Reid's blog

I currently own a couple late 80’s three-series BMWs. What I love about these cars is how responsive they are to my inputs. Steering, throttle, brake, the car does what I want it to do. With manual transmissions and ABS and cruise control removed, there is only one entity controlling the car, me. If I want to threshold brake through a corner, I can push the limits beyond what ABS would allow.

One of the primary draws to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is the ability to download and install apps on the device. The paradigm of an application storefront began in early versions of Apple’s iOS, and has since been adopted by all smart device operating systems. Now what interests me the most about these storefronts is how people use them.

It seems like there is a constant debate amongst smartphone users. You've got the touchscreen enthusiasts who pride themselves on the sleek, minimalist design of a touch-only device. Then you've got the two-thumb texting machines that will not touch a phone that doesn't have a physical keyboard.

It used to be a futuristic fantasy exclusively portrayed at the box office, where artificially intelligent machines guised as humans could walk, talk and ride motorcycles with one hand while toting a sawed-off shotgun in the other.

According to the press, Microsoft will be supposedly releasing a minor update to their new mobile OS, Windows Phone 7, sometime in the next few days. The update, which has been referred to internally as "NoDo", will bring some minor software fixes and the highly anticipated copy and paste feature. Microsoft is also working on a more large-scale update they are calling Mango.

With developments in computer vision technology such as depth-sensitive cameras, engineers are innovating new means of interacting with machines.

One of the things I am most intrigued by in the world of portable technology is the explosion of mobile social networkers. With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace all available on the latest mobile devices, it is now possible to broadcast all of life’s happenings in real-time from the convenience of a portable handset.