Global POV: At the Intersection of Technology and Culture

wi-fi-fo-fum

by David Holtzman

I have just returned from a sailboat trip to the Caribbean. I traveled with my usual kitbag of gadgetry and for once it was more-or-less useful.

I bought an iPod Touch a few months ago and have been dragging it everywhere and trying to tap into free wifi networks and surprisingly enough, there are lots of them, even when you're in a sailboat, hugging the coast. I was able to find free wifi about half the time (when I was close to land). In many cases, I was able to tap wifi from cruise ships and even large chartered catamarans.

I see the writing on the wall now...a worldwide mesh of completely free wifi. Hallelujah.

Posted on March 12, 2008

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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:

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

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

The ultimate nerd gadget

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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?

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

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

by David Holtzman

I'm bored with technology.

Tech has become the flying monkeys of marketing. The novelty and creativity behind yesteryear's tech has taken a backseat to use of clever ways to sell a new gadget, rather than the thingie itself.

Remember when Windows releases had the snap of a Beatle's reunion? Compare that to the annual running of the video geeks outside America's toystores, hoping to get this year's hot and trendy digital wampum. The Microsoft mooks were interested in getting the technology because they thought that it was cool (it wasn't;) the gamers are trying to buy something scarce. In the latter case, they line up because if they don't, they won't be early adopters.

Every year or two, I see some gadget that is different that I like. The first Palm Pilot, the NeXT machine, the WII console. But they're few and far between compared to the layers and layers of dreck that clog up our stores and pea-sized consumer minds every holiday season. Go look at MP3 players...are they really that different from a couple of years ago? How about stereos? Is a flatscreen TV significant because it's diagonal size has increased 3 or 4 inches?

I believe that there's a fundamental conservatism prevalent in America's technology companies. That even though they look innovative, hip and out-of-the-box, they are anything but. Silicon Valley has become this decade's Detroit; electronic gadgetry is the boxy American Patriotmobile that was displaced by genuinely innovative Japanese cars.

Posted on December 19, 2006

Cyber stores

by David Holtzman

More details on IBM's investment in Second Life, the alternative reality thingamabobbie. Cnet has the first pictures and some details. Big Blue will be showcasing their technology and have even partnered with Circuit City to put up a virtual "store".

I am going to be watching this kind of thing closely over the next few years. Second Life itself may not go anywhere, indeed the odds are that it will not, but the concept rings true. I expect the future of CRM and helpdesks to be virtual, at least for the cutting edge companies anyway.

I predict three phases:

1. Hot companies use online VR worlds like 24 hour trade expos.
   
2. It becomes standard business practice to provide customer support virtually in cyberspace, eventually causing online lines and delays that mirror the real world as the problem quickly becomes the human in the loop.
   
3. The technology comes into its own as the human avatars are replaced with human-looking AIs that can hold their own in an online discussion.
   

Posted on December 15, 2006

Threeway on the online freeway

by David Holtzman

Starting this holiday season, consumers are faced with a fascinating and groundbreaking choice when looking to buy one of the new videogame consoles as one of the season's obligatory electronic gift-gadgets. The choice is that the three major contenders: Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's WII (pronounced "whee!") are not just differently priced variations of the same thing, but different approaches to implementation of the target technology. This may have happened before, but I can't think when.

Since the beginning of the electronic gizmo era, we buyers have had to pick digital entertainment devices on the basis of pricing, content availability and some uneducated guess as to which of the several incompatible formats would be left standing at the end of the day. VHS or Beta? Nintendo or Playstation? iPod or Zune?

This is different. The Xbox360 was released last year and is principly designed for people who want to play online live games with others a la Xbox live. The PS3 is a monster game system with everything imaginable thrown in including a DVD format (Bluray) so new that we haven't cracked its protection scheme yet. The really interesting one is the Nintendo WII. This device uses a wireless controller and attached "nunchuk" to provide a completely new gaming experience as the remotes have to be physically swung to match the online action. You manipualte the controller like a tennis racket, a steering wheel or a sword and can actually break out a sweat while playing a game.

The three consoles are priced differently, ranging from the low of the WII ($200ish after supplies pickup) to the high of the PS3 ($500-600)

I think that we're entering a golden age of electronic consumerism and this example points the way. The electronic gadget industry has matured enough to where there is more than one way to build a device and we consumers can only benefit from the diversity.

Posted on December 11, 2006

Phone locks

by David Holtzman

Tracphone, a low-cost (read: cheap) cellphone provider, hasn't lost any time challenging the new Digital Millenium Copyright Act exemption allowing consumers to crack the firmware "locks" keeping users from switching providers.

This is an interesting case to watch because it's a harbinger of things to come. The cellphone industry, like the motion picture and music industries have been using bully encryption...crypto to protect their interests and then heavy-handed lobbying to create legislation stopping their victims (sorry, customers), from fighting back.

Wait for the crypto wars. They're coming in every content-driven vertical industry this decade and cases like this will set the legal stage.

Posted on December 07, 2006

Lindsay Lohan and abuse in Kuala Lumpur

by David Holtzman

The Washington Post has a story about a young Malaysian woman who was arrested on suspicion of drug possession by Kuala Lumpur police and ordered to strip naked and repeatedly squat. Supposedly this happens a lot in Kuala Lumpur. The newsworthy piece is that this particular piece of abuse and humiliation was captured by a policeman on his cellphone and made its way to the Internet, sparking international outrage.

Even though the article has a trend-setting, global headline, "Amateur Videos are Putting Official Abuse in New Light", the writer slants the piece heavily towards the foreign and vaguely unAmerican land of Malaysia, even putting a sidebar on cellphone usage in that country. The spin leaves one with the feeling that this is somehow a local phenomena, useful in the 3rd world.

Well, it might prove pretty damn useful in the 1st and 2nd ones, too. Video is the silent witness to abuse and tragedy everywhere. Remember Rodney King? I can't imagine that too many public events in the future will not be recorded for posterity.

And not just the big things, but also the little picayune peculiar ones. Last week, professional 20-year old exhibitionist Linday Lohan, called her gynecologist's test dummy friend, Paris Hilton a four letter word (hint, it starts with 'C'). She mumbled the word while getting into a car, apparently unaware that the words were snagged.

Video accountability in the real world is the future. That's why Youtube is potentially so important. Well-known people will, as they well know, be under perpetual scrutiny. Abusive situations will be documented. Innocent people will be embarassed and those of us who are still cringing at the Starr report's description of the 1001'st use of a cigar will spend the future mortified, hanging our heads and peeping between our fingers at the next outrageous sight.

