The CueTab case struck me as having what so many cases are missing – optional methods of holding your iPad.

You have to watch the video for yourselves to see the versatility of this design. Needless to say – I want one.

The handle is the clincher. Who doesn’t want a handle on their iPad?! I do! And I like the idea of the handle being used to hang your iPad for easy viewing, or to prop up the case. It does seem pretty complete.

Join me in backing this one! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/202789185/cuetab-case-the-best-all-in-one-case-for-ipad

While it may be understandable why Apple is iOSinizing the Mac OS: the huge success of iPhone and iPad. It is strange why Microsoft is pushing the user interface of very unpopular smartphone. Windows Phone has only 2-3 % of the global smartphone market. And they’re pushing it to cash cows like Xbox (Windows Phone-like update pushed at the end of last year) and Windows (starting with Windows 8 later this year). But well, it’s beyond the point: the fact is Microsoft is doing it, never mind users being angry about it.

So let’s take a look how Windows Phoneification looks like in Xbox now, after latest major update!

Look at this, doesn’t it look like Windows Phone tiles? Yes it does!

There are even bigger horizontal tiles.

And you can use also tile-based television (over Internet naturally).

Social network integration is also included. Typical also for Windows Phone that also integrates both Facebook (where Microsoft invested hundreds of millions) and Twitter (that is so popular that Microsoft can’t ignore it).

On Windows Phone if you hit the search button you get Bing page with some random background. Not surprisingly, the latest Xbox update also gets Bing page.

But how deeply does Windows Phoneification go when it comes to user interface elements?

Well, I checked it out, and noticed that it’s not deep. While user interface elements of Windows Phone are all typically square, not so in Xbox – they are still old-style and round.

One more thing: if you do typical hand waving to your Kinect, then you can move around new tile-based user interface of Xbox also with hand gestures (note the hand icon).

Can you imagine having tiles everywhere, also on your personal computers? If you can’t, then buy Apple hardware only and you may be able to avoid it, but since many companies and people still buy Windows powered computers, we will see many more tiles. And also because soon-to-be-released Windows 8, that is also tile-based, supports not only Intel x86 processors but also ARM processors. So we will see also tile-based touch tablets aplenty.

While you may hate tiles, consider this: yes, it’s true that in the case of video games for Xbox usually users have immersive gameplay experience and users don’t care about the Xbox dashboard interface, but since Microsoft has released (mainly for developers) a Kinect sensor for PC, we may soon see many PCs with both multitouch and 3D hand-gestures control and then tiles may come in handy.

Conclusion: 2012 will be the year when Windows Phoneification of Microsoft user interfaces will be completed by Windows 8 release. But you can see already in current Xbox that even if you don’t have Windows Phone, you might not be able to avoid it.

These days, it seems like everyone a member of at least one social networking site, if not more. Social media claims to have benefits for your social life, your education, your career – but which one should you be using? Here are just four which you might consider…

First up, it’s Facebook. What started out as a networking site for students at Harvard University has quickly become an international phenomenon, and one of the most popular platforms when it comes to social media. If you’re keen to keep in contact with old college friends, travel buddies and even colleagues, then Facebook is ideal, as it will allow you to share messages, wallposts and photos with everyone you’re friends with via the site.

Another hugely popular social networking site is Twitter. Rather than a two-way friendship, Twitter allows users to follow other members, providing time-line of status-like updates. With access to high-speed broadband widely available and via apps from the latest smartphones like those from O2, automatically updating micro-blogging sites have gained a huge audience. Twitter is particularly useful in that, depending on who you decide to follow, you can tailor you account’s time-line to suit your own personal interests.

If you’re a keen music fan, then one site you’ll definitely want to visit is Last.fm. Not only is this a great way to listen to music online, but it actually builds user profiles based on their own specific tastes. Users can then share their ‘radio station’ playlists with others, and will also have music recommended to them.

Lastly, those who want to keep it professional might choose to opt for a social networking website like LinkedIn. Instead of adding friends, LinkedIn allows users to build up their professional contacts online. The site is generally much more formal than many social networking alternatives, and is specifically designed to help users build up a database of business connections.

This has been a sponsored post.

Importance

This is the only authorized autobiography of Steve Jobs where the author (Walter Isaacson) was able to get Steve Jobs’ opinions on many topics. Since Steve Jobs has died there will be no other authorized biography about him. This book is unique.

This book is not merely for people interested in Steve Jobs’ personal life, but for people interested in the history of Apple. Shortly speaking, it is a must-read.

How to read it?

You can read it in paper form if you insist on destroying forests, but I recommend using an eBook form for 2 reasons: the text is searchable and you can use lookup dictionary (Isaacson sometimes uses sophisticated wordage).

Which eBook form? I prefer the Amazon Kindle form of this Steve Jobs bio because you can then read it everywhere: on Kindle devices, on smartphones (there is a Kindle app for absolutely all smartphone platforms), on tablets and on personal computers (Kindle reader both for PC and Mac available).

However some people think that the only appropriate way to read this book is by buying it in Apple iBook form and to read it on iPhone or iPad – to honor memory of Steve Jobs.

