Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

Within the last few months, my local grocery chain (Publix), announced that they're offering a Publix Delivery service, powered by Instacart. I've been looking for a second job with a flexible schedule so I signed up thinking I could just do it on the weekends. I signed up, got accepted, and immediately realized it wasn't going to work for me. More after the jump.

I shared fake news yesterday. There. I admit it. I shared the latest fan renderings of the upcoming Jeep Wrangler pickup, which were presented in such a way that made it sound like it was the official design released by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, or FCA, Jeep's parent company. Like many times before it and many times after, this was just a couple renderings of what fans of the Wrangler believe the new small-pickup will look like. My shared content sparked a discussion among friends over two things. 1) Critique of the design and 2) Relevance of fan renderings. I'd like to discuss these two things.

As much as I enjoy my iOS devices, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Palm, specifically WebOS. My first smartphone was a Palm Centro. The Centro was a blocky, modern redesign of what was essentially a Treo 650 and it ran Palm's aging PalmOS operating system. I chose the Palm over the Blackberry Curve and Motorola Q (running Windows Mobile), because PalmOS was more "hackable". When Palm changed the game, I fell in love with the Pre, and their new WebOS. I was originally going to write a quick bit tossing in my $0.02 about the ever-raging Android vs iOS debate, but writing a mobile phone history lesson seems like a more productive use of my time. Some trademark features of WebOS live on in current iterations of iOS and Android so I'll talk about those afterwards.

Autonomous vehicles are the future. There’s really no stopping the progress of technology from moving forward. Before I dive into the topic, I’d like to straighten out some confusion around the terms. An autonomous vehicle isn’t the same as a self-driving vehicle. The two terms sound the same but an autonomous vehicle can navigate and transport goods and/or people with no input from a human driver or operator. A self-driving vehicle is one where parts of the driving experience are automated but still requires input from a human operator. A fully autonomous car isn’t available for public consumption, though companies such as Google and Uber have made headlines for testing prototypes. Meanwhile, vehicles available for the public have had some automated features and the advances in those features have happened very quickly. For example, Ford now offers adaptive cruise control (which allows the car to adjust its speed if it comes too close to another car in front of it), blind spot monitor...

Today marks the official reveal from Ford of their next generation Ford Mustang. This generation kicks off the 50th year of the pony car and the Mustang Community, long-time fans of the Mustang, and the world as a whole have all been waiting to get a glimpse of Dearborn's new iconic sports car.