In a conversation with a friend about the ongoing sophistication of television, he once remarked to me, "It won't belong before all TV will be done with holograms so the characters will be right in your living room interacting with your family."  Of course, this sounds like a science fiction or science fantasy imagination.  But you don't have to go very far to notice how the next step toward that crazy idea is almost here in the form of 3D televisions that you can have in your own home.

The reality of 3D television is already here.  There are models of 3D televisions being advertised right now that are trying to cash in on the huge popularity of 3D movies.  Probably the biggest 3D movie sensation was the movie Avatar. James Cameron, the genius behind this amazing movie has openly predicted that 3D televisions will be the standard for TV watching within a couple decades.  From a consumer perspective on the push to get everyone onto HDTV, that prediction could come true a lot faster.

A Little Soon after the High Def Push.

The drive to yet another new format is questionable and one wonders how much these frequent format changes are about marketing more than demand.  After all, when was the last time you heard someone say, "I would kill to be able to watch Fear Factor in 3D"?  Probably never. Yes, it is one thing to see a big screen blockbuster movie in 3D because that adds to the spectacular nature of some films.  But even then, there are lots of movies such as romantic comedies or independent films that would be a waste of technology to apply the 3D method to them.

It could be that it is the television manufacturers who love to push a new technology and it is the genius of marketing and advertising that makes everybody think they need that new format.  Then as the new technology takes over the market, it gets harder and harder to find a new TV in the old format. The push toward HDTV has gone this way in some ways.  When the time comes that you cannot buy a new TV that isn't HDTV, then everybody will have one, even if many consumers could care less about High Def technology.

Consumers are aware that they are being pushed toward new technology.  That is why this new concept in watching television may not be as exciting for many consumers as it is for the retail market that sells televisions. The campaign to get everyone on HDTV has been unrelenting and many consumers resent being pushed toward a technology that they do not really want.  And while there are some added values to HDTV, it has taken consumers a while to take to those new features.  As more and more channels switch to HD format, that acceptance level is catching on.

This newest push to the new 3D technology may be more difficult to get past a skeptical public.  For many it is hard to see a future where everything from their local news to reruns of Cheers being presented to them on a 3D television.  Even big screen televisions are not as massive as a movie theater screen so home viewing of big budget movies like Avatar is going to lose something seeing it in a home setting.  That is assuming that the 3D experience at home can be done to a high enough quality to live up to the movie experience.  That is a tall order.

Wearing Glasses to Watch Gilligan's Island Reruns.

One question that industry experts have had to field about whether 3D television will be a success is whether consumers will have to wear those cumbersome 3D glasses at home to get the value out of their new TVs.  The answer is yes. And they won't be the cheap cardboard kind either.  The 3D glasses needed for get a full 3D experience from a home television unit will be large and complicated affair that are powered by batteries themselves. 

Once again, there are lifestyle issues with introducing these bulky and uncomfortable glasses to the home viewing experience.  There is no question that we simply watch things at home differently than we do in the theater.  For one thing, if you need expensive and complicated glasses for a 3D television shows, how many will you need?  If you have a large family or frequently enjoy television with friends or extended family, does that mean keeping 5 or 6 or 10 3D glasses on hand for everyone to wear?  If the 3D television comes with 2 pair of glasses, that will be an additional expense to buy more. The overhead and fuss and bother of dealing with the 3D glasses for every show you watch may be more than the average television audience will be willing to put up with.

So the argument will be made, you will not see every show in 3D.  You might just watch an occasional movie, concert or sporting event in 3D.  So will that justify replacing existing television equipment with expensive 3D televisions just for an occasional use?  A TV is a part of life that everybody is exposed to every day.  Mom and dad might watch must see TV at night and then allow the teenager to watch music videos or Disney shows and then later on the little ones to enjoy the latest cartoons.  If 3D does not dominate the daily routine viewing of television, it may not be worth the investment for the average television consumer.
When Will it End?

There are additional overhead issues that could stand in the way of 3D television.  To use these new television to watch rented video, you will need a Blu-ray player. Once again, consumers may feel pressured by the constant replacement of their video equipment. First it was VCRs then CD and then DVD and then HD DVD and now Blu-ray.  One has to wonder, when will it end?

