Mark Oeltjenbruns' Radio Weblog

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:19:36 GMT

Pablo Picasso. "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." [Quotes of the Day]

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 13:19:11 GMT

Thomas Jefferson. "I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it." [Quotes of the Day]

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 12:58:00 GMT

Leaderless Resistance. I was reading this quote from an article called Leaderless Resistance Today:

"The new communications technologies make it possible for a movement to exist solely as an ideology, with no membership lists, no financial records, no direct communication between the operatives and no "off" switch. There is no way to negotiate with such an ideology, no way to compromise....Because there is no formal "group" with assets, interpersonal relationships, or other stabilizing factors, individuals who moderate simply leave the milieu; their writings and actions remain behind, recruiting new members."

..and I was thinking "Yeah, that's fabulous, that's the kind of stuff we need!!", when I actually looked at the article and realized it was about terrorist groups and dangerous elements in society, and how movements might continue, simply based on an ideology, a book, a website, an event, even without any organizing network, without an organization, without any leaders. And the article talks about how that is a very bad thing, and how we might stop that. But I'm looking for how we might start that. Oh, not focused on hate and violence as the article is talking about. Focused on truth, freedom, beauty, love, the common good. Imagine that there were nothing any frantic monopoly could do to stop people from spontaneous making things work better and being more fun, and from exposing the truth at every turn. No organizational leadership to buy off, no accounts to bankrupt, nobody to put in jail, no communication channels to cut. Just millions of people who freely and voluntarily operated as cells of a bigger body, without even having to talk about it. Heheh. [Ming the Mechanic]

There is something very powerful here. Does the Internet need some pruning and cleanup? Is that even possible?

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 12:52:18 GMT

Nokia Mediamaster Makes Phone-TV Connection. With consumers clamoring for mobile phones that double as digital cameras, letting users capture and share snapshots of their latest trip to the mountains or send photos of their darling little sons and daughters, Nokia has come up with a way to offer photo-phone "slide shows" on TV. [osOpinion]

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 12:51:02 GMT

Frank Scully. "Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?" [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 12:50:13 GMT

Who Needs a 100 Million-Pixel Cell Phone Camera?.

I don't think I need one, but apparently Mitsubishi Electric Corp. built one and demonstrated it at CeBIT 2003. The company showed a prototype mobile phone handset with a digital camera having a resolution of about 100 million pixels and wireless LAN capability.

The new mobile phone model comes with a small digital camera attachable to the hinge of the folding handset. The digital camera has a MPEG4 encoding capability to take photos of animation. It is also capable of transmitting images taken to any access points nearby via wireless LAN. The model will have a compatibility with UMTS, the third-generation mobile communications protocol adopted in Europe.

Here is what this prototype looks like.

The built-in wireless LAN is in compliance with IEEE802.1b at 2.4GHz. Mitsubishi Electric assumes that users can use either wireless LAN or UMTS, depending on the intended purpose. For example, they can use UMTS for larger areas, and wireless LAN for particular areas for faster downloading, the spokesperson explained.

And what about prices and availability?

The maker does not have a concrete plan to commercialize the mobile phone yet. "We have developed this model to prove a multi-functional, operable mobile phone handset is technically feasible although it is still a concept model," a spokesperson at the lab said.

OK, the technology permits to build this handset, but it's almost absurd. How long will it take to send an image of 100 million pixels to someone? And what's the purpose of having that many pixels on such a small display?

This reminds me of an article about how designers are creating minuscule gadgets, with buttons too small for our fingers, and screens so tiny that nobody over 40 can read them easily.

If you haven't seen yet, please read "Hello, tech designers? This stuff is too small." Here is a short quote about how ridicule the situation is today.

Jeff Parrish, the manager of user experience at Palmsource, the software arm of Palm Computing, points out, anyone who squints at Palm screens can call on many tools to make it easier. An $11 program called Teal Magnify enlarges the type; a $30 magnifying glass available in stores from Officeonthego clips onto Palm units.

So, you first buy a gizmo with a small screen, then you have to add a magnifying glass!! Amazing!!

