tl;dr I'm new, I'm not a very knowledgeable developer, I have an idea that I want your opinion about.
Heyo Peoples,
I'm new and I like to think a lot about cool new stuff with mobile devices (web, software, hardware, etc). I've been thinking a lot recently about how people like to use mobile devices, and how we might use them in the near future--thinking past what's being done now, and into what comes next.
I've been wondering for a while why there isn't an existing piece of functionality on mobile devices that allows a user complete control of the device and every piece of information on it. Imagine a GUI except instead of graphics, it's like interacting with a person. (aside: first person to say Siri should be shunned like an Amish girl who went to a movie theater).
Is it outrageous to say that you should be able to pick up your phone and have it find anything, from anytime in the past that you have done with or on it? I know that would take mountains of data, but is it silly? In it's most basic form, this would just be a search feature. In it's most eloquent form it could be an operating system. Imagine being able to ask your phone what you did last Wednesday, or maybe where you were. What if it could recall emails or documents based on date, time, location where you were when you wrote it, keyword, or contact, based on verbal interaction? What if it tracked data usage by application, or allowed you to measure and optimize system performance with a verbal command (ex. "Shut down all apps except for Google Maps" or "How much data am I using per minute").
Is it too early to start wishing for an interface like that computer on Paycheck (horrible movie with Ben Afleck) or Cortana in Halo? Is this type of interface impractical or implausible?
If you were to make something like this, would it have to be a new operating system built from the ground up, or could you develop an app to do this, or could you hack Android to do it? I welcome all of your feedback.
Lots of questions, and I have very few answers.
Jujubes said:
tl;dr I'm new, I'm not a very knowledgeable developer, I have an idea that I want your opinion about.
Heyo Peoples,
I'm new and I like to think a lot about cool new stuff with mobile devices (web, software, hardware, etc). I've been thinking a lot recently about how people like to use mobile devices, and how we might use them in the near future--thinking past what's being done now, and into what comes next.
I've been wondering for a while why there isn't an existing piece of functionality on mobile devices that allows a user complete control of the device and every piece of information on it. Imagine a GUI except instead of graphics, it's like interacting with a person. (aside: first person to say Siri should be shunned like an Amish girl who went to a movie theater).
Is it outrageous to say that you should be able to pick up your phone and have it find anything, from anytime in the past that you have done with or on it? I know that would take mountains of data, but is it silly? In it's most basic form, this would just be a search feature. In it's most eloquent form it could be an operating system. Imagine being able to ask your phone what you did last Wednesday, or maybe where you were. What if it could recall emails or documents based on date, time, location where you were when you wrote it, keyword, or contact, based on verbal interaction? What if it tracked data usage by application, or allowed you to measure and optimize system performance with a verbal command (ex. "Shut down all apps except for Google Maps" or "How much data am I using per minute").
Is it too early to start wishing for an interface like that computer on Paycheck (horrible movie with Ben Afleck) or Cortana in Halo? Is this type of interface impractical or implausible?
If you were to make something like this, would it have to be a new operating system built from the ground up, or could you develop an app to do this, or could you hack Android to do it? I welcome all of your feedback.
Lots of questions, and I have very few answers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is probably not as far off as it seems. The developers of "Utter" have come along way in the right direction. You should maybe approach them with your ideas. Not all of them of course . Save some for yourself.
One problem I see is semantics. "Shut down all apps except for Google Maps" sounds good - but do you really mean ALL apps ? The line that would be walked is one where the developer must train the program to not necessarily do what they ask, but do what they WANT. It gets trickier when you realise that some people who aren't your average users might want to test things and shut down an app (in this case) that an average user would never want shut, where they might mess up their phone beyond their ability to repair if they did.
I think speech is a great tool to interact, though I'm not going to be a person to use it. I don't think speech will ever become a default unless there are other technological advances that change how we interact with the world. It's annoying enough to hear someone gabbing loudly to another human on the phone, do we really want people gabbing AT their phones as a default interface ? I think privacy is a driving factor that will keep sound from being a major interface - perhaps it could work for in home applications, but out in public people may not want to announce to the world who they are calling, what they are looking for, or what site they're logging on to, et cetera. Until there's technology to make voice and sound less "public", I don't see this being the future of phones - it's more of a nice thing to have as an "extra" for when a person is comfortable using it.
But, hey, maybe we'll get used to wearing Google Glass and talking to ourselves all the time - or we'll get in-ear buds or implants where we can choose to hear the outside world or not. Just exploring the possibilities here.