If the powers that be can get 3D television to that point that James Cameron predicted, there are lots of growth that can happen.  One can envision 3D HD coming along after that and further developments on the glasses technology as well. Another hurdle to be conquered is to get enough television stations to broadcast in 3D to justify the sale of the equipment.  It seems like an uphill battle to get a viewing public to make this transition in light of what a limited type of viewing one would do on a 3D television.  But let's not underestimate the persistence and talent of marketers of this kind of product.  Even if you are skeptical, sure as anything you will find yourself watching TV with big 3D glasses on in a few years thinking, "What happened?"

For any data processing professional, the protection of client data is a high priority.  Not only is a huge amount of effort put into the integrity and usability of data, significant expense and work is done to make sure that data is not disclosed beyond the relationship between a customer and the institution.  You see that ethic in action when there is a firestorm of outrage when user data is compromised by a bank or financial institutions, which can lead to that dreaded phrase - identity theft.

Our inherent urge to keep data secure and confidential continues to be assaulted as the internet seems to be going the route of spilling everything about you out into cyberspace for the world to know about.  If there is one internet trend that has turned a flow of compromised information into a volcano, it is the explosion of social networking. 

There has been plenty written about how much personal information is on display for the world to see on Facebook and Twitter.  And while social networks put on a brave front about how hard they are working to protect private data of their users, deals being made in back rooms only accelerate the trend to share your private data with anyone who has the money to get access to it.

Now the evidence of that back room deal making has come out in full view in an agreement between Yahoo and Twitter to share user data.  Yahoo's lust to sink their teeth into a rich repository of user information goes way back.  It started when they failed to buy out Facebook for over $1 billion before Facebook became a household word.  Now that social networking is the hottest thing since search engines were invented, Yahoo wants in.

It is no secret by the private information that social networks have in abundance has such a huge cash value.  It all comes down to one word - marketing.  Not long ago, if an internet marketer could just harvest your email address, they were in online marketing heaven.  Social networks go much further than just getting emails.  On Facebook alone, they can gather phone numbers, addresses, what groups you belong to, your favorite activities and even details about what products you like.  This is nothing but pure gold to companies who want to build target marketing strategies.  And that information can be sold for high price tags to the highest bidder.

Yahoo finally got their opening into this gold mine of user information when they finalized a deal with Twitter to share user data between the two domains.  This is not their first success in the deal making in cyberspace between just last December, they closed a similar agreement with Facebook.  This means that tweets on Twitter along with Facebook status messages and other updates can be tapped by the Yahoo search engine.  So if you want to have fun and post a status or tweet "I am a vampire", all of cyberspace will instantly be informed that you are a vampire.

These deals are being portrayed as ways to serve these large social networks better.  But let's not be naive here because these deals are clearly in response to similar agreements that have been made between Microsoft and Google recently.  Clearly, the big power players in internet information and data access are merging with each other to make data sharing even more a fact of life than it already was.

The value to users of Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook is that as these services become more like one online data location.  What you post on one service will be usable on the other.  For a long time, the fact that people like to post tweets of their activities almost moment to moment seems very similar to how some people post status updates on Facebook.  So if you could post something in one service and have it pop up on the other, isn't that a tremendous labor savings that these public spirit minded social networks are doing for us?

Yahoo operates one of the most active chat services on the internet as well.  If you build a yahoo account, every effort will be made to encourage you to provide large amounts of profile data that can be used within the vast Yahoo services offerings including email, chat, personals and other services.  Ever since Yahoo began to lose out as the premier search engine on the web to Google, their emphasis on provide domain services that are beyond the conventional search engine job descriptions has been aggressive.  This step of beginning to share huge caches of user data will make those ambitions to create one central library of rich marketing data a reality.

The one thing that big social networks depend upon to keep their large populations active is trust.  When you are on Facebook, you have some trust that the site is safe from hackers, viruses or spyware.  You want to feel safe that your data will be protected and that if you set your security so your private information won't be shared, it won't be.  Of course, most of those assumptions long ago proved to be faulty. 

Hackers seem to have no trouble getting into Facebook and Twitter accounts.  And with each passing month, the number of advertising "spam" that is hitting your account on either service is getting greater and greater.  We all went through this with email and the result was an entire new industry of products and services designed to stop the spam in email.  If the epidemic of spam takes over Facebook and Twitter, one wonders if their populations may just jump ship rather than spend money to be able to keep posting statuses and tweeting away while putting up with compromises to their user data.

