This is called "user testing" (DOH!) and its amazing how few (software products) products are user tested. A lot of products get "usability tested" but I don't think I've actually seen a developer at a usability test (and I agree with you, the REAL benefit of usability test is to teach developers how not to make the same old UI boo-boos; most companies like a piece of paper they can throw at developers) but I like your idea of "the developer as the instructor"..I can see a lot of room for growth there:)
As for the test you mention..,that's actually a bad one. Humanity is very diverse and surprising. I would have said that facebook should fail under that test...and how wrong I would have been.
The problem with Kinect is the limited minimum range (50-80cm) at which depth information can be extracted; while visual systems are affordable and in the price range of researchers to study, in the long term electromyography probably will be the long term technology of choice.
I'm quite sure SoE will have seen a player decline in many of its older titles were players will often play due to habituation, community or a lack of motivation to try alternatives. With SWTOR on the horizon this was wound to happen eventually...
For me, the only surprise is that the closure of Vanguard wasn't announced at the same time.
Programming on Android is hard as it is due to the extreme OS versioning and hardware fragmentation
In part, the fragmentation issue is due to manufacturers such as Motorola who fail to support their hardware by issuing timely updates. If we had a situation were for a given generation of Android we saw continual patches and upgrades, much the same way as with many desktop OS versions, perhaps we wouldn't have quite this mess.
And no, I don't entirely blame the manufacturers but Moto has one of the worst records for failing to update their hardware so I'm not particularly sympathetic to their claims here.
younger programmers, or programmers in India/China/Shanghai etc.
And there's the key to this entire mess. Never leave UI design to programmers. They are fundamentally different jobs requiring different skill-sets and methodologies. Now if you will excuse me, I need to see how well my landscape designer is doing with the gardening,
I like them little! I recently watched the "My Little Pony - Friendship is magic!" series (apart from the last 4 episodes)... its AMAZINGLY good for a girls cartoon series, but then it comes from the same stable as the power puff girls!
"e-fuse is there so that Motorola can stop releasing kernel updates when the droid 3 comes out so that you are forced to buy a new phone if you want the latest version of android"
They don't need e-fuse for that; they simply either cancel any update plans for the phone or make you wait so long for an update that your contract expires before they deploy it to the phone. I've had this happen with my Milestone and x720 and believe me that these will be the LAST Motorola phones that I buy for myself or my family or allow any friends to buy. While the argument may be that the masses don't care, when looking at phone options there often is very little difference between 1 model and the next, hence a reputation for prompt, frequent and long terms support for a handset IS going to feature in the purchasing decision on a large number of users and Motorola have shot themselves in the foot from that standpoint (i.e. They will not supply updates and e-fuse will prevent (in theory) users from updating their hardware).
I've been researching this area for my masters. Just getting the basic text localisation (i.e. recognising an area as containing text) working reliably is very difficult - there are some good algorithms out there but in the real world, with 1000s of fonts, font sizes, angles, lighting conditions etc, I've yet to see a 1 size fits all approach. And even if you do find an area of text, throwing that into an OCR engine is going to produce garbage for the most part. In short, its quite easy to show something off in controlled conditions but I wouldn't expect anything like the performance seen in the video in the real world.
The above said, very impressed to see that on an iphone and for it to be so responsive; these things can only get better and once some form of viable HMD makes it onto the scene these types of application are going to be massive.
Interesting - that's almost without doubt a copy of the Sun versions with slight changes. However that code is released under the GNU license and both versions of the exhibit code seem to be sans any header information hence its difficult to know (sorry I'm not interested enough to go digging out the google/android version to see if the GNU headers are intact) if there is any COPYRIGHT violation going on here. As proof of PATENT violation though this is totally useless and appears to be a case of Oracle trying to cloud the issue maybe.
"Given his history of speaking truth, Google's going to lose."
Given the insanity that is patent law, it wouldn't surprise me. However most patent battles end up with counter-suits and I wouldn't be surprised if Google could hit Oracle where it REALLY hurts, i.e. their core database products. I'm really hoping this is one to buy popcorn for.
Its a good point but there is also the issue or touch and the physical presence that vinyl and its packaging brings. Its possible to put a decent sized poster in vinyl, to use it as wall art - to actually have a presence in a room via your collection....CD still seems like "just a bunch or plastic".
Personally though I still morn videodisc as a format, much for the same reasons but there I hold out little hope QQ
There's a BIG market for this technology which is only going to grow. Its already being used in neuro-marketing (market research), I'm personally looking to apply it to usability, and down the line context sensitive affective interactions are going to play a big part of how you interact with software (think a computer that can tell it gave you an unsatisfactory answer by the tone of your voice and thus does another search in the background to try and improve the results).
