How my day was...

[mdlbear]

My day at work was almost entirely taken up with the Patent Review Committee: a dry run in the morning for my presentation, and the meeting itself all afternoon. My walk got squeezed down to under half an hour.

But the presentation went well; I'll find out tomorrow whether it passed. In any case, the next step is to get back to turning it from a bailing-wire-and-duct-tape demo into a real system. I'm actually rather pleased with it -- it's a system of physical devices, not just software.

Somehow I managed to twist my right ankle, just standing up out of my chair. Aspirin and a brace seem to have taken care of the worst of it, but I'm grumpy. That was the good ankle.

Not my project, but it's cool as heck and launched today: iCandy.ricohinnovations.com. No Linux client yet, unfortunately; I'll see what I can do. [11-10: Note: iCandy is cool technology, but it's still beta at this point and the site might not be the best introduction to it. The somewhat-misnamed About Us page might be a better place to start. Note that you need a webcam and iTunes in order to use it; we're all hoping that the need for iTunes will go away, because it's just as useful for sharing links to photos and websites as it is for sharing links to music.]

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit paranoid about signing up for things, especially if I don't know whether I'm actually going to use them. (I know I won't use iCandy, because I can't - I don't own a webcam, and the camera on my cell phone only takes still pictures.) I do like the concept, and I'm curious to see where it goes; perhaps in the future I might decide I need it after all (which, of course, would require that I buy some hardware).

You might want to involve a web designer at least part-time, though.

[mdlbear]

I'm pretty sure they have one under contract, but just having one is no guarantee that they'll have any sense of what users actually want. (And they're going after a very young demographic for the initial tests, so for all I know that is what they want.)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Then you can safely ignore all the nitpicking from someone who's been ordering off the "Senior Silver Saver" menu at Denny's for five years...

[mdlbear]

Hasn't stopped me yet. My actual title isn't "resident curmudgeon", but it might as well be.

Eventually they'll want broader appeal, because Ricoh's main customer base is small businesses and workgroups.