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Author Archives Jake

Our Glass Overlords Have Arrived

We ran into Floyd (@fteter) last night. His cyborg transformation is complete. Note the serious demeanor, with Glass power comes great responsibility, or something. Backstory, Anthony (@anthonyslai) finally got his Explorer Series Glass unit on Sunday. Funny story, its display had a few dead pixels, three actually. He counted. Google replaced the unit, so all’s [...]

Posted 15 May 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Virtual Sleuthing with GeoGuessr

I don’t normally pay much attention to games, but after GeoGuessr showed up in both the Verge and Kottke.org, I took notice. It’s a very simple, but difficult game. GeoGuessr drops you into a random place that Google has mapped with Street View, but without any metadata, just the images Google captured. You can navigate around, using [...]

Posted 14 May 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Thanks for Reading

This blog has been around for six years, and given how varied and banal a lot of what I write is, I’m stunned it’s lasted that long. While at Collaborate in April, John (@jpiwowar) mentioned something about the blog that resonated with me. He said he appreciated that I replied to his comments. That struck [...]

Posted 06 May 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

Experimenting on My Family

One of the aspects I like about my newish team, Applications User Experience, is access to real research. Through eye-tracking, the usability labs, ethnographic research, focus groups and a host of other tools, AUX collects data from real users to help us understand how to build better software. This is perfect for me, since I’ve [...]

Posted 06 May 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

WebKey: Manage Your Android Device from a Browser

I’ve been doing more tinkering with my development toy, the Nexus 7, and kudos to Anthony (@anthonyslai) for finding this gem. WebKey is an Android app and accompanying service that allows you to manage your device from a browser. WebKey (Play Store link) isn’t new. I found coverage from the Android Police and Lifehacker from a [...]

Posted 30 April 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

PBS Off Book on the Future of Wearable Computing

PBS Off Book has a short and interesting look into wearable computing. Check it out, h/t MAKE and Geekosystem: Aside from the recent, top-of-mind examples (Google Glass, Pebble), I’m amazed at how functional smart garments have become. Innovation has been happening in both the fashion and DIY circles, but since I don’t pay very close attention to those [...]

Posted 29 April 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °

A Week-ish with Facebook Home

When Facebook launched Home earlier this month, it marked the first time in quite a while that I was excited to use Facebook. What excited me wasn’t using Facebook per se, but exploring the possibilities of moving beyond the app. Despite only being officially supported for a handful of phones, the Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy [...]

Posted 26 April 2013 § Uncategorized ‡ Comments Off °