Source: Hiroki Yomogita, Nikkei Electronics, March 17, 2003; Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY, March 3, 2003

[Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]

Well, I would really like one even if it is small!

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:07:24 GMT

Ultrawideband might push out Bluetooth physical layer: As I've predicted in various forms, if UWB proves itself, the radio part of Bluetooth could disappear, while Bluetooth's top-level protocols remain. The IEEE 802.15 working group on Personal Area Networking had made great progress with 802.15.1 by approving a subset of Bluetooth's spec with the Bluetooth SIG's involvement. The 802.15.2 task group had several months ago worked out a co-existence plan for living in the same place as Wi-Fi-like networks (and an FCC decision reducing the number of channels that a frequency hopping standard needed to use will make that even easier). The 802.15.3 task group has been trying to establish a base on moving forward in the radio part of things, and many of the proposals coming in rely on UWB. [80211b News]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:05:04 GMT

Smartgun with authentication and minicam. A new South African gun comes equipped with a biometric authentication system (so it can only be fired by its owner) and a built-in minicam (so you can document the circumstances of each shot fired). Link Discuss (via /.) [Boing Boing Blog]

Great, I can just see the new TV series now, "Gun Shot." Showing all the footage of people getting shot at from the gunners POV, of course for TV, no one ever dies. Maybe the cops can review the footage and understand why these highly trained officers are such bad shots most of the time. "One shot, One Kill."

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:01:52 GMT

Airport luggage inspectors policing thoughtcrime. A traveller flying to San Diego from Seattle found his luggage had been opened by the Federal Transport Security Authority, who had left behind a note telling him so, on which was scrawled "DONT APPRECIATE YOUR ANTI-AMERICAN ATTITUDE" -- a reference to the "No Iraq War" signs he'd picked up in a shop in Seattle.

So, the Feds are not only inspecting our bags -- and invading our privacy -- to ensure that they are bomb-free; they're now taking it upon themselves to chastise us for our political beliefs? What the hell does keeping bombs off airplanes have to do with winkling out protest signs?

Nothing like a little thoughtcrime policing to undermine the entire mission and credibility of the TSA. Of course, the TSA is maintaining that this wasn't the work of an inspector -- rather, someone at the airport cut the security-seal left behind by the inspector, defaced the "You have been inspected" card, and replaced the seal, all without being caught by the TSA itself (wow, that gives me a lot of confidence in the TSA's ability to secure the nation's airports!).

Nico Melendez, western regional spokesman for the TSA, said the note in Goldberg's luggage will be investigated, but he said there's no proof that a TSA employee wrote it. "It's a leap to say it was a TSA screener," Melendez said.
But Goldberg said, "It seems a little far-fetched to think people are running around the airport writing messages on TSA literature and slipping them into people's bags."

Link Discuss (via Interesting People)
[Boing Boing Blog]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:00:11 GMT

RFID Cards Big in Tokyo.

I still have a couple hundred yen left on the railroad card I bought in Tokyo last September. New York Times reports that these slim, metallic, RFID-based cards are growing more popular in Japan. Some think they are the forerunner to electronic cash. All I know is that it was convenient to charge a card with cash at a vending machine, then simply slap my wallet down on the turnstile at the entrance to any Yamanote line train.

[Smart Mobs]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:59:13 GMT

Handheld video. Archos AC340 audio/video player..

Saw this in Wired this month. Looks cool - at least a heck of a lot cooler than the previous stuff archos has put out.

"The AV340 looks like it might be the real deal when it comes to watching video on the go: it can store up to 80 hours of video on its 40GB hard drive, has a 3.8-inch LCD screen, also plays both MP3s, and, with an optional attachment, can even be transformed into 3 megapixel digital camera." [via Gizmodo]

[nick gaydos > thynk]

Cool - finally.

[Marc's Voice]

Forget about an ipod!

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:50:49 GMT

hong kong flu. BBC: A global warning has been issued about a virulent flu and pneumonia sweeping hospitals in Hong Kong and Vietnam. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

This worries me since it seems to be an airborne virus. Easy to spread, hard to stop.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:48:34 GMT

More about RFID-based e-money.

