TECHPopuli

Spring Cleaning

Sorting through some of the geek junk that I've accumulated over the years. I've decided to try selling a few of them on eBay. Here's the first.

Fastlane Serial MIDI Interface

My how the Tivo has fallen

I've never been shy about saying how much I love my Tivo. But over the past few years they've developed a really bad habit of putting advertising on my recorder without my permission. The latest is this.

Tivo has announced a plan to offer viewers the opportunity to view commercials while they are fast forwarding through commercials.

ZDNet:

Known as Video-to-Video, the idea is to let viewers click a button on their remote control to immediately watch a 3-minute video describing products and services that might appeal to them. The marketing clips are promoted through small icons that appear on the TV screen as viewers fast-forward past regular ads.

I'm not sure what makes them think that I'll be fast forwarding through commercials, see one of these icons, and say, ooh there's a commercial that I really do want to watch.

Camera Phones

These things are very popular. People are using them to snap all sorts of photos for instant sharing with friends.

According to TechWeb.com they are beginning to canibalize conventional digital camera sales.

TechWeb:

Manufacturers of digital still cameras are expected to steadily lose market share to camera phone makers, market analysts said Monday.

The impact of cellular phones capable of taking and sending pictures will mostly be felt in the market for digital cameras costing $250 or less. Consumers are expected to move away from these low-end cameras in earnest as cellular phone makers introduce products with comparable resolutions.

Some are experimenting with other uses for the built-in camera.

Over at it-analysis.com, Rob Bamforth wonders what future uses for phone cameras might by found. One, he notes, is as a sort of hand controler for playing online games.

it-analysis.com:

German games company, Mobile Scope has tried to use the camera to capture player movement in a new version of its game, Moorhen. The phone motion picked up by the camera is used for targeting the object of this shoot-em-up, the hens.

Bango.net has created a system that uses a circular "bar code" that the camera phone can "scan" and immediately go to a site on the phone's browser. Didn't we try this sort of thing a few years back with codes in magazine ads?

1950s Geeks

NPR.com:

March 25, 2004 -- Fifty years ago today, the first color TV sets made for consumers started rolling off the assembly line. Because they were initially too expensive and there was little color programming available, it took more than a decade for color television to become a household fixture.

Make it up on volume.

In a follow-up to our earlier item about WalMart's entry into the online music biz, and how they planned to make money at 88 cents per song.

Jo Webb of Silicon.com quotes Wal-Mart as saying,

"...it doesn't want to make any money from it... The idea is to drive more traffic towards its internet business as a whole and make up the profits there."

Home Is Where the Server Is

Simson Garfinkel, MIT Technology Review:

You’ve got your high-speed Internet connection, you’ve wired the house with high-speed cable, and you’ve installed, or are seriously contemplating, a wireless LAN. What’s next? The answer is simple: you set up a home server.

A server in your home allows easy storage, retrieval, and backup of your files—at very little cost.

I think this an excellent and cool idea. But you should keep in mind that running a server on the most common home broadband connections is, strictly speaking, a violation of the Terms of Service.

Not all providers are enforcing these rules in every case, but very high amounts data traffic across your connection, has been known to set off alarms. Most providers do offer higher service levels ( for a higher price) which do allow this kind of thing.

I'm not saying not to do it, but use caution and common sense.

The 800 Pound Gorilla

Wal-Mart Stores has officially launched its online music store.

The conventional wisdom is that Apple loses money on every song it sells at 99 cents, but makes it up on sales of iPods. But Walmart is pricing at 88 cents. How's that gonna work?

Also, they've named it "Music Downloads". In what universe do they think they're gonna be able to use that exclusively? It's like creating an operating system and calling it Windows. Oh... yeah.

PCWorld.com:

The Wal-Mart service, called Music Downloads and located in a section of the company's Web site , sells individual songs for 88 cents each from a music catalog that has been expanded by 50 percent since the store went online in testing mode in December. Prices for entire albums vary.

[Cross-posted to Gone East]

Ride 'Em Cowboy

Here's what I want.

