I·Flo 易科技

Creativity = Firings between previously unconnected neurons; New...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:20:34 +0800

Creativity = Firings between previously unconnected neurons; New connections between pre-existing ideas.

Chance/Opportunity = New links between people/groups.

Is there a six degree theory of creativity?

scanzen: thekhooll: Soyuz Blueprint of a Russian Soyuz rocket....

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:41:10 +0800

thekhooll:

Soyuz

Blueprint of a Russian Soyuz rocket. Click here to view big..!

omg this is beautiful

edit: this is BIG

Why Samsung Galaxy S 4 = 3S?

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:22:22 +0800

Maybe they want to reserve a cooler design to Tizen?

iPad Mini - A Non-premium Product With A Premium Price Tag

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:17:05 +0800

A total rip-off.

A disappointing screen (resolution) and outdated processor. Only a confused mind would consider this a premium product. However solid the fit and finish, it is still only an appearance, and it will scratch and break (rather easily, as seen in the solidly build iPhone 5).

So if appearance is really important to you, why not choose the most important appearance part of all on a mobile device - the screen? For about 25% less $ you can get a Nexus 7 with a higher DPI screen (and more future-proofing quad-core processor). Moreover, if you really like appearances, Android has plenty of beautiful skins for your appetite, instead of being stuck in the age-old skin in iOS.

Why Apple fans should stop buying iPhone

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:30:00 +0800

The new iPhone is out. It is disappointing. The announcement was boring. Instead of releasing a market leading product, Apple is now merely playing catching up in many aspects - screen, size, processing speed etc. It is now just another smartphone in the market. Apple no longer think different.

I think this is yet another evidence for the fact that we have entered the ho-hum era of smartphones (or mobile devices in general).

But there is a way to encourage Apple to be more innovative, and that is by stop buying its products. This will ignite their imagination, perhaps.

But anyway, I see this as good opportunity for hardware startups (like this), all they need to do is to think and do different, especially now, when Apple and other big companies have really perfected the fits and finishes of the mobile technology, something that a startup simply do not have the resources to do.

Microsoft Surface Cover Keyboard - Almost Identical To My idea 1 Year Ago

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:33:00 +0800

Just yesterday Microsoft announced their new tablets running windows 8. They also introduced their cover for the tablets, which is also a soft keyboard.

I have designed a soft keyboard cover for tablet more than a year ago, right after the iPad 2 smart cover was announced: http://iflotech.tumblr.com/post/3718359159/magic-cover-what-smart-cover-we-want-magi

Microsoft latest patent similar (but not as exciting) as my concept 7 months ago

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:40:00 +0800

Microsoft latest patent similar (but not as exciting) as my concept 7 months ago:

In Microsoft’s latest patent, the screen content varies with viewing angle, so people sitting at different angles in front of the screen see different things going on.
In my post 7 months ago ( http://iflotech.tumblr.com/post/12027103248/contextual-vision-technology ) I envisioned a technology called “Private Vision”, which is more advanced than Microsoft’s - different people see different content on the SAME screen, even if they are at the same viewing angle!
So my proposal solves the most important issue: privacy.
A more concrete way of implementing the idea is posted a few weeks ago at http://iflotech.tumblr.com/post/23149010778/private-vision-wearing-a-special-glass-only

Just look at the device at the top right corner. Isn’t that look...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 17:04:42 +0800

Just look at the device at the top right corner. Isn’t that look like the design I posted a year ago here? (http://iflotech.tumblr.com/post/3636629732/this-is-another-design-which-accomplishes-the)
The picture above is from a recent talk by Intel’s general manager of the PC client unit, Kirk Skaugen.

Private Vision - Wearing a special glass, only the user can see...

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:56:00 +0800

Private Vision -

Wearing a special glass, only the user can see the real content of the screen.
Or, different people see different things on the same screen.

Advantages:
1. Privacy when using devices with screen;
2. Display different (user-specific) information on public screens for different users.

and more…

Apple no longer Think different?

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:32:00 +0800

When everyone is using the same boring product, it’s time to Think different, again.

Hmmmm…written by Jobs?

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:42:10 +0800

Hmmmm…written by Jobs?

In future we only need Two

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:33:00 +0800

Now there are too many computing devices in the market. There are smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops…

As smaller mobile devices have more and more powerful processing powers, these devices will have a larger and larger overlap in terms of function, capabilities, and goal.

So, I see no reason why people want to keep so many things that do almost the same stuffs - more devices also means we need to bring more, or need to decide which one to bring. Other important issues are the device costs and carrier fees.

My guess is in the future we only need two (for each user) - a laptop (possibly a tablet-laptop hybrid) that mostly sits at home, and a phone/tablet hybrid device for on the go usage.

