How does this involve the computer? Google among others continues to push this. Here’s a news article describing one such addition.[Is Cloud TV on the horizon for Google]

What features and usages make sense as a user with nearly instant ability to watch about anything you want? I believe that to make the experience useful requires a front end ability to balance sources with cost and desire, along with maintaining a viewing database and suggestion engine that is able to work across platforms and media services. I’ll explain this.

I want to be able to watch “Rubicon” a TV show and not have to worry about which service has it, or which might charge and which might be free. Software on my computer system should be able to pick the lowest price to view this content and present it to me. Perhaps with my confirmation if I need to buy it vs it’s available on a pre-paid service.

To really make this all useful I need a suggestion and search engine that knows not only what I viewed on Netflix, but also Amazon, Vudu and Hulu. That way I can get reasonable suggestions for things I might enjoy that actually make sense. By placing this ability under my control I could also control the privacy of my viewing data by limiting access to the providers I choose due to their ability to offer me services I desire.

Now we can really take this another step. Presume I’m sitting in front of my TV with all of these viewing abilities and a tablet in my hand. How can that tablet add value? Perhaps by analyzing my viewing and presenting me with options to learn more about the topic, location or other aspects of the currently watched content such as the director, actors etc. All of this is possible with our current technology, we just need it to be implemented and then it can be used to improve our experience as we use the technology. That is really the bottom line, improving our experiences as we go about life; thus changing the world for the better.

In the early days of Radio, shows were broadcast at a certain time, and the family would gather around the radio in the evenings to listen to their favorite show. Radio was augmented by TV but essentially had the same consuming method. I have wonderful memories as a family watching the Sunday night movies together. As kids we would anxiously await the yearly viewing of favorite films such as the Wizard of OZ. The “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” line was forever etched as a powerful unveiling of the mysteries of what we believe vs what is real.

We have been moving for several years from a mode of “what is on now?” to “What do I feel like watching?” A lazy evening pushing buttons on the remote to see “what’s on” is still possible as you move through hundreds of digital cable or satellite channels, but that isn’t how viewing works now. Instead we have several on demand venues where you can build a list of movies, shows, concerts etc you would like to watch and place them in your Queue. Then when you have time for viewing, instead of watching what happens to be on, you can decide to watch what you previously determined you would like to watch.

Netflix was an early leader in on-demand viewing, with many others out there with various specialties. Vudu for current movies, Hulu for TV shows, Amazon for a mix of about everything. This shift in viewing methods has caused me to rethink how I spend my time in front of a TV and additionally just how the TV and Computer are evolving in my home.

A recent Netready Vizio TV adds more to this equation. The remote includes buttons for one press access to Amazon, Netflix and Vudu. All of which I have access to now in a very simple UI. I’ll include a picture of the remote below so you can see the buttons too. On the back of the remote is a micro keyboard used to enter user names, passwords and URL’s as necessary to configure the players.
This evolution while powerful and changing to the viewing habits, leads me to consider new ways to apply this technology. I’ll cover ideas for augmenting and improving these new abilities in my next blog.

It’s great technology which gives us the ability to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” and yet consume the media as we freely desire.

Vizio Netready TV remote control front side w/Amazon Netflix and Vudu buttons

Vizio Netready TV remote control back side, with micro keyboard

So much of our lives are now online.  In the event something happens, who will know where or how to pay your bills?  Where your critical documents are?  How about paperless accounts that might have assets to manage?  With a new year just hours away I want to mention briefly that we all need to consider just how to pass along our critical information to others in case something happens to us.  Consider that one of the most critical last words you could say might just be your password!

There are many ways to pass along password information to others.  I use encrypted documents to keep all of my online records safe, so having the key to the encryption method I use is very critical or nothing can be accessed.  Easiest of course is to simply share the information with a trusted companion or family member.  The issue of account access is additionally complicated when you include Wills and other issues you wish to make known to family members.

To help address these concerns there are many methods available.  I’ll include a sample below to show a few companies that have ways you can automate the process.

www.legacylocker.com  Once notified of your demise via an official death certificate, Legacy Locker will contact people whose names you’ve provided. You can divide up who gets what information and thus send different account information or assets to different beneficiaries.  It’s free to have one beneficiary and up to three assets. It’s $29.99 a year for unlimited beneficiaries and assets.

For quicker access to your assets, you can setup an email based system.

www.deathswitch.com  uses periodic e-mails based on a schedule you set up. If you fail to respond to an e-mail after a certain period of time, Death Switch delivers e-mails you’ve prepared in advance to the person you’ve designated.  You control the timing and messaging so consider offline scenarios such as a hospital visit before you send out messaging presuming death.  There is no charge for the basic service. To send multiple e-mails, you pay $19.95 a year for up to 30 e-mails with attachments.

http://www.assetlock.net uses a system where several of your friends need to log in to confirm your passing.  Once the critical number has been reached a time delay is triggered after which your information will be released as you scheduled and determined.

As you can see, there are many ways to manage your documents.  Some banks also offer critical document storage methods too.  The key to all of this is to plan for and determine in advance how you would like your affairs to be managed in the case of some type of critical event or death.