Posted on November 15, 2006

The compass of cyberspace

by David Holtzman

I resisted using Instant Messenger-like programs for a long time. I din't think that I wanted people to be able to get at me night-and-day and I wasn't sure that there was anyone out there that I needed to talk to faster than email and slower than cell phone. Am I so jaded that I needed this kind of interactive email?

But finally I broke down last year and started using AIM and immediately realized something interesting--IM gives you presence detection. Knowing my friends and family enough to have a general idea of what they're up to means that when I see them pop up in IM, I know where they are--roughly.

This idea is being underutilized right now. There's enormous benefit in having people in a trusted group knowledgable about where you and what you're up to. I thought this decades ago when I first started using vacation messages on email.

I envision this concept of presence detection expanded throughout the Internet and maybe even tied in to mobile devices. I'm not sure that we all want to be GPS located most of the time (I don't), but it's to our advantage for those close to us to know what we're doing.

Posted on November 13, 2006

Second sight--Second Life

by David Holtzman

I have seen the future and it is Second Life. IBM has decided to invest $10 million in using the virtual world. They have already been using it for meetings, so the added money isn't a great surprise. CEO Sam Palmisano will be addressing employees next week in a virtual meeting staged on a Second Life island.

Why is this significant? Because I believe that there will be a huge migration of conventional collaborative Internet functions into these virtual worlds over the next five years. I predict that most social websites, including most of the newer ones like Youtube, Myspace and Facebook will either migrate into these worlds or die.

Expect a convergence of the online gaming world and virtual worlds.

The only thing that's missing (now that Broadband is cheap and plentiful) is a monster identity management system that cuts across each of the sites.

Posted on November 10, 2006

On the Ballmer

by David Holtzman

The New York Times has an interview with Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. He waxes poetical about his youth in Belgium and why it's so hard to make Windows work. He says that Windows is different because it manages the hardware. Responding to the growing threat to Redmond from the open source movement and Internet software distribution in general, he acknowledged that it's the future, but downplayed the significance of the Internet to the company's well-being.

The article all but says that Vista will be the last significant Microsoft operating sytem.

I agree with this conclusion. MIcrosoft, as we know it, is really three companies today. It is an operating system developer, forcing hardware manufacturers to conform to a universal spec. It is an application developer, building the definitive versions of word processors, spread sheets and presentation management. It is recently a consumer entertainment company, selling the XBox line along with associated content and controllers. It's soon-to-be released Zune MP3 player shows where they're going .
The first Microsoft is the one being hammered by Open Source. The second company only succeeds because of the monopolistic tricks practiced by the first. The consumer company is and has always been, in a highly competititve environment.

The Microsoft of the future must empathize the 2nd and 3rd corporate incarnations. They are losing their grip on the first part, the Operating System division, that's been so lucrative for them in the last two decades.

It seems to me that for them to be successful in recasting their company they will need a new culture and new management. Mr. Ballmer may be too attached to the old world order and ultimately may not prove hungry enough to discover a new world for Microsoft to conquer.

Posted on October 16, 2006

Spearphishing for spam

by David Holtzman

CNET has an article talking about how social networking sites are getting hit by malware attacks that appear to be personalized because of the information inherent in the site.

I expect a much worse problem in the next few years. I anticipate the growth of "spear-phishing" or targeted, personalized spam using personal information gleaned from bots and updated mailing lists, cross-indexed with public records and google searchs. For instance, it wouldn't be that hard to monitor email traffic, figure out who people talk to and deliver email, ostensibly from those "friends" that would be effectively impossible to filter. How about subject lines taken from websites browsed by the victim or even copying subject lines received on an earlier email?

This idea requires some email theft, which isn't so hard. But it could also be done by using spyware on a PC, malware at a social networking site or even a massive hack against a poorly-defended "viral" site like Plaxo.

Every spam filtering system out there today that I know of will collapse under the weight of this kind of mailings.

Posted on October 04, 2006

Planes still fly

by David Holtzman

An interesting article in the New York Times today written by a freelance reporter that happened to be on board the small private jet that hit the 737 in Brazil the other day. Amazingly enough, the small Embraer made it safely down to a nearby runway, even though a big piece was chunked from the wing. Everyone on board the Embraer was fine. Not so the passengers in the larger plane. The 737 went into an immediate death spiral, hitting the Amazonian jungle and killing all 155 people aboard.

The description by Joe Sharkey is amazing. He is one of the few people who have ever survived a mid-air collision.

I don't like to fly yet I do it all the time. The main reason that I'm nervous about flying is because I am a technologist and thus shocked that these things even work. Think about it: how many engineers, computer programmers and project managers worked on that plane? How many millions of lines of code are required to keep it operational? All it takes is one bad day for one worker and a rivet might be put in wrong, right enough to pass safety checks, but still flawed. Maybe the navigational software is glitched, but only when you cross zero degrees latitude (don't laugh--it happens). My God, WHAT IF THE PLANE IS RUNNING WINDOWS XP?

It's amazing that planes fly. Thinking about this accident and realizing that this is about as bad as it ever gets--a screwup causes a collision--makes me proud of technology. It's great to realize that even with all of the human frailities of the many people involved in getting that jet into the air, somehow we've created enough quality control to compensate. Not only could that jet fly, but it got clipped and landed safely--and in the rain forest no less.

There's hope for technology yet.

Posted on October 03, 2006

Fishing for toxins

by David Holtzman

Fish are not only brain food, but they're part of the nation's growing counter-terrorism forces. Several American cities have begun pilot projects to test their municpal water supplies with fish, by using technology developed by Intelligent Automation Corporation. The fish are contained in a tank and water from the town's supply is constantly streamed by the Bluegills, who apparently are extremely sensitive to the presence of many kinds of toxins in their environmental water. When they spot something, they thrash, which is picked up sensors and triggers an email alert to human beings to check out the situation. The fish's receptors are more refined than anything that we've been able to build so far.

This is a pretty neat idea and I wonder if this can be extended to other roles for animals. It reminds me of dolphin testing that the US Navy did during the Vietnam War, employing the porposies as "guard dogs" for navy ships.

Posted on September 19, 2006

Apple's new iTV

by David Holtzman

Steve Jobs made several announcements yesterday announcing new parts of the company's product line. In addition to the expected and usual enhancements to iPods (Nanos in different color, smaller Shuffles), he also made the long-awaited statement about how his new deal with Disney would shape out in Appleland (Steve Jobs was recently appointed to the Disney board and is currently the largest shareholder). Apple will, as anticipated, begin to sell movies through iTunes, initially all from Disney.

The bigger announcement, however, was a prerelease teaser of a new device under development called an iTv. This small box plugs into a television set and using wi-fi, takes content from a networked computer and displays it on the TV.

