November 13, 2008

Codemusic

Lately I have been loving a few truly innovative audio apps for the iPhone, none having to do with it being an iPod.

I had always thought that mobile audio creation software were frivolous party tricks. Hey, look at me, I can play Baby Got Back on my 3"-wide keyboard! But that's changed.

A while back I wrote about an idea for including audio processing code in the header of MP3 files. The premise was that, in addition to creating a music track, the artist would provide parameters for real-time playback modification based on user input, randomness, or anything else. The song would never (or at least wouldn't ever have to) be the same.

The team at RJDJ have taken this idea to the extreme. The free and pay RJDJ apps in the iTunes store both provide "scenes", akin to music tracks, complete with artwork. These scenes are nothing but audio processing algorithms.

All input happens via the lavalier microphone on the iTunes earbuds. Basically the scenes take the ambient noise surrounding you and remix it. Some of the scenes do this subtly, some are more musical, but all of them make you the focal point of the remix -- not so much a musician as a conductor. I've listened to the noise of the L train, walking down the street, and the cacophony of three kids at dinner time. It is completely entrancing. Location-based remixing.

So, to our list of traditional musical interfaces -- stick hitting animal skin, horse hair pulled across wire -- we add one's physical movement through life's soundscape.

Here's a more musical scene based on my eastward walk through the city a few days ago*. Note especially the interpolation of me almost being hit by a cab crossing Michigan Ave. at 1:16 (red marker on map). The horn makes the piece, in my opinion, but the beauty of this particular scene is how the bleeps and bloops are modulated by the ambient street noise.

View Larger Map

Of course this map isn't connected in any way to playback control, but with the iPhone's GPS it seems like an obvious evolution of the RJDJ app. The possibilities are many. How about a View in Google Maps button in iTunes? Or a site that aggregates user-created tracks and plots them over one another on a map, a personal-social musical-spatial mashup. Dan Hill's city of sound, indeed.

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There are some other apps of note too.

Bloom is a generative music app from none other than Brian Eno, working with Brian Chilvers. You initiate notes of music by touching the screen. Each note plays and interacts with other notes in expanding concentric circles, like dropping pebbles in a pond. As with scenes in RJDJ, the parameters of note interaction are constrained by "moods". These are the algorithms that govern the evolution of the sounds you start off. Spore for music. (Not a coincidence that Eno did the music for Spore, of course.)

Ocarina is one of those apps that makes you love the creators for thinking of it. Basically Ocarina turns your iPhone into a high-tech flute. OK, you say, I can see touching the screen like you cover the holes of a woodwind, but where do you blow? Why, the microphone of course! They've turned the lack of a wind guard on the iPhone mic into a feature! Light exhalation makes less noise on the mic and produces a lower intensity of the current note combination, and conversely. It's brilliant really.

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* There's no easy way to export audio from RJDJ, but this handy tool allows you to parse the backup file that the iPhone generates on your machine. You can pluck out the .wav files right from the RJDJ folder.

Posted at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 6, 2008

iPhone apps and Flickr nit-picking

The iPhone 3G and firmware 2.0 were released hours after my plane departed for Africa. It was source of great consternation for me, but it did force a kind of critical distance that I rarely have from new technology releases. What did I learn? I learned that I don't care for critical distance from new technology releases.

I did eventually get to update the firmware on my original iPhone while I was over there, though there was virtually nothing I could do with new apps without good network access. Read: all the battery-sucking issues, none of the benefits. Since I have been back I've gotten a 3G, ceding the original phone to my wife who really needed it.

Here's a list of apps that I'm liking a great deal.

• AirMe - Takes photos and uploads them automatically to Flickr with geo info (and weather tags, if you want). Works with Facebook too. Here's a sample photo.
• Last.fm - Last.fm has always been great, but conceptually is so well-suited to a mobile device. No background apps on the iPhone means it won't play while you do other stuff (ala the iPod), but them's the breaks with Apple.
• MLB.com At Bat - Recently updated to include field and batter infographic overviews. Very well-designed and pretty timely video clip access make this indispensable, even when you're at the game (especially so at Jumbotron-less Wrigley).
• Remote - Possibly the most useful app out there, which is probably why Apple got to it first. Creates a slick remote interface for iTunes and Apple TV's on your LAN.
• Rotary Dialer - Because you can, that's why.
• Shazam - Too-good-to-be-true app that identifies the title and artist of a currently-playing music source (like the jukebox at a bar). Pretty damn accurate and it offers instant links to buy the track. Great party trick potential trying to stump it.
• Simplify Media - Sets up a server on your machine that allows streaming access to your iTunes library wherever you (or anyone you permit) happen to be. This was cool when it was computer-to-computer, but the ability to stream anything from home to your iPhone is game-changing. Points to a day when the iPod has no storage at all and is just a thin network interface to your cloud of media. Highly recommended.
• Tetris - Slower to start than the free knock-off (now removed) Tris, but still mesmerizingly addictive. Takes a while to get used to manipulating blocks by finger flick.
• Twitterific - Not sure I'd even use Twitter if not for the desktop app Twitterific. The iPhone version is just as scrumptious, adding in some location features to boot.

There are a few apps I want to like, but just don't. NetNewsWire is everything I want in an offline feedreader (with desktop and web synching!), but it is just dog-slow. Takes forever to load my feeds. AIM works fine, but instant messaging just doesn't work with the no background app paradigm. You can't give all your focus to chat.

And here are the apps I wish existed.

Backpack - I know 37Signals is all about lightweight web apps, but what I would love is actual offline access with synch.

SMS over IP - We can make phone calls with VOIP, but why not SMS? This may exist and I don't know it, but with AT&T's ridiculous messaging fees, why put anything over the voice network you don't have to?

MarsEdit - On-the-go blog composition. Synching with desktop drafts would be yummy.

A native NPR app.

Google Earth - Why not? The video capabilities are clearly adequate and with the iPhone location abilities seems like a natural.

A great e-reader app. Kindle-screen quality with iTunes store breadth of access? Sign me up.

A stickie note app that synchs at least to a desktop app, preferably to a web app too. Most text pad apps for iPhone do too little (see all the to do list apps in the App Store) or too much (like Evernote, which I tried desperately to like). All I need is stickie notes. ShifD is promising, but right now you can only get it on your phone as a web app. Not ideal at all. If you know of something along these lines, please let me know!

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In other news, I've been using Flickr a ton lately. The more I use Flickr the more I love it, but it has prompted some critical observations:

• Video on Flickr is fantastic, but none of the video metadata comes over. This may not be Flickr's fault, but it breaks the videos-are-just-long-photos thing organizationally.
• There is a "Replace this photo" option for stills that is very handy when uploading high-res versions of low-res originals. But this function does not exist for video. You have to delete and re-upload, losing all metadata and comments. Boo.
• Speaking of replacing, it would be great if there were a bulk replace function. Having to do it photo by photo is so ... unFlickr.
• Flickr slideshows do not include video. C'mon!
• FlickrExport for iPhoto is indispensable, but it does not allow permission-setting (CC, etc). This is a very correctible limitation, it seems to me. (There's a Facebook export from iPhoto that works just as smoothly).
• Speaking of iPhoto, why will it not copy video seen from a shared library like it will photos? Annoying!

Phew. Feels good to release some geek.

Posted at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 17, 2008

How to Save America

With John 7,000 miles away in a third world country, I have decided to fill in for him. Now, taking his wife out for a night on the town could be a little awkward and very inconvenient for me. Instead, I have decided to guest blog on this widely revered Ascent Stage.

