This war has been a big topic lately especially since last week and WebOS was acquired by HP hopefully saving the platform and using it in their own attempt to the mobile phone and tablet market.  But I would like to take the next step in this war past just the Phone and the Tablet, and why I think Android, as of right now, is in the prime spot for victory.

It is already understood the the iPhone/iPad OS is the most polished and most successful platform right now and Apple does not see to be slowing down, but in my opinion they have a fatal flaw when it comes to the mobile OS market.  This flaw is the reason Android is most likely to win while allowing Microsoft a chance to retry again on their failures like Vista and why i think Phone 7 will have to be redone.  This is also why I think WebOS could survive if HP uses it right.

The key in my argument is what I believe to be the Mobile OS market.  This market is not just phones and tablets/slates, this market includes any and all information consumption devises and could be carried over to the majority electronic devices not just for news and entertainment.

What I see are companies wanting a way to expand the abilities and experiences of their devices.  The next step would be TVs.  The ability to put a mobile OS into a TV and to have that OS run a browser and apps likes Skype and Netflix or weather will be the next leap these mobile OSes will take.

The question people ask my when I say things like video chat on their tv is Why do I need Skype on my TV? but I tell them the question will be Why can’t I have skype on my TV? And this goes for any and all applications.  The ability to allow consumers use their devices as they please will be key.  The need for an OS that can handle a multitude of tasks very well and in a very polished way will drive the market for the need of these Mobile OSes in all our devises.

The OS that can adapt and place it self in a position for companies to easily implement their OS and app catalog into their devices will dominate the market.  We are now at a point we we can place low powered cheap processors on anything and a mobile OS that is light weight that won’t overwhelm the processor will be more importnat than our current full desktop Operation Systems.  That is why I see Android come out of the war as the victor.  We always question why we need certain technologies in our lives and a few years later that technology is thoroughly rooted in our everyday routines.  You might say we dont need android on our refrigerators or digital or AVR receivers or cars!  But their will always be enough niches of people that want some feature or another available to them.  Instead of dismissing it as to much technology in an already complicated life we should accept it and let the inevitable happen.

For each of these companies to survive in the Mobile OS market they will need to make some serious changes.  Apple is to closed and will not let their software to leave their hardware (ex OS X and the Hackintosh community). Microsoft will need to rethink Windows Phone 7 and the scope of their mobile OS and probably a name change.  HP has a beautiful and powerful Mobile OS ready to transcend the phone and move to the tablet and further if they chose to do so.  Google and Android is already attempting to make the shift to TV with a set top box or directly to the TV (People of Lava LCD) and  allowing and open sources community to patch the software for robots and many other applications.

Android TV by People of Lava

So let the Mobile OS war begin.

I am shocked by the fact that youtube has banned the video.  If you have not already seen it here it is or just look below.  Yes it is very provocative and very gruesome.  But it sends a message.  Some may say you don’t have to be so over the top just to get a few eyes to see your work but honestly I dont think this is much worse than most things I see in the world.  The metaphor she uses and the people she uses are a good choice in my opinion.  Go through the list of types of people in the world and find a pair that wont be brushed off as typical.  Black vs white, seen that, people will ignore it as usual.  If you pick and race of third world discrimination it will just be brushed off as third world.  Using people that are so similar in the masses makes it pop.  Then you think how absurd this kind of discrimination really is.  It almost seems like a joke.  But it is harsh reality.  The absurdity of this world and how we treat each other based on skin color, religion, or place of birth and ridiculous.

Yes this video is way more violent then most people would like to see but that does not warrant a ban from the most popular online video consumption website.  People will watch it if the choose to and I think a lot of people should watch it because they need too.

The comments on videos site is an eye opener of how ignorant people are of this world.  Take the music aside.  If you like it or hate it it doesn’t really matter.  She is just send a message on her opinion and you should take it as that, an OPINION.  I feel its a great message and people should try to understand a message and where it comes from before dismissing the artest completely.

p.s. Censorship on the internet is overate.

How can you tell you have great friends?  Well they should be constantly talking and plotting against you behind your back.  If you notice that they are doing this and you suspect a surprise whether for better (gift) or for worse (prank) at least you know that they care enough about you to try.

You guys are awesome!

http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/stuart-holden/

Being from Houston I have a strong affinity for the Houston Dynamo Soccer team.  In the past couple of weeks a lot of interesting things have been happening concerning the Dynamo, and in some ways to United States Men’s National Team. Stewy and Rico leaving us.

