Blogger App

So today I found google's blogger app. Since I'm always glued to my phone, I figured it'd be easier to write up my posts if I could at least START writing them while on my phone. It's also pretty fast since I've got the whole swype keyboard thing. Since my laptop is up and running now, here's a video of me typing with
Swype!

Ok I give up on debut video capture.I've switched to Snagit. Anyway, it's just a video of me writing with swype. It's pretty fast and I have minimal complaints about the keyboard. It's nice to have the voice to speech while driving as well. I don't really know what else to say so I guess I'll stop now. I guess it is worth mentioning that typing on swype requires all your attention, so it's annoying while walking or driving, but that's why my phone has a physical keyboard as well. I love physical keyboards. Wow the whole video turned sideways that's interesting.

Also, here's a picture of my laptop:

Notice the neat custom made sticker my friend made for me!
Speaking of apps, NPR had a segment recently about the unemployment rate. They said the united states has dropped to 8.5 unemployment, and that the numbers fluctuate for certain fields. Interestingly enough, job postings with the word "android" in it have doubled since this time last year, and that the unemployment for computer science is a mere 5%. 5% by the way, is considered full employment!

The e-learning curve

Nowadays people disseminate information primarily over the internet. When I'm talking to a co-worker, or a teacher, or a friend and I ask them for something, gone are the days where they write it down and they do that task later. If I want my grade in a given class, I have to e-mail the teacher. If I want to remind someone of a party going on, they say "oh just text me". If I hear an ad on the radio, they say "google such-n-such to find out more info about us because we're just that awesome!!!" Web sites or email addresses are given out as another way to communicate with people. In fact, communication is such a vital part of our lives, that tyrannical governments first turn to communication methods to shut down the peoples' movements and communication. The "Twitter revolution" in Iran, whether that actually happened to the scale we've been told or not, at least played some roll in Iran's recent post-presidential election protests.

The point is, technology has become an integrated part in everyone's lives -- not just the nerds like me that sit on it day and night, or who carry it around in our pockets. It's touching grandmothers and parents, kids, and rural communities, even rebelling communities. It takes a small learning curve and a way-of-life change to move your entire calendar away from you pen and paper written agenda and onto sync'd online calendars. My girlfriend still uses pen and paper, but of course there's nothing wrong with her methods. I'm just different is all. Like my preference for Wendy's french fries over Food Poisoning Whataburger french fries.

That being said I still have a hard time tracking random things such as Blackboard. If you're not familiar with blackboard, it's a teaching system that UNT uses. Thankfully, some of the Discovery Park classes use a different, more accessible system called Moodle. Nonetheless, some of those deadlines really sneak up on me in those Blackboard classes....

Recently at Discovery Park

Despite how my blog is an excellent source of info about UNT's Discovery Park, there's actually a lot of things that happen here that I don't cover on my blog. Occasionally, we get newsletters through the school e-mail system. The most recent one being this one. It just so happens there are several students I know that appear in this issue. The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at UNT pictured a couple kids I knew, as well as the UNT Robotics Society pictured yours truly, along with fellow blogger and ambassador Jordan Simleness! Although I don't know if we made a good enough impression on her...

The letter also gives you a nice feel of what PhD students accomplish. If you ever read my "random criticisms", one of them mentioned how our traffic system is very inefficient, and we desperately need an engineer. Well Yiwen Wan heard my call, and he is on the case:

Yiwen Wan and colleagues assembling traffic surveillance equipment on Loop 288

As pictured in the student newsletter, Wan is pictured here fiddling with traffic surveillance equipment.

"Ms. Wan submitted a video-based traffic surveillance system for which she leads the development. Specifically designed for remote locations, the system communicates via wireless to the base station. The camera autonomously calibrates and, in addition to collecting traffic statistics, watches for incidents." -Source

Also mentioned in the article is her receiving of the Wanda J. Shafer Graduate Scholarship. There are many scholarships available for those dedicated (and lucky) enough to receive one. Deadline is March 1st!! So start applying!

Oh the Drama

You know, there's just as much drama in the Tech world as there is in the 'other' world. Who cares about Miley Syrus, Britteny what's-her-face, and what the latest fashion stores are selling. Look at what is happening to the Flash platform! First off, Virgin America ditches Flash for its website and adopts HTML5. No biggie, it's just one site. Well next, I find out that video juggernaut sites Vimeo and Youtube are eyeballing HTML5. Not to mention that Apple ditched Adobe Flash back in 2007 with its iPhone platform. Apple continues to deal blows as they still do not support flash on their newest "magical" expensive brick ipad (Mark my words they will release an ipad with MAC OSX on it, while cranking up the prices to the 3k+ mark. Perhaps called iPad X. or iPad OSX. or just iOSX...). Finally, Jobs outlines a few reasons why he continues to show the cold shoulder to Adobe. Adobe won't take this sitting down as its CTO Lynch defends his platform, saying that HTML has had a history of inconsistently rendering on different platforms and browsers, and that Flash's relevance and standard output across all platforms that it is implemented on is part of what will keep flash alive. He has a point, but recent criticism of Adobe's Flash platform causing battery life drainage and overall performance hit on less powerful devices has not been disproved and even succumbs to some of this criticism. Nevertheless, Flash 10.1 has been well under development and is soon to be every mobile device's savior as it will bring performance increases and a better user experience!!

Anyway, moral of the story being that you have to make conscious and smart decisions when designing software. If you're sure you don't want to develop for an up coming mobile platform, be sure you're ready to face the music when your users or investors question you. If you want to cut support for X product or limit your users to only Y protocol, you better be sure you know what you're doing. I for one would love to see some Flash apps on the Android now that iPhone is out of the picture ;)

In other news, HP buys Palm. Now we're going for a web-OS powered HP netbook!? I think it would have been neat if Adobe bought Palm.. As Palm recently faced its own music as it was forced to sell its assets in its ailing Web-OS.

But think about it.. A Flash powered phone? That may be the prettiest phone ever.. or perhaps the slowest phone ever. We'll never know now. I myself am fairly versed in Flash.. at least I used to be back in the Flash MX and even Flash 8 days.