Personal stuff

I will not discuss those things related to personal behavior. This book covers these topics extensively from both sides. Isaacson not only got the opinion of one side (Steve, his wife) but also the other side of the story (like Bill Gates, former Apple CEOs etc). You get it: both Steve Jobs and many people who had contact with him were talking directly with the author of this biography!

Personally, I think it’s wrong to judge people – particularly if they are not doing anything immoral (except for smokers: these are evil people). Germans have a word “Streitkultur” that could be translated “atmosphere of constructive debate” or “argumentative atmosphere” – that could describe how Steve Jobs worked, and I think that decisiveness was the main reason for Apple’s success. While other corporations needed many meetings to get some product decision, at Apple, Steve Jobs decided in a matter of minutes.

Note: in this book it is revealed that the biological parents of Steve Jobs were German-American (mother) and Arab-American (father) so ethnically speaking Jobs was 50% German, 50% Arab.

Role of Woz

Warning: Steve Wozniak is one of 10 million Polish Americans (compared to 51 million Americans originating in Germany and 49 million Americans originating in England) and I am myself Polish so I am a bit biased about him.

However, in this book Steve Jobs admits that there would be no Apple without Woz (nickname for Steve Wozniak) as it was Woz who developed Apple I and Apple II computers single-handedly while Jobs was doing marketing/sales. Steve Jobs admits in this bio in his own words that Woz was 50 times better than the average engineer.

Steve Jobs is portrayed as a teddy bear – a lovable character interested only in engineering and not in management and office politics – so he was ying to Jobs’s yang. Although Jobs himself was technically good, Jobs was not doing the programming (which, by the way, was belittled by Bill Gates who called him “super-salesman” – but more about Bill Gates below) and all work initially was done by Woz, who was extremely nice to all people.

Woz had an airplane accident, so he left Apple and couldn’t participate in the development of Mac, but there were some quarrels. Jobs was badmouthing Woz many times as somebody not having enough focus in work and there is this frog design matter…. (Read the book, I will not spoil it here!) However, in the end Woz forgave Jobs and they were at peace with each other.

Woz also admitted that without Jobs’ business skills there would be no Apple. Woz recognized the importance of Jobs’ contribution.

History of Apple corporation

This book is also about the history of Apple as a corporation. By reading this book you can understand how many products came into being, and why many design decisions were made. This book could just as well have been called “History of Apple”.

The author depicts the history of Apple from both sides so it is nice to hear for, example, what various CEOs of Apple had to say about Jobs. For example, what they believed and what was Jobs thinking (he tells it to author!) despite the fact he was saying something different.

The NeXT company episode – when Jobs was ousted from Apple – is also discussed and it is important because later Apple purchased this NeXT company and integrated many NeXT technologies both into Mac, OS X, and into iOS products.

Pixar

The fact of the matter is that Steve Jobs poured 50 million dollars into Pixar before it became profitable. Pixar also constituted a breakthrough moment for Steve Jobs on 2 levels: he became a billionaire for the first time thanks to Pixar, and he received confirmation that his way of being on “intersection of tech and liberal arts” is right.

Many dealings with Pixar and with Disney are described, where you can learn the history not just of Apple, but also of Disney and other computer generated movies.

iPad was before iPhone!

An interesting fact is that Apple had developed multi-touch iPad before releasing iPhone, and it was spawned by bragging of Microsoft employee about Tablet PC. However, the iPad was not released because Jobs considered mobile phones an endangerment to iPod business so he had to release cellphone first.

Maybe you remember when Kevin Rose (founder of Digg and other startups) claimed before release of iPhone that it would have a click wheel? Well, this book reveals that there were 2 iPhone projects ongoing within Apple: one with click wheel (like in old iPods) and one with multi-touch display. Apparently the click-wheel solution didn’t have the ability to easily enter numbers so Steve Jobs decided on the iPhone as we have come to know it. But click-wheel iPhone prototypes existed!

Porn on App Store

In this book Steve Jobs confirms email exchange with a certain blogger about the absence of porn in the iPhone. It is a widely known argument that Apple’s app store may not have porn but it is free from virus software and not having porn is good for children.

Particularly what touched Steve Jobs was the argument that Bob Dylan wouldn’t like the absence of porn on iPhone as it is a limitation of freedom.

So it’s true: yes, it was Steve Jobs himself who was replying to emails that were leaking on various blogs. Amazing!

Jonny Ive – the lovely Brit

While Tim Cook is portrayed as somebody who may not give a monkey, gets credit for inventions, and focuses just on operations, it is striking to read in this book that Jonny Ive actually resented that Steve Jobs did not credit him for some ideas and claimed that Jobs himself invented them.

In fact Jonny Ive – the main designer of Apple – was Steve Jobs’ best friend, and in many arguments, Jobs actually supported Ive’s position.

However, it is worth underlining that since many designs were coming from Jonny Ive, Apple has bright future as Ive can continue without Jobs.

Interestingly, the British city of Newcastle in North England, is mentioned twice. Jonny Ive studed at Newcastle Polytechnic, and in his younger days, Jonny Ive attended a U2 concert in Newcastle!