First we have some bad news for the Dynamo but hopefully good news for the men’s national team.  The heart and soul of the Dynamo midfield have both left to pursue their dreams in Europe.  Stewart Holden (Sugar Land Native, where I’m from) has left to Bolton Wanderers in the English Premier league and Ricardo Clark moving on to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga.  If anything this says a lot about the talent on the Dynamo team.  Good luck to them.  That leaves the Dynamo with some holes to fill.  Here is my starting line-up for the new Dynamo team:

Landín – Ching

Davis

Ash          -          Mullan

Cameron

Hainault – Robinson – Boswell – Mulrooney

Davis has played in the middle for us before and has a ton of skill on the ball.  And Jeff Cameron has the talent and is originally a midfielder before he was a Best XI for defender for MLS last year.

I can’t wait for the World Cup to start this summer either.  Let’s just hope the US National team can get healthy for it. We are already  missing Davies, and we are gonna miss him a lot butin the last couple of months the injured for regular starters have really pilled up.  Dempsey and his knee, thankfully Demerit is back in the line-up, Onyewu will have to work hard to be prepared and the onslaught of minor injuries for Clark, Stewy, Edu, Beasley, and others.  So here is my starting line-up for the World Cup with everyone being healthy except for Davies which we know will not recover in time.

Altidore

Dempsey – Bradley – Donvan

Clark – Torres

Bocanegra – Demerit – Onyewu – Spector

The Torres spot could be interchanged with Jermain Jones or Feilhalber or who ever proves to deserve that spot. And Holden and Beasley on the Bench to add some Spark to that midfield when needed.

Well just some thoughts on the team.  I would love to see some discussion on your opinions on how the team should be structured.

]]> http://gibius.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/dynamo-and-the-usmnt/feed/ 0 gibius Stewy US National Team Rico Clark US national Team http://gibius.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/ipad-beautiful-but-disappointing-for-me/ http://gibius.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/ipad-beautiful-but-disappointing-for-me/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:34:36 +0000 gibius http://gibius.wordpress.com/?p=54 Continue reading →]]>

The ipad came out today from Apple.  It is an amazingly beautiful device and the demos were awe inspiring.  But I had 2 MAJOR issues that would be a deal breaker for me.

1. No front facing camera. I dont mind not having a rear camera on this device, but the ability to video conference through ichat or skype would be killer.  I would think this could have been a real cool feature and or demo to show it propped up or help up and conferencing with you family.  It doesn’t even matter where you place it on the front within that black bezel.  Propped up properly you can get the angle you want!  Big miss in my opinion and NEEDS to be on the next iteration.

2. USB port! If you want people to take your device seriously about productivity, this is referring to the iWork demo, then you need to include a USB 2.0 port to connect jump drives or cameras or our own broadband USB stick if we already own one for our other computers.  Yes I know you have the camera connector adapter and you want to make money on accessories, but that just isn’t good enough.  I want to be able to transfer a movie or a document from a jump drive, so i can work and edit it and PRINT it there.  Especially since you will be shipping a device without 3G, meaning I won’t have internet everywhere, and my friend just so happens to have a jump drive with the document i need.  I know we are getting to a wireless age working in the cloud but we still aren’t there yet.  I just want one USB port, thats it.

Other than that I will have to save any other opinion until I actually hold the device in my hands.  I can’t wait.

p.s.  Wouldn’t hurt to have HDMI out but i guess that asking for a little too much!  and some sort of Mini Finder to access documents with auto open in the right app.  Not deal breakers.

p.s.s. iPhone could use a front facing camera as well.

OK back on track.  The second video of the Smartboard using a wiimote is very intriguing because of how cheap it is to make such and expensive product typically.  Since this video was posted, he has inspired many other projects like it.  There is now a community of people developing more tools to use this simple technology to our advantage.  These tool are free as well.  Just head over to wiimoteprojects and read up on the projects, and there is plenty of help if you run into any problems.

Now here are some of my experience attempting it.  First I built my own Infrared or IR pen.  There are a few sites with Schematics to build your pen including Instructables.  I used information from all of them to build one that I thought would work best for me.  This is the pen I built.