I'm personally still sceptical regarding the performance of these "consumer" level BCIs but the emotiv headset (EPOC) and SDK have been turned to some very interesting applications (e.g. wheel chair control for the disabled, neurophone using the p300 signal which could be more broadly applied to a range of applications).
Right now this is probably at the level of home computing in the 80s and the EPOC headset might actually be the ZX81 in terms of putting practical BCIs in enthusiasts hands. But that's a rather big "might" since I'm still trying to scrape funding together for mine *sigh*
There's an SDK version in the works with a promise of a beta at any point. Closed source drivers though which of course sucks but this is a small company trying to make it in a very small market; could have been worse, could have needed a dongle. Oh, wait:(
So yes, the Linux support could be better but they are at least making an effort in this area rather than having to be brow-beated about it for many years.
The version to access EEG data is $750. They have a $500 developer version and a $299 consumer version - I don't even think they have a $10K product! As for Neurosky, do you mean that toy where you move the pong ball up and down? Sorry, genuinely interested since I hadn't thought they had done much beyond that.
So I hit the nearest town looking for a specific book ("Dragonflies of Surrey" - yes the town was in Surrey) last weekend, heck I would have settled for ANYTHING decent on the subject matter I was looking for. 3 book stores (2 large chains, 1 small specialist store) and not a single book on dragonflies let alone the specific title I was looking for. And I hadnt really expected there to be to be honest.
Now if publishers had actually grasped new technology by the horns and allowed bookstores to print (and bind) **on demand** titles, browse through their back-catalogue (which is several hundreds of times larger than any store could be reasonable anticipated to stock) etc. etc. then maybe we would be seeing a thriving book industry as book stores competed on the quality of their product (paper, binding, ink quality....smell) and facilities (user friendly search, cafe to sit down and browse in) rather than the almost absolute reliance that we now have on the internet to find any rare or unusual titles.
The book store industry isnt dying, the publishers are slowly killing it.
It would seem like a bad idea at the conceptual stage since this idea violates one of the most fundamental HCI principles of providing the user with feedback, but reading the "article" it seems like what these researchers are looking at is how the use of gestures can be projected to aid in remote communication between individuals (rather than this actually being a full interface technology...at this point). Great, now we can look forward to people using their talking loudly on their mobiles phones AND gesticulating wildly!
Anyways, this is a kind of "post-it note" of gesture technologies and while I dont feel it adds much to the field *practically* (i.e. I'd love to see someone with some good gesture recognition algs that just work) I'd be interesting in seeing some of the evaluation metrics on this since my primary concern would be that people just wouldnt grok it and if they do, I'd suspect that the additional cognitive load would render anything but the most basic interactions (i.e. post-it notes) useless.
Speaking of useless, they have also done some research on projected touch. Anyone else think...."well, why not just use VLC"?
Some of the Xenix systems did have CGA/Hercules adaptors - its been a long time since I had to touch an altos. I also seem to recall that many of them used SCSI for the terminal multiplexing so its quite possible that a display could be attached without resorting to the serial port.
"WTF?"? Assuming most of the data is ASCII/ANSI, cat it to the screen, preferably with pagination (it will ease the conversion if pagination is used). Place a high res camera in front of the screen and photograph/video record the data then run the photos through OCR...voila! (of course if video is used you'll want to just grab 1 occurrence of each page...if you've just done a cat without pagination this is going to make the conversion a lot harder).
Of course the above sounds stupid but with hardware that age you want to do everything possible to capture the data as fast as possible. Depending on how much data you're talking about you might be able to do the above faster than transferring the data via serial.
Once we have 1.1Gbps compressed UHD/8K might become possible - while 3D might be what the electronics companies are keen to push out to consumers its *really* going to be the next HD format that will create the next big tech push.
Interesting thing about that list is that the salary is fairly competitive at starting/mid levels but once you hit senior levels its rather dire. I think that says a lot for the profession were we continually need to reskill (usually at our expense) yet at senior levels are valued less than many other professions who might not have had to perform any formal training after post-grad level. Having become somewhat fed-up of this myself, I've moved to a less technical IT roll than I am used to, have spent less time in training and skill development (1 week) but am being paid far more than in any of the technical jobs I've done in the last 10 years. And I can do this job with minimal retraining until I retire. Oh I should say that this is after 25 years in the full "range" of IT roles.
Quite frankly, if seniority and experience in IT doesn't become recognised in the near future then the situation will just continue to get worse as the only people coming into the profession are likely to be complete muppets.
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This is called "user testing" (DOH!) and its amazing how few (software products) products are user tested. A lot of products get "usability tested" but I don't think I've actually seen a developer at a usability test (and I agree with you, the REAL benefit of usability test is to teach developers how not to make the same old UI boo-boos; most companies like a piece of paper they can throw at developers) but I like your idea of "the developer as the instructor"..I can see a lot of room for growth there :)
As for the test you mention..,that's actually a bad one. Humanity is very diverse and surprising. I would have said that facebook should fail under that test...and how wrong I would have been.
