The Uncanny Valley of Wearables - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@muneeb_bokhari/the-uncanny-valley-of-wearables-70b1a7603256

<comment><USER2> What does he mean fight-or-flight mechanisms? I've worn a watch for a long time and I've never had the thought that it was a "fight-or-flight mechanism". He makes it sound like he's comparing wearable tech to ninja stars strapped to your wrists. As to which one is cooler is obvious to us all.</comment>


Reconciling the shift in Software Construction Processes - <AUTHOR> http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2008/11/reconciling-shift-in-software.html

<comment><USER2> I read the article I couldn't find the point in it. Looks like a lot of rambling about methodologies.

Anyone got it?</comment>


Show HN: firstname.lastname@example.com  MVP to reduce emails in corporate environment - <AUTHOR> http://email-cost.com <comment><USER2> "So if you're sending one email that you wrote in 10 seconds to 20 people, you're not spending 10 seconds, but more like 20 minutes of resources: wouldn't it be better to work 5 minutes to find a solution yourself?"

I aim to be the person who will take 5 minutes to find a solution rather than seeking it via email or tweet. Evaluating my time vs others' time and attention is habitual throughout my career. I pride myself in being capable and considerate. But many corporate, office, or otherwise networked cultures will drown out a person's focused effort and wins among the outspoken or otherwise visible folk.

I appreciate your work in bringing to light email as a costly tools in the process of knowledge sharing and coordination.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I am developing firstname.lastname@example.com a chatbot whose goal is to reduce the overall emails in corporate environments --emails are not kept by the system. For the moment it only replies with the cost of your mail, taking into consideration the reading and interruption time. This is a "skateboard MVP" so feel free to play with it and comment below.

As a side note, the most expensive mail I found in my mailbox is 125.40 USD, does someone have more than that? ; )</comment>


Where's the CrunchPad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/wheres-the-crunchpad-2009-9

<comment><USER2> It was apparent from day one that the economics of this device just didn't jive. Large high resolution touch screen display assemblies are expensive. There's no way around that. Even if this device was powered by a wad of used chewing gum it would be hard to hit a $300, $400 or $500 price point. Let's assume it's not powered by used chewing gum and speculate you need a CPU capable of handling modern web technologies. I believe Flash support was promised? Double, or triple your baseline CPU specs. Flash isn't getting any skinnier as the years go on. So you have this wonderful device with a huge touchscreen and a fast CPU that magically costs only $300, er $400. Great.

How's the battery life? Turns out good small form factor battery technology isn't cheap. Unfortunately that big LCD touchscreen and fast CPU need lots of power. Let's assume you want the battery to last at least 2 hours (which would be on the low side of acceptable for a modern laptop) but you don't want the device to be 2 inches thick. Maybe with a really good battery and some serious power management tweaking you can get your 2-3 hours. (just don't watch a flash video with your backlight turned above 50% or cut that figure down to 45-60m)

Don't forget industrial design. No one wants a 2" thick tablet so figure almost everything in the device has to be carefully designed to fit into you enclosure. Make sure it doesn't overheat. Make sure it gets good radio reception. Make sure there isn't a design flaw that causes the battery cover latch to break and fall off due to repetitive stress. Make sure you built it out of durable plastic. It's probably going to be bumping around in people's backpacks a lot. You might also want to include some boring stuff like BlueTooth, 802.11 wifi, at least leave some space for a GSM/CDMA chip and antennas. Probably wouldn't hurt to include some storage so you can run an OS. Oh you need one of those too. Linux is a great starting point but there's probably no off the shelf solution that is going to perfectly fit your hardware. Expect to have at least a small team of developers working on it for you.

So yeah, $300. Where's the pre-order link?

<comment><USER3> "So yeah, $300. Where's the pre-order link?"

<http://www.laptop.org> plus a $100 mark-up?

It's doable. The CPU doesn't have to be an x86 or have a huge amount of memory. A small amount of flash memory also suffices instead of spinning metal. It could all be mounted directly on the motherboard, reducing manufacture costs and required components (no need for a SATA controller if your flash is not connected through SATA). Linux runs fine on ARM. If we want to get fancy, couple the touchscreen with a PixelQi LCD and you have an LCD that works fine without backlight.

Heck... I would be delighted to help designing such animal. I want one badly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Turns out that designing a consumer electronics project from scratch isn't quite as easy as writing about how Facebook has a "fax this photo" feature.

Also turns out that talking about what you want a project to be is easier than making it so. Good lessons for everyone here.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only thing I'm really upset about here is the lack of communication. A new product type made by a new company is going to be delayed. Especially when you're dealing with hardware. It would be unreasonable not to expect a delay or two.

