Tag: technology

Sensors in the Roadway

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Us Angelenos love our traffic information. The most common way of getting it is through Sigalert.Com, but Google Traffic is a close second. We all know that Sigalert gets their data from sensors in the roadway. But what about Google, which even gives the ability to see traffic on surface streets? Where does it get its data?

The answer is buried in this article about Google Maps deleting the estimates of travel times in traffic from its routings:

In late 2009, the search giant started crowdsourcing traffic data, feeding bits of information sent to its servers from smartphones into the database that powered the Google Maps traffic feature. “When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you’re moving,” Google explained in an official blog post. “When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions.”

So as you go around town with smart phone, just remember you have the gratitude of all the people depending on you to give us accurate travel data. We really don’t care where you are, but are interested in how fast you are getting there.

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Wither Autographs?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

An interesting article in the NY Times raises the wonderful question: What do autographs mean in this era of E-Book readers?

It’s a fun question to ponder. Tom Paxton has long joked that autographs are required in order to give a CD its full stereographic and quality sound, yet one year when I (joking) indicated he might need to sign my iPod, he deferred. When our collections of music are all digital, what does this mean for signed album covers? How do we show we’ve heard and seen that artist live—how do we get that visceral connection?

The article explores the issue for books: specifically, those on Kindles and iPads. Yes, you can have the artist sign the back of the device, but that’s not really the same thing (and even with a Sharpie, is likely to wear off). There are apps that permit you to take your picture with the artist, transmit the picture to their eReader and permit the artist to sign it, sending it back. There are others that just take the picture. Of course, as we all know, a picture is only as good as the bits it is made of, which can easily be (cough) Photoshop (cough) redone. The same can’t be said for that Sharpie on the case.

Will a digital signature ever have the same value as an autograph? One hundred years from now, will I be able to sell my email with Barak Obama’s PKI signature? Are digital signatures just emphemera from a collectable point of view?

Yet again, technology is destroying a hobby. First it was stamp collecting, which email is rapidly destroying. Now autographs.

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And The Younger Generation…

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

…. the stuff they write these days, it’s just noise.

An interesting article in the NY Times posits the end of email as we know it. They argue that the formality of eMail doesn’t suit the younger generation. There’s all that signing in. There are those odd things called subject lines. There are these unknown things called “cc:” and “bcc:” (and what the hell is a “carbon copy” anyway). Lastly, you can send it and it might sit for hours. That’s so yesterday.

They want the immediency of instant messages and chat. This is the AIM generation (the only successful thing ever to come from AOL). Here are some numbers from the article:

The number of total unique visitors to major e-mail sites like Yahoo and Hotmail is now in steady decline, according to the research company comScore. Such visits peaked in November 2009 and have since slid 6 percent; visits among 12- to 17-year-olds fell around 18 percent. (The only big gainer in the category has been Gmail, up 10 percent from a year ago.)

Facebook will be following this trend in their new email (oops) messaging system. According to the article, the service will eliminate the subject line on messages (its research showed that it was most commonly left blank or used for an uninformative “hi” or “yo.”). Gone will be the “cc” and “bcc” lines. Hitting the enter key can immediately fire off the message, à la instant messaging, instead of creating a new paragraph.

OK, I’m old fashioned. I like paragraphs. I like writing in more than 140 characters or single sentences. I like to compose my thoughts, and sometimes wax rhapsodically. What about you? Do you like this new trend?

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Impacts of Technology Evolution

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today’s news chum brings three stories of how techlogical change may be bringing about (or brought about) unanticipated problems. The stories relate to the Titanic, the iPod, and teachers.

  • From the “What do you mean you sunk the Lusitania, Charlie?” Department: The New York Times has an article about an author who claims the Titanic hit the iceberg due to a steering error. In particular, the claim is that the error occurred because of changing technology: the world was transitioning from sailing ships that used tiller orders to steamships that used rudder orders. With tiller orders, to turn the ship right, you push the tiller to the left. With rudder orders, you turn the wheel in the direction you want the ship to go. Misinterpretation of orders is a common problem: I recall one spacecraft that thought it was getting imperial units when it was being sent metric.
  • From the “A Music Library in your Pocket” Department: The LA Times has an opinion piece on how Apple is abandoning the audiophile market by neglecting the iPod Classic. Specifically, Apple has moved their device from being “your music library in your pocket” (which was the goal of the first iPods) to being a box of magic holding for content purchased from the iTunes store. In doing so, they are neglecting the music lovers who want the library in their pocket—the people who don’t want to have to choose what music to put on the device due to lack of space. I’m one of those folks, with over 80GB of music… and growing. Further, their techology has made people tied to iTunes: once the music enters (especially if you use AAC/.M4A format), it tends to stay due to the time cost of reripping a large collection. I’ll note that the iPod Classic is still alive, although there are many believe that it is a dead pod playing, just biding the time until solid-state memory becomes cheaper.
  • From the “Leaving the Past Behind You” Department: SignonSanDiego (San Diego U-T) has a nice article about how would be school volunteers are being thwarted by their past. For example, if you wrote a bad check in college, you might be barred from being a chaperone for your teen’s school trip. This is because our paranoia has led us to do more and more background checks, and they are finding more and more data due to data repositories. How does this fit with the theme? Simple: there was an article a while back about how we can no longer run away from our past and our youthful indiscretions. Do something stupid, it goes up on Facebook, and it is with you (insert reverb sound) f-o-r-e-v-e-r. The situation with these volunteers is just one example, but the problem is well known on other fronts. When the nets were forming, we never thought about all the data that would be collected—we just wanted to read SF-LOVERS. But the evolution has had an impact. The notion of trusting a letter of introduction is passe. Who needs reference checks when you have Google?
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Airport Musings: Living in an Analog World

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today, at the airport, ellipticcurve and I started free associating after this fellow left his iPhone on the charging stand. Here are some of the thoughts:

It’s lucky his ring-tone isn’t a ticking sound. Just imagine phones programmed with that sound at the airport… ummm, officer, that phone is ticking. It’s like in the Illuminatus trilogy, where a fellow taught his parrot to say “Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty”.