3.5 Inches? Not so fast.

Fri, 04 May 2012 11:38:00 +0800

In his blog, Dustin Curtis explained why Apple continues with 3.5 inch iPhones while Android and Windows phones all have larger screens.

His discovery: because one-handed use of 3.5 inch phone allows user to “touch any area of the screen while holding the phone in one hand, with your thumb.”

I totally agree with him that all these large screen Android phones are difficult to use single-handedly. But I would like to uncover a hidden assumption in such a view, which I believe is also the view of Apple’s (or rather, Steve Jobs’). Maybe by doing this will point us to a new kind of mobile OS, or UI design.

The point of a touchscreen is that it is not just a display (visual output) interface, but also an input (touch input) interface. Purely from the visual perspective, user will want a screen as large as possible, so that more information can be displayed without being cramped.

Now, it seems to be the common view (and Dustin’s view) that a larger screen means it is more difficult to operate single-handedly, in general. This sounds reasonable - holding the phone with one hand and try to reach an icon on the opposite side of the screen using your thumb is not possible without awkwardly adjusting your hand position (for 5” and above it seems downright impossible, or extremely difficult).

However, there is a hidden assumption to this view:

Why make the UI such that your finger need to be at the location of an icon in order to touch it?

One can, for example, create a small half-opaque area (which can be a semicircle shape) that can pop in and out from the edge of the screen, which serves as a “virtual trackpad” for the entire screen. When the thumb moves around the “trackpad”, there is a small highlighted circle moving correspondingly around the entire screen of the device. Tapping your thumb twice at a certain location of the “trackpad” means pressing the corresponding location of the touchscreen.

This allows the entire screen to be accessible by your thumb while holding the device single-handedly.

I can also imagine the default function of this trackpad to be customizable according to when it is being activated, so that it has other advantages such as:

1. When activating this trackpad inside a web browser, a list of miniaturised tab thumbnails appeared around the edge of the trackpad so that user can go to (and close) any tabs quickly. So now the tab list on top of the screen is unnecessary, and we can always surf webpages at full screen mode.

2. In general, activating this trackpad in any app also brings out a list of running apps, so that user can easily open (and close) any running apps.

3. Activating the trackpad in pictures will call up an analog zoom icon, so that by using one thumb we can easily zoom in and out.

…etc.

I would like to add that this “virtual trackpad” is purely optional, so that anyone can use their phone with OR without it, by turning it on or off. The location of the “trackpad” is also movable, along the edge of the screen, or on both right and left sides of the screen.

The lesson?

Whether a device is usable by one hand not only depends on its size, but also on its UI (or OS). As another example, Windows’ metro-like tiles are more usable single-handedly than android because of its large tiles, and that its text-like icons are arranged in rows.

(Of course, portability will also matter if a screen size gets too large. But my discussion here targets at devices from 4” to 5+”, which are still pocketable)

How to combine a phone and a tablet?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:32:00 +0800

A simple and elegant way to put a 7” screen on a 4-5” device. The first true combination of portability and functionality on a mobile device.

Why no one has ever thought of this?

Daring to Stumble on the Road to Discovery

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:21:56 +0800

Daring to Stumble on the Road to Discovery:

Whether you’re an artist or an entrepreneur, success depends on placing many small bets.

Contextual vision technology

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:34:00 +0800

Human vision is itself contextual to a certain degree - even when two different users starring at the same object: what they see and how they feel about what they see is different. It depends on the users’ own background knowledge, preferences and personal histories etc.

Why not just make this fact more apparently into the technology? I mean, is it possible that looking at the same screen, it will detect the which users are starring at which part of the screen, and then show different details at these parts. What one user sees are only the details that are relevant to the user’s own preferences.

I call this contextual vision or private vision.

The engineering details aside, I believe this technology is most useful for screens that are located at public places and which is large enough to be shown to a lot of people at once, such as whiteboard in offices or schools, shopping windows, information boards at airports/railway stations, and even cinema movie screens.

Of course, now we will need a way for the users to manipulate these personalized information (e.g. to save it to their personal storage account for later viewing or usage). This function can be perfectly done by another idea of mine - GUCI. (see my previous post on this device). GUCI allows users to interact with screens far away. Moreover, due to its ubiquitous connectivity to the personal cloud account, the screen will recognize exactly which person is looking at it.

parislemon: Here’s To The Crazy One

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:22:33 +0800

parislemon:

Here’s To The Crazy One

On touch vs keyboard/mouse input

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 11:14:00 +0800

It is quite obvious to us by now that some operations in computer are easier to be executed by using touch (think pinch to zoom, dragging objects), while some are easier using mouse/keyboard (think typing, highlighting texts). Another way of characterizing such differences is through the content consumption vs content production viewpoint. Content production is clearly much more easily handled using keyboard/mouse.

