RickyCadden.com

A New Year Begins

// December 31st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // blogging, technology

Wow, it’s hard to believe that an entire year has already passed. What a crazy one it’s been, too. In March, I started a new position as the Social Media Community Manager at RadioShack, taking the lead on all of our Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and The Shack Blog content. It’s been exciting and fun, but challenging, too. In July, I became a daddy to a beautiful little girl – what an adventure that’s been. The rest of the year has mostly been spent learning how life works with a kiddo – it’s entirely different than life before, that’s for sure.

Another goal for 2012 is to read a book every month. When I was a kid, I read all the time. I read all the Bluebonnet books, most of the Newberry Award winners, all that. I read a lot through high school too, and in college, by gradually drifted off. Most books will be business-oriented, with a healthy mix of Christian non-fiction and maybe something random thrown in. I’ll try to do a book review each month here, but I always hated writing book reviews in school, so maybe not.

Last, to use mobile technology more to create content. I used to do this nonstop, and I got spoiled with a laptop. So, for 2012, I’m going to try to create with my phone and iPad more. Starting with this post – it was written entirely on my iPad. More photos and videos, too. I’d like to say ill take a photo of something everyday and a video once a week, but we’ll see how that goes.

So that’s it – nothing fancy or major. What are your goals for 2012? I would challenge you to adopt the mobile technology one, personally. Most people would be astonished at what you can do with just the phone in your pocket.

NAO Next Gen: One Step Closer To The Future

// December 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // cool, technology

As a tech geek, I’m constantly looking at the technology that we have available today and how I think it will progress over the next few years. I’m also firmly convinced that technology should enrich and enable our real lives, without getting in the way. One way tech will do that in the future is robotics. There are so many mundane tasks that we do repeatedly that could be handled with robotics, freeing us to do other things.

Robotics are nothing new, but over the past few years, there have been major advancements, specifically in the realm of humanoid robots, that look and act like humans. The latest demonstration of this is the NAO Next Gen from Aldebaran Robotics. This little robot is roughly 2ft tall and is incredibly capable. Check out the video below:

That’s just plain awesome. Currently, the NAO Next Gen is for developers only, priced at around $5,600 for a developer membership. Imagine when these little guys are $1,000 each, or even less!

Here’s an idea of what I would train mine to do:

What would you teach your NAO to do for you?

The Convergence Of Print And Digital – Life Essentials Study Bible

// December 22nd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Family, technology

With the rise of digital and increased portability of small displays with computers behind them, the print industry is looking at quite the bleak future. Indeed, while I do have a physical subscription to Wired magazine, the hard copy usually goes straight from the mailbox to the back of our toilet. By the time the physical magazine arrives, I’ve typically already downloaded and read the digital version on my iPad.

I prefer the digital copy, too – it has videos embedded, live links, and is simply more engaging to me. However, that’s purely an entertainment example. What about something a bit more difficult to ‘digitize’, like a Study Bible? Study Bibles are meant to be used as spiritual research tools, and somewhat like a diary. I know my personal bible is now covered in duct tape, since I’ve had it for so long that the cover has worn off. I can’t replace it though, because during its use, I’ve scribbled notes here and there in the margins. Notes that, at one point, helped me see a verse more clearly or offered up some insight that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not as easy – yet – to scribble those notes in the margin on a digital copy. Sure, the Kindle lets you highlight and make notes, but you have to type them out and you lose the passion that scrawling affords you.

Recently, though, we picked up a new Bible for Christina that offers an interesting balance between my iPad-based Wired magazine and my duct tape-bound study Bible - the Life Essentials Study Bible. It was put together by Gene Getz, and in addition to the normal extra definitions and side-notes that a Study Bible normally includes, he’s put together over 250 hours of video content, hosted it online, and then inserted QR codes throughout the chapters. You can scan the codes to get directly to the appropriate video for that passage, to get some additional video insights that you wouldn’t get by simply reading the words.

Personally, I think this is really brilliant for a few reasons:

1. It’s a unique approach to bridging the digital and the analog. You have a print book with direct links (easy ones, no less) to digital content. Brilliant.

2. Over 250 hours of video is a TON. Realistically speaking, it likely took at least an entire year JUST to determine where the videos should be inserted in the text, script the videos, shoot them, process them, upload them, and then generate QR codes for them, and insert those QR codes in the text in the correct place. That’s in addition to whatever time it took to add the other notes and extras here and there.

3. The use of QR code is fascinating. Why not short URLs? QR codes are easier, especially for an older generation – simply hold your phone up to the page and boom. Done.

I know Christina is excited to start using her new Study Bible, and I’ll be teaching her how to use these ‘fancy’ codes with her smartphone this evening. What a great way to bring the Scriptures alive.

