What is the snazziest computer/phone thingy?

[CharlieB]

And is it just possible that the iPad was named after the PADD devices used in the original Star Trek by Kirk and crew?

The operation looks the same, but I doubt the iPad gets you a relationship with a green woman.

 

[byegad]

I believe in another 50 years, mobile phones will post to each other on forums about the latest app they are running on their human.

Or summat.

Too late human!


byegad's Blackberry!

 

[darkstar]

iPhones and Ipads run that app, it's pretty awesome.

 

[dodgy]

It's called Pocket Universe, and it is sensational, especially with the clear nights we've been having rececntly.

 

[2Loose]

"Google Sky Map" software does indeed rock.

"Google Voice Search" is a lot more practical but just as wow - speak it and it shall go off and find it on 'tinterweb...

 

[meenaghman]

Was playing around with Google voice search. Here hot off the press Today's news : http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/9/8/google-demos-live-speech-translator-android/ imagine that.. speak into phone .. translates your voice.

 

[Bman]

Do you ever watch some of the earlier (60s/70s) Bond movies and think 'I remember when all these gadgets were like magic - now have handheld technology which is better than that'?

I am (just) old enough to remember when Teletext was just fantastic - controlling what appeared on screen was like having the power of the Gods.

However, I am still waiting for my Dick Tracy watch, jetpac and hover car. Less patiently every year...

I watched Moonraker at the weekend. Bond used his cigarette case as a xray device for opening a safe. Its hard to take seriously now.

 

[Canrider]

I wonder when it was that the mobile phone - or something like it - first appeared in TV fiction as the communcation of the future? My belief is, it was well before Star ("beep-beep-beep-Kirk here") Trek, it dates from The Man From UNCLE, early 1960s, IIRC. All good stuff! Of course when I used to watch it, as a kid, I never believed that everyone and their dog would be carrying one of the things around come the 2000's...

There was also a spoof version of M-f-U, Get Smart - anyone remember? The eponymous agent carried his mobile built into his shoe.

Dick Tracy had a radio built into his watch, pre-WWII.

 

[martint235]

I was one of the two that night using an android hero. There was confusion over the planets involved because of the alignment of the text. Only the "nus" of the second planet could be rread. I thought it was venus, the other guy (could have been Adrian but not sure) thought uranus.

I do use my phone to make calls too (and to post on CC when on residential training)

 

[Arch]

I don't have such a phone yet, but eventually I expect I will. I think the app that I saw advertised that started me thinking 'ooo, cool!' was a bit more prosaic - a spirit level.

Are we the generation who've seen the greatest leaps in technology? But then, think of Orville Wright - made the first powered flight, and lived to see the jet 'plane.

I suppose it's a matter of scale. One little flame doesn't seem like much to us, but to the generation to whom it meant the difference between raw and cooked, it was pretty big!

 

[GazK]

It is Jupiter. I remember talking to someone about it at the time. Quite the brightest thing in the dusk sky at the moment. You should see it through a reasonable telescope! They haven't developed an iPhone app for that (yet).

The easiest way to tell whether a bright object is a star or a planet is stars twinkle (due to their distance) and planets don't!

Stars twinkle because their distance makes them a point source and movements in the earths atmosphere disturbs that point source. The larger planets have an apparent diameter so the fluctuations in the atmosphere don't have the same effect.

 

[Archie_tect]

Do you ever watch some of the earlier (60s/70s) Bond movies and think 'I remember when all these gadgets were like magic - now have handheld technology which is better than that'?

I am (just) old enough to remember when Teletext was just fantastic - controlling what appeared on screen was like having the power of the Gods.

However, I am still waiting for my Dick Tracy watch, jetpac and hover car. Less patiently every year...

One of my favourite children's books was an Arthur C Clark story called Dolphin Boy which was set 'way in the future' [this was back in the early 70s]. The boy's schooling was done at home on-line with his classmates all interacting with the teacher [video conferencing!] with jetboats, hydrofoils and the like. Fantastic imagination AC Clark had!