Then again, what timers tick these days. Ticking is so analog. Does anyone know digital timers that tick? It’s like digital cameras that make a shutter noise. While we were on the subject, we wondered if anyone ever made a real bomb that looks like those ones in the cartoons… you know, round and black, with a visible burning fuse.

We then got to thinking about how we replicate the analog. Look at all the phones programed to sound like an old-fashioned ringing phone. We wondered if it would be possible to make phone that made clicks just like a rotary phone.

Then, when arrived in Baltimore, I got a Nissan Altima as my rental car. Now this is cool: a car with no key, only a fob. However, I kept reaching to turn the key—it is that force of habit after over 30 years of driving. We wondered how many of the dealers have folks come in with broken fobs: … it stopped working after I tried to turn it.

Yes, some days this is how my mind free associates.

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Chum to Start the Week

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

I’ve been so busy of late that I haven’t had the time to find some really good news chum, but I figured I’d take some time at lunch and share the few I found:

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Start Your Week Off Right, Chum

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Ah, Monday. The start of another work week. Perhaps my lunchtime findings can give you something to think about…

  • From the “Damn Microsoft and their Start Button” Department: Actually, this has nothing to do with Microsoft, and everything to do with “Start” buttons. Specifically, automobile start buttons and keyless entry systems. Hardware keys, even though they can be easily duplicated, have one distinct advantage: everyone understands how they work. You put in the key and turn it to on, or to off. The keyless starter systems, however, have no such universal protocol: although it is understood how to turn the car on, turning it off completely is another matter. Different manufacturers use different approaches. It turns out that turning a car off is critical: it relates to dealing with uncontrolled acceleration, as well as simply turning the car completely off when you park (some haven’t, and have returned to either no car or dead battery). It also turns out that some of these systems can be affected by nearby radio frequencies. After reading this, I’m not sure I’d want a keyless car.
  • From the “Shades of Therac 25” Department: You think by now we would have learned about software safety. But we haven’t. The NY Times has an article about how people have been mistakenly given too much radiation, making them (effectively) dead people glowing. Missed warnings. Missed filters. All leading to non-reversable problems. Yet another reminder that we need to be careful with our technology.
  • From the “And When I Die” Department: And speaking of death, the Washington Post has an interesting article on some new services that are springing up: digital lockers to store site passwords and messages that would be sent to a virtual executor when you die. Now you have a way to pass on your Facebook or LJ password to a trusted friend who can post your obit when the eventual occurs. My worry would be that the service would still be around.
  • From the “Divided House” Department: USA Today is reporting on a poll that President Obama is the most polarizing president to date. In fact, the article notes that excessive partisanship and polarization towards the president started with President Clinton, and has continued ever since. In many ways, this polarization is one of the most harmful things we’re seeing in politics today: we’ve lost the ability to listen to the other side and work towards compromises (and that goes for both parties, as there was equal polarization under Bush 43). Hopefully, our leaders will realize this before it is too late.
  • From the “Can You Hear Me Now” Department: Lastly, something that might help my cell phone bill. It appears that Apple will be working with Verizon for their new Tablet, and as a side benefit of that, will add Verizon as a carrier for the iPhone once the exclusivity period runs out with AT&T in June. This would be good news for us, as we’re on Verizon, and we have lots of friends with iPhones. Perhaps they will get fed up with AT&T and switch.
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Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Three stories in today’s news demonstrate the adage that “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose”, or to put it another way… in the shades of some apparant victory, some will or may get hurt:

  • From the “They Said It Would Never Work” Department: Well, an NBC official has confirmed it: after the Winter Olympics, Jay Leno is moving back to 11:35 Pacific/Eastern. It is unclear yet what will happen to Conan, but fewer people seem to care whether he stays at NBC or goes, other than the penalties NBC will pay. However, this change will hurt some. I’m one of the folks that liked Jay Leno at 10pm. I get up in the morning at 4:45am, and thus go to bed at 10pm. Jay is the perfect program for falling asleep, for it is only the first half-hour that is usually interesting. Now I’ll rarely see him (as it was before).
  • From the “What About The Side Effects?” Department: It looks like a push is on to strengthen airport security, and it will be done by the backscanner machines. However, these scanners appear to slightly raise the risk of cancer. If they are put into wide-spread use, there may be increased medical costs down the line for the cancer treatments… and (as it was with cigarettes and other carcingens), the person who creates the problem is the one who pays for the problem. So where do we draw the line between saving people now, and saving people down the road? It’s hard question.
  • From the “End of Paragraph. Dot. Dot. Dot.” Department: We loves our computers, don’t we. We have love-hate relationships with our word processors. But do we think about who we hurt: the poor typewriter repair shop. Luckily, some are still hanging on for those few who need typewriters. So who does? Here’s an example: inmates who are barred from using a computer and the Internet; instead, they use a typewriter with a transparent case designed to prevent inmates from hiding contraband inside. By the way, I should note that the typewriter manufacturers are not going the same way as the buggywhip manufactuers: the NY Times makes that clear. They are going the way of carriage makers and carriage parts makers.
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