I was delighted to see this cool & powerful Microsoft feature in Office 365. Now you can search for words in your images in #Microsoft #Office365!
With such algorithms and more & more Artificial Intelligence in use in all types of software, I predict the end of differentiating between text and image files, with it all being seamless information available to us and our tools.
What do you think?
© 2017 IMRAN™
As a Pakistani-American and UET Lahore Electrical Engineer, I know how many brilliant minds, even technical geniuses, were just in my own class of 80-Electrical. So, I always think of Pakistanis as well as UET students or recent grads first when I have ideas where I may need to hire someone for side projects or new ideas I want to develop into something more.
Sometimes I need to hire someone for a short project, sometimes longer. But I would also love to find one or more very capable electrical/electronics engineers I can use regularly, not fulltime, but part-time on different projects and ideas. Could that be You?
Ideally you would be great at designing and prototyping innovative new things in side projects for me. That takes more than just having a degree. (After all, even I have that. 😊). Here are some of the skills I would require.
You have great command of English, total ability to hear an idea and technical requirements, and design the hardware / prototype and / or write the middleware / software or web apps. By that I mean more than "Oh I can do responsive website and SEO for you!"
A full understanding of intellectual property concepts and areas (including patent, trademark, copyright, and licensing) is essential. I repeat: Knowing about what patents are, and what is needed to get one issued by USPTO or Pakistan PTO, is absolutely essential.
The following are skills specific to various projects that I do NOT expect any one person to have. So I may need different people for different projects related to:
Electrical/Electronics Engineering
- Wireless / Home Automation and integration to other IoT systems, including interface and middleware. Nothing massively complex, but being able to make seemingly unrelated things interface and communicate. (e.g. …this is just an EXAMPLE... if I wanted to have a doorbell ringing outside the house to trigger a dot matrix printer to print Hello World, then he or she would be able to make that happen. Again, this is an EXAMPLE, not an actual idea!)
- Mobile Phone (iOS and Android) expertise to design accessories for Apple/Samsung etc. devices with apps to use that accessory. (e.g. design an extra external camera accessory for smartphones and software to capture data from the external and built-in device together). Only for EXAMPLE check out the FLIR InfraRed external camera for iPhones. (www.flir.com/flirone/ios-android/ )
- Android open source operating system customization (e.g. and this is only an EXAMPLE.... to customize Android for an IMRAN-Phone that just changes the screen display based on location and temperature).
- Web Apps. not websites, development expertise. For EXAMPLE, think more about building FaceBook the SYSTEM not just offering to do FaceBook’s index.php page design.
- BlockChain, with knowledge of micropayments and BitCoin, smart contracts, digital currency.
Patent Drawing With Mechanical Engineering A Plus
- Patent Drawing EXPERIENCE of actually FILED patent(s), not just wasting my time by saying “I can draw plan, elevation, side view!” or that “I can do anything in SketchUp or other 3D or illustration program.” You need to ACTUALLY KNOW and have experience of having MADE the very SPECIFIC types of PATENT DRAWINGS required by the USPTO. Please do NOT waste my time if you do not know what I am talking about specifically here. This person can be a NON-ENGINEER or non-Electrical engineer, or even a talented teenager.
If you already do this type of work through sites like Fiverr, etc. that would make life simpler. I will need you to sign NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and agreements to ensure that the intellectual property is protected and that you will neither re-use it nor use it yourself nor let anyone else have or use or copy from it. If interested, write in detail on what your areas of expertise are, what kind of time you are available, and rates. You may contact me via: http://imran.com/contactus.php but make sure to use an accurate and valid email address. To make sure your message is found and not lost in spam blockers, leave a comment below also to let me know. Let's see what great projects we can do together!
IMRAN
A contact of mine commented on my light-hearted FaceBook post about it being time to stop using Apple products like iPhone etc.
She wrote, "Apple til I die".
That made me think how in 1996Apple was written off for dead, and my web post (before it was called blogging) Imran Anwar's Opinion on The Future of Apple Computers told Apple users not to give up hope as Apple would survive. Yet now I have no love for Apple now, which acts far more monopolistic than Microsoft was accused of with its Internet Explorer domination back then.
Today, Apple is steadily losing people like me. I've been a Mac user since Apple created them, and have been a loyal user ever since. There was also a certain exclusivity to Apple products, the same market share as Mercedes Benz and BMW was not a bad thing to have with a company that was still profitable and made really cool stuff. But, even before I joined Microsoft, I had been getting fed up with Apple.
In the interest of full disclosure, since last year I have been working with Microsoft, on a strategy consulting project at the Department of Defense. But, my frustration with Apple, which began a few years ago, and has reached total disgust levels, is easily seen from my posts (many even deleted by the criticism-rejecting-content-Nazis at Apple's discussion boards) on the Apple customer fora.
More and more often flakier and flakier services (including being ripped off by the class-action lawsuit worthy Music Match that never worked, and the promised refund that was never delivered), major bugs Apple idiotically tried to ignore (antenna gate, the known but never acknowledge static noise bug in iPhone 4S), stupid ugly apps (like GameCenter, PassBook, etc. that you cannot delete and can't even push to end of apps lists off the phone screen, Apple deliberately shoves them to front screen on reboots), the Maps app that various police departments have called LIFE-THREATENING-TO-USE, Apple's total lack of variety in phone models, making iPhone 5 a bit longer and with no truly desirable new features, … the list goes on.. would be enough. But even the air of exclusivity is gone... on top of the actual ability to deliver major innovation.
I am not a fan of Android at all, but, I have to give credit to Samsung for really shaking things up in more and more categories, while Apple is playing defense even in segments it made commercially successful.
So, I am not dumping my dozen old Macs and MacBook Pros, iMacs and tens of thousands of dollars in Mac OS based software I bought. But even as an Apple tech (not company) fan, I did not buy the iPhone 5, I did not buy the iPad mini, I did not buy the MacBook Pro Retina, etc. {Though I apparently will need to spend money because the 2010 MacBook Pro I use is apparently one that has a known manufacturing defect. Apple will quietly replace the logic board on it -- if you can afford to part with your machine for nearly a week -- but I can't do that as I had since then upgraded to a larger hard drive and do not know where my original drive is).
I am not the only one from the core Mac loving Apple customers who find the company is due to be kicked off its high horse, that has been limping even more noticeably since Steve Jobs' passing.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Apple will right itself, go back to innovation, and actually building quality products again?
PS Note, these are my personal opinions. I do not even work on any products or software for Microsoft but do strategy consulting for one of its clients.
