Noting the 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

I enjoyed this list from Wired magazine: 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About. Some are definitely true today already, some are in process and likely to be correct, a few are more future-looking and won't literally be true for a long time (if ever). Still, a good list overall.

This Thing Called the Internet

Classic news clip from the early days of the Internet. Pretty funny.

On the Future of Books

Stephen Johnson has written a fascinating piece for the WSJ: How the E-Book Will Change Will Change the Way We Read and Write. I was going to quote some of his points and predictions, but there are too many interesting bits to choose just a few. I'm not sure I believe all of his predictions will come true, but I suspect many of them will. It will be fascinating to watch what happens over the next 10+ years in this realm.

Microsoft Video on Technology of the Future

See this short video posted at Jay Cross' blog, a Microsoft video about technology improvements that are coming in the future.

The technologies shown vary a bit in terms of how soon we'll see each: some are already in early-release/expensive/prototypes from various providers, others I assume won't be ready for many years.

My random thoughts:

• You can see how we'll get here from the latest advances we've already seen in recent years, such as the UI of the iPhone/iTouch, the latest Kindle device, Microsoft's table-top "Surface" technology, and early digital whiteboards.
• I presume a bit further out will be the examples that are more holographic or similar to what we saw in the movie "Minority Report".
• People have been talking up GPS-driven technology for years, but I hope we'll get better scenarios than stores giving us personalized digital coupons as we walk by their doors.
• The quick example of changing prices in the supermarket... wow! That would be a big efficiency gain for these kinds of stores!
• I've been reading about "digital paper" for a while too... the example of the newspaper shown here is impressive... if that comes soon enough, might it keep more traditional newspapers alive I wonder?
• Language-translation-during-conversation example... very "star trek"... and would be great if near-100% accurate. Less than that, could be annoying and cause major problems.

You might need to watch the video twice to catch all the good examples flying by... enjoy!

Late again, but I'm now on Facebook

As I've said before, I am often late to the latest popular things. I was late to switch from VHS to DVD, late to get an iPod, late to blogging, and I still don't use a cell phone much at all. Adding to this list... Facebook. I've been meaning to get myself included at Facebook for a long time now, and last week I finally did it. It will take me some time to fill out my profile to my satisfaction, and to explore the many wonderful apps and widgets one can add. I'm having fun with it so far.

I've of course been on the more professionally-oriented social networking site LinkedIn, for quite a long time. But that is to be expected since I'm 34 years old, not 16 or 22.

Backup and Music Streaming with Windows Home Server

I am pleased to report that over the recent holidays I got a Windows Home Server and was able to get it up and running with amazing ease. I got the HP MediaSmart EX475, which comes with 1 TB (that's 1,000 GB) of storage space. Here is info on it from HP's site, and then also from Amazon. I ordered straight from HP, and it came quickly.

I've only just begun to make use of this machine, but so far I'm quite happy with it. The obvious thing to use it for immediately is automatic backup of all computers in your home. Between midnight and 6 am the WHS wakes up each computer on my network and backs them up. The first backup is heavy of course, but then after that it uses smart technology to only backup the files that are changed or new. You can then rollback individual files or entire hard drives to any date should something go wrong -- and of course, things inevitably go wrong. Since I'm as lazy as the next guy when it comes to backing up my files, this is a great solution. I no longer need to worry about it!

The other thing I've begun using my WHS for is streaming music to our primary television in the living room. Now, there are many ways one can do this -- with media center PCs, or XBox, or whatever. And I've had a Tivo machine for a while, and so could have been doing this all along. But I found the approach used by Tivo Desktop to be cumbersome, so I never bothered using it much. But with WHS, and with the handy Tivo Publisher Add-in For Windows Home Server, I can now listen to any MP3s that I have stored on WHS via iTunes. Very cool, because I didn't need to mess with Tivo Desktop, convert files in any way, etc. Oh, and ditto for photos and videos... for what that's worth... though I've not yet gotten my photos organized and stored on the WHS machine, and I doubt I'll be doing much perusing of photos on my TV anyway.

You can learn more about WHS by visiting the Microsoft WHS homepage.

And see also my original posting about WHS over a year ago. Unlike many technologies, this one is living up the hype and my own expectations for it.

There are many other things I hope to use my WHS for, as time permits me to explore the available add-ons and try out the various use scenarios (like remote access). So watch this blog for more updates on this...

Windows Home Server -- Latest Marketing is Kinda Funny

Not hugely funny, but not bad either. Here is some new Microsoft marketing videos for Windows Home Server. On the left there are four videos, a brief intro and three themed videos. Then on the bottom right check out the fake children's book that explains about home servers -- a clever idea. My favorite line is about the uncle who smells like bark.

I haven't yet bought my Windows Home Server, but I will be doing so very soon, as I've been waiting all year for them to be released.

Hurdles for Bloggers from Cuba

Here is an interesting article about the hurdles that bloggers in Cuba face. And yet there are some in America who still praise the totalitarian Communist regime that causes so much misery in Cuba.

TuneGlue AudioMaps

The October 16 issue of PC Magazine had a sidebar noting the site TuneGlue as a "Best of the Internet". I checked it out, and it is pretty slick. It is a flash-based site that takes the name of a music group or artist as input, and then lets you get back various bits of information about them. The most interesting aspect is the audio-map feature, accessible by clicking the artist's circle and then clicking Expand. This locates six-related artists, from which you could then repeat the procedure several times to develop a music-map to see the relationships between the artists.

I did several tests of this and found it to be fairly accurate. I started with Enya, and found that many of the artists it said were one or two-level relationships with Enya are exactly the same artists that Pandora selects for me based on my interest in Enya.

The results for Pink Floyd were not very enlightening, as they included some of the biggest groups from the 60s and 70s (Beatles, Doors, Led Zep, etc.). But then when I tried Jethro Tull, I was pleased to see Pink Floyd as one of the six bands directly related.

I tried several other artists, with mixed results in my opinion. Then again, perhaps what I consider to be closely related artists and what the rest of the world does are not in close alignment!

I'll also note that the database seems to be pretty deep, as I looked up Dargaard and they were included, as is Stan Rogers a favorite of Susan's.

Pretty nifty site, and a good way to research new artists that you might want to check out!

Unfortunate Web Domain Names

From the September 4, 2007 issue of PC Magazine we get a hilarious sidebar "The 6 Most Unfortunate Web Domain Names":

• Children's Wear = childrenswear.co.uk
• IHA Vegas = ihavegas.com
• ipAnywhere = ipanywhere.com
• Mole Station Nursery = molestationnursery.com
• Therapist Finder = therapistfinder.com
• ViaGrafix = viagrafix.com

Ripping on Windows Vista

Here is a funny YouTube video that rips on Windows Vista. Some clever jabs there. I have one computer with Vista, and don't have any major gripes actually. But I still found this video kinda funny.

Vicipaedia

Now here is something I wouldn't have thought of... a Latin version of Wikipedia. It is called Vikipaedia. Apparently this is a good place for people to practice their latin skills.

Banned from the Internet?

This item from the CHE is bizarre:

After a college student was found harassing (indeed, threatening) a fellow student via e-mail, a judge ordered him to stay away from her and her friends. But the judge went a step further, telling the student that he is not allowed on the Internet at all...

Where to begin here? First, the easy criticism from practicality -- how will this ban on Internet usage be enforced? With even minimal technical savvy the kid will find his way onto the Internet -- or simply use the Internet via a friend's account/login/etc.

But aside from that issue, on the principle of the matter, this judge's decision is insane. The judge has clearly gone far beyond a just punishment for this individual, and is clearly thereby violating this person's rights. For one thing, email is just one part of the Internet. This would be like someone stalking someone else in the real world, say by driving by their house constantly and yelling nasty things or whatever. This judge would apparently not just put a restaining order on such a person requiring them to stay away from that house -- he would take away the stalkers driver's license altogether. Further, because driving is just one mode of transportation, he'd apparently bar the stalker from flying, taking trains, riding his bike, and so on.

Surely this aspect of the decision will be tossed out on appeal... I hope!

Windows Home Server Website is Updated

Today Microsoft updated their website for the forthcoming Windows Home Server product due out this fall. They have different sections targetting different audiences (Home Users, Enthusiasts, etc.). Way back in January, when I first heard of WHS, I blogged at length about my excitement for this product's potential. I'm still just as interested in it today, and I look forward to getting a WHS machine later this year.

An Interesting Idea: Wikirage

A new site called Wikirage is very interesting. It provides a list of the entries in Wikipedia that are getting the most frequent edits over various periods of time (past hour, past 24 hours, past week, and so on). The lists generated are more-or-less a good way to get a sense of the very latest new-generating events, on the assumption that if something is an important news item it would generate a wikipedia change -- and likely many in a flurry, as wikipedians hurry to get as accurate an account of the event as possible.

