Published on
May 21, 2009 in
Cool.
I’m very excited at the moment. It’s only a couple of weeks until WWDC in San Francisco and I’m expecting some big announcements from Apple. The new Snow Leopard and iPhone 3.0 operating systems should be ready and a new iPhone model is pretty much guaranteed.
Among the new features already known to be on the third iteration of the iPhone will be video recording, an improved camera and a magnetometer or digital compass. It’s this last item that is the source of my anticipation. A device that knows where it is by using GPS, knows its orientation using accelerometers, knows which way it is pointing from the digital compass and knows what it can see through the camera should be able to do some amazing things – especially when you have large screen to display things on.
I’ve been more excited about this concept since watching this demonstration and playing with Sky Map on a colleagues Android G1. This kind of augmented reality, where virtual digital data is overlaid on top of what you actually see through your camera will be huge in the next five or so years.
The next logical step – though this is a good way away yet – will be to have the same technology available through wearable lightweight glasses and then on to a contact lens type system. This coupled with facial recognition will mean that you’ll never be unable to put a name to a face again!
I was watching Jonathan Ross interview Tom Hanks last night and Tom started talking about the swimming training he did for Angels and Demons. There’s a bonus at the end of the clip: Tom does the rap from Big.
I was impressed that he could remember the words just like that after 21 years. However something was itching away at the back of my mind about the name of the guy who trained him to swim: Michael Newman, an ex-firefighter and lifeguard. Then it hit me. This just had to be Michael “Newmy” Newman from Baywatch fame. He didn’t have a major role but I still remember him and I don’t know why.
Probably for the same reasons that I can remember most of the cast and characters from ‘Allo ‘Allo or that the wooden Indian in Neighbours years ago was called Frank. Of course this recall seems to be arbitrary – my memory didn’t make exams a breeze, professionally it doesn’t help me remember which function arguments come in which order when coding but it certainly comes in useful in a pub quiz.
As has been witnessed before by many people who blog, activity elsewhere can have a detrimental effect on the frequency of your posts. Not only have I not updated my blog for a good couple of weeks but I’ve also noticed that my Facebook activity has all but stopped completely.
It’s not just excessive tweeting and other online distractions that have occupied me recently. A couple of weddings, a stag weekend and a very busy period at work (about which I shouldn’t really moan too much, all things considered1) have all colluded to keep me from blogging recently. Things don’t seem to be getting any quieter in the near future either. For a start, this weekend sees the christening and first birthday of my gorgeous niece who I don’t see nearly enough of. I’m going to use the long weekend visiting my brother and sister-in-law to try and get them comfortable with using Skype.
1 I refuse to employ the overused term “current climate”.