At first glance, this sounds like a minor geek thing, but it is not. The iTV box is squarely in the killing zone of upcoming home media wars. The Internet has proven itself as a content distribution device, yet most people balk at using a computer like a television. There's a geeky, teenage feel to watching a DVD on your laptop, no matter how big the screen is. Hence the iTV. It could easily become the crossover device that will tie together distribution channels and entertainment, and oh, by the way, disintermediating two particularly noxious, consumer-unfriendly industries, cable television and telephone companies, both of whom are counting on big future bucks by selling movies and pay-per-view over their respective cabling.

Posted on September 13, 2006

Tech thoughts on Venice

by David Holtzman

I just got back from a week in Italy; specifically Venice. In addition to admiring the beauty of the city and eating my way through squid ink risotto,gnocchi and gallons of gelato, I turned my professional eye onto how people use technology. I can't help it--it's what I do.

I've traveled to Italy once a year for the last few years and have been to many of the big cities in both the South and the North.

Conventional Internet access seems to always be more difficult to find in Italy than in most of the rest of Europe. In Venice, it's expensive--much more so than Rome, for instance. My hotel charged 15 Euro per HOUR for access (about $19 USD) to their wi-fi network. When I ordered an hour a bellboy brought up a silver tray holding a printed slip with an access password. Internet cafes in Venice were a better solution, but were still 7.50 Euros ($10 USD) per hour. Interestingly enough, my Lufthansa flight on the way over had a wi-fi hotspot on it.

Everyone that I met had cell phones. Many Venetians were not even bothering to get landlines, because of the excessive cost and because they had to buy a cell phone anyway.

Several of the professionals that I met had sophisticated smart phones from Samsung and LG that gave them crisp web browsing and email access. Several of the young business types that I ran into had full Internet presences, websites, email addresses, etc. all flowing down into the phones.

To generalize, the difference between casual usage of the Internet in Europe and America (also Canada) is striking.

Americans that have full mobile connective generally use expensive piggy gadgets like Crackberries or Treos that not only cost hundreds and hundreds of bucks, but realistically need a good support system (read: IT staff) to make work. Most of us think of the Internet as being a stationary thing, tied to a desk somewhere. Europeans seem to have gotten into the mobility thing easier than many Americans.

Posted on September 05, 2006

Upgrade advice (part 2)

by David Holtzman

Thumbs up or down for upgrading? It gets more complicated when you get into the specifics. Most computer-savvy people get bugged several times a week by friends and family who are foundering on what to buy, when to buy it and the worst of all--upgrade or use the old thing? Unfortunately, unlike lawyers and doctors, computer people are expected to give advice for free (often by doctors and lawyers). Here's what I often say:

• Laptops - Replace them when they break. It's not worth fixing them and if you really use them, they won't survive more than 2-3 years.
  
• Desktops - These mothers last too long. They will function long past the point where they should be thrown out. That's right, in the garbage. After 3 years, there's no resale value and your nephew doesn't want it, even for free. When the desktop looks like it's too big, it is--get rid of it.
  
• Networking equipmentThis is trickier. It comes up these days because of the various flavors of 802.11. Basic rule of thumb is that if the new networking gear is faster, don't bother. If it let's you use your laptop somewhere new and that's important to you, do it. If it's for home, don't bother. If what you have works, don't change horses.
  
• Operating systemsAlways upgrade. You don't have to stand in line all night to be first, but don't be last. Software companies save the real fixes for the paying OS releases and if you don't upgrade to the latest version, you will find that your system gets worse than you're used to, because it's now an orphaned system. It's not fair, but there it is. You can't stand still with OSes. This goes for Apple, too, by the way, although to a lesser extent.
  
• Cell phonesThese are now fashion statements. If yours works, keep it. If you really, really need a Blackberry, get one. If your phone makes you feel like you stand out for all the reasons, replace it. Trust me on this, by the time that the mandatory phone plan commitment period expires, you'll be ready for a new one.
  
• PDAsThe first Palms worked. Every subsequent one does not. Not consistently. I use a Treo 650 and I spend far too much time babying it. If you have a PDA that is working , keep it. PDAs are really a peephole into your administrative procedures--change the PDA, and watch Outlook or whatever else you're using, break.
  

Posted on August 22, 2006

Upgrade advice (part 1)

by David Holtzman

When do you upgrade a gadget? This is a big problem for gadget freaks and becoming a bigger problem than might be obvious for normal people--aka, those with a life. Here's some examples of what I'm talking about:

• Should you buy a Blu-Ray player even though you own hundreds of DVDs?
  
• Should you replace your XBox with an XBox 360?
  
• Do you get rid of your cellphone, palm pilot or Blackberry if a newer model is available?
  
• Is it time to get rid of your PC?
  

Many cringe when they hear these questions. These are hard choices. But why?

Firstly, you generally have inadequate information to make an informed decision. Most people do not have the time or the knowledge to process the fine nuances of why USB 2.0 was better than 1.0 or why 802.11n is superior to 'g'. For this reason manufacturers stress quantitative measurements that have very little to do with your subjective experience (often the most important factor in gadget retention and happiness). Since most consumers can't really figure out what will happen if they don't buy the new-new thingie, they listen to peers, read reviews or unfortunately respect the authority of the 18-year old Best Buy salesman.

Secondly, these days you often have an investment in content that's unique to the gadget that may or may not be upwardly compatible. That's the DVD/Blu-Ray question and is always the case with video game consoles. The vendors suck you in because the new device is always a faster processor/better graphics/bigger hard drive or something similar. It's very difficult to weigh the tradeoff of the better whatever against the sunk investment in content.

Thirdly, if you don't upgrade, you will look stupid. Especially to the younger crowd. Clearly there is some point at which you have to get rid of something even if it still works. Think about the old shoebox sized cell phones. I would imagine that they still work, but...jeez! Who would? Advertising often shames us into buying...if not the best and greatest, then certainly the next wave. Blackberry users today follow this philosophy. Not savvy enough or brave enough to have bought the things two years ago when the technology was new, the RIM devices have become the SUV of the suburban cellular set.

Fourthly, you might actually need the new capabilities to do something important. Wi-Fi is significantly different and your laptop really ought to have it if you have any intention of communicating while on the road. It's often difficult for normal (ie; non-gadgethead) people to assess whether and how they will use the new capability unless all of their friends are already using it. It's easy to want Wi-Fi when you see dozens of people every day using them at Starbucks.

Posted on August 21, 2006

Bloggers!

by David Holtzman

The Pew Foundation released a new report on the Internet yesterday titled "Bloggers." The nonprofit organization did the analysis by conducting two telephone surveys last year.

Some of the conclusions were:

• Bloggers are not journalists. Most have not been published elsewhere. They are new voices.
  
• 12 million Americans write blogs. 57 million people read them.
  
