The Peace Dividends of the Smartphone War One of the biggest byproducts of the mass proliferation of smartphones around the planet is the fact that the components inside the devices are becoming increasingly more powerful and sophisticated, while simultaneously becoming smaller and less expensive. Chris Anderson, the CEO of 3D Robotics, refers to this as… Continue reading The Innovation Happening Inside Hearables and Hearing Aids
Category: Essays
The Unexpected #VoiceFirst Power Users
In-The-Ear Assistants There was a really good post published last week in the #VoiceFirst world by Cathy Pearl, the author of the book, "Designing Voice User Interfaces." In her post, she goes through some of the positive effects that smart assistants are having on the disabled and elderly communities. The unique and awesome thing about the… Continue reading The Unexpected #VoiceFirst Power Users
Pondering Apple’s Healthcare Move
Outside Disruption There have been a number of recent developments that involve impending moves from non-healthcare companies intending to venture into the healthcare space in some capacity. First, there was the joint announcement from Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan and Amazon that they intend to team up to "disrupt healthcare" by creating an independent healthcare company… Continue reading Pondering Apple’s Healthcare Move
A Journey to the Center of the Ear
The Road Starts Here If you examine the past 50 years of user interfaces in computing, what you'll see is that a new one surfaces every 10 years or so. Each of these new interfaces has been an incremental step away from hardware-based interfaces, to ones that are more software-based. From the 1970's - early… Continue reading A Journey to the Center of the Ear
The Power of Network Effects
Think back to 2007 when the iPhone debuted. If you recall, the device itself was pretty unique - multi-touch touchscreen, completely new user interface, iconic form factor - but, the initial functionality that it provided was not all that different from what existed at that time. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone as, "an iPod, a… Continue reading The Power of Network Effects
Welcome to FuturEar
Hello and welcome to FuturEar! As the name insinuates, the purpose of this blog is to provide an ongoing account of the rapidly evolving audio landscape. My goal is to help make sense of all the trends that are converging toward the ear and then consider the implications of those progressions. This blog will feature… Continue reading Welcome to FuturEar