Dealings with the entertainment industry

Having Pixar gave Steve Jobs leverage in dealings with the entertainment industry starting with record companies and ending with movies and television. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney and had a great influence on Disney studios, so Jobs was in a good position to convince the industry to offer music in digital form.

Apparently, prior to Apple, the only way to get music online was to steal it or stream it – there was no way to purchase it legally. Apple pioneered digital downloads and only thanks to Steve Jobs’ skills was it possible to convince the music industry.

Funnily enough, this book also explains why Sony – the company that invented walkman and had stylish design in products – has failed in music download and portable players. Shortly speaking: various divisions at Sony fight with each other but at Apple all work together.

Veganism

In his youth Steve Jobs was purely vegan and later he also ate fish (e.g. for unagi sushi), but generally his diet seem to be very unhealthy and unbalanced.

At one point it is written in this book that Jobs’ son, Reed. became an omnivore because he realized that veganism is very unbalanced and unhealthy.

Jobs also fasted via juicing or eating only one fruit (apple!) for several days/weeks.

Personally, I don’t mind various diets but I consider veganism to be unnatural. Even our cousins the apes also eat meat sometimes. Only humans are dick headed about diets.

Bill Gates

Steve Jobs admitted that having Bill Gates on the big screen during one of keynotes was a big mistake and generally Jobs despised Gates for his lack of style and for making crappy (his words!) products.

Bill Gates, on the other hand, says that without Steve Jobs, Apple has no chance to keep going with their “integrated model” (i.e. doing both software and hardware) and despised Jobs for not being technical enough. Gates was actually programming himself while Jobs was not (said Gates). Gates claimed that Jobs didn’t understand technology but admitted that Jobs understood what customers need (not want: as customers are too stupid to know what they need).

All in all however, Bill Gates was a close friend of Jobs and Microsoft supported Apple for many years, by doing things like releasing Microsoft Office for Mac at critical times.

Android hater

Steve Jobs extremely hated the fact that Eric “weasel” Schmidt, CEO of Google who was on board of Apple, stole the iPhone user interface design (array of icons, multi-touch, etc) and Google released Android. Jobs is quoted in this book saying that he would spend all Apple’s money to destroy Android.

So it is even more strange, that when Google’s new CEO (Larry Page, one of 2 Google founders, the other being Russia-born Sergey Brin) came to Jobs for advice, that Jobs gave him advice instead of refusing it due to Android.

The advice that Jobs gave to Larry Page: focus on fewer products! Some people claim that it was the reason why Google has recently discontinued many products – advice from Steve Jobs!!!! To this day I am scared that Google will cancel my personal most favorite Google product: fusion tables (I love it more than anything Google does).

Zen and other eastern philosophies

Jobs went to India for several months and he loved Japanese buddishm and unagi sushi. This was a big influence on his design philosophy and life.

He said that when it comes to the existence of God it is 50/50.

It is, however, extremely strange how many contradictions his philosophies contained: he was emotional, crying often and unstable so he was unable to achieve the desired Zen-like peace of mind and calm.

Death

While this book doesn’t describe the death of Steve Jobs itself, it describes that Jobs actually died of cancer and died in great pain. Great. Pain.

A shocking revelation is that for 9 months Jobs postponed surgery and in that time his cancer was spreading. It is uncertain whether he would still be alive if he hadn’t postponed it, but it shows that alternative medicine is useless in such tragical situations.

Legacy

By reading this book one realizes how big influence Steve Jobs had on many industries.

For many people it all started with the iPhone in 2007 and the subsequent halo effect (customers realizing that if iPhone is so good so also Macs must be good etc) but in fact Steve Jobs pioneered user interfaces (first OS with overlapping windows), graphical displays, portable players (playlist management in iTunes not on device), phones (multi-touch!), tablets (before iPad sales of tables were minuscule), digital downloads of music (before iTunes music was legally streamed but not available for download legally).

Conclusion

This is a must-read book and not just for people interested in Steve Jobs but also for people interested in Apple corporation in particular, and the tech industry in general.

The main purpose of Steve Jobs’ life was, in his words: “to make a dent in the universe” and everybody must admit that in fact he achieved his goal.

Thank you, Steve Jobs!

Have you ever been commuting to work and thinking “if only I could spend this time interestingly?” or maybe you have been listening to a boring lecture of a professor and thought “I could play a game in my phone but it wouldn’t be intellectually challenging enough…”? Well, now you can develop some mini apps-in-apps with apps – all in your phone or touch tablet.

To develop apps for smartphones one needs to have quite a powerful personal computer: Windows 7 PC in case of Windows Phone and Mac in case of iPhone.

Really? Well, if you want to publish your apps in iOS app store or Windows Phone marketplace – then yes, but if you are interested in creating apps just for yourself or mini-apps available for others out of app stores – then there is a way: recently released Codify for iPad, and previously released but recently extremely refined TouchDevelop for Windows Phone.

Don’t get me wrong: you can’t write apps on your smartphone yet that you would then publish in app stores, but it’s close!

So, what can this on-device app development do now?