My name is Cory Ritterbusch, and I am the only ecologist that John knows. Some of you AS die-hards may remember my blog PrairieWorks being cited in the past. I practice a small but growing form of land conservation known as Restoration Ecology in the rural Midwest. Ecological Restoration, as a verb, is the practice of repairing a damaged or destroyed ecosystem. Let's try to get our arms around the man-child that is ecological restoration to show you: How you can utilize it in some of your decision making, how to view the landscape in a new way, the power that humans possess and the damage we can reverse.

For millions of years American Indians and the ecosystem co-existed together here in America rather nicely. What is now corn and soybean fields were extensive prairies, savannas and woodlands harboring thousands of different species. Intermingled amongst these prairies were forests, wetlands, bogs, fens, and so on. There was a very smooth and seamless transition into one another without fragmentation. These ecosystems were on fire frequently, started by lighting strikes and by intentional means by Indians. It was a part of the natural process here in America for millions of years. With fire, the Midwest remained open without many trees. The plants living here adapted to these fires and became dependent on them for survival.

Beginning in the early 1800s pioneers began entering these wild areas and by 1850 the landscape had become extremely altered. Prairies were plowed into crop fields, woodlands were cut for timber and wetlands were drained. This had a detrimental effect on the species that had existed here for millions of years. With the suppression of fire and the introduction of plants from other continents, the conservative native plants had a hard time competing and were eventually extirpated. Luckily, small areas known as remnants were spared and botanists could study these areas to learn about them. These are now a benchmark for comparison and a seed bank for plant propagation. Today, restoration ecologists are mimicking the natural processes in hopes of recreating the glory of the prairie's former past.

The landscape, agricultural and energy industries have also taken notice and are learning from these ghost plants of the past. We are now utilizing native plants to amend troublesome site conditions and are designing landscapes that provide a greater sense of place. The deep root systems that native plants formed after millions of years of harsh weather conditions are being utilized for many applications including: Controlling erosion, removing toxins from soils, creating landscapes that do not require water and fertilizers, planting flower filled areas in sub-par soil conditions and for producing ethanol. Native plants also offer a greater sense of place rather than utilizing the same set of plants from state to state and region to region, regardless of climate and soil types. For example, an Applebee's restaurant chain will use the same building design and landscape design for all of its locations in today's current streamlined thought process.

Much like Frank Lloyd Wright's house designs incorporated elements of local materials, we are now doing this outdoors. Ironically, for the first time we are beginning to create landscapes that are of American influence rather than English and Japanese, the norm for the last two centuries. Replacing lawns, which have large maintenance requirements, with short grasses native to the western Midwest is just one example of how we can utilize native flora to reduce financial and natural resource strains for the betterment of humanity. Soon, we hope that the 55 billion dollar landscape industry can be trained in local plants rather than the sharpening of blades at the cost of a depleting water supply.

History comes full circle sometimes. The plants that we destroyed to create food to feed a nation can now be utilized to solve many important issues here at home. Utilizing perennial prairie plants for ethanol, installing plants that reduce labor inputs, attracting wildlife, reminding us where we are, cleaning our air and water, all while stabilizing soil in the process can be useful tools as we look towards the future. The plants that were once used to sustain an entire population of native people may do so again.

Thanks to John for allowing me to preach the power of native plants.

Cory Ritterbusch
cory@prairieworksinc.com

Posted at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 7, 2008

Offline dance

We've been told there's no Internet at the hotel in Kumasi (though an unsubstantiated report says the proprietor is "working on it"). The program manager has earnestly stood by his directive that we should experience the Internet the way Ghanaians do, which is to say (if they do at all) at public cafes.

I see the point. You can't consult much less design for a culture whose particular constraints you do not understand. OK. But this my biggest concern since, as a team with a job to do involving (at least in my particular task) using the Internet as a route to market, this seems like an unfortunate and avoidable self-limitation.

But so it is. To make matters more challenging, we're told that power cuts out in Kumasi two to three times a day. Many places have backup generators; many do not. So, you can imagine the near-panic I'm in being a creature of connectivity. I'm not proud of it, just laying it out truthfully.

It's a reversal of the productivity direction I've been working towards for years: a near-total online workflow. Sure, I use desktop apps and love a few dearly. But they're almost all hooked to networked data and have a web-based interface too. Most simply won't work without a connection. My laptop is about to become an island.

Thinking through how it will actually work has been interesting, though. There are three scenarios, not counting the pipe dream of guest house Internet:

1. Connection at place of work, relatively nearby Internet cafe
2. No connection or very limited connection
3. Machine failure

The first is the most likely, though it still involves long offline periods. It's pretty easy really: e-mail gets pulled into Mail.app and calendar items into iCal whenever I can connect. NetNewsWire can suck down feeds for offline review.

But that leaves Backpack and Basecamp, two online services I use for personal and project task management. There's a great offline synch app for Backpack called Packrat, but for Basecamp I'm basically hosed. In a stroke of great timing, my files at Google Docs now live offline thanks to the Google Gears integration it now offers. I compose blog posts in the superb MarsEdit so that's not a worry. I suppose there are some offline Flickr apps, but that seems like such a hassle. IM, Twitter, virtual worlds: forget about it.

The second scenario is basically the same, only more dire. I suspect I will just abandon e-mail altogether and just compose offline blog posts hoping to cast their bottles into the sea at some point.

The last scenario -- total computer death -- had me considering bringing two laptops ... until the sheer idiocy of hauling all that hardware to Africa brought me to my senses. (Some of my teammates are considering not even bringing one. What!?) When you consider that the closest Apple Store is half a continent and a sea away, you basically realize that letting go is easier than fighting it. If the MBP dies, my hipster PDA takes over.

If this particular calamity should come to pass I've loaded up a USB key with a bunch of portable apps so that I can at least fake the semblance of a personalized workspace at a public terminal. Loading critical data onto the key just isn't practical, though, so I'll basically be all dressed up with no place to go.

And yet. There's an upside to these scenarios. There are still a few apps that require no connection at all. In fact, the distractions of the 'tubes are actually a hindrance to using them in some ways. I'm thinking specifically of Ableton Live, but also tools like Tinderbox and Scrivener. All these are for personal composition. I can imagine being hunched monk-like in my room hammering out new tunes and chapters, perversely thankful for the isolation.

That is, if the electricity stays on. There are as yet no affordable (or compact) solar-powered solutions for laptop power. So, I have my three MBP batteries.

Add to all this worry that the iPhone 2.0 update and 3G hardware is released the day after I leave and you may understand better why I am obsessing more about Internet withdrawal than microbe invasion.

If this sounds like spoiled geek whining, you're probably right. But I think this post will be a useful record to return to when the real conditions of daily work present themselves. I'm pretty sure I'm being shortsighted. Which is probably a good summary of my overall preparedness for this adventure.

Not too long now. Departure Thursday.

Posted at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 12, 2008

Honesty in application design

We're a few months into the painstakingly slow process of home video conversion and upload. Many tools have come into play, but the most useful has been VisualHub. It's batch operation, Xgrid support, and variety of device destination presets make the fact that it is free that much more amazing.

Last night I gave it a whopper of a batch list to get crunching on. When I went to bed it had some ridiculous estimate of time to complete, several thousand hours, constantly recalculating up and down.

But when I woke, this.

I love it. Is it a lie or is it honesty? I'd much rather have an app say, "You know what, I can't do this. I have no freaking idea how long this is going to take" than flop around trying to calculate the incalculable.

Posted at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 13, 2008

Good Apple, bad Apple

Lots of Apple news since Macworld in January. Figured I'd weigh in for those of you who look exclusively to me for technology guidance. (Tip: bad idea.)

In a very un-Apple-like move they provided significant software-based functionality upgrades to two existing products -- the iPhone and the Apple TV -- at no cost to owners. Now, I know that iPod touch owners bitched about having to pay $20 to make their units phone-less iPhones, but I have no sympathy for that. If you really wanted the extra functionality when you bought the touch you should have just bought an iPhone.

