Yesterday's Beliefs

There has been research that points to the fact that people take in information based on how they perceive the world. Your brain creates an “auto-pilot” version of how it thinks the world should work, and sometimes you keep using it even when it’s no longer true or helpful. It also affects what you believe about yourself. These beliefs have the power to push you in certain directions that you might not have wanted to go in. You can approach it like a software development project and draw a tree diagram with yes and nos as to what is working. Just because it was true in the past, doesn’t mean it’s true today. And just because you learned something one way doesn’t mean you learned it the best way. Don’t let yesterday’s beliefs dictate the story that you live out today. This requires the sometimes uncomfortable act of taking a look at what you believe and if it works today. Some people might say that faith is something that does not change. It is absolutely necessary to look at yourself through a mirror and ask these questions to be able to survive. The world is constantly changing and the fittest will survive.

Pick Up the Phone

Social media, communication services, and mobile applications have changed the communication landscape significantly. This has even gotten the attention of researchers because many of the changes are affecting the way we live and do business. We are able to connect with each other more but there is much less interaction that is face to face. The number of text messages sent monthly in the U.S. exploded from 14 billion in 2000 to 188 billion in 2010. As a result, a whole generation is rapidly losing the social grace necessary to conduct calls. Their reasoning makes sense, at least to them - why talk on the phone when it's so easy to text/email/Hangout/Snapchat/Facebook Message. I have to admit that even I have thought along those lines when talking on the phone was feeling like a chore. What would happen in the internet went down? Would chaos break out and you would have scenes like from the Purge? It begs the question, how in the world did people survive before being online? They had to, wait for it, actually talk to other people and look them in the eye. These days, it seems like people have social issues when someone talks to them in person or calls them on the phone.

Different Tapping

Backed by $2.3 million, the San Jose, California-based startup has developed a new touchscreen technology that can detect the difference between a fingertip, a knuckle, a fingernail, and a stylus. By assigning different parts of the finger to different actions, this technology–known as FingerSense–could reduce tasks that currently require multiple steps to just one. We still use a single input–a fingertip–to operate the device. And that limits the way we use our phones. On a desktop, there’s a mouse, a right click button, a shift button, and many other inputs that serve different functions. But on the smartphone, because there’s just the fingertip, a common task like copying and pasting becomes a tedious process of tapping, holding, dragging, and selecting. Qeexo wants to finally put the smartphone on par with the desktop. The technology uses the accelerometer to detect the different vibrations created by the different parts of the hand. One of the other uses for this type of technology would come from the development of it on the body. A challenge of it is that the sensors have to specific enough to recognize the taps and it has to become intuitive and helpful in solving a problem. Otherwise, people will not adopt this new software development.

New Trends in Web Development

Mobile apps and smartphones have changed everything when it comes to developing a quality website. From the way we choose a restaurant to the way some people search for a date, mobile applications have encompassed almost every aspect of our lives. And unsurprisingly, the websites of yesteryear are beginning to disappear in favor of refined app-like experiences. In part due to the proliferation of touchscreens, mobile devices have fundamentally altered expectations for online experiences. Traditional HTML text heavy websites now look as archaic as a Ford Model-T. Faced with the sleek design and refined visual aesthetic of today's top mobile apps, web developers must adapt or fall to the wayside. This definitely goes for business professionals and owner where image is very important to keep up in order to keep your clients. One of the downsides to this redesign is that it sometimes does not mesh with the non-touchscreen devices and makes the sites harder to navigate. It seems like the hardware to slowing down when it comes to the speed of designing and innovation.