Each winter the open space of New England is taken over by snowmobiles and other all terrain vehicles. This past winter there seemed to be an increased percentage of the the four-wheeled machines that you sit on kinda like a motorcyle.

I got to thinking about how you might improve these with future technology, and that got me to thinking about all the robotics research we see of machines walking with legs, on rough terrain. That's the future.

It's only a matter of time before we see one of these ATVs with 4 or 6 legs that carries you across any terrain. And over obstacles that the wheels could never handle.

Cool.

NASCAR on Hi Def TV (HDTV)

Mark Cuban's HDNet HDTV network, has cut a deal to televise NASCAR in HiDef.

hometheatermag.com:

On March 15, 2004 - NASCAR and HDNet announced a three-year partnership to deliver NASCAR's first high definition television productions. The landmark deal features 15 live high definition telecasts, and a total of 18 races from the NASCAR Grand National Division, a tier of NASCAR regional racing series that includes the Busch North Series and West Series

Wal-Mart getting behind non-CRT TVs

CNET News.com:

Wal-Mart Stores will increase floor space dedicated to flat-panel TVs due to strong sales, another indication that this trend in televisions has momentum.

The retailing giant, which already is one of the largest outlets for consumer electronics worldwide, is in the midst of expanding its selection of liquid-crystal display TVs , plasma TVs and other types of digital sets, a representative said last week.

[Cross-posted to Gone East]

What did you say?

AFP Science, via Yahoo!:

NASA has developed a computer program that comes close to reading thoughts not yet spoken, by analyzing nerve commands to the throat.

It says the breakthrough holds promise for astronauts and the handicapped.

"A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain," said developer Chuck Jorgensen, of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

Jorgensen's team found that sensors under the chin and one each side of the Adam's apple pick up the brain's commands to the speech organs, allowing the subauditory, or "silent speech" to be captured.

The team concluded that the method could be useful on space missions or other difficult working conditions, such as air traffic control towers and even to make current voice-recognition software more active.

Local Internet

CNET News.com:

On Wednesday, the Web search company unveiled Google Local, which has been tested in the company's research and development lab for the last 8 months. Type a keyword along with an address or city name into the search box at Google.com or at its newly designated site, Local.google.com, to find maps, locally relevant Web sites and listings from businesses in the area.

"A lot of times when people are looking for something, they want to do it on a local level...This is a core search promise," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products, who helped build the service with a team of engineers from Google's New York office.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is giving prominence to local search at a time when it's one of the most hyped areas of development in the industry. Financial analysts and industry executives say geographically targeted search listings are prime real estate for local advertising, an estimated $12 billion annual business in the United States.

CRT Monitors nearing extinction

From twice.com, the website of the consumer electronics magazine, TWICE.

Thomson announced here Tuesday that declining demand for CRT picture-tube televisions has forced it to close its over 50-year-old picture-tube plant here and a related panel and funnel manufacturing plant in Circleville, Ohio.

And then the employees went crazy and burned the place down. Really, read the article.

Online Printing

PsPrint.com is an online printshop that can take your pdf file and ship you a full color business card, brochure, or whaterver. The prices are apparently pretty good too.

PsPrint is innovating digital printing by combining the very best in web and print technology with proven techniques to provide cutting-edge products and services.

Kevin Kelly of the Cool Tools website used them with good results.

For instance, I designed my own personal business card in Photoshop (it could have been any program), uploaded the file, ordered the minimum 250 cards for $26, and got the box of four-color cards by mail later that week. No muss, no fuss.

Howard Stern to revolutionize radio?

There's a lot of talk about how the current witch-hunt against Howard Stern, and against free speech, by the right, may cause Stern to abandon terrestrial radio, and move to satellite.

The feeling is that Howard's huge, and loyal, audience would make him the "killer app" that tips satellite radio into real success. And it would probably signal the beginning of the end for traditional broadcast radio.

Jeff Jarvis has been reporting on this.

The consensus right now is that Howard would go to the Sirius satellite radio system.

Century City premieres tonight.

L.A. Law meets Max Headroom?

Early reviews are that this show may be weak, but I'm gonna give it a chance. The idea of using a lawyer show to explore the ways that new technology will change our way of life, is right up the alley of the TECHPopuli website.

