Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

I/O, I/O--it's off to work we go

Slashdot has a report on a University of Washington researcher who has developed a model for a digital contact lens, including a built-in LED matrix for display purposes. Although this particular prototype is still in the pre-working phase, it shows one possible direction that highly mobile display devices may go. Presumably you would interact with data via some other gadget like some kind of haptic gizmo and the resulting output would flow across the contact lens.

One consequence of this is that this will be that hyperactive, multitasking, ADD people will be rewarded. Imagine a street full of pedestrians and drivers, communing with the info zeitgeist as they move. This idea is completely contrary to where lawyers and legislators are headed with rules prohibiting GPS and cell phone use while driving. Although it is clearly in the sweet spot of where devices like the iTouch and iPhone are going.

I suspect that this kind of gadget, like the subcutaneous digital implants will be adopted by some generations and not by others.

Posted on January 21, 2008

Forgetting maps

An interesting fall-out of the GPS world is that some small cities are having too much traffic routed through them because the algorithmic calculation concludes that that is the shortest path. The NY Times has an article about a small town in the UK called Wedmore who has a novel solution to this problem: They want to be taken off the map (or at least out of GPS systems).

Wedmore is an old English town with old English streets, narrow, windy, cobblestone-covered streets that are not suitable for the procession of tractor trailers and trucks that they've been seeing since the GPS systems started recommending them as a shortcut.

This brings up an interesting question about whether reference material should reflect reality or a convenient reality. The answer is applicable to many areas, not just maps. Should Wikipedia not have articles about dangerous things like bomb-making? Should musicians be able to eradicate music that they're ashamed of, hunting down every digital copy and killing it? Should politicians be able to retroactively change the history, modifying what they actually said to what they wish they said? (Actually they can already do this on the Congressional Record).

My vote is that painful or not, data is data. When you start screwing around with it, data becomes too reflective of cultural bias and less about facts. So leave Wedmore on the map and put up more signs or better yet, have towns feed data to the GPS companies.

Posted on December 05, 2007

The fire inside Amazon's Kindle

I just got my Kindle, Amazon's new book reader. I got it because this was a technology that I thought that I needed to understand and for some reason, the descriptions sounded compelling; more so than the half dozen or so failed book readers that preceded this one.

There are three things about the Kindle that are markedly different:

It uses the new "electronic ink" technology providing a crystal clear display, even in direct sunlight
It has built-in wireless (Sprint EVDO) that is preconfigured and transparent to the user
You can buy content from Amazon amazingly easy and a book downloads in less than a minute

I bought a copy of Colbert's new book and of course, a copy of my own book (Privacy Lost--if you buy a copy you'll get 76 virgins in paradise), and a subscription to the NY Times.

The books are amazingly readable. In the case of Colbert's book, the illustrations are rendered and crisply, (in monochrome, of course). The device is light enough, that you don't get tired holding it up, the way you do sometimes with big hardbacks.

There are also things that you can do with a Kindle that you can't do with a book--looking up definitions (there's a built-in dictionary), playing background music, accessing Wikipedia, highlighting text (surrounding it with a box, anyway).

The battery seems better than I would have thought. 3 or 4 hours didn't hurt it too badly, whereas it would have killed my laptop.

The device is a bit clunky; it's not as elegant as say, an iPod.

But the big thing here is that it works. You can buy books and newspapers, quickly download them into a gadget and quite legibly read them when you're on the go. That's pretty cool. And by the way, many people have criticized Amazon for missing features from the Kindle, but there is an experimental web browser, via which I was able to manipulate to do most other things that I wanted to do.

I believe that this gadget will be quite successful. A reader is not a phone nor a music player. Some gadgets won't converge for awhile and unlike GPS's which will almost certainly be subsumed into phones, this reader might survive as a standalone thingie for quite awhile. I am looking forward to traveling and having a bunch of books in the Kindle and out of my suitcase for once.

Posted on November 30, 2007

lovedoll printer.jpg

The ultimate nerd gadget

Wired has an article about the adoption of 3D printers, giving the example of a man who designed his fiance's platinum wedding ring on Autocad, then extruded a plastic prototype which was then cast into the real thing.

3D printers are driven by a computer to apply successive layers of polymers and build up a three-dimensional shape as a prototype. There are many possible future applications of this technology as the price comes down; medical one-off prosthetics, military parts, etc.

