Bro's browsings

Ada Lovelace Day

Today is the day when all over the world people will be using their blogs to write about women in technology - tech heroines.

Inspired by Ada Lovelace who wrote the first computer programme the idea has snowballed over recent months and started a debate about women in technology. Ada is an example of what I think many women have brought to high tech developments, the practical application of those developments.

Some years ago I wrote a regular column as part of my job as a journalist on Electronics Times. While colleagues wrote about developments in chip design and so forth, mine was more about where tech might take us, applications I'd like to see - I talked about the potential for mobile apps, e-payments and so on. Often blue skies off the top of my head, but some times they were predictive such as the one asking why all laptops had to be square and grey well before Apple launched its first laptops. But to some my stuff was fluffy - but these days some of it would be regarded as to do with monetization.

The point is that in looking for our tech heroines we must think about the ideas people, the business developers as well as the engineers and the coding ninjas.

Meanwhile I will add a mention for one of my favourites: the glamorous Hedy Lamar who managed to combine Hollywood stardom with research into frequency switching and missile guidance. How many of us could do that.

Never without my phone?

A very few years ago I wrote a column for Electronics Times about seeing someone using a mobile phone on a ski lift. This was an extraordinary idea - yes a phone was small enough to fit  in a ski jacket but why would you carry something so expensive when doing something like skiing? 

These days one of the firsts tasks on ski trip is the synchronise phones moment - the bit where you check everyone has everyone else's numbers. 

This year things moved on and tweeting ski updates and weather reports featured in my and many of my friends' snowy activities.

But I want more. I was in Austria this year where we struggled initially with the ski maps being much more used to the French piste marking system. This lead to one of my bath-born ideas (see previous browsings), could I have piste maps on my phone with GPS indicating my position and useful items such as lunch options.

Luckily someone else has been musing on the same problem and so there is SatSki. What impressed me was some of the ideas around this technology, including the idea that when you are near mountain restaurants you might be 'pushed' info on offers or that day's specials by text.

This is the type of idea that has been discussed for years but this is a great real-life application. Now we should be thinking were else it can be applied.

Meanwhile, this year's big ticket item of new kit was an orthopedic knee brace to allow me to still enjoy the slopes, but I think next season it will be something a lot funkier and high tech.

Bath time for Bronagh

Am I the only person that has their best ideas in the bath? I'm always having ideas for columns, articles and blog posts or editorial developments. I become much clearer about presentations or other public speaking.

Only one problem, I haven't found a successful answer for recording these ideas - notebooks dropped in the water, wet hands not mixing well with Dictaphones, etc.

And so, basking among the bubbles I came up with my latest idea. What I actually need is a bluetooth mic mounted somewhere over the bath and functional voice recognition software on the laptop safely out of splash range. 

Of course there is the issue of the VR software and what it will make of water noises - well, that and the possibility I'm over-engineering the problem.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Death 2.0 – networking our grief

Social media tools and networks have rapidly become central to many of our lives but may be only something unexpected can bring their role in death into focus.

Although I have known someone who blogged her terminal illness, this week I gained a new perspective on social media and the end of a life. Late the other evening I received a direct message through Facebook from a stranger who said she was the niece of “Kildare” and broke the news that he had died suddenly that morning. Within minutes I was in a tornado of Tweets, Facebook exchanges, Yahoogroup posts and straight emails as other friends received the message and sought confirmation and more info, as well as an outlet for shock and sadness.

It was my first experience of an online wake and it certainly gave those involved a new way to share in a time like this. Kildare’s Facebook wall became a place of tribute and memorial. Messages of condolence and even photos from recent night out with Kildare were soon sprouting. It was clearly a helpful, cathartic exercise – and much faster than that kicked off by traditional notification methods.

But death 2.0 raised other issues. The Facebook approach meant that some of Kildare’s closest – but perhaps older or less social media savvy – friends learnt the news second or third hand, in one case almost by accident.

Then there is the unexpected. While Kildare’s Facebook presence lived on in a dynamic way, his Twitter biog – like an unerased answering machine message – remained frozen in time reading, poignantly: “I was born and have not yet died…”

So how do we ensure old media users are not excluded in the era of the online wake? And how long do we leave the online ghosts untouched – or erase or not to erase?

Suddenly these are issues society – or that part in 2.0 world – needs new norms for.