Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes smartphones and the like only come in one color. There is more to adding colors than meets the eye. I used to work for an organization that built little gadgets. Every little gadget came in the same color: black. One year I worked on a project where I thought I was […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I sing the praises of Jumpcut: a little clipboard buffer for OS X. I do a lot of copying and pasting on my computer. That saves me untold hours of time typing. It also saves me from making data entry errors. I use Jumpcut: a little clipboard buffer for OS X. It […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I find an online tool for formatting LaTex documents I once wrote a book using LaTex – the electronic typesetting system. LaTex allows you to do things that you cannot do with just about anything else. The result is a document with an excellent, professional appearance – much better than anything MS […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I try DRAFT – an online writing tool. Years ago I tried a web site called writely.com. It allowed a person to use a simple word processor online. That writer could then “share” what was written with other people who also had writely.com accounts. One day, as the stories go, Google bought […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This Apple ad is deep in several aspects. Here is a precedent for this blog: a video inserted and on top of that it is an advertisement. To the reader, first watch the video, then read my comments. Apple Family Christmas Ad (1) There is the lost teenager in a big family […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I enter the world of cloud computing and learn that, once again, we go forward to the past. I finally did it. I entered the world of actual virtual cloud computing. Not just Facebooking or DropBoxing, but actual computing. Well, not much computing, but making a few bits move. Earlier this year […]

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by Dwayne Phillips What is the least-expensive in the store these days? Is it really a computer or merely a terminal? I was browsing a few stores recently (you know those places that actually exist, have an exterior and interior?). I looked at the computers and, being as cheap as I am, sought the least-expensive […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Don’t try big government programs. The government doesn’t have the expertise. There have been lots of problems with the new government health care site. What surprises me is that some people are surprised. How can you not build a web site that registers users and takes orders? Amazon and just about everyone […]

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by Dwayne Phillips My experiences teach me that younger technologists are much better at predicting the future than older technologists. Go back to 2007. I am working in a group that looks at technology trends so we can be ready for the future when it comes. We were considering operating systems for smartphones. The senior […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Facial recognition software can (probably) detect emotional reactions. We enter the age of the real-time political poll and its (largely unintended) consequences. A recent study delves into the use of facial recognition software in education. I like the idea. Have the computer detect confusion, frustration, etc. in students using computer-based training or […]

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