With TouchDevelop for Windows Phone developed by Microsoft itself, one can develop mini-apps. One can even publish them to a special Microsoft website that others can then download and reuse. Making small games or utility apps – all is possible with TouchDevelop. And Microsoft is extending its API (application programming interface) very consistently and continuously. Amazingly, with Windows Phone Mango release, Microsoft even has managed to make those mini-apps (scripts) pinnable to the home screen in the form of tiles. Also support for events has recently been introduced and all that’s missing is a camera API. I can imagine that Microsoft will be releasing more updates to TouchDevelop and it is absolutely amazing that users can share their scripts.

With iOS, the situation is more difficult because Apple is very strict and doesn’t allow for downloadable code in apps so the only ability to transfer code in Codify is by copy and paste. Codify has been developed not by Apple but by a Polish-Australian guy and he tries to push an update to Apple that would enable code sharing but it is far from certain that Apple will approve it.

To give you idea about Codify for iPad, here are some screenshots.

Firstly here is simply hello-world type mini-app that also includes drawing an ellipse:

You can see above that the actual code editor in this Codify app for iPad is absolutely brilliant: it features not only syntax highlighting but hints about methods and additional help buttons.

Once executed by pressing play button, one can see this app in action.

And there are plenty of methods available from various areas.

So you see, this app is very powerful although it’s a pity it’s only for iPad.

With both these apps – Codify and TouchDevelop – users can develop mini apps, but Codify seems to be more focused on games.

When it comes to languages, Codify uses “Lua” that is a programming language created originally in Brasil and TouchDevelop Microsoft’s own variant that is difficult to describe for me.

Of course apart from mini-app sharing, users would wish to have the ability to convert such mini-apps to apps that are on sale in main app stores (iOS app store and Windows Phone marketplace) but this is not yet in sight.

Conclusion

While we can edit videos and run Office apps inside of smartphones, we can run practically all types of apps in mobile devices as in personal computers, it is yet not possible to develop commercial apps inside of smartphones or touch tablets (with exception of Windows 8 tablets that however are still melody of the future), but Codify and TouchDevelop are showing that this last frontier is approaching soon.

In the meantime, if you have some time to kill, then you can actually develop video games inside of your device instead of merely playing them.

To get these apps tap here:

* Codify for iPad
* TouchDevelop for Windows Phone

To learn more about these apps click here:

* Codify for iPad
* TouchDevelop for Windows Phone

Smartphone War 1

Before Smartphone War 1 started, Nokia-controlled Symbian (a mobile OS that originated from British EPOC mobile OS for PDAs) had the dominant market share.

And as you can see from this graph, Microsoft’s mobile operating system had a comfortable second or third place – despite the fact that neither Bill Gates nor Steven Ballmer were treating the whole cellphone business seriously. Employees of Windows Mobile division were parachuters who used it as a temporary phase in their career within Microsoft and were looked down at by other Microsoft employees.

On January 9, 2007, merely 4 years ago, Smartphone War 1 broke up! Like Michelangelo 500 years ago, who combined many talents in one person, and was considered the biggest and “unparalleled influence on the development of Western art”, the genius called Steve Jobs presented a new smartphone that changed everything forever: iPhone.

iPhone brought multi-touch and a capacitive screen, a very responsive display that seemed like a gadget from the future. Compared to resistive touch screens that used a stylus or finger nails. Apple also ported their BSD Unix -based Mac OS X to mobile format and Apple designed a whole new user interface especially conceived to be user friendly, just like Mac was before.

Traditional companies couldn’t believe that the iPhone could endanger them, and at that time anyway smartphones constituted only 1-2 % of all cellphones. It took 3-4 years for established manufacturers to realize what had hit them (iPhone!) and then they needed an operating system to compete with the almighty iPhone.

Smartphone War 2

Obviously Microsoft couldn’t deliver, and in 2008 Microsoft had to cancel all development on Windows Mobile 7 and start anew by developing Windows Phone 7. That was released by the end of 2010 – too late for companies that wanted to have something against iPhone in 2008 and 2009.

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, was a member of Apple’s board of directors and learned about the development of iPhone and initiated counter attack: Google has purchased a tiny company and adapted the Android operating system. Android was running on Linux and using Java without paying a license fees to Sun Corporation by using a trick to run it inside of Google’s own virtual machine, Dalvik, and by using other set of APIs. This stealing of intellectual property by Google would strike back in Smartphone War 3.

Since Microsoft was late with delivering a competitive mobile OS, HTC jumped into bed with Google, and while their first Android phones were crude, they did offer multi-touch.

And the Android invasion started.

Over the very short time since the launch of the first Android phone, October 2008, this operating system managed to conquer not only outdated and dying Symbian, but also dethroned iPhone itself. Today, Android is the number one smartphone platform in the world.

Smartphone War 3

Smartphone War 2 was not prosperous for all. As collateral damage, webOS (formerly developed by Palm and later purchased by HP) is practically dead, Symbian has no future (Nokia sold Symbian support to outsourcing company Accenture), and it seemed that there are only 2 kings of the hill: Android and iPhone.

But no – now Microsoft is back!

With a twofold attack, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango, and convinced Nokia to use Windows Phone as their primary and de-facto only operating system for Nokia smartphones.