At the Wikirage homepage the default list shows the 100 entries based on edits over the past day. Giving it a quick glance, there are many entries that are about major sports events from the past day, some political news from the past day, and so on. I suspect that this site will be a hit!

Problem with Windows Vista Networking with Windows XP

Like many folks, I recently bought a new laptop that has Windows Vista as the OS. I still have computers on my network that use Windows XP. I have a pretty standard SOHO network with a standard LinkSys router, so you'd think this wouldn't be all that tough to do. Well, it wasn't easy at all. I had all kinds of problems getting the Vista machine to even see the XP machines, even though I had done all the obvious stuff (e.g., in the same workgroup, same user id logins used, necessary protocols and so on installed and configured, firewalls tested to see if they were the problem, and more).

In the end, the solution was a buried setting in the registry that needed a tweak:

1. On your Vista machine: Start, Run, regedit
2. Navigate to the following folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3. In the right, double-click "LmCompatibilityLevel"
4. Change the value to 1 (probably currently 3)
5. Restart your computer

That fixed it... as I was then able to share files between the computers, no problem. Hopefully this will help someone else out there with a similar problem!

Oh, and for info on what that setting is for, see here.

Outlook 2007 RSS Date Problem

I upgraded from Eudora to Outlook 2007 earlier this year, and for the most part I've been very happy with it. I use it for email of course, but also for tasks/to-do list information, contacts/address book, and also as my RSS reader for blogs and other feeds. It is this last area where I was having one problem with Outlook 2007, as any blog feeds that were from Blogger were listing all entries as having a date of 12/31/2006. The problem is that Outlook has problems supporting the Atom feed format, as opposed to say the RSS2 feed format.

Many other folks have the same problem of course, and it took a lot of research at discussion forums and so on to find a workaround that we can use -- until MSFT fixes this aspect of Outlook 2007.

Many people suggested appending ?alt=rss to the end of the URL of your atom feed, and that this would then produce an RSS2 feed that Outlook 2007 could work with properly. But that doesn't work. What you need to do is append that parameter to the end of the URL of the feed as it is stored at the Blogger.com site -- not at your blog's location. This is an address that looks something like this:

http://www.blogger.com/feeds/23832556/posts/default

That is the one for my blog, Philosopher Stone. Yours would be identical, except it would have a different number string there in the middle. How can you get this URL? One way is to look for it in the metadata at the beginning of your feed. If you are using IE7, you can do this by browsing your feed, right-clicking, and choosing View Source. Then look around for a URL just like above, except with different numbers. There you have it!

Use that in Outlook 2007, except append ?alt=rss to the end of it, like this:

http://www.blogger.com/feeds/23832556/posts/default?alt=rss

That should do it! Your date display problem will now be solved!

Social Bookmarking Explained

I've never started up with del.icio.us or any of the other popular "social bookmarking" sites that have become so popular in recent years. I've always thought that could be useful for me, but I've never taken the plunge. If you aren't clear on what this is about, I found this YouTube video to be quite good at explaining the basics.

My Top 10 Work and Learning Tools

I recently blogged about the top-100 tools listing that has resulted from a poll conducted by the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies. The results are still growing, as the Centre approaches its goal of gathering results from 100 "learning professionals - consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics".

After posting that blog entry, Jane Hart -- head of the Centre -- posted a comment and invited me to submit my own top-10 for inclusion in this list. Since I was already thinking about what my top-10 would be, it was easy for me to type up my annotated list and send it along, and she has kindly now included it in the results. You can see me in the list of folks included here (I'm #95). And then my Top-10 list, with my reasons for each, is given here. As I noted in my earlier post, the question is quite broad and includes tools important to me for "personal work" and for "learning". The current top-100 list is here, and you can also see the results grouped by type here.

Wikipedia Nears Two Million English Entries

Here is a brief blurb from CHE, with an interesting quote from Jimbo Wales, about Wikipedia nearing the two-million mark for English-language entries.

Kittens and Puppies Fighting Spam

Computerworld had an interesting article about Microsoft's use of photos of kittens and puppies to fight email spam: "Kittens could sink their wee teeth into spam deluge." This use of technology is evolutionary not revolutionary, but I liked the added benefit of their use of PetFinder.com, thereby promoting pet adoptions as a side benefit.

Top 100 "Learning Tools"

I recently learned from a few different sources of an interesting poll being conducted by the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies. This is what they did recently: "In July we asked e-learning professionals - consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics, etc - to let us know what their 10 favourite tools were for their own personal working and learning or for creating and delivering learning solutions."

So given that very broad poll question... first see the current top-100 results.

Then here is the list of folks whose votes are in so far -- which would be important to consider since this is both a small population of respondents and also a broad question to be asked, so there could easily be institution-bias, e.g., if many are from academia or government or business, or a greater number who do a particular type of work (word-heavy, graphic-heavy, etc.).

Then to see the same results organized by type -- which is also useful and interesting -- see the so-called "Learning Toolbox".

As they note: "This collection is proving to be a popular resource to find out about the wide range of tools that can be used in a learning context, and is demonstrating that e-learning is much much more than online courses."

A few comments of my own (about the top-100):

1. The top 15 are not what I would consider "learning specific" tools. They are all broader than that ("personal work" tools, and so on). Some are Web 2.0 tools, some are standards like Word and PPT.
2. At #16 we have Moodle, which is a Course Management System -- an open source solution. So that is the highest ranking purely "learning" related tool.
3. Around #16 is also where you'll start to see some tools you might not have heard of before. Has everyone reading this heard of Moodle? Netvibes? Ning? MindManager? Those are all in the top 25, receiving 8 or more votes each!
4. Adobe Captivate (which I've used and think highly of) is at #22 with 8 votes. Articulate Presenter is right behind it with 7 votes, though strangely the nearly identical product, Adobe Presenter, is not in the top 100.
5. I'm a bit surprised to see Wikipedia so low (just 5 votes), but that could be the result of very vague instructions for voting -- many might not have thought of particular Wikis, instead thinking to vote for their favorite wiki software application (e.g., MediaWiki, WikiSpaces, Drupal, etc.)
6. While there are many commercial apps included, I think there is a bias here towards open-source apps -- perhaps with good reason in many instances. For instance, FireFox ranks first with 45 votes, and IE just gets 4 votes -- yet far more people the world around still use IE over Firefox. I think many people who responded no doubt use IE7, but do so by default, and so wouldn't think to mention it in their top 10.

There certainly is a lot of new technologies out there! It is amazing what Open Source, collaborative building, and also traditional commercial software building can collectively produce!

Maybe I'll submit my own top-10, or at least indicate them on this blog sometime. I think most of my top-10 would already be in the top-100 somewhere... but... my favorite tool for a list like this (again, more for personal work than for "learning" per se) is not in the top-100! Answer: OneNote.

A Union for Bloggers? Huh?

My wife Susan sent me a link today and prefaced it with "This is not a joke article from the Onion." That certainly got me curious, so I read the blog posting at Rational Jen that was itself a response to the Forbes.com piece "Bloggers Consider Forming Labor Union" (my friend Chris also mentions this on his new blog here). As a story about bloggers, no doubt this is being much talked about around the Blogosphere -- alas, I don't have time right now to look around for others' comments on this story.

Assuming this isn't a joke, I'll comment on a few bits from the Forbes article:

In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

Huh? Who will they receive it from? Who are they going to be collectively bargaining with? They are not employed by anyone! This is bizarre. The only thing I can imagine here, with regard to health insurance premiums, is that a very large number of bloggers banded together in some sort of way that insurers recognized, then they could be considered a "pool" the way large companies are, and this can lower insurance rates somewhat. Is that what they are hoping for? Other than that, I don't know where they are going to be magically given health care from or with whom they plan to bargain collectively.

Organizers hope a bloggers' labor group will not only showcase the growing
professionalism of the Web-based writers, but also the importance of their roles in candidates' campaigns.

Its not clear to me how these benefits will derive from having a union. Again, being as charitable as I can, are they thinking that they will do someting like MSM columnists who have their content aggregated on larger sites and thereby reach an audience they would have difficulty reaching as lone writers? If so, then they should just write for group blogs, or use RSS to aggregate their blog postings on particular sites. I don't see what role a "labor union" will play here.

Others see a blogger coalition as a way to find health insurance discounts, fight for press credentials or even establish guidelines for dealing with advertising and presenting data on page views.

That first issue I addressed above -- I think they must mean the insurance pool idea. I can see the value of press credentials, but can't bloggers just get together and write guidelines for various things? What role does an actual "labor union" play here? Is this just semantics that is throwing me off?

"It would raise the professionalism," said Leslie Robinson, a writer at ColoradoConfidential.com. "Maybe we could get more jobs, bona fide jobs."