In response to my post about RFID-enabled railroad passes in Tokyo, several readers of this blog pointed out:

Robert Renling points out:

"We have this is sweden also on most public transport systems."

Number5 points out:

Public transport systems like metro and bus in Guangzhou, China started to adopt these RFID systems this year.

As to small amount payment, there is another way: mobile phone. You can buy drinks or snacks auto seller machine by send sms to a specified number, and you'll pay for that when you pay your phone bill.

Peter Davidson points out:

We are seeing success in the US with a small fob that fits on users keychain. Called "Speedpass" by the Mobil oil company these little sentient things allow users to charge gasoline and other service station purchases to a credit card. The system is faster than a gas pump that takes credit cards.

In the Chicago area the Speedpass can be used at McDonalds. The device can be swiped past a proximity reader mounted outside the drive-thru window.

Interestingly the Speedpass is intended to be on a users keychain. With the keys in the ignition it requires a two part keychain to be able to swipe the Speedpass without having to shut the engine down and remove the keys from the ignition.

This same user interface issue applies to the new "switchblade" Discover card now available. This is a kidney shaped credit card that swivels out of a small plastic case like a pocket knife. This device is intended to ride on users keychains to make carrying and using the Discover card easier. Fine for self-swipe transactions like mass retailors and food stores but not good for transactions like meals where you'd have to hand your keychain to the waiter to pay the bill. Perhaps there's a quick release of some sort but I've not seen it in their advertising.
[Smart Mobs]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:48:11 GMT

Is the Brain Equivalent to a Turing Machine?. From the NewScientist.com: "The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease." [kuro5hin.org]

Wow!

Now we have brain and Face implants, what's next?

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:38:37 GMT

Scott Love tells the story of outliners. [Scripting News]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:33:47 GMT

Unknown. "Barnum was wrong - it's more like every 30 seconds." [Quotes of the Day]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:33:34 GMT

George Burns. "Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair." [Quotes of the Day]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:32:52 GMT

Ed Macauley. "When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:32:08 GMT

The Work of the Chariot. "When a man takes one step toward God, God takes more steps toward that man than there are sands in the worlds of time." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:24:24 GMT

Seb does it again. Towards Structured Blogging.

Lately I've been thinking about how we could evolve blogging tools to allow people to author more structured (dare I say semantic?) content, so that other people could find their stuff that they find of interest more easily.

Right now what we have, globally speaking, is pretty much a huge pool of blog posts, each implicitly tied to a particular weblog author and with a date slapped on. Now, say I've written a review of the latest Radiohead album into my blog. I'd like others who are interested in Radiohead, or in music reviews in general, and who may not know me, to be able to pick out my review from the common pool in a simple way. Interesting people may come my way because of this.

What we're talking about is getting people to put more metadata on their content. Now allowing it is one thing, and fostering it is another. And I'd say the latter is the bigger challenge.

The importance of feedback

I believe a critical element to get a sustainable system is for people to get reasonably quick feedback in return for the extra effort expended in creating metadata. The Internet Topic Exchange, in which Phillip Pearson implemented the ridiculously easy group-forming design, seems to work because it has a short feedback loop, and might provide a template for where we'd like to go. Here's an illustration of how the Internet Topic Exchange works:

People (on the left) associate select posts with particular topics by specifying a Ping URL; TrackBack carries information about their posts into the Exchange (the fat square), and from there they make it into open topic-specific blogs (on the right). (I don't need to talk about the per-topic Wiki pages here.) Creating a new topic is as easy as inventing a name - anyone is allowed (and encouraged) to do it.

Now, people interested in particular topics will watch them, and this is where the fun comes from. Look at the figure above. Say John (the yellow guy) doesn't know Elaine (the purple girl). But he watches Topic 1 dutifully. Now Elaine happens to come across the channel for Topic 1 and posts to it because she's also interested in Topic 1. Soon John gets her post in his aggregator, checks out her blog, and voilà, he's found a like mind.