The new location-awareness functionality on the iPhone is jaw-dropping, not only in its accuracy but in the fact that it was software-only (no GPS) and cleverly uses cell tower and WIFI triangulation to figure out your location. It is like getting a whole new device for free. LOVE it.

But ... where oh where is the iPhone SDK? I think pretty much everyone is tired of web-based apps that try to do things that a native, Cocoa app was clearly meant to. C'mon, Apple!

Today the Apple TV upgrade rolled out. Pretty much what Jobs announced -- HD video, redesigned interface, rentals -- but there is one feature no one talked about and it, too, is like getting a new device. The Apple TV now acts exactly like an Airport Express, showing up in network-connected iTunes in your home as just another set of speakers. Not only that, but the connection is two-way (unlike the Airport Express). That is, changes you make at the Apple TV by remote flow back to iTunes. Superb! Now my Airport Express is superfluous. Might have to stow that in my travel bag for hotel room rocking-out. (PVRblog has great coverage of the new stuff.)

But ... the movie rentals. Apple, thank you for high-def, thank you for 5.1 audio, but what the hell were you thinking limiting movie playback to a 24 hour period? Do none of you have children? Have none of you travelled overseas before? I rarely watch a movie in a single 24 hour period. That's just asinine. Please tell me this is just more movie studio idiocy (like DRM) and that you didn't actually think this was a good idea.

Leopard: QuickLook may be the best thing in OSX in the last three major revs. Seriously. Has changed the way I work. Time Machine, well the jury is still out. I've not needed it (he says as his hard drive armature plows a furrow into the disk platter.)

But ... Spaces? Useless to me. And if I initiate it one more time by dragging a window to the screen edge accidentally I am going to scream. Stacks? Totally useless. If someone can show me how this is any way more usable than a flat depiction of filesystem hierarchy I would be willing to buy you a tasty beverage.

MacBook Air: sexy, awesome. Love the lack of CD/DVD drive.

But ... would this really last five minutes in a house with mischievous children? No, it would not.

And lastly, where praytell are the new MacBook Pros? Gotta have some of that Air multitouch trackpad goodness!

Posted at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 16, 2007

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station."

Back in China. I had been feeling like the frequency of my travel here had diminished some of the (wander)luster of the place. Until last night, that is. We were having dinner with the History Channel team (who are making a documentary which includes my project here), but my pal Victor re-routed my driver to meet him at a Starbucks at a mall somewhere in the megapolis known as Beijing. Ninety minutes of the most infuriating, nauseating traffic later, I was there. I was so jetlagged, tired, irritated, and sick of the car that I only wanted alcohol or a bed.

I was too out of it to notice that I was standing directly underneath a 22,000 square foot television screen.

The thing is simply too massive to believe. You wonder instantly at what resolution it displays and then how in the hell content is created for it. The answers sort of inform each other: ginormous and artificially. That is, it is simply too large (and odd) a format for video, except some sort of composite montage which it never showed. Everything is animated CGI. Victor says the variety of content is amazing, though I all saw was this underwater scene, the best screensaver I've ever zoned out to.

It is also a pickpocket's wet dream. Think of it, a destination that entrances shoppers and keeps them looking straight up. I was there on a cold night, so the crowds were thin. But that didn't stop Johnny Quickfingers, no. He brushed aside me, muttered apology, then vectored off empty-handed into the wide open space like so much Brownian motion. Our gazes locked and I flashed him a you-fucking-amateur look. If you're going to burgle my person at least do it with panache ... or complete stealth. Jeez.

As a sidenote, a little more than three years ago this blog started on a similar trip with the History Channel to make a documentary of the Eternal Egypt project.

Posted at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 7, 2007

Human After All

Two weeks ago, in addition to launching a project, I was in DC to meet with a bunch of people that work in the relatively new field of technology-juiced humanistic research. You scratch your head at that -- and fair enough. The field is barely a decade old.

When I was in English graduate school in the mid-90's I envied the small group of university researchers who cared little about the conventional wisdom of left brain-right brain and who pounded down the doors of their engineering and computer science colleagues across campus to start what's loosely known as computational humanities. It isn't a hard concept to grasp, though I am sure you are imagining tweedy, bespectacled bookworms accidentally reformatting DOS drives. There's a lot of truth to that image*, even now, but like any stereotype it exists only as counterpoint to what is actually happening outside the mainstream.

This is no place for a history of the field (though that would make an interesting monograph). Suffice to say that, in my mind anyway, the grand-daddy of these programs is the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at Virginia. I'll offer one example from IATH that I think well-defines the kind of new knowledge that can come from the you-put-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter mashup of computers and the humanities.

It is called the Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project and is led by David Koller.

In ancient Rome there was a gigantic marble map of Rome that displayed every road in the city including internal layouts of buildings. This map, called the Forma Urbis, was pulled down and fragmented in the Middle Ages for scrap -- and the world lost a perfect snapshot of the way Rome was. Thousands of the fragments of this map have been found scattered in digs all over Rome. For 400 years scholars have been manually attempting to reform this 3D jigsaw puzzle, and not very successfully. What Dave did is scan every single known piece in three dimensions and then build a few different algorithms for matching them up. He was able to piece together much of the map, doing in a few weeks more than had been done in centuries. The picture of the municipal layout, architecture, and patterns of life that the map depicts are an invaluable resource.

There's more than IATH, though. The University of Maryland also has a cross-disciplinary program called MITH for, yes, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. Judging from the fact that they asked me to speak there you might think the work they are doing is qualitatively less impressive than IATH's. But you would be wrong. And if you still doubt, have a listen at all the tough questions they threw my way at the end of this recording.

Not to be outdone by academia -- or rather, in order to ally forces -- the NEH has a digital humanities program aimed squarely at supporting projects that put technology in the service of humanist inquiry. Most recently they are working to match up researchers with supercomputing resources, some at the Department of Energy (you know, the folks that have those nuclear explosion-modelling boxes**).

That's the next frontier, really: what can you do with a truckload of data and an enormously powerful computer? Definitively prove or disprove the authorship of Shakespeare? Map out the journey of an idea across all known writings/art through the ages? Reconstruct a collapsed temple from thousands of pieces of heaped stone? Researchers are only just beginning to ask these questions in a way that is not rhetorical or just a flat out joke. What can WOPR do for you?

[*] It isn't just humanities scholars. My neighbor in grad school was a computer science professor who would occasionally come over for basic Windows help. He didn't even use a computer. All theory, all math, he taught.

[**] I have this funny image of a English professor politely asking a nuclear physicist to pause his simulation at 100,000 casualties so that he could load his corpus of Emily Dickinson writings into the supercomputer.

Tags: digital, humanities, supercomputing

Posted at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 1, 2007

Early thoughts about that phone (but mostly about AT&T)

When I went to stand in line for the iPhone Friday at 11 AM I plopped my chair down and promptly went inside for real service. The nerd queue looked at me like I had some inside track.

My AT&T 3G card had stopped working two weeks ago. Scratch that, my 3G card -- compatible with the AT&T network, which they were not yet selling three months ago but which I could not wait for so I bought unlocked -- was not working. It worked splendidly for three months and then suddenly nothing. The first rep, though a nice guy, immediately called tech support, put me on the line, and walked away. The exact same thing I would have done from home. Ugh. Long story short: “We don't know your card and the fact that you are working on a Mac means we can't follow our script so, despite the fact that the card was working for months, we recommend a) that you buy one of our cards (for $300) and b) that you call Apple.”

That you call Apple. The irony was rich. Everyone in the store was gearing up for the biggest day in AT&T/Cingular retail history because Apple found them to be the least despicable carrier to partner with and they were blaming the malfunction on Apple.* I hung up with the absolutely derailed tech support guy (remember I'm in the AT&T store) and thought this iPhone partnership ain't gonna last long. Indeed, if not for the special features that Jobs forced upon AT&T (visual voicemail, at-home activation) I see no reason to keep this going.