How would forming a labor union "raise the professionalism"? And why don't such bloggers -- if they actually want "real" jobs as writers -- go get them? Don't big bloggers love being on the outside of the MSM? Are they now saying they want real jobs as writers afterall? I don't get the desire here, nor how forming a "labor union" is the answer -- afterall, most employers would rather not have to deal with labor unions, not to mention a labor union composed mostly of ultra-leftist folks -- which it seems is mostly the type of bloggers who are interested in forming a "labor union" for bloggers.

"The blogosphere is such a weird term and such a weird idea. It's anyone who wants to do it," Hopkins said. "There's absolutely no commonality there. How will they find a commonality to go on? I think it's doomed to failure on any sort of large scale."

I think what you could get is some banding together of bloggers -- but we already have that. We have group bloggers. We have aggregators. A blogger union on a large scale? Like this person, I don't see it.

Madrak hopes that regardless the form, the labor movement ultimately will help bloggers pay for medical bills. It's important, she said, because some bloggers can spend hours a day tethered to computers as they update their Web sites.

"Blogging is very intense - physically, mentally," she said. "You're constantly scanning for news. You're constantly trying to come up with information that you think will mobilize your readers. In the meantime, you're sitting at a computer and your ass is getting wider and your arm and neck and shoulder are wearing out because you're constantly using a mouse."

Just a thought... maybe you should get some balance in your life then! Its no one's fault but your own if you are "tethered to your computer", if your "ass is getting wider" from sitting too long, and your body is "wearing out because you're constantly using a mouse". Get some exercise! Break up your day with other activities.

If readers of these blogs enjoy their writing so much, then they can help pay for the medical care needed to keep them at their computers 19 hours a day. That is their choice. Put out a special Tip Jar or PayPal button for that purpose! Good luck!

Photosynth, Part 2

Even though I only two days ago posted about the cool, amazing new technology called PhotoSynth, I've since learned a bit more about it and just gotta share.

First, if you haven't yet seen the video from the TED conference, do so here or here.

Then if you want to play with a trial of this yourself, you can do so at http://labs.live.com/photosynth/default.html (Note: there are minimum system requirements to do so). And there is more than one collection you can play with -- click the collections to see more.

Then to learn more about the project, see the videos at this page.... the first two are particularly worthwhile.

This is something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie. Question: when will see this used on an episode of 24, or a big movie? I bet pretty soon...

Another thing I wonder about here... so far, what we are seeing is mostly focused on buildings, and buildings that aren't changing much. But of course buildings do change over time, so that would throw a complication into the mix -- you could have photographs from two years, where part of the building is the same in each, but say a corner has been remodeled in one because it was taken a year later after some construction work. So if both photos were in the dataset or collection, then I wonder what would happen to the 3D model created? There would be this conflict from these two photos I think.

Another thing that occurs to me is... wouldn't it be great to have a photosynth collection from something that doesn't exist any more? Some building or place that doesn't exist any longer (a favorite sports stadium that has been demolished, or main street of Deadwood in the late 1800s, or whatever), and if you had enough photos of it from a certain time period where there was enough consistency for it to work (per question above), then you could reconstruct a 3D space from those photos pretty accurately using this photosynth technology.

I'm quite sure some really creative people are going to find really interesting applications for this in the near future, stuff I can't even imagine. And could there be uses for it... in business? in the military? Lotsa possibilities I think...

Audio Version of The Economist Now Available

One thing that I've long looked forward to is the ability to get entire magazines or newspapers as high-quality audio files. While some articles are things that I really need to focus on (whether read or heard), others are things I could listen to while doing something else: either because the content is less demanding or I'm relatively less interested in it. The ability to listen to such content rather than read it makes it possible to do simple tasks like checking email or other computer tasks, light housework like dusting, exercise (jogging!), or even eating meals with something smarter than most TV is. Can't do that while reading the print versions (except eating, but even that is kind-of a hassle and can be messy).

So I learned recently that my dream in this area is starting to come true. In particular, The Economist is now offering complete audio of every issue. It looks like they just started this a few issues ago, unless I am not seeing an older "archive" link. Regardless, I am delighted that they are now offering this. I gave it a try today -- downloading the lengthy Special Report they had on Iran in the 7/21 issue. The process was easy, and the quality was very good! the files are MP3, so you can listen to them on your computer, your portable device, burn to CD, or whatever. You have to either be a subscriber to the print version, or buy each audio issue online for $8 each. Since I already subscribe to the print version, there is no extra cost for me.

So now I'm eager to learn if other print content providers already offer their entire contents, in a timely manner, and with high-production quality results. I'll be checking into Wired, Wall Street Journal, and others in this regard soon. But my first choice for this would have been The Economist, since they have the most words per page and are hence the slowest to read through each week. I'm not a fast reader, so this new audio edition is wonderful for me!

ONN: Internet Crash

One of the best Onion News Network video clips has to be this one that describes how one man's overuse of his computer caused a disaster. Check it out... and as with all ONN clips, watch it twice, the second time with the volume low or off so you can focus on the crawl at the bottom as those are generally pretty funny too.

Other ONN videos are funny, though I find them to be inconsistent. And some are quite adult in their content, so the humor isn't for everyone. A few other favorites of mine include Study: Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful to Monkeys... and ... Live from Congress: Rep. Ingersoll's Murder of a Hobo... and ... 70 Percent of all Praise is Sarcastic... and ... even the hard-to-be-straight-faced video Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays.

Amazing "Photosynth" Technology

Check out this video (or see it here at YouTube). Pretty impressive! The ability to zoom in so far on so much photographic data at once was amazing enough. But then when he switches to the ability to generate massive photographic images from dozens or hundreds of related images from Flickr, well, that is when the jaw hits the floor. If you can grok all of what he is saying while displaying this and afterwards (play it a few times if necessary), then you can see the potential that he sees for this kind of technology. Simply amazing!

WHS Goes to RTM

Microsoft is, for once, staying on schedule. Last week they finished work on the RTM-release for Windows Home Server. I am still as excited about this product as I was back in January when I wrote this blog posting, and then on June 19 when I wrote that WHS Will Be the Next Big Thing. I am really looking forward to later this year when I can get my hands on a WHS integrated hardware/software device, from HP or another vendor.

For a clearly written, official document that describes the features of WHS, see the WHS Reviewer's Guide.

For a description of interesting third-party add-ins already developed, see here. For me, the Tivo one is of most interest. For folks that use Flickr, that one could be very useful too.

Interesting OS Bug Fix Statistics

Paul Thurrott's WinInfo Daily email newsletter is something I've read for years, as Paul often provides the very latest information on computers and the Internet faster than anyone else -- and he often corrects stories or rumors in the mainstream media that are not in line with the facts. Although the general focus of his newsletter is Windows, he is often very critical of Microsoft and often has very positive things to say about its various competitors (Apple, Linux, Google, et al.). And the topics of the newsletter really do cover the entire industry, broadly construed. Oh, and his SuperSite for Windows is a great resource for product reviews too!

A couple of his "short-takes" from Friday summarized the situation with bug fixes for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux:

Microsoft: We Patch More Quickly than Apple or Linux
Well, duh. And anyone who disagrees with this hasn't been paying attention. Microsoft on Thursday released data showing that Windows users were at risk from security flaws for less time than users of Apple Mac OS X or Linux over the past few years because the company responds to flaws more quickly. According to the company, Windows users were at risk an average of less than 29 days last year, compared with 46 days for OS X and 74-107 days for various Linux distributions. Hey, that's great, really. But on the flip side, Windows is hacked more than all those systems combined, so it's unclear whether this data makes much difference. Let's flip it around again: In 2006, Windows also had the fewest actual security flaws, with 90 for Windows XP, compared with 129 for OS X and 232-301 for various Linux versions. In the end, security is a tough one: Although it's very easy to protect a Windows system against electronic attack, it's equally true that Windows is the target of most actual attacks, even if it has the fewest actual flaws or shortest length of time before flaws are fixed.

But... Microsoft Patched Windows XP More Quickly than it Patches Windows Vista
But wait, there's more. Although Microsoft wasn't trying to highlight this fact in its revelation about security flaws, the company's data also shows that it's patching security flaws in Vista far more slowly than it did with XP. According to Microsoft, it patched 12 of 27 security flaws in the first six months since Vista was generally released. But the company had patched 36 out of 39 known security flaws in XP in the same timeframe when that OS was released. To be fair, most of Vista's unpatched bugs are not critical security flaws, which might explain the discrepancy. And the lower number of actual flaws suggests that Vista is more secure than XP, especially given that electronic attacks are more frequent and more sophisticated now than when XP first shipped. Yeah, I'm making lemonade here, but it seems there are many ways to interpret this data.