Century City, 9pm Eastern on CBS.

Combining RSS and Bit-Torrent

Soon, TECHPopuli will begin experimenting with presenting content that is more than just words and pictures. We're gonna start offering audio and audio/video reports.

We did a private experiment a few month ago about how to distribute this stuff. This might be the way:

Andrew Grumet, who is also playing around with RSS syndication feeds for TiVo content too, has produced a REALLY INTERESTING demo of a way to syndicate rich-media using RSS.

First, RSS and BitTorrent complement each other naturally. RSS was designed to report freshly available content, which is exactly where BitTorrent shines. RSS 2.0 enclosures were designed to automate the download process that BitTorrent optimizes.

Second, combining the two should reduce the barrier to entry for small broadcasters. While not a new idea, video blogging has always borne a bandwidth cost. Combining BitTorrent's cost savings with widely available RSS emitting tools should, for example, make it possible for a small group of motivated people across the world to create their own news channel.

Pay no attention to the files behind the curtain.

A couple years ago the net was titilated for a few days by the fact that some poor slob had stored some naughty pics of himself that his girlfriend had taken, in one of the folders of his webserver. He apparently figured that since he didn't publish the link to this folder it would be safe. It wasn't.

Some search engine, maybe it was Google, found the files, and they became the "wait till you see this" buzz of the week. Embarrassing. Foolish.

Google is looking. Nothing stored in the public html folders of your website are secret. The Register has details:

Google is in many ways most dangerous website on the Internet for thousands of individuals and organisations, writes SecurityFocus columnist Scott Granneman . Most computers users still have no idea that they may be revealing far more to the world than they would want.

Video Karaoke???

Be afraid, be very afraid.

All the evidence in the room pointed to imminent karaoke. There was a tiny stage and a television monitor flashing words. There was an energetic hostess trying to whip people into the mood. And the people, about a dozen, were waiting patiently for their third beer to lend them the necessary talent.

But when the first amateur celebrity took the stage, it was not to belt out his own heartfelt version of "Candle in the Wind." Instead he crouched like a lemur and began to croak out a scene from "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," as a movie screen behind him showed the monologue by the creature Gollum.

-- From the New York Times

Improving Tradeshows

I'm a little late to the game in pointing to this piece by Doc Searls. But let me add my support for his ideas.

...it seems to me that this whole industry could benefit from the same open-source value system and development methods that caused the growth of Linux and the Net.

In that spirit, I'd like to share the best of what I've learned from the best of the tradeshows I've attended over the last few years. Here goes...

[Cross-posted to Gone East]

Sony Cyber-shot Family Quick Look

DSC-P41: "The 4-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P41 aims at those new to the digital photography market."

DSC-P73: "Sony's newest 4.1-megapixel camera, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P73..."

DSC-P93: "Sony's new 5-megapixel camera..."

DSC-W1: "Fans of rangefinder-style cameras will want to take a look at Sony's new Cyber-shot DSC-W1, a tiny 5-megapixel camera..."

Sony Cyber-shot Station CSS-PHA/FEB: "The newly announced Cyber-shot Station CSS-PHA/FEB works with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P100 digital camera to bring digital photography to your living room. While the cradled camera's batteries charge, users can view images and play back slide shows on a TV, as well as print to PictBridge-enabled printers."

What to do with all those digital photos?

With more and more people converting to digital photography for the family snapshots, a way to create share-able photo albums is becoming more and more important.

USA Today, via Yahoo! explore some solutions.

With consumers expected to snap up nearly 60 million digital cameras this year, Web sites that help shutterbugs share their photos electronically are proliferating.

Videoblogging

A few weeks back, AlbertW and I were evangelizing video-blogging at the After Berkman Thursday Dinner. The tools are already available, and easy to use, we said. Here's a group that sponsors amateur video "film" creation with a regular festival.

It wasn't long ago that only those serious about moviemaking created short films during their college years. Now, however, rapid advances in technology have allowed anyone to pick up a digital video (DV) camcorder, shoot some footage, and edit it on a Mac with Apple's iMovie...

