Getting My Game On

I'm growing up, I admit it, I no longer burn through a twelve pack of mountain dew in one night, my obligations are more than summer job and gaming with buddies, I'm growing up, why is it so hard for me to play with grown ups?  I want a service, ideally one that knows all of the various games and platforms I own and enjoy and when I have time to play with people online, and my friends are busy, I want a platform that lets me be a casual player with other casual players.

This idealized app would allow you to link your steam, xbox live, etc... accounts into a single shareable tool, where you can conveniently broadcast to the world that you're down for playing with someone online.  When I start my time slot for gaming, I would press the broadcast button, letting other people with my game list know that I am playing game X.  If someone else joins my game, we can have a trial period of working together in the game, after the time has elapsed you can let them know if you are going to keep playing or not.

A challenging social tool is noting whether people enjoyed playing together and whether or not they want to play together again.  As time goes on the system would  learn what gaming personas you enjoy playing with most and try to best match players.

Imagine a world where when you want to decompress after a long week you aren't duking it out against squeaky 12 year olds or aspiring pro players who can't understand that people have lives outside of a game.  That world is possible.

Gauging the Truth in the News

Currently more of a nugget of an idea than anything else, but I would love to see an app or service, similar to shazam, so that when I hear a news report on one of the major networks, I can see their reference materials and ideally as much information from their sources.  As it is unlikely that anyone could absorb all of that information in real-time, users could book mark stories that they are interested in following up on, and at a later time the app would allow them to look back on stories.

Future iterations could start to account for statements made by major political candidates, using services like politifact and (ideally) alternative data sources, a user could ask about candidate A's accuracy in presenting the facts on the benefits of space exploration budgeting.  On another day users could see if candidate B has changed their stance on fossil fuel subsidies and whether or not those changes are a closer match to their own.  Truly wishful thinking would be that the app/service could provide a reasonable estimate on how likely Candidate C is to actually stick to their campaign promises, I would only find this feature acceptable if it clearly communicated any publicly stated rationals behind why that stance was changed, or why they didn't vote for that initiative.  Politics is a messy game and it should not be trivialized to make people feel better.

Can I fix it

Relatively Simple Concept, really difficult execution
An app that lets you suggest a project you want to do, and through tracking your tool selection, knowledge of use, and available hardware, can suggest an estimated time to complete a project and calculate potential budget

Hopefully a semi-unique approach to user interfaces

If advertisements along Boston's Red Line are any indication, smartdevices are moving towards ever larger screens for users to interact with their media.  One distinct challenge of these larger screens is allowing consumers to still comfortably use their device on a regular basis, ideally with out using two hands all the time. As consumers we are hyper caffeinated and overstimulated it would be a real shame if we had to put our coffee down to answer a phone call.  One solution, as put forth by Apple is to simply restrict the width of their phones to the width of a 90th percentile human female (ok I'm assuming here, I remember reading that their phone width was partially dictated by ease of single thumb use I just don't know the specifics), and as far as I know this is the only real solution to the problem that I know of off hand.  What I would propose, as we are already embedding more and more sensing technology into our smart phones, would be to take advantage of this expanded awareness to allow the phone to detect how it is being held.  so no matter how you held your phone it would know how you wanted to use it, and adjust its default interface accordingly.

Figure 1, Phone Held in Right Hand

For example if I am holding my phone to make a call in my right hand, the number pad would re-position itself so that at no point would I need to adjust my grip to reach the number 1. (As shown in Figure 1.)  Ideally whatever sensing technology I was using would be able to detect the dimensions of my individual fingers, allowing for truly dynamic sizing and positioning of the interface space.  Alternatively (I don't have a drawing, I try to limit my crappy art to 4 per day) if I were to interface with my hand gripping at a higher position, the interface space would move accordingly.

Figure 2 Horizontal Positioning and Full Tablet

Placing the phone in a horizontal position with both hands gripping the back would create split input regions designed to accommodate the thumb size of whatever user is holding the device.  Junior and Senior can both use the same tablet and feel confident that their fingers will find the buttons they are looking for.  A potential benefit I could see if technologies like this were to become ubiquitous would be more consistent user experiences across platforms sizes, while the display screen might change size the sensation of input in all but extreme sizes would feel roughly the same, allowing for people to have much more efficient interface with technology.  The final interface area is putting the device on a table or a docking station, at which point the entire surface becomes a viable input.  I should comment that I would be extremely surprised if people wanted a user interface as cut and dry as described here, the necessary fine tuning and wow factor of an interface like this would come from determining how much resistance is experienced before other parts of the screen become active as the user grips the device.


