Sometimes, there are two ways to do things. It’s great if a programmer knows how to write a specific block of code in both ways, and understand the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. Now, why not take web tutorials or technical books and have them teach two things at once? If it sounds a little confusing to you, think of it this way. Let’s see, there are a lot of online PHP tutorials out there, so let’s use that as an example. Let’s say we have an online PHP tutorial that teaches how to use MySQL and PostgreSQL with PHP.

The programmer, previously knowing how to work with neither, now knows how to work with two popular databases that PHP supports. I think that the dual tutorial could greatly improve what is learned from a tutorial or book that applies this concept. It will also save the programmer time as he does not have to learn something else in the event that he cannot write something the way that he wants to (or, continuing with the database example, MySQL is not available).

But might be a problem with my dual tutorial idea. What if teaching two ways to do everything takes too long? Well, it depends on how much is taught in the tutorial and who the audience is. If the audience is a beginning PHP programmer that wants to learn to program well, that programmer might be willing to spend more time on learning in exchange for being able to write better code.

So, what do you think? Is the dual tutorial actually something that might help people learn, or is it just another idea that wouldn’t work?

Introduction

I’m sure you have fond memories with your first experiences with a computer. If you don’t, well, pretend you do. Why don’t you pass off some of what you’ve learned to kids? They are the future, after all. Here are some ways that you can help kids get involved with technology. They are not organized by age group as age is no measurement for intelligence. You should decide if kids you have in mind are too smart or not mature enough to be able to do the task.

Get ‘em hooked up, quick!

1) Give your kids an old digital camera and a PC.

If you have an old camera and a computer lying around, a kid can probably put it to really good use. Register him or her on Flickr and let the kid show the pictures to his friends.

2) Give them a compute running Ubuntu with Compiz.

If your kids want to make special effects for movies when they grow up, start them off with experimenting wih Compiz. They’ll enjoy the effects, and it’s a good way to get them started using Linux too.

The downside to this is that you might not be able to get Compiz working on older computers.

3) Teach them HTML (and CSS).

Teaching your kids HTML is a good way to get them on the road to being a programmer. Once they get experience with editing files and then uploading, maybe they can move onto Javascript, PHP, or Python.

Their webpages might look a little ugly at first, but don’t feel guilty for making the Internet ugly just yet. Show the kid a CSS reference and explain that CSS can be used to gain more control over a webpage’s design.

4) Teach them a programming language

As I mentioned above, teaching HTML can put your kid on the road to programming. If you think your kid is smart enough to understand programming right off the bat, go for it.

5) Get them a video camera.

Nowadays, so much of video editing revolves around technology. Get your kids a camcorde and see if they enjoy prancing in front of the camera, then applying transitions to the prancing scenes.

6) Have them start up a blog.

Blogging involves reading and writing, which are two things that are valued in schools. Blogging also involves a computer, and they can practice their HTML and CSS skills when editing the blog template.

It would be a good idea to disable comments or make the blog private if the kid is sensitive to criticism.

Introduction

Everybody is talking about it. You know what they’re saying. “Voice activated technology is the future.” Well, I think it isn’t. I see many, many flaws in voice activated technology. Remember the Windows Vista voice-activated security hole? Now, why do I think that voice-activated technology is doomed?

It will fail because…

1) You can’t use it for anything secure.

As the illustration above shows, you cannot use voice-activated technology to authenticate yourself in the traditional sense. You would have to use some other sort of method. Having to grab a keyboard to authenticate yourself, and then going back to voice commands seems a bit odd. You could try fingerprint scanners. Oh wait! They’re insecure too! It’s quite easy to fool a fingerprint scanner as they are designed towards false positives instead of false negatives. CodingHorror has a good post about the insecurity of fingerprint scanners.

There’s also the issue of people hearing what commands you’re saying after you’ve authenticated yourself. Don’t forget that the computer cannot speak secure data back to you.

2) It will be difficult to filter out noise.

Having a bunch of people talking loudly while a person is trying to use a voice-activated interface is like all those people pressing random keys on the keyboard while you’re trying to type. But, in the not-so-recent future, it will be possible for computers to filter out noise. If a human can do it, what is to stop a computer from doing the same?

Until we get to the point where computers can filter out noise like humans, it will be impractical to have voice-activated technology in noisy situations.

3) It would be difficult to navigate through a voice-activated user interface.

You’ve just installed a cool new voice-activated app that your friends were talking about. You get to the point in the installation where you have to agree to the software’s terms of service. Oh boy, reading off that end user license agreement could take a while.

Now, the above example is a little silly. You can’t expect voice-activated applications to behave in the exact same way as traditional desktop applications. However, it shows something that’s difficult with voice-activation. It would be difficult for it to read out large amounts of text for you without you getting bored. The great thing about reading is that you don’t have to read all the words. You can skim over the sentences to get a general feel of what the text is talking about. How are you going to imitate that with voice-activated technology? Have the computer skip over a few words when reading? I don’t think so. When you don’t understand a paragraph after skimming through it, you can read it for the details to understand it better.

You can’t dig through complicated configuration dialogs in a voice-activated user interface either. It’s already easy to get lost in a traditional program’s settings, so imagine how difficult it would be to find one little option to change in a voice-activated dialog.

The only thing that voice-activated tech is good for

Voice-activated technology seems best applied in areas where security is not required and the user interface is simple. In the short term, it will have to only operate in quiet areas.

Still think that voice-activated tech is the new cool thing? Tell me why in the comments.