It is a matter of opinion whether the sharing of data between these huge internet powerhouse businesses represents a breach of trust.  If you use all three services and have fully developed profiles on each internet property, it probably will turn out to be a nice convenience to have one profile fit all.  Then if you do want to update your relationship status, it is one post that flows out to every service you are on.

But if you are a bit suspicious of big companies getting generous with data that belongs to you, you are not alone in that reaction to this news.  Many people enjoy social networks but would like to do so without every detail about them being shared with the world.  Many of us would like to be able to share with a friend that we like a movie or a certain restaurant without seeing that opinion become a marketing blitz because your private data is being sold on the open market to anyone who would like to use it to sell something to you.  It is important that we keep our eyes on the big players in the internet world and not let deals like this one go by without notice.  At very least, it is a wake up call to take care posting anything personal on any online service.  Because if you post it somewhere, before long, you may inadvertently be posting it everywhere.

Most IT department managers or project leaders grow up out of the IT technical ranks.  That is a good thing.  For one thing, an IT manager must have the ability to talk intelligently with technical experts.  If he or she cannot sustain the respect of a staff of highly trained and talented IT developers, that manager's ability to be effective is in bad shape. 

An IT manager has a very unique job because you sit directly between the two most important groups in the business world that you must get to work together to be successful.  You manage a department of developers who are capable of performing technical wizardry if you manage them right.  And you work for the top-level leadership of the business who are capable of making the business and you very profitable if you can deliver what they need, when they need it, on time and under budget. 

In order to achieve the goals of both groups, the IT manager must be able to speak two languages fluently.  Moreover, you have to be able to communicate the needs and interests of both groups to each other and do so in a way that results in greater cooperation and productivity - resulting in completed projects, happy developers and happy upper management.  It’s a tricky operation to pull it off.  But if you can speak both languages, you are in for a long and very successful career at the IT management level.

Very Different Languages

If you got to management by working up through technical jobs, you understand the language of technical people.  Knowing how to be proficient in "tech speak" is about more than just understanding the acronyms.  Your history in the culture of technical developers will serve you well.  Speaking the language of developers means understanding what makes them tick and how the technical tools they use can be brought to bear on the development problem at hand.

Even within the technical world, there are various disciplines that must be able to integrate with each other and you must be able to make that possible by understanding the tools and terms of each group.  If you have applications developers, they will need to make their code work seamlessly with the database management system and with the web interfaces needed to make the application really deliver for its users.  Add in the security team and the hardware gurus who will give you the limitations and possibilities you have from a platform perspective and that is a lot of translation going on within an already cramped technical world.

Your technical team cannot function without good projects that come to them from the business planners who run the business.  But the top level owners and managers of business departments speak their own language as well - sometimes sniffing rarified air that just isn't ready for everyone else.  Their goals and objectives for the projects that they define are couched in what the application will do for the business.  In many respects they may not know, understand or care about the technical complications you face to make that application a reality.

Your job as the manager who will make your department or project team successful is to define the projects and goals of upper management in terms of their business language.  When you meet with the business leaders who make things happen in your organization, your job will be to understand what the application will do and how it will make the business more successful.  The business objectives of the application will be the standards of measurement by which your technical team will be judged.  Those objectives will then be "translated" into technical objectives that you can communicate to your project development team.  You may wonder who does that translation.  That would be you.

Very Different Priorities

While you may be manager of the technical development team, to make them successful, you have to know how to motivate them and make them productive - I can tell you from experience, it isn't a lot of shouting and cursing.  While you may work for the upper level business management team, you manage them in a sense because it is up to you to understand their priorities and get them to work with you and not against you for the success of your department.  This can be the hardest game to play if that management tier isn't interested or just doesn't 'have time' for teamwork .

The priorities of upper management are business objectives.  So the applications you bring back to your team from the top brass will be successful if they make the company more efficient, more profitable or save money through some form of process improvement.  So you must understand and speak fluently about those priorities so you can excite management about what your team can do for them.  Then you can then gather the details of the business objectives of the applications work to be done so you can take those goals to your technical team.

To say that your technical development team will have different priorities is to understate things dramatically.  It isn't that systems developers and "techies" don’t want the company to hit it's business objectives because they do (contrary to the belief of upper management sometimes!).  They consider that to be your job and the job of upper management to deal with.  The priorities for a systems developer lie in the ongoing development his or her skills, the size and impact of projects that they get to work on and the peace and quiet you can provide to them to continue being "techies" by keeping management "off their backs."  There ARE tools to make management less painful.  But that's the subject of another post.