Apart from releasing Windows Phone, Microsoft has no mercy. Microsoft is creating a black hole in the center of Android that can suck out the entire Android ecosystem. Microsoft is demanding patent fees from device manufacturers making Android devices. Google is simply not providing patent protection like Microsoft is for Windows Phone license takers, and this whole Android patent debacle is not only about Microsoft. Google had stolen Java technology from Sun Corporation that was later acquired by Oracle Corporation, and now Oracle (not just Microsoft), demands patent fees – and Oracle might even win a court ruling.

Comically, thanks to patent fees, Microsoft is now earning more money off Android than off Windows Phone, but the main hope of Microsoft is Nokia.

Nokia is still the biggest cellphone (not smartphones) maker in the world, and in November 2011 the first Nokia smartphones powered by Windows Phone will be going on sale. Apart from Nokia, maps with free turn-by-turn navigation and the ability to save maps locally for off-line navigating (possible because Nokia previously purchased Navteq for many billions), Nokia brings to the smartphone wars German lenses. Here, the 12 megapixel camera in the Nokia N8. I took this photo with my Windows Phone with 8 megapixel camera.

Other companies insist on using non-branded lenses – for example I was chatting 1-on-1 with CEO of HTC and with Chief Marketing Officer of HTC and they both were saying that HTC has no need for using German lenses as they are proud Taiwanese and will use only HTC lenses.

Apart from Nokia, iPhone 4S is now releasing an improved camera (not 12 megapixels but with more lenses and improved sensor). So finally HTC also realized that their cameras need improvement and inserted better lenses with low-light ability, thanks to bigger aperture to HTC Titan and HTC Radar.

What will the future bring?

There are 2 major events that will determine the future:

• Steve Jobs is dead. Cancer has defeated this genius and everybody is now worrying about Apple. When Steve Jobs was thrown out of Apple, Apple was close to bankruptcy and only the return of Steve Jobs saved it. Now he is gone for good, and while many people claim that he has left 4 years of new Apple products in the pipeline, nobody in Apple will be brave enough to make radical changes. Arguably the still-tiny display of iPhone 4S – 3.5 inch compared to 4.6 inch of latest Android and Windows Phone phones – is proof of it. And while he imprinted his values (combination of style and engineering excellence) on Apple employees, nobody can replace him. Nobody.

• Android has many unresolved patent issues. Not just patent issues with Microsoft, but also Oracle. To add to the confusion, Google has purchased Motorola, which means that Google is now a hardware manufacturer and thus in direct competition with Android licensees. Apart from that, mobile operators (aka carriers) are tired of the duopoly of iPhone+Android and would like to see the third ecosystem dissipate the domination of these two giants.

Conversely and clearly, there is big chance for Microsoft, for Windows Phone!

And this time Microsoft is serious. Microsoft is without mercy – fighting Android (by demanding patent fees!) and pushing Windows Phone on all fronts. Nokia is serious this time as well. They have lost their market share in smartphones rapidly and they cannot afford to fail with their Windows Phone rollout.

My predictions

• Android will collapse in the same way Symbian collapsed. Symbian previously was developed by a common effort of several cellphone manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and Motorola. But over time Nokia controlled and even purchased Symbian – just like Google has purchased Motorola – thus competing directly with other Android manufacturers. Oracle will also win patent quarrel with Google as it is obvious that Google had stolen Java technology from Sun (now owned by Oracle).

• Microsoft will regain their market share in smartphones big time in the long-term (next 3-5 years), particularly because Windows 8 is coming next year offering the ability to run both on Intel/AMD x86 processors and ARM-architecture processors with built-in cellphone functionality. In other words, Windows Phone 8 will practically be a subset of Windows 8.
• Apple has too much momentum by now to suffer in Smartphone War 3, even after the death of Steve Jobs, and it will maintain a safe second position in the smartphone market in the long term. As with personal computers, where Apple has huge profits off Mac computers despite not having a majority of market share, Apple will thrive off iOS devices without needing to be the market leader.

Conclusion

Smartphone War 3 is starting in November 2011 with the release of Nokia’s Windows Phone cellphones. But the Android camp is not sleeping – it’s releasing stunning 4.6 inch smartphones.  And iPhone 4S brings revolutionary Siri technology not just for voice control, but practically a built-in artificial intelligence equipped assistant. So the future is not written yet.

Windows Phone 7 is totally different than the old Windows Mobile as it doesn’t run native apps but only Silverlight and XNA apps running in .NET virtual machine (hence the impression that it’s reliable and stable) and has a totally different user interface based on tiles on the home screen.

Windows Phone is quite young yet – less than one year as it launched in October 2010 – but to date it has been a pitiful failure. It has around a 1% market share in the smartphone market compared to 40% of Android and 30% of iPhone. Microsoft, however, signed an agreement with Nokia, which brings hope that Windows Phone will soon have (after launch of Nokia Windows Phone phones with German lenses from Carl-Zeiss and free turn-by-turn sat nav from Nokia-owned Navteq), much larger sales. In fact, Microsoft employees from Windows Phone division are extremely arrogant (visible also in their customer-disrespecting comments about Mango update) nowadays because they think that Nokia will save them, but most importantly they don’t listen to users at all, as list of bugs at Xda-dev proves.

