Mobile-related technologies for the past week, in 3 (or almost) words: A Kind Of Magic, Education, No Phone

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THE WEEK IN 3 WORDS

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WEEK #34

3. A KIND OF MAGIC
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In this article*, the author comments a survey his company has done over 1 000 students,
asking them which applications (not yet famous) they currently use and what would be their
“dreamt” application.
This study shows that those students run a quite disparate set of applications and none of them
emerges as being the application that gets a massive approval. It also shows that a majority of
them would like a sort of super application that would help them run their life (by mixing their
own life and external information to plan a perfect day – no room for surprises…)
The author concludes by expecting the next wave of applications to be “magic” applications,
synthetizing several sources of data to deliver a global consistent experience, in opposition
with the first wave we experienced so far, mainly made of one-feature focused applications.
This conclusion may be a bit too reductive. The survey demonstrated that users are not
interested in the same functionalities, thus downloading and using very different applications,
that answer their specific needs. This is unlikely to change, because users would probably not
trust a public transportation application to advise them on a place for dinner or a live show:
every application has its own specific usage, even if the dreamt application would do
everything…
But, hey, isn’t this magic application actually called a smartphone?
(*) http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/15/what-studying-students-teaches-us-about-great-apps/?ncid=rss

5. EDUCATION
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Learning how to code is the goal that more and more applications try to
achieve. Tickle is on of them, still in development and crowdfunding on
KickStarter.
The promises of applications such Tickle are pretty impressive, in the
kind of powerful achievements they seem to permit, without actually
having to write any line of code. Still, the user learns coding
fundamentals, like: sequence of operations, tests, iterations, etc.
Moreover, such applications teach us that programming learning is key
in today kids education. Digital technologies already shape the world
and it’s only a beginning: in the future, pretty every thing will come with
an embedded computer (vehicles, home accessories, wearable
objects, etc.). If users have basic knowledge of how such “things” work,
logically, they will be actors of their life and not only blindly depend on
their surrounding technologies.

7. NO PHONE
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It seems to be a good gag – even more now that the supporting site is down –
but it’s innovative enough to be reported here.
Innovative? Oh yes! A phone that does not need a battery,
a chipset, that does not require any software to run, that
will work forever, that is even toilet-bowl proof… Won’t
you name this “innovative”? Though, it looks like it’s a
pretty cheap phone.
Wondering how this is all achieved? Well… welcome in
the future! The noPhone is all you can expect from a
phone – be your everyday partner, comfort – without the
worries – disturbing calls or alerts, low battery,
incompatibility with latest version of applications, etc.
If you’re lucky, check it out at: http://www.nophone.eu/; and if you’re not and
this site is not available… well, just try to stomach the fact you’ve missed the
opportunity to be the first to possess such combination of highly advanced
technologies!