In this case the metadata that we have managed to get John, Elaine and others interested in consists of a simple topic identification. This simple scheme has helped such groups as spanish bloggers, emergent democrats, and Austin bloggers coalesce.

Beyond topics

How might we work our way from this model to a different form of metadata, say a music review? Here's a possibility. We retain the basic architecture of the Exchange, but add a new type of blog post called "music review". A drop-down box might enable me to select between "plain-vanilla blog post" and "Music Review". The interface for entering a "Music Review" post might look like this:

(Here I'm assuming there is some sort of standard for music reviews composed of a title, an identification code for the piece of work being reviewed, a rating, and some text. If you know of a similar existing standard please let me know.)

In an ideal world, the "Find" button would pop up an assistant that lets you dig into a music metadatabase (say, MusicBrainz) and quickly home in on an unambiguous ID code for whatever it is you're reviewing (possibly asking you to contribute to the metadatabase if it doesn't know about this piece of work), and puts it in the box.

You fill in the other boxes, click "Post", and your part is pretty much done. Next the system does three things. First, it stores the review in a non-lossy format somewhere on your site. Second, it converts your input into a regular blog post to put in your blog and RSS feed. Third, it notifies one (or more) central indexing service(s), analogous to the Topic Exchange, that knows about music reviews, of the availability of your new review and of its location. This central service also serves a variety of RSS feeds. There could be song-based feeds, album-based feeds, artist-based feeds, genre-based feeds, etc. that you can subscribe to. You could subscribe to the "Radiohead songs and albums" feed and get all reviews of Radiohead songs and albums as soon as they come out. Or maybe you just want to be notified whenever someone reviews a certain song you especially like.

As in the case of the Topic Exchange, these RSS feeds are where the feedback (and the addictive quality) comes from and how new interpersonal links form and people cluster.

Putting it all together

Now to generalize. I talked about music reviews, but the scheme should also work with other kinds of content. Music video reviews, movie reviews (using IMDB?), ad reviews, TV show reviews, game reviews, radio station reviews, weblog reviews, restaurant reviews (perhaps using GPS data), scholarly article reviews... other kinds of content that are not reviews also, such as song lyrics, TV show transcripts, quotes, self-identification data.

Each of these would have (one or more) standard format(s). The basic idea is to let the blogging system support "alternate post type" plug-ins. Anyone should be able to develop such a plug-in (and a corresponding indexing service) for a new kind of post that they want.

If something like this were to become successful it would compete with a host of commercially led user-contributed databases such as Amazon's review database. One advantage would be to put control more firmly in the hands of contributors.

Will people care enough about having their writings under their own control and collected in one place to move away from such databases? I think they might. I know I do.

Other people are thinking along similar lines: Danny Ayers, Alf Eaton, Marc Canter, Sam Ruby, Ben Trott, Karl Dubost, to name a few. It would be nice to make something like this happen in 2003.

[Seb's Open Research]

Seb is so right on. First he does the Personal Knowledge Publishing rap, then he wrote about the collective mind "web-enabled group minds at work" - and he's been tracking the TopicExchange for a while. he's also been the ONLY person so far, besides me - who has contributed to the Topic Exchange channel I created - 'theMatrix'.

[Marc's Voice]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:16:16 GMT

Presidential Candidate Howard Dean has a weblog. During the last mid-term elections, we had Tara Sue Grubb (a libertarian candidate for Congress), and now we have a presidential candidate with a weblog. He's also using MeetUp, which is an Internet service that makes it easy for people to organize meetings. It's good to see politicians discover the power of the web. Maybe, as more of them understand its power of communication, our politicians won't be so readily inclined to pass laws that seem so riduculous to those of us that use the Internet extensively. [Ernie the Attorney]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:09:50 GMT

More Social-Network Mapping Tools.

I wrote yesterday a column named "New Social-Network Mapping Tools Are Emerging."

Slashdot mentioned it, and their readers sent me many comments and e-mails about other visualization tools.