Personally I like that there is SiriusXM Buddy app for Windows Phone available, that makes it possible for me to listen to Sirius radio without needing to pay a premium monthly fee – as if I had a PC in my pocket. There is no such app for the iPhone (Pocket Tunes stopped working with Sirius XM a few months ago) and the official Sirius app demands an additional monthly fee.

It’s worth mentioning that Microsoft employees from Windows Phone division are not only arrogant but also incompetent: actually the OS version is 7.0, and Windows Phone version is 7.0 for pre-mango, and Mango has versions: OS version 7.1 but Windows Mobile version 7.5 …

So, let me talk through my various impressions about Windows Phone 7 (after release of Mango update i.e. 7.5 I will come back with a Mango review):

• no screenshot taking on device - so the only way to make a screenshot of an app is to take a photo of the display! This is utterly pathetic because not only can bloggers not blog about apps properly, but also because users can’t share apps, content, and experiences with other users. In other words, due to the extreme stupidity of Microsoft employees there is no basic built-in viral marketing mechanism.

• it’s nice to have 8 megapixel camera with xenon flash in phone, but Windows Phone pre-mango doesn’t have: save settings function, so I switch off flash, take photo, go away, return to camera app, and flash is again switched on. Very annoying. The anti-shake function in camera is only in Samsung phones with Windows Phone, not HTC. But worst of all: in pre-mango there is no camera API so there are no apps that can take photos or videos themselves, there is no way to do augmented reality so no such apps yet, etc

• there is no multitasking. but mango update should rectify it, although it will be multitasking of iPhone-style i.e. apps will be frozen and not running in background (like in Android) and only some activities like streaming audio, will be allowed in background – exact copy of iPhone multitasking. However in pre-mango: no multitasking at all and many apps don’t even remember their state and you start from scratch.

• tiles are useless, although in Mango so called “Live Tiles” are coming where also 3rd party apps will be able to display more info on home screen in tiles, not just those from Microsoft and manufacturers. Personally for me: useless junk.

• fewer apps and all apps are worse – yes, there are already over 30,000 apps in Marketplace (Microsoft’s name for app store) but many of them are total junk so numbers say nothing. In fact some apps are not available at all (examples: Skype, Whatsapp) and some apps known from other platforms are available but less frequently updated than iPhone version and very lame in functionality (official Twitter for Windows Phone is extremely bad, unusable, and Kindle app for Windows Phone doesn’t have search function and doesn’t have dictionary lookup function). App-wise situation may improve after Mango update (Whatsapp for Windows Phone is coming!) but still no Skype, which is annoying considering that Microsoft paid 8 billion dollars to buy Skype. Skype is, on the other hand, available including video calling for iPhone and for Android.

• I like 3 capacitive buttons under the screen (go back, windows logo, search). and it is much better than physical button in iPhone, but obviously the same technique is used also in Android phones so it’s not unique to Windows Phone. In other words: hitting these 3 buttons does not require any physical pressure, just touch.

• Zune player sucks on many levels. I can’t just go to given playing position by pointing finger or moving the marker. Tthe only way is to hold down the fast forward button for a very long time. Also there is no volume control on the touch screen, so I have to use physical buttons for volume control – this problem is not only in Zune player (i.e. Microsoft’s built-in player) but also in third party apps for audio playback – no volume controls on touchscreen. I want to punch in the face people who were praising Zune user interface for years – they are imbeciles.

  

• waiting for updates sucks because not all users get update to next version simultaneously as is the case with iPhone. Furthermore Microsoft is holding back with updates (like Mango) to have bigger impact, and updates are rare and very delayed. Apple and Google do several iterations of iOS and Android, but in the same time Microsoft manages to do only 1 update of Windows Phone. Very low update frequency rate therefore. Reason is simple: 90% of Windows Phone division is marketing not development, so no wonder updates are rare…

• no sideloading of apps so unlike Android, you can’t download any app you want. There are jailbreaking solutions for Windows Phone where users can download anything simply by copying XAP file (format that replaced CAB file of old Windows Mobile) but I hate deeply jailbreaking as it fosters piracy, so don’t use it or kitty will suffer.

• no native apps but only .NET based (Silverlight+XNA), which is another reason (apart from tiny market share) why some apps (example: TomTom that is preparing TomTom for Android but has no intention to release Windows Phone app at all, not working on it at all – I’ve been told personally at a trade show), are not available at all and not coming any time soon. In other words: .NET apps of Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 mango can be super-easily recompiled and there is zero copy protection. There is no reason why some teenage hacker, for example, couldn’t decompile your Windows Phone app (because it’s .NET), change a bit and release it as his own to the Marketplace. It’s extremely easy, zero protection for intellectual property.

• Xbox Live built-in but unreliable. As a Kinect player I should appreciate it but it’s too unreliable, fails to login sometimes and not showing everything. Should improve in Mango a lot, so let’s not bark at it yet.

• browser sucks, with sucky-looking fonts, and while it does have multi-touch with pinch to zoom, the fonts are ugly and rendering of many web apps is basic, not beautiful like in the case of iPhone/iPad. Mango update should bring a major update here.