Luckily one of the clerks was tenacious. He just sat at his terminal googling stuff and asking me to change settings as he came across them. Again, something I clearly could have done from home if I didn't have a seat waiting for me outside of the store. Eventually he came across a random authentication string that work. All from in-store googling.

Is this really what tech support has come to? True, most of the first-day adopters of the iPhone are technically savvy and can get by without ever setting foot in an AT&T store, but if Apple wants to reach their goal of 10 million phones sold by the end of 2008 they are going to have to figure out how to deal with AT&T customer service. It is as abominable as the phone itself is glorious. Methinks the partnership will not last.

The best thing about the iPhone is how it feels so integrated and seamless, but here are some of the specific things I am really impressed with.

The flick-and-scroll and pinch-to-zoom interaction is unbelievably right. Forehead-slappingly so. In particular the pinching is extremely precise. One immediately wishes the multitouch trackpad on the MacBook allowed the same thing. And one wonders about how the iPhone UI will influence future Mac development.

Visual voicemail. I've had this at work for a few years and it is by far the right way to deal with voicemail. Being able to see who called and to choose which message you want non-serially (e-mail-like) is exactly how it should be done. The message itself resides on your phone. No dialing up to get it.

The iPod functionality is truly the best there is. I thought I'd miss the scroll wheel, but I don't. CoverFlow was formerly eye candy, now it is actually useful. Videos (and of course photos) look great.

EDGE is faster than I expected (but still way below the 3G that Cingular supports).

A few gripes too of course.

No LEAP authentication support for wireless. So no hopping on the corporate network, for now.

There's no dedicated contacts app, which is odd because the contacts are superbly handled. Just that they are handled inside other apps (phone, e-mail, etc).

Driving a car and operating the iPhone is tricky, nay, dangerous. Some of the features absolutely require two hands.

The recessed headphone jack -- which does not work with most connectors -- is baffling. Why do this?

On web pages that auto-reload (like a sports scoreboard) the currently selected zoom level is forgotten. So you have to pinch and flick it back. Just seems like an oversight.

I miss having the ability to take a voicenote.

No synching of notes from the iPhone to the desktop, which makes them a lot less useful.

More as I play with, erm, use it more.

[*] Unsurprisingly the problem had nothing whatsoever to do with Apple. It was a missing access string from AT&T. But that's the end-of-the-line recommendation from all tech support: “call the manufacturer” (because we give up).

Tags: apple, at&t, iphone, support

Posted at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2007

Flick and pinch

Sorry to leave you hanging last night. I did indeed get an iPhone right after 6:00 PM. I may in fact have been the first person in Chicago to activate it since my office was right across the street from the AT&T store. I think I was screwing around on it by 6:15.

So, yes, I have it. Yes, I love it. I'll certainly post a review.

But can you give us some alone time please?

Tags: gadget, iphone, joy, phone, ipod

Posted at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 29, 2007

18:00 iPhone

The best part about sitting out here for half the day is the people watching -- and not just the nerds in line like me. It's become a bit of a game to make up replies to the suburbanites fleeing the city who ask “What are you in line for?” There's a sizable group of commuters who now truly believe that Kevin Federline is in town, for instance.

Waiting hasn't been too bad actually. The store clerks periodically bring out snacks, water, and even Chipotle for us, believe it or not.

The line-sitters fall into a few camps: plain old dorks (that'd be me), young kids, and people who will have the phones up on eBay as soon as they get home. And then there are the homeless people who have been hired to wait in line. Sad, really, but they're happy. Paid, free food, and a bit of a fun atmosphere. There has been only one fight between drunks. (This did not involve me.)

So I'm just sitting here sucking off wifi across the street from Caribou. When the light turns red and the traffic piles up I lose signal. A guy and I bought extension cords and have strung them the length of the 100 or so people who are here so all the nerds can compute. We're happy.

A little over an hour now.

Tags: at&t, iphone, retail, waiting

Posted at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 27, 2007

Lord of the Gizmos

Can I tell you how many times I've been asked: Are you getting an iPhone? No, I cannot, for I cannot count that high unassisted by spreadsheet.

People, of course I am getting an iPhone ... but maybe not for the reasons you suspect.

I've needed a new phone since January. My trusty, bulky Sony Ericsson S710a was simply not cutting it any longer. I was prepared for a new phone but then heard that the iPhone was coming. Months in the future of course, but on the horizon. So I waited. Waited for the details to trickle in.

Not everything impressed. When I found out it would be on my current carrier Cingular I was happy. Then I remembered it was Cingular and I was sad. Because Cingular sucks, but they have good international coverage, which is the only reason I am with them. Then I learned that the iPhone would not support Cingular's nascent 3G network. And I was really sad. This will most certainly suck.

But the real reason I am going to get one is that I am coming around to convergence -- when done right. Everything I have seen suggests that this device can synthesize a phone and an iPod perfectly. True, it will not be the 80GB version I haul around, but it has caused me to rethink my iPod strategy. I carry an 80GB mostly because of long-distance travel, not for my commute. Who the hell listens to 80GB of music in a typical session on the iPod? No one. But the large capacity is ideal for when you are away from your main music library for a time and want choice.

The iPhone has me rethinking. The only other device I always have on me is my laptop and, while it does not have enough free space to house my entire collection, there are multiple options for expansion including swapping the CD drive (which I rarely use) for a second hard drive or using a tiny external drive. I might just do this. Unload the 80GB and use the iPhone exclusively for listening on the go.

The other reason the iPhone makes sense to me is coincidental. I have been moving all my critical data to web services in the last year. E-mail, bookmarks, to do lists, calendar, project plans, backups, everything is now accessible via a web interface. And this, despite the protestations of OSX developers everywhere, is the only way Apple is currently allowing developer access to the platform -- through web apps. I still love offline, cross-platform access to data, but this will do for a mobile device.

So what's my plan on Friday? Well, there is an AT&T/Cingular store right across the street from my office. As soon as I see a line form, I'm out there.

Tags: apple, iphone, phone, at&t

Posted at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

May 17, 2007

And now, a dork moment

OK, got some questions I want to inject into the Googlesphere in the hope they will one day be answered.

• Does anyone know when Feedburner will support splicing Twitter feeds? Any other good solutions?
• Is there a way to convert webcal feeds to RSS?
• Does a Firefox extension exist to prevent a single tab (say the leftmost) from scrolling off the screen when you have many tabs open in Firefox?
• OK, I use Lotus Notes for Mac. Laugh for a moment ... now here's the question. Does anyone know how to enable Chinese character display in Notes for Mac?
• Lastly, how can I make money quickly by helping millionaires in west Africa, specifically, Nigeria?

Thank you.

Tags: firefox, lotusnotes, rss, twitter, webcal

Posted at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 7, 2007

Brita city

Bioswales, blackwater, and benthic nets. Microbial fuel cells, hydroponic disinfection, and pervious pavement.

Were you thinking about these things when you were in college? I certainly wasn't. Perhaps I should have been, because the student teams in the History Channel's City of the Future Engineering Challenge sure seem like they have bright futures ahead.

Picking up on the popularity of their “Engineering an Empire” series, the History Channel last year held a design competition in LA, Chicago, and NYC. Professional design teams had one week to design a vision of their city 100 years in the future in such a way that would be sustainable much beyond.

The winner in Chicago was Urban Lab, a small outfit on the south side whose Growing Water submission presented a Chicago infrastructure that recycles 100% of the water it needs by un-reversing the flow of the Chicago River back into Lake Michigan, resurrecting the (currently) century-old idea of an Urbs in Horto “Emerald Necklace” of parks ringing the city proper, and carving latitudinal waterways alongside “eco-boulevards” to make the whole city-sized water filter work.