But you shouldn't just disappear. Everything that was posted on TechCrunch about this product seemed to be aimed at one goal: to get people invested in the idea. Now that they've done that it's really bad form to just let several deadlines pass with not even a word as to why nothing's happened.

I'm not saying reveal specs or anything but just a simple tweet would do. "Hey, we've run into delays on the Crunchpad, expect announcement in November" (or whatever)

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing I'm surprised about (or maybe annoyed actually) is how, with time, the rumored Apple tablet has become something certain to compare other products to. Even though nobody has ever seen one.

<comment><USER7> It's a page straight out of Microsoft's playbook. Microsoft pulled the same shenanigans with Cairo and we're still hearing about how some of the features promised back then (WinFS) are right around the corner. It's really not a bad strategy at all. You assume very little risk by not having to actually produce anything, chip away at any foothold a leader might establish and then release your own incremental improvement if your competitor shows there's a viable market.

<comment><USER5> In Apple's defense they haven't announced anything and I doubt the leaks we've seen were planned by Apple (since they're all over the place in regards to features). Microsoft would actually announce the product and then not deliver when their competitors folded.

<comment><USER7> There's no need to defend Apple. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It may annoy some people, but it's hard to argue its effectiveness. So-called leaks are another good method. You get to see which ideas resonate with consumers before investing in their development.

I remember a Joel article (at least I think it was Joel) about a slightly similar concept. He talked about putting a link in a web application to some feature that didn't exist yet. Then you would track the number of 404 hits on the link to gauge interest.

<comment><USER5> I see what you're saying and I don't really disagree. I'm just not sure that's what Apple's doing. The problem with Apple is many of their fans are so rabid that they'll fall for even the most ridiculous leak. Steve Jobs says his Toilet paper's scratchy and there will be fake Apple toilet paper leaks on the Web by sundown. So it's hard to tell when Apple's actually leaking and when it's just everyone going crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any news surrounding the CrunchPad has to be taken as seriously as everything else from Arrington's mouth, which is to say not very.

I'm surprised it has made it this far, but I doubt we'll see an actual product in the near future, otherwise Arrington's hype machine would be in overdrive.

</comment><comment><USER9> Michael Arrington is a Mogul? Really?

</comment><comment><USER10> Apparently Nik Cubrilovic is sorting it all out for Arrington.

[http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/bootstrappr/soa/Duel-of-the- fa...](http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/bootstrappr/soa/Duel-of-the-fates- Atlassian-and-Omnidrive/0,2001092438,339297682,00.htm)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think they're finding out that coming out with a consumer electronics device is a lot more involved than simply coming up with a list of features and telling someone else to go build it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tablets are awesome, it's just the 2000 dollar price point that kept them out of the running.

</comment><comment><USER13> Perils of improper outsourcing ?

<comment><USER14> Perils of believing there is a large market where there isn't one?

I love the Apple rumors also. "As reported somewhere else, someone said on his blog he believes Apple is 'definitely' working on a tablet." Oh well, that proves it then.

<comment><USER13> I think the market _is_ there, but it may not be uninitiated so to say. Once someone explains to people that they can now comfortably browse the Internet while sitting on the john, the sales _will_ go exponential :-) But this is a substantial marketing expense, so .. hmm .. perhaps crunchpad may be in the right position after all. They have effectively reserved for themselves a market niche of inexpensive tablets, and so they just need to sit tight for a while and let Apple do the marketing. Once the tablet ball gets rolling, they can introduce their stuff and capitalize on the pre-established "cheap tablet pioneer" status.

Hmm .. so it may work after all. Weird :-)

<comment><USER14> >> "at they can now comfortably browse the Internet while sitting on the john"

That's what a netbooks for, and better than a tablet, you can put it on your _lap_ and have 2 hands free to operate it.

I use my Macbook on the toilet, in bed, on the sofa etc all the time and have never thought "hey I wish this didn't have a keyboard, and I wish I had to hold the screen with one hand and try to type one handed on the other on the screen"

<comment><USER13> Don't know about you, by my browsing of the Internet and reading of the PDFs requires virtually no typing. Ideally I'd like to have a notebook with a detachable touch display, and the tablet is as close as it gets to that.

<comment><USER15> I want a tablet so that I can read a pdf on the metro on my way to work. Often there are enough seats for everyone in the morning so I suppose a netbook would work then but in the evening I'm usually standing so keeping something on my lap wouldn't work. Holding a light tablet and scrolling down by sliding a finger down the screen would be awesome though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>