Friday, August 30, 2013

Text A Driver! Get Sued!


A New Jersey court just gave an opinion that I find a bit disturbing.  We all know that texting and driving can be just as dangerous as drinking and driving.  Distracted drivers kills thousands per year thus a New Jersey judge recently stated the following:  “We hold that the sender of a text message can potentially be liable if an accident is caused by texting, but only if the sender knew or had special reason to know that the recipient would view the text while driving and thus be distracted.”.

Seriously?  How is it the responsibility of the sender of a text message?  The courts are over stepping their bounds here. As a resident of the state of New Jersey, I require a deeper explanation here.  Am I liable if I send a Facebook instant message to a friend while he/she is driving?  Am I liable if I send an email to a friend while he/she is driving?   Online faxing services can be configured to send automated text messages to the recipient. Am I liable if I know that the recipient has this fax alert feature enabled and I knowingly send a fax to that person?  I have my Orbitz account configured to send me text alerts for flight status updates when I travel.  If Orbitz sends me a flight status update while I am driving to the airport, then can't we assume that Orbitz should have known or made a reasonable assumption that I would be driving during the receiving of these text messages.

I probably send text messages to people that I know are driving all of the time.  I make an assumption that they will read those messages when it is safe.  In New Jersey, I can't do that anymore.  What do you think?


Monday, August 26, 2013

Robot Cars? Google is Designing Its Own Self-Driving Car!


Google Inc., which has been working on software to help major automakers build self-driving cars, also is quietly going around them by designing and developing a full-fledged self-driving car, according to people familiar with the matter.

In recent months, Google has held talks with contract manufacturers to build new cars to Google’s specifications, said the people familiar with the matter. The move came after Google’s talks with big car brands about incorporating its technology into their vehicles failed to yield a partnership, one of these people said.

Read full story on JessicaLessin.com

Autonomous cars?  The concept is very similar to "Johnny Cab" from the movie Total Recall.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Blackberry's Demise: It's All About The Apps Stupid!

This year Blackberry launched its Blackberry 10 model to compete with iPhone and Android.   Coupled with the launch was the announcement of Alicia Keys as “Creative Director”.  I love Alicia Keys.  She is one of the most talented artists today.  However, having Alicia Keys as “Creative Director” for Blackberry was like putting whipped cream on a pile of horse droppings. 

Blackberry’s Fundamental Problem: APPS!
Back in 2006, I investigated the possibility of developing apps for the Blackberry.  It was a complete nightmare!  Blackberry required me to develop my app separately for every different model of Blackberry phone.  At the time there were 6 models that I was targeting, thus I would have had to develop my app 6 different times.  This was insane!

Most consumers choose iPhone/Android for the bountiful supply of apps available.  I predicted Blackberry’s demise before version 10 launched.  The only thing that could have saved them was an easy way for Android developers (or iPhone developers) to port their apps to Blackberry.  Blackberry engineers should have built in a Linux emulator which could easily run Android apps.  These apps could have been ported to the Blackberry app store.  Blackberry could have had an easy acceptance program by automatically accepting apps which had been approved by Google/Apple.
Most sane developers have chosen to avoid Blackberry for (1) Lack of market share and (2) Lack of a development platform that could port existing code.

Today, it was announced that Blackberry is up sale.  This should be of no big surprise to anyone.  So, to you Crackberry fans, when are you going to trade in that old monster of a phone for a real smart phone?  What do you think?