Assuming his numbers are accurate, the only angle missing from this is how many of those bugs for each OS are "critical" vs. lesser status. Unless the Windows ones are predominantly "critical" and the Linux and Mac OS X ones aren't, these numbers do indicate a common misconception in the OS world and in the press.

Pandora Introduces Me To Dargaard

Another plug for Pandora.com here. I first blogged about this internet radio service here, and then again later here. The latest song that my "Enya-centered" radio station has introduced me to that I really like a lot is the depressingly-titled "In the Omnipresence of Death". It is by an Austrian group called Dargaard (for more info, see the Wikipedia entry about them, their website, and the Napalm Records promo page for them). It is from their 2001 album "The Dissolution of Eternity".

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't have the song available yet. And Amazon doesn't provide clips from this album. But you can listen to a clip of just the beginning of it at the eMusic page for this album. The song begins with chimes with some haunting background voices. Then the song picks up the pace with female vocals and heavy what I assume are bass and timpani percussion. It returns to the chimes and then back again to the female voice with deep percussion, and some strings as well. And there are keyboards throughout (indeed, some of what I just described could be keyboard/synthesized for all I know).

Just another song I've come to really like a lot... and only through the wonder that is Pandora!

WHS Will Be the Next Big Thing

I've said it before... or at least clearly implied it before: I think WHS (Windows Home Server) is going to be a big deal. In a blog posting in January of this year I sang the praises of WHS; if you haven't read that one, do so now since I describe the many reasons why I am excited about this forthcoming product.

Compared with some other upcoming technologies -- such as Apple iPhone or Microsoft's "Surface" technology -- WHS doesn't seem to be getting a lot of a buzz. I guess that is in part because there isn't anything really visually cool to show in video clip or advertisement -- except what will inevitably be extremely happy customers! And yet, I really think WHS will be a hugely important product. Put me on record as predicting it now -- or better, back in January. There is huge pent-up demand for a product that does what WHS will do. It must perform all those functions, do them all well, and be easy to setup and maintain. And from the ongoing beta-testing and development news I've been reading for months, WHS seems well-poised to deliver on every count.

Here are a couple of recent news bits: PC World on the RC1 release, and then a Smarthouse review (a technology guide from Australia). The latter I think hits the nail on the head with its title: "Windows Home Server The Next Big Thing".

Postmodern Learning?

My confusion-radar perks up whenever I see the word "Postmodern" used, and especially when it is used in some neologistic phrase that I've not heard before.

The May 14 issue of BusinessWeek magazine had a commentary piece by Michelle Conlin titled "Cheating -- or Postmodern Learning?". It mentions Duke Business School, and reports that they recently had 10% of their class of 2008 caught cheating on a take-home final exam. It doesn't mention any details of the Duke situation, such as what kind of final exam it was, or exactly how the students supposedly cheated. That would have been very helpful for the rest of this commentary, as you'll see. Instead the commentary wants to raise the notion that there is a fuzzy ethical line in such contexts between "sharing" or "collaborating" and outright "cheating".

I don't see it all. She writes:

It's easy to imagine the explanations these MBAs, who are mulling an appeal, might come up with. Teaming up on a take-home exam: That's not academic fraud, it's postmodern learning, wiki style. Text-messaging exam answers or downloading essays onto iPods: That's simply a wise use of technology.

One can understand the confusion. This is a generation that came of age nabbing music off Napster and watching bootlegged Hollywood blockbusters in their dorm rooms. "What do you mean?" you can almost hear them saying. "We're not supposed to share?"

Well, hold on. Teaming up on a take-home exam is OK if the professor has said it is OK, otherwise the assumption must be that your exam should reflect your understanding and work only. That is the basic difference between an exam and a group-project. Text-messaging each other answers during an exam is cheating, pure and simple. The folks who "nabbed music off Napster" were stealing property, pure and simple. The fact that most of a generation of young people don't understand this doesn't change the facts: it just speaks to a massive failing of education and personal responsibility in this country.

Conlin continues:

That's not to say that university administrators should ignore unethical behavior, if it in fact occurred. But in this wired world, maybe the very notion of what constitutes cheating has to be reevaluated. The scandal at Duke points to how much the world has changed, and how academia and corporations are confused about it all, sending split messages.

We're told it's all about teamwork and shared information. But then we're graded and ranked as individuals. We assess everybody as single entities. But then we plop them into an interdependent world and tell them their success hinges on creative collaboration.

Is this really all that confusing? I don't think so. I don't think we need to "reevaluate what constitutes cheating." If a professor's instructions for a final exam or a class project are vague or unclear, then they are at fault. And perhaps professors need to be even more clear about what constitutes cheating and what does not, in light of the growing emphasis on collaboration in so many aspects of life (which is a good thing of course). But assuming that the professor is clear that their final exam is what most final exams are (whether take home or in-class) -- that they are intended to be assessments of the knowledge or skills gained by each individual -- independently of others -- then I just don't see that the students have much of a defense if they are caught copying each others work or whatnot. So that is why the lack of any additional information about the Duke case is so important here -- without knowing that, we can't make a judgement as to whether the Professor was vague or the students cheated. In either case though, I don't see the emergence of a fuzzy-ethics conundrum.

Her paragraph that begins "We're told..." is blantant context-dropping with the purpose of obfuscation of the issues. Teamwork and sharing information are praiseworthing in certain contexts only. Exams, typically, are for evaluating individuals. And the fact that we "plop them into an interdependent world" and "tell them that their success hinges on creative collaboration"... so what? This doesn't negate the fact that final exams are traditionally used to evaluate individuals as individuals, everyone knows this, and assuming the professor hasn't said otherwise, it would be bizarre to now just assume otherwise.

To be fair, her next paragraph shows that Conlin does understand the need to evaluate individuals as individuals:

The new culture of shared information is vastly different from the old, where hoarding information was power. But professors--and bosses, for that matter--need to be able to test individual ability. For all the talk about workforce teamwork, there are plenty of times when a person is on his or her own, arguing a case, preparing a profit and loss statement, or writing a research report.

And then her final paragraph she also writes: "This is in no way a pass on those who consciously break the rules." So that is good to see.

But I just think she is giving way to much strength to the potential claims of cheaters that they were somehow confused by "mixed messages" from society. As long as there are no mixed-messages or ambiguities coming from their instructor, there is no problem here and cheaters have no excuse.

And finally, getting back to the use of "Postmodern Learning" in the title of her commentary, what is "Postmodern" about it (whatever that even means)? And to what extent is the type of thing being described in this commentary "Learning" at all? I don't deny that people can learn by working together, collaborating on a project, and so on -- that is all obvious. But one example in the commentary was from a Stanford professor, who spoke approvingly of someone who "found somebody to help you write an exam". Well again, if the exam is a traditional one that was intended to test the knowledge of each individual, then this is cheating -- it isn't an assessment of learning, of any variety, postmodern or otherwise.

Costa on the Format War

The June 26 issue of PC Magazine had a good column by Dan Costa, on the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format war for video on optical discs. I'll admit I don't know very much about this battle, other than it exists. And that's because a while ago I came to the same conclusion that Costa states in this column: that it really doesn't matter, in the long-run, what wins this "format war". Once we can reliably download movies from massive and reasonably priced media libraries, why would very many people want to buy them on physical media (of any format)? To be sure, when that day comes, the existing media formats will linger for a long time, just as music CDs are lingering and will continue to for some time. But I agree with Costa that the long-term media distribution solution is downloading/streaming, not physical media. (Well, at least not single-movie discs, as I suppose if someone could purchase a single piece of physical media/hardware that had tens of thousands of movies already stored on it, that might be appealing if priced reasonably. But that doesn't seem like a viable approach, since it would presumably come with a hefty price tag.)

I'll go even farther than Costa, by just noting that I've even stopped buying regular DVDs. Since I switched from VHS to DVD relatively late, I never really acquired very many DVDs -- two dozen or so. But a while back I decided there was little reason to own many more movies on DVD. If I can get a great movie on DVD for 50 cents or a dollar, then I might do it. But any more than that it just isn't worth owning it. Presumably, one day in the not-too-distant-future we'll be able to access pretty much any movies we could want to see, from massive media libraries, at reasonably per-movie or subscription prices. For now, I use and really like our Blockbuster Access membership to see new movies, but I really have no need to own movies on physical media.

More on Elon Musk, and What is Wrong with NASA

Back in April I blogged a bit about Elon Musk, after learning a bit about this amazing entrepreneur in Wired magazine. So I was pleased to see the latest issue of Wired have a cover story titled Rocket Boom, which goes into more detail about Elon Musk's efforts to build privately-funded space rockets. It is a well-written piece, as it gives a glimpse of what his work is like in this field.

