Why we will never fall in love with our smartphone’s virtual assistant

After watching Her last night (the Golden Globe winner for the Best Screenplay category) I was captivated by its amazing performances and its delightfully depicted technology. What motivated me the most to watch the movie was this article from Wired: why Her will dominate UI design even more than Minority Report.

In the movie, technology is almost completely transparent for the user: most of the interactions between Theodore, the main character, and his “smartphone” happen through the earpiece and the virtual assistant, and he only touches the little screen when he wants to watch a picture. This is what his gadgets look like:

Visual user interfaces are almost nowhere to be seen, and that’s the message: human interactions are the future of personal computing.

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Would you sell your driving privacy for a potential discount?

I attended a presentation by Kevin Mitnick several years ago where he claimed that he could get a person’s account password by offering them a pen, by the end of the presentation he was able to get several. In reality people do give up their information for a benefit, Google gives you free search results, Facebook keeps you connected with friends for free, Nielsen pays you to know your TV habits and even the government with their NSA programs provides security (although this has been controversial to say the least).

I first heard about Progressive from my marketing professor, who raved about them. He really loved this company due to their offerings and their great marketing. He also talked about their Snapshot program where Progressive sends a customer a device that tracks their driving habits and provides a discount to do so. At the time, I was very happy with my car insurance but started noticing the advertisement around this program. I found it very intriguing and was curious about it. Last August when I bought a new car my insurance company dropped the ball and I decided to give Progressive a try.

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The future of Smart TVs

Last week I bought a new TV for my parents. It turns out, salesmen give you weird looks when you tell them that a Smart TV is not as powerful as a simple laptop connected through HDMI.

Nonetheless, the TV I got has integrated Wi-Fi and yes, is a Smart TV. All in all, I kept telling my mom (the techie of the family) that by having the Surface next to the TV, they wouldn’t use the “smart” part.

4 ways I’d change Windows Phone 8

This is a follow-up post to a comparison between the Lumia 920 and the iPhone 5s and you can also find a similar list of opinions about the iPhone 5s and the iOS ecosystem here.

Windows Phone 8 is a great product, there is no doubt; unfortunately, there are several issues that might drive people like me to try other mobile environments. The following list is a compilation of personal opinions about what things I’d change from the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem.

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4 ways I’d change the iPhone 5s

Some of my beloved friends at Microsoft mentioned that the comparison of the Nokia Lumia 920 and the iPhone 5s wasn’t fair because I compared a 2012 device with a 2013 device.

Well, I disagree. The 920 happens to win and loose in exactly the same categories that the Lumia 1020, which is a 2013 device: it’s still bulkier and heavier than the 5s and it still has a much better camera than the 5s.

However, I’ll go a step further and expand the comparison with a list of things I’d change from the iPhone 5s and the iOS ecosystem.

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Nokia Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5s

Three years ago, I switched from an iPhone 3Gs with iOS 4.2 to a Samsung Focus with Windows Phone 7 and I wrote a series of posts about the changes (here’s the translation, powered by Bing: part I, II and III).

Things have changed a lot since 2010: Android has surpassed iOS and is now the market-share king, Google bought Motorola, Blackberry has “disappeared”, Windows Phone has evolved quite a bit and Microsoft is in the middle of the process of buying Nokia’s devices & services business.

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