The Convergence Of Print And Digital – Life Essentials Study Bible

// December 22nd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Family, technology

With the rise of digital and increased portability of small displays with computers behind them, the print industry is looking at quite the bleak future. Indeed, while I do have a physical subscription to Wired magazine, the hard copy usually goes straight from the mailbox to the back of our toilet. By the time the physical magazine arrives, I’ve typically already downloaded and read the digital version on my iPad.

I prefer the digital copy, too – it has videos embedded, live links, and is simply more engaging to me. However, that’s purely an entertainment example. What about something a bit more difficult to ‘digitize’, like a Study Bible? Study Bibles are meant to be used as spiritual research tools, and somewhat like a diary. I know my personal bible is now covered in duct tape, since I’ve had it for so long that the cover has worn off. I can’t replace it though, because during its use, I’ve scribbled notes here and there in the margins. Notes that, at one point, helped me see a verse more clearly or offered up some insight that I hadn’t seen before. It’s not as easy – yet – to scribble those notes in the margin on a digital copy. Sure, the Kindle lets you highlight and make notes, but you have to type them out and you lose the passion that scrawling affords you.

Recently, though, we picked up a new Bible for Christina that offers an interesting balance between my iPad-based Wired magazine and my duct tape-bound study Bible - the Life Essentials Study Bible. It was put together by Gene Getz, and in addition to the normal extra definitions and side-notes that a Study Bible normally includes, he’s put together over 250 hours of video content, hosted it online, and then inserted QR codes throughout the chapters. You can scan the codes to get directly to the appropriate video for that passage, to get some additional video insights that you wouldn’t get by simply reading the words.

Personally, I think this is really brilliant for a few reasons:

1. It’s a unique approach to bridging the digital and the analog. You have a print book with direct links (easy ones, no less) to digital content. Brilliant.

2. Over 250 hours of video is a TON. Realistically speaking, it likely took at least an entire year JUST to determine where the videos should be inserted in the text, script the videos, shoot them, process them, upload them, and then generate QR codes for them, and insert those QR codes in the text in the correct place. That’s in addition to whatever time it took to add the other notes and extras here and there.

3. The use of QR code is fascinating. Why not short URLs? QR codes are easier, especially for an older generation – simply hold your phone up to the page and boom. Done.

I know Christina is excited to start using her new Study Bible, and I’ll be teaching her how to use these ‘fancy’ codes with her smartphone this evening. What a great way to bring the Scriptures alive.

OnStar RemoteLink On The #KloutChevySonic

// December 16th, 2011 // No Comments » // android, Mobile, technology

The Chevy Sonic that I had the chance to drive for a weekend through a Klout Perk also came with OnStar pre-installed. My GMC truck doesn’t have OnStar, so I was pretty excited to see what cool stuff you can do with it. I did have to send a few emails to get a trial setup, but it was well worth it.

You can read all the features of OnStar here – you’ve probably seen their TV ads, too. The base features include roadside assistance, emergency contact, and now, voice-guided navigation. I didn’t actually try any of those features – what I was interested in is the OnStar RemoteLink app for your smartphone that lets you control the car and get helpful information. The app is free and currently available for iOS and Android. I used the Android version for this test.

Here’s the main screen – this syncs with your car when you tell it to, and shows information such as current fuel level, average MPG, and that sort of thing:

You’ll also notice three little dots along the bottom. You can swipe to the side from here to also get a readout of your car’s tire pressure as of the last time you started the ignition:

Pretty cool, huh? Just wait, it gets cooler. If you touch the ‘Remote’ button at the bottom of the app, you get this screen:

Now, this is freakin cool. From the app on my phone (after going through some verification processes including a security pin and whatnot), I can lock or unlock the doors, activate the horn and lights, and even remotely start the car. Yes, you read that correctly - I can start my car from my phone. A-mazing.

There are some caveats, though. Even with my phone showing a full 4G signal (I know it doesn’t in these screenshots, but I took these later), it took over 30 seconds for the command to be sent to the car and the action to take place. It’s not instant like you see in the commercial. The time-delay is a bit ridiculous, honestly, but let’s face it – starting your car from your phone is just plain awesome, no matter how you look at it.

Also, the remote start seems cool (obviously), but if, like me, your car sits in the garage overnight, this is NOT an option you want to use in the morning. Having a car running in the garage with the doors closed for even 10 minutes is a highly dangerous situation. You would only want to use Remote Start if you park outside, such as in your driveway, at the mall, or at work. Also, I couldn’t figure out a way to switch from ‘remotely started running’ to ‘I’m ready to drive’ running – I had to use the app to cancel the remote start before it would even let me put the key in the ignition. Again, I didn’t read the manual, so maybe I missed something.