Besides that, regardless of the purpose of usage, long hours of touch-based usage will be tiring for anyone. So if one can divide some of the touch operations to keyboard/mouse operations then it will be less exhausting.

But the current situation of operating systems in our computing devices is that either it is entirely touch-based (iOS/Android) or entirely built for keyboard/mouse (Windows/OS X).

This presents a problem: how to blend these two so that one is allowed to perform all the touch operations in the former type of OS, while perform the typing/clicking operations in the latter type of OS, in ONE SINGLE DEVICE?

One way is to combine the two OS’s in one device, like what Apple is doing with its latest operating system OS X Lion. However it can be seen as only a half-baked solution, due to the fact that the touch part of the operations is still executed through a track pad, while strictly speaking a touch operation is only truly utilized if one directly touches the screen. There is still a cursor that acts as a pointing agent.

On the other hand, one can change the OS so as to use a mouse (and a keyboard) on a tablet device.

(To be continued….)

Dual-Screen Phone with whole touch-screen body

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:04:00 +0800

An idea that I had on November 2010.

The design goal is to have a device that is playable in itself. That is, it is not just a plain platform for displaying its contents (in contrast to the Apple minimalism). It should be more interactive in a physical sense, not just in the virtual sense where all the fun rest inside the screen. This will, in turn, allow new types of phone functions as now we can have physical-virtual interactions.

Below is a summary of the phone design and components:

1. Surface - The whole body of the phone is interactive - the smartphone is covered almost entirely in touch screen, including the front, the back, and the edges (except for the bottom edge, where there is a slot for battery to slide in). This allows many new ways to present phone contents. (So, basically this is the phlow concept, see previous post)

2. Structure - The phone can be “opened” from the edge (see the jpg file attached with the mail) just like opening a closed book. The opened inside surfaces are also covered in touch screen. The expanded phone thus has screen twice as big as before, for both of the sides, so in total we have four times as big as before. The main issue with all dual-screen phone or tablets is that there is a bezel between the screens when fold opened. This is very inconvenient as it defeats the purpose of turning it into a single-screen tablet. I have a design which would eliminate the need for such bezel.

3. Interactions - With whole-body touch screen, we can allow many creative ways to interact with the phone. Some of the examples include:

a) Tap the current screen with five fingers, and transfer the current whole active screen to the screen on the back;

b) Dragging a text/mail message to the top phone edge, and then slide to the left or right of the top edge screen, in order to save or send the message;

c) Zoom in and out pages or videos using finger gestures on the edge’s touchscreen. This is to avoid fingers from blocking the content that user is watching. Also, volume and progress bar can be controlled via the edge touchscreens;

d) One can develop a software to read gestures made on the touchscreen on the back and translate it to corresponding movements on the current screen. This allows user to hold the (expanded) phone with two hands and control everything on the current screen that the user is facing. This can avoid fingers from crowding the current screen, and easily allows gestures up to 8 fingers.

But there are even more than just touch screen interctions, when reading ebook on an “opened” phone, one need only slightly bend the right (or left) screen towards the other screen, and the page will be turned accordingly, just like turning pages on a real book.

4. Operating System(s) - That this phone have two sided screens allows us to run two operating systems at the same time - one at the front and another at the back screen. This would let users to have the best of both worlds.

5. Camera and Webcam - This phone has two cameras, located BEHIND the touch screens, at the top part of the front and back of the “closed” phone. This allows easy 3D photo taking. Also, two webcams rest BEHIND the inner touch screens of the “closed” phone, so one can do 3D video chatting with these two webcam heads. Besides, covering the lenses with touchscreen may imply interesting results for photo or video taking.

Organic Apps

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:32:00 +0800

Until now all phone apps are individual applications - you launch one after another and there’s not too much connection between them. For example if you want to read book and listen to music, you fire up one book reader app and then a music player app.

I would like to claim that this is essentially a relic mode of thinking about softwares that is being passed down from how we use the programs in PCs. Different programs do their own specialised functions and then together we have something called multi-tasking in our PC.

But mobile apps need not follow that path.

In my idea of an Organic App, apps are redesigned from ground up to have an extra feature - to combine with other apps into its user interface. In the above example I can drag the music player app into the interface of the book reader app, and a simplified player UI will appear to be integrated to the reader app. This allows the screen to show more apps at one time, and thus much easier control on all opened apps.

This basically opens up an infinite combinations of combined apps:

reading app + music app - read while listening to songs

photo app + music app - watch photos while listening to songs

text editing + camera app - writing while taking and insert photos into texts

reading app + web surfing app - reading and searching for some words with search engine directly in the app

..and much more.

So instead of the term “multi-tasking”, the combined apps form a single app running together in one screen.

What’s more, these apps can combined according to user’s habit. If a user frequently reads while searching for words in search engine, then the reader app will automatically have an integrated search engine app in it whenever the reader app is opened.