That was sorta the easy part. The heavy lifting was left for the students in the second phase who actually had to present the engineering behind it all. As a sponsor of the event (with a keen interest in promoting engineering, math, and science) IBM was asked to provide a judge for the second phase. This was me. I was elated. I wasn't at all qualified, but I have been writing about the subcontinental divide, reversed river, and future Chicago here for a long time. The blog as street cred.

Undergraduate engineering student teams were fielded by the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Purdue University, U of I Urbana-Champaign, two from U of I Chicago, and Northwestern University. The presentations were simply remarkable. These kids -- and they were kids to be sure -- had put an amazing amount of time and thought into the tricky real-world problems of re-architecting a city at its most basic level. None of this was done for course credit.

Prior to the presentations the judges received ample supporting documentation for each solution: dozens of pages of equations backing up claims, diagrams, 3D renderings, and a bounty of specialized words to make the verbophile delight for hours. Advective. Biomimicry. Turbidity. Effluent. I loved it all.

The essence of the challenge in engineering Urban Lab's design was how to design the filtration of the water in the terminal parks and along the eco-boulevards east of the subcontinental divide. Most of the teams focused on how this filtration would happen. Others also stressed the challenge of separating graywater (wastewater with everything but poop), blackwater (poop), and potable water while being able to accommodate the “100-year-storm” (Chicago, though above sea level, is essentially a swamp). Still others focused on the Urban Lab sidenote that existing santitation tunnels (not needed in their design) could be used for expanded mass transit. One team went into great detail about a Chicago Maglev train. This might be a great next project for the CTA as their current Brown Line expansion will likely finish up around 2106.

The team from UIUC won the competition with their notion of EcoTowers -- residences at the terminus of eco-boulevards that pass graywater through a “biomimetic forward osmosis membrane bioreactor.” Duh. Of course they do. The towers themselves provide further filtration by running a curtain of nearly-clean water down the windows of the highrises for UV disinfection. Like living under a waterfall or inside the Beijing Olympic natatorium. Brilliant.

Chicago has a very long way to go to approach anything like this design, of course. Green roofs are a start, I suppose. Just glad people are working the problem. Even more glad that career-minded students are taking it so seriously. Bravo to all the teams.

See also on Ascent Stage: City of the Future and 10 Visions, an exhibition from the Art Institute

Tags: planning, urban, water

Posted at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 2, 2007

OS friction

Last week I had to travel without my Mac. I maintain a Thinkpad running XP that's pretty much always in synch with my main work laptop, a first-gen MacBook Pro. This is mostly to have a hot backup ready in case of calamity, but it also serves the rare instance when I'd rather not rub it in to my co-workers that I have a Mac and they don't. Such was last week.

The switch is always interesting because, functionally, the two set-ups are identical. Got all my main apps; got all my data (most of which is web-based anyway). It is precisely this functional parity that does a great job of highlighting that which truly differentiates MacOS. Not visual luster. Little things like apps not hanging/dying inexplicably. Not having to prowl around the tray and task manager killing off rogue apps. The ease of WiFi connectivity. Lightweight PDF viewing. (Acrobat, you are a swollen beast.)

I've noted before a few apps that I really miss on XP such as Quicksilver and BluePhoneElite. These apps don't -- can't -- have analogs in the Windows world: they are Mac-ish through and through. To this list I'd add Growl, Synergy, and Dashboard. (Yes, Yahoo Widgets exist to the PC, but it simply is not the same feel as Dashboard.)

I've not used Vista, so I'm not prepared to jump into that fray. But I have to think that the real differences between the OS's are more fundamental than any rev could address. There's just more friction in Windows.

The law of conservation of energy (a productivity rule to live by!) states that no energy is destroyed due to friction, though it may be transferred or transformed -- usually into heat. That's basically the case here. All the little frictive annoyances of Windows rubbing against your ability to achieve a task until the whole thing smolders in delay, disappointment, or anger.

See also Gruber's related post on what makes software “smoother” (though he doesn't cast it in those terms).

Tags: macos, windows, usability

Posted at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 1, 2007

Paleocomputing

Anybody out there sitting on vintage computing hardware circa 1972? (If so, why?)

Coudal Partners is creating a great short film (for which I am an Executive Producer) and they need some help for their set. We have a few options, but could use some more.

Not familiar with Coudal's film work? Well, the Copy Goes Here.

Tags: 1972, coudal, film, computing, vintage

Posted at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 14, 2006

Dreamy Tangerine

You know that field in iTunes for beats-per-minute? Ever wondered what the hell it was good for? Well, now we know. Tangerine, a scrumptious little OSX app, will analyze your entire library -- mine of some 12,000 tunes took 15 hours -- and plop the BPM into track metadata -- another 12 or so hours. So that's nice: more complete metadata. But Tangerine actually allows you to do something useful.

Tangerine locally logs BPM and beat intensity. You can then construct playlists by selecting a frequency and intensity range and choosing a pattern.

The playlist view is nicely done. Songs are represented by their cover art and scaled vertically to represent BPM, horizontally to represent duration. You can of course save your playlists to iTunes.

This particular fruit will set you back $25.

Tags: itunes, bpm

Posted at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 26, 2006

Dialogical

In watching Attack of the Clones again (painful indeed, but my boy asked) I noticed a strange line of dialogue. Obi-Wan at the clone factory is trying to establish a connection back to his peeps at Jedi HQ. He asks his droid to send the message “care of the old folks home.” Seemed odd, so I Googled it. Passionate discussions like this, friends, are why I love the Intertubes so.

Speaking of shows my kids watch, I'm still enamored with the Challenge of the Superfriends on DVD. Here's one reason why. The word “doom.” It is said often and always with subwoofer insidiousness. Doom! (Actually anything the narrator says is pretty cool. I've had the line “Deep within the gaseous core of Saturn ...” in my head all day.)

Tags: dialogue, starwars, superfriends

Posted at 5:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

November 16, 2006

When the metaverse is your town hall

Tuesday in Beijing I was part of a team that did something truly bizarre and unique. We helped the CEO of IBM, Sam Palmisano, deliver the results of IBM's Innovation Jam to an audience inside of Second Life. The virtual venue complemented the 8,000 IBM'ers in China he was speaking directly to as well as the hundreds of thousands of colleagues watching the event via internal webcast.

The reason Palmisano did this was to highlight IBM's commitment to virtual world technology, one of ten new focus areas coming out of the Innovation Jam. (Roo's got a bit more detail on the other Jam ideas over at Eightbar.) So, rather than just say we're committed to the space, we figured we'd have Sam show it. Sam carried on a conversation with Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who was at a supercomputing convention in Tampa, via Second Life and phone line while a few dozen IBM'ers from around the world milled about smartly.

It was truly challenging to pull off, though not for the reasons you might expect. The execs were very positive and open-minded about showing a live interaction in Second Life. Trouble was, preparing for doing so in China was a nightmare of failover and logistical planning. Basically every shred of what we hoped to do live had to be filmed machinima-style as a backup in case we lost the connection. Thankfully, it stayed stable at showtime, but the virtual filming easily consumed 95% of our prep time. You just try corralling talented, curious, script-wielding colleagues in Second Life to serve as virtual extras. It is like arranging toddlers for a photo shoot. Everyone wants to show off their latest set of wings or ability to make it rain. It took forever. Still, we had to have the video. So much easier than trying to explain to 8,000 people that the grid's down.

For the actual event, I was in Beijing with small group of colleagues to anchor the Sam-side interaction. We too were organized for failover. One colleague served as the vitual camera person, another was her backup and video triggerer. Others maintained contact with the IBM crowd, directing them and prepping them for the moment when Sam would “enter” the virtual world being displayed to the real audience in Beijing. Virtual webcasting.

