Lazy people and "smartphones" continue to erode P&S sales

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:16:15 +1100, "Trevor" wrote:


"Eric Stevens" wrote in message
.. .
My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse. He is
waiting for an app which will enable him to measure blood O2 in the
finger.

It's amazing how non technical people think you simply need an 'app" to do
anything, forgetting the sensors/interface are the real hardware, and the
iphone simply adds a processor and display. In many cases the device can be
made just as cheaply as a stand alone item rather than an iphone add-on.

There is no add-on hardware in this case. The camera lens is held
close to the finger and the app does the rest.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 2012-01-16 19:26:19 -0800, Eric Stevens said:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:16:15 +1100, "Trevor" wrote:


"Eric Stevens" wrote in message
...
My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse. He is
waiting for an app which will enable him to measure blood O2 in the
finger.

It's amazing how non technical people think you simply need an 'app" to do
anything, forgetting the sensors/interface are the real hardware, and the
iphone simply adds a processor and display. In many cases the device can be
made just as cheaply as a stand alone item rather than an iphone add-on.

There is no add-on hardware in this case. The camera lens is held
close to the finger and the app does the rest.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

Aah! You mean this one.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pulse...315580736?mt=8


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 2012-01-16 19:39:29 -0800, Savageduck said:

On 2012-01-16 19:26:19 -0800, Eric Stevens said:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:16:15 +1100, "Trevor" wrote:


"Eric Stevens" wrote in message
...
My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse. He is
waiting for an app which will enable him to measure blood O2 in the
finger.

It's amazing how non technical people think you simply need an 'app" to do
anything, forgetting the sensors/interface are the real hardware, and the
iphone simply adds a processor and display. In many cases the device can be
made just as cheaply as a stand alone item rather than an iphone add-on.

There is no add-on hardware in this case. The camera lens is held
close to the finger and the app does the rest.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

Aah! You mean this one.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pulse...315580736?mt=8

....and here it is at work, I don't believe I will feel deprived by not
buying this app.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut9thrIVxt8&

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse.

Every watch with a second hand I've ever owned has had that "app".

so you just pressed the watch to the person's skin and it directly read
out the pulse? amazing! and to think all those years people did it the
hard way by counting.

no, your watch did not have any such app. *you* were the app, not the
watch.

Fortunately, my wife has the training, skills, and intellectual
ability to not need an app for this.

unfortunately, not enough to use more modern and more capable methods
when available. i bet she ignores the digital monitors in the hospital
too.

My wife, a now-retired nurse, has never owned a watch without a second
hand. No designer watch, no matter how stylish, has ever met with her
approval to own.

did she at least accept digital watches or was she analog-only?

Neither my wife nor I would ever wear a digital wris****ch.

of course not. why am i not the least bit surprised. do you remember to
wind them every day?

They have no style.

some do and some don't. the plastic ones that you have to squeeze to
make the leds light up (probably the ones you looked at), you're right,
those have no style. others, however, definitely do.

I know, to you, "high style" is a pocket protector without
an logo, but some of us have different views.

can't forgo an ad hominem can you? fortunately, very few share your
views, or technology would not advance.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

As I understand it, some phones are actually capable of allowing you
to speak to people that are not in the same room you are in, and they
can speak back and you can hear them! They even have some sort of
mechanism in them that gives you an audible notification that the
other person is trying to get your attention.

you must mean the ones with rotary dials and mechanical bells. yea, i
had one of those once.

sorry to burst your bubble, but today's phones can do a *lot* more than
just make calls, and that's a very, very good thing.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

My first mobile phone was hard-wired into my car, my second a "bag
phone", and my third one was one of those Motorolas roughly the size,
weight, and shape of a WWII walkie-talkie. Each successive mobile
phone I've owned has been smaller, thinner, and been capable of more
features than the last one.

i seem to recall you said you didn't have a smartphone and didn't plan
on getting one.