• Blogs are about life experiences. Politics is not as important as the media would have us believe.
  
• Most bloggers are under 30, half are women
  
• Bloggers are power users of the internet
  
• More than half of bloggers use a pseudonym
  

The next generation of movers and shakers are writing blogs today. Clever business people will figure out a way to listen to them.

Posted on July 20, 2006

United we stand

by David Holtzman

There are two electronic consumer needs headed on a crash course at the crossroads--unification and segregation. Unification refers to the idea of an all-in-one gadget, like the Treo that's a phone, a PDA and a camera. Many people, especially gadget freaks such as myself, run out and buy the new electronic Swiss army knife because it holds out the promise of multifunctionality in a small package. Almost every new phone seems to have a camera these days, for instance.

There's even a software equivalent: integrated software applications. Microsoft Office is sold as a package for a good technical reason, the various components share common elements, making the whole installed beast only grossly fat, which is a big change from the alternative configuration that would have to be labeled "morbidly obese."

So what's wrong with it?

The weakest link in a chain breaks the whole chain or something like that. What do you do with your Treo if the camera breaks? There's a hidden proposition in multifunction gadgets--disposability. They are betting that you won't keep one for more than two years anyway.

On the software front it's even worse. Consolidated software packages do weird and unexpected things to users. For instance, MS Office on the Mac checks for concurrent license usage across a LAN and stops the second instance from running. But it will you stop you from using Word if I'm using Excel, which somehow doesn't seem quite right.

The solution? Case by case. As a consumer, you need to think about these weird side effects and also question whether you really need a watch with a built-in universal remote control. Think about what happens if something breaks. As far as software goes, you probably don't have legitimate alternatives, certainly not in the case of Adobe and Microsoft.

Posted on July 12, 2006

Street smart technology

by David Holtzman

The New York Times has an article talking about how gangs are using the Internet. Law enforcment professionals now watch known gathering places on the Internet for information on crimes, members and to soak up some of the cultural references. Sometimes the sites are used for recruiting, some to memorialize dead members, some as a community noteboard.

The Internet is a non-discriminatory social experiment. It's come a long way from its roots as a playtoy for atomic energy scientists.

Anyone can use the Internet for any purpose. Future innovations will ooze out of their business shell and be adopted by whomever needs to use it, because they're either useful or not.

Sure gang members use the Internet the way that they use a spray can or a telephone. Now that they know that they're being watched, they'll probably adopt encryption soon, too.

Technology, if useful, will be employed by many people for many purposes, some of which will be unintended, unanticipated and even dangerous to the society that birthed the creation.

Posted on July 10, 2006

Sick of computers

by David Holtzman

It's been 20+ years now that consumer computing really took off. And by computer, I don't mean PC, I mean calculators, televisions, cell phones and every other device that has a digital brain inside. 20 years and in my case, literally hundreds of gadgets later and I've come to the conclusion that I'm...sick...and...tired...of...computers.

I like what they do for me and I wouldn't go back. I appreciate the convenience and the portablity and the low cost. I like watching blockbuster movies and playing videogames and keeping in touch with my kids as I travel all over the world; I'm not a luddite. I just don't like thinking of these things as separate devices anymore. I don't want to configure things that I buy and be aware of battery life and having to reset the blinking red "12:00"s when the power goes out. I don't want to remember which charger cord goes with which device and tracking down esoteric gizmo parts in Europe has gotten old.

Why can't computers disappear into clothing or the walls or something? What would it take to have a seamless digital world?

For one thing it needs a commitment by vendors or maybe even one. One stylish, consumer-sensitive business, almost certainly European, could make a commitment to releasing digital products that were fashionable and had the guts as neatly tucked away as a split, broiled lobster in a nice American restaurant.

We are, as a consuming people, as primitive in our objectification of digital artifacts as the South Pacific Cargo Cult.

Computerized devices should be invisible. They should have style. They should work out of the box and for at least two years thereafter. The company that gets the model right will win and win big and with the decline in influence of Microsoft, you couldn't find a better time.

Posted on July 04, 2006

The Illustrated Man

by David Holtzman

I was thinking about sticking a computer somewhere in my body. Wait, that sounds bad. What I mean is that it would be nice to have embedded computers, as long as they weren't running Windows XP anyway (wouldn't that bring a new meaning to the words "Blue Screen of Death."?) By using WiFi, Bluetooth or something similar, the gizmos could be easily programmed and interrogated remotely.

Implanted computers could regulate medicine, like the pumps that are in use today. All of us could have little medical devices inserted into our arms that would dole out meds precisely and at the same time constantly monitor temperature, blood pressure and possibly scan the blood for sugar and cholesterol.

I'd love a couple of k of RAM that I could access in my head as a scratchpad. It would be perfect for storing phone numbers and to-do lists, because I can never remember any of that. Of course if somebody figures out how to do the chip-brain interface thing, each of us could turn into a digital camera, couldn't we? What would that do to privacy? What about going to a concert and walking out with a perfect recording in our head that could be uploaded and shared. I can't wait to see the lawsuit over that.

There's always that basic human need of ornamentation. We could plant wire matrices, little plasma screens or maybe conductive nanobots under our skin and via a control interface, turn in to a walking advertisement or a mood ring or something.

Posted on June 26, 2006

Satellites I love

by David Holtzman

I am right now in Canada, 70 feet above the ocean, watching lobster boats pulling up traps and writing this. I live part of the year on Prince Edward Island, in the Maritimes. Since my place is a little remote, I can't get straight broadband and am forced to use satellite Internet connectivity.

All in all, it's not bad. It got me thinking about satellites and how they're starting to play a big role in our daily lives, at least for us early adopter types.

How do we use satellites?

The Internet connectivity piece actually works. It's about twice, three times as expensive as DSL, but when it's the only option, it's not a bad one. The thing that you really notice though, is slow uplink speeds and latency caused by same when you're browsing. Even a one second hesitation adds up quickly when you're on a website that's linking all over place to Double Click. But if you're in a remote location or on a boat, it's amazes me that it works at all.

Satellite radio is new for me. I had Sirius put into my car before I set out on a cross-country trip this month. Wow, what a difference. Being able to have radio everywhere you go is fantastic, and by radio I mean non-country. It's also nice to be able to have continuity with the same station for awhile. In the old days with AM or even worse, FM, you'd switch stations every 20 miles or so, which is a lot when you're on a 3,000 mile road trip.

GPS is a necessity for me. I use it locally and globally. Sometimes it helps answer the basic "where am I" question, but even more importantly it tells me how to get somewhere. It has its limitations, most don't do well at overpasses or in cities with tall buildings, but I still love it.