The problem with Kinect is the limited minimum range (50-80cm) at which depth information can be extracted; while visual systems are affordable and in the price range of researchers to study, in the long term electromyography probably will be the long term technology of choice.
I'm quite sure SoE will have seen a player decline in many of its older titles were players will often play due to habituation, community or a lack of motivation to try alternatives. With SWTOR on the horizon this was wound to happen eventually...
For me, the only surprise is that the closure of Vanguard wasn't announced at the same time.
Programming on Android is hard as it is due to the extreme OS versioning and hardware fragmentation
In part, the fragmentation issue is due to manufacturers such as Motorola who fail to support their hardware by issuing timely updates. If we had a situation were for a given generation of Android we saw continual patches and upgrades, much the same way as with many desktop OS versions, perhaps we wouldn't have quite this mess.
And no, I don't entirely blame the manufacturers but Moto has one of the worst records for failing to update their hardware so I'm not particularly sympathetic to their claims here.
younger programmers, or programmers in India/China/Shanghai etc.
And there's the key to this entire mess. Never leave UI design to programmers. They are fundamentally different jobs requiring different skill-sets and methodologies. Now if you will excuse me, I need to see how well my landscape designer is doing with the gardening,
I like them little! I recently watched the "My Little Pony - Friendship is magic!" series (apart from the last 4 episodes)... its AMAZINGLY good for a girls cartoon series, but then it comes from the same stable as the power puff girls!
And no, I'm not handing in my geek card!
"e-fuse is there so that Motorola can stop releasing kernel updates when the droid 3 comes out so that you are forced to buy a new phone if you want the latest version of android"
They don't need e-fuse for that; they simply either cancel any update plans for the phone or make you wait so long for an update that your contract expires before they deploy it to the phone. I've had this happen with my Milestone and x720 and believe me that these will be the LAST Motorola phones that I buy for myself or my family or allow any friends to buy. While the argument may be that the masses don't care, when looking at phone options there often is very little difference between 1 model and the next, hence a reputation for prompt, frequent and long terms support for a handset IS going to feature in the purchasing decision on a large number of users and Motorola have shot themselves in the foot from that standpoint (i.e. They will not supply updates and e-fuse will prevent (in theory) users from updating their hardware).
e-fuMoto!!
I've been researching this area for my masters. Just getting the basic text localisation (i.e. recognising an area as containing text) working reliably is very difficult - there are some good algorithms out there but in the real world, with 1000s of fonts, font sizes, angles, lighting conditions etc, I've yet to see a 1 size fits all approach. And even if you do find an area of text, throwing that into an OCR engine is going to produce garbage for the most part. In short, its quite easy to show something off in controlled conditions but I wouldn't expect anything like the performance seen in the video in the real world.
The above said, very impressed to see that on an iphone and for it to be so responsive; these things can only get better and once some form of viable HMD makes it onto the scene these types of application are going to be massive.
Interesting - that's almost without doubt a copy of the Sun versions with slight changes. However that code is released under the GNU license and both versions of the exhibit code seem to be sans any header information hence its difficult to know (sorry I'm not interested enough to go digging out the google/android version to see if the GNU headers are intact) if there is any COPYRIGHT violation going on here. As proof of PATENT violation though this is totally useless and appears to be a case of Oracle trying to cloud the issue maybe.
"Given his history of speaking truth, Google's going to lose."
Given the insanity that is patent law, it wouldn't surprise me. However most patent battles end up with counter-suits and I wouldn't be surprised if Google could hit Oracle where it REALLY hurts, i.e. their core database products. I'm really hoping this is one to buy popcorn for.
Its a good point but there is also the issue or touch and the physical presence that vinyl and its packaging brings. Its possible to put a decent sized poster in vinyl, to use it as wall art - to actually have a presence in a room via your collection....CD still seems like "just a bunch or plastic".
Personally though I still morn videodisc as a format, much for the same reasons but there I hold out little hope QQ
There's a BIG market for this technology which is only going to grow. Its already being used in neuro-marketing (market research), I'm personally looking to apply it to usability, and down the line context sensitive affective interactions are going to play a big part of how you interact with software (think a computer that can tell it gave you an unsatisfactory answer by the tone of your voice and thus does another search in the background to try and improve the results).
I'm personally still sceptical regarding the performance of these "consumer" level BCIs but the emotiv headset (EPOC) and SDK have been turned to some very interesting applications (e.g. wheel chair control for the disabled, neurophone using the p300 signal which could be more broadly applied to a range of applications).
