Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: smartphones

  • It starts on the phone

    It starts on the phone

    It starts on the phone, always. Proximity is key, because it didn’t use to be like this, but today the phone is always there, and it’s an amazing piece of hardware that invites interaction. It also invites distraction, but that’s something you and I must handle ourselves. The phone can’t do it for us, it can only enable whatever it is you want enabled.

    Ideas comes at any time, they follow no pattern. They come, because we force them to or by themselves due to something going on in the back of our heads. Processing, stand by please – all done, here’s your lightbulb! You write them down, because ideas are precious. It used to be that you scrambled for pen and paper, or something resembling the two, but no more. Or if you do, it’s because you made a conscious decision to do so, to rely on those particular tools. I get that, it’s understandable because the pen and the paper are wonderful things, borderline mythical in today’s society. We buy our pens and notebooks, we might even subscribe to them, because they are precious to us. A relic of a notion of a concept of yore.

    The phone is always there, waiting for you. If you’re organized and structured, then the same might be universally true for your pen and notebook, but I doubt it. Most of us wouldn’t leave the phone out of reach. It’s always there. The notebook can be forgotten. Not so the phone.

    Ideas come when they come. Forced, as in invited through focused thinking, meditation, or with a blank mind, it matters little. They come, and you don’t want them to slip away. Write them down, process them by formulating the words, refine and save. The idea is safe, you haven’t lost it which is fortunate, because it might be a good one. You never know, not really, at that point in time. Like words, ideas must stew to validate themselves.

    Keeping an idea in your head for a longer period of time might not be the best way to get distance to it, to enable you to look at the idea from a different point of view. It’s not just time that changes between an idea’s inception and its final judgment. All ideas must be judged, or validated if you prefer, and then it’s up to you to decide what you’ll do with it. Give it away, exploit it, set it free – your call. But judge it you must, how else will you figure out if it’s a good idea, or a bad one? The criteria will be different for different ideas, but the stewing won’t be. You’ll give the idea time, but you – as in, you – will also change from the idea’s inception, to its judgment. Your life will change your disposition, large or small, things will have happened. A good dinner, having a headache, reading something profound, all these things are part of the stewing. Likewise, big things in your life will matter too, horrible things and good things. Happiness, depression, hurt and heartache, all matter come judgment day.

    You look at the idea. Is it still a good one? Has it changed, evolved, since you wrote it down? Only you will know. Maybe you’ll revise it again, and let it stew for a little while longer. Maybe circumstances have made it obsolete, or crucial, or boring, or whatever else might be. Things tend to happen, to change.

    You’ll have more ideas, better and newer ones. They come from nowhere or somewhere, and when they do you need to write them down. You reach for your phone, it’s sitting there on the table beside the coffee cup, or on the desk, or by your bedside, or waiting in your pocket. You pick it up and write down your idea, revise it. It’s started again, it’s there, ready to stew and be judged.

  • Screens are stealing the conversation

    Stop googling, let’s talk, published late September last year:

    Studies of conversation both in the laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in the periphery of their vision changes both what they talk about and the degree of connection they feel. People keep the conversation on topics where they won’t mind being interrupted. They don’t feel as invested in each other. Even a silent phone disconnects us.

    I think this is true. If there’s a TV in the room, my eyes will be drawn to it. That, however, doesn’t mean that there’s no room for phones, or any screen really, in everyday life. Moderation is key, as with so many things.

  • Commodore PET

    Commodore PET, not the computer, launches in Italy, France, Germany, and Poland, soon. Wired:

    Now it’s appearing on a smartphone created by a pair of Italian entrepreneurs. It’s called the PET—sharing its name with Commodore’s other iconic PC—and its custom Android build includes two emulators so owners can enjoy old C64 and Amiga games.

    This isn’t the first time a product’s been built around the classic Commodore (or Amiga) brand. The chances for this smartphone are slim, I’d say. Maybe it’s time to let the Commodore brand rest?

  • The Amazon Fire Phone Is About The Future

    I haven’t played with nor seen Amazon’s smartphone, the Fire Phone. It’ll probably not even be available in my neck of the woods, much like the Kindle Fire tablets. It matters little for this piece though.

    Amazon showing off the Firefly feature
    Amazon showing off the Firefly feature

    The tech media seem puzzled about Amazon’s decision to ”fork Android” (read Ben Evans’ piece on this if you’re interested) and go head to head with Apple, Google, and to a lesser extent, Microsoft. There are some interesting features in the Fire Phone, including the 3D UI, Firefly and Mayday, and the Buy button, and then there’s Amazon’s Prime service too. The general consensus is that the Fire Phone is an expensive yet underpowered high-end smartphone with Amazon’s limited app store, tailored for Amazon services. The question this beckons is who’d want this?