The Fine Art of Translation

Much of the real work of being a manager over technical projects is translating business objectives to technical people and technical details to management people.  While it is always good management to let your technical team know what the goals are of the project in business terms, to get their "buy in" and to see them really engage the project, they must see it as a technical challenge. 

So you will translate each business priority into a technical specification before you begin having meetings with the rank and file development team.  That means that the first few phases of the project development life cycle, which is the project definition and needs analysis, are by far the most critical phases.  It is in those phases that you will use your ability to speak two languages to lay out a technical solution to a business problem in language that both camps will understand.

Similarly, when you and your team have defined the business problem in technical terms, you will take that solution to your business management team to explain how that solution will take the business where it needs to go.  The more you develop your skills at explaining technical solutions to business managers in business terms and explaining business objectives in technical terms to your development team, the more success you will realize as an IT manager.  And success is what it is all about after all.

P.S. A bad place to start building bridges is to post this one on the office wall!

Application Development for Mobile Computing Explodes

Unless you live in a cave, you already know that the huge surge of popularity for mobile applications is the next big technological paradigm shift.  The days when a mobile phone was only a phone are long behind us now.  And judging by the speed of technological development in the mobile markets, we may never see those days again.

To even call a modern mobile device a cell phone only understates the multifunctional nature of mobile devices.  And the sector of the economy who are not underestimating this explosion of functionality at the mobile level are hardware and software developers who see this explosive development environment as the next great market for them to tap for greater profits.  And such a huge surge of creativity and productivity is bound to yielded some very big winners and some very big losers along the way.

This newest explosion of both platform and software innovation is comparable to the huge surges in the technology sector such as the initial spread of the internet, the arrival of WEB 2.0 applications and the development of social networking.  In fact, each of those monumental paradigm shifts in how we see technology were necessary steps that lead up to this latest change in the technological landscape toward mobile computing.  The speed at which the capabilities of mobile devices has changed has created a need for mobile applications.  That need creates huge opportunities for systems developers worldwide.

The genres of application development are tremendously diverse.  The most obvious applications that get a lot of attention are games, music and video applications and tools to enhance social connectivity such as the use of Facebook and Twitter.  But as more applications become available, developers and companies who sponsor that development are being presented with an unprecedented ability to market their developments to their markets. 

The reason that the time to market has been cut so dramatically lies in the nature of mobile computing.  Because people can access their favorite apps libraries and shop quickly and anywhere they go, applications reach customers much more quickly and move more rapidly from developer to customer as well.  And because online payments has become so routine, the resulting marketing paradigm is a systems developers dream.

There is good reason to pay attention to this explosion in marketable mobile applications.  It is a golden opportunity to use your skills to put together some very cool applications that can get to this huge market quickly.  To put it succinctly, if you are thinking about how to cash in on this huge technology explosion, you can bet someone you know is. 

Whether you are a programmer, a writer, an internet company or just someone who has some friends who are plugged into what is "right now" in technology, right now is the time to strike gold in this market.  You may not have been able to buy Cisco at $1 or get in on the Google paradigm shift.  But this new mobile marketplace is anybody's game and anyone who can get to it fast with great new applications, can win big!

It’s a Wide Open Playing Field

Probably the players who are going to grab the biggest pieces of the mobile application pie are big technology companies who have the resources to develop applications quickly.  When a developer begins to brainstorm what applications could be the "next big thing", its good to broaden your view.  To try to go after the markets for video players and games is fine but that is a limited application group.  The variety of apps that are taking off is far more diverse including…

• News server applications that allows mobile customers to stay up to date on the weather, sports, keep up with blogs and access online information sources like encyclopedias or dictionaries at a moments notice.
• Tools for staying organized on the go including schedulers, calendars, post it note utilities and alarm services.
• Any application that enhances the social networking environment or takes shortcomings in Twitter, MySpace, Google Buzz or Facebook and makes them better is going to get a lot of attention.
• Mobile computing is taking off in the business world just as much as it is among college students and teenagers.  So tools for business people to manage contact lists and network with each other will have a natural market waiting for it.
• Because users will develop a diverse assortment of web sites and services they like to use on their mobile devices, any application that makes it possible to organize user names and passwords and does so in a secure way will be welcome.  Mobile users know they should not use the same user name and password but they will without some help.
• Financial applications will see greater and greater demand as more people who use their mobile devices to manage their financial empires expands.  This includes applications to keep up with stock movement, applications that safely speeds up the management of online financial accounts, spreadsheet applications and checkbook tools to keep things balanced even while on the go.
• Applications that connect the mobile device to home computers or the local network at the office or at home so a user can manage those worlds while on the go.

