John Karlin, Developer of All-Digit Dialing Dies at 94

As the home phone is posed to slowly fade into oblivion, many of us are unaware of the process that took the home phone from the realm of operator controlled call centers to completely automated digital call handling.  

Before John Karlin call handling had transformed from operators to mechanical switches.  But in the decades following WWII the number of home based private numbers outpaced the mechanical switch centers ability to absorb them.  

Enter the DTMF system or Dual Tone Multi Frequency dialing which mixes two tones to represent a single number and as little as five frequencies mixed to produce 0 thru 9 plus room for two special keys.  This technology allowed the call centers to transit to filters and digital switches and the ability to handle substantially more calls. 

But the shift to the new system required a paradigm shift in the design of the phone. 

From the article:

• The rectangular design of the keypad, the shape of its buttons and the position of the numbers — with “1-2-3” on the top row instead of the bottom, as on a calculator — all sprang from empirical research conducted or overseen by Mr. Karlin. 

2013 is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the touch-tone phone.  In those 50 years, Karlin's designs have affected many more technologies than the phone.  The keyboard design alone has become innocuous  finding itself incorporated in dissimilar items as the microwave oven to cellular phones.   And to consider that John Karlin made such stunning contributions to the very nature of how we use technology was virtually unknown outside his field.  

Original article in the New York Times 2/8/13 by By Margalit Fox

submitted by xnewsman

Five Most Popular Tech Myths

Popular may have been a bit of an over statement, lets say the five most commonly held myths in the tech world.  First off, I know that Five common anything in and of itself is a myth, so I am not about to say that this is definitive in the least. But I crawled through a few lists and took some that just screamed of polarization in the techie world. Let's see if you agree:

1: Macs are immune to Malware: Last year alone the trojan called Flashback infected more than 600,000 Macs. The idea that Macs were not as likely to contract malware was more of a marketing ploy spread by Apple marketing than actual statistics of real conditions.

2: The more megapixels a camera has the better the pictures: Do you remember the movie "This is Spinal Tap"? The part I am referring to is when Nigel explained to the documentary's director that their amps went to 11 while other amps only went to 10. When pushed for the significance his only reply was "But Ours Go to 11!" as it was with Nigel so is it with camera buyers today. Unless you plan on printing and enlarging your photos, the extra pixels are of no use what so ever. For the web, a 3 mega pixel camera's output will be virtually the same as a camera with 3 to 4 times the pixel count. Plus if the pictures are going online, even 3 mega pixels have to be downsized to less pixels so they will load faster. Yep, pixels from your great 16 mega pixel camera are thrown away when you put them online for viewing.

3: Commercial software is safer and more reliable than free or open-source software. Wow talk about a loaded question! But one near and dear to my heart, because you see, free or open source and free software is in many ways superior to their commercial counterparts. First quite a few free software titles are gateways to commercial packages. That's fine in my book. As long as the free packages have enough features from the commercial versions to make them safe and functional. I myself use almost exclusively open-source ( open source software is usually conceived and coded by programming pros that have a need for custom software, which they then release to the public to change or improve the software to make it more up to date ) These packages are equal and in a lot of cases superior to the commercial offering.

4: The qwerty keyboard was designed to slow typists down: Here is another that is close to my heart and to be truthful I know this answer from experience. The true answer is exactly opposite. From my experience the keyboard designed was to speed up or to be clearer to make typists more efficient by having them type more. Yes the design comes from the old typewriter days when the keys and letters were mechanical. Only one key could occupy the paper strike area at a time. In the ABC keyboard, it was easy to get the most common keys used to try and occupy a space designed for one letter, the keys would then jam and you would spend time getting the keys unstuck. The less time you did this and the more you spent typing the more efficient you were, so the most common keys were moved apart to cause less jamming and much less wear and tear on the expensive equipment. Typing speeds in truth went up and repair bills went down all due to the qwerty keyboard design. today, no one design is better than another because it is now impossible to "jam" keys.

5: Refurbished tech is not as good as new: Another one that near and dear! WRONG! People have this idea that refurbed means broken damaged or otherwise not working that has had the bare minimum needed to get it operational and returned to the sales floor or bought by junk dealers who sell it with no warranty. In reality refurbs can be as simple as a floor demo or a unit with packaging damage or missing instructions or secondary hardware. Often these are cleaned, tested, repacked and sent for sale. It has been< my experience that such units are NEVER old, then they can only be sold as used. They can not be sold as new, so you often get great savings on items that have little or no usage at all. Now to be as safe as possible, purchase factory certified. These have been tested to spec and often have 30 to 90 day warranties. The savings may be shorter though. If you can forgo the< factory certifications look to buy from sites that will allow you to lodge a grievance should you be unhappy with your purchase. I myself have used these option with a great deal of success and maybe once or twice had to ask for a replacement. You should check the reputation of the site you are making purchases from would not hurt though.

Now there are MANY other tech mythperceptions that can be found by googling the subject. Some of these ideas came from

Lifehacker

and

from an article by Kim Komando

Patent Foolishness a real WTF!

Here is a riddle for ya: What's a rectangle with rounded corners? Hint, it can ONLY BE ONE THING.

Yep, you heard that right, there is only ONE rectangular device with rounded corners in the whole world! Come on, it can't be that hard, there IS only one.

How can I say something so obviously wrong, why there are thousands of devices that are rectangular with rounded corners! Awcontraire mon ami! According to the Mashable Tech website:

• Apple has been awarded a design patent for the “rectangles with curved corners” look of the iPad.
• The patent — called “Portable Display Device” and includes Steve Jobs among its inventors — was filed in November 2010 (six months after Apple launched its first-generation iPad tablet), but was finally approved on Tuesday by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

That's right there can be only one! and Steve Job's invented it! Says so right on the patent app!  Not resting on its' laurels Apple has already gone after Samsung demanding several products be banned in the US outright!

How's that for developing a free and open market with the patent office protecting the small entrepreneur. I feel so much safer now knowing I am not being bullied by corporate entities!

How many times have we seen just such a scenereo in a science fiction movie or story huh?

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