While watching television recently I came across two favorite programs from my youth. One was the cartoon The Jetsons. I really enjoyed the space-age technology and futuristic designs. The other was Star Trek (the original series). The idea of travelling around at warp speed and ‘beaming’ from one point to another was always fascinating to me. I realized that these advanced civilizations had at least one thing in common: they talked to their computers. No bulky keyboards, no awkward mice, no fancy trackballs, just good old-fashioned speech. And their computers not only listened, but they talked back, usually with good results.
Using speech to interact with your computer hasn’t really caught on. Other than converting speech to text, there are not too many business applications where you talk to your PC. With mobile technology, many of us have voice-dialed a name in our address book but not much else. And then Siri comes along.
Microsoft has certainly had a lot to say about mobile computing in 2013 and looks to be a watershed year for them. Let’s take a closer look at their story.
It’s the 4th of July again and citizens of the United States are celebrating America’s birthday with picnics and fireworks. There’s another birthday of note which celebrates another type of independence.
The iPhone recently had its fifth birthday, having been launched on June 29, 2007. It’s hard to put into words the impact that the iPhone has had on the mobile computing industry. Every so often I go back and view Steve Job’s iPhone announcement at MacWorld 2007. Simple things we take for granted today like pinch/zoom, screen rotation, and a usable mobile browser had us in a state of wonderment. Today most of the smartphone designs are building on (and improving on) the iPhone’s innovative design.