Get Yourself Some Tools of the Trade!

In order to quickly develop and deploy mobile applications, you will have to become proficient in the newest development tools.  This is a routine practice for anyone who has developed applications for the web before because the toolsets change frequently.  But the toolsets are not difficult to get used to.  It isn't like you have to learn to program an IBM mainframe in binary code.  The learning curve is pretty fast.

The IPhone environment is probably one of the biggest markets for applications that is happening right now.  So learning how to develop and distribute apps to that world will prove to be a profitable move.  The good about the IPhone is that once you conquer the development tools, that will open up applications possibilities to the youth markets and to the professional world at the same time.

It is always smart to keep an eye on Google to see what they are putting together for new markets.  For better or for worse, Google works hard to maintain the cutting edge in anything cyberspace related.  Right now Google Android is a resource for development tools that you can put to use quickly.  Keep your fingers on the pulse of Google because as quickly as this development paradigm changes, Google will probably be on top of it.

It is a challenge to stay up to date with the shifting markets in cyberspace.  This new application world in the mobile computing setting is just another in an ongoing flow of technological innovation and change.  The skills you learn to adapt and capitalize on this technological shift will serve you well because as sure as mobile computing is taking over the world today, something completely new and unforeseen will take over again tomorrow.

Why You Should Take Tracking Your Loved Ones Seriously

The newest GPS technology and tracking devices has found a new purpose beyond tracking vehicles, to tracking people. Now, since this is still a new idea, one might be concerned about invading privacy, being too sheltering, or being a "helicopter parent," as the derogatory phrase has it.

But the fact remains that people get hurt and harmed through no fault of their own. Two people at risk for that are children and the elderly. Both of them will benefit from a simple tracking device.

In fact, one of our associates who lives in the United States near a wide wooded area told us recently that a neighbor of his had had an argument with his roommate while drunk and wandered off into the woods. Search parties scoured the area for a week. They found him, drowned in a local river. A GPS tracking device could have saved his life. And we're talking about a 30-year-old, fully capable man. This just goes to make a point, there is nothing wrong with attaching a monitor to a five-year-old child or an Alzheimer's patient.

Children can especially get into a variety of troubles:

* The big one every parent worries about is abduction. And the awful thing about it is that you never know where it will strike. Children today are better educated about not talking to strangers and reporting suspicious activity to an adult, but the fact that we need to do that just highlights the need for safety. Not to mention what might happen if the child is simply overpowered and has no choice.

* Wandering into danger. Swimming pools, busy streets, machinery, mine shafts, and natural hazards are just some of the kinds of distress a young child can unknowingly find themselves in. While it can't protect against everything, a GPS tracker can still make it so that a quick glance at a screen can tell whether a child is near an area known to be dangerous.

* Getting lost. Somewhere between learning to walk and acquiring middle-school skills, every child has that one occasion where a they just roam off. Children at that age have no concept of just how big the world is, and they get lost before they even realize it. And every parent knows that first moment of panic realization when their child is missing, and the increasingly frantic search.

In addition to the cases where just any child can be at risk, there is the case of children born with a handicap of some sort. Autism, ADD, learning and attention disorders can all give a child a greater tendency to roam or wander into danger. In all of these cases, using a GPS tracking device just makes good common sense.

Time Management Tips

In our increasingly busy society, we find ourselves barely able to fit everything we want to do into a day. If you feel like your days are slipping by without getting enough done, here are some time management hints from the experts:

1. Build your vocabulary. That surprised you, didn't it? The fact is, we spend a large part of each day just trying to communicate with other people. Knowing more words and being more glib in conversation is the key to rapid, efficient communication.

