Archive for the ‘Pete Posts’ Category
The Drive’s (Time Magazine) list of people with a “crystal ball” in Automotive Technology!
http://www.thedrive.com/the-drive-50/3362/the-10-most-influential-people-in-automotive-technology
I wrestled with this frustrating issue – and now the solution makes so much sense! Thought I would share in case it helps!
When you have multiple displays with different resolutions, you should line them up so that the smaller one is centered on the larger. Otherwise when you attempt to move the mouse cursor from one to the next, near the top menu bar or bottom task bar, the cursor will run into a “wall”!
Do this:
Not this:
Or your cursor will run into a “wall” like this:
Companies and journalists keep getting it wrong:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/01/ambient-proximity/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb
The friend finder / check-in apps didn’t fail because the technology was too creepy, or too hard to use.
They failed because they solved a problem the vast majority of people do not have. Most people don’t want to serendipitously meet up with their Facebook/Foursquare/etc friends. Much less constantly broadcast their location (even rough location is revealing / creepy to broadcast).
Out of 100s of friends, not even one person I know uses a friend finder / check-in app. None are using Facebook/Nearby. Almost everyone I know uses Google Maps for traffic and directions, and Yelp for restaurants.
People use location based apps that provide immediate value:
“I’m late. How can I get to work 5 minutes faster?”.
“I’m hungry. What’s the best burrito within walking distance?”.
“I’m buzzed. Is there a DUI checkpoint on my way home?”
…
You probably heard – on 10/19/13 a 3 person team led by Ed Bolian drove from New York to Los Angeles in 28 hours 50 minutes, breaking the coast to coast (”transcontinental”) record famously set by Alex Roy (31 hours 4 minutes, 2006 – Alex broke the previous record of 32 hours 7 minutes). As in the hilarious Burt Reynolds movie “Cannonball Run”, the route leaves from Manhattan and ends up at the Portofino Hotel and Marina in Redondo Beach, California.
You may not have heard – they used Trapster! Friends in lead cars at various stages along the way spotted police on the road ahead. Guessing that’s how they leveraged Trapster (the friends would place the police reports in the app). If so, very interesting. Trapster was originally intended to be used this way – as a private system for groups of friends. It was later that I redesigned Trapster as a public system. In any case, awesome to see people still using Trapster after all these years!
Found via Gadgetwise, NY Times