The setting for all this was Thinkland, a private IBM island in Second Life that serves as a testbed for the Forbidden City project mentioned here previously. While the project itself will not ultimately live in SL and only launches in 2008, having a ready virtual environment so clearly China-themed was too good to pass up. Thinkland became the “stage” for the virtual event.

The press response has been strong. BusinessWeek had the exclusive (I believe) with ZDNet, Reuters (and their SL bureau), and a slew of others following closely behind.

Can't wait to see what happens now. IBM's ad hoc Virtual Universe Community accomplished a stunning amount of work as a non-organization. Let's hope the new funding and focus doesn't squelch any of the passion that has fueled the group to date.

UPDATE: Irving blogs this in much greater detail.

Posted at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 24, 2006

Pimp my rat's nest of cables

Last year during our annual Christmas party the joy ended when our amplifier overheated and shut off. It was one of those record-needle-screeching-to-a-halt moments. I've been looking for a solution since then. I didn't want to have to keep the component cabinet open all the time. For one, it looks bad; for another, an open door is an invitation for my children to practice their ad hoc rewiring skills.

I knew a fan was the key, but desktop fans were too big and loud. It seemed to me that internal PC fans would be perfect: silent, small, and made to cool electronics. Problem was (as I learned the hard way) there is no such thing as a PC fan that is powered from AC from the wall. They all use internal power connectors (duh). So that put the skids on that idea ... until I found a G4 in my alley, souped it up, and plopped it in the media center.

The hardest part was obtaining internal power cables long enough to snake out of the Mac and up to the amplifier. Thankfully, case-modders sustain a healthy industry in wacky computer parts. (I was able to find custom length power cables here.) I bought two fans, complete with white LED's (perfect for illuminating the connectors in the back) and voila! Instant cooldown.

You know, you're not truly a dork until you post photos of your customized (and LED-bejewelled) hardware.

Posted at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 12, 2006

A conversation between friends

Hey man, thoughts on the Apple announcements today?

A few things ...

iTunes 7 is pretty slick, but I am disappointed in the high-end iPod. And I think they are over-thinking/over-engineering the iTV. All it needs to be is an Airport Express with HDMI out.

I thought you wanted my thoughts?

Go on.

The large iPods are nice. Nothing great. I was hoping for 60 and 120GB though.

Apple has purchased the 100GB Toshiba drives. We know this. So I was baffled at the 80GB.

Nanos are nice. Interesting color schemes, though. I think it's funny that they reverted to the old mini colors. I love how they're segregating the rich by making them black. Kinda reverse racism.

Yeah, no white anymore. There goes a truckload of color-matched addons. I swear, iPod add-on vendors must swerve between elation and complete horror during these announcements.

iTunes 7 is slick (good word). I like the new "views." The new iPod management system is nice. I really hope they bought the guy who developed Coverflow out or hired him.

Yeah, I owned that. I should get a credit.

Ah, the site has been updated. Apple bought him out. Good for Apple.

Heh, good for Coverflow Guy.

iTunes 7 "transfers content from computer to (authorized) computer." I guess they're finally catching on to this ...

No kidding. The gapless playback is a godsend. Have you tried it?

In the webcast Steve said that gapless playback was "encoded into the MP3" which is a flat out lie. I'm a little concerned by that. If you install Linux on the iPod you get gapless playback.

Well, I think it is not a complete lie. I believe iTunes is mucking with the ID3 header, ticking it so that iTunes and the iPod know what song to play right up against the end of the current one.

Hrm, the gap?

I could be wrong. I mean, if they put it in the iTunes XML file that would suck. That's the reason ratings don't transfer with the songs. But the jawdropper for me today was a friend who mentioned that iTunes actually analyzes the waveforms of the songs to make sure the transition is flawless. That's amazing, if true.

I was never a big fan of the gap. I mean, when the pref pane gives you the option of "0" I would expect gapless.

You'd think, yeah. My trusty Audiotron even did that.

I haven't gotten to iTV yet in the webcast.

Oh man, I am so ready for that. But again, I really wonder what the wait is. This is nothing more than an Airport Express with video out. Give me a break. 1Q2007? What kind of DRM hell are they negotiating on the device-side, I wonder. Why would you even need to?

Overall, a few thoughts. iTunes is becoming a whole new Finder. I mean, it's almost it's own operating system.

Interesting. It is fun to watch iTunes mimic the OSX interface and vice versa. And the PC version of iTunes is like a MacOS UI virus infiltrating Windows.

I'm not sure how I feel about the button-up. I kinda like the black turtleneck.

Nice observation.

Once again, the event didn't live up to the hype. No full-screen iPod, no iPhone. But the iTV was a nice tease.

I think I cried when I saw that the iPod was not full-screen. Can't recall through the haze of despondency. Good talking to you, Len.

Posted at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 9, 2006

SweatML

Cabel Sasser's post about the Nike-iPod doodad turning the solitary activity of jogging into a multiplayer compeition got me thinking in general about the way technology has made exercising, if not easier, at least more interesting. And this, as with so many things, has to do with data -- specifically what you can do with the data.

Fitness gadgets record all kinds of data: heart rate BPM, distance, speed, even elevation and lat/long if you have a GPS watch. (The new Garmin Forerunner 305 for example is a frankenstein of a cardio computer logging everything you can think of including compensating for GPS reception gaps using a pedometer.) Bike computers produce a whole lot more.

So there's plenty of raw material and that's where it gets fun. Sites like We Endure and Nike+ let you log workout data, view charts, and compare against others. The Forerunner (even earlier versions) let's you race yourself using previous run data in a unintentionally hilarious visual of stickmen chasing each other.

Certain companies, such as IBM, offer physical activity rebates for consistent exercise. This too requires workout data. And that's the thing. None of the fitness sites are interoperable and none of the data formats are standardized. It is a nightmare of multiple entry. Here's an example. When I return from a run I pop my iPod into its cradle. Up goes the workout data to Nike+. OK, so I get a nice animation and some basic stats for my run in a totally opaque Flash interface. That data is stuck in Nike for all practical purposes. To track all workouts over time I have to enter data manually at We Endure. Then over to the IBM Wellness for Life vendor site. More manual entry. And then there's Activtrax for gym workouts -- a smorgasboard of manual data entry that talks to nothing else.

You'd think there'd be some effort towards standardization what with the ascendancy of microformats and the relatively high percentage of web geeks who are also cyclists, runners, etc. Maybe I'm missing some real work here. It seems so obviously needed. The place to start might be the geo data that is generated from a workout since there's more standardization here (GIS, etc.) than elsewhere. Also you have to think that there are medical standards for biometric info (heartrate, etc).

Anybody really into microformats out there? How about hFit?

See also Veen's entertaining rant Polar Heart Rate Monitors: Gimme my data!

Posted at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 5, 2006

Building a virtual world one tourist photo at a time

The phrase "Hey, wanna see my vacation photos?" has stricken fear into the hearts of co-workers and family members since photography was invented. But the combined mass of pics could help build virtual worlds of, well, of the whole photographed world. The University of Washington and Microsoft (believe it or not) have created a jawdropping demo of stitching together disparate photos of the same place into a textured navigable world.

The site is called Photo Tourism, but that doesn't do justice to what these people have done. Only the videos convey the concept.

Soon enough this will be integrated with Google Earth and its ilk. A virtually navigable earth at all levels of detail can't be that far off.

Of course, most tourist photos contain people in them. But that appears not to be such a problem either. Witness Tourist Remover. (Oh, to have this in real life.)

Posted at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 1, 2006

World Community Grid takes on cancer, take two

Not sure what happened to this post. It literally just disappeared. (Has anyone ever experienced a spontaneous Movable Type database reversion?)

