TECHPopuli

Wearable display devices

From MGA, via email, we were directed to this item about LCD screens sewed onto the front of one's shirt. Kinda like a 21st century sandwich board.

I don't think it's the same tech, but here's an article about this kind of thing.

Next step: Chameleon clothes. "I look best in warm colors in the morning, then cool colors in the afternoon."

Scumbags did this.

While the feast was being prepared at my sister's house on Thursday morning, our brother Scott spent a couple hours trying to remove adware, spyware, and other trespassing programs from her family's PC. When he was done the machine ran much better, and faster.

Here's a report by Ben Edelman who has documented the illicit installations from visiting a single webpage.

How bad is this problem? How much junk can get installed on a user's PC by merely visiting a single site? I set out to see for myself -- by visiting a single web page taking advantage of a security hole (in an ordinary fresh copy of Windows XP), and by recording what programs that site caused to be installed on my PC. In the course of my testing, my test PC was brought to a virtual stand-still -- with at least 16 distinct programs installed. I was not shown licenses or other installation prompts for any of these programs, and I certainly didn't consent to their installation on my PC.

Who do you call?

CNN:

The first time Bruce Dougherty tried to get his home wireless network up and running, it was a bust. The former marketing executive had to enlist his son's help, and still there were problems.

So who did he turn to when he wanted a network upgrade?

"That's my geek, Johnny," Dougherty said happily outside his local Best Buy store, gesturing toward a young man in a snappy black-and-white Volkswagen Beetle emblazoned with a "Geek Squad" logo.

Sub-vocalization

Something else from KurzweilAI:

Soldiers and stroke victims might one day have something in common: a device that allows them to talk without speaking. As this ScienCentral News video reports, NASA engineers are developing technology that picks up and translates throat signals into words before they're even spoken.

And also for people who want to talk on their cellphones in public. Really.

Broadband use increasing

New York Times (registration req.):

The number of Americans using fast Internet connections doubled from 2001 through late 2003, still below some expectations and especially low among minority groups and people in rural areas, according to a report by the Bush administration.

During the election campaign, President Bush advocated affordable access to high-speed Internet services for all Americans by 2007.

The Commerce Department report, prepared in September but undisclosed until after the election, said use of fast Internet connections grew dramatically through October 2003 to 20 percent of U.S. households. The report praised such services for fueling online banking, entertainment and commerce.

[Via Kurzweilai.net]

I used to love my TiVo

We are seeing the beginning of the end for a wonderful experiment. A lot of us used to love our TiVos. But their bad behavior, in spamming their own customers, has now reached what, for me, is the last straw. Soon we will be presented with an ad while fast-forwarding through the ads.

First they started downloading commercials to my PVR without my permission. Commercials that used my bandwidth and storage space, and which I couldn't opt out of, and couldn't delete even after they were put on my machine.

Then they started putting the "Press Thumbs Up" banner over select commercials.

And now this. LA Times:

By March, TiVo viewers will see "billboards," or small logos, popping up over TV commercials as they fast-forward through them, offering contest entries, giveaways or links to other ads. If a viewer "opts in" to the ad, their contact information will be downloaded to that advertiser — exclusively and by permission only — so even more direct marketing can take place.

So I'm certain now that I will never but another TiVo. I'll probably be looking into the various PC based PVRs, and I'm watching the video/podcasters -- SteveG is a great example -- with great interest. They may be the next big thing.

Digital Darkroom

Some interesting digital photo tips and tutorials here.

[Thanks SteveG.]

Geeky TV Archive

Former roommate, and soon to be first-time dad, RobH sends along this info about an online archive of the groundbreaking, geek TV show, Computer Chronicles.

Somebody's posted all the Computer Chronicle episodes online, what a hoot!

http://www.archive.org/movies/computerchronicles.php

Here's an episode with JLG [Jean Louis Gassee] at MacWorld Boston 1988!
http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?id=9786

UPDATE: Checking out the site, I was pleasantly surprised to see the face of one of Rob and my old BCSMac running buddies: Ben Calica. He appeared in this episode of CC.

Free the WiFi

TechDirt writes about how Starbucks store managers are starting to push to offer free WiFi.

It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out that charging for WiFi is a dead end model when the competition is giving it away for free. While many of the restaurants and cafes offering free WiFi are singing its praises as it brings in more customers -- especially during the off hours -- T-Mobile is stubbornly sticking to their high priced plans. It appears, however, that their major retail partner, Starbucks, may be pushing back. Apparently, some Starbucks managers are begging upper management to let them free up the WiFi, because they know they're losing business to others.

Checking out Thunderbird

I've installed the Thunderbird mail client (v0.9) on my Mac. I've been hearing good things about it. And I like Firefox, which is kinda from the same folks, kinda. So I'm gonna check out T-bird.

After 15 mins of playing around, my impression is favorable. Setup was very easy. The UI -- at least as far as I've explored so far -- seems to comply with the standards of the day.