    It’s a valid question, with an obvious yet complicated answer: Amazon’s customers wants this. The answer is obvious because if you do all your shopping at Amazon, if you use Prime, then the Fire Phone’s for you. On paper that might make sense, but in reality smartphones are personal devices and I doubt a lot of us want to be defined by where we buy adult diapers.

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  • The Smartphone, Dumbphone, Tablet Thing

    The Smartphone, Dumbphone, Tablet Thing

    There are those who dream about not having to carry around a smartphone. That’s obviously easy enough, just get a feature phone, or dumbphone if you will, and use it. Thing is, these people don’t want to give up the functionality of a smartphone. For that they have the tablet instead, a device that in many ways mirrors that of a smartphone. “Why should I have to carry both?” they tend to complain.

    Why indeed.

    The Nexus 7 and a dumbphone picked up in France while snowboarding.
    The Nexus 7 and a dumbphone picked up in France while snowboarding

    The idea is this. By replacing the smartphone with a dumbphone, you cancel out all worries about battery life (any dumbphone worth its name can work for days, weeks even, without charge) and the fact that you’re carrying an expensive piece of glass-encased machinery that could easily be lost. Dumbphones are cheap and accessible, and they do one thing well (being phones), thus they’re superior at their prime function, or so the reasoning goes.

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  • Phones, Tablets And Post PC

    Phones, Tablets And Post PC

    The modern smartphone is a pocket computer. Let’s just get that out of the way. For some reason, the whole Post-PC thing have been entirely focused on tablets, when all smart mobile devices should be implied and considered.

    Here’s an example: A relative of mine just bought an iPhone 4S, and a 11″ MacBook Air. She’s happy with both, but wonder what she need the computer for, really? What she should get is an iPad, at least when the apps and web services (banks and government mostly) support it all the way. They might already. Funny thing is, to her the iPhone 4S is almost a valid replacement to a computer. Next year, the iPad will be that replacement, because the parts of the infrastructure that hasn’t caught up with the times yet will have by then.

    Think about that for a second. An older person, not an Apple fanboy or a techsavvy cord-cutter, thinks that a smartphone is a valid computer replacement. That’s very much Post-PC. (more…)

  • Put Down Your Phone

    There’s a video doing the rounds called I Forgot My Phone which I found very telling about today’s social interactions. Watch it.

    My iPhone is always with me. I communicate a lot using the iPhone, almost never utilizing the phone part, but rather through Twitter, App.net or messages. Sometimes I kill time on Tumblr, and I read a lot on my iPhone. In my weakest moment, I might even open the Facebook app.

    I don’t watch the world through my phone though. The times I go to a concert, I don’t take a ton of crappy photos or make Vine movies out of every little thing. It ruins the experience, both for me and everybody else. That said, the iPhone is my primary camera, because it’s the one I carry with me.

    I write a lot on my iPhone, and I’m not only talking about the novel project. I also take a lot of notes.

    The iPhone is a powerful tool, just like most smartphones out there.

    However, it’s also addictive. Suddenly you’re not eating unless you’re instagramming, you don’t exist until you check in, and you better refresh your Twitter feed every third second so that you don’t miss out on anything. It’s fascinating how quickly this behavior embedded itself in our spines, making us collectively forget every ounce of our manners.

    I’m not perfect, and I’m easily bored. My iPhone’s a savior more often than not. I’ve been that rude douche who picks up his phone and starts fiddling with it while in a conversation at times, something I’m not proud of and try not to do. It’s socially acceptable to a degree that still astounds me.

    Don’t throw away your smartphone. Keep reaping the benefits of technology, and by all means don’t stop communicating through the web. But do consider the world outside of your screen, preferably slightly more than how it’d look with your favorite Instagram filter.

  • Om möjligheter, och hur de vill ha din uppmärksamhet

    Jag skriver om hur alla möjligheterna som våra smarta telefoner (oavsett om du föredrar iPhone eller Android) och plattor (iPad, för det finns inga egentliga alternativ) ger oss i dag:

    So are the distractions and hence I’m thinking a lot about what all the noise is giving me. Do I need to be this available online get the most out of Twitter and Facebook? Can I disconnect for a week/month/year and still live on?

    Läs The Power That Is Possibilities på TDH.me.

  • Social media diet

    I was pointed to Per Håkanssons post about his social media diet by Mikael Pawlo, and I found it interesting. Per is quitting a bunch of services, such as Instagram, Google+ and Linkedin, to focus on more important matters. This quote pretty much sums up why he’s taking this somewhat drastic approach:

    I miss the days when you could go out and eat with a bunch of friends and focus on the conversation and not the latest pings, notifications and checkins on your mobile device.

    I see this a lot, people who feel that social media is interfering with their conversations and relationships in the physical world. But here’s the thing: Quitting social media won’t change this.

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