3 ms·

What bothers me is that the most important part of this project is to get a lot of existing entities to do something for the visual impaired people (e.g. put bl

by hrktb 12y ago

What bothers me is that the most important part of this project is to get a lot of existing entities to do something for the visual impaired people (e.g. put bluetooth devices everywhere, create sevices to push the information to users), and I feel this part of the project is brushed away in a "we have great ideas, surely everyone will be conviced to make them possible" attitude. There is already realtime tracking of the train delays where I live, and it just doesn't work (regularly a train will be displayed as arriving to a station, when clearly it's not there, and 5 min after it gets rescheduled). Telling me in nice video that we'll expand this kind of experience to vuses and a lot of other things, and it will help blind people to workaround unexpected things just feels like wild fantasy. About the other companies, Apple's doesn't advertise feel good prototypes of "boil the ocean" types of projects. They didn't come with a "wouldn't it be great if you could pay for things with our technology ? Imagine if everyone put this beacon everywhere in the world" video telling fluffy stories in advance. They prototyped the barcode payment system in their shop, you could actually use it with existing devices, and they're pushing their NFC payment with a nationwide partner networks with working payment terminals from the get go, doing the hard work upfront.

pataracts 12y ago
Should we dismiss ideas because they don't work as intended right now? All I see here is room for improvement. Rarely, if ever, do new approaches work perfectly the first time around, and the problem is especially complex. Regardless of how Microsoft profits from this, it is still a good idea that could improve the lives of millions of people. If a company can make money while improving the lives of people, that is a good thing for both parties, wouldn't you say?
- hrktb 12y ago
  I think I might be grumpy, but it's hard for me to share the hyperbolism of this PR piece on the importance of the experiment. To put it differently, this PR story should be written when this experiment expends to London as a whole and is ready to actually take the world. In a way, this is another instance of the "ideas don't matter, implementation does" mantra. It's not their ideas that will change millions of people's life, it's the implementation, and what is presented doesn't seen revolutionary nor reliable nor scalable to me. I'd want to be proven wrong, of course.
  - pataracts 12y ago
    Fair enough, thanks for replying.
radiorental 12y ago
'There is already realtime tracking of the train delays where I live, and it just doesn't work' The important point is not that the data is flawed, it's accessibility to that data. Leveling the playing field.
- hrktb 12y ago
  That the data is already accessible. It has an app, it has a website. If you can use the accessibility features of any smartphone then you have access to it. The leveling of the playing field you mention is not some moonshot, some dream to hold dear to one's heart. It certainly can still be done better, but it's already done competently.

by hrktb 12y ago

pataracts 12y ago

Should we dismiss ideas because they don't work as intended right now? All I see here is room for improvement. Rarely, if ever, do new approaches work perfectly the first time around, and the problem is especially complex. Regardless of how Microsoft profits from this, it is still a good idea that could improve the lives of millions of people. If a company can make money while improving the lives of people, that is a good thing for both parties, wouldn't you say?

hrktb 12y ago
I think I might be grumpy, but it's hard for me to share the hyperbolism of this PR piece on the importance of the experiment. To put it differently, this PR story should be written when this experiment expends to London as a whole and is ready to actually take the world. In a way, this is another instance of the "ideas don't matter, implementation does" mantra. It's not their ideas that will change millions of people's life, it's the implementation, and what is presented doesn't seen revolutionary nor reliable nor scalable to me. I'd want to be proven wrong, of course.
- pataracts 12y ago
  Fair enough, thanks for replying.

radiorental 12y ago

'There is already realtime tracking of the train delays where I live, and it just doesn't work' The important point is not that the data is flawed, it's accessibility to that data. Leveling the playing field.

hrktb 12y ago
That the data is already accessible. It has an app, it has a website. If you can use the accessibility features of any smartphone then you have access to it. The leveling of the playing field you mention is not some moonshot, some dream to hold dear to one's heart. It certainly can still be done better, but it's already done competently.