And another, shorter item in that issue is also worth reading: How NASA Screwed Up (And four ways to fix it). Author Gregg Easterbrook really makes clear the failings of NASA -- not just failed projects, but more importantly its misguided priorities for projects going forward. Consider the moon-base plan, being pushed by George Bush:

For a sense of how out of whack NASA priorities have become, briefly ponder that plan. Because the Apollo missions suggested there was little of pressing importance to be learned on the moon, NASA has not landed so much as one automated probe there in three decades. In fact, the rockets used by the Apollo program were retired 30 years ago; even space enthusiasts saw no point in returning to the lunar surface. But now, with the space station a punch line and the shuttles too old to operate much longer, NASA suddenly decides it needs to restore its moon-landing capability in order to build a "permanent" crewed base. The cost is likely to be substantial -- $6 billion is the annual budget of the space station, which is closer to Earth and quite spartan compared with what even a stripped-down moon facility would require. But set that aside: What will a moon base crew do? Monitor equipment -- a task that could easily be handled from an office building in Houston.

In 2004, former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, now an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, calculated that NASA can place objects on the moon for $26,000 a pound. At that price, each bottle of water a crew member uncaps will cost the taxpayer $13,000. Even if the new moon rocket being designed by NASA cuts launch costs in half, as agency insiders hope, that's still $6,500 for one Aquafina (astronauts and moon base are extra). Prices like this quickly push the total construction bill for any serious facility into the hundreds of billions of dollars. A private company facing such numbers would conclude that a moon base is an absurd project -- at least until a fundamentally different way of reaching space is found -- and would put its capital into the development of new propulsion technologies. But NASA takes a cost-is-no-object approach that appeals only to those who personally benefit from the spending.

Although the article begins by laying out several projects that would be more rational for NASA to focus on than what it currently has as its priorities, I was glad to see the article end with the following emphasis on the need for a turn away from NASA and towards the private sector:

Given NASA's politicization, we should hope that the space industry evolves as aviation did — transitioning from ponderous government-run projects to mostly private-sector activities attuned to customer needs. That raises the question: Could entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos eventually put NASA out of business? Perhaps, but not for the next couple of decades — space has colossal economic barriers to entry. Given that NASA is sure to be around for a while, taxpayers should insist the space agency be recon figured to produce tangible benefits for all of us. With any luck, private space enterprise will eventually find success and begin to exert competitive market pressures on the government space program. NASA's success in putting men on the moon in the 1960s is one of history's enduring achievements. But it's the 21st century now — long past time for a new set of space priorities.

RCTV Censored, Turns to YouTube

Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez recently shutdown (by not renewing their license for political reasons) the longest standing television station in Venezuela, RCTV. This made news worldwide, with many free-speech advocate groups, governments, and others condemning the move. But when I read a version of this AP article in my local paper, I was pleased to learn the good effect that the Internet can continue to have on the world. This time it is YouTube which is providing the journalists at RCTV a means to continue to broadcast their viewpoint, even when they have been otherwise silenced by a tyrant.

After days of street protests by students and others, against the move by Chavez to shutdown RCTV, and after many other mounting problems in the country -- including food shortages, even though the nation is flush with oil revenue -- it is easy to ask the obvious question: when will this nation erupt into a major class between the people and the government? True, Chavez has many supporters, as he hands out money and services to many of the poor in the country, even while keeping the country from growing because of his socialist economic policies. Will there be a violent clash between the poor and the middle-class? or between the middle-class and opposition parties and the government and military? How many more egregious acts by Chavez will it take to push this beyond the breaking point I wonder?

WikiHow and Brain Freeze

A site I've known about for a little while now, but haven't had a chance to explore is the seemingly useful resource wikiHow. Its subtitle describes it nicely (esp. for those who are already well-versed in wikis like Wikipedia): "The How-To Manual That You Can Edit".

My friend Josh Zader's blog recently called attention to this site as well, and he linked to an interesting entry on How To Stop Brain Freeze -- you know, that strong, brief headache that you get after eating or drinking intensely cold stuff too quickly. The advice is to quickly warm the top of your mouth (they give several ways how), and that this should alleviate the headache fastest because it reverses the cause of the brain freeze headache. I have yet to try this for myself, but if this article is correct, that is a very practical tip for life!

Goodbye Eudora... Hello Outlook 2007

After 10+ years using Eudora Pro as my email client application, I'm finally moving on. Like so many people, I'm going to be using Outlook. In fact, as of this weekend, I am now switched over to the new Outlook 2007. The reasons for this are several:

1. Eudora hasn't had much in the way of new features added to it in a long time. While I've long liked the program (obviously!), it seems to be falling further and further behind. And as Qualcomm recently decided to stop developing the app and selling it, and instead turn it into an Open Source app, well, I'm not sure whether that will be a good thing for it or not. Afterall, there are already some good open-source/free email clients out there.
2. While I considering going to web-based email, like gmail or hotmail or Yahoo! mail, I wanted loads of features. While those are getting better all the time, they don't compare to a good client app yet.
3. I already had Outlook 2007, since I bought Office 2007 Professional shortly after it was released, as an upgrade for us from the increasingly ancient Office 2000. So starting to use Outlook at this point would only cost me some time to switchover, not any additional money.
4. I like the new interface that Office 2007 provides, with the ribbon and so on. Even though Outlook is a hybrid and still uses the old-style menus interface for the main screen, I wanted to use an email client that uses the new interface for at least some things -- as I really like and will be getting more and more accustomed to it going forward through Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access use.

So in recent weeks I've been cleaning up all my Eudora stuff, preparing for the switchover to Outlook. In doing so I've archived thousands of emails sent and received since 1997, and re-organized how I structure email folders and so on. Having done all of that upfront, the switch over has been relatively smooth.

With Outlook I plan to use a great many more features than I was able to get with Eudora. A while back I already started to use Outlook for RSS feeds for blog-reading. There too the tool I had been using, the web-based Newsgator site, served me well for a couple of years, but I decided I wanted to read blogs in the same tool that I read email -- so that was going to be Outlook.

I've already switched over all my Contacts data into Outlook too, info which had formerly been stored in a custom Access database I had designed. And I intend to start using Outlook's item categorization features, the Tasks feature, the To-Do Bar, and perhaps Calendaring. I doubt I'll use its Journal or Notes features, as I use Microsoft OneNote for that sort of thing already.

For long-time Outlook users, all of this "ho-hum" no doubt. But for someone who had been using Eudora for 10+ years, it has been a major switch-over! So far, so-good...

Finally, I've Joined the iPod People

Today my iPod Nano (8GB) arrived from Amazon. This is my first MP3 player, as I tend to be very slow to pick up the latest technologies when it comes to media and media players. I was slow to switch from tapes to CDs, slow to switch from VHS to DVD, and obviously I've been slow to switch from a CD-walkman player to an iPod. I finally decided to get one though, because the benefits just became to great to ignore. I have two primary uses in mind, as I'll use it while running (I purchased the Belkin Sports Sleeve that is intended to go with the iPod Nano to better enable this) and also at the office to listen to both music and podcasts. I don't travel often, but obviously it will come in handy when I do -- no more packing up a larger CD player and a CD case with a dozen or more CDs!

So far, so good. I have connected and sync'd up the 40 or so songs I had previously purchased from iTunes. Alas, the bulk of my music was recorded using Windows Media Player, so it will take some time to get it all switched over to iTunes and then onto the iPod. Fortunately, while some was recorded in windows media format, some was MP3 format, so that will help a bit I think.

Which song got the honor of being the first played for me on this device? "Call Me When You're Sober", by Evanescence -- arguably my favorite new song in several years.

Judge: What is a Web Site?

This story almost seems too ridiculous to be true. It begins: "A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet." Read the article for more details...

Google's PigeonRank Technology

This April Fools Day item was put up in 2002, but if you haven't seen it, check out the technology behind Google's great results.

My Enya-Centered Radio Station

I've blogged before about the wonderful site Pandora, a service provided by the so-called Music Genome Project. This is the online "radio" station (I hate referring to Internet music streaming sites as "radio", btw) that lets you indicate an artist or song (or a few) and then it will play songs that its search engine considers musically similar. As I've said before, this didn't work so well when I tried Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull, but I think that is because what I like about those groups is unique to those groups (or nearly so). But this approach works quite nicely for the one "station" I've created that I use regularly, namely my Enya-related collection of music. My intention here was to create a playlist that was heavy on Enya's music, but that included soothing music from other artists, mostly women vocalists, that is good to listen to as background music while working at my desk or reading. Doing a few searches at Pandora, its seems several other Enya fans have done exactly the same thing!

My results as of now are as follows. I've "approved" 55 songs as being ones I like -- so these get repeated now and then in the playlist. I've rejected 61 songs as being ones I don't like -- so these will never be played again on my "station". Then many more -- perhaps 100 or so -- have been played at least once and I didn't vote them up or down: either I was ambivalent at that point about them, or more often, I was just busy and didn't have time to stop what I was doing to click yeah or nay.

