Sometimes using one’s smartphone is like playing a game of, well, ?telephone.? Half the time no one can hear you and when they can, the message gets lost in translation ? even when it’s not actually being translated. I’m convinced that mine is actually a ‘smart-ass phone? given how it willfully drops calls, truncates texts…
Tag: Gadgets & Gadflies
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Getting Siri-ous
Building real-time voice-recognition into our gadgets has been a holy grail for technologists ever since an onscreen superhero commanded an artificial intelligence to do his bidding in some sepia-toned sci-fi serial. Who this first human-computer interlocutor was, exactly, is lost to the annals of speculative fiction, though its echoes can be heard from?Star Trek?to the…
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Kindle Fire is Aflame
Nearly 60 years ago, sci-fi scribe Ray Bradbury put the “lit” in literature when he opened his dystopian exploration of censorship?Fahrenheit 451?with the memorable line “It was a pleasure to burn.” In the classic fable of a world without books, “firemen” of the future pump kerosene onto pulp, thus keeping dangerous ideas from impressionable minds.…
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iCloudius: Apple’s Man in the Sky
When it rains it pours for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The lauded gadget guru qua rainmaker came out of medical leave to formally introduce attendees of Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference to a bevy of new products, among them the much anticipated announcement of the iCloud. Apple’s own spin on so-called cloud-computing, which, sans the…
They look like the bastard offspring of a crossword puzzle and a crop circle. QR codes, also known as “quick response” or “quick read” codes, are often seen lingering on the corner of magazine ads, clothing tags or band fliers as a bridge for our digital and terrestrial worlds through the aid of one’s smartphone.…
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Cut the Cord
?Cut the cord? has become the rallying cry for those interested in abandoning cable television in favor of streaming online video to their phones, tablets, desktops and ??forsooth! ??televisions. It’s an apt phrase, not merely for its echoes of severing the umbilical cord in the delivery room but for its metaphoric reach into that almond-shaped…