The sound quality of voice transmission has declined, though. The
durability has declined. None have the sound quality or the
durability of the ordinary house phone land-line. My current phone
is out-of-warrenty because it has a pink tab, but it has never been
exposed to water. Just humidity.

maybe on the phones you've picked it has. sound quality might be worse
when there's very poor reception (digital does not degrade well).
however, the sound quality can also be much better since it's not
limited to the 8k bandwidth analog phone lines had.

We have one mechanical land-line phone in the house that was installed
in 1972 when I had the house built. The sound is excellent, and phone
works today just as it worked in 1972. In Florida, it's a good thing
to have a hard-wired mechanical phone because hurricanes or storms
often cause the power to go out for days at a time and our wireless
phones won't work and mobile phones can't be charged unless you charge
them in the car.

both are useful. a mechanical landline at your house will not do you
one whit of good if a tree falls and snaps the wires leading to your
house, which happened to my aunt many years back, before cellular
phones were widespread. a mechanical landline also won't do you any
good if you are away from home and get stuck, storm or not.

also, cellphones can be charged in many ways other than in a car when
there's a power outage, but a car is certainly an easy way to do it,
and a lot of times, the cellular providers stay running when the
landline providers do not, as happened to me in the last power outage i
was in.

Also, the phone company charges for repairs to the
lines outside the home, but on your property, if a storm blows them
down and you don't have one of their phones in the house.

bull****. as a public utility, the phone company is required to repair
everything outside the house up to the demarc at no cost to you,
including the wires from the pole to the house. however, if you don't
have one of their phones, why does it matter what they do? it's not
like you are suddenly going to get service when you didn't have it
before.

anything beyond the demarc, however, is entirely your problem unless
you get one of their overpriced maintenance packages.

On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:39:29 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2012-01-16 19:26:19 -0800, Eric Stevens said:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:16:15 +1100, "Trevor" wrote:


"Eric Stevens" wrote in message
...
My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse. He is
waiting for an app which will enable him to measure blood O2 in the
finger.

It's amazing how non technical people think you simply need an 'app" to do
anything, forgetting the sensors/interface are the real hardware, and the
iphone simply adds a processor and display. In many cases the device can be
made just as cheaply as a stand alone item rather than an iphone add-on.

There is no add-on hardware in this case. The camera lens is held
close to the finger and the app does the rest.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

Aah! You mean this one.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pulse...315580736?mt=8

No, it didn't look quite like that, but that's the general idea.

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In rec.photo.digital Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:
In rec.photo.digital Trevor wrote:
"ala" wrote in message

I bought one for the camera because I can download an app from an
advocacy group that deals with vision issues that uses the camera as a
magnifier to enable reading of documents with small print

Wow, sounds like an expensive, power hungry magnifying glass to me.

Which offers a degree of magnification and image quality at least an
order of magnitude above any optical magnifying glass,

Is that needed?

Very definitely if you're partially sighted to the point of being
legally "blind", as some of my friends are.

And is that indeed true?

Because some of my friends have such poor sight I keep an eye on
magnification technology. AFAIK nothing optical and hand held like a
magnfying glass can come close to the magnification easily available
digital camera.

plus a host of
other features useful to those with poor sight. Have you checked the
prices of the very best optical magnifying glasses you can get? Sounds
a good deal to me.

I usually don't check the prices for 13 meter diameter parabol
mirror optics or even 1200mm f/5.6 lenses when looking for a
35mm-sized 50mm lens. You seem to.

Why do you think that? A 13 meter mirror falls way outside my
definition of a hand holdable magnifying glass. As does a 1200mm lens
of any aperture.

BTW, the very best optical magnifying glass is quite more powerful
than your iWhatever or smartsomethingorother. After all, the
microscope's objective lens is nothing else and can enlarge
100x (and that can be enlarged at least by another factor 10x).
That means your 1mm³ will look like 1m² at the other end.

You can't read text with a microscope for several practical
reasons. Of course they're optical and have much higher magnification,
but they're not practical text magnfication tools for the poor of
sight.