2. Cut out low-quality entertainment. While many other time management gurus will say you should stop playing and start working, the reality is that your brain needs a rest and you're only human. So instead, try condensing your entertainment time into a small block of high-quality time. That will be either shutting off the TV or quit browsing the Internet, but at the same time consider working a crossword puzzle or playing chess with a friend. The key here is stimulating, interactive entertainment instead of long hours of media grazing.

3. Read everywhere. Over every meal, on your morning subway commute, and in every office while you're waiting to keep an appointment. Just about every kind of work requires you to absorb information, so put those down hours to work.

4. Reward yourself for meeting goals. Instead of consuming a coffee while at your desk, deliberately deny yourself the coffee until you finish your spreadsheet. Then reward yourself with a coffee break. Even if a whole task is too long to wait, break it up into smaller tasks so you can get by on smaller rewards.

5. Streamline your gadgets. This is a non-obvious one, but think about how much time you spend looking for a phone number because you haven't updated your mobile's address book, or how much time you spend waiting for something to download over a network. Devote some time to using your gadgets more efficiently, and it will pay off.

6. Pay other people to handle the little stuff. In other words, delegate. You might have gotten into the habit of mowing your own grass, shoveling your own snow, or doing your own laundry. It might seem ludicrous to pay somebody else $25 for what you can do yourself for free, but the landscaping company can come out and buzz that grass in ten minutes flat with their big riding mower, while it would have taken you two hours with your push mower. Then you could have gotten an extra two hours of work done and earned back the $25 plus change!

7. Get up early. The old saying goes, "Work in the morning may easily be done that all the long day may hardly be won." In the early morning hours, there are fewer distractions and your mind is sharper and naturally more focused. Stay disciplined and you'll get used to it - but do also go to bed at a sensible hour as well!

8. Close out distractions. In today's media-frenzy world, you have to be assertive about your time. Don't be afraid to ask your co-worker to turn down that radio, shut off his annoying phone that he refuses to answer, and learn when the office comedian comes around so you can dodge him and his stack of stale, printed-out cartoons.

9. Take a walk. Exercise will give you energy. Especially in the information age, we have a tendency to live indoors on a computer. Your body and brain need fresh air and sunshine (or even a little rain!) to feel refreshed and healthy.

10. Live by the ten-minute rule. The ten-minute rule: pick the ugliest, hairiest task that you have looming over you - the one you dread above all. Now say "I'm going to work on this for just ten minutes and then stop." Actually, you'll usually find about half the time that when your ten minutes are up, you'll keep working on it a little longer, because you have momentum going!

Concepts of Network Security

The first thing to understand about network security is that it's all about preventing unauthorized users from accessing a network. This is different from information security, which protects against things like automated malware such as viruses. The second thing to understand is that securing your network has to take into account that intrusions can either be in the digital space, or the "human space." Your best methods for protecting your network will still fail if Hal, the friendly night janitor, lets somebody into the building without swiping their card, or Gladys the receptionist writes down her password on a Post-It stuck to her monitor in full view of the visitor's lobby!

There are four basic rules of thumb to network security:

1. If a door doesn't need to be open, close it.

2. If someone doesn't need to know something, don't share it with them.

3. Redundant measures are a good thing.

4. There is no such thing as a perfectly secure network!

Methods of access control come in levels. For instance, simply requiring a username and password would be a level-one control. Adding the requirement to have a physical object is a level-two control; for instance, to make a debit-card purchase you need both the plastic card to swipe and a PIN number to punch in. Adding a third level might be something in the biometric range - for example, voice-recognition, fingerprint-scanning, retinal scanning, and so on.

Further access control may include:

* Encryption. This is standard in most digital security now. For wireless devices, you should seek out the strongest encryption protocol available for a device.

* Firewalls. These are software systems which control access to a network, only allowing a "whitelist" of devices or ports which are authorized.

* Secured software. A system administrator should be keeping all software systems up to date with the latest patches. Anti-intrusion software is an essential part of this department. One should also be proactive; scan industry news for daily exploits discovered and what can be done to protect against them.

* Network analyzers. These "network sniffers" monitor and log the traffic on the network, raising a red flag at any unusual accesses or traffic patterns.

* Security services. These might be security guards who assist in controlling physical access to a site. They might check badges, assign passes, scan property being carried in and out of the facility, and otherwise control access.

* Education of employees or other users of a network.

What Can You Get in Bluetooth Devices? 