I found these presentations very motivational and personally rewarding.  At times conferences can feel rather like cheerleading promotions but I didn’t feel this was the case.  Here we had solid work, great benefits, and the rewards of using Qt for your development work were clearly obvious.  It was a case of positive affirmation of proven results.

One of the additional positive feelings I got from the conference concerned Meego and Nokia.  The commitment to Meego was clear with the explanation that their future high end mobile device will be based on Meego.  You can’t really be more committed than that!  It too was energizing, and powerful to see and feel the energy from both the presenters and from the participants at the conference.  I know Intel is putting many great resources into Meego and to be a part of that, to see it grow and flourish is an exciting thing.

I'm looking forward to an exciting 2011 using both Qt and Meego!

It’s reached the point where our computer tools have become very trusted components in our daily lives, even reaching advisor status in many ways.  I spend all day working in front of a monitor typing away at one project or another and have noticed how computing resources have slowly grown into places we would have never suspected.  Working on the Atom projects we’re continuing the trend of taking CPU’s into smaller places and working to solve problems we never considered computer assistance with years ago.  With the Atom processor as small as a grain of rice there’s so much processing power there it’s incredible.

My Chevy Tahoe has 14 computers to help it work safely.  It is a few years old so that has probably gone up in newer models with computer entertainment centers too.  They are isolated sub-systems to keep them from having any bottlenecks.  It would be a serious problem if your anti-lock brakes failed to work when you needed them due to the MP3 song playing at the time!

When backpacking (generally considered an off-the-grid activity) last summer we had several items requiring power to not only help us on the trip (GPS and cell-phone) but also music players to entertain as you made the hikes.  Add to that possible computers in your shoes to track you, pace you and train you; with possible links to your watch and we’re really marching to a different tune now!

I pay my bills online and setup warnings to keep me in tune with my finances; I consider that portion of the household management an advisor role.  On weekends when I focus on outdoor activities and family life I still have the need to get online a few times to check up on transactions and other issues all of which are managed online now. 

With so much of my life being managed through my connections and portable devices, I want the best I can in my hands and enjoy knowing that new devices and products are moving to Intel and the trusted Atom processor to help fill these needs.

A very fascinating article in the New York Times discusses how languages can possibly shape the way you think.  If you are interested in this topic I highly suggest reading the article which can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html

Given that some of the article is true, it very well could be true that your native language not only can but does influence your programming skills and possibly how you think when solving problems.

As I thought about the image, I knew I had shared it via the online photo site Flickr some years ago.  I looked at it again on Flickr and with a little searching I have also found it in the commercial.

This is the original picture as posted to Flickr:
 

This link will take you to the website for the Desert Schools Credit Union which is playing the commercial.  The commercial is titled "Then and Now"  Click to play the commercial and 4 seconds in as they turn the page to the 2^nd page of their photo album, my photo is there at the top of the page.  It's easy to pause the commercial and verify that it is my image.

https://www.desertschools.org/templates/media/media.aspx?id=4392

The real question now is one of family privacy and how our rights to our images apply in this digital age.  I have all of my images marked "Copyright protected" as supported by Flickr.  In fact I often have people contact me for legal use of my images and have always granted their requests.  This time it was a surprise to see one of my images in the "wild" and not have been asked first.  While I am not really interested in some type of legal battle it would have been appropriate for them to ask me before they used the image.  Especially in a commercial that is currently running many times every evening in the Phoenix area.

My current camera encodes my copyright information into the file as it's created.  This helps assure people know the image is copyright but doesn't keep them from using images.  In this case it's not an offensive commercial but I have read about others who found their images being used to advertise products or issues they found offensive.  I am not one who desires to fight anyone in court but certainly we have a right to our own images and somehow this needs needs to be addressed in a fair manner.  Companies should not be "appropriating" images they find online and using them as they please.

Where we should go with this and how it'll work out in the next few years will be interesting to watch unfold.  I know that pictures of our family are some of our most cherished in life and respect for that needs to somehow be addressed.

As I’ve been diving into these great tools, a few tips have popped up that are useful to pass along.

A great place to start when looking for documentation is here:

http://qt.nokia.com/developer/getting-started

If you are a book reader rather than online study, you can download a copy of the official Qt book here:

http://www.qtrac.eu/C++-GUI-Programming-with-Qt-4-1st-ed.zip

I’ve found the book very useful in helping me understand the many nuances to Qt.  There’s also extensive video training and many types of materials available at the Qt site.

I've listed a few very useful Qt tips I want to share.

Forward references to improve compilation times:

I noticed forward references when all they needed to do was include header files and it would have resolved the linker issues.  I wondered why and found this:

For the private variables, we used forward declarations of their classes. This was possible because they are all pointers and we don’t access them in the header file, so the compiler doesn’t need the full class definitions. We could have included the relevant header files (<QCheckBox>, <QLabel>, etc.), but using forward declarations when it is possible makes compiling somewhat faster.

