Online Cortex Thoughts on Science and Technology

I took a look at the new iPod shuffle today and I was dismayed by Apple’s continued development of the “intuitive” control system. To help people use their products, Apple actually has to have a website devoted to instructions.

The ipod shuffle (3rd gen) requires a table of instructions

These instructions include

Play: click the center button once (status light blinks green once)

Fast-Forward: double-click an hold the center button (status light blinks green once)

Rewind: triple-click and hold the center button (status light blinks green once)

Hear song title and artist names: Click and hold the Center button (status light blinks green once)

Go to the next track: Double-click the Center button (status light blinks green once)

This reminds me of the combination of buttons I had to press to perform that triple roundhouse kick in Nintendo! And that all informative status light! Thank goodness they thought to put that in there, otherwise who would ever know that the ipod shuffle was getting your commands correct.

The problem is that to make these things slick and sleek Apple needs to minimize the number of controls on the device. This puts the burden on the user to remember precisely what pattern of button presses and holds will give the desired result. Its unfortunate that Apple couldn’t at least add some extra LEDs so that the status light actually conveyed meaningful information.

I find this a disturbing trend in consumer electronics resulting in devices that work like that darn overhead ceiling fan. You are never sure how many times you need to pull on that string to get the thing to stop. Or it reminds me of the crappy little alarm clocks where you have to press two buttons in some crazy pattern to set the alarm. I think most people have at some point in their lives overslept because of this “feature”.

A good friend of mine Asaf Degani who is a NASA research scientist wrote a book called Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001 where he examines the design of effective user interfaces. I should find out what he thinks of Apple’s interfaces.

Me? I disapprove.

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

Posted under Gadgets, Product

Looking back, I am surprised at how electronics has quietly advanced to the point where we can buy small programmable computers on chips for a dollar or two.  These are microcontrollers of course, and in my lab we are working on programming them to handle the tedious tasks in our robotics projects.

At makezine.com, I stumbled on this gem of a book titled “Making Things Talk”

It is packed with 26 electronics projects that involve getting these tiny computers to talk to each other and the internet over both wired and wireless connections.  I have ordered all the requisite parts, and when purchased, they amount to around $280.  I am looking forward to summer vacation when I get to go through each of these projects one-by-one:

1. Making a computer “mouse” out of a stuffed animal monkey and flex sensors.
2. Making the monkey wireless
3. Negotiating in Bluetooth with the BlueSMiRF module
4. Setting up a networked webcam
5. Connecting a microcontroller to the internet without a computer
6. Networked Air Quality Meter
7. Networked Games
8. Infrared Communication
9. Radio Communication
10. Duplex Radio Communication
11. Bluetooth Communication
12. Broadcasting Messaging
13. Directed Messaging
14. Infrared Rangefinding
15. Ultrasonic Rangefinding
16. Reading Signal Strength with XBee Radios
17. Reading Signal Strength with Bluetooth Radios
18. Reading the GPS Serial Protocol
19. Heading with a Digital Compass
20. Attitude with an Accelerometer
21. Color Recognition with a Webcam
22. 2D Barcode Recognition with a Webcam
23. Reading RFID Tags
24. RFID and Home Automation
25. IP Geocoding
26. Email from RFID

OK, I wont be making each of these.  I will get an idea halfway through and take off and work on that.  But it should be fun!

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
 

Posted under Coding, Entrepreneurship, Evolution, Exploration, Fun, Gadgets, Information, Intelligent Systems, Internet, Inventions, Research, Robotics, Technology