Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Robotic phone message

Readers who've seen Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey will recall that the AI [artificial intelligence] creature named Hal—who looked physically like a red lamp on a firetruck—often took the initiative of speaking to the human crewman Dave.

This afternoon, I feel a little like Dave, in that I've just succeeded in coaxing the Google Android telephone to send me this text message asking if everything's OK at Gamone:

It's a small step for telephony, but a giant step for my mastery of the Google Android SDK [software development kit] and the Java programming language. What you must understand is that this telephone doesn't exist yet in flesh and blood [if I can be allowed to speak that way about a future cellphone]. So, the phone call in question was actually emulated on my MacBook, on a virtual cellphone. But that's neither here nor there, for anything that works correctly in an emulated software environment should be perfectly operational when it's transposed onto a real piece of electronic equipment.

In my article entitled iPhoney gadget, a couple of months ago [display], I illustrated the possibility of using a software gadget to see what such-and-such a website would looked like when displayed on an iPhone. In the case of my Google Android phone demo, the big difference is that the virtual phone is not merely displaying something I created on the web, but actually behaving in accordance with my precise programmed instructions. In a Kubrick setting, you might say that, not only did I receive a message from Hal, but I actually programmed Hal to send me this message.

Skeptics might be tempted to ask: "How do we know that William really programmed a virtual Google Android cellphone to display this message? Maybe he simply used Photoshop to paste this line of text into an existing image." That's a problem with emulation. I can't really prove that what I show you is authentic. But I cross my heart that I'm not cheating. On the other hand, I must admit that this demo is basically an elementary tutorial thing supplied with the Google Android documentation. But I'm thrilled to find that I could get it to work. Now I'll be able to start work on my real cellphone software project, which will be a much bigger thing...

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Apple and the others

Apple's latest publicity in the personal computing domain, directed aggressively against Microsoft's Vista system, is a little like firing upon an ambulance... but few of us Mac enthusiasts feel sorry for Bill Gates and his failing universe.

In the iPhone domain, Apple's ads have been delightfully naive, invoking nice reassuring individuals such as an airline pilot equipped with his ever-present friendly iPhone.

This kind of publicity can be easily spoofed. I love this specimen about a friendly guy whose favorite pastime is punching cops and then running like hell. In a memorable line that deserves to go down in cellphone ad history, he explains: "Finding an escape route after a random act of violence can be tricky." Thankfully, he owns an iPhone!

In a neighboring domain, Google has just announced its much-awaited Android system, with $10 million of prize money offered to ingenious software developers. I'm going to try to jump onto this bandwagon, in ways that I'm already indicating to interested friends.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Intriguing Google findings

In the domain of Googling gurus, I think my friend Natacha must be some sort of a world champion. She's constantly discovering all kinds of weird things, including stuff about myself that I wouldn't even think of looking for. Latest example. There's a Google menu indicated as more, shown here, that puts you in contact with a tool called Books:

If you type in my name, you'll find a list of published documents that refer to me in one way or another. Well, I was amazed to see that the UK subsidiary of Amazon surrounds my name by stars and stripes and considers me as the author of a book on Iran, published in 1983!

Consequently, it would be perfectly plausible for George W Bush to consult me, one of these days, as a specialist on this complex corner of the globe, before he decides to attack Iran. Meanwhile, I'm starting to understand why I used to get interrogated and searched at length by security officials during my visits to Israel, because they might have imagined me as an Iranian agent. [No, on second thoughts, that couldn't possibly be the case, because the Internet and Amazon didn't even exist back in the days when I used to visit the Holy Land.]

There's only one minor discrepancy. It ain't me who wrote a book about Iran, but rather my former friend Jean Hureau, founder of the Jeune Afrique publishing house in Paris, which once employed me to write a relatively successful book about Great Britain. But, thanks to the diligence of Google and Amazon, this erroneous information will no doubt be recorded permanently on computers for posterity.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Fabulous Google offer

I've been saying so many nice things about Google that readers will end up believing that I work for this company, or that I own shares in Google. But here I go again. Their offer named Google TiSP, which enables users to install a totally free broadband Internet connection in their own bathroom, is ingenious, indeed fabulous. [Click on the image to see their website.] I'm annoyed in that I've just signed up for a broadband contract with the French Free organization (as I explained in this blog already). Today, I learn that, with Google TiSP, I could have obtained a higher-quality service, of an optimally fluid nature, for a financial outlay of zero. I'm infuriated. A positive aspect of this affair is that, in suburban Australia, I'm pleased to think that this free Google service will no doubt persuade many users to abandon their existing costly and inefficient ISP [Internet service provider] and move to Google TiSP.