My phone rings but I don't want to take the call, so I swipe left on my watch and off to voicemail it goes. I have a meeting in an hour so I look at the notification on my ring while it painfully displays a tiny message from right to left like a tiny stock ticker. I'm on the subway and want to fast forward the current song on Pandora so I tap my watch or ring a few times.
These are the wearable computer scenarios companies are trying to sell that come right out of a science fiction novel. From Dick Tracy to KnightRider, it sounds interesting until I pick up my iPhone and realize the notifications on the lock screen has all these controls and a much easier to read interface. Why do companies think we need a watch, ring, or any piece of jewelry that only delivers tiny screens with notifications served by Bluetooth linking to our phone? In each of these scenarios, I still need one thing, my phone.
The phone part is required and severely limits the desirability of a smaller and inferior device. In terms of watches, Samsung shows exactly what not to do with their Galaxy Gear. For the not so cheap price of $300, you get bad fitting, non existent app ecosystem, and the option to only link with other Samsung devices. For that much money, I think I'll stick to a elegant Seiko watch and keep pulling my phone out of my pocket to get things done.
Qualcomm released the toq watch to pair with Android devices as well, so don't forgot to keep you phone close by. Once again it hits the not so cheap price of $350 and makes some improvements over the Galaxy Gear with longer battery life and a better looking screen, but it's still just mini output for relaying phone information and controlling how fast I move to my next song on Pandora.
From watches to rings, Smarty Ring met its funding goal and promises first deliveries in April of 2014. For an estimated price of $275, you get three buttons and a tiny display. The promise of a ready to ship product in just over four months when there are only artists concept drawings on their page makes this a very wobbly investment. Even if they deliver, what exactly does a watch bring besides a tiny screen to my fingers? Which way do I wear the ring to read the information on it?
The idea that any of these products makes any sense at the moment is almost completely ridiculous. Everything links through your smart phone making it an absurd expensive extension, and not much more.
For any wearable device to work there are some mandatory requirements yet to be met. First, no more than a single physical button. Ideally, motion would be all you need to get the watch from standby mode to ready to go. There also needs to be a curved glass design that accepts touch input and displays on the same screen so it more comfortably fits the contours of the human appendage.
Second, voice. The device needs to accept voice commands and relay those into your smart phone. As odd as some people will look talking into their wrist placing an order for take out food, tweeting about their favorite restaurant, or just making a reminder, it's quick and easy enough to make it an actual useful addition.
Last, price. When the wearable computing device costs more than a smart phone on contract and only provides these basic additions, it's still not worth buying.
Somewhere, someone is working hard to make wearable computing a main stream reality. To turn this from a gullible tech nerd's desire and into a real usable product, work is nowhere near completed.
Showing posts with label Smart Phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Smart Phones. Show all posts
Friday, December 20, 2013
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Why Wired's CES Phone Articles Are the Least Exciting
Christina Bonnington wrote an article for Wired titled, "Why Windows Phones Are the Most Exciting Handsets at CES," that takes center stage on their homepage. I was chowing down on my spring roll lunch and huddled in for a good informed read. Instead I got a puzzled face asking myself why did I just waste my time with this garbage?
The article starts with the contradiction that Windows phones are the fire of the show even with years of evident failures. Interesting, let's keep reading. There's a quote from Ballmer that turns into the same PR drivel you would expect from any corporate drone. Then the article points out how these new Windows phones, specifically from Nokia, are no longer, "behind the times, specs-wise." How utterly banal.
Fantastic how going from mediocre to average is an achievement in the realm of Microsoft smart phones. One of the differentiating factors are upgraded cameras as high as 16 megapixels but rating cameras by megapixels alone has never been a real identifier of quality for the average user. No mention about the timing from turning on the phone to picture, HDR, filters, timers, or integration with a cloud system to share and save your images through multiple devices (hello Xbox 360).
The next item is how these phones support 4G speeds. Ok, that's kind of cool, if not totally unexpected since almost all phones will be 4G by the end of this year. Let's keep moving on through the sea of yawns.