Information technology kind of hit a jackpot with Bluetooth. For once, we have an extremely useful telecommunications protocol which became an open standard, and to this day enjoys an open existence while not being owned by any company in particular. That is, the Bluetooth special-interest-group is actually a conglomerate of electronics manufacturers. So it isn't tied up in patents, and it isn't licensed from some company threatening to sue everybody, and it isn't closed-up proprietary abandonware that nobody in the modern day can crack... we got lucky.

For those of you who don't know, Bluetooth is a wireless communications protocol which can currently send and receive at about one megabyte per second. It is perfect for short-range data transmission which doesn't have to be high-bandwidth. One of the technologies it's replacing is infrared signals.

Some cocktail-party trivia: If the name sounds unappetizing, the name comes from the nickname of King Harald I of Denmark and Norway, who ruled in the tenth century. He's responsible for uniting the tribes of Denmark into a single kingdom, which is sort of what Bluetooth does with digital devices. And the logo is actually a combination of two Germanic runes named "Gebo" and "Berkanan."

Now then, here's a list of devices and applications where you'll find Bluetooth technology in action:

Just about any mobile phone or headset. Just about any computer peripheral, using wireless mice, keyboards, and printers. Wireless networking between computers, laptops, PDAs, UMPCs, pocket-PCs, and mobile devices of every stripe. Speakers and headphones. These are all given, and not too surprising.

Lots of industrial applications. Bar-code scanners, medical scanners, police forensic equipment, traffic control equipment, some retail point-of-sale devices, GPS receivers, security equipment. Anything that uses OPEX (OBject EXchange, the binary file transfer protocol) as likely as not runs over Bluetooth.

And now for some of the more surprising and newer applications of Bluetooth:

Game consoles. Both the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PlayStation-3 use Bluetooth technology for their wireless controllers. This has helped to revolutionize gaming technology. The Nintendo Wii in particular has been noted for being revolutionary in having a controller which allows you to combine exercise and video gaming. In your hands, the controller can double for a tennis racket, golf club, katana, fishing rod, lightsaber, pool cue, laser cannon, and anything else you can imagine.

Small home accessories which use Bluetooth are also becoming possible as well. Bluetooth-enabled TV remotes and garage-door openers haven't yet become commonplace, but their day is coming.

Another growing field is "telehealth" devices. These are devices associated with remote patient monitoring, implanted devices, and sensory aides. Your future pacemaker or insulin monitor may use Bluetooth to communicate with a base in your home or the doctor's office.

Finally, Bluetooth has shown the ultimate sign of adoption - it's starting to show up in marketing! Yes, it is slowly becoming a common occurrence: you're at the mall, walking along by the shops and looking at your phone, when it suddenly displays an advertisement from a store you're passing. Hmmm, we hope that doesn't get too annoying, but even so, it still sounds kind of cool.

And just to balance the cool comment.. Here's the Microsoft driver model!

Comparing Touchscreens and Keyboards 

The home user has only to take a moment to consider whether they like touchscreens or keyboards, but the business owner and industrial provider has to ponder the question more deeply. The question changes when you're ordering for thousands of employees. We'll discuss ramifications for both here.

Keyboards have a lot of loyalty in tech circles. Especially the full-sized keyboards that go with desktop personal computers and workstations. The benefits are that human hands are most comfortable on a large keyboard, which provides the most comfortable typing. For those of us who grew up using computers in the "space cadet" or "bucky-bits" era, when you were expected to play four-and-five-key combos, nothing else feels quite as natural.

But time has marched on. In fact, the single greatest bottleneck to adopting mobile devices is the tiny keyboards we have to adapt to. UMPCs and Blackberrys are fantastic, but those tiny little buttons are suitable for little more than twiddling out one-line messages with the thumbs - and the thumbs get tired fast!

Touchscreens are a much better solution for mobile devices. One big reason is because a keyboard can be replicated in software, and then, unlike a physical keyboard, an onscreen keyboard can be changed to a different layout. It can not only switch between Querty and Dvorak, but to Icelandic or Chinese as well. In addition they can be adapted to using fingers or a stylus.

One red flag for touchscreens, however, is the large touchscreen surface. If you have a flat monitor in front of you, tapping and moving things on the screen can become tiring very fast. The syndrome has the nickname "gorilla arm," because the muscles in your forearm become strained if you're making gestures in front of your face for eight hours a day. Similarly, a large flat table surface looks really impressive in a demo, but again physically making those sweeping arm gestures day in and day out gets old fast.

