Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Wireless Woman

What does a geek want more than anything? A she-geek to idolize, praise, and discuss the nature of your neighbor's poorly unsecured wireless network with. If there's anything that geeks like, it's geek tech. Sure some people settle for the Wonder Woman cliche, of a beautiful powerful woman with a secret identity, spandex, and super amazing powers of super speed, flight, and stamina... But Wonder Woman has absolutely zilch on Wireless Woman
She's all the awesomeness of Spandex, combined with amazing wireless gadgets that practically give her a sixth sense. With all her radios, broadband, point to point systems, communications tools, and product placement, you'd think she were a true American Hero. She is a hero I assure you. Perhaps to only a few tech geeks at UNT, but nonetheless, that's enough merit to land you the title of "Hero". Actually, all of those fancy gadgets on her seem to overlap at some points. I mean, her smartphone could easily act as an "EV-DO modem", Broadband network, camera, and headset. In fact, I think she could still qualify as a Hero if she were merely carrying my hero!

I guess that gives me enough merit to be a Hero too! Me and Wireless Woman are on the same level here. With all that gear though, I hope those radio waves aren't microwaving her insides too much.

Mobile phone platforms are where the future is though. When you think about the day-to-day tasks you perform, they usually have something to do with information, communication, or a task of some sort. The iPhone and Android platforms in particular are doing a spectacular job at providing users a curtailed custom experience with what those users need in their day-to-day life. I wake up to the sound of my alarm (off my phone), check my email and find out class is cancelled (on my phone), text a friend to play tennis with (coughonmyphonecough), freak out that I have a computer science assignment due that I forgot to turn in, so I whip out my phone, SSH into the assignments machine, tap out my code and submit - crisis averted. Blog about my experience through my phone (with god-like spell check, mind you), set up a meeting and meet my Information Systems team at some place called Jupiter's simply by looking it up with the GPS on my phone, check the weather and realize there's a hail storm scheduled for tonight so I move my car into cover....... I could go all day.

Anyway, a phone can't do everything. It's a tiny computer that has a connection to a service provider and in some cases, the internet. Most computing isn't even done by my phone. "Cloud Computing" is responsible for storing my contacts, GPS data, delivery of voice and text to other phones, looking up information, etc. A phone's role in networking and IT is just beginning to be exploited. Information Technology is a great field to learn the boundaries and roles of different hardware!

By the way, wireless woman has her own twitter feed. but sources tell me she's not really who we think she is :( oh well, I don't have a Twitter account.

Edit:
Here's her Twitter, Blog, and Personal Home Page (PHP!)