The place João Bordalo calls home

Google Glass next steps

bordalix — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:41:00 -0500

It's just a video with some new apps and concepts for Google Glass, by Playground Inc. Have I told you already how excited I am with this?

Space Oddity in the ISS

bordalix — Fri, 17 May 2013 05:34:00 -0500

Watching this gave me the chills, with the music being one of my all time favorites and the fact that its recorded in the International Space Station. I just can't resist myself and had to post it:

One minute in the Internet

bordalix — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:20:00 -0500

Gosh, I still remember when you were born, and now you are so grown up...

Nice infographic from Intel with what happens in the Internet in a sigle minute.

Samsung Galaxy S4

bordalix — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 04:43:00 -0500

A quick post to celebrate the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4, full of innovative features, and to mark the day Apple started playing defense:

Google owe us the Reader

bordalix — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 07:14:00 -0500

Like everyone knows by now, Google announced it will retire Google Reader on July 1st. For me, this are very bad news, since I strongly rely on Reader to get access and organize my feed of information.

I've been working with the Internet since before the invention of the World Wide Web, and, call me old school, I still heavily believe in RSS feeds to get information, since I don't believe in social media and services like Flipboard to get fresh, relevant information about all the different topics I'm interested in (which goes from systems scalability to biology, or from economics to user experience design).

From my 302 subscriptions, Google Reader states that I've read 9.789 items over the last 30 days, so I consider myself as a heavy user. But the usage is not confined to the interface, since I also depend on the Reader's API. Reeder in my iOS devices, Android reader, IFTTT recipes and podcasts, all of them depend on the existence of the Reader's API.

Additionally, I think Google owe us Google Reader. Google is subsidizing Google Reader from day one, which killed all competition. I started by using Bloglines, and later had to change to Google Reader, since it was becoming the de facto standard for RSS reading. Retiring Google Reader now is being evil.

So, what are my alternatives?

Do nothing, and rely on the rumor that Reader functionalities will be incorporated in Google+. I'm a Google+ aficionado, and I can see how this move will facilitate the sharing of information and increase the user experience on Google ecosystem;
Change to another web based RSS reader, where the challenge is to identify which. As noted previously, the API is a very important part of this decision, and I'm glad to see Marco's first attempt to have a very quick standard in order to facilitate the migration of the API to other services. Having said that, there are already some moves from several players trying to feel the gap (Zite, Feedly, digg), and some webpages trying to find out which are the best alternatives (see here and here);
Build my own web based RSS reader, using open source code such as tt-rss. The problem with this alternative has to do with the API issue, so I will discard this option for now;
Subscribe feeds by email, as suggested by the Copyblogger (one of my feeds). While it is a valid option, it has a lot of drawbacks, which would break my daily workflow, so I'm also discarding this for the time being.

Do you know any other alternatives?

Armband gesture control

bordalix — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:27:00 -0600

The war on gesture control gadgets is getting hotter. A new contender is on the rise, Telmic Labs, with his $149 armband called MYO that detects motion and muscle movements to allow control of a Mac, PC, or other device using gestures. Will be available on late 2013. Watch the demo video:

It's only February, and the list for Christmas presents is already full.

Ok glass, post video to blog

bordalix — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:59:00 -0600

Last time I was so excited about a product, it was 2007 and Apple was about to launch the iPhone. At that time I was considered a looney, with almost all my friends telling me “your’re crazy, it’s just a phone”.

Well, it’s 2007 again:

Human face video mapping

bordalix — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 05:53:00 -0500

While everyone else is doing it in buildings and automobiles, we made it in a human face. This video uses exclusively the video mapping technique to build several characters on a human face, with no post production whatsoever. Yes, I know, hard to believe:

RSS readers may need to visit the blog to see the video.

The eyeborg documentary

bordalix — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:12:00 -0500

Once in a while a think on what will be the generation gap between me and people from younger generations. I consider my self as a liberal person, but I'm pretty sure that, sometime in the future, I'll see a younger doing something that will clash against my principles, morals or ethic, but that will be completely accepted by the social norms. I just don't know what it will be.

The very first time I saw the following video, I started to see it. The video is a documentary about prosthetic technology, used mainly to help people who had lost some organ or member. But, as you watch the documentary, you will start to realize that some people with this prosthesis actually have a better performance than before. Yes, the cyborg is coming, and is coming really fast.

So, if in a couple of years your son tells you he is going to replace is perfectly healthy arm with an artificial one, just to be able to throw a ball a couple of meters longer, don't be surprised.

RSS readers may need to visit the blog to see the video.

Microsoft future vision (2011)

bordalix — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:51:00 -0500

A brand new video featuring Microsoft's vision of the future, with some interesting concepts in it. The focus here is productivity, so I think that's the reason why the video is from the Office division:

RSS readers may need to visit the blog in order to see the video.