In many ways, this is the ultimate geek gadget. I look forward to getting one myself. Computing will go to the next level when you can leave the world of the virtual and build a real artifact from digital data. Imagine needing a spare part for a coffee pot, logging on to the manufacturer's website, downloading an xml-like file and building the part, right there.

Posted on November 23, 2007

Globalization by gear

I've been traveling a lot this month. I've been in Canada, Korea, Hong Kong and am just leaving Sweden right now, where I was speaking at SIME 07, the big Scandinavian multimedia event; which was absolutely wonderful, by the way. Something that I've been reading loud and clear is how the Internet is quickly breaking down cultural barriers. In most relatively urban places in the world, people (read: young people), use advanced communication technology in every part of their daily life. Chat, Facebook, SMS, you name it.

The lexicon of this technology is not linked to any one country but is becoming a mish-mash of international abbreviations, mostly in English. Memory cards have been easily available in every place that I've been in the last few years, more apparent than Starbucks. The pictograms of technology like USB plugs, wi-fi hotspots and ethernet jacks are a sneaky new international symbology.

As new abbreviations and dialects come into existence from the ground up, this will serve to tie the world's youth together in a new and interesting way and incidentally pushing pop culture instantly out to the edge of the circle with imperceptible delay.

When I was a kid I could tell who was from urban hot spots and who wasn't by what they wore, what music they thought was hot and even by what kind of slang they used. No more.

I realize that these aren't new thoughts but call it another data point. I wonder what the world will be like in ten years and what the new generation, Gen Z(?) will think is important, given that they will be the first generation almost literally wired from the cradle.

Posted on November 16, 2007

Springtime for San Diego

The Internet changes peoples' perspectives on many things, their lives, opinions and apparently buildings. The New York Times has an article this morning describing a kerfuffle that the US Navy is having because a barracks built in '60s at the San Diego Naval base looks like a swastika from the air. But nobody could tell until Google Earth. The base is part of a no-fly zone, so commercial air travelers wouldn't have seen it and I guess astronauts kept it to themselves. It's pretty clearly visible in Google Earth however.

Unfettered access to information will cause these little glitches from time to time and I think that it's a good thing. As embarrassing as it undoubtedly is for the Navy, it's entertaining for the rest of us and more importantly, it helps us see the world from a different perspective.

Posted on September 27, 2007

I'm sorry I broke your iPhone--not

Apple has announced that its upcoming iPhone software update this week may inadvertently break phones that have been modified to "unlock" them, freeing their owners from the restriction of using AT&T's less-than-sterling network.

Apple claims that the disabling of hacked phones will be a result of fixing damaged phone software and not as a deliberate attempt by Apple to fight back against hackers.

Yeah.
Right.

It's unfortunate that Apple isn't honest enough to admit whose side they're on here. Clearly they've been pressured by AT&T to "do something" to stop the bleeding of unlocked iPhones. Please note however, that unlocked iPhones are still bought from Apple and the users pay somebody for network charges, but tthey pay market rates which are competitive. Any product that uses technology to lock in a pricing scheme is fair game for hacking. Viva le free market!

Posted on September 25, 2007

It's a love hack baby

The more popular the computerized device, the quicker it seems to get hacked.

Apple's much ballyhooed iPhone was released 3 months ago with some reasonably draconian lock-up measures to protect their relationship with AT&T. iPhones do not allow 3rd party applications to be loaded, for instance; they also are "locked" to the AT&T network, forcing iPhone users to enter into a service contract with AT&T wireless (formerly Cingular), ranked at the very bottom of wireless providers for customer service as well as being notorious intimate with the U.S. government.

However, less than 100 days after release, there is a thriving market in hacked phones. Wired has a story about unlocked iPhones being sold on eBay and Craig's List. MacWorld has an article explicitly explaining, step-by-step, how users can unlock their phones themselves.

What I can't figure out is did Apple allow some back doors so that they could take the sweet, sweet AT&T deal and wink-wink, empower the users or did they just screw up?

It could be either. I am afraid that i believe the latter. If true that they just messed up, it leads to an interesting implication that maybe you just can't lock stuff down anymore. Oh, would that that were true. But that might be the case. The complexity of modern software coupled with the need for frequent updates, means leaving emmentaler-sized holes in computer gadgets. Perhaps we'll get to the point when "locked" device are not only rejected by the market, not just for being unfriendly to the customers, but because it can be easily hacked?