Comparison to the current Android OS and Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich comes down to how Microsoft's OS is more locked down and allows for minimal customization to get a feeling of unity across devices. A nice differentiating factor from Android, but nothing new from an Apple standpoint.
So far I haven't read a single thing that makes me want a Nokia Microsoft phone, let alone read about one.
To finish it off, here's a direct quote from the article, "In most ways, Windows Phone is playing catch up. But for those of us who deal with smartphone news and technology on a daily basis, it’s exciting to see a new player enter the game in earnest. A major reason for that excitement is Microsoft’s and Nokia’s Windows Phone product synergy."
Yes, Windows phone is playing catch up. As someone who reads technology blogs and news information on a daily basis, no, I don't find it particularly exciting to read an article about a product that lists nothing new or interesting. From an average consumer standpoint, I think the article would be even more useless since there are no real talking points or clear symbols of uniqueness. I guess Wired just had to make some imaginary quota of CES articles for the day.
The article starts with the contradiction that Windows phones are the fire of the show even with years of evident failures. Interesting, let's keep reading. There's a quote from Ballmer that turns into the same PR drivel you would expect from any corporate drone. Then the article points out how these new Windows phones, specifically from Nokia, are no longer, "behind the times, specs-wise." How utterly banal.
Fantastic how going from mediocre to average is an achievement in the realm of Microsoft smart phones. One of the differentiating factors are upgraded cameras as high as 16 megapixels but rating cameras by megapixels alone has never been a real identifier of quality for the average user. No mention about the timing from turning on the phone to picture, HDR, filters, timers, or integration with a cloud system to share and save your images through multiple devices (hello Xbox 360).
The next item is how these phones support 4G speeds. Ok, that's kind of cool, if not totally unexpected since almost all phones will be 4G by the end of this year. Let's keep moving on through the sea of yawns.
Comparison to the current Android OS and Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich comes down to how Microsoft's OS is more locked down and allows for minimal customization to get a feeling of unity across devices. A nice differentiating factor from Android, but nothing new from an Apple standpoint.
So far I haven't read a single thing that makes me want a Nokia Microsoft phone, let alone read about one.
To finish it off, here's a direct quote from the article, "In most ways, Windows Phone is playing catch up. But for those of us who deal with smartphone news and technology on a daily basis, it’s exciting to see a new player enter the game in earnest. A major reason for that excitement is Microsoft’s and Nokia’s Windows Phone product synergy."
Yes, Windows phone is playing catch up. As someone who reads technology blogs and news information on a daily basis, no, I don't find it particularly exciting to read an article about a product that lists nothing new or interesting. From an average consumer standpoint, I think the article would be even more useless since there are no real talking points or clear symbols of uniqueness. I guess Wired just had to make some imaginary quota of CES articles for the day.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Virus Ridden Smart Phones Are Not the Problem: You are
How viruses used to work,
Trick the user into running a piece of code
This could be a floppy disk (remember those?), an internet download or any way of communicating program code into a foreign host. One of the most classic ideas was emailing mass amounts of people with a conspicuous excel document that ran code in Microsoft Excel when opened. This would do anything from setting up your PC to remotely run commands or just maliciously create havoc.
Why did this work so well? Windows was notorious for virus problems because of relaxed permissions and a vast install base. Unix/Linux is less susceptible with strict file and directory permissions; which Microsoft began to emulate with implementations like the horrible UAC system.
Now security companies are jumping up and down about virus infections in smart phones and how you need their protection or the world will end. 99% of this is baloney. Your phone does not get infected with viruses. Today, you knowingly give access to your phone.
How "viruses" are working today,
Trick the user to blatantly accept an action that collects personal information
Permissions have gotten good enough that just downloading a piece of code and compromising your smart phone is not very likely. (All bets are off if you're rooting or jail braking your device and using unverified kernels!) What's changed is that applications are now sectioned off in their own little sandbox and do not have unrestricted access into the main system; unless you give them that permission.