  

• maximal resolution 480×800 pixels. Another, after no screenshot taking on device, bizarre incompetence of Microsoft: not only iPhone has high resolution (960×640 pixels called Retina) but nowadays also Android phones have high-resolution (now: qHD = 960×540 pixels, but yet this year first Android phones with 1280×800 pixels coming). However Windows Phone can handle only 800×480 so huge 4.7 inch big HTC Titan powered by Windows Phone has to use stupid 800×480 resolution and we cannot expect high resolution phones powered by Windows Phone. Mango not solving here anything either.

• tiny market share so no point of writing apps, and the vicious circle closes: not many apps no point to buy Windows Phone etc. Fact is that Microsoft hopes that Nokia will sell many millions of Windows Phone devices in 2012 so maybe there is a chance for developers here, but I am not sure if it will really happen.

Conclusion: clearly there will be some breathtaking Windows Phone 7.5 Mango handsets like Samsung Focus S (essentially a Samsung Galaxy S2 but running Windows Phone OS instead of Android) but I cannot recommend Windows Phone cellphones – it’s still a junk.

by Frank Tobe, Owner/Publisher of The Robot Report

Willow Garage’s ROS (Robotic Operating System) provides a collection of software libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. ROS provides device drivers, visualizers, message-passing, package management, and advanced libraries to help application engineers understand camera, video and 3D data.

ROS is open source and free to use, change and commercialize. The system is used by a growing number of popular personal service and research robots including one at the University of California in Berkeley (shown in the picture above) that learned how to process a basket of laundry from washing to folding. Gerkey believes ROS will allow entrepreneurs to create new commercial applications for robots even if they don’t have extensive robotics expertise.  Gerkey said in the write-up about his Technology Review TR 35 award, “The goal [of ROS] is to help people who have ideas for what robots can do in the marketplace by providing a common language for robots.”

The industrial robotics industry is confronted today with the modification of production processes due to the trend toward individualization of consumer products. This requires that handling of robots be much easier, with greater flexibility and rapidity, and that accuracy has to be increased.

Thus it was a big leap forward last week when Yaskawa America’s Motoman Robotics Division signed a collaboration agreement with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to port Willow Garage’s ROS to the Motoman line of industrial robots. This is the first authorized porting of ROS to an industrial robot. SwRI plans to develop, demonstrate and release to the open-source community an interface between Motoman robots and ROS thereby taking this award-winning software beyond the realm of universities and research and into the world of business.

SwRI (Southwest Research Institute) is an independent, nonprofit, applied research and development organization based in San Antonio, Texas, with more than 3,000 employees and an annual research volume of more than $500 million.

Yaskawa America Motoman Robotics division offers arc welding robots, spot welding robots, painting robots, handling and other robots. It’s most recent two-armed handling robots are being implemented in the automotive industry in Germany and Japan.

W. Clay Flannigan, Manager of the Robotics and Automation Engineering Section of SwRI, said:

We are working to build a general purpose interface between the broad manipulation and perception capabilities of the ROS framework and the highly reliable architecture of industrial robots. We plan to implement the interface at a low-level within the existing robot controller that enables the capabilities of the ROS manipulation stack, while maintaining the safety inherent in the industrial controller. By providing the solution as open source, we hope to build a community around the use of ROS in a wide variety of industrial applications. Ideally, the community will expand to encompass more robots, sensors and industrial controllers, and we hope to contribute to the process.

We plan to release the source in the first quarter of 2012.

Erik Nieves, Technology Director for Yaskawa America’s Motoman Robotics Division, explained why Yaskawa America is pursuing an open source controller interface for it’s Motoman line of robots:

Yaskawa’s strategy is to offer many controllers for the many different audiences and applications that our robots address. This ROS adaption is in line with that strategy.

The next step for industrial robotics is to be more sensor aware; to be able to accomodate the many new capabilities showing up in the service sector. It’s clear that ROS is able to handle all of these and it saves our programming department from writing drivers for each and every possible configuration. We want ROS for these next generation devices which will come first to ROS.

A near-term goal of the project is to demonstrate advanced material handling solutions that leverage the path planning, grasp planning, and perception frameworks within ROS to enable robotic solutions that would be difficult or expensive with current solutions. One can only imagine the longer-term future. Perhaps ROS could become the universal robot controller that most end users wish for. Perhaps the days of the clunky teaching pendant will soon be replaced by an iPad or tablet running an ROS applet.

Willow Garage’s CEO Steve Cousins, in addition to providing the colorful title to this article (“ROS Everywhere!”), commented on the import of the SwRI Motoman ROS porting project. He explained that current-day industrial robots often don’t need the extensive vision, mobility and navigation capabilities available in the growing world of service robotics. But vision and navigation systems are the next level in the evolution of industrial robotics as they branch out of the automotive industry and into all the other areas of production and material handling, and ROS is a good entry system to program, simulate and implement these new industrial and material handling applications using all the new navigation and vision features.