Posted on September 17, 2007

Fair is foul and foul is fair

I have been involved in the technology industry for close to 30 years and not a month goes by where I don't see something significantly different or interesting. Once or twice a year I'm even "wowed", seeing a gadget that just does something remarkable, either too because it's too cool for words or even more rarely, because it's so useful, it can make you cry.

Then there's the things that go wrong. I completely understand new tech breaking down or maybe some esoteric bug that manifests when some never-been-tested-before situation occurs, "we never tried using the invisible dog fence while making microwave popcorn. Look, we'll buy your kid a new poodle." But that's not what really happens. What is the most common tech problem?

Microphones that don't work. It happened to General Petraeus yesterday while testifying on the Hill.

After microphones? Speakerphones. Then comes the dreaded A/V nightmare, the overhead presentation.

Why is 50 year old tech this difficult to get right? I'm not sure that I've ever been to a presentation where there wasn't a problem with one of these three gadgets: microphone, speakerphone or overhead display.

This bodes ill for the future of truly complex gadgets like cellphones, PDAs or GSMs. As we begin using them in critical situations where we need them to function, will they let us down the way their stupid audiovisual brethren have? And where are the geeks from the old High School A/V club now that you need them? Oh that's right, they're running Microsoft.

Posted on September 11, 2007

Socializing the Internet

Social Networks are an interesting phenomena. Some sites like Linkedin are business-driven; an extension of real-world networking, while others like Myspace are multimedia party lines. Facebook began as an alumni service and seems to be morphing into a Swiss Army knife social network.

Several companies with strong brands like Coca-cola and Disney have built their own social networking sites.

New companies like Lemonade are trying to integrate pay referrals into social networking, allowing their participants to make a little money for using the service.

But what are they really? What will they become?

I believe that social networking is a transitory phenomena and will disappear as separate business entities quite soon. The underlying strata of the Internet will become a big social networking site. It's hard to believe that any one company among the ones listed above (and add Second Life to that list), will dominate something that large, or indeed, even exist in anything like their current form, if at all.

The Internet needs other "social representation" layers sitting on top of xml, html and http. The Internet will become one big always-on social networking site used throughout the day the same way as we use the "real world" when we step outside our front doors in the morning.

Posted on September 10, 2007

Buried by relationships

Wired has an interesting op-ed today that I agree with. They call for an opening of Social Networks, making them interoperable and based on open standards. Right now, of course, whatever data you put into them stays there.

Wired feels that the missing secret sauce in a roll-your-own social network is relationships.

At this point, "friend" relationships remain unique to the social networks. The web still lacks a generalized way to convey relationships between people's identities on the internet. The absence of this secret sauce -- an underlying framework that connects "friends" and establishes trust relationships between peers -- is what gave rise to social networks in the first place. While we've largely outgrown the limitations of closed platforms (take e-mail or the web itself), no one has stepped forward with an open solution to managing your friends on the internet at large.

I expect to see several companies pop up soon that do this. I'm working on one myself:)

We're not going to take closed systems much longer, I think, whether they're social networking sites, cellular telephones or windowing operating systems. The whole point of the information age is interoperable information. We buy CDs to put music on iPods. We painstakingly type in our lists of friends so as to capture all of our relationships. Any company that blocks the free-flow of customer data to further their own interests will eventually be smothered in their own dust.

Posted on August 06, 2007

Singing in the rain

Ambient Devices is a company that I've been watching closely over the last few years. They excel at integrating information displays into everyday devices. For instance, they sell a weather orb that changes color based on the weather report. Their newest device is an umbrella, whose handle changes color when it's going to rain.

I expect to sell lots of these kinds of hybrid information artifacts. It makes sense, after all, because we're not going to lug around computers all of the time when we want to look something up.

Posted on July 31, 2007

The new soldier will keep on ticking

This is intriguing. The Defense Department is holding a $1 million prize competition to find a solution to reduce battery weight and size in a typical soldier's load out. The average soldier carries 20-40 lbs of batteries, more than their ammunition. The winning prototype (doesn't have to be a final product), must be wearable and weigh no more than 8.8 Kgs and be capable of a sustained power output of 20 watts/day for 4 days.

This has very interesting ramifications for the personal computer and associated gadgetry industries. Most of us that are "wired", such as myself, carry far too many chargers and batteries when we go somewhere. I, for instance, currently use a Blackberry (w/extra battery), MacBook Pro (w/extra battery), handheld Garmin GPS, video iPod, handheld digitial tape recorder, wi-fi network finder, bluetooth headset and easily half a dozen interchangable power cords. It would be nice to consolidate them into a single powerpack. A single charging station that weighed less than 1.5 lbs would be nice, too.

