Wednesday, July 28, 2010 1:05:34 AM
I love my HTC Desire. It is by far the best phone I have ever owned. It does almost everything perfectly and I couldn't ask for more.
However, and of course there had to be a however....
When left idle for a period of time, and a call comes in, the microphone appears to be inactive. I can hear the caller on the other end, but they can't hear me. Upon hanging up and receiving the call again, everything is fine.
You can see from here: forums.whirlpool.net.au and here: androidforums.com that I am not alone.
Various people have returned devices, swapped SIM cards etc but to no avail, the issue seems to be ongoing, non-carrier based, and global.
A smart phone is really not a smart phone when the phone part doesn't work 100% of the time.
Click here to vote in my poll on if you are seeing this issue.
I'm also hoping to gain support from industry heavyweights such as Engadget to raise the profile of this issue, so let hope we see some action sooner rather than later.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 11:59:18 PM
A while back a good friend of mine wrote an article entitled 'All Of My Data In The Cloud' (
http://tinyurl.com/2cj4ale). This, for those people who don't immediately understand the statement, is a reference to storing all ones data on the internet and accessing it as needed via an internet connection. This allows freedom to be able to access your data from any computer in the world that has an internet connection.
This is of course a completely new and alternative world, bleeding edge if you will, and the complete opposite to storing data on your computer hard drive or even on a removable portable storage device. Moving to life in the cloud is a big step and one that is really only undertaken by people like us. What are people like us?
The term that most people would be familiar with is 'Geek' or 'Nerd' however in this writers opinion there is a very clear distinction between the two. To put is simply a Geek is a Nerd with Social Skills. Both have the same thirst for technology however Geeks are just as comfortable in a social environment as in a technical environment. Nerds, on the other hand, tend to confine themselves to the non-social arena. No offence to all the nerds out there, but you know who you are and you know I'm right ;) Alas, I digress.
From the title of this article I guess you would have worked out by now that we will be covering life on the bleeding edge of: Technology. This, of course, will mean different things to different people so a little background on this writer will go a long way to assisting in defining the perspective from which this article is derived.
I am a geek (see above), whose background is in software development. I operate my own IT Consulting company that provides software development services to national and international clients. I use the latest technology that budgets allow and enjoy the use of the latest time saving technological advancements in real time online services provided by other companies that are hoping to operate on the bleeding edge.
Anyone who knows what goes into creating robust, real time, online applications also knows that it's not an easy thing to do. This is especially true when dependencies upon 3rd party service providers are introduced to facilitate different components of the collective 'system'. Like mechanical systems, software based systems are only as strong as their weakest point and far too often everyday companies operating on the bleeding edge are being let down by their systems and 3rd party providers.
To say that living on the bleeding edge can 'sometimes disappoint' is a bit of an understatement, in fact disappointment appears to be the norm these days. Being someone who travels by air often, I was recently enticed by the promise of a paperless option to check in for my flights. This meant I could check-in to my flight without the need to access a printer to print a boarding pass.
The process is facilitated by way of a mobile version of web check-in which is currently offered by major domestic airlines. After checking in via the airlines mobile based website, the passenger receives an SMS that contains a link to a web page. This web page is essentially the boarding pass and contains a 2D barcode so that it can be read by newer CCD based barcode readers.
On the surface this sounds pretty simple, in reality there will be many individual components, each of which are of equal importance. Consider the diagram below. Please note that this diagram is a suggested design of how such a system might be constructed in a basic sense.
As you can see the dependencies can be substantial and any one link not performing it's task at 100% will mean disappointment to the end user. This has indeed been the case for this writer on the three occasions while using this technology. To summarise 3 of 6 attempts to scan the barcode at the gate have failed and 1 of 6 attempts to check in via the mobile have failed.
I wish I had more data for this article, however on the surface it appears as though this technology needs a few more revisions before it can be called robust. When companies put technology into the world there is a lot of time spent on understanding the risks and points of failure. Risks, which on many occasions, are well out of the control of the company itself.
What can be done to mitigate these risks?
Realistically a lot can be done, however like all projects you have to consider the 'Good-Fast-Cheap' triangle. You can pick only 2.
How would I mitigate these risks? Simple, reduce the dependencies, and/or increase the redundancy. I could elaborate on this however it would risk turning this article into something it was not meant to be.
In future articles I hope to cover the pitfalls for building bleeding edge technology and talk more about ways to effectively mitigate the associated risks.
For those that are interested, this article was written in a basic text editor. It was then copied to a 'Word Processor' purely for spell checking because, as most geeks can attest, speeling is not one of our strong points ;)
Sunday, July 18, 2010 6:04:23 AM
Coming soon is a series of articles relating specifically to living on the bleeding edge of technology.
http://tinyurl.com/bleedingedge
Stay tuned.