Multiple Language support

I was curious how language issues would be supported in Layouts and found this simple code snipped along with an explanation.

closeButton = new QPushButton( tr( "Close") );

The tr( ) function calls around the string literals mark them for translation to other languages. The function is declared in QObject and every subclass that contains the Q_OBJECT macro. It’s a good habit to surround user-visible strings with tr() , even if you don’t have immediate plans for translating your applications to other languages.

QDialogButtonBox

I noticed when creating dialogs that you could add the buttons individually but that there is also a class for groups such as the Ok and Cancel button pairs.  This quote explains the usefulness of the QDialogButtonBox.

QDialogButtonBox, a widget that contains the buttons we specify and that presents them in the correct way for the window system on which the application is being run.

It’s very cool that you can create cross-platform dialogs that will look correct on each platform.

Do you have any great Qt tips to share?

For the game playing systems, that is another issue.  The games require Windows based tools and features that cannot be as easily moved as traditional office related tasks.

As I work to enable mobile devices this comes to mind because there are many more OS choices for handsets than the market has for desktop computers.  For most handset consumers, the OS isn’t even known by name, they are more often referred to by brand of phone or device.  Given that we are now creating data on our mobile devices, it seems sensible that this will evolve over time.  Users want to keep data created on their phones and move it to new mobile devices as they upgrade and improve their systems.  When you get a new phone and lose all of your pictures or files that is a problem.

This opens the door for OS branding and improvements across systems and device classes.  I look forward to solutions that enable us as consumers to preserve our data and files.  It continues to be the case that the Consumer is king and the market is evolving to address these needs and demands.

Out boat engine is a Volvo Penta engine that uses lake water to run the cooling system.  As it turned out the impeller that pulls the water into the system had come apart and thus the engine was running dry and would quickly overheat.  The irony of sitting in millions of gallons of water and yet overheating due to not enough water in critical places was funny to ponder!  Nicely an internet connection gave me the ability to diagnose the problem and determine a course of action before we ever got off the lake.

Knowing the problem was relatively minor gave me the peace of mind to enjoy the day and not worry about hurrying off the lake which enabled my kids to swim and enjoy their time too.  It’s nice to have a connection and a MID when you need it.

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If you are doing Atom and Mobile focused work, check out the site and join us as a developer.

Here’s the 4 blogs you might find useful:

Connectivity concerns for Netbook applications

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2009/09/16/connectivity-concerns-netbook-applications

Developing for power and performance on a Netbook

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2009/09/16/developing-power-and-performance-netbook

Adapting your application to Netbook hardware

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2009/09/16/adapting-your-application-netbook-hardware

Creating a Netbook UI for your application

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/blog/2009/09/14/creating-netbook-ui-your-application

Years ago I worked on a product called InfoCentral.  It was a wonderful database that gave as much power to the connections as the objects the connections were between.  You could manage your connections, including possibly multiple connections of different types between objects.  It gave you the ability to realistically map life’s complex realities into a software metaphor.  I really enjoyed that program and have been unable to find anything even close to its power in the years since.  Hopefully something like that can evolve from the successful roots of Facebook.

Currently there’s a way to avoid seeing news from specific people posted to your main page, but even that nice start needs to be improved.  Here are a couple of suggestions that would really help in connection management.

1.      Be able to prioritize, perhaps with as few as 3 levels you could group people into for news you would rather see first… priority level A, B and C.

2.      Be able to block anything having to do with, showing or related to specific individuals (without them knowing)

3.      Be able to “drop” someone from your relationships and yet have them continue to think its still there.  A stealth mode.  Someone you don’t want to offend but perhaps this relative posts updates a little too frequently for your tastes.

Small changes add up to big differences in what you see and experience when using social networking software.

With so much valuable information stored on USB and other portable memory devices, protecting that data becomes an important and necessary task.  I use a program called TrueCrypt which can be found here: http://www.truecrypt.org/

This program enables you to create either an encrypted partition on your drive, or the easiest is to create a file which is then mounted as an encrypted drive when you run the TrueCrypt software.  The software is free, open source and supports AES-256, Serpent and Twofish encryption algorithms.  I’ve found it to be easy to use and reliable.  Once you have the device mounted you have easy access to your files and can move copy etc just as if it were a regular drive.

I format and use the memory key as a regular Fat32 USB device with files on it.  I keep a folder with the TrueCrypt files so I can easily move into that folder and run the TrueCrypt program.  You have to determine in advance how much room you’re going to allocate to storing encrypted data and format an encrypted file for storing the data before you can use it.  Once the setup portion is done, accessing the data is simple.  You insert the key, run the software, mount the encrypted drive and off you go.

A nice feature when storing your important files encrypted this way is that by making a simple backup of the encrypted master file, you have backed up everything you keep within that file.  The backup file is also mountable and works just like the original, it does not have to be on the memory key to be used.

One warning… DO NOT forget your password or you’ll be in a world of hurt, because you can’t recover your data without it.  I prefer to use a nice long password, a sentence actually, knowing my data is very secure.

Give True Crypt a try, and if you have software you find useful in protecting your data, post a comment with some information about it.