies on the horizon that show a lot of promise. First, gestural controllers hold a lot of promise. Like touchscreens, gestural controllers have been around for a long time for musical applications, most notably the Theremin. Xbox Kinect has been a huge success, and already companies and hackers are using the technology to do other things.

Another technology on the upswing is speech recognition and input. Both iOS and Android, the dominant operating systems for smartphones, have rushed to embrace this technology. If you haven’t already tried the Vlingo app for Android, you should. Availability of 3G and 4G data connections makes it easier to put remote processing capacity against the uploaded commands.

Voice control is most useful in a hands-free setting, such as driving a car. It also seems crazy to use body motions to control your computer. However, both of these new technologies are quickly being adapted for laptops and other electronics. Because each controller type has advantages and disadvantages, I believe that the future lies in mixing and matching the controllers. In the same way that a keyboard is paired with a mouse, I would not be surprised to see the touchscreen paired with voice control.

Facebook to Open DC Plans

Facebook opened up its datacenter plans! It’s a really big contribution, and it is sure to change the way that Data Centers are designed. It could also prove to be disruptive for hardware manufacturers in the server space. Gigaom covers a lot of the details.

The motherboard speaker is replaced with LED indicators to save power and provide visual indicators of server health.

Some of the design details seem obvious to me. Unless you are standing in front of a server, the speaker is useless. Also, the beeps can be muffled by the fans and the hundreds of other servers in the vicinity. A visual indicator of server health is far more useful.

This reminds me of the time one of the marketing managers at Novell referred to the telecom closet in a branch office as a datacenter. Even IT geeks sometimes forget the scale at which some large corporations are running at. Minute energy savings, such as the ones found by Facebook, are a nerdy (but green) topic.

Industrial Design Fakeout

One of my coworkers, Peter Teichman, pointed out this interesting industrial design choice. He was disassembling a Zigbee-based home control unit when he noticed something odd.

Zigbee devices have tranceivers so that they can be (mesh) networked. This unit has an antenna on it, but it is smaller than a postage stamp and inside the unit. The plastic antenna is empty and serves no function.

Either there was a component change after the plastics were ordered or they added it to look more radio-like. Either way, this is pretty funny!

Analytics Software

One of my co-workers pointed me to this blog entry about the future of analytics software.

Speedtest Brought To You By DSCI

I was just trying to get a recap on the Bruins game last night, and I was having a hard time getting it to buffer. I am not sure why the NHL’s player doesn’t let the recaps buffer, it would really help when you have a poor connection. Out of curiousity, I went to speedtest.com to figure out how my connection was doing. I was happy to see that my speedtest was brought to me by DSCI! Thanks friends!

Here are the results of the speed test. This has to be the result of the snowstorm, and the countless people stuck indoors working from home and surfing the web. I think our packets are being carried to me by retarded turtles, through rain, sleet and snow.

CR-48 First Look

One of the developers at litl, Tristan, brought in a CR-48 to work. I have applied for a device, but I haven’t received one.

• The matte black with the matte screen is really beautiful. Visually it is the “opposite” of the shiny, too-shiny MacBook on my desk.
• They try to keep it fun. Intel wasn’t allowed to put a sticker on it, so the accompanying card is humorous. The minimalist paperwork accompanying the notebook has some quirky bits. The product managers and the product marketing managers did a great job with the physical product and the packaging.
• After a user screen, it goes directly to the Chrome Browser. The notebook seems very responsive and the startup, hibernate and sleep functions are wicked fast.
• The notebook had some issues maintaining connectivity with our corporate wireless network. It seems unusual to me because I feel that wireless is one thing that Linux has excelled at in recent years.
• It seems unusual to have a VGA out on the machine, since it is non-functional. Perhaps it will be for projectors?

There are a ton of reviews out there on the device, so I won’t post an in-depth review. Here are two pictures of the device though!

Small Technology From China

I’ve found out that if you really need a generic technology item, it’s sometimes easiest to get it delivered from China. eBay is loaded with these sellers. Another site I like to browse for is Alibaba Express. For example, I spent 2.49 cents on a TPU Case for my T-Mobile Vibrant. If I went to the mall and bought it from a kiosk, it would have cost me $20.

Another item I just purchased was a microphone to test out my laptop. I was having audio problems, as I discussed before, and I couldn’t find a software fix. To purchase a minimalist microphone it cost me $1.50. I’m not sure how the economics work, since the shipping costs 6 Yuan (.90 USD).

Ubuntu T235D Sound Fix

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the T235D works great with Ubuntu 10.04. However, there is one slight issue – the microphone sound doesn’t work. I found this fix in the Ubuntu Forums, and it works!

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-alsa-driver-modules-$(uname -r)
sudo reboot now

Toshiba T235D and Ubuntu (Update)

After struggling with Ubuntu 10.10, I “downgraded” to the long-term stable edition, 10.04. This solved a lot of the power management issues.

Everything seems to work as expected. Two exceptions:

1. The audio input, which is actually part of the webcam, doesn’t work. I’ve tried everything, but I can’t get it recognized.
2. My attempt at using gparted to shrink the Windows 7 partition didn’t work so well. Windows is now unusable.

Facebook Valuation

FastCompany posted this interesting article about Facebook valuation.

Venture Capitalists and others value non-public companies by the amount of the last investment or trade. In Facebook’s case, the last trade was rumored to value the entire company at 35 to 50 billion dollars. An example, if 10% of the company gets sold for 10 cents, then the entire company must be worth 1 dollar. In this case, people are willing to pay exorbitant amounts for shares of Facebook. Since there is such a restricted supply of these shares, and the demand is so great, the result is a stratospheric valuation of the entire company. There is a fascinating story over at Bloomberg on how trading in Facebook derivatives has taken off.

Current Facebook shareholders gain the most out of this scheme. However, it is sort of like a pyramid scheme – at some point they will run out of investors willing to pay such high premiums. If the stock ever does go public, and it will because of SEC regulations, the valuation should adjust downwards to reflect the intrinsic value.