Of the 55 songs I've "approved", 18 are from Enya. Since I like every one of her songs, that is no surprise. And I hope it helps to reinforce to the system what I am looking for. The "Theme from Harry's Game", by Clannad, was an early and obvious song to be included in this playlist -- though for some reason it gets played an inordinate number of times (perhaps it has been approved by so many people out there that it gets weighted in the system a bit too much?). Then there is Annie Lennox's famous "No more 'I Love You's'", which I like enough to include in this playlist. There is one Loreena McKennit song ("Blacksmith") so far, and even one Crosby and Nash ("Where Will I Be?") which I was glad to hear as I really like CSNY of course. And then the song "May it Be", by Lisa Kelly (and also a version by Hayley Westenra), which is a song I know from one of the Lord of the Rings movies. Most of the other artists on my "approved" list have been new ones for me, which is great.

But the one new song that sticks out as one I really like a lot is from an artist I had heard of previously, but that I wasn't very familiar with: Sarah Brightman. Her song "Free" is incredible. I'm probably going to plunk down the 99 cents to buy it outright from iTunes. Her song "Beautiful" has also made my playlist.

A few arists have songs on both my approved and rejected listings so far. The aforementioned Annie Lennox is one, and the famous Yanni is another. A group called Secret Garden is also batting .500 for me so far. A few famous artists that have a tune on my reject list include Abba, Enigma, Heart, Linda Rondstadt, and Phil Collins.

Anyway, if you have broadband, are interested in expanding your musical interests, and have a specific idea for a playlist theme -- or just want to experiment with the suggestion system to see what happens -- then I strongly urge you to give Pandora a try!

Memjet and the Future of Printing

The May 22 issue of PC Magazine has an interesting article, The Future of Ink Jet Printing, about a new prtiner technology called "Memjet", introduced at the 2007 Global Ink Jet Printing Conference. The technology replaces the standard approach to ink jet printing, which involves a printhead (with the ink cartridges) moving back and forth across the page, with a wider printhead which spans the entire page. There are thousands of tiny nozzles that fire the ink onto the page. Assuming no technological hurdles arise to keep this from happening, Memjet seems like an outstanding innovation (which took over 10 years of research from Silverbrook Research). Compare 9 pages per minute that you might get with a traditional printer, with 60 pages per minute thta Memjet can deliver! And one might assume that the overal printer is more stable and would require repairs less often since there isn't this physical device constantly shooting back and forth, back and forth. This Memjet technology just seems to make a lot of sense!

If they can perfect it and license it to various producers, so that prices will become reasonable, this could really change the ink jet printing world for the better.

On Virtual Worlds and Web 3.0

I was getting caught up on recent issues of PC Magazine recently, and two articles in particular caught my attention.

First we have The Ins and Outs of Virtual Worlds (in print called "The Emperor's New Web", from 4/24/2007 issue). I thought this was a pretty good introduction/survey of online virtual worlds. And it is very good as a dose of reality to counter all the hype surrounding Second Life and other virtual world environments (e.g., companies putting a lot of resources into this prematurely, and Linden Labs exaggerated claims of user numbers). I like the pic on page 73 of the Cisco conference in Second Life, that has people attending... and the Kool-Aid man too.

Then the second article is provocatively titled Web 3.0 (from the the 4/10/2007 issue). For what it is worth, here is my take on the big four discussed on pg. 76:

1. The Semantic Web - This is most often associated with Tim Berners-Lee, as he is a major proponent of it and has been for a while now. But his preferred approach I think is largely not going to happen, as it would require a huge amount of exisitng content to get retrofitted with all kinds of keywords -- and not by people tagging it, but by the creators themselves (and requires metadata standards for it, etc). So that seems very dubious. And the other approach involves much better agents to understand web pages as they exist today, and I'm very skeptical of this approach because I am skeptical of how well AI can get in the near future (or ever really -- I'm a backer of Searle's Chinese Room-style arguments in philosophy, contra claims by some that computers could one day "think" the way humans do). So I think the first approach will be successful in niche areas, but not across the entire web, and I think the second approach will lead to improvements -- but only very slowly.

2. 3D Web - I think this will continue to grow, but I think it will eventually be only used in certain areas. Navigating a 3D environment is just not efficient if all you want is *information*. Stuff that is text- or numbers-only in reality need not be presented or only accessible via avatars in 3D environments! That is overkill, and once the novelty wears off, the overhead this produces will be seen as very annoying -- a point made nicely in the first article linked above!

3. The Media-Centric Web - I think search algorithms for media-centric searching will get better and better, but I tend to err on the side of skepticism of claims of AI in this area. They are very error prone -- bringing back a lot of images that are similar to what you asked for is nice and helpful, but if it returns 40% bad hits, then that is actually not all that accurate. (On the flip side, I do like Pandora -- an online radio service based on the Music Genome Project that learns what you like based on favorites you supply it. For me, this worked very well for Enya, but not so well for Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull.)

4. The Pervasive Web - This will continue to grow for sure, esp. as broadband proliferates, and really esp. if WiMax or some other wireless standard can blanket the country/world with broadband access. I'll note that people have been talking about the first and fourth here, "the Semantic web" and "the Pervasive web", for many, many years -- since 1999 really. And we've seen lots of new things, but I don't think we've seen any major expansions in these areas -- meanwhile, the Web 2.0 phenomena have burst onto the scene, many in the past couple years only: MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Blogs, and on and on.

So what does this tell me? Well, note that the things that have grown like crazy are all relatively simple, people-powered phenomena. Web 2.0 stuff is mostly centered around people producing content themselves and often in collaborative ways -- people becoming "prosumers" and so on. And several of them are very text-centric: Wikipedia, Blogs, and so on (not YouTube of course). These speculated "Web 3.0" things are much more technology-driven. And in particular, several of them will need improvements to AI algorithms to really see major gains (e.g., Semantic Web approach #2, and the Media-centric web). I think that if universal wireless broadband becomes a reality soon, then something like "The Pervasive Web" could become the next big thing -- the next thing that is a noticeable "change in kind" in Internet, in the way that the collaboration creation of Web 2.0 stuff is a "change in kind" today.

Expert Village

I recently discovered the incredible site ExpertVillage.com. Check it out... Scroll down and pick a top-level category. Then pick a video series and watch a video or two. High-quality videos... I watched one on how to change a tire. I could definitely learn from these how-to videos.

Problems with the site I have are that they have grown so fast, the top-level categories are not sufficient -- there is too much variety in each. So they need sub-categories here. Also, the search is not very good, since it relies on Google to just provide page search results, rather than having a more focused keyword-driven search of metadata for each video series.

But that said, this is a very impressive site. It is obviously like YouTube in that it is user-created content, but quite unlike YouTube in that most or all of its videos are educational and helpful. YouTube has anything and everything: somethings are entertaining, some things are helpful, but most of it is total crap.

Anyone know of a similar site that provides free tutorials for software of all kinds, from Word and Excel to advanced programming topics? I know of some sites that provide such tutorials (either video or flash-based), but they are usually just on a particular application or niche, or perhaps the most popular 10 apps like Word and PhotoShop. What I'm somewhat surprised doesn't already exist is a wiki-organized, collaboratively created site that provides thousands of tutorials on all popular software apps, programming and database tasks, and so on. Seems like something obvious to arise in this world of Web 2.0! I don't think any MediaWiki projects are tackling this yet... or am I just missing it?

Google on Going from New York City to Paris

A friend of mine pointed out this funny tidbit to me:
1. Go to Google.com.
2. Click on 'Maps,' then click on 'Get Directions.' (near top).
3. Type in 'New York, NY' as your starting point and 'Paris, France' as your destination.
4. Once it computes your directions scroll down to #23.

Pretty funny...

Pandora: Create Your Own Radio Station

I'm sure there are many sites like this one, so I'm not claiming this is the best. But I just discovered Pandora.com this evening and it is quite slick in my opinion. You type in a musical artist, and it does some searching, and then plays music by that artist or by other artists that are similar.

I didn't have success with the first two I tried: Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. What I like about these bands is I think hard to abstract away from their particular songs, so I'm not surprised that a database and some algorithms couldn't do it very well. In both cases, the songs they suggested I might like -- other than the ones by PF and JT themselves -- are not songs I like.

But it did work well when I tried Enya. Now her music is very unique: her voice is stunning and they layer it many times for an incredible effect. But aside from that, her music is a combination of celtic and "new age" instrumentals. And I don't just like the unique aspects of it, I also like these fairly common characteristics as well: gentle, rich "new age/celtic" pieces that are nice as background music while I'm read email, doing some programming, or whatever. And I'm very much interested in finding more music of this type, so I'm glad to have found the Pandora service.

