Image by Creative Tools 

Well, almost anyway. With 3D print we are almost there.

When I came across this video on youtube, I realized that at least we can send copies of 3D objects over the net. Kind of like sending copies of music and other files. Just the same problem with copyright arises here but now with 3D objects and design protection. Right now there are a limited variety of materials that can be printed but what if the original is printed in this material? There will be more about this in a few years. Mark my words!

My view of 3D printing so far has been centered on new types of production. For instance spare parts can be produced cheaply by small businesses and perhaps even from home. The video below shows that we now also can scan 3D objects, and then print out an exact copy.

Such a printer has to be useful even when we build houses. Lots of small items can be printed on site.
Make this printer big enough and we can also print complete buildings!

 

Of course there are loads of applications that we may not think of right away. For instance can the printer replicate itself?

 

Another example of the development of 3D print is EndlessForms, a website that lets users create sculptures virtually and render them in physical form.

In the end of the 80's I was heading a group at Volvo Data that worked with AI (Artificial Intelligence). We had high expectations of what could be done with AI at that time. Mainly we worked with expert systems. Trying to capture the knowledge from experts within a certain area and then organize it so it can be reused. There were also some quite new techniques such as Neural Nets and Genetic Algorithms just to mention a few. I think we achieved some progress but the impact on the business was much smaller than we had hoped for. Most companies lost interest in AI but scientists and researches continued to explore this complicated and interesting area. AI techniques are used in search engines, automatic translation and in many other types software but we usually don't call it AI anymore. In a way these skills are too limited to be called AI. Ai aimed for intelligence that was similar to or even beated human capacity.

Signs of a new dawn for AI 

Now, 20 years later, we can see signs of a new level of AI due to both much more computer power and better software. One very interesting example is Watson, IBM's system that can compete with the best humans in Jeaopardy. Watson listen to the category and the clue, translates it to text and a search expression, search the huge database, rates all the different hits, selects the most promising one and finally answer with a question (that the rules of Jeaopardy states). 

Think about it! This is not an easy task for a computer system and Watson actually beats strong humans these days. IBM are already heading more serious tasks with Watson. One is within health care. Listening to the patients symptoms and suggest a diagnosis is not so very far from the Jeopardy game. When I think about I would rely more on a diagnosis where the doxtor first took advice from Watson than the doctor only. Medicine is an area that develops very fast and no human can keep up with all the new knowledge that is flowing in. There are many other areas of course where such computer systems can be very useful   

Is this Singularity?

 The Singularity point is when computers have the same or better reasoning capacity as humans. What this Sinularity point really means to the human race and what the consequenses are is very hard to imagine. Watson is not even close yet. Singularity will of course not suddenly be here from nowhere. Computers will gradually come closer and closer to human reasoning level. The Watson version is now 2011. Wait until next verison and next version after that and so on. Watson will just get better and better. It is one step of many on the way to Singularity. 

it never ends does it? The number of sites that needs userid and password . The most safe way is to have complex passwords that are different for each site. In order to remember all these passwords it is tempting to write them down somewhere and that is NOT safe...

I recently found LastPass.com that really helps. Just let me first tell my password history in short..

I used to have Password Safe to keep my passwords in a safe place. It is not so bad really but I use 3 computers with a local copy of the password files and had to maintain them all. These days that little problem can be solved by putting the password file in Dropbox!

I also prefered to build up my passwords from a base word and then combine with the 2nd and 4th position in the the site name. For instance, let's say that my base word is 24Avenue* and I need a password for gmail. Position 2 and 4 in gmail is 'm' and 'i'. I put 'm' and 'i' as the first and last character in the new password. So I create the password m24Avenue*i. This makes it easy to remember any password at any site. a24Avenue*o for Yahoo, r24Avenue*p for Dropbox and so on. I found that more convenient than having Password Safe to generate a random password.

LastPass and Password Safe have similar functionality but I found LastPass a bit more useful for me. It saves the passwords in the cloud so I can reach from any browser nad any computer at any place. One thing is that it is completely integrated with my browser as an extension and if you are willing to pay a few dollars there is an App for iPhone, Android and other smartphones. LastPass automatically fill in the password and ask me to save new passwords. The only password I need to remember is the password that open up LastPass. I think I will continue to create my passwords in the way I described above. Even if all my passwords disappear in the cloud I have a chance to remember them!

Can we really trust that LastPass will not check our passwords? I don't know. I think the same question is relevant for all cloud services. Can we trust that Dropbox will not look into our files or Google in our documents?

 

I have been comparing Google search with DuckDuckGo, a new search engine (for me).

I must say that DuckDuckGo gives a much more appealing result page than Google does.
It is clear and simple and I have so far received better results with DuckDuckGo.

Perhaps Google has more in its databases. I do not know but the actual presentation of the results are better in DuckDuckGo.

Try it out and tell me your opinion!

As I see it, there are a few simple reasons that users refrain:

1. The user interface is lousy.
2. The lack of integration with the functions that Wave was supposed to replace. That is email and chat.
3. One must be registered and log in to yet another environment and the one you interact with must also be registered.

Instead, they should integrate Wave in Gmail. Eg. when you mark a thread as "Wave" it will enable that the participants in the conversation to see it in the "Wave way". If your partners email system doesn't have this function, it will remain an ordinary email conversation as usual. 

 

 

(photo by IK's World Trip) 

Sitting on an airport thinking about nothing and everything, I got in the complaining mode!

Why is it more complicated now to do easy things than before? Shouldn't it be more easy and faster these days?

Flight companies, car rental companies and others doesn't have the same rules and routines and to check in doesn't mean the same thing. Instead of reading all the rules for checking in and what codes or cards I have to have handy, I use to put all the documents to Dropbox.  In order to reach Dropbox I need a smartphone or a laptop or whatever needed to get out on the net.