Satellite world phones. I don't have one, but if it was a little cheaper, I would. A theme that runs through a lot of satellite technology, is how much better it is to not have to be in line of sight of an antenna. I imagine that's really nice when you're on a mobile phone.

What else could potentially be on satellite? Streaming video, for one. Hollywood is already rolling this out for theatre distribution, but there's no reason that it couldn't be used by consumers, other than the obvious intellectual property ones.

So, if we're doing so much on satellites and even more in the future, how come we (America) don't have a more robust space program? It seems to me that the countries that can put commsats up, USA, EU, Russia, Japan, China, could have a stranglehold on future commerce. For instance, a country with political filters on the technology could extend that bias right into the relay circuits. I wonder if the US intelligence agencies have any surprises as payloads onboard commercial commsats? Hmm.

Posted on June 13, 2006

Digital Life

by David Holtzman

Far too much of my life is stored on my computers. It used to be work stuff like appointments, contacts, documents and presentations. Now it includes photographs and emails, video and music. Even more importantly, computers in general have become my extended memory. I can remember where I was on a given day by checking my Palm, in fact, it's gotten to the point where I can't figure out what I was doing if it's not on the computer.

I don't even bother to print photos anymore, I just make sure that I have a decent monitor nearby. I have to perfectly good Sony CD changers in my stereo cabinet that haven't been touched in months because I have my iPod rigged up to my sound system.

Sure I'm susceptible to computer glitches now on a personal level and backup being as hard to use as it is, I get burned once a while. I am more susceptible to privacy violations now. If someone gets their hands on my computer, I lose a lot more than a couple of video games.

Where's this all going? The big problem I think, is the undue dependency that we have when we move over to a completely digital life. I couldn't move back now if I tried. If I know that I can find something, I don't memorize it. Once I got a GPS, I stopped trying to remember directions, for example.

Good search makes it even worse. If I know how to find something on the web, I don't even save a link anymore, let alone the actual document...I just remember the search that I've used.

One big advantage is that I don't have to remember as much. A search term is a lot less information than the whole document. Knowing how to type in a Mapquest query is more efficient than storing a lot of directions.

I do worry though what happens if all of this digital memory gets zapped somehow. I wonder what the younger generation will experience, since they're growing up digital. I imagine that eventually they'll be able to interface directly with solid-state storage somehow.

Posted on June 09, 2006

Coasting through America

by David Holtzman

So I'm driving across America right now from Oregon to Virginia and getting a little thoughtful about tech. Like most technologists, I live for the big coastal cities...New York, DC, San Francisco. I tend to ignore the central part of the country and certainly rural America in my "where-are-computers-heading" kind of thinking.

So, here's some off-the-cuff observations based on virtually no data points:
Americans everywhere have and use the Internet
IF they don't have Broadband, they can easily get it
They use DVDs and HD TVs

The Internet is part of their daily life. I hear people everywhere talking about using Mapquest or EBay or Amazon. The Internet is not about Silicon Valley or Wall Street or even Congress. It's like Wal-Mart.

The funny part is that the coastal urbanites make all the big decisions. We pick what cars like and what's on TV and how much computers cost.

I wonder how long that will go on, given the subversive nature of universal Internet communications?

Posted on June 01, 2006

The relationship between social sites and tech

by David Holtzman

Youtube is the latest in a series of fashionable websites that have a different emphasis than seen in the past. Rather than trying to sell the participants things, they are social in nature. They are not B-B or B-C, they are true C-C sites, Consumer-to-Consumer.

It may not look like technology plays a big part in their makeup, but it does. Many of these sites exist not just because they allow social interaction, but also because they give people something to do with hi tech gadgetry that they buy.

Without Youtube, where would budding film directors put their video?

The explosion of digital appliances in the last ten years is really a series of pummeling waves: cell phones, MP3 players, digital video cameras. Each wave seems to take about 3-5 years to crest. At that point, the gadget is the Christmas gift de jour. Everyone has one even though they may not know how to use it yet.

But what do they do with it other than annoy friends and family with the ritual show-off scene?

It's especially hard because these gadgets are almost always content-driven; they function best when they're either loaded with content (MP3 player) or creating content (video camera).

I believe that this is where many of these social sites come in. They are inevitably locked to the spread of content-driven digital gadgets, following on the tail end of the wave, after adoption.

The point here is that when a new way of creating, acquiring or distributing digital content is introduced, the demand begins to be created for a website that facilitates same. People don't want to pay for it, they've already spent money for the gadget. Now they want to use it.

Posted on May 04, 2006

The cacaphony of digital culture

by David Holtzman

I'm not sure what tomorrow's world will be like, but it's going to be noisy. Every new gadget seems to be equipped with a noisemaker; a buzzer or beep, that tells you, the owner, that you've done something wrong. Cars yell at you when you don't buckle your seatbelt. Many of them become shriller and more insistent until you do. Coffeepots beep when they're ready, waffle irons remind you that they're hot, cell phones chirp when they're out of batteries.

Think that's bad? You haven't seen nothin' yet. The rapidly lowering cost of chips are behind the rapid digitization of everything. As more and more common household objects become digital, they'll scream at you too.

It could be pretty bad.

What's worse, of course, are the trigger conditions for the noises. There's a certain paternalism in these companys' decisions on when and what to annoy you for. Why should you always have to wear a seat belt? Sure it's safer, but that's a choice, isn't it?

In many ways, it's about removal of free will and replacing it with some kind of computer conscience.

There's a sickness in our society that we think that it's a good idea to replace education and informed decisions with silicon nagging. Who's behind this?

Why, lawyers of course.

Posted on May 01, 2006

The three most useful gadgets

by David Holtzman

Most gadgetry is not useful. In fact a lot of it looks great when you buy it, usually because of some neat feature, but quickly becomes relegated to the dusty back corners of your electronics shelf. A good litmus test these days for those of us who travel a lot is "is it useful enough to put up with the hassle taking it through airport security?" That quickly winnows the digital chaff.

So, the three most useful electronic gadgets that I've ever owned:
Palm Pilot - It really worked. The two parts that made it worth it were the address book and the calendar. The "to do" list and memo pad were nice, but not worth the hassle of lugging the gizmo around in my pocket. But dates and phone numbers are critical to every ones' business. Not only that, but important account numbers and other things were easy to store in the phone book. Oh and the basic interface was easy. Sure, Graffitti was difficult to learn, but you didn't need to. You could perform all of the basic functions with one-handed button presses. Palm users quickly grew into the habit of not memorizing numeric facts anymore, because it was so easy to look up. In short, the Palm became our long-term digital memory.

