By now most people have heard of or seen the 75th anniversary issue cover of Esquire magazine with the E-Ink display that flashes messages electronically (see link to Engadget video above). But why is this interesting to the RF and microwave community? Well, the future E-Ink technology might enable electronic newspapers or e-books to be transmitted via wireless to your piece of E-Ink "paper" in real time. Imagine picking up your E-Ink sheet each day off the kitchen table and seeing the latest news from your favorite newspaper or reading your e-book on the way to work. What an Eco-friendly technology that could save massive amounts of trees each year.
It could become the new display technology that is easy to read for more complicated articles or even videos rather than your small cell phone or Blackberry display. E-books do not seem to have caught on yet probably due to the limited display technology that would allow us to read them easier like a real book or newspaper (the Kindle is probably the closest thing to date). What ideas do you have for your E-Ink sheet of paper???
back from Vegas :)
Well the past 4 days have been a whirlwind of fun and exciting things! I had so much fun in Vegas with my Aunt Jeri, cousin Christen and my mom. It was the best girls trip ever! It was the longest Ryan and I have ever been apart so it was a sweet reunion in the airport today :) However, now it's time to get back to work, catch up on life, bills, and all that jazz. I promise a really long Vegas recap post as soon as I have time to breathe! Until then, here's a picture for those impatient friends of mine. :)
Fountains at the Bellagio last night... sooo gorgeous.
P.S. Wish Ryan luck as he starts training for his new job tomorrow!!
P.S.S. It's our six month anniversary! I can't believe how fast time flies!
Fountains at the Bellagio last night... sooo gorgeous.
P.S. Wish Ryan luck as he starts training for his new job tomorrow!!
P.S.S. It's our six month anniversary! I can't believe how fast time flies!
Have a good week everyone :)
My Location: smaller is better!
My Location just got better for all the applications that use Google's geolocation service!
In November 2007 we launched My Location on Google Maps for mobile, and in the past few months, we've location-enabled other applications from third parties and Google. Hundreds of location-enabled iPhone applications, including the Google Mobile App, use Google's database of cell towers to determine approximate location. And just last week we announced Mobile Search with My Location, powered by the Gears Geolocation API.
With today's launch, your location estimate will be centered closer to your true location, and we have also improved the calculation of just how good our estimate is. When we originally launched the "blue circle" on Google Maps for mobile, the circle usually stayed the same size no matter if you were in downtown Manhattan or rural Iowa. Now, the next time you're using Google Maps in downtown Manhattan, expect to see a much smaller circle that's also far more accurate. Conversely, when you're in a lightly populated area like rural Iowa, expect to see a much larger circle which also happens to be centered closer to your true location. Check out these screenshots to get a better idea of the before and after effects of today's change:
New York City -- a smaller light blue circle denotes that we're more confident of your actual location.
Slater, Iowa - the light blue circle is larger because there are fewer cell towers with which to determine your location, but the dark blue circle is more accurately centered in downtown Slater
So how exactly have we made these improvements? Mobile operators typically need a lot more cell towers in populous areas to service all the users. This means each individual tower provides a much smaller coverage footprint. On the other hand, in a very sparsely populated area, towers provide much larger coverage footprints. We've developed algorithms to try and figure out what the right circle size should be and are pleased to make this available to you today.
There's actually nothing you need to do to start enjoying the new improvements to My Location. Any application powered by Google's geolocation service automatically benefits from today's launch. Enjoy!
Posted by Zhengrong Ji, Software Engineer
In November 2007 we launched My Location on Google Maps for mobile, and in the past few months, we've location-enabled other applications from third parties and Google. Hundreds of location-enabled iPhone applications, including the Google Mobile App, use Google's database of cell towers to determine approximate location. And just last week we announced Mobile Search with My Location, powered by the Gears Geolocation API.
With today's launch, your location estimate will be centered closer to your true location, and we have also improved the calculation of just how good our estimate is. When we originally launched the "blue circle" on Google Maps for mobile, the circle usually stayed the same size no matter if you were in downtown Manhattan or rural Iowa. Now, the next time you're using Google Maps in downtown Manhattan, expect to see a much smaller circle that's also far more accurate. Conversely, when you're in a lightly populated area like rural Iowa, expect to see a much larger circle which also happens to be centered closer to your true location. Check out these screenshots to get a better idea of the before and after effects of today's change:
New York City -- a smaller light blue circle denotes that we're more confident of your actual location.
Slater, Iowa - the light blue circle is larger because there are fewer cell towers with which to determine your location, but the dark blue circle is more accurately centered in downtown Slater
So how exactly have we made these improvements? Mobile operators typically need a lot more cell towers in populous areas to service all the users. This means each individual tower provides a much smaller coverage footprint. On the other hand, in a very sparsely populated area, towers provide much larger coverage footprints. We've developed algorithms to try and figure out what the right circle size should be and are pleased to make this available to you today.
There's actually nothing you need to do to start enjoying the new improvements to My Location. Any application powered by Google's geolocation service automatically benefits from today's launch. Enjoy!
Posted by Zhengrong Ji, Software Engineer
Seattle is a Cloudy Kind of Town
Two weeks ago, there were two App Engine events in Seattle, and I have to say, Seattle is rocking cloud computing.
The first event was at StartPad, a coworking facility where lots of great start-ups are based. Yours truly gave a presentation, interrupted quite frequently by excellent questions, to a crowd of about 40 people. There were lots of people interested in cloud computing, both Google App Engine and Amazon's AWS. After all, who wants to manage their own data center?
The second event was Google's App Engine Hack-a-thon, where about 45 people came and hacked away on their App Engine applications. It was great fun. Here are just some of the apps that people wrote and demoed during the event:
StumbleRead - a Friend Feed aggregator.
After Market Accounts - Allows you to resell website registrations.
Media Library - Allows you to store and organize your iTunes library information.
PublicDominion - A wiki that generates new web pages automatically from user-added tags.
Plain Ticket - A message queue for Google App Engine applications.
Thanks Seattle, for your hospitality.
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