The really interesting inventions would be long-life batteries that would power a digital gadget for weeks and some day, wireless power.

Posted on July 19, 2007

I dream of geneie

The first successful gene transplant has been consummated. One species of bacteria has been changed into a totally different species by means of a complete gene transplant.

I wonder what it would be like to do this on a human being? Pig people. Fly women. Lobster boys. That way if they got steamed at you it would be a good thing.

Posted on June 29, 2007

Ready for Teddy

Here's a glimpse of the future: Slashdot has an article about teddy bear robots pulling wounded soldiers out of battle. The teddy bear head has been picked because it will supposedly put the hurt man at ease.

Not me. I can't imagine that too many things would be creepier than having a terminator-looking thing with a teddy ruxpin face telling me not too worry.

I wonder if this kind of Spielbergish view of the future isn't right on. It doesn't look like we're going to have truly realistic androids for a long time to come and robotics is getting better. Perhaps the family robots will look like a monster hiding under the bed in Toy Story.

Posted on June 08, 2007

Technology adoption--turtle or hare?

I am generally surprised at how pervasive information technology is across the world. Internet cafes are ubiquitious, you can buy flash cards almost everywhere and the sheer reach of gsm phones is remarkable. For instance, I was able to use GPRS to get my email while floating in a ship off the Galapagos Islands.

I'm surprised because technology spread to the so-called 3rd World was a much harder proposition because it required a supportive infrastructure. What good was having a large TV if there were no stations broadcasting within your viewing range?

Many people have written about the "leapfrog effect", whereby a country can skip over an expensive technology and go right to something newer and easier to deploy. A good example is India skipping over copper telecommunication lines and going directly to cellular and satellite. The leapfrog effect is happening in spades all over the world. Countries like America, Japan and Germany provide the infrastructure and smaller countries provide the consumption. Internet power users do not require a PhD to use the Web nor must live in a high-rise condo and drive a SUV to be able to afford to purchase entry to the technology. Anyone can use a web browser. Anyone can insert a SIM card into a GSM phone.

Posted on May 30, 2007

Constructing a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins

Spock is the name of a new web2.0 company that uses technology to solve a problem that's only been partially solved--finding people. What they attempt to do is to disambiguate the multiple person-one name problem. They do this by using what I consider a pretty sound approach--use software to initially populate the database, then enlist the great unwashed, the webtwofer types, to refine the data.

So Google does do this, but it's oriented along the lines of pure content retrieval, it's not looking for people, but stuff. If the stuff is organized along people lines, great, otherwise you get non-standard results. What we want I think, is to search on a person's name and get the most famous or well-known person, not the first one on Google's search list. So Michael Jackson the musician, not Michael Jackson the beer expert.

(Technical note: We actually want neither of those approaches--we really want a context-driven search based on who we, the searcher are. If I'm a beergeek, then I do want the 2nd Michael Jackson. Neither Spock nor Google can do that.)

I haven't actually seen Spock work myself, but I would like to play with the beta. By the way, they're having a moneyed contest to help them with some technical stuff. More info here.

In theory, this should work, although I wonder about the practice. It's like the Wikipedia situation, do we really think that hordes of anonymous people can actually cook an omelet or just break a lot of eggs? I also wonder how difficult it would be for Google to add this capability to their engine, thus killing Spock yet again. Still It will be interesting to see how they do.

Posted on April 19, 2007

Most of us are boring and know it

Reuters reports that Web 2.0 sites are not quite as participatory as the media hype would have us believe. Less than 0.16% of Youtube visitors upload, for instance. 0.2% upload to Flickr.

Yet overall traffic to these kind of sites are up 668%. This number represents 12% of all US traffic, up from 2% two years ago.

Significance? It's like cable access channels...a camera does not make an actor. Most people don't have anything entertaining to say or do and they quickly realize it. Much of the best stuff on Youtube is based on screwups, very little are professionally produced. Although check out this bit on George Washington.

Web 2.0 is, of course, doomed. Maybe not today, but soon. The idea of user-generated content is interesting, but not entertaining and I believe that realization of that is what drives these numbers. American Idol would lead you to believe that anyone is a potential Celine Dion, but the truth is that you would not pay to hear most people sing, or to watch most people dance or to listen to comedy from anyone who has a goofy face.