Cell phone - I should qualify this because I don't mean the first round of shoebox-sized phones. I mean ones that could fit into the pocket and had a couple of hours of battery life. What an amazing invention. These phones changed how many of us functioned socially. For one thing we could be less precise in our getting-together planning because we could always narrow in using cell phones. "I'll call you when I get to the mall and tell you where I'll be.' We could track our kids and each other. In the business context, we always became reachable, no matter where we were. Cellular phones knocked down the last artificial barrier between home and office. For some people it became a living hell. For others, it was a business opportunity. At this point, cell phones have became our primary method of communication. Many people don't even bother having a landline installed anymore, they just use their cells.

Tivo - This choice is probably less obvious. Tivo completely changes how we view television and I suspect, eventually all broadcast entertainment including movies and streaming live events. As we move into a different consumptive model, that of pay-per-view vs. advertising supported revenue models, the invention of the PVR (Personal Video Recorder) becomes critical, because it's the distribution and collection mechanism. The Tivo is to pay-per-view what Blockbuster is to videos. Oh and by the way, we don't need the cable companies to do anything except be a dumb cable. All of that upsale stuff that they'd like us to buy? We can get it better off of Tivo, either sent over the cable, satellite or Internet. Much is made of Tivo's time-shifting attributes and it's well-deserved. It gives us the ability to consume entertainment when we want, not when they want. And ultimately, it will kill broadcast advertising, hastening the arrival of complete pay-as-you-go television. Tivo becomes our ultimate entertainment device. I expect to see it hop off the television and have mini-tivos appear on cell phones, PCs and every other electronic device capable of streaming video.

Posted on April 18, 2006

The perfect phone

by David Holtzman

For the last ten years, one of the electronic's industry's catch phrases is "convergence." This means the growing-together of gadgetry, presumably into some super-gizmo that does everything. To this end, we've seen untold numbers of hybrid devices. TVs, phones, digital music players, PDAs, laptop computing devices and cameras are all jumbled together. Somewhere you can find almost every possible combination. Want to watch TV on your phone? No problem. Want to talk on the phone from your TV? We can do that.

So where does it end? What would be the perfect gadget(s) that we'd carry?

Let's start by looking at what it needs to do:

- It should authenticate the user for financial transactions
- It should record multimedia (video, pictures and sound)
- It should be a communicator, whatever that might mean in the future (IM, phone, email, etc.)
- It should be a sensor like the old Star Trek tricorder, reading out temperature, humidity, Internet presence, whatever
- It should be a custodian of one's personal knowledge, containing photographs, resume, you know, personal stuff
- It should be an entertainment device, capable of playing games, movies, music
- It should be an electronic assistant, helping with scheduling and phone number look-ups
- It should a library, capable of answering any question from the mundane like movie times to the historic like Wikipedia
- It should be someone's digital skeleton key controlling all interaction with the digital world. This could include things like remote control functions as well as being a door pass.

There's a lot of stuff here, but if someone could build one, I"d buy it. I suspect that technology has arrived to do so. Display screens such as the video iPod's, coupled with a GSM phone and Palm pilot functionality could handle a lot of this.

Posted on April 13, 2006

So you say you want a revolution...

by David Holtzman

While sitting around this weekend, listening to the part of my music collection that's 40+ years old, I started thinking about the protests in the 60s and how they would be different today because of technology. I highly recommend songs like Buffalo Springfield's For what it's worth or Creedence's Fortunate son if you want to set the right mood. Some candles and incense help, too. I'd put on a strobe light, but I'd probably give myself a seizure.

So if the 60s happened today...first off, the campus protests. Communication would be much, much better. Everyone has a cell phone, now. If you bought a 7-11 special provisioned with a smart card, they're virtually untraceable. Huge protests could be called with virtually no notice by using SMS. Lack of coordination is usually the problem with coalition groups, cells, wi-fi and special websites could easily fix that. How about counter-culture blogs where Yippies, Black Panthers and SDS members could plot?

Civil disobedience could be significantly enhanced by wireless technology. Flash crowds could block highways, train stations and public venues without even breaking the law. I saw a blurb recently about some students that, to prove a point, drove 4 cars in parallel down a highway, going the speedlimit and blocking anyone from passing them at greater speeds. It was a complete mess, snarling traffic for miles. Imagine a concerted campaign to do that on say, the DC Beltway? At 3:30 on a Friday? Before a 3-day weekend?

A little encryption would make it very hard for routine government wiretapping. Specially coded websites could be used as "digital dropsites" for cohesive maneuvering. MP3 players would bring the music to everyone and permit songwriters to create protest songs about topical events and instantaneously broadcast them to the budding revolutionaries.

Abbie Hoffman's Steal this book would probably be Hack this website.

I can almost smell the pot.

The flipside, of course, is that whatever the counter-culture has, the cops do, too. They would spy on the websites and the cellphones and the wifi, essentially becoming "cyber narcs" without taking any risks.

Even more importantly, I suspect that any organized student protests, especially if there was a hint of violence, would be considered terrorism and therefore subject to the Patriot Act and worse. I do not think that America would tolerate stone-throwing revolutionaries today, even if they were our own kids.

I pity the next generation that hasn't figured this out, because government now has all the tools that they need to take action against domestic protest. I wonder if there's room in Gitmo for antiwar protesters? I hope that they at least write good rock-and-roll.

Posted on April 03, 2006

Of Mice and ?

by David Holtzman

It's time for an alternate way to interact with a computer. The mouse was invented in 1963 by Doug Englebart and ironically enough, was originally known as the bug. Mice came into their own with the advent of Windowing systems, first the Mac, then MS Windows. Mice have been built with many options. There're wireless mice, optical mice, 1,2,3 or more button flavors.The mouse was ideally suited for moving windows around on the screen and seemed to fulfill the basic functions necessary for an input device: pointing and selecting objects.

The mouse is squeaking its age. Computer games only use mice when they have to, because the rodents are not a great tool when you're trying to do something quickly. It's not so great for sophisticated word processing, although it's usable. The biggest problem is that it's totally wrong for web browsing.

What we need would be a tool that:
- Allowed click-selection without taking your hands off the keyboard
- Had its own storage metaphor, like an unlimited paste buffer
- Was customized to the individual and probably taken away from computer to computer

I'm not sure what the answer is. If I had to guess, I'd say wearable technology like rings or bracelets, but it's too early to say. What I am sure of, is that this is big, big money waiting to be found.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Imagine what they'd do if you built a better mouse.

Posted on March 30, 2006

Guarding Google's Data Banks (Business Week article)

by David Holtzman

Business Week Online

MARCH 14, 2006

Viewpoint
By David H. Holtzman

Guarding Google's Data Banks
The more info the company accumulates, the more unwanted legal attention it will draw. What's more, its brand could suffer damage as well

Google's motto is "Don't be evil," but it might be better for the company if it were "Don't view evil." The search-engine giant's strategy to become the custodian of all electronic information may ultimately tarnish its financial future.