The giant Sharpie highlighter works great for this.  It fits all the parts perfectly and even gives you the ability to make the battery easily replaceable.  I used a N size battery but a AAA battery would fit as well, and would power the pen perfectly.  Using just a soldering iron (solder of course), some pliers and some hot glue it all came together fairly easily.  Just lay everything out before hand and make sure your wiring is correct.  The other thing is that you will not be able to see the IR LED.  The light is out of the range of the visible light for the human eye.  So when testing your wiring you should use a digital camera.  The digital camera can see IR light .  The other issue I found was the actual use of the pen on the white board.  The IR light was very forward directional , so when using it like a pen on a board the IR camera on the wiimote would not see it very well.  I read online that using sandpaper to scuff the LED so the light diffuses better will solve my issue.  Other than that is is very accurate and fun to use (just a slight learning curve to get use to it).

The next step after making the pen is pairing your wiimote to your computer.  This is where i have had may issues so I will try to give some explanation to what you should look out for.  For your PC: Depending on your bluetooth driver you may find extreme difficulty on pairing your wiimote.  The key is having a windows native driver that allows you to pair WITHOUT a passkey.  If you are not able to do this then you will need another bluetooth dongle or a 3rd party bluetooth software like BlueSoleil.  Although I have read this is a good option, the software is not free (it has a free version but is limited to 2mb data).  For you Mac:  I have not have any issue in pairing my wiimote through bluetooth (on a side not check out Darwiin, will map your wiimote buttons to work with emulatores for NES or SNES or many other games).  The interesting things to help my previous issue with see the IR light you can pair two wiimotes that will talk to each other through the software so it doesn’t matter at what angle you are standing or holding the pen.  If keep a clean line of sight either way.

Software is the next step.  If you are on a PC and have successfully paired your Wiimote, wiimoteprojects (linked above) has a nifty little program called Smoothboard that gives many tool desired for a whiteboard.  Like changing pen colors, highlighter, and plain whiteboard to draw on.  For Mac i found a simple cross platform (runs on Java so will work on Linux and PC) program called Wiimote Whiteboard that gives you the ability to use your IR pen as a mouse but does not give you the presentation style floating tool box that Smoothboard gives you.  Both are very cool and easy to use.

I will continue to test them out and give back my input.  If you are brave enough you should definitely try it out.  For only $40 you can gave yourself a very powerful Whiteboard in you office or home that would normally cost you over $1000.  If you are willing to give it try let me know and I will see what I can do to help you along.  Impress you office and your boss with this, or have some fun with your friends drawing on a giant screen or flying through google earth.( Oh yea…it has multitouch, so multiple pens if you make them, and all that zooming fun like the iphone with the pinch.)  Good Luck!

Short Video

Just recently I have begun managing my soccer team with some friends.  The countless emails that were sent with a million reply alls really took its toll.  Trying to get information from everyone and put it together in an orderly fashion, where everyone knew what was going on was very annoying.

I waited a reasonable month to receive my wave invite from a friend who is not necessarily tech savvy which made me sad and happy.  I looked all over the net to get my invite earlier.  I guess it’s all about who you know.  When i first received it and opened it up to my first wave for sending invites to others, I will have to say I was slightly disappointed.  I already had an issue with the window size.  Even after resizing it, I felt i did not have enough real estate on my screen to enjoy it.  There is just so much going on, that it is not well suited for 13 inch screen or less.  I was looking into my near future with complicated gadgets and could see myself running out of space to work smoothly.  I guess its time to invest in a larger screen.

The next thing I tried was to search for public waves which is highly recommended since it is very likely you will have a limited number of people to actually use the service at this time.  I tried a few out to learn the ropes and see the possibilities of the service.

Finally came the opportunity to get my entire soccer team on the service.  So far we have a good quarter of the members signed up.  Luckily for my I get the feeling that these guys either A. trust me in managing the team or B. will do whatever i say as long as they don’t have to deal with paperwork.  With only a few members signed up I went ahead and tried some new widgets…errr…gadgets(sorry google) out.  The coolest so far and the most useful is called the iFrame gadget.  It allows the ability to embed an entire webpage into the wave.  You may think why would this be sooo useful?  Well I’m glad you asked.  A neat little trick is that with google Docs you can embed, in this case, an Excel file to be collaborated on.  Just adjust your share settings on a google Doc and poof.  Now, instead of gathering each members info and putting it into a spreadsheet myself, they can get in on the wave and edit the team roster themselves with all the essential info.  This is a killer feature for me and has worked very well.

The next thing I tried was a vote system to find out when everyone would be available to practice.  There are many voting systems available to try to suit your specific needs.  And if your need doesn’t exist, there is a huge community to help you out.

Well, I am still in basic testing phase so ill get back to what else i find out.  But for now, give google a check mark for: good tool for organizing a sports team!