Anywhere, here it is again. I've typed extra hard to make sure it sticks.

The World Community Grid has just launched its third program to fight disease using the combined computing power of desktop machines across the world. Like prior programs (which continue to run!) Help Defeat Cancer stitches together idle processing cycles to crack the nut of cancer tissue microarray analysis, a step towards enhanced treatment.

Oh, WCG also has Linux and Mac clients now. (They ain't pretty, but then neither is data-crunching, frankly.)

Posted at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 27, 2006

Living across operating systems

So I'm travelling this week without my MacBook Pro. Nothing like a little deprivation to make it obvious why it feels so much like deprivation in the first place.

Here's what I miss most about the Mac (besides OSX itself of course):

• Quicksilver - Amazing app that has changed the way I conceive of files and file access. Makes folders virtual irrevalant and complex functions as easy as typing subject-verb-object. Has to be used to be fully understood.
• BluePhoneElite - Smartly done access to most phone functions, with full integration with your Mac Address Book. You'll never want to send an SMS from your phone keypad again.
• Universal CMD-Q - ALT-F4 is for people with robotic wrists that swivel on ball bearings, I've decided.
• An ical-compatible calendar that actually works well. Sunbird, MozCalendar, Chandler: I've left you for good.
• The speakers. As good as I have heard on a laptop ever.
• PackRat - Smooth offline updating and synching with the online Backpack service.
• Not being able to flip the MacBook over to warm my morning coffee on its molten underside.

I do actually miss a few things about XP. Google's Picasa is really wonderful. Adium is an excellent app, but I do kinda miss Trillian. And lastly, though this will change, Photoshop on Rosetta is pretty painful. It runs a lot faster on XP for now.

Posted at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 13, 2006

Converge this

If you've ever asked --

How does digital convergence transform the creative world of designers, developers, inventors, and entrepreneurs? How can we spot trends and practices that will prepare us for the future in a world of accelerating change?

-- perhaps you should get Googling. Chances are, the panel I was on at SxSW will leave you more confused than enlightened*. But if you must know, the podcast of the panel is now available.

[*] Through no fault of my co-panelists I hasten to add.

Posted at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 12, 2006

Z

Got a new laptop, the Thinkpad Z60m. It is one of the first Thinkpads since Lenovo took over PC operations from IBM and you can definitely see the new direction (though one wonders if this was already in the planning pipeline in IBM before the sale): widescreen aspect ratio, Firewire, no parallel port (welcome to the late 1990's!), media card reader, fingerprint reader. The screen is brilliant, so much so that the dragged-window transition to my second (external, old) monitor actually hurts my eyes. And the video card is a dream. The battery's nice too. One unexpected problem is that Lenovo switched the nearly decade-old power coupling so my half-dozen AC units are utterly useless. I like the fingerprint reader, but its utility seems so far short of what it could do if it integrated with saved passwords in Firefox., etc. Logging on with your finger is fine, but how about addressing the awfulness that is system-wide user authentication?

Oh, it also has a titanium cover which makes it look at least different from most Thinkpads (and somewhat striking), but one wonders if that's just a symptom of Powerbook envy. Truth to be told, with the new dual-boot Intel MacBooks and IBM no longer producing PC's the issue may be moot. Maybe my next work laptop will be Mac. There is already a supported suite of internal applications for the Mac. One can dream.

Posted at 7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 9, 2006

Two worlds come to life

This past Sunday Chicagoans emerged from their winter bunkers to embrace the first Spring-like weather we've had. They did it enthusiastically. Perhaps too much so: it really wasn't that warm. But goodness what a difference it made. The city was seething with happiness. Everyone was outside, walking, running, playing, being seen, having brunch with friends, perched on stoops, meeting neighbors. If the city is a living organism and sidewalks are the circulatory system then this specimen was near the peak of its cardiovasicular capacity.

I have said it before and I will say it again: there is no city on Earth that does summer as well as Chicago does. The most deliberately savored 90 days anywhere. This past weekend was but a warmup.

Another world came alive this weekend, to me at least. I've mentioned my interest in the virtual world known as Second Life. Now, you're probably thinking, this guy has two kids with a third on the way -- of course he needs a second life. Har. Actually I find it fascinating, like I've just discovered the web or something (which I remember vividly, thank you Mosaic!) Some colleagues of mine in the UK actually use Second Life for team meetings, an idea that makes a ton of sense since it merges the textual immediacy of chat with the gestural and multimedia capacity of videoconferencing.

My sister and father and I have a bookclub. We rotate selection of the book and it gives us a great excuse to to take a break from our own families and have a lunch together. We usually select a place to eat that has some relationship to the book. (For instance, for one of my Dad's selections about the Manhattan Project we met near the site of the first successful fission of an atom at the University of Chicago.) The book we read this time was Cast of Shadows, a story about a doctor working at a human cloning clinic (like a reproduction clinic) whose daughter is raped and killed and whose murderer is never caught. The doctor, using semen from the crime scene, clones his daughter's killer and arranges for him to be raised by a couple out of fertility options. He follows the boy as he grows in hopes of getting a clue to the man -- the boy's genetic clone, of course -- who killed his daughter. A significant portion of the book occurs in a virtual environment called Shadow World, furthering the notion of cloning. Well, Second Life is a lot like Shadow World. So we had our bookclub in there, virtually, as avatars in Second Life.

What made this experiment more interesting is that my dad, sis, and I were all physically together in my basement on different computers interacting more or less interchangeably inside and outside of the world. Once we got past the normal new-user issues with my father (forgotten password, all thumbs on the keyboard, etc.) we were off and running -- or flying, the mode of transport most useful in SL. It was probably the most enjoyable bookclub we've had. I was the tour guide, showing my family around my favorite parts of Second Life like a museum docent. Most of the club meeting was spent looking for somewhere out of earshot of others where we could quietly discuss the book. This was probably a mistake since all we'd really have to do is IM each other in-world, but I found it interesting that we desperately wanted to find some real-world analog (like a coffee shop) to have our conversation.

My father, true to real life, kept getting lost. Luckily I could always offer to teleport him to where my sister and I were. If only we had this ability in real life. Body modification also occupied much of my father's and sister's time. My sister -- a petite, conservative lawyer in real life -- was obsessed with being, well, slutty. She gave herself the biggest boobs allowable, pants that literally were painted on, and lips that were comically oversized. I could hardly look at her for fear of the disturbing possibility of being turned on by a virtual depiction of my own sister. My father, on the other hand, looked like a lifelong beer drinker who focused exclusively on upper-chest muscle toning. We were a motley crew. My sister was deathly afraid of interaction with the other residents of Second Life. (Well, she should have been, dressed like that!) In her mind she had a specific reason for being in SL whereas all these other people were clearly miscreant do-nothings simply prowling about. (This is definitely not the case. In fact it is probably the opposite right now, akin to the early days of the Internet when it was populated only with a certain intelligent stratum of tech-savvy adventurers. Give it time, though. I predict we'll see the same diversified spamification of Second Life as we've seen in e-mail and on the web.)

The session ended, rather poetically, with us all astride a statue of a hippopotamus in a park we stumbled into somewhere. That's the beauty of SL. Like a second box of chocolates, you still never know what you're going to get.

Posted at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 23, 2006

Buddy breathing

OK, here's an idea. How about a USB to USB gagdet that a person whose laptop battery is dying can use to suck power from someone nearby who is plugged in? Obviously you could not power a whole laptop solely from the USB draw, but the idea would be merely to replenish while there is still life left in the battery, forestalling laptop shutdown. Patent!