The other features of the app are still interesting – the ‘Nav‘ button lets you setup a navigation path on your phone and then ‘send’ it to your phone, while the ‘Assist‘ button lets you get access to roadside assistance.

OnStar services normally cost ~$20/month for everything except for navigation, while the navigation option adds about $10, so $30/month. If I had the option on my personal car, I would totally pay for the $20/month package. The peace of mind knowing I have access to help anywhere, and the security features of OnStar, such as the ability to remotely kill the engine, as well as the OnStar RemoteLink application are totally worth it.

I’m due for a new truck in a few years, and I know that I’ll be making OnStar a requirement.

Why I Love Vimeo (And Tolerate YouTube)

// November 27th, 2011 // No Comments » // technology

I’ve been doing online videos for years – the first video on my YouTube channel was uploaded in June of 2007, and I’ve made many more than show up on my personal YouTube channel. I hosted a weekly video podcast that ran for nearly 2 years, and even today, with my job at RadioShack, I make several videos per month. Pretty much all of these videos are uploaded to YouTube, but when I want to browse and find videos for personal entertainment, I nearly always go to Vimeo to find things to watch.

YouTube is awesome, especially for getting eyeballs. It’s kind of a non-negotiable that you put your content there if you want people to see it. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a non-negotiable that you put your content there – that means it’s overloaded with all sorts of junk videos. 115 different versions of the same news clip where the announcer slips up, 20 different ‘versions’ of a band’s music video (half of them are just uploads of the music with a slideshow of photos as the ‘video’), and anything a 12-year-old could get the webcam on their computer to record. There is pretty much zero curation taking place on YouTube, and there’s pretty much zero tools to make better quality videos there (aside from 3rd party editing tools like Final Cut and such). Even Jason Toff, product manager at YouTube, acknowledged this to Mashable recently when YouTube announced a few small editing capabilities: “We noticed that a lot of people were uploading videos to YouTube that we can say are somewhat unpolished.” Somewhat unpolished is a gross understatement.

Vimeo, on the other hand, seems to be the upload destination of choice for real videographers – people making really awesome videos. People who are making the types of videos that I want to kick back with a beer and watch on the iPad (even though the iPad experience leaves much to be desired). It’s real artistic stuff, and I’m glad to have it.

Here’s a few examples of videos that I love on Vimeo:

Back To The iPad 2

// November 15th, 2011 // 5 Comments » // technology

Most of you will be surprised to read this, knowing that I’m a staunch Android fanboy, but I’ve been using an iPad 2 for over a month now, and I absolutely love it. The unit that I have is a WiFi-only 16GB – there’s nothing wrong with the baseline, honestly. I had previously used an iPad 2 with iOS 4.3.3 on it, and I really enjoy some of the improvements added with iOS 5. My previous tablet experience includes the Samsung Galaxy Tab (7-inch, Sprint variant), HP Touchpad (only lasted less than 24 hours with that one, lol), HTC Flyer, BlackBerry PlayBook, Velocity Micro Cruz, and Toshiba Thrive. The Toshiba Thrive lasted the longest – it’s seriously a phenomenal tablet, especially with the full-sized HDMI-out and USB port. However, I’ve stuck with the iPad 2 – here’s the good and bad (coming from an Android user)

The Good

• Battery Life – it’s ridiculously awesome. I use the heck out of this thing and can easily go two days before I need to juice up. It’s just plain nuts (and awesome for travelling)
• Responsive – there is literally zero delay when doing things on the iPad 2. This was one thing that bothered me on Android tablets, even the Thrive – system hesitation in various places. The iPad doesn’t hesitate, it just does.
• App Selection – I know this is a tiresome topic, and Android has come a LONG way in the apps area. However, I will confess that iPad apps are generally much more polished, with actual thought put into the user experience.
• Flipboard – Quite honestly, for someone as obsessed with reading content on the Internet, Flipboard is an actual bullet-point reason to buy an iPad. It’s that good.
• iOS 5 – iOS 5 is a pretty big improvement over previous versions, specifically with the notifications experience. More importantly, iOS 5 brings OTA updates, which means I don’t have to install iTunes on my computer anymore. I really don’t think I’ve hated any piece of software more in my life than I hate iTunes.

The Bad

Real Life And Gadgets

// September 25th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // cool, technology

I just read this awesome post from my friend Antoine about how he met our mutual online friend Trent in real life the other day. The two apparently had a great time discussing tech, and the conversation eventually moved to something that I firmly believe in: Technology should enrich and enable your real life, and not get in the way.

Trent had noticed that his new Nexus One made it so easy – simply type in his Google username and password and all his content was downloaded from the cloud to his phone, just like that. Somewhat magical, but the process of getting setup is so simple now that it leaves plenty of room for actually using our devices.