What does this mean exactly? It means if an evil application wants to read your SMS messages, or take note of all your keyboard inputs - you are going to let it. If you're installing custom keyboards in Android, you're going to get a notice asking you if you really want to allow this application access into your phone. You better be damn sure that new keyboard isn't a piece of evil code because you just gave this app and whoever created it, direct access into all of your phone's information.
iOS is an even harder wall to knock down. It's sectioned off like the Great Wall of China around Apple's house. With a moat and a dragon ready to take you out if you get too close. No one gets in, no one takes a look around, period. There has been a crafty exception where a security researcher was able to get outside code to run from an app and he was kicked out of Apple's developer program for a year. They're a little touchy on this subject. This is one of the very few occurrences of this type of execution though. With Apple's review process and sectioned off OS, almost no threats are going to come from the outside.
It's the same thing with some lame Facebook applications. For example, there are some apps that claim to show you the frequency of visitors to your profile page, and yeah, total BS. When you install this type of application, you give it permission to read through all of your posts and friends - so it does just that. Taking some bogus average of number of posts from friends and direct messages to show you the number of times your profile has been viewed by a particular person. What really just happened there was you gave this application, and whoever wrote it, full access into all of your Facebook posts and friend connections.
This next era in computer security has reached a much more social aspect. Viruses are no longer the main threat, it's the user who allows programs into their lives that is. The worst part of this? Agreement Fatigue. Users are seeing these messages asking for access so often, no one pays attention to them anymore. When was the last time you read, or even skimmed, an EULA agreement? When was the last time you paid special attention to what access you were allowing outside apps? Just like that, users are the weakest line of defense and no security company can sell you a product to improve that.
Trick the user into running a piece of code
This could be a floppy disk (remember those?), an internet download or any way of communicating program code into a foreign host. One of the most classic ideas was emailing mass amounts of people with a conspicuous excel document that ran code in Microsoft Excel when opened. This would do anything from setting up your PC to remotely run commands or just maliciously create havoc.
Why did this work so well? Windows was notorious for virus problems because of relaxed permissions and a vast install base. Unix/Linux is less susceptible with strict file and directory permissions; which Microsoft began to emulate with implementations like the horrible UAC system.
Now security companies are jumping up and down about virus infections in smart phones and how you need their protection or the world will end. 99% of this is baloney. Your phone does not get infected with viruses. Today, you knowingly give access to your phone.
How "viruses" are working today,
Trick the user to blatantly accept an action that collects personal information
Permissions have gotten good enough that just downloading a piece of code and compromising your smart phone is not very likely. (All bets are off if you're rooting or jail braking your device and using unverified kernels!) What's changed is that applications are now sectioned off in their own little sandbox and do not have unrestricted access into the main system; unless you give them that permission.
What does this mean exactly? It means if an evil application wants to read your SMS messages, or take note of all your keyboard inputs - you are going to let it. If you're installing custom keyboards in Android, you're going to get a notice asking you if you really want to allow this application access into your phone. You better be damn sure that new keyboard isn't a piece of evil code because you just gave this app and whoever created it, direct access into all of your phone's information.
iOS is an even harder wall to knock down. It's sectioned off like the Great Wall of China around Apple's house. With a moat and a dragon ready to take you out if you get too close. No one gets in, no one takes a look around, period. There has been a crafty exception where a security researcher was able to get outside code to run from an app and he was kicked out of Apple's developer program for a year. They're a little touchy on this subject. This is one of the very few occurrences of this type of execution though. With Apple's review process and sectioned off OS, almost no threats are going to come from the outside.
It's the same thing with some lame Facebook applications. For example, there are some apps that claim to show you the frequency of visitors to your profile page, and yeah, total BS. When you install this type of application, you give it permission to read through all of your posts and friends - so it does just that. Taking some bogus average of number of posts from friends and direct messages to show you the number of times your profile has been viewed by a particular person. What really just happened there was you gave this application, and whoever wrote it, full access into all of your Facebook posts and friend connections.
This next era in computer security has reached a much more social aspect. Viruses are no longer the main threat, it's the user who allows programs into their lives that is. The worst part of this? Agreement Fatigue. Users are seeing these messages asking for access so often, no one pays attention to them anymore. When was the last time you read, or even skimmed, an EULA agreement? When was the last time you paid special attention to what access you were allowing outside apps? Just like that, users are the weakest line of defense and no security company can sell you a product to improve that.
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