First, I need to make some corrections about Valdis Krebs, the developer of InFlow, a software tool I talked about in this previous column. He wrote me to tell he never worked at IBM. On the contrary, IBM was his first big customer. And, while this Discover article stated that "Krebs has spent most of the last 15 years honing his mapping software," he told me "the first working version [w/o visuals] was written in 2 weekends... on a 512K Macintosh... using Prolog." Finally, InFlow is designed to analyze not an individual e-mail box, but groups of them.

And now, let's browse through the excellent suggestions in no particular order. [Please note that I intentionally removed all e-mail addresses.]

Raffi Krikorian urged me to take a look at a quick hack he put together a year ago called email constellations. "This project aims to be a free, flexible, and easily modifiable visualization tool that allows a user to intuitively understand their online social group structure."
Stefano Mazzocchi sent me a pointer to his Apache Agora visualizing social networks. There, you can see a data cloud "generated by processing three months of e-mail traffic on three Apache development mail lists."
Jonathon N. Cummings alerted me about the NetVis Module which allows a dynamic visualization of social networks. "The NetVis Module is a free open source web-based tool designed to simulate, analyze, and visualize social networks using data from csv files, online surveys, and geographically dispersed work teams."
Rev. wRy mentioned EtherApe, a graphical network monitor for Unix.
J. Maxwell Legg wrote about his freeware inGridX tool. "inGridX started life as a repertory grid creative free software offer to Kellian decision support consultants who make inferences about meanings by looking at the spin derived from a grid of elements and constructs. inGridX uses Principle Component Analysis as the basis to materially implicate a grid's digital effects.
The NameBase people pointed me to their Proximity Search tool which "generates social network diagrams of the ruling class."
Steve Wolff asked me to check his Surf3D Pro tool. This is a freeware program which promises to reduce "search time by over 80% in comparison to what it normally takes you to click through and evaluate search engine results." It has specific agents for Google Usenet groups, eBay auctions, Yahoo! Boards and others.
Arthur Embleton and Gustavo Muslera both recommended KartOO visual meta search engine. It is similar to the TouchGraph GoogleBrowser, but it doesn't require Java and uses FlashPlayer to draw interactive maps. Dazzling!
Finally, a reader named xynopsis talked about another kind of tools, the Visual Thesaurus. This web tool is not about social mapping, but it shows graphical connections between words. In this previous column, "The Visual Thesaurus: What Does it Show About Thanksgiving?," I already explored this very funny tool.

As I already said, if you know about other similar new tools, please tell me and I'll gather your comments in a future story.

Sources: Roland Piquepaille, with Slashdot readers' help, March 16, 2003

[Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:08:11 GMT

Mount Washington has wireless Webcam at the top of New England: Some insane folks at the Zakon Group in New Hampshire braved exceptional snow and temperature conditions to launch a Webcam at NH's Wildcat Mountain Ski Area (4,000 feet) pointing at the legendary Tuckerman and Huntingon Ravines. (My father-in-law learned to ski on Tuckerman Ravine using Stem Christies to turn from a full stop. Yes, it's steep.) The Webcam is solar powered and relays its signal wirelessly to the Mount Washington Observatory (6,300 feet). The Observatory has a frame-relay line.

[80211b News]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:07:24 GMT

Wireless Art Course/Blog.

Wireless Art, to my knowledge, this is the first graduate level art course explicitly on Wireless Art, or using WiFi as an artistic medium. According to the instructor, Yuri Gitman, "This class leads students through a series of projects and lectures aimed at pushing the boundaries of both art and wireless technology by using WiFi for purely artistic and expressive ends. I'm the instructor and also an artist-in-resident at Eyebeam(.org), a leading art and technology organization in NYC. I was responsible for the Noderunner game, which was posted at smartmobs.com a few months back. In any case, the class website is updated often, as it's a blog, and will host links to the projects we create."

[Smart Mobs]

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 13:06:42 GMT

New Social Network Mapping tools.

Yesterday, Roland Piquepaille wrote about New Social Network Mapping Tools Are Emerging. The story was Slashdotted and many Slashdot readers sent Roland suggestions, so he wrote a new column based on their suggestions: More Social-Network Mapping Tools

(Thanks, Roland!)

[Smart Mobs]