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Showing posts from July, 2009

Home Automation

I would love to get into some real good home automation. I think the technology is there (or at least almost there) to make some really cool things now. It would be great if there were microphones set throughout the house so you could just say "computer.. do this" or "computer.. dim lights.. set dinner party mood" or "computer activate house alarm for downstairs" when you go to bed. Windows Vista has some good voice recognition that is heavily underused. I have got some good results after giving it rigourous training. Of course it still occasionaly does some blunders but it is getting there. Like wise no use is made of the speech API really either. I think with these 2 combined you could do some very interesting things. One place is in the kitchen. There are already usages of LCD television screens in kitchens ect.. but really these should be computers with voice recognition ect.. so that you can say to it, "Recipe for Lamb Rogan Josh Curry" for

Posture

I have decided to give a posture correcting strap a go for my back. As some will probably know I fell off a cliff 2 years ago and had some extremely serious injuries and obviously I am still recovering from them. The biggest thing that gives me grief everyday is a back neck and back. It doesn’t help that I am sat at a computer almost all the time. Anyway I saw this in the back of a computer magazine and thought I’d give it a try. It’s not something I would normally do but when you back is on fire you will try anything! Here is the website and below is the product. I will left you know how I get on with it when it arrives!

Velosos 5Qs

We covered an interesting thing today on the Emarketing course. The general feel today was an introduction into writing persuasive content and how you engage the customer / reader on your website (although the same ideas apply off the web as well). The main idea to get a customer interested in your products and services is engage in an internal conversation in their heads. The idea is to give them content that they can identify with, makes them think about themselves and what they want and need and then suggests a solution to them (ie: your product / service). There is a person called Veloso I after a bit of digging I assume it it this Maria Veloso . They have 5 big questions that were pushed as a great framework to write content. We call them the 5qs! What's the problem? Identify the problem with the customer in the text, or explain a situation that helps them identify their own current problem. For example, you currently don't have all the sports channels on television so ca