Always Room for Improvement…

Well 2013 is here and either we are just the holographic debris on an event horizon of a black hole, or reality is relative. I wouldn’t have minded being the Mayan Calendar maker who made the last calendar, because then when finished, and asked …

King: “What happens when we reach the end of thew calendar? This think will not work after that.”

Mayan Calendar Maker: “By then I hope we are using a better system.”

King:“But you said your system was great?”

Mayan Calendar Maker: “There is always room for improvement.”

With that said, (as I actually said when someone asked me about databases I created in the mid 1990s about Mac OS’s Unix calendar running out in 2038) I wanted to write about a few things, but a project has been eating time like the Cookie Monster with a box of chocolate chip cookies. (Cookie & Count were always my favorite.)

So, I will mash up a few things, left and right… Read of to find out about a new Bluetooth audio headset, a product warning, and whatever else comes out in this unedited memory dump:

Bluetooth A2DP Receivers & Review: Kanex AirBlue

Bluetooth’s Strangled Promise

When Bluetooth was first introduced, it promised a world of wireless freedom. We, the computing public, were told  that Bluetooth would be in everything and replace USB and other connections for low-speed data transfers and other light bandwidth demands. RS 232 connections would fade—replaced by fast, flexible BT connections. Home users would benefit from wireless printing, fast connections and more freedom.

But the computing and  mobile phone public has been slow to adopt the technology thanks to the high prices compared to wired equivalents and the added complexity of pairing and connecting devices. Many people have mobile phones but only a small fraction is technically competent enough to pair and use bluetooth. Thus, high prices are as much a reflection of the niche demand as they are device manufacturers pricing devices based on perceived value of the technology. The devices themselves cost little to manufacture, but a lot to develop the software and hardware. This price premium for an “unproven killer technology” has resulted in strangling adoption rates. Who wants to pay $200 for a stereo headset or $99 for a mono-earpiece that delivers unknown benefits when a wired headsets costs only $20? Luckily, the standard has marched on to version 4.0, which offers higher throughput and lower power consumption. Finally, Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP & HFP device prices are coming down to a level that is more in line with the basic functionality of what they do.

Pairing has also been made simpler, in hopes that people will actually use that little “B” instead of bluetooth circuits — which are usually on by default — eating up battery life, and exposing a person to snooping and bluejacking.

I myself, knew the benefits or going wireless decades ago when I got an Amateur Radio License, long before mobile phones went digital. I was just waiting for the prices to come down to a point where I could justify ridding myself of wires. That point finally arrived about 2 years ago, when I found a bluetooth earpiece for less than $70.

DicePhone Article up! (The picture alone is worth seeing)

My piece on the new iPhone (“iPhone 5” or whatever the hardworking people at Apple call it) is now live at Dice News. Speaking of Apple, I have to do a 180 on my piece slamming their support. Recently, I was treated great by both phone and in-store support. But that’s another story…

Not much was actually cut (and I did all the cutting of actual points made) from this short article since I had a discussion with my editor about the difference in format between my stream of thought ramblings here in a personal journal format and a news/opinion article fit for mass consumption.

Popping open Scrivener right now, I see the first snapshot of the first draft mentioned that I was streaming music via bluetooth when I wrote the part about bluetooth A2DP, and this:

(*“The New iPad” doesn’t fly with me because—as my CL buddies and I know—naming anything “New …” is a bad practice. After 5 years, another thing supersedes it, and “New New…” sounds like something out of Futurama and/or Idiocracy.)

I really liked this aside, but the article was already over what most people have the patience to read. There are enough inside jokes in the article anyway. My favorite is the coining of the word “portamanmeme.” When I made the nyPhone image it took about 5 minutes to remember how to do it in Pixelmator having always used Photoshop for the slick masking, etc. Even before I made it, I thought that it would have ended up cut for sure, but nope, it made it in! Sure anyone can spew out bad jokes and tech commentary, but usually not at the same time (unless you are @mosspuppet).

I also cut this part about what we will be doing in the future with monitors and 802.11ad:

And next year I will be talking about how awesome direct point to point 802.11ad is at 60GHz with its currently mind-blowing 7Gbps throughput (and yes I realize the actual throughput will probably be less than half that, but an average of even 300MBps on 802.11ad with no physical connection would make me happy). The idea of being able to pull a monitor out of its box, turn it on, and then simply route your laptop’s video to that seamlessly, with no loss in quality is very appealing.

I also have the second part of my TouchUI article coming out, but with all the tech news, it has been pushed back since it is not something time sensitive.

Welp. Go read it, and then link the article to your friends so they can enjoy nyPhone as much as I did.