Posted on April 18, 2007

Thinner is a winner

I went shopping for televisions and monitors this week and was stunned at the continually dropping prices for HD-capable thin flatscreens (starting at $350 for a 20 incher at Costco). CPU power is inexpensive, fixed storage prices have dropped and now displays have gotten cheaper. The total package price for a functioning, graphically intense computer system is now well under $1000. At that price, things start to happen. Computers become more directly competitive with game consoles and will accelerate their convergence on a universal media platform.

The first thing that they need to do though is to become transportable or at least omnipresent throughout the house. One of the biggest impediments towards having a computer drive entertainment systems is the need for a dedicated computer in the family room. The form factor isn't right either; computers look out of place almost everywhere in the house.

This is the real power of Apple TV--an attractive, low-key computer that fits well into an AV rack in an entertainment area. They should be able to out-Tivo Tivo eventually.

Posted on April 11, 2007

Digitiphobia

The hoary old NY TImes has an op-ed today by a gentleman named Richard Conniff titled The Rich Are More Oblivious Than You and Me. In the article, the author posits that not only are the rich less aware, but they are also risk takers in interesting ways because they do not fear the downside. As examples, he gives the recent story of comedian Eddie Griffin trashing a million-and-a-half dollar Ferrari and the by now notorious Steve Wynn's elbow-through-the-Picasso puncturing. The nonrich drive a 7 figure car differently than the wealthy, because any resulting damage can disproportionately disrupt their (non-rich peoples') lives.

I think that this principle also applies to technology. Those who are willing to take chances with tech gear learn more. Perversely enough, these people tend to be the ones who already understand computers and other gizmos well enough to fix any resulting problems from the experimentation. I can download and install a piece of wacky public domain software, because I can remove it later if it acts up, but everyone is not in that same position. I can experiment with digital cameras and cell phones, computers and camcorders in a way that non-techies cannot, because the downside is a couple of hours of my time rolling back what I did. If the downside was complete and utter destruction of the utility of the expensive product, I might not be so quick to try something new.

I'm constantly being asked by those around me to help them fix their email, configure something on their laptops or explain the birds and bees of USB and firewire to these helpless souls standing there clutching a proud and masculine digital doohickey in their lefthand and a receptive female whatchamacallit in their right.

Perversely enough, the more we experiment, the more we learn. The more afraid we are to play Dr. Moreau and cross-fertilize technology beasts, the more that the nirvana caused by understanding technology passes us by.

Digitophobia: the fear of screwing up a digital gadget by playing with it.

The lesson for parents: encourage your children to screw around with expensive computer stuff. Treat your gadgets like tinkertoys, not like the family jewels. After all, those cameras and computers will be obsolete in 5 years anyway.

Posted on April 06, 2007

I want my iTV

I preordered an Apple TV and it arrived yesterday. Here's my initial impressions:

Down side:

Only works on wide-screen TVS
Doesn't include any cables
Only works with content (streaming or sync) from iTunes

Up side:

It works and it's easy to setup
The wi-fi piece appears to be flawless and it streams large files with ease
It has an USB port that doesn't appear to do anything...(yet)

Summary:

It's barely comparable to the XBox, inferior to the Microsoft media player and other streaming video devices, but it has potential. I have faith that Apple will continue to build on this base and that the hardware that's been sold is reflective of future software upgrades that will enhance it's usefulness.

Prediction:

It's a Tivo killer.

Posted on March 23, 2007

Linking and driving don't mix

A German study shows that people who play video racing games are more prone to risky driving and may get into more accidents.

I am vindicated. I have believed this for years and now it's real because it has been investigated by genuine scientists. Seriously I know that when I play Grand Theft Auto for hours and then get in the car and drive, I have a tendency to cut corners, ignore streetlights and generally ignore pedestrians in crosswalks.

I wonder what else gaming might be conditioning us for? I pity the first aliens who visit the Earth if they happen to look menacing. Quake fans everywhere will be buying chainsaws.

have noticed that I shouldn't drive within an hour or so after playing a deeply immersive racing game. I wonder if this phenomena extends to online worlds like Second Life and MMOPRGs? Will it be like not swimming for an hour after eating--some kind of grandmotherly bit of homy wisdom?

