The Digital Brink

If there's one thing about technology that I love, it's that it is always changing.  You can wake up one morning and go to sleep that evening with a completely different landscape.  Following the technology news is easy if you care about it, but forming opinions and trying to disseminate all of the information is something else entirely.

I've found that I think about technology all the time.  While I'm driving, taking a shower, walking to class...  It's almost the only thing that I think about these days.  So I've decided that I should try to write about these ideas.  Thus begins The Digital Brink.

The Digital Brink is a space for me to try to focus my thoughts on technology into fully formed articles.  My writing skill isn't exactly stellar, and I am by no means a journalist in the technology industry, but it makes sense that if I can articulate my thoughts into readable and enjoyable pieces that I might be able to come up with even more thoughts about this awesome world of technology that we live in.

Contact Requests. Why Isn't This a Thing?

Apple let the leash off of a slew of new stuff last Wednesday, not least of which being a new Mail/Contact/Calendar syncing service called iCloud.  As of right now, the only thing iCloud does is synchronize your stuff between your Mac, iOS devices, and it's web interfaces - something that Google has been doing for years with Gmail, Calendar, and Android.  What I can't figure out is why no one has used these services to let people share contact information with each other.

Both Apple and Google have had the opportunity to create a feature like this, and it seems obvious to me that they should.  As everyone knows, managing a contact list of everyone you know is an immensely tedious task.  Apple could easily roll out a system like this through iCloud and iOS, and Google could easily do it through Gmail and Android.  A user maintains their profile and the people they're sharing it with instead of trying to manage a static contact list.  Imagine asking someone for their Apple ID or their Gmail address instead of their phone number when you want to exchange contact information.

This awesome mockup was done by Cillian O'Keeffe. Thanks a ton!

The model for this system could take inspiration from Valve.  Steam has a very simple "Add a Friend" feature that lets you enter the email address of the person who you want to add.  Once you do that, an alert will show up on that person's Steam account that lets them confirm the friendship.  The exact same process could be done through iCloud and people's me.com address, or through Gmail.

Granted, Facebook already has something like this.  The Facebook apps on iOS and Android can synchronize your Facebook friends list with your device's contact list.  But it always isn't appropriate to be a Facebook friend with someone (like your boss or a client), as it gives them access to much more than just your name and phone number.

In the coming years, mobile phone plans will move away from a weird combination of gigabytes of data, voice minutes, and text messages to only data (and an unlimited amount of it), people will have the freedom to use a multitude of communication media.  For now, Google and Apple need to create a system like this so that they can maintain a list of connections for when phone numbers become obsolete.

Begun, the Job Hunt Has

Right now, I'm in my last semester at Texas State University. I'm set to graduate with a Bachelors of Business Administration in Computer Information Systems in December of this year. As such, it's time for me to begin searching for a job.

I should note right away that my college experience has been dismal at best, and a total nightmare at worst. I haven't felt like I've gone through more of a grind in my entire life, and that's a horrible thing. College should be challenging and enriching, but instead it's been mindless and dull. Trudging through class has been the bane of my existence for the last two years, and I honestly don't have much to show for it in terms of new knowledge. The vast majority of the new information that I have obtained throughout my college life has been independently and outside the scope of class.

The problem is that my overall GPA doesn't reflect the lack of challenge. Quite the contrary, in fact, it would seem from an outsider as though I struggled through, hanging on to the one lone thread of understanding from a particular course and pulling it through to obtain a barely passing grade. That is an unfortunate side effect from a curriculum that isn't engaging or enveloping. Frankly, I don't think the knowledge and experience that I have gained while on this campus is enough for me to be a worthwhile hire for a potential employer. So I've been doing other things...

I just hope those other things are evident to my potential employers when I apply for a job.

Perry Dental Health Consulting

The website for Dr. Perry's new consulting company, Perry Dental Health Consulting, is up and running! This was a project long in the works, and I think it turned out very nice.  It is using jQuery to show and hide the main content, which is all preloaded.  We also used Google Calendar to display information regarding Dr. Perry's speaking events.

AJAX, HashChange, and Twitter

I've upgraded troy swanson dot net to use the HashChange event, and converted the site to an AJAX-only experience. Now, one page is loaded, and any links that are clicked are fetched asynchronously using jQuery.

Also, I added a Twitter node in the side bar, and am working on creating a client that utilizes Twitter's Streaming API to fetch tweets in real time. Right now, I'm using the RESTful API to fetch tweets every 5 minutes.