CD Spindle Bagel Tote

Now this is a brilliant/obvious idea! One of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments for sure. Wouldn't work well for bagel sandwiches that have "stuff" (meat, lettuce, whatever) that spans across the middle hole. But if you have just cream cheese spread on the bread, or something similar, then this would work fine.

WHS Homepage

Microsoft recently created a homepage for the forthcoming Windows Home Server (WHS) product. So in addition to the various blogs and other sites dedicated to this exciting technology, bookmark this site to stay on top of official information about it. I'm still as excited about it as I was a few months ago when I first blogged about it at great length. Read that posting, or browse around the Microsoft site to learn all about WHS.

On Radical Transparency in Business

The latest issue of Wired has an interesting cover story, The See-Through CEO (and the cover itself was, um, interesting too). The concept is that various technologies, most notably some of the Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, as well as the ubiquity of Google searching and so on, are changing the calculus that companies need to go through when determining what information to keep secret and what information they should share with the public, and most importantly with their customers. I won't try to retell it here... read the article for many fascinating and thought-provoking anecdotes and questions about both the present-day realities and what the future might be like in this area.

Then also check out the article about Microsoft's Channel 9 operation. I've watched several videos from both channel 9 and the newer channel 10, usually on upcoming products (e.g., Windows Home Server). This article is a nice example of how a company can introduce some measure of transparency in ways that are really effective and useful to people, and yet aren't completely zany and liable to get the legal or marketing department up in arms.

On the Amazing Elon Musk

Is it just me, or does the name Elon Musk not get enough press? I read a one-page article about him ("Rocket Man") in the March 22 issue of The Economist, and I was floored that I haven't heard his name more often. I mean, you hear the names of creators of tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and so on... all the time. But I only vaguely remembered the name Elon Musk.

So what has this 35 year-old accomplished in his life so far? Well, he co-founded the company that became PayPal, the online payment service that was enventually sold in 2002 to eBay for $1.5 billion. Since I use PayPal all the time... thank you Mr. Musk!

Then in June 2002 he founded SpaceX (he is currently CEO), a company that develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. Their Falcon two-stage rocket recently launched and climbed to an altitute of 200 miles. As the article notes: "Although the second stage failed to reach its intended orbit, the Falcon can claim to be the first rocket designed, developed, and financed by private sector that is anywhere near carrying a payload into space. Mr. Musk founded SpaceX five years ago and designed much of the rocket himself."

What else? Well, Musk is the principal owner and Board Chairman of Tesla motors, an innovative company that produces electric cars. The article notes: "In July Tesla unveiled its first model: a sports car which is faster than a Ferrari, more environmentally friendly than a Toyota Prius, and can travel 250 miles after charging overnight through an ordinary household socket. The first few have been pre-sold, but the concept will be properly tested only when they start rolling off the production line in August."

For info about him, see the Elon Musk entry at Wikipedia.

The Future of Books

The March 24 issue of The Economist had an interesting article "Not Bound by Anything" (subscription required), which looks at the future of books. It begins by talking about how Google, after some early missteps, is working with libraries to digitize huge volumes of written materials, noting that conservative estimates have Google digitizing 10 million books a year. And other companies, like Amazon, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have been scanning books too. They then write:

As books go digital, new questions, both philosophical and commercial, arise. How, physically, will people read books in the future? Will technology "unbind" books, as it has unbundled other media, such as music albums? Will reading habits change as a result? What happens when books are interlinked? And what is a book anyway?

All of these are interesting questions. Additional questions arise when you consider other technologies, such as Wikis and other Web 2.0 technology. Can people collaboratively write books? If not all types (e.g., novels), then what about textbooks, where perhaps different experts right each chapter on different topics, with a few writers editing the entire thing for style consistency, etc.?

The article states that change in the physical medium of books (printed) is not likely. I wonder about that. Obviously early reports of the death of the book (and the magazine and newspaper) were greatly exaggerated. Electronic books and book reader devices have mostly been complete flops commercially, but the game has just begun. As technology improves, I think we'll have high-quality tablet-PC like devices, that provide text that is easy on the eyes and hence could replace physical, paper-based books. As I often do, I think of the later Star Trek series... where they had such devices, and it just seems natural that this will eventually become a reality.

The article opines that the "biggest changes are likely to be seen in what becomes a book in the first place." That is indeed an interesting suggestion. With more and more content available, will the traditional book-length (non-fiction) item (say, 200-400 pages) become less popular, in favor of shorter items? I don't know the numbers here, but surely this is already happening, with web content that tends to be far shorter than book-length. I know I struggle to read anything that is book-length, preferring to read short, concise, well-written articles on a subject. Maybe I'm in the minority? Or maybe the younger generation will grow up this way, and a few decades from now, book-length treatises will be far less popular. There will always be a place for them -- if you have a cogent, detailed case to make for some thesis, then you might need that much space to do so. But this article notes also that often an author really only as an idea worth about 50 pages, but in order to sell it as a book, they need to write another 150+ pages of material -- much of which is wasted, in the sense that it isn't of high-value to readers, and often goes unread if the reader can figure this out before spending too much time on it. But in the digital realm, there is no need to pad a 50-page idea or thesis with all that extra junk.

The article notes that things that people don't traditionally read in their entirety, like encyclopedias, cookbooks, and textbooks, are ideal candidates to be altered by the digital revolution. Obviously this is already happening with encyclopedias (with Wikipedia and others), and I can see how it could happen with cookbooks and textbooks very soon as well.

Other effects of digitizing books that the article mentions are obvious. By linking content together, research is made much easier. A link network amongst books can provide valuable information regarding quality, relatedness, and so on. But overall I found this article to be quite interesting.

The Citizendium Wiki Has Been Launched

After a beta period, a new -- and potentially significant -- public Wiki was launched last week, called this announcement, which was carried by AP and hence all over the place in the media.

This new Wiki project is being led by one of the founders of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger. I won't try to rehearse the story as to why Larry became disinterested in Wikipedia -- suffice to say that he believes there is value in expertise, and that it would be great if expertise could be focused and harnessed in a collaborative environment the way Wikipedia has harnessed the efforts of anyone and everyone. With the launch of Citizendium, we are seeing the fruits of his thinking and labors in this regard.

I've been looking forward to the launch of this project for quite a while now, even before it had a name. I happen to be friends with Larry, from well before Wikipedia was even an idea being tossed around by anyone. I met him in the mid-90s, and he I were fellow graduate students in philosophy at Ohio State in 1996, my one year there. For that matter, I also know Jimbo, the driving force behind Wikipedia's phenomenal success. I met him at a philosophy conference in 1994, and then at some subsequent conferences since then. They are actually the only two "famous" people I know, if you want to call them famous. (I don't know any celebrities like actors, rock stars, or sports stars.)

Here is a writeup on the similarities and differences between CZ and Wikipedia -- an interesting read, not just for the issues with Wikipedia itself, but to get a sense of some issues that arise in hosting and developing Wikis more generally. And then if you really are interested in more info, here is an article "Why the Citizendium Will (Probably) Succeed". This includes a good list of objections and replies to the project.

I wish Larry (and the others involved in the CZ project) well in their endeavors. Of course, as Larry notes in the article above, many factors will come into play as to whether the project gains enough momentum to become a permanent Internet resource, not to mention rival Wikipedia in most people's minds on the various dimensions that might do so.

A First for Me: PayPal Used at Lunch

I had lunch today with three friends, all ex-colleagues of mine, at a favorite local Chinese restaurant. At the end of the meal, we had the standard issue of how to divide up the bill. Two of the guys only had 20 dollar bills, so we were in the standard predicament. Then a couple of us thought at the same time... why not use PayPal? So I paid for the lunch on my credit card, one of the guys paid me his share with cash, and the other two are paying me back via PayPal. Geeky? Perhaps. But I suspect one day this will not seem novel at all -- in fact, no doubt some people do this all the time already, though it was a first for me.

One of the guys (Tim), later noted in email that "I just PayPal'ed you your money." Then he wondered about creating a verb "To PayPal" someone. The world of technology has led to many new verbs of course, e.g., "to Google someone". But I haven't heard or thought of "PayPal" used as a verb until today. Tim jokingly wondered if the past tense would be be "PayPaled", "PayPalled", or "PayPaid". I'm against PayPaled for pronunciation reasons, but beyond that I have no idea!

TelePresence and the Future

Because of a project I'm involved with at work, I've recently become somewhat familiar with the latest high-end video-conferencing systems (at least the one from Cisco). So I was interested to read the article The 21st Century Meeting in the February 26 issue of BusinessWeek.

The article relays some of the premature announcements about video-phones and other devices from years past (including the comical failure of AT&T's planned video-phone from 1960s (think "Technology of the Future" types of displays from the World's Fair -- hard not to laugh!).