As far as I know the precise approach I am putting forth is relatively unique (I only did about 30 minutes of skimming patents and research documents, but nothing really popped out)  Microsoft did a research paper on interfaces designed to flexibly interact with either a single thumb or four fingers. Here is one very broad patent that basically says that you can have a touchscreen where parameters change according to other parameters (oh yeah that seems legit(ok I haven't really read it in depth enough to really comment, I just have issues with software based stuff)).  This patent deals with adjusting the displayed interface on user proximity, (90% sure a semi decent patent attorney could show the difference between approaches, and hell I'm not going to try making money off of this idea)
Ahah, after spending too much time looking into it, I found that DoCoMo of Japan is doing some grip interface research in smartphones.  Another dude wanted to just use a straight up different input methodology, regardless of external sensors.  Yet another alternative UI, no adaptive properties right now.

So long story short, I am probably not making a truly unique proposal, but it was fun to get the idea out there, and at least I can honestly say that I only found the individual elements of what I am suggesting, but no one showed up in the hour of research I did.  Please don't get mad if I am wrong.

Follow Up March 20, 2016:  I have been meaning to post this follow up for a while, itty bitty radar chips could allow smart devices of the future to implement this proposed adaptive user interface.

Making Homes Smarter, because freezing your ass off is no fun

During snowstorm Nemo I had the distinct pleasure of hanging out in a house that had to hover around 48 degrees to conserve heating oil.  A side effect of the apartment collectively forgetting to check our fuel levels until they were dangerously low.  During a walk home I was inspired by random thoughts to start sketching out a device that could help people avoid this issue happening.  The product I suggest is relatively straight forward as an initial platform, but with some revision could turn into quite a flexible home automation technology.  Connecting a low cost camera system to a micro-controller with a wi-fi or ethernet routing module would allow home users to place a smart device next to their home fuel meters to allow for automatic updates on their energy use.  In the rather crude drawing below you can see the sensor assembly placed near a fuel gauge with a plain background placed behind it (that is to help the camera read as readily as possible).

A really basic set up from a software approach to this technology would be to have a single piece smart package that customers would purchase.  After buying the package a customer would do a one time plug in set up where they connected their home smart sensor to any screened device with a USB port to provide a window for inputting information like, the name of the home WiFi network, network password if necessary, the user's email(s), and a specified frequency of how often they would like to be updated on system readings.  After set-up clients should be able to more or less ignore that their physical device exists and wait for updates on the systems operation.  As the necessary technologies get cheaper, users or service providers could even start to train the micro-controller to identify on its own when it would need to alert users when critical changes were happening to the system ex. fuel levels are getting critically low.

With the right APIs integrated into the system it would be possible to design the platform so that it would automatically order more heating oil (or whatever service it was connected to) from a designated service provider.  If the components became cheap enough it might be reasonable for companies like heating oil providers to distribute these smart systems to customers to allow for smarter predictions of service demand over time.  As the base system is relying on simple visual reads off of a webcam, it would be fairly reasonable to see later adaptations that made it possible to attach sensors like these to natural gas and electrical meters.  (I'm well aware of smart meters already in existence, the intent of this platform is to provide a way to add greater sensing ability to legacy hardware that might be too expensive to replace or not allow for retrofitting as a result of aesthetic/historic concerns)

Another potential application of a technology like this could be for management of liquid wastes like cooking oil.  Smart sensors in the grease collectors would allow collecting services to work automatically, increasing productivity and customer satisfaction.

Technology like this might help keep an eye on elderly family members while minimizing the invasion of privacy.  Concerned relatives could put simple sensors on the home heating, refrigerator, and some critical lights, the mesh could start to identify points of concern  (crap I think this originally came from Microsoft's smart home initiative, oh well)

Feb 1:  Well son of a be sting, it looks some MIT alumni have developed a very different approach to the idea I was proposing.  Their device apparently measures the energy performance of a home's heating system.  

Make My Browser Better

Ok, so I haven't slept yet, and I still haven't posted my article on 4-dimensional radiators and their applications in various sci-fi series so I'm going to go quick and dirty for something I want for internet browsers.  A frustration I have while surfing the tubes, is that I will open 20+ different tabs, while listening to Pandora or some other audio source, and said additional tabs will start playing random soundbites from flash games or stupid commercials.  What would be a wonderful update to browsers, either as an extension or as a default feature, is to have a small icon displayed within a tab showing whether or not it is playing audio.  Ideally you could pin audio sources, much like you can pin apps in your browser already, you would be able to pin an audio source as your primary and reduce or eliminate sound coming from the other tabs.  All I can say is that it would be magical.