Embracing technology

Ross Mayfield writes about the differing ways of embracing technology between his generation and his dad's. I am probably closer to his dad's.

Being part of Generation X is a condition of being caught between booming generations. But lately it feels like being caught between revolutions. Sure, we play a larger role than our size in the creation and adoption of the information revolution. But being at the beginning of a wave means we have less mastery of our technology than our immediate predecessors.

He also write here about the "hack's meme" and "users as developers".

The point I am getting to is that Tim O'Reilly is really on to something with the Hacks meme. Sure, today its about hard core geeks messing with code. But the number of users as developers is increasing -- as consumers become participants in networks and collectively demand the right to self-organize when the market fails them. From the bottom-up, we are attempting to overcome the complexity we have created.

You solve distributed problems with distributed solutions.

Wired Magazine:

The Energy Web

The best minds in electricity R&D have a plan: Every node in the power network of the future will be awake, responsive, adaptive, price-smart, eco-sensitive, real-time, flexible, humming - and interconnected with everything else.

LA Law meets Sleeper

Premieres next week. A Lawyer show set in the year 2030. Interesting. Future technology in court.

CBS.com:

The world has passed through some harrowing experiences, like the Brentwood Quake and the war in Iran, but in 2030 things look pretty bright. The world is more interconnected than ever before, thanks to high-resolution holographic projections beamed across the fiberoptic net and scramjets that make weekend trips to other continents commonplace.

Question is, will this make Microsoft's stock go up or down?

If this patent invalidation sticks, it will be a really good thing for most of us. And it will save MS from having to pay the half-billion dollar court judgement against it. But some think that MS wanted to lose.

The thinking was that by losing this suit MS would be in a position to engineer their own replacement solution that would be exclusive to their OSs. Getting a monopoly on this technology would be worth the half-billion.

CNET News.com:

Feds reject Eolas browser patent... The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has invalidated a claim to Web browser technology...

Narrowing the gap

According to a recent study, young men and women are embracing new technology in equal numbers. Where were these geek gals when I was a young nerd?

The Register:

The so-called technology gender gap has slammed shut in the US: university students, whether male or female, report near identical take-up of technology, according to the latest 360 Youth College Explorer Study.

A survey of over 4,000 students found that men and women spend similar amounts of time playing computer games online, are equally likely to own a handheld game system and to send text messages on their phones.

Disney/Pixar/Apple???

Ted Parrish, a stock analyst appearing on CNBC, just named Steve Jobs as a possible successor for Michael Eisner at Disney.

Google testifies before the Supreme Court

I'm not talking about Google execs, or employees, or representatives. I mean the Google search engine gave testimony.

The article didn't actually say that it was Google. But recreating the search on a handful of the major search engines, and Google is the only one that produces a result close to "6,230,000 sites available". And in any event it was still a piece of software that gave the answer.

This is sort of like a version of the Turing Test. The Google system was asked a question, and its answer became part of the court's record.

Boston Globe:

...[US Solicitor General Theodore B.] Olson told the [U.S. Supreme Court] justices yesterday, he typed in those two words ["free porn"] in a search engine, and found that "there were 6,230,000 sites available."

The top lawyer who represents the Bush administration before the Supreme Court said the search's results illustrate how pornography on websites "is increasing enormously every day," a central point in his argument for saving an antipornography law that was enacted six years ago but has yet to go into effect.

Olson also described a second Web search he performed by typing in "disable filter." He said he got "a screenful of step-by-step ways to dismantle" software to block explicit websites.

[Cross-posted to Gone East blog]

No big deal

Apple Support Updates:

Nothing can be more frustrating than turning on your Mac only to find that it won't start up. Instead of seeing the Finder, you see a blue or gray screen, an icon of a broken folder, a kernel panic, a flashing question mark, or a computer that just sits there. What are you going to do now? A million things could make your Mac act this way. Don't worry. It's usually just a simple issue you can fix yourself.

Ten Tips on Buying a Hi-Def TV (HDTV)

Stephen Manes, Forbes Magazine:

I'm a huge fan of HDTV. With its incredible picture clarity, you can read the names on the back of players' uniforms in football long shots; friends who see this stuff get itchy-wallet fingers. But here are ten snags to consider when planning your hi-def future:

Placebo Crossing

We need a Consititutional Amendement to prohibit this kind of government misbehaviour.

