IDEA: Consumer electronics with open personalization

Okay, I have to do a quick post since I am at work.

I have mentioned before that I love the idea of people customizing their experience with the electronics they use each day. I have seen anime and other creative stories that have interesting UIs in cell phones and the like.

My idea is to have a company that makes consumer electronics such as cell phones. The primary goal is to add software to these devices that allows the user to personalize their experience.

You could say that Android systems allow this, but customization for each person does not seem to be an easy task from the little research I've done. Feel free to chime in in the comments if you know otherwise.

For this company, their software would allow users to personalize their device easily and quickly, perhaps even on the fly. One obvious example is font for various phone functions. The user could design their own font for use throughout the phone. Other possibilities for customization include background, animations, and so on.

This came up after I was thinking how cool it would be to use some of the LED displays I had obtained in watches, and then I thought "Well it would be easier to just do it with a single matrix-type display using software.

IDEA: Binary clock in a ring

Just a free idea off the top of my head. I was thinking it would be neat to have a binary clock on a ring.

After a little experiment with a small sheet of paper, it looks like it would be idea if the "digits" were all on one side (one quarter) of the ring. It would be readable for both right and left with the correct orientation.

The lights would have to be very small, e.g. 1mm in diameter, and with decent vertical spacing, only the hours and minutes could be shown. For the paranoid that wonder whether it's actually ticking, you could add one more led that blinks for each tick.

If anyone out there sees this and makes it a reality, I would be very interested in pictures!

CODING: Observations on coding big projects

So, I am currently doing a big coding project, codenamed "Joe", and I have an observation I wanted to share.

I seem to be going through three steps in my development process:

- General planning
- Coding to deliver functionality
- Unit testing and optimization

Now, part of this is due to my impatient nature. I want the results as soon as possible. In theory, I could do more of the optimization during the planning stage, and more of the unit testing during coding.

However, I think there is also a valid point that not all code requirements can be planned out. Some obstacles or "inspiration" may occur during coding, and then we still need the optimization step at the end.

Incidentally, I liken the optimization step to taking the parts of a machine out, cleaning them and going over them, then putting them back in.