There was a time when I changed phones multiple times per day. Even now, I have no less than 10 phones laying around, but I only swap my SIM card between three, and they each have very specific purposes. My G2 is my powerhouse – it can do anything, at any time, and I’ve got it setup to work precisely how I want it to. My HD7 is my reliable phone. It never needs to be rebooted, doesn’t lock up or get sluggish, and while it doesn’t afford me the same abilities as my G2 (yet), it’s awesome for various specific needs. My N8 is my fun phone, since I can’t put my work email on it (because it’s too stupid to be able to sync 2 Exchange accounts simultaneously). The N8, though, has the best camera and pretty darn good battery life.

As phones get smarter, they get more useful, mainly because they begin to do things FOR us. The money quote from Antoine’s blog post is this:

Those two applications made it such that my device was able to simply sit on the side until I needed it. And when I did, there was no swiping between home screens, application lists, folders, or even navigating settings. Things just worked best for me and the mobile could go back into my pocket without much fuss. Simplicity because it adapted first.

Technology that enriches and enables our real life, instead of getting in the way. It’s beautiful.

Flickr Finally Innovates Around Location

// August 30th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Mobile, technology

I love taking photos with my phone. There are so many benefits to using a smartphone for photography that it’s basically a no-brainer (and worth the small sacrifice in quality, in my opinion). One of those benefits is the ability to geo-tag your photos, which adds location coordinates to the EXIF data stored in the image file, so that you can easily track the exact location that you took your favorite photo. The other benefit, of course, is the ability to instantly upload your photos to share with your friends, without having to offload to a PC or anything.

While these two benefits are great, together, they potentially pose a problem, especially for privacy-cautious photographers. While the majority of my online life is available for all to see, I do have some specific rules about what I share – one of those is that I don’t share my home address. Of course, it’s readily available to anyone with a phonebook, and a determined individual could quickly find it through public means, but I don’t share my home address via social, at least not as freely as I share pretty much anything else.

My phone is set to automatically geo-tag photos with my location. To combat this when I’m at home, I use an app for Android called Locale (I’ve written about it before) to automatically disable the location services on my phone whenever I’m within a small radius of my home. This way, I don’t have to worry about it (as much).

Today, Flickr made enforcing that limit even easier, especially for folks that don’t have an Android-powered smartphone or don’t want to tinker with Locale. Their new ‘geofences‘ feature allows you to specify a number of locations that are ‘safe zones’ for your photos. If one of your photos’ location is within one of your geofences, the location will automatically not be shown on Flickr. You can specify exceptions, such as your Friends or Family list on Flickr, which is nice.

It’s a simple feature, but one that’s definitely welcome. Do you geo-tag your photos, and if so, is location privacy a concern for you? Do Flickr’s geofences feature help you feel comfortable sharing photos?

Qik Keeps On Improving, Adds Premium Features To Android

// August 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // android, cool, Family, technology

When the whole notion of streaming live video from your phone to the Internet came around, there were basically two companies doing it – Flixwagon and Qik. Both got their start on Nokia’s Symbian-powered smartphones – in fact, I even live-streamed my wedding using Nokia N82s, the Nokia DT-22 tripod, and Flixwagon.

Unfortunately, Flixwagon is pretty much gone at this point, but Qik has continued to skyrocket in functionality and popularity. In the U.S., Qik has become the default video calling solution for most Android-powered smartphones, with even carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint touting the app as being pre-loaded on the latest and greatest smartphones. The leap from video-streaming to video-calling has also proved to be a great move for Qik.

I use Qik on a daily basis now, especially with a new baby in the house – it’s super easy to video chat with grandparents, or with my wife when I’m away on business. There’s almost no setup required – when my mom asked about it, all I did was spell out ‘Q-I-K’ for her and 15 minutes later, she was video calling me from her Android-powered smartphone! She was able to download and install the app and get an account setup that quickly and easily.

I’m pretty jazzed for Qik, who recently announced that they have over 10 million users across all its supported platforms (iOS, Android, Symbian), and are bringing their Premium services to the Android platform, finally. Qik Premium is $4.99/month and offers unlimited video storage as well as the ability to record and send HD and 3D video (if your phone can handle it, of course). I’ll gladly sign up – more for the ability to show support to the company who keeps me visually connected with my family, but also for the extra features.

If you haven’t used Qik, I would highly recommend it. It’s brilliant, and it’s cross-platform, so Android users can easily call iOS users, and vice versa. Qik has also been purchased by Skype, so hopefully in the future we’ll see integration so that you can easily call your Skype contacts with Qik. I’m also hoping that Skype lets the Qik team build the next version of the Skype mobile application – Qik is MUCH better on a phone in terms of resources and power management.

Congrats, Qik, keep up the great work!