I do think it's a big "outrageous" to have infinite backup. Just take a look at how much data companies like Amazon and Facebook acquire on a per-day basis. Think about how much data you use on a daily basis. I don't have the money or desire to be buying new HDDs every other week. Maybe in the future there will be a technological revolution that allows for mass amounts of data to be stored in even smaller spaces. But current technology in that regard is still very expensive and persnickety - read about high capacity SD cards and how fragile they can be and about data needing to be "refreshed" or they can become corrupt. There are lots of issues that make backing up everything you do impracticable.
And, again - privacy concerns. Do I really want my computer to know what I did last Wednesday and who I was with ? What if someone stole my computer or phone and had access to that information ? If we had the technology to do that, who's to say that current encryption would be "enough" - or that someone wouldn't go ahead and try to hack it anyway if they felt finding out basically everything about you was worth brute-forcing your phone or whatever they'd do in the future ? And have no password or a crappy one - even easier for them to know EVERYTHING about you, now.
Highly visual and talk-activated computers are absolutely great for games, movies, and TV. Why ? They function as narrative devices. They allow the actor to say or explain things they otherwise wouldn't have said out loud for personal, practical, or security reasons. They can become characters in their own right. People like those big screen computer displays where the characters are poking things all over and up and down - it looks cool. But not so cool is having your arms get tired from reaching up and around all the time. Not so cool is having to tell the computer out loud what kind of special images you want to search for when you have house-mates living in the next room over.
Just some thoughts. If you have other or counter ideas, go right on ahead.
I'm not a programmer or I'd do this in a heartbeat. I use a journaling/note application on linux called Rednotebook. It's on sourceforge, sorry I'm still under 10 posts so I can't post a link.
It is a simple, lightweight, app that you can drop notes, pics, diary entrys, whatever, and easily find them again. Pretty much what evernote does only without the massive bloat and eye-bleed interface. It feels a lot like a personal wiki interface. I use this and evernote and constantly go back to this because it is so much easier to deal with.
I don't know how the author would deal with royalties from the app store but he has indicated on his forums he has no interest in porting to android but would be glad to help someone else do it. I run this on all of my linux system and would buy it in a heartbeat to run on my tablet.
My hope is to be able to run this on all of my systems and export/import it as necessary. A way to sync this securely without putting personal stuff out on the internet somewhere would be icing on the cake but manual would work just fine.
Just putting it out there. I'd definately pay more than the average $1.99 google play app for this port.
For my school, I am planning to create an app that will allow people to be aware of upcoming events and general information about the school for new students and parents.
My IST (Information and Software Technology) teacher said that if it was successful, we will be able to publish it as the school's app and thus awarding be brownie points and overall a beneficiary. My school is not a dodgy one in terms of behavior etc and most people have smartphones, and not retards with iPhones with like #SWAG#YOLO#INSTAGRAM#FACEBOOK.'
Basically it's supposed to display stuff like a map of the school, things like upcoming exams and events like carnivals. I am hoping to add something that will allow you to put your grade as preference and thus only notify you of things that concern you. Basically like a news feed but for your school life.
Will it be able to be pulled off? If it is I will start with Android and move on from there.
I don't see why it would be impossible, but it seems you are taking the difficult road for something that could be done simply.
If there's planned events, you simply need to maintain a calendar/agenda one can sync to. With Google Agenda/Calendar, you can do just that. Share one or multiple agendas people can sync with. The upside is that people can use a multitude of apps, whether on their smartphone or computer to sync with that calendar instead of using a closed app.
The downside, is that its meant to manage a calendar/agenda, thus not really usable for the other part of your project, posts with general informations and news.
I feel like I'm alone out here wandering around the 'design communities', whether it be Designer News, Hacker News, or /r/web_design & /r/webdev, all alone. Do any of you venture into those domains?
My apologies for the OT start there. What apps, tools, and/or utilities do you use with your phone and whatever machine you do the majority of your designing/developing on? Aside from all the useful cloud services I've been unable to find any apps that truly assist me in my workflow. I'm mainly talking about responsive cross-device testing. Adobe Edge Inspect seems to have it's good days and it's bad days for me, and I've yet to try the display mirroring apps such as Skala Preview and iDisplay (I believe that's correct).
So I'm curious if I'm missing out on anything here. I do use TurboEditor [Unlocked] on the rare occasion that I have to make a change or fix something immediately and don't have time to get to my desk, and I've found DropSync extremely handy, but that goes beyond web design/development.
A majority might not agree, but I actually like using The Small apps Framework by Sony. It's useful for multitasking, and s'more, and I would like to propose a new project. Now, i don't know anything about making apps, (Just basic HTML, in fact), and I know it's hard, but can the good people here at XDA try and improve upon Sony's Small Apps? The Browser Small App for example, is very useful and all however, I find that it lacks features that are generally useful (Not gonna go into details. Maybe later) Something like the features found in the COBRA floating Browser that almost convinced me to let it stay. Alas, it wasn't a small app. Anyone willing to spend some time on these amazing little things?