I've started to teach it how to ID spam. We'll see how that works out. It has a good reputation, so I have expectations.

More later.

Webex kinda cool

At last night's Berkman Bloggers session, computer visionary Marc Canter spoke to us from California. Marc's talk was pretty interesting, and I'll say more about it in another post, but one interesting aspect of the evening was using Webex.

We heard Marc's voice via a conventional conference hookup, but the Webex system also allowed us to view the Marc's computer desktop live, and thus his powerpoint slides and software demos. Also, anyone out in the world, who we gave the password to, could also use Webex to see and hear Marc's presentation.

Pretty cool.

Berkman Bloggers

Heading out for tonight's Berkman Blogger's meeting. Should be good. One of the things on the agenda is a visit by phone (or phone-like internet device) of Marc Cantor to talk about his latest big-thing.

Berkman Thursday Special Meeting

I'm not sure if this Thursday's Berkman Blogger's group will be more notable for the guest and content, or for the experiment in collaboration technology that will accompany it.

Guest Marc Cantor will participate remotely (perhaps from his home base in California) and the audio, and maybe even video, of the session will be available live, and later as an archive.

More Flickr fun

MegH, of blog megnut, ran in a Marathon recently. A friend put up a map of the route on flickr and invited people to add annotations the showed where they'd be standing along the route.

Very cool.

November BMac Meeting

Just back from tonight's BMac, Boston Macintosh User Group, meeting. Ian Blanton did an overview of games for the Mac. Special guest Peter Cohen, games columnist for MacWorld Magazine spoke a little about his favorites, and some news about coming attractions in the Games space.

The Q&A and open discussion during the meeting highlighted some other interesting tech stuff that I'll be posting separately.

My Seamac Presentation

My digital photography presentation at Seamac went really well. There were about 35 people there.

I talked through the life-cycle of a digital pic. Taking the pic, camera features, downloading to your computer, enhancing the pic, storing and organizing them, and sharing them via email & the web.

At the beginning of the session we gathered the crowd together and took this group pic.

Tonight at SeaMac

I'm the presenter at tonight's NH Seacoast Mac User Group. Here's the blurb about my session:

Fun With Digital Photography

Jack Hodgson will take us on a whirlwind tour of the fun things you can do with a digital camera and your Macintosh. Taking pics, downloading them to your Mac, enhancing them, organizing and saving them with iPhoto, emailing them to friends and family, sharing them on the internet, and more. This session will not focus on any particular program but will give you ideas about the things you can do with digital photography.

7PM at the Rye Junior High School Cafeteria, Rye NH.

$10 million

Burt Rutan and his team are awarded the prize. AP Science via Yahoo!:

The designers of the first privately manned rocket to burst into space were handed a $10 million check Saturday, a prize designed to encourage technology that will open the heavens to tourists.

SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan accepted the Ansari X Prize money, along with a 150-pound trophy, as a chase plane flew over the ceremony in a field adjacent to the St. Louis Science Center.

4W Segway

I was telling someone recently about this descendent of the Segway. I forget who I was telling, but now I'm telling you.

Grass Roots Documentaries

Now that the election is over, will we still see more of the political themed shorts, and video remixes, that flourished? Technology Review:

What now? The event that drove traffic, the presidential election, will quickly fade into history. How are these sites hoping to hold onto the gains made in the last four months? Harrison says iFilm will soon launch an action sports channel, hoping to capture the grassroots enthusiasm surrounding activities such as skateboarding and motocross. Atom Film’s O’Neill says her company has learned a valuable lesson from its recent success: go topical. “We’re looking at the calendar for big events to figure out what we can produce around them,” she says. “If we can keep even half the people we’ve gotten through the election, we’ll be thrilled.” If sites such as Atom Films and iFilm can continue their audience growth, don’t be surprised if the short film category inches closer to the A-list among the Hollywood elite.

Ahhh, refreshing.

The Mars rover, Opportunity, which is gradually losing power as Martian dust covers its solar panels, recently experienced an unexpected increase in it's power supply.

Opportunity recently experienced an unexplained rejuvenation from what can so far be described only as two or three significant "cleaning events," said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

...

The rover team has been bandying about theories, but hasn't figured out the cause.

"One favorite is that a dust devil happened to pick the vehicle to go through and go over the surface of it and clean it off a little bit," Erickson said.

Will they work?

Of course, one of the big questions of today's election is whether the electronic voting machines will work.

The little town where I live uses good-old-fashioned paper ballots, with boxes where you mark your choice with an X.

In this day of smart scanners, and good OCR, and image parsing, I don't know why everyone doesn't return to that system. It would solve most all the problems of poor usability of the machines, as well as the questions about software errors, electronic vote manipulation, and recount audit trails.

Anyway, send me your voting booth experiences. I'll post them here. Did it work? Are you comfortable that your vote will be counted correctly?