Posted on March 20, 2007

3 things I really need

The three devices that I wish existed:

1. Universal copyright manager - I don't mind paying for a movie or an album...once. I deeply resent being asked to pay for something twice. Just because an industry changes formats (ex. DVD to Blu-Ray) doesn't mean that I should have to pony up another twenty bucks. Ditto for music that I want to listen to in the car (either car--I have two), or in my house or on my iPod. I want the right to keep copies everywhere as long as I'm the one listening to them, although that concept is a little silly if you really think about it. So I want a system that will "check in" my license to copyrighted material when I buy some and allow me ubiquitious usage of same on any device, at any location and in any format device that I choose.

2. Brain-in-a-box - I don't want a cellphone and pda. I don't want a car GPS. I don't want a browser with a Google toolbar. I want everything rolled into one--a universal brain-in-a-box that will answer any question that I ask and anticipate what I haven't. It should know where I am, where I need to be and who's trying to reach me, as well as helping me solve crossword puzzles and connecting me to my family. The form factor should be irrelevant. It should have video and audio, be "always on" and essentially be my major domo in the cyber world, even to the point of representing me through an AI avatar when people come a'calling in cyberspace. Oh yeah, it should also be my personal historian and archivist, keeping track of who and what I know.

3. A super-duper digital vault- an encryption device so good, so secure that there will never for a second, be a possibility that the government or anyone else is listening in. I can drop anything into this box; video, audio, pictures, text. If, by an chance, a small piece of it gets compromised, it will not undermine the integrity of the whole. I will never fully trust the digital world until I have one of these things.

Posted on March 19, 2007

Old toys creak like old men

My house is littered with bin and piles of dead technology. Milk crates and U-Haul boxes full of cords, transformers, old floppies, manuals and creaky old rollerball mice are under every stair, on top of bookcases and hiding in closets.

I can't throw out a perfectly good SCSI-2 cable or a power cord for a long-dead cell phone or a serial cord. I wonder what this is all about?

Reason 1-They might come in handy some day.
Unlikely. No one will use a SCSI hard drive again until many centuries from now when people stage "Renaissance Fairs" aping the 20th Century, wandering around gnawing on turkey legs and talking on cell phones that look like loaves of bread sprouting licorice whips.

Reason 2-They might be worth something
Not a bloody chance. I have very rarely heard of old tech taking on collector's value. I'm sure that it will happen someday, but I'm not so sure that I'll still be alive then.

Reason 3-Tech people are packrats
Now we're getting to the meat of it. People who have done tech...programmers specifially and former programmers horde everything because they just do. For them, nothing is sweeter than filling up their house with junk for 25 years just for that one golden moment when a visitor looks up thoughtfully from their can of vintage Jolt Cola and ask: "say, this may be silly, but you wouldn't happen to have an external floppy drive for an Atari 800 lying around, would you?"

Posted on February 23, 2007

Watching the watchers watching us

One soon-to-be-recurring theme in this newly cryptographic world is the underlying technical war between institutional technology and citizen technology. It is, of course, the same gadgetry and that's what's different in the digital age--a private citizen can afford world-class spy gear.

The movie studios encrypt and hackers decrypt.

Big money software companies create horrific licensing policies and open source groups create alternative and free products.

It's going on everywhere. One interesting opportunity is citizens holding their public officials accountable. The proliferation of cheap cameras makes a whole new era of neighborhood vigilance possible.

I like this and that's why I find the following story in this morning's Slashdot disturbing: It's about a Georgia couple named Lee and Teresa Sipple. They live on the bottom of a hill in a suburban neighborhood near Rome, Georgia and they got tired of their neighbors ignoring the speed limit and zipping down the hill.

So they did something about it, using technology, of course. They installed a $1200 three-camera rig hooked up to a radar gun, so that they could get the speed of passerbys, take a picture of their plates and then email them to authorities. Leaving the neighboriness of their actions aside, for a second, their problems began when they caught one of their community going 25 mph over the limit and reported him to the police station. The problem is that he is a cop--Richard Perrone.

Rather than reprimanding the officer, the police are helping Perrone press charges against the Sipples--for stalking.

Don't we all get aggravated at people in power flaunting the rules? How many times have you seen a police car going the speed limit, regardless of where they're actually going or what they're doing? I applaud the Sipples for having the courage to report the officer and I'd hate to see them lose their case.

The empowering nature of technology is one of its greatest virtues and one of the few advantages in our surveillance society is to provide a new check and balance to monitor those in positions of power. A negative verdict against the Sipples would be a major setback.