New York Times:

For years, at thousands of New York City intersections, well-worn push buttons have offered harried walkers a rare promise of control over their pedestrian lives. The signs mounted above explained their purpose:

To Cross Street
Push Button
Wait for Walk Signal
Dept. of Transportation

Millions of dutiful city residents and tourists have pushed them over the years, thinking it would help speed them in their journeys. Many trusting souls might have believed they actually worked. Others, more cynical, might have suspected they were broken but pushed anyway, out of habit, or in the off chance they might bring a walk sign more quickly.

As it turns out, the cynics were right.

Let’s rove, my love, And meet before we die!

John Updike in New Yorker magazine:

Said Spirit to Opportunity,
“I’m feeling rather frail,
With too much in my memory,
Plus barrels of e-mail.”

Responded Opportunity,
“My bounce was not so bad,
But now they send me out to see
These dreary rocks, bedad!”

“It’s cold up here, and rather red,”
Sighed Spirit. “I feel faint.”
Good Opportunity then said,
“Crawl on, without complaint!

“This planet needs our shovels’ bite
And treadmarks in the dust
To tell if life and hematite
Pervade its arid crust.”

“There’s life, by all the stars above,
On Mars—it’s you and I!”
Blithe Spirit cried. “Let’s rove, my love,
And meet before we die!”

BloggerConII Session Idea

David Pinto has this suggestion for a BloggerConII session. I'm not sure if he is serious, but I actually think it's a really interesting idea.

The Yankees are in town that weekend, so if enough baseball bloggers show up, we can skip out on the afternoon session and watch the game (or better still, have a session where we watch the game and talk about how we can blog it).

Maybe a little more generic, blogging live sports.

Brave new world

Jeff Jarvis on the future or Howard Stern:

I predicted that Stern would end up going to satellite and he talked about it this morning. He said that if he went onto satellite, they'd sell 12 million receivers immediately; "they wouldn't be able to make them fast enough." It would change the entire radio industry, making broadcast stations worth a helluva lot less, he said, and he's right. Radio had no appointment programming until Stern came; if he goes to satellite, he will bring listeners and excitement and revenue with him. Stern said he was planning to leave radio in two years but now he says he's thinking about changing the industry and then leaving. "If you don't think I'm serious, watch me."

More than we thought

Followup on my earlier post about the recent report about how many people are blogging. A couple of sites, including Dan Gillmor, have noted that the report actually states "44% of U.S. Internet users have contributed their thoughts and their files to the online world," just that most of them are using forms other than blogs.

That's a really great point.

Berkman Thursday 2/26/2004

I can't really call these "notes". They are more like some highlights that I jotted down on my pad.

BloggerConII planning
* "reporters" leading sessions
* non-commercial
* can't promote a product

Jim Moore's blog tools vision

Need to be fixed my MSIE. Cause it needs to happen in the browser. -- DaveW

Should there be a session about new tools at BC?

DaveW: How do you make money at this?

LisaW: What is our vision for blogging? Answer that question first and that will lead to the feature requests.

We need to ecourage stopping the "echo chamber"

"anti-meetup"

Just listen to someone who you are never gonna agree with. -- Dave W.

Interesting info on using the net in politics by Jesse Ventura back in late 90s.

Party planning for BC. Possible: the enormous room in central sq.

Blogs doing just fine thank you

I'm trying to decide what to make of this article. Is it the misguided "power law" discussion all over again?

AP Technology, via Yahoo!:

Despite the potential of turning every Internet user into a publisher, relatively few have created Web journals called blogs and even fewer do so with regularly, a new study finds.

Some bloggers indeed update their journals often, in some cases several times a day. But it's clearly a minority who are taking advantage of the blog and its potential to steer the online discourse with personal musings about news events and daily life.

Blogs don't need to be widely read, or extremely numerous, to be valuable and powerful. It is human nature that people are not going to be equally vocal. Some will be more vocal than others. And in the long run that will make the world a better place.