BillP Studios
It was no surprise to find voice recognition everywhere especially when it was integrated into a device hosting one of the top three personal assistants/friends/companions or speaker. The battle of Amazon Alexa vs. Google Assistant vs. Apple Siri has started and Alexa has a huge lead. At this time, Amazon provides the full interface that device makers need. If your company has created a networked washing machine, oven, microwave, or other smart device, Alexa provides a simple, single interface you can use to communicate with your house.
The new buzz words you'll start hearing include, "MicroLED", which is mentioned in the press kits for "The Wall" from Samsung. It's an amazing 146 inch TV. Meanwhile, SONY is sticking with OLED for its large screens and continues to look for a "killer app" that will convince consumer they need a robot in their home.
Samsung was excited about their new "white board" although I was far more amazed seeing their digital dashboard that allows you customize the controls for your family car. Not only can you adjust the seat for each driver, the facial recognition will adjust the dashboard screen based on the driver preferences.
The sleeper product of the Consumer Electionics Show so far is Virtual or Alternate Realality. There have been some great new contributions to the product lines but a hint to its future can be found at your local Wal*Mart. VR glasses designed to use your phone are stacked all over the electronics department. This is a sign that somebody obviously knows something I don't or these glasses wouldn't go for $5.00 USD. The sleeper product of the Consumer Electronics Show so far is Virtual or Alternate Reality. There have been some great new contributions to the product lines but a hint to its future can be found at your local Wal*Mart. VR glasses designed to use your phone are stacked all over the electronics department. This is a sign that somebody obviously knows something I don't or these glasses wouldn't go for $5.00 USD. Last year I predicted we would soon skip Virtual in favor of an Alternate Reality.
I was very impressed this week when I heard Apple's CEO Tim Cook tell a crowd how Apple has been crippling the performance of older iPhones. Cook explained, this trick was included in updates last year to make up for aging lithium ion batteries. I give Apple crdit for the honesty but wish they included this tweek as an Option.
While I have a Samsung S7 Edge for outside the house cell phone, I still use an older iPhone regularity. Instead of having it on my cell plan I use it on my home nNetwork with a WiFi net connection. Since I rarely take it outside my home it's usually plugged in without depending on any battery power. So, in my case I have no benefit from the slow down plan and would really like it to be an option.
I have my old iPhone4 in my living room with an HDMI cable displaying the screen on to 50" plasma TV. I have a new grand daughter on the other side of the country and she loves to Facetime with her "Papa."
Now in retirement, the time has come to upgrade the more popular BillP Studios web sites and provide a location online full of some amazing technology news. I will continue to share my thoughts on technology, new and old. The blog software I had been using hasn't improved so I'll use BillP.com as an expanding site to keep my friends and/or fans updated.
My history and experience spans over 25 years watching amazing changes in technology. I've had the honor and pleasure to meet and work with some brilliant minds. Many of my associates are familiar names and a few will be mentioned in our history books 25 years from now.
I've included badges from many of the popular companies I've worked for. Ironically, the early years at my first big company, our badges designed for security. They were magnetic security cards with no identifier on them. The first five years I start my career at America Online it was known as Quantum Computer Services. Click "Yesterday" on the menu to read about some of my fun experiences.
The last project I was part of was called BlueHat hackers. BillP Studies along with many of our security contacts worked to find and report back to users if their personal data was being exposed. It hasn't surprised me that many companies are now promoting similiar services. Experian, ID Agent, On-Site Technology, Alien Vault, Massive Alliance, Digital Stakeout and more now offer 24 x 7 monitoring of your information on the "dark web or deep web."
The credit reporting company Experian introduced their free "Dark Web Email Scan" that lets you know if your email is found on the Dark Web. For $9.99 a month they'll look for your Social Security, Drivers License, Credit cards and more. Ironically, the same month many of these services were announced, one of the our other credit bureau's, Equifax acknowledged a major data breach.
While exploring the dark web for our Blue Hat service we consistantly found our customer data was readily available. Only one individual appeared to be safe. It turned out someone reviewing the service created an account in the name of someone who died 50 years ago. If Experian or one of the other dark web monitors doesn't find your personal info has been exposed, they must be doing something wrong.
Diagnosed with "Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease" I am dedicated to helping to spread any current information on this confusing condition. Be smart in environments with ticks and if you have immediate symptoms like a bullet shaped rash, seek treatment immediately. When treated when first infected the outlook is good. If the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, has been in your system for a number of years, significant damage may be done. If you need more information to be concerned check out the following DVD. Amazon Prime members can stream this award winning video for free.
Now that I'm retired I have more time to be an information junkie. I will be sharing my thoughts on new information as it comes out. One of the favorites I've written about are all the new devices using Amazon's Alexa technology. Many of my friends have heard me explain that unlike the "Assistant Apps" like Siri and Googles Assistant, Alexa is a full-blown development platform. The number of devices supporting Alexa is huge and continues to grow.
While I'm working on a few of my own Alexa "Skills" I am also building another new technology. I haven't created a cool new name or designed a t-shirt but I'm anxious to handle one of my pet peeves and dangerous trends, the "Auto Update." If you've ever read my "Bits from Bill" blog you would have read about the mess that is often created when a faulty autoupdate cripples a wide range of computers.
Using a combination of automation and artifical intelligence I've developed a system that will detect and isolate changes that have been made to software following an updated. In an ideal senario the only changes reported will be those that were planned. While I will probably end up making this techology free to consumers, I'd really like to see companies distributing updates add the technology to their tools suite.
I knew it was time for a solution when I heard that Tesla, Inc. had updated the software in their cars overnight. Can you imagine the possibiles of an auto-driving car getting updated while you sleep? I'm sure I'll be manually controlling any cars if I'm in the drivers seat.