Right now this is probably at the level of home computing in the 80s and the EPOC headset might actually be the ZX81 in terms of putting practical BCIs in enthusiasts hands. But that's a rather big "might" since I'm still trying to scrape funding together for mine *sigh*
There's an SDK version in the works with a promise of a beta at any point. Closed source drivers though which of course sucks but this is a small company trying to make it in a very small market; could have been worse, could have needed a dongle. Oh, wait :(
So yes, the Linux support could be better but they are at least making an effort in this area rather than having to be brow-beated about it for many years.
Nonsense!
The version to access EEG data is $750. They have a $500 developer version and a $299 consumer version - I don't even think they have a $10K product! As for Neurosky, do you mean that toy where you move the pong ball up and down? Sorry, genuinely interested since I hadn't thought they had done much beyond that.
So I hit the nearest town looking for a specific book ("Dragonflies of Surrey" - yes the town was in Surrey) last weekend, heck I would have settled for ANYTHING decent on the subject matter I was looking for. 3 book stores (2 large chains, 1 small specialist store) and not a single book on dragonflies let alone the specific title I was looking for. And I hadnt really expected there to be to be honest.
Now if publishers had actually grasped new technology by the horns and allowed bookstores to print (and bind) **on demand** titles, browse through their back-catalogue (which is several hundreds of times larger than any store could be reasonable anticipated to stock) etc. etc. then maybe we would be seeing a thriving book industry as book stores competed on the quality of their product (paper, binding, ink quality....smell) and facilities (user friendly search, cafe to sit down and browse in) rather than the almost absolute reliance that we now have on the internet to find any rare or unusual titles.
The book store industry isnt dying, the publishers are slowly killing it.
It would seem like a bad idea at the conceptual stage since this idea violates one of the most fundamental HCI principles of providing the user with feedback, but reading the "article" it seems like what these researchers are looking at is how the use of gestures can be projected to aid in remote communication between individuals (rather than this actually being a full interface technology...at this point). Great, now we can look forward to people using their talking loudly on their mobiles phones AND gesticulating wildly!
Anyways, this is a kind of "post-it note" of gesture technologies and while I dont feel it adds much to the field *practically* (i.e. I'd love to see someone with some good gesture recognition algs that just work) I'd be interesting in seeing some of the evaluation metrics on this since my primary concern would be that people just wouldnt grok it and if they do, I'd suspect that the additional cognitive load would render anything but the most basic interactions (i.e. post-it notes) useless.
Speaking of useless, they have also done some research on projected touch. Anyone else think...."well, why not just use VLC"?
Sounds like a challenge to me - I'll stick it on my todo list when I've got my term papers out of the way.
Some of the Xenix systems did have CGA/Hercules adaptors - its been a long time since I had to touch an altos. I also seem to recall that many of them used SCSI for the terminal multiplexing so its quite possible that a display could be attached without resorting to the serial port.
As for your suggestion...love it :)
Screendump.
"WTF?"? Assuming most of the data is ASCII/ANSI, cat it to the screen, preferably with pagination (it will ease the conversion if pagination is used). Place a high res camera in front of the screen and photograph/video record the data then run the photos through OCR...voila! (of course if video is used you'll want to just grab 1 occurrence of each page...if you've just done a cat without pagination this is going to make the conversion a lot harder).
Of course the above sounds stupid but with hardware that age you want to do everything possible to capture the data as fast as possible. Depending on how much data you're talking about you might be able to do the above faster than transferring the data via serial.
Oopps, time for me to climb back into my box.
Very interesting solution.
"At least Java's main benefit was portability."
Write once, test everywhere?
Once we have 1.1Gbps compressed UHD/8K might become possible - while 3D might be what the electronics companies are keen to push out to consumers its *really* going to be the next HD format that will create the next big tech push.
You're giving 4chan users credit for a lot of maturity there....
lke, rally der bestest ways like ter learn a puter inglish isit!!!??!?!
Seriously though, poor AI; if I had a gun I'd go and put it out of its misery.
Interesting thing about that list is that the salary is fairly competitive at starting/mid levels but once you hit senior levels its rather dire. I think that says a lot for the profession were we continually need to reskill (usually at our expense) yet at senior levels are valued less than many other professions who might not have had to perform any formal training after post-grad level. Having become somewhat fed-up of this myself, I've moved to a less technical IT roll than I am used to, have spent less time in training and skill development (1 week) but am being paid far more than in any of the technical jobs I've done in the last 10 years. And I can do this job with minimal retraining until I retire. Oh I should say that this is after 25 years in the full "range" of IT roles.
Quite frankly, if seniority and experience in IT doesn't become recognised in the near future then the situation will just continue to get worse as the only people coming into the profession are likely to be complete muppets.