NASA SmartSatellites based on Nexus S
I remember Bill Gates on stage at a Microsoft employee conference talking about the progress in computing power, and how he envisaged that the humle Windows CE (or Pocket PC at the time?) could power everything...
He had a Windows CE phone device with an external keyboard and TV screen, which basically was a sub $300 "computer" for emerging markets. And he mentioned (probably before 2000) how satellites could potentially run off Windows CE. How sad (for Microsoft) that they did not capitalise on the opportunity they had then. Where they just too early, or where the execution and focus just not there?
(I also remember saying that Google and phone would never work :) )
I've been dreaming of sending a phone into space, but it's been done so many times, that I'm not sure just replicating it would be much of a challenge... I'm hunting for that special twist that will make it much more interesting.
More seriously, NASA is now doing it too... powering a satellite with an Android Nexus S phone.
This excites me. Why? Because tech is so much more advanced than our applications of it. We can do so much more with the building blocks we've got today, and it's exciting to see some serious (e.g. NASA) work being done on a humble (cheap, commodity) phone. It's a similar story to the Arduino control systems....
He had a Windows CE phone device with an external keyboard and TV screen, which basically was a sub $300 "computer" for emerging markets. And he mentioned (probably before 2000) how satellites could potentially run off Windows CE. How sad (for Microsoft) that they did not capitalise on the opportunity they had then. Where they just too early, or where the execution and focus just not there?
(I also remember saying that Google and phone would never work :) )
I've been dreaming of sending a phone into space, but it's been done so many times, that I'm not sure just replicating it would be much of a challenge... I'm hunting for that special twist that will make it much more interesting.
More seriously, NASA is now doing it too... powering a satellite with an Android Nexus S phone.
This excites me. Why? Because tech is so much more advanced than our applications of it. We can do so much more with the building blocks we've got today, and it's exciting to see some serious (e.g. NASA) work being done on a humble (cheap, commodity) phone. It's a similar story to the Arduino control systems....
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