Marvin Lee Dot Net

The year of 2009 is coming to a close and the following is my personal listing of the best in 2009 (for technology).

1. Twitter & Twitter API

Twitter has grown exponentially throughout the world and fast becoming the top Web 2.0 application.
Sometimes it’s not the most complicated application that wins, and Twitter that only takes 140 chars for a tweet/status update wins it.

Notice that it has become almost the top 100 websites of every country (except China where access to it has been blocked).

Twitter API has enabled a huge number of client applications and business grow with Twitter through the API usage and having an API to integrate with social networks is fast becoming a mandatory feature.

2. HTC and Android
While the world was immensed with the iPhone frenzy prior to 2009, other phone manufacturers are busy capturing the mobile market by having secret and not-so-secret projects like the Palm Pre and Google Android.

HTC is now ranked the fourth largest smartphone maker, after Nokia, Research In Motion (BlackBerrys) and Apple. HTC’s Android portfolio now includes the original G1 and MyTouch on T-Mobile, the Hero on Sprint, and the Tattoo and Droid Eris on Verizon and has at least five other Android phones planned for 2010.
That does not even include the HTC Nexus One, aka the Googlephone, is among the most anticipated devices of 2010.
HTC and Android walked side by side in 2009 and is definitely something we could watch out for in 2010.

3. MovieBox Media Players

I have no idea what is the right name for these products, it came with MovieBox, Media Players, etc that could play Real Player formats and various other internet downloadable movies.

It easily gain following by movie buffs due to its convenience of playing digital movie files directly to the television.

This device stands between your tv and a USB 2.0 compatible device (like external HDD or USB thumbdrive that has any image files or movie files). It can then play the content that are compatible to your TV, even make slideshows for photos as well.
I foresee its much cheaper to have a home theater or home cinema now as compared to a few years ago.

4. GPS with Internet on the phone, roam the world

With GPS you can roam the world and with GPS on your phone with mobile internet access, there is no place that you cannot venture too (of course except to location where there is no mobile data signal).

GPS has enabled human to accurately position a location and to easily make a first time travel to a place they have never been to before.
Add it with more information surrounding the location (like more landmarks and F&B attractions nearby) and by providing directions, it has now became easier for anyone to travel around the world.

5. Point and shoot cameras with DSLR capabilities
Should you buy a DSLR or Point and Shoot Digital Camera?
In 2009, you can have both.

Olympus came out with the Olympus PEN E-P1 is a hybrid 12.3-megapixel interchangeable lens camera that manages to merge the look, feel and flexibility of a traditional film SLR with the convenience of a slim, lightweight digital point-and-shoot camera.
The price is still steep but we are sure to see more professional looking photos in the making anyday, and I bet video too..

So there you have, my personal best technology products in 2009.

What is your best technology product or services you encountered in 2009? Please leave your comment below.

Internet, Technology 2009, Android, DSLR, GPS, HTC, MovieBox, Olympus, Olympus PEN E-P1, twitter, Twitter API

This is one big step in technology advancement. GPS navigation is nothing new to most who knows what a GPS device is.

By far, GPS navigation or satellite navigation has been related to GPS device only, that is you buy a single GPS device which primary role is to navigate you to your desired destination.

There are various GPS device manufacturers and evolution of ideas, from pure GPS device (Papago) only, to GPS device with mobile phone ability (like
Garmin and Asus), to mobile phone application (like TomTom).

Google’s announcement of its Google Maps Navigation is going to change the GPS game and some even are concerned about it being a satnav killer.

Just watch the video below for a quick understanding of what Google Maps Navigation is all about:

By the way, anybody has an extra ‘I am here’ t-shirt for me?

Google Maps Navigation is an internet-connected GPS navigation system with voice guidance. It is part of Google Maps for mobile and is available for phones with Android 2.0.

This means that armed with only a phone, you can have the ability of a GPS with you. No more phone and GPS device, phone = phone + GPS.

Although current phones with Google Maps has GPS functions, but the ability of it navigating with speech is solely the strength of those satnav devices.
With Google Maps Navigation, we can now have the speech guidance, with real-time data that feeds your GPS, such as real time traffic, street view and 3D satellite view . These are some that I do not think satnav companies can do in the very near future. Of course, such real-time functions will also depend on data availability and how many users are actually using to generate such amount of data too.

Traffic view : Highlights of red is heavy traffic, and you can choose to change your route to skip that portion of traffic

Street view : Previously only available on web, now you can view the street exactly like it is

Satellite view : Sort of a three dimensional view of the location

My next trip to Broga Hill, I might just be using Google Maps Navigation that tells me where to turn and leads me the way there (not that I want to complain about my very helpful co-driver though).

Google, Internet, Software, Technology Android, Android 2.0, Asus, Garmin, Google, Google Maps, Google Maps for mobile, Google Maps Navigation, GPS, Papago

Have you ever wondered how you could get to know the traffic condition on roads you are going to travel?

Information via media like radio is common, live traffic feed via internet is an upcoming trend or – a call to someone you know taking the same route sooner than you?

These things are going to change and frankly, we can see it coming – with Google Maps.
Google Maps provide the ease of location based search, road search, route planning and whatnot.
Google Maps for mobile, however takes location-based application one notch higher.

Since Google Maps for mobile runs on your device, it basically could know your location either via GPS (for GPS enabled device) or the nearest telco base station.

With GPS and data layering, Google Maps for mobile could now highlight the roads that are encountering traffic jam!

Imagine a significant number of users on the road with Google Maps for mobile on their devices turned on. This group of people sends data frequently to the Google Maps server indicating their location. For a particular road that the data source indicates that users are travelling at a low speed, then that road is shown as crowded and having bad condition.

This solution has already been implemented but only for U.S. at the moment. I’m sure it will gradually implemented globally when it’s ready.

Among the few things that I could see as issues at the moment and already mentioned by Google is data privacy. People might be concerned on sending their locations, including exact time of their travelling origin and destination. I believe the data could be traced to the device and if effort has been taken enough could find the owner.

Google is trying to educate users that they overcome the data privacy issue by making the data unidentifiable and to remove the data once it has been used.

We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone. We use our scale to provide further privacy protection: When a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another. Even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, we don’t want anybody to be able to find out where that anonymous vehicle came from or where it went — so we find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it.

The other problem would be data accuracy.
How accurate the data would be dependent on the number of users with Google Maps for mobile.
Only with a high number of users would the data be meaningful to identify roads that are having heavy road conditions, and it would be difficult to identify if the users are spread evenly and not everyone got their Google Maps enabled for this.

What about roads that are having multiple storeys? Ramps or multi-storey highways? How could that be identified which road is having heavy or light condition as the Google Maps is still in two dimension.

I guess there are still issues to be resolved but nevertheless, if Google is able to map the roads of the entire world, resolving issues for traffic condition shouldn’t be that difficult at all.

And if you can give me your location, I’ll get there in 60 seconds, skipping all the traffic jams along the way.

Google, Internet, Technology data privacy, Google Maps, Google Maps for mobile, GPS, traffic