You're missing the whole point and purpose and practicality of the
hand-holdable magnifying glass.

Oh, and you'll probably want a tablet, because smartphone
screens are ... well ... tiny.

Yes, you might want a tablet, but smarthpone screens are pannable and
some of the partially sighted find they work very well as text
magnifiers. Very much better than any hand holdable magnifying glass
at any price.

--
Chris Malcolm

In rec.photo.digital tony cooper wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:45:39 -0800, Irwell wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:15:52 -0500, tony cooper wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:52:05 +1300, Eric Stevens
wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:11:30 -0500, "ala"
wrote:


"RichA" wrote in message
...
BBC:

23 December 2011 Last updated at 09:35 ET
Smartphones eat into low-end camera sales in US, study

Smartphones are eating into sales of basic cameras and camcorders in
the US, according to market researchers.

I bought one for the camera because I can download an app from an advocacy
group that deals with vision issues that uses the camera as a magnifier to
enable reading of documents with small print

My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse.

Every watch with a second hand I've ever owned has had that "app".

My wife, a now-retired nurse, has never owned a watch without a second
hand. No designer watch, no matter how stylish, has ever met with her
approval to own.

I once bought her a very nice, and expensive, wris****ch as a
Christmas gift. It didn't have a second hand, but I thought she could
wear it as a dress watch. I had to exchange it.


Why do the blood pressures read by nurses differ so much from
doctors, at least in the 'Health Fair' at the Mall, they do.
The quacks findings are always higher for me.

I think it's because you are unconsciously a bit more anxious when the
doctor takes your BP. You are mentally thinking "He's going to find
something wrong!". You know the nurse isn't going to give you any
bad news. She'll tell the doc and he's paid the big bucks to give you
the bad news.

I have an unusually slow pulse and breathing rythm. I noted when in
hospital that the nurses who took my pulse and breathing every morning
were recording oddly consistent and high figures for me. Pretty much
standard normal figures. So I tried an experiment. When my pulse and
breathing was being taken I held my breath. The nurse recorded exactly
the same figures as usual. 20 breaths a minute during the half minute
in which I hadn't breathed at all. And 60bpm when my pulse had been by
my own measure 50bpm.

I asked her why she was making the figures up. That was a mistake. For
the next three days I was treating rather curtly and punitively by all
the nurses.

--
Chris Malcolm

In rec.photo.digital Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:15:52 -0500, tony cooper
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:52:05 +1300, Eric Stevens
wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:11:30 -0500, "ala"
wrote:

"RichA" wrote in message
...
BBC:

23 December 2011 Last updated at 09:35 ET
Smartphones eat into low-end camera sales in US, study

Smartphones are eating into sales of basic cameras and camcorders in
the US, according to market researchers.

I bought one for the camera because I can download an app from an advocacy
group that deals with vision issues that uses the camera as a magnifier to
enable reading of documents with small print

My medical nephew has an app which lets him measure the pulse.

Every watch with a second hand I've ever owned has had that "app".

This one reads out the pulse directly. It also gives a waveform.

If it's the same as the one I use it's excellent! I've had a heart
attack and have heart problems. I sometimes suffer from episodes of
skipped beats, some not skipped but tiny premature beats substituting
for the proper later larger beat. Plus some other heart beat oddities.
It displays all of them accurately. What's more I sometimes have some
heart beat waverform peculiarities under stress which cardiologists
have shown me on my printed ECGs taken during treadmill stress tests
in the cardiology unit. I can see the same distortion on the waveform
the phone app shows me.

An extraordinarily useful and accurate app! To duplicate its results
would require several hundred dollars of medical technology. It's
enabled me to keep a much more detailed and accurate check of what my
old heart is up to than a watch and pulse stethoscope (which is what I
used to use).

I know something of the technology involved, and it's clear this app
has been developed by someone who understands ECG technology. The
statistical adaptive recovery of signal from noise it uses is very
impressive!

--
Chris Malcolm