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Tag: technology

April 14, 2019

Why You Need to Build a Kitchen Counter Tech Station

If you’re finding too much of your tech cluttering your kitchen counter, it’s time to get organized. Here’s what I did…

Your kitchen counter made is for cooking, right? But how often do other household items and mail accumulate on it? And how about all of your tech? Don’t tell me that you’ve never had to charge up your smartphone on your counter…

It’s just a mess!
Right?

Instead of fighting it… I say… go with it.
…and officially make some space for it.

Your tech doesn’t have to take a lot of room, but you should really consider creating your own kitchen counter tech station.

The Lester Kitchen Tech Station
My tech station lives in the corner of our kitchen tucked away on the counter next to the refrigerator. These are the pieces:

  • Sonos Play:1 wireless speaker
    If you dream of having whole-house music functionality, then you’ve got to find a place in your kitchen for a speaker, right?
  • Orbi Wi-Fi router’s satellite unit
    When I upgraded my home Wi-Fi to a mesh system, I needed to find a centrally-located place on the first floor to locate the satellite Orbi to extend its mesh network. The corner of our kitchen counter was the perfect spot.
  • Cordless telephone
    Yes, we still have a landline. (Cough)
  • Compact power strip
    Of course, your kitchen wasn’t designed for your power-hungry tech to take over all of the outlets. So, you’re probably going to need to create a power extension for all of your resident kitchen tech. I went with a compact 4-plug surge protector and 2 USB charger made by NTONPOWER.
    It’s $20.99 on Amazon Prime.

I’ve positioned these four tech supports neatly in a row in the corner of our kitchen counter.

Smartphone Support
Then, I’ve got a mobile smartphone/tablet stand. It’s easy to attach one of our iPhones to it when cooking from an online recipe. Sure, you can simply place the phone on the counter, but when food and knives are flying around, I find it’s safer for our devices to live slightly above the action. Plus it’s easier to read the recipe!

I went with a stand made by Kanto… It’s $29.99 on Amazon Prime.

Tomorrow’s Kitchen… Today
If you want your kitchen to be a tech-free zone, then good luck to you. Let me know how that’s working out.

For the rest of us, I think it makes a lot of sense to find a corner in your kitchen that’s relatively out of the way and intentionally build your own tech station.

You’ll feel a lot more organized!

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June 10, 2018

Ode to the IT Guy on Father’s Day

Someone placed this mystery spring on my desk at home, and it inspired me to pen another of my occasional ‘poems.’ Please be gentle…

A Tiny Spring is on his Desk

A tiny spring is on his desk
From whom he cannot fathom
It could be from his better half
Perhaps his little phantom

The IT Guy should know it all
His home tech in his control
All the gear working as it should
Not warped by a near wormhole

Like Sisyphus, it’s never done
You really cannot linger
Even superheroes feel woe
They can’t just snap a finger

But a Thanos he cannot be
He works hard to be a sleuth
Not so clever like MacGuiver
If you only knew the truth

Loading Minecraft on his iMac
His eight year old beams with glee
But when he gets stuck in a realm
He cannot help the boy flee

His wife’s old Macbook Pro runs slow
The fix is more RAM he thinks
He even does the job himself
But now the battery stinks

But with no quest, what good is that?
It’s the challenge that’s the fun
He needs that spring, it makes him think
About more than hot dog buns

To all the dads, the day is near
When all will scream your wonder
They have the faith you know enough
That you will never blunder

But do dads have some special skill?
This premise is so not true
They just treat tech like a hobby
No Kobayashi Maru

But if you want to help him be
A Jedi in his domain
Go right ahead and make him smile
Though you walk the same terrain

Still, he’s nifty at what he does
He keeps your ship a running
Even though there are lots of times
He’s not sure he’s so stunning

It’s the journey that builds his skills
His big brain… no marshmallow
Now go celebrate Father’s Day
And fill his desk tomorrow

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April 1, 2018

Please Give the Computer on the Phone a Moment to Act More Human

When a computer on the other end of your phone call can’t move fast enough, is that good customer service? Well, it depends…

Customer service call centers are dominated by automated voice response systems, voice recognition, computer-generated voices, and growing AI capabilities. These non-human IVR interfaces are the first line of defense before you can talk with a human being. It’s been that way for years.

And granted, more sophisticated technologies have vastly improved the user experience these days. But it’s still not the same as talking to a real person. Not even close.

So why do voice recordings and computer generated voices pretend like they’re actual people? Do the human designers feel like their cyber creations are somehow totally pulling it off?

Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL
When I hear the computer “typing” in the background… now that’s just silly.

“Please give me a moment while I submit this.”
Really?
(That’s what the computer lady said when I called the New York Times to set up a vacation suspension before we travelled to Massachusetts to see family over the holidays.)

Is there some laptop computer running down the hallway to get my order into the in-box ahead of a hulking iMac that can’t turn the corner quite as fast?
(That would be fun to watch.)

Seriously, though…
Is there a pause in our ‘conversation,’ because the technology requires the delay?
Or is the delay inserted there just to make me feel more comfortable?
(Because an actual person wouldn’t be able to move any faster)

In a future world ruled by AI, I certainly hope sentient computers aren’t going make us wait around for answers, because they think we’ll like it better that way.

Or maybe they will… just to annoy us.
Because we all know they’ll be able to figure out any question instantaneously.
(Including the fate of humanity… but that’s another conversation.)

Can We Speed it Up, Please?
Look, I certainly understand that the goal is to make this kind of tech feel more approachable to today’s human population.

When I hear a computer’s interactive voice like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home or Apple’s Siri, and these smart assistants are sounding so real… that’s already amazing, right?

When the day comes where I can’t tell the difference between a computer and a person’s voice on the phone, it’s going to be pretty wild. And that’s a whole other conversation.

If that computer voice wants to throw in some extraneous sounds to lock in the whole reality, I say go for it!

But until then, please don’t do silly things to try to appear human.
That’s what humans do.

Please just be a computer and get the job done better and faster than a person can.
That’s how you’re going to make people happy.

Wait… what?

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