But some applications are perfect for large touchscreens. One example is media. When CNN or BBC does a newcast about an election or a war and they have data spread out all over a big board, they can control it easily since all they have to do is manipulate it for thirty minutes or less in front of the camera.

Getting back to small devices, touchscreens have a couple of those drawbacks. The glass surface can easily get dirty from greasy fingerprints, and if somebody taps them with an object not suited for the task and damages the screen, there goes your device. You don't think of this until you see an engineer working in the field, who uses a screwdriver to tap his PDAs icons, since one's already in his hand.

One more thing to consider is repetitive motion injury. With large keyboards, the microcomputer revolution discovered a new disease: carpal tunnel syndrome. This is when the nerves in the wrist become pinched as a result of too much typing on those large computer keyboards. Another kind of repetitive stress comes from using a mouse, which is why many mousepads now come with gel pad wrist supports.

At the very least, you should try out a model for yourself. Whatever interface you decide on, try using it for a day or so. Note what works and what fails for your particular case. But also take into account the various needs of your staff, if you have to make such a decision.

P.S. If you're still sold on a keyboard, don't forget there's hybrid touchscreen keyboards coming - just to confuse the issue even further!

We've been inspired by sites like Bash.org and their funny, but very old and stale, IRC quotes. So we've decided to bring that concept into the 21st century by starting a collection of memorable tweats from the wild, wild world of Twitter.com. Because, well, somebody had to think of it first. Enjoy these virtual messages in a bottle afloat on the sea of the social web!

"Just outside Disneyland, getting gas. The kids are freaking out thinking we are going to Disneyland. Funny, but cruel. But funny." - Warren "WO" Owen

"when a 15 mo old stands by the garbage and claps, looking proud of himself, one MUST investigate." - Beth@TheNaturalMommy

You'd better. It's probably the cat.

"Filling out my "Employee Performance Review" and I must say I am great." - quang

We got started down that road when we hacked into the school computer to improve our grades.

"im going to build a twitter clone using visual basic 6 and winsock. BACK OFF." - Christian

The tragic part is, this would be possible. It would be like kicking dead whales down the beach, but it would be possible. Nostradamus predicted this would happen.

"Accidentally rubbed my eye with my fingers which had some jalepeno juice on them. Not fun. This day is kinda boring and sucky thus far." - Andre

"people at a certain gym should know they are paying a lot of money to work-out at a place where the assistant manager has never worked out" - Kim Osterberg

Got any pictures of him huffing and sweating up the stairs?

"If Carlin is in heaven, I hope he takes it easy on God." - Ryan McShowoff

We love George Carlin too, and this is the single best comment about his passing we have ever seen.

"Why is it when spiders are on the ceiling, they love to crawl above your head and taunt you? Maybe they'll come down. Maybe they won't." - sammi_jo

Meanwhile, the spider is thinking 'Why do humans like to stand there and taunt you? Maybe they'll swat you, and maybe they won't.'

"We're under NDA, but a game that we can't talk about is very, very, very good." - BenKuchera

This is every software company announcement, ever. You could leave it on loop and never check the software news again.

"Also I must record for posterity that she said her cockatiel was more mature than her boyfriend. A lot more mature." - marisolita

But how much sunflower seed hulls did the boyfriend spill on the floor around his cage?

"The hulk has prefect teeth" - iamhaen

It's about time somebody else noticed!

"still 50/50. someone convince me why i should go apple vs. pc on the laptop purchase." - Ben Rabicoff

A swing buyer! We'll send a fanboy over to convert you right away!

"Let it rain, let it rain... OK now STOP!" - Aaron Holverson

Did it work?

""i drink a lot in the right circumstances." "and what are the right circumstances?" (shrug) "lots of alcohol"" - the_bait

Things not to say on your first date...

"Don't you just "love" the inevitable heavy breathing you hear on conference calls, with mics too close to noses?" - Dewald Pretorius

You're lucky. Wait until you get one where you can hear the gastric juices sloshing around in their stomachs.

"Forced to eat bagel crips left by coworker on my desk. Stop using me as the endless trashcan." - ancient_buho

;-X

"@Genuine That's cool, I guess, but what was your wife doing at the strip club?" - Jeremy Tanner

That's the kind of line you can say just before you break for a commercial.