If we had some common standards about how to identify ourself and show our codes we would only need our credit card or why not our "mobile wallet". Any Mobile Wallets are not around in Europe at this time but it will for sure, within maybe 5 years. The lack of standards confuses us all. Not to mention different charging cables...

The thing is that I can't be sure of having Internet connection at the time that I need access to the document so I print some important part of it... Stupid? Yes probably...

We still live in between the old document world, where a signature is the standard, and the new world where digital signatures are more valid. We need standards! How to identify ourself in order to login or to get our tickets or whatever.

Standards is boring (for me) but it is needed in the same way that we need to brush our teeth regularly. Just do it!

BTW, it is recommended to bring a copy of your passport and similar documents when you are abroad. Scan it and put in Dropbox!
If you want a free Dropbox account with 2 Gb space, click here, and you will at the same time give me another 256 Mb!

More about Dropbox. 

Humans have always wanted to predict the future.

The internet introduced "wisdom of the crowd". Under certain conditions the crowd is more correct in estimating and predicting things.

So what is more natural to use social media such as blogs and Twitter for predictions!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627655.800-blogs-and-tweets-could-predict-the-future.html?full=true

Here is a site that is actually trying to do exactly this:

https://www.recordedfuture.com/how-it-works.html

Some problems might arise here. One of the conditions for "wisdom of the crowd" is that individuals shouldn't affect each other so much that the result is changed significantly. Blogs and tweets are constantly referring to other blogs and tweets so they are really affecting each other. So can we really rely on these results? Hard to predict, the future will tell...

 

Finally, we have the well known contradiction of predicting the future and being able to change our destiny. If I can predict for instance my own death in a car accident I will not go by car that day. My prediction would be wrong.

Everyone who have used business application in enterprises knows how terrible the user interface can be. They often miss not just the design of the page itself but also the navigation and interaction with the user. In short extremely boring! Many including me have been looking at how the game approach could make applications better. The game industry knows everything about "cliff hangers" and how to give feedback to keep the players interest. Business application developers have much to learn from the game industry when it comes to user experience. There is a business value of a fun to use application!

The App era

The last 2 years we have seen a completely new type of applications, the apps. I will call applications for both the iPhone, iPod, Android and all the others for apps here. One click to download and install. No manuals needed very easy to use but still sometimes with a huge lot of functionality. Many applications are transformed from pc to iPhone (or Android). Very often is the user interface for an application on an iPhone better than the corresponding interface on the pc! This is really interesting. The iPhone/iPod screen is smaller, we have no mouse and the keyboard is not very user friendly. Still the user interface is better.

How come?

The pc screen is often overloaded with information, hard to get an overview of and full of completely unnecessary functions (in 90% of the time), It is so easy to put some extra info on the pc and make some extra dialog steps and not really think from a user perspective. This is an old and well known problem. How come it can be so much better on a smaller screen? The small format of the iPhone makes the developer to think the dialog over again. Smart solutions are needed to keep it simple. It is obvious that it MUST be simple.

The App development will probably change how business applications will look in the future. Both the easy type of interface but also the agile methods used for app development. Apps are short time applications. Short development time and with a short life span. Each app  will give solutions to limited parts of a business application and maybe to a limited set of users. Specialized for certain tasks. As opposed to global applications with full functionality for all cases. Applications that take so long time to prospect, develop and implement that they are outdated when they are set to production.

The demand is of course that we have clear interfaces (API's) to the business applications and databases that apps can use. SOA in a new light.

Will we finally see business applications that are not only functional but also fun to use?

 

Picture by Titanas

I have used Nokia for several years now and my latest was Nokia E75 a highly competent mobile.

By pure coincidence I happen to have an iPhone these days. The iPhone is not so good for writing with the virtual keyboard as Nokia E75's real keyboard but navigation and reading is far better in the iPhone.

Nokia is still at the top of the telephone sales statistics. Yes telephones not smartphones. The main reason is Nokias big advantage in countries that are not so wealthy. In Asia, in Africa and South America. Recently Nokia released their touch screen similar to the iPhone, 3 years after Apple. So what is Nokias strategy now? They can not expect to have the same lead with smartphones. Will the current Nokia owners upgrade to a Nokia touch? Don't count on that! When all these people are upgrading to touch screens they will probably choose Android.  

Nokia you chose the wrong path! You developed your own Operating System and your own App Store for touch screens. As Microsoft you use your own libraries with its own standards. This seems to be a very bad idea.

Nokia, you are the best selling cellphone but not the best selling smartphone. Don't get isolated with your own App Store. You are in the lead but that can change very fast!

Nokia follow my advice, join the Android group and fight Apple!

Hard competition is good for us consumers but it is also good for the companies.

BTW, why not stop talking about smartphones. It is less and less phone and more a mobile pc. The phone is just one of many functions. I prefer to say mobile.

 

 

When iPhone and iPod came along they had a touch screen Graphical User Interface that was so much ahead of the others that the competitors didn't even understand the threat. Now are they slowly gaining and with Android there are many more options than just Apple.

Picture from Rego

This time when the iPad was released as a very big iPod, the disance to their competitors is not at all that big. There are numerous Tablet PC's aht will be released this year with at least the same good functionality and a similar Touch screen Interface. The iPad will not take the lead in the same way as iPhones and iPods did. It will more be a matter of taste. Do I like the App's that Apple almost guarantee to have no spam or virus or will I like the Android way of open App's?

Right now there is a huge lead of App's from Apple but it will maybe change in the future. This graph from Chart of the day

 

Look at the following graph from AdMob, indicating that Android App's are slowly gaining.

There will be a battle between the iPad and other touch screen tablet PC's or even a combination of touch screen and keyboard. Something that I would like...