Posted on February 20, 2007

Defusing Google bombs

Google claims to have eradicated Google bombs by tweaking their algorithms.

For those who don't know, Google bombing is a specific case of a larger set of hacks called "search engine bombing" that attempt to influence the results of search engines through manipulation, usually by a large amount of false entries placed in such a way that the engine's indexer is likely to run across them and interpret them as widespread evidence of popularity.

Fundamentally Google-like search engines are statistical tinker toys. Before Google, the best engines were boolean and used various probabilistic algorithms to increase the "precision" of a search by looking for the presence of each of the terms in the query and then applying mathematical operators to combine the results based on the nature of the Boolean connective (eg AND, OR). Google works very differently, however. They rate a document as more highly relevant if more external websites link to it.

Because of this approach, it's not hard to spoof Google. Implanting links to the victim's website and associating the links with the desired key words on a dozen or so sites should do it. The company terms Google Bombing a "prank", but that's a little arrogant. Google, like candid photography, works best when people forget about their voyeurism. Whenever anyone "apes for the camera", it throws off the legitimacy of the results.

There are several well-known cases of Google bombing, many detailed in the linked Wikipedia article. Probably the most well-known was having the term "miserable failure" link to the official George W. Bush website.

In their announcement, Google says that they will weigh the discussion of google bombing higher than the bomb itself and a search of "miserable failure" seems to confirm this.

So. Although they needed to do something like this to confirm the public's faith in their results, it's futile and arrogant.

Futile because there's always going to be ways to get around Google. What they've done is to throw down the glove and challenge far too many hackers with far too much free time on their hands to work around this latest fix. And make no mistake--someone will hack the system and soon.

Google is arrogant because they seem to think that there's something special about what they're doing. They were the right approach at the right time and everyone involved with the company has been rewarded beyond most of our wildest dreams, but that doesn't make them valuable, immutable or eternal. Okay, valuable maybe. The road to technology hell is littered with the skulls of good company ideas. In many respects, Google is a multi-billion dollar parlor trick and it's getting hokier as they "tweak" their engine for special cases. Eventually they will be a patchwork of special case code that even's whorier than Microsoft's operating systems.

Posted on January 29, 2007

The Apple of my ear

Apple computer has finally launched their long-awaited phone. Oops, as of this week they're now Apple, Inc., not Apple computer. I really liked the AppleTV among the other announcements, but more about that another time.

The phone. It looks sleek, almost museum-quality with the style that we've come to expect from Apple. It appears to have a stripped-down version of OS X built in, which, if so, will make the phone potentially compatible with a great deal of software. It's an iPod. It's from Cingular and right now, only from Cingular. It usees a built-in battery and works on the GSM network with Edge capabilities.

So, the good news is that this will probably be the coolest phone of the year (released: June).
The bad news is that there are some design considerations that might be problematic.

The built-in battery is a bad idea. The bane of the modern Apple has always been their batteries and this will probably prove to be in the same vein.

GSM/Edge makes business sense, but it's slow compared to 3G. For those of us who travel outside the US, it will be problematic. For those who haven't used a Blackberry or something similar, Edge provides fast enough Web access to make you try to download something, but still slow enough to be annoying.

I question whether the phone/MP3 combo is something that consumers really want. Maybe. It would be nice to carry one gadget, but it would be bad if the MP3 player jammed up, locking up your phone.

I'll probably get one this summer and see. If nothing else, kudos to Jobs and Apple for still pushing the edge. Their name change is both timely and appropriate.

Posted on January 10, 2007

Desk to lap

Cnet has published some interesting statistics related to computer purchases this holiday season--laptops are beating desktops, hands down. Notebook shipments were up 57.7% during the first 3 weeks of the shopping season from the same period last year. Also the average price of a notebook has fallen 20% from last year.

I find this trend fascinating. I think that it illustrates that we're becoming a mobile computing society and that's a significant shift in how computers are used; just as much as the transition from desktop publishing to all-in-one game and media machine.

Computing is no longer an isolated research activity done at a fixed station at home or work, it's often more useful when transportable, especially when it can be used online.

So what's this mean to the future of consumer computing? This is actually a negative sign for quick adoption of Windows Vista, because notebook computers are notoriously unupgradeable. They use custom hardware manufacturer generated drivers and it often takes the companies a year or more to support new OS's for anything complex.

Posted on December 20, 2006

Wake me up before you go-go