I've owned 4 (!) different TI graphing calculators throughout the years. I believe it started with the TI-85 in the mid-90s, followed by the 86, then the 92, and finally culminating with the TI-89 in 1999. I don't think they've really surpassed the 89 in terms of functionality. I ended up selling the 92, as it was replaced with the functionally-equivalent 89 (in the familiar TI form-factor), and gave the 85 to my sister, so today all that remains is the 89 and the 86. I have fond memories of playing games and writing small programs on TI graphing calcs (ticalc.org still exists, apparently). At first only BASIC programs were supported, but then some folks figured out how to hack the 85 to run assembly, which continued on the other models. TI fought it at first, but later reluctantly supported assembly programs. Some enterprising hackers managed to implement rudimentary audio support via the data port, which I thought was quite impressive. The 84 Plus is essentially the old TI-82 platform iterated a number of times (TI-82, TI-83, 83 Plus, 83 Plus Silver, etc.)
I've been waiting for years for TI to make a graphing calc smartphone app, but with margins such as those described in the article, why would they? It'll likely take a major shift in the testing standards (i.e. allowing mobile devices) for this situation to change. Test proctors might have to become more vigilant, but I imagine if airplane mode was strictly enforced, then smartphones might be allowed. Seems that the communications features (which can facilitate cheating) are the primary concern.
Number one feature request for IFTTT: support multiple conditions, i.e. if this AND this AND this then that
As is stands now, for me, IFTTT is cute (I've played around with the app and website) but not really useful for many things without multiple conditions.
I used ScribTex for my dissertation and have used ShareLaTeX for papers as well. Both were/are great services backed by a great team. Having experienced the pain in configuring and maintaining a local LaTeX installation in the past, it was a pleasure to have a web-based version that was backed by git.
I'm glad to read that the code behind ShareLaTeX is being released as open source!
I had the same thought, as that seems to be an overlooked market. After some research, I found a few: check out Greenbox http://www.greenboxhq.com and Lono http://lonoapp.com for a couple of smart sprinkler startups.
I've used Ubuntu on the desktop since 2004 so this is an exciting development. From the video and screenshots the design is really polished and the UI/UX well-thought-out. I really want to see this succeed but have doubts. The mobile market is already crowded with competition from Apple and Android, not to mention second-tier players (Microsoft, Blackberry) gunning for a larger slice of the pie.
Even if Ubuntu achieves a modicum of success, their entry into the market means yet another platform that mobile developers must target (I'm not counting web apps since those can be supported equally with minimum effort across platforms). It's a wonder that Ubuntu chose to create another binary mobile development platform instead of adopting Java (leveraging the skills of existing Android devs) and calling it good enough.