http://www.Xactical.com Technology Design Innovation Invention Xactial http://wwww.Xactical.com and http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com RSS Feed - Technology, Design, Innovation, and Invention en-us Copyright 2008-2009 Xactical LLC http://www.xactical.com webmaster@xactical.com (Robert Gallick) Mon, 25 May 2009 15:09:00 MST http://www.Xactical.com/rss/Xactical-ICON143x30.png 143 30 http://www.Xactical.com Xactical.com RSS Feed on Technology, Design, Innovation, and Invention Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Sometimes the hardest part of problem solving is the identification of the actual problem. We sometimes see a symptom, quickly formulate a solution in our minds, and then approach the problem as the best way to implement the solution we have thought of. And sometimes no matter how good our intentions are, we fail to see the “bigger” problem that exists. I’ve mentioned this before and I have seen it in corporate America where someone wants a pet project and they rationalize it by coming up with “problems” that would be solved if they implemented their project. This is actually creating an excuse rather than problem solving...]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/04/problem-solving-asking-all-questions.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/04/problem-solving-asking-all-questions.html Xactical Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:00:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Some mental techniques are explored for improving ones inventive skills. I suppose everyone goes through periods of inventiveness. Sometimes you feel innovative and sometimes you don’t. No matter where I am at, I always find myself looking around for a problem to solve. The bad thing about doing this is it makes you focus on the negative things in the world around you. The good thing about it is it provides stimulus for potential new products and solutions. So whether I am home, in a restaurant, a public restroom, a theater, or a grocery store, I always look for things that could be improved. Read more...]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/honing-your-inventive-skills.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/honing-your-inventive-skills.html Xactical Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:23:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): To overcome the memory barrier of the current computing platforms, we need 64-bit computing on the desktop. But one of the biggest problems is all of my applications are 32-bit. It is reported that Microsoft Office 11 will ship in a 64-bit version in about a year. As a user, what I would like to see is a single offering with both a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version media in the same box. The same should apply to any new OS offerings. My analogy is it should be like buying a movie and having both letter-box and wide-format both on the same media. Read more...]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/64-bit-computing-needed-on-desktop.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/64-bit-computing-needed-on-desktop.html Xactical Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:30:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): I’ve been using Visio® since long before it was a Microsoft® product. When I first used it, it struck me as one of the best interfaces. It was intuitive to use and the drag and drop drawing features were way ahead of their time. Over the years the product has gradually improved but there is still one feature that would make it so much easier to use. It is almost shocking it has not been implemented in the product. I have literally drawn many thousands of Visio drawings in my life. I zoom-in more than I did two decades ago since my eye sight isn’t as good as it used to be. But once I zoom in, I often want to move the drawing left, right, up, or down so that I can work on another part of the drawing. And in doing so, I find myself always repositioning the mouse on the scroll bars and then back to the area I would like to work. Read more...]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/easily-reposition-visio-images.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/easily-reposition-visio-images.html Xactical Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:30:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): A menu option in the browser allows the user to create a user defined frameless browser window on the desktop. Along with code defined for that window in the window properties, these small browser windows become desktop widgets. Various primitive extensions such as the ability to consume web services or pull data from multiple web sources allows the user to create powerful extensions. The windows become permanent until deleted, as an option, so they will re-appear on reboot. Perhaps if Microsoft ever acquires Yahoo they can incorporate some of their widget engine technology into such a feature. The feature is explored in this blog entry. Browser windows acting as widgets on remote computing platforms will be explored in a future blog.]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/browser-ooption-creates-desktop-widgets.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/browser-ooption-creates-desktop-widgets.html Xactical Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:31:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): An Apple iPhone bluetooth based key finder is explored. The bluetooth dongles sound when activated from an iPhone. The dongles use standard button batteries and can be placed on keys, breief cases or any other item that the user needs to track. ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/iphone-bluetooth-key-finder.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/03/iphone-bluetooth-key-finder.html Xactical Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:34:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Problem solving is applied to the US Unemployment. Several stimulus suggestions are provided along with an alternative approach to Unemployment. A suggestion to enable students to remain in school to prevent them from entering the workplace and enabling those within several years of retirement to retire early to remove workers from the workforce are explored. ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/02/solving-us-unemployment.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/02/solving-us-unemployment.html Xactical Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:00:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Problem solving is applied to the US Economy. A suggested focused stimulus on Broadband Communications and Energy Independence is discussed. Comments on the US stock market as nothing more than legalized gambling. ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/02/us-economy-need-for-focused-stimulus.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/02/us-economy-need-for-focused-stimulus.html Xactical Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:00:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): This blog entry discusses the Apple iPhone human interface including the limitations on the number of applications that can concurrently be downloaded onto the device. Several suggested new features for the iPhone and iTunes are suggested including a drag and drop application sorting feature for iTunes and the ability to group application ICONS into fixed groups or to fixed pages for easy access. The ability to search, sort or have informative popup clouds over the ICONs for easy identification is also suggested... ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/02/apple-iphone-almost-perfect.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/02/apple-iphone-almost-perfect.html Xactical Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:42:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Well I had to laugh while reading the BBC News article by Maggie Shiels titled "Calls for open source government" when she referred to Scott McNealy as “…one of Silicon Valley’s most respected business leaders.” The article is about McNealy’s claims that president Obama has asked him to author a white paper on the benefits of open source. The president should have asked him to author a paper on how open source software has helped him lose most of the value of Sun Microsystems over the last decade. Though Sun's problems are much deeper than this, the thousands of additional people Sun is planning on laying off would be more than happy to tell the president the value of open source... ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-and-open-source.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-and-open-source.html Xactical Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:41:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Part of the basics of problem solving is gathering as much information as possible about a problem followed by creating hypothetical solutions for the problem and then trying to mentally match the best feasible solution to the problem. Sometimes we have something in mind for a product or service and we mentally work backward trying to understand the problem being solved with the proposed service or feature. The exercise becomes one of justifying the desired product or product feature... ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/problem-solving-domain-knowlege.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/problem-solving-domain-knowlege.html Xactical Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:41:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): There is a surge in the number of Digital Photo Frames, Smart Displays and now Intel IA based phones targeted to a number of market spaces including the home. It is envisioned that the popularity of smart displays, smart phones, and smart devices used for control, data collection, data display, security and communication will increase. This is evidenced by OpenPeak’s latest product announcement of an iPhone-like desk phone based on an Intel Atom processor. We could see tens of millions of such devices flowing into the marketplace as chip prices become more cost effective and as device power falls. It is expected that there could an X86 processor in just about every gadget in your home or business. The only thing that might slow this deployment down is the expected worsening recession which may last throughout 2009. ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/displays-will-increase-intel-chip.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/displays-will-increase-intel-chip.html Xactical Tue, 13 Jan 2009 11:35:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): Some are saying that Microsoft should throw in the towel with their Live Search technology claiming that Google has won. A different view of the problem is presented and three alternatives are suggested that could allow Microsoft to become a winner in the search engine space. It is suggested that acquiring Yahoo would have little impact on Microsoft's market share. ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/microsoft-and-google-search-engine-wars.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/microsoft-and-google-search-engine-wars.html Xactical Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:50:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): The Google search window is looked at in comparison to a command line interface. Google has extended this usefulness of their search window by responding to specific keywords which may be entered by the user. In essence, it acts as a command line interface. On the other hand, the Microsoft Windows command line has all but disappeared for the common user and HP has even disabled the command line from their new Mini 1000 mi computers. A hypothetical command line interface is explored that has no dedicated command prompt window. ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-is-google-doing-that-microsoft.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-is-google-doing-that-microsoft.html Xactical Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:29:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): No one wanted to carry a cell phone, a PDA, an MP3 player and a GPS device around with them all the time. It was just too many devices to handle. The solution to the problem was an integrated device such as the iPhone or RIM Blackberry. However, up until now, there are been many compromises with the integrated camera. More... ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2008/12/12-megapixel-camera-for-iphone.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2008/12/12-megapixel-camera-for-iphone.html Xactical Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:40:00 MST Xactical News (Technology, Design, Innovation & Invention): It was always frustrating to me to see the slow acceptance of tablet computers. Perhaps it was their cost or perhaps the lack of compelling applications that held their deployment to a limited niche market. Bringing the touch screen of an Apple ® iPhone® or iPod Touch® to the larger display of a laptop or a desktop would be interesting and useful. Interactive touch enabled applications and games would definitely be a distinguishable advantage to Apple. More... ]]> http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2008/12/could-we-see-apple-touch-display-on.html http://gallick-technology-invention.blogspot.com/2008/12/could-we-see-apple-touch-display-on.html Xactical Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:40:00 MST