Storing information is very different from pointing to it. Google (GOOG) has already been involved in legal and government hassles over access to its search logs. The company's lawyers will square off with the Justice Dept. in a U.S. District Court hearing on Mar. 14 in San Jose. Calif., over the government's attempts to gain access to search requests and Web-site addresses. But all this is nothing compared to what's going to happen once Google becomes the one-stop database shop on the information superhighway.

The company's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible." And there's no doubt Google is data-ravenous. Unlike its predecessors in the search business, it didn't stop with tracking Internet sites. Through acquisition and product development, Google has expanded its search functions to include shopping information (Froogle), blogs, catalogs, 20 years of Internet Usenet chatter (Google Groups), academic papers (Google Scholar), and, ostensibly, all published hard copy (Google Books).

GOOGLE ALL OVER. If the target were just public material, the only entity under threat would be the Library of Congress. But Google needs private information, too.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt pointed to the company's ambitions earlier this month when he inadvertently confirmed the existence of GDrive, a remote storage service, apparently designed to host the master version of everyone's personal data. GDrive was revealed on slide notes accidentally attached to a PowerPoint presentation posted on the Google Web site.

The company has also expanded its technology onto the personal computer with Google Desktop, which enables users to search through personal files. Schmidt & Co. have even gotten into communications with Google SMS (short messaging) and Google Mobile, maps with Google Maps, detailed satellite reconnaissance of the planet with Google Earth, and, of course, e-mail with the company's popular Gmail service.

SNOOP MAGNET. The more Google wants to do, the more information it needs to store. And the more it has, the more valuable that data becomes -- and the more third parties will try to get their hands on Google's assets.

Another drawback to the spotlight: The more successful Google is, the more unwelcome legal attention it will draw. As data continues to flood into Google, the comprehensiveness of its databases makes it a juicier target for government fishing expeditions. Its refusal to comply with a Justice Dept. subpoena is getting a lot of media attention right now, but surely there are many situations where Google has complied with U.S. government requests. In fact, I imagine it has given in to most of them. Remember, Google's defense in the Justice Dept. case isn't based on consumer privacy, but rather on its right to protect trade secrets.

So I would imagine that Google is a favorite stopping point on the Patriot Act express. A federal agent investigating almost anything could easily justify dipping into Google's records, assuming the agent ever felt the need to justify anything.

HACKING TARGET. Sometimes, just the results of searches can be damning. In one recent case, Google search evidence was used to secure a criminal conviction. In November, 2005, Robert Petrick was convicted of murder in Durham, N.C., in part because of evidence that he used Google to search for the terms "neck snap break." Although the police got the evidence directly from his hard drive, the authorities could have gotten it straight from the company.

In addition to criminal activity, Google's records would be useful in many civil cases, such as divorce, employment suits, and shareholder actions. As time goes on, Google's records will be as useful to an investigation as that of any other utility -- if not more so.

Even in the unlikely event that the lawyers leave it alone, Google is rapidly becoming the crown jewel of the Internet for hackers. The sheer volume of information makes robbing it as difficult as stealing bullion from Fort Knox, but if enough money is at stake, an aspiring Goldfinger will find a way.

PERSONAL PITCH. I don't know what it costs Google to comply with each government request, but the real damage isn't financial -- it comes in the form of brand erosion. The "oo" at the heart of Google is you. The company doesn't produce a product -- it sells the opinions of the Internet community. Its search approach is based on the concept that for a given search term, the most-linked site is probably the most relevant. These pointers aren't put there by Google. They come from everyone.

Users don't need to understand how it works any more than they do a television set. They just need to believe that the answer is relevant, and miraculously, it usually is. And because people trusted the company, they were more than willing to use Gmail and Google Desktop.

So Google's business model is heavily dependent on trust. Without it, it will have trouble with more than just cranky privacy advocates. Look at Gmail. The revenue comes from targeted ads. The personalization is accomplished by software that reads and analyzes each e-mail and serves up a pitch tailored to its content. If consumers' suspicion of the company grows, it could tank the service.

NO FUN. Future Google offerings will undoubtedly incorporate personalization, which requires further trust -- trust that personal information is safe with Google, trust that searches are anonymous, trust that the company truly does no evil.

It's easy to see why Google is fighting the Justice Dept. subpoena. It might even win -- which would have wide ramifications well beyond the company itself. But regardless of how this case turns out, there will be others. The more Google collects and centralizes data, the more others will want it. The more compliant the company is with investigative requests, the more damage to its brand.

Google could ride through some revenue loss, but the end result could be something much worse: The culture the company espouses, and that employees love, could go away. Then it might experience one of the worst fates that can befall an innovative Silicon Valley company -- it will cease to have fun.

Posted on March 18, 2006

Vista from the top

by David Holtzman

Microsoft's new OS Vista is coming out this summer and some of the release details have already been leaked to the press. They will have six core offerings of their product for various flavors of home, small business and enterprise users.

Know what? I could care less.

I remember the days when they would have a worldwide celebration of new OS releases, booking huge venues for the "party", doing 24x7 publicity tours. A new Microsoft release was like a U2 tour. Bigger.

So why is news of a new release so boring?

Several reasons:

1) We don't need it unless they force us to upgrade. The only thing that we want from Microsoft at this point is a more secure platform that doesn't patching every week. They say that this one is more secure. Sight unseeen, I think that they lie.

2) We don't expect the company to be innovative. When a Microsoft product does something interesting, it's not cool because you've never seen it before, it's because it's Microsoft. It's like watching a cat use a toilet.

3) Somehow, we just know that Vista will ooze problems like a software leper. It's happened before and it will happen again.

Lastly, I don't care because I already switched to Macintosh.

Posted on February 27, 2006

Disky business

by David Holtzman

Put this in the category of "I-didn't-know-this". An IBM researcher says that normal home-burned CDs will only last for 2 years, 5 at the most for higher quality disks. Kurt Gerecke, from IBM Germany, recommends that important information be moved to mag tapes.

Yikes. Maybe the music industry can just wait it out. If this is true, I'm surprised that it's not more commonly discussed, considering all the small businesses who store all their financials on CD.

Posted on February 08, 2006

No more comp sci please, I'm full

by David Holtzman

When I talk to college kids today, I try to persuade them not to go into computer science. Geeks--sure, but the industry can only absorb so many competent geeks. Owning a light saber and speaking Klingon does not a good computer geek make.

The cowboy days are over now. Application software built on top of open source makes one person a software wrecking crew. You only need in depth knowledge of programming when you're opening the hood and fiddling with the internals of the car and honestly, you just don't need to do that anymore.

You don't build your own basic class library, string functions, I/O library and error handling routines the way that we all did over the last 20 years.