What's different today is that it is actually happening. At least for very large companies with a lot of money to throw around. HP, Cisco, and other companies have created high-end video conferencing systems (the word "TelePresence" is sometimes used, as it is the name of the Cisco solution set, and has the chance to become a generic term for this kind of solution, much as "Kleenex" is for facial tissues). The Cisco setup is a nice conference table (half) with three large screens on the other side. On those screens are shown one or two people piped in from around the world. Because the rooms used are optimized for acoustics, lighting, and other environmental conditions, and are made to literally feel the same as each other around the world, the experience can give a very high level of realism.

Given another article in this issue of BW, on the explosive competition and growth of flat panel TVs (and their "flat" margins), it seems that this kind of high-quality video-conferencing will only become more and more widespread. What was needed to do this right was broadband Internet, large flat-screens, and other technology infrastructure pieces all maturing enough to make it possible. That has happened, and the technology has been proven. At this point, it will just be a matter of slowly making it better, cheaper, and eventually -- I predict -- ubiquitous.

And not just in business. There is every reason to think that eventually this kind of video-conferencing will be standard in homes as well. People might not have three screens and a large table, but they'll have one large screen (at least) that can display multiple friends or family from around the world, picture-in-picture style. And they'll have a video camera, affixed to the screen, that is showing them back to everyone else on the connection.

Nothing beats being there: in-person family reunions or gatherings of friends will not go away. But given the obvious costs and risks of travel -- both of which have increased (or at least become more of a concern) in recent years, when you consider gas prices and terrorism -- there is every reason to think that people would love to be able to see each other when talking to each other. This won't be called a "video phone" solution, since the "phone" isn't going to be the major technology piece of it. The key technologies are the Internet (broadband), flat panel screens, affordable webcams, and the various protocols and geeky stuff that makes it all work.

In recent years I've heard of a growing trend towards having "virtual conferences" in the academic arena. Rather than hundreds of people gathering in one location to hear each other give papers on academic topics, they can stay in their own offices and watch the speaker, see the PowerPoint, and even ask questions, just as nicely as being there in person. And as this new wave of video conferencing solution matures and becomes cheaper, we'll see more and more possibilities here. Dozens of individuals could gather, via the Internet, to hear a paper read and then discuss it in a workshop-type of atmosphere.

Think about Star Trek -- particularly Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the other series that followed it. It seemed entirely natural that everyone there communicated by "video conference": (1) ship-to-ship encounters between the Enterprise and the Klingons/Romulans/Ferengi/whoever, (2) intra-ship communication from room to room, bridge to engineering, and so on, (3) and ship-to-Earth (or any other 'fixed' destination) communication, such as Captain Picard communicating with Starfleet Command. Often this was depicted on the Bridge big-screen, but also often on the built-in flat-panel screens at various people's desks. But it also was shown on portable tablet-style devices. All of these scenarios make sense, and I predict we will see them -- for business first, but also for consumers, and eventually quite reasonably-priced.

Think too of all the money currently spent on travel, both business and personal, that could be saved if high-quality video-conferencing were ubiquitous and reliable. Granted, some of that money would go towards paying for and maintaining these systems -- but surely there would be money leftover (once the prices become reasonable), which could then be spent on other areas of life. And more importantly, think of all the time and aggravation saved by traveling less -- time that again could be spent on other pursuits (more innovation, productivity and profit in business, more happiness in one's personal life). And that is not to mention the reduced risks from travelling less.

I'm far from alone in seeing the possibilities here. Consider this from the end of BW article:

At Cisco, CEO John T. Chambers imagines a day when high-quality video technology is so affordable that households will connect to each other via videoconferences simply to "hang out," one living room connected to another. It's back to the '64 World's Fair, but with broadband and high-def TV.

Again, people will still want to see each other in person from time to time -- even if it means travelling around the world to do it. Some people will still gather for in-person conferences, in both business and academia, and surely families and friends will still gather in person. But I suspect all of these will, one day, be at least partially replaced by video-conferencing. And even those physical gatherings that still occur -- they will almost always be supplemented by attendees who couldn't make it there in person. Think of a group of business people with one who couldn't make it to the meeting. Think of an academic conference where half of the people gather in a University auditorium, but the other half stay at home in their offices but can still be full participants (watching, listening, and asking questions). And think of the family reunion, where 50 people gather at someone's house, but one elderly person wasn't well enough travel (but doesn't mind being seen on screen by everyone else), and a few others had business schedules that didn't allow them to join in person, but they can spare a few hours to see and talk with everyone who did make it to the event. The possibilities are endless.

Some might lament this change, fearing that if actual physical meetings become few and far between, that we will lose something of great value. But this need not happen. Like all technologies, there will be some who, for a while, use it in such a way that it distorts their personal value hierarchy. Some people who aren't really that far away from each other might regularly rely on video-conferencing, only to realize over time that they are really missing the personal, in-the-same-room connection one gets by being there. But people will adjust over time to this change, to the opportunities it presents us.

Consider the Internet as a whole. For a long time people were lamenting how much time was being spent at computers, instead of being out there amongst people in 'real-life'. And certainly this complaint lingers on, especially with the rise of virtual worlds like MMPGs and Second Life. But it is also true that people are collaborating with each other in ways they never would have before the Internet, especially with the maturing of the various "Web 2.0" technologies and phenomena, including blogging, Wikipedia and other wiki-sites, photo-sharing (e.g., Flickr), video-sharing (e.g., YouTube), and so on. Virtually none of that personal interaction and collaboration would have come about without the Internet.

So I believe that similarly, over time, people will adjust as video-conferencing technology becomes affordable and ubiquitous (including eventually in the home). People's actions and values will adjust where needed, and their lives will, on the whole, be greatly enhanced.

Squirrels Drive Utilities Nuts

Yes, I know... bad pun, but that was the headline in the USA Today story that ran in my local paper yesterday. In summary, squirrels can be a major nuisance for power companies, and hence for just about all of us, as they can cause major outages. They do this, it seems, by getting themselves electrocuted, so that is not very funny: I grew up in a woods in the country in Western NY, so I had squirrels around me all the time and enjoyed feeding and watching them year-round.

But I nonetheless found the article itself to be quite funny. Consider these quotes:

• "What caused more outages? The lightning or the squirrels?"
• "Many states are grappling with a big increase in the number of power outages caused by squirrel electrocutions."
• "In Georgia, squirrel-related outages more than tripled from 5,273 in 2005 to 16,750 in 2006."
• "Stopping the squirrels is costing utilities millions more dollars."
• "It appears that the problem may in part be due to acorns."
• "...says Peter Smallwood, a squirrel expert and biology professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia." [Italics mine]
• "Smallwood, who has studied squirrels for more than 20 years, said their affinity for power lines and fighting through manmade barriers is in their nature."
• "Hundreds of gallons of raw sewage poured into Mobile Bay in Alabama after a squirrel cut power to a sewage lift station there."
• "Stopping the squirrels is not easy."
• "PECO, which powers Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, spends $1 million a year on squirrel guards to stop outages from "those rascally little varmints," Engel said. The utilities say they're seeing some success. PECO has seen its squirrel-related outages tumble from 11,605 in 2003 to 1,345 in 2006."
• "But squirrels adapt to the technology, forcing the utilities to switch to different forms of what's known in the business as "wildlife abatement technology." "Whenever we think we've got them figured out, they try something else," Engelman said."

Maybe its just me, but I find something quite funny in the phrase "squirrel-related". I admit the issues here are serious, for both man and squirrel, but this article still gave me many laughs. Maybe its the name "squirrel" itself -- that is an odd name when you think about it.

That last quote above made me think of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation, who had shielding against phaser pistols fire, and after a period of adaptation, against even those that had modulating frequencies.

And the article as a whole made me think of Al-Qaeda. I mean, we've all heard how terrorists are likely to target our utilities (nuclear plants, electric grid, etc.). Maybe they already are. Maybe they are in cahoots with the squirrels. Maybe they promised them a huge pile of acorns in the afterlife to be suicide runners into the transformer fields! I am hereby starting a conspiracy theory along these lines!

Getting Timber from Underwater Forests

The February issue of Wired had a very interesting article called "Reservoir Logs" about "A submersible robot called the Sawfish can harvest healthy timber from long-forgotten underwater forests. Clear-cutting never looked so green."

Chris Godsall, CEO of Triton logging, is an entreprenuerial and inventive genius. Read the article to find out how he is able to profitably cut down long-dead forests that are deeply submerged under water, and how he overcame various technical hurdles (like the fact that the trees are water-logged and hence wouldn't float after being cut). All this, and the environmentalists are applauding as well because the more wood we can get from already dead, submerged forests, the less clear-cutting of regular forests the market will ask for.