Yaskawa’s Motoman line of robots will, by using ROS, at no significant research cost on the software side, be able to add features to their existing robot manipulators enabling them to compete in terms of handling new manufacturing processes. ROS and Willow Garage are getting a boost to the credibility of ROS by this very real and timely proof of concept. Also getting a big boost are the many industrial integrators who add a wide range of industrial expertise to the ROS community thereby making both groups stronger.

Pictures and captions:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8QMIoQEciG4/TmOT2TVvHjI/AAAAAAAAAoo/xxN5DzZYu38/s320/0911-TR35-Abbeel_wPR2.jpg

Pieter Abbeel was one of this year’s MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR 35) award winners as was Brian Gerkey of Willow Garage. Pieter and his team at UC Berkeley programmed a robot to learn how to perform tasks such as folding laundry without detailed instructions. Brian oversees development of the Willow Garage open source ROS software used to control the robot.  Photo credit: Technology Review, Winnie Wintermeyer.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UoPGN7wtUPs/TmOjbCuTj5I/AAAAAAAAAos/bC4Ru2VAR4Y/s200/Brian+Gerkey.jpg

Brian Gerkey
Director, Open Source Development
Willow Garage

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9KOBTFrGVog/TmavS2VEK7I/AAAAAAAAAo4/M9aT5P4h2Wo/s200/Motoman-wo-head-SDA10.jpg

Motoman Dual-arm Robots
Future versions of this robot may have a head
containing camera’s and a Kinect device.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3Bu047cKjiI/TmOjdoXYMzI/AAAAAAAAAow/O0TwM2UaSS0/s200/Steve+Cousins.jpg

Steve Cousins
CEO, Willow Garage

http://www.therobotreport.com/ 

Paper.li is for people who are too lazy to blog, don’t know about RSS readers, and basically don’t understand that what they’re doing is plaguerism. Pure and simple. If they want to link to my blog, I’d welcome the link, and the accompanying pingback. But that’s not how they work. If it weren’t for the Twitter mentions, which I have (hopefully) stopped, I wouldn’t be aware of them at all.

When I check my site analytics, not a single refer comes in from paper.li. Now I’m not sure if this means that no one actually reads anyone else’s “Daily” or no one is actually reading my stuff on those aggregations. I do know that I haven’t clicked one of their links in a very long time, because despite my being mentioned, I can never find where my stuff is in their mess. And yes, they are all a mess. Too much stuff on a page to resemble an old fashioned newspaper, and not enough organization to count for much in today’s electronic world.

For instance, I publish an app review. I expect it to be under the “technology” tab of someone’s paper.li. But it could wind up anywhere, with no rhyme or reason. Of course, the fact that someone mentions you as being included in their paper.li doesn’t tell you why either. Was it something you tweeted, was it something you retweeted? Was it a blog post, and if so, which one?

I hate them. I wish all the people using paper.li would get their own blogs and either write some original content, or properly link to things they want to share. Or retweet what they want to share if they feel they have that much influence.

I know people who have two or three paper.li dailies (I don’t even know what to properly call them), for different content emphasis. Why? Do they think none of their Twitter or Facebook followers can find this content on their own?

I just don’t get it. The only people I have ever mentioned it to, also don’t get it. And we don’t like it. But we are bloggers, and the paper.li people are not. I wish they would stop.

Maybe one of them will include this little rant in their paper.li. It would have to be by accident, since I’m convinced it’s all done automatically with no thought as to what gets included. But then they would actually have to read it themselves.

Do you hate Paper.li? Do you get it?

To those of you who are outraged by this, I say “seriously? Maybe you need to get a life.” While I very much agree that the data I buy from AT&T is mine, and I should be allowed to use it as I want (ie, why can’t I tether my laptop if I’ve already bought the data), I am actually sickened by the people who feel that they can replace home internet with cellular data. It was never meant for that.

Now maybe I don’t understand, because even for the short period where I tethered (I was on holiday and had no available WiFi at all), I only got up to 2 GB of data. And I was using my laptop normally during that period of time, just like I would at home. I realize I may be atypical, but I recently bought a Verizon MiFi card, and for two weeks, I had 5 devices attached 24/7. We conducted business using that MiFi. We pushed it to its limits…and didn’t come close to my 5 GB plan.

I keep coming back to the question that’s been niggling at my mind since I first read a story of outrage on a forum: what the heck are you doing with your cellular internet that you would even need that much? The majority of people complaining in forums keep talking about streaming media. Ok, I’ll buy that you stream a lot of media. But again, if you work 40 hours a week, and have any kind of social life, it doesn’t leave you time to stream that many “geebees” of media data.

Trying to stream music and video (hulu) in the evening to relax? Come on, people, get yourself a home broadband connection, or better yet, cable tv! I don’t get what this top 5% is using their cellular data FOR. I don’t understand when most people would have time to use 10 GB of cellular data, even if tethered.

And yes, I am perfectly content if AT&T (or Verizon, or any of the carriers worldwide) throttle YOUR data once you’ve used 5 GB in a month if it means I will have a better experience. We’re all sharing this data, and just because I choose to take a smaller piece of the pie doesn’t mean my piece shouldn’t be as rich and flavorful as anyone else’s.

So for those of you complaining about caps and throttling on your unlimited plans – buy yourself home broadband. Or get a life.