Anyone can put up a pretty good web site.

The real computer geeks know who they are. We still need them for the research shops. We need some programmers, but more importantly we need a computer literate generation.

So maybe the visa/immigration issue is less important, because what matters, what really matters in the digital age is not wonkiness, but creativity. We need innovaters, designers and marketers, not more computer engineers.

Posted on February 03, 2006

Explore and store, evermore

by David Holtzman

Slashdot quotes a story that Samsung will begin manufacturing a 16 Gig flash chip that will cost about $90. The story discusses it's possible inclusion in Windows Vista-powered computers.

I think that the real significance of flash chips being swept away by Moore's law is what it does for swarmed and embedded gadgetry. Everything digital is starting to communicate via low-cost wi-fi chips and now they'll have substantive storage capabilities. 16 Gigs will store a lot of log files and wll provide almost unlimited transactional memory for household appliances, cell phones and of course, surveillance devices. The low-cost, minimal power requirements and high storage profile of these chips will make extreme espionage a reality.

Posted on January 13, 2006

A murder of emails

by Melody

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday explaining some of the problems that the National Archives are having in storing email. Slashdot has commentary on the story here. The issue has come to the forefront as they prepare to receive the digital archives of the Bush administration in 2008. They expect 100 million emails, three times what they got from the Clinton people.

Expect to see more of this kind of story. Their problem isn't raw storage, it's two-fold. First, what mechanism do they use for long term storage, since they only want to do it once. Right now, they're transferring it to mag tape, clearly not a good forever solution.

The second problem, which is only lightly touched on in the article, is the problem of "format bending" or transformation of obsolete media standards, file formats and application data structures into some universal mechanism. There's a lot of obsolete standards out there and the Archives will eventually have to support all of them.

Some day there will be a profession of data archivists, who only deal with the obsolete and discarded, the midden heaps of the data world. We will need librarians trained in not only long dead spoken languages but also computer ones.

Posted on December 30, 2005

XBox 360-Is enough enough?

by Melody

A tough problem for parents in this holiday season and gadget freaks in any season is when do you upgrade to the latest technology? Is the new XBox, for example, significant enough to merit the expenditure of a couple of hundred bucks, especially if the household already has a game console?

As a technologist for over 25 years, I get calls like this from friends and family pretty much every week. Unlike doctors and lawyers, I can't find an excuse to shift it into a billable event, so I just answer it. Interesting enough, the doctors and lawyers are never shy about asking for technology advice.

So when is enough technology? I believe that there are three reasons to buy new technology:

1. Leapfrog - When the technology that is being replaced is so antiquated that you have to buy something regardless so you buy the newest available.

2. Enhancement - When the features of the product are so much better that the new version solves a problem and need that earlier versions did not.

3. Blackmail - When you are forced to because the manufacturer stops supporting the old product.

There is a fourth reason that only applies to geeks-- because it's there. Some people will buy the latest technology, just because.

The first three reasons are a good basis for a decision for most people. Applying them to the new XBox is an interesting test. Some people may buy it for reason #1 because they don't have a modern game console at all. Very few people will really buy it for reason #2, although many people will argue that they are. The new features aren't that compelling, HD output included. #3 is an excellent reason in the software business (think Microsoft), but not so much for game machine companies. They don't really support the product so much themselves because by then there's a significant 3rd party group that will.

I suspect that the real reaon people are buying the 360 is reason #4--because it's cool and don't let anyone tell you any differently.

Posted on December 28, 2005

A-O, A-O,L, Google come and me want to go home

by David Holtzman

What does the Google investment in AOL really mean?

At on level, nothing. Microsoft often took 5% shares in companies and it didn't seem to benefit either company at all. This smells different, though.

I see 2 advantages for Google:

- Google gets access to a lot of deep content that it couldn't scan before, including AOL's video and possible part of TIme Warner's library
- Google gets a channel for its ads

There's one huge advantage for AOL:
- It sets a valuation for what I suspect will soon be a sale. The transaction values AOL at 20 billion dollars, giving Time Warner an initial bargaining position for future business deals.

Who loses? MIcrosoft. It continues to emphasize the gradual denutting of Redmond by the computer industry.

But don't bet against the Microserfs, it isn't over yet.

Posted on December 22, 2005

Flash flood

by David Holtzman

Macromedia's Flash started off as a good idea. Having a graphics-rich, programming language was an incredible boon to early web programmers; the strength of its platform interoperability offsetting the proprietary nature of the product.

In the early bad-boy days of the Commercial Internet, Flash was used to push the edge of html. You could do things with Flash; animation that dazzled like disco sequins, operating system agnostic graphics and interactive marketing tools as entertaining as a clown.

It's evolved since then and I mean that in an Intelligent-Design-Sarcastic-kind of way.

First it was the goofs; the emailed animations like a blender full of dancing hamsters or a bigmouth singing bass.

Then it was the drawn-out Flash intros on web sites subjecting the browser to endless "loading" warnings to show an expensive not-so-clever animation that palled quickly after the first viewing.

Now, Flash has found its true niche. It's the whore of Madison Avenue. The most annoying popups on websites are built with Flash. Plus the newest abomination; the full-page Flash ads run on credible web sites like the Washington Post. Sure they say "skip this ad" now. How long will that last, I wonder.

Lastly, take a good look at what Flash can do from a privacy perspective sometime. Right-click on a Flash ad and bring up the settings menu. There's settings that say things like "Allow washingtonpost.com to access your camera and microphone?" It defaults now to Deny, but the implication is clear--someday it might default to allow.

Why would anyone in their right mind ever click "allow"? What does it say about the future of Flash ads that this option is even in there?

By the way, if you're using Firefox, there's an excellent free product called Flashblock that will disable them.

Posted on November 28, 2005

Cyberseniors

by David Holtzman

The generational reaches in technology are far vaster than simply explaining how to use a piece of software. Most seniors do not get IT--the whole enchilada, the big picture, the gestalt. They don't understand basic principles of how to interact with the machine world and they probably never will. They're not vested in it enough to make the effort and it would be an enormous amount of work to assimilate the cultural underpinnings of the "always-on" generation.

There's an opportunity here: build software and electronic gadgets that are aimed to an older age group. Make them useful and friendly and not require any special knowledge. If I were 65 years old and walked into a Best Buy for the first time to buy Christmas gifts, I would be terrified. What's the difference between an Xbox 360 and an Xbox? What's a Tivo do? Just buying a cell phone is frightening.

It's time that gadgery and gimcracks grew up. Electronics are no longer for the geeks and the kids. They're not even luxuries anymore...They are the window into another world where information is found and decisions are made and to be shut out is an early intellectual death.

Posted on November 21, 2005