Posted at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 20, 2006

Scissorhands

It is safe to say that anyone who has even glanced at this blog knows that I am no luddite. I use and extol technology for its own sake all the time. And yet, and yet. There comes a time when it is so clear that neither human necessity nor technological innovation are driving change that I find myself wondering if low tech might be better. I speak of course of the proliferation of multi-bladed razors.

True to form, I'd been thinking I needed more blades for some time. Why? More blades. I had been using the prehistoric, two-blade plus lube strip Sensor Excel for years and frankly I was jealous of the three-, four-, and five- bladed variants. When they added power to vibrate the whole rig I knew it was only a matter of time. I believe the equation, check me on this, is: (r + p)^b = d, where r = the basic razor stem, p = power, b = number of blades, and d = desire for object.

So I forgot my old razor on my latest trip. I was staying with my in-laws and my brother-in-law had one of the newfangled Fusion 5+1 beasts. This is the razor that the Onion actually predicted back in 2004. As the chart below from the Economist shows, the parody wasn't all that prophetic. Blade profusion is almost as guaranteed as Moore's Law. We'll be at 14 blades by 2100.

My experience was terrible. See, five blades does give a nice shave on the open fields of ones cheeks, but for actual styling or for navigating any kind of variance in facial topography it is simply too big. I have a goatee, so getting close in to the beard is key. If I don't I look like a hick meth addict festooned with different lengths of hair around my mouth. Yes, the +1 on the Fusion is the extra blade on the back precisely for this purpose, but it really doesn't work. The single blade is still part of a gigantic bladehead and you just can't get close enough.

I was still without a decent razor so my father-in-law bought me a powered Mach 3, a razor he swears by. Same problem and this time without the styling blade. The power too is a problem. For one, I didn't realize how much of shaving is actually aural. I'd grown accustomed to hearing the sound of the beard growth being severed or not -- no shearing noise meaning I'd gotten that area fully. This is much harder to do with a vibrating shaft (ahem) in your hand. I found it taking me longer to shave. Maybe I was also more cautious since it felt like the razor would vibrate right out of my hand at any time. There's enough metal on that baby to earn its place in a display case next to a cat-o'-nine-tails mace.

So, I'm going low-tech. Back to the Sensor Excel. Perhaps nanotech is the salvation here and I will return to the multibladed progress curve, but for now I'm bailing. Call me backwards. But also call me well-groomed.

Posted at 6:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 1, 2006

"Fun" Mac products

The Apple PR machine was groaning with exertion at their announcement event yesterday. Labelled as "fun," the products they announced were new leather cases, an iPod boombox, and a new Mac mini. The first two were accessories of course and the last was somewhat interesting in that it moves much closer to being a media center component. I'm tempted to buy it. But when I isolate what my needs really are it becomes apparent that even a Mac mini is total overkill.

All I really need is the Airport Express equivalent of an iPod video. Where is the Airport Express that has an HDMI out? This would solve my problem completely. Why put an entire computer in your AV rig when all you need is an elegant bridge?

Posted at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 3, 2006

Cord-free

My guess is that the biggest complaint about the iPod and portable music players is the headphone cord. You do have to wonder about outtake footage from the famous iPod silhouette commercials -- dancers getting entangled, accidentally ripping the earbuds out violently, cursing, storming out from in front of the chroma screen.

The cord is a particular pain in the ass for me, especially in the winter when I am bundled tightly with the cord wrapped into my scarf and the iPod buried deep in my coat. Add to that the hassle of basically undressing to make it through the metal scanners at my security-obsessed office building. So, it was a special treat to receive a pair of Plantronics 590a stereo Bluetooth headphones for Christmas. There are a few of these on the market now and because of the lack of devices that support the A2DP Bluetooth profile (or lack Bluetooth support at all, like the iPod), Plantronics includes a dongle that hangs off the headphone jack and pairs with the headphones. Conveniently, if a phone call comes in to your Bluetooth phone while you are listening to music you can easily switch over and talk. There is a small, clear telescoping tube that you can pull out as a microphone boom. When not in use it is hidden away. Actually the physical design of the headset is the nicest thing about it. Slightly retro with robotic-looking hinges, the 590a inverts to sit in its charger and pulses red and blue to indicate status.

This morning was the first real-world test: the L train commute to work. The headphones worked great on the walk to the station, hugging my hat over my ears. Waiting for the train, the flashing blue light on the headset (indicating a strong pairing) literally lit up dark train platform. A bit too bright, I'd say. I can only imagine how annoying this will be to fellow flyers on an airplane. About 20 minutes into the trip the headphones started to drop occasionally, at first for only a millisecond and then for a second or two at a time. Worrisome. That's basically a showstopper. I'm wondering if it has to do with Bluetooth interference from other devices on the train.

And so I embark on a time-honored post-holiday tradition: contacting tech support.

UPDATE: It did have to do with Bluetooth interference, but from my own phone. I unpaired the phone and the drops stopped. In fact, I re-paired it and the drops have not returned. Interesting. This bit of sleuthing was no thanks to Plantronics tech support which gets a D- for a crappy attitude and absolutely no clue about the dropouts. "Just return it for a new one," they said. That's the consumer electronics version of "um, have you tried rebooting?"

Posted at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 30, 2005

Firestarter

This winter season if updates to this blog stop for an extended period you may plausibly attribute it to this cause: I have burned the house down. I really look forward to cold weather because I love building fires -- stoking, proding, accelerating them. I had my cord of wood delivered in September when it was still 80 out. But, man, I screw up one out of every five fires. Usually I know why: too windy out, didn't heat the flue up enough, ember torched the rug -- that sort of thing. But there's that one instance out of, say, ten when I can't explain why the house is filling with smoke. Like tonight, when I had to scurry around ripping the smoke detectors from the ceiling. I did everything right. Might it have something to do with the fact that there are two fireplaces -- one right below the other -- that feed into the same chimney? Some sort of backdraft coming in through the other fireplace? Or something with starting a fire with a not-completely-burnt log from a prior fire? Perhaps the arsonist is just an idiot. Is that it?

Posted at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

November 15, 2005

There's got to be a better way

For me these days it seems that the task of creating a presentation is really an act of merging and culling prior presentations, then creating new material to stitch it all together. Powerpoint is awful at this. What's really needed is a way to view multiple presentations (trying ... hard ... not ... to ... say ... "decks") in a single window with all available slides so that you can mix and match and group. Sort of like the thumbnail view but with the flexibility to arrange stuff non-linearly. I don't think Keynote does this either. I end up printing it all out and arranging on the floor. The GTD people surely love this low-tech information design, but I'm not convinced software couldn't solve the problem (and free up my kid's play area floor space)

Tinderbox for Windows where are you?

Posted at 7:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

November 10, 2005

Yep, he's a geek

I had the chance to steal Nicholas Negroponte's laptop last night. I chose not to. He put it down for only a second.

We were on the same flight from Chicago to White Plains and, just as you'd suspect, his nose was buried in a laptop from the moment I spotted him in the gate area, through check-in, down the jetway into his seat -- pause for takeoff, nervously -- back on the whole flight -- pause for landing, grumpily -- balance on palm and back into it off the plane, into the baggage area. He actually made his chaffeur stand there, bags draped off him, while he did something on his laptop, still balanced on his left palm. What the hell was he doing? Surfing? Not typing, certainly. Being ... digital?

(Actually I think he was working on this.)

Posted at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

Headmuffs

I have too many types of headphones I think.

• Earbuds for iPod listening during the commute. (Apple iPod Earbud Headphones, not the ones that come with the iPod -- decent sound, not great)
• Sweat-proof, collapsible headphones for running (Sony MDR-A35G S2 Sports Headphones -- love these, sweat is not an issue and I am one sweaty bastard)
• Crappy earbuds for inserting under hat when running outside in winter (whatever)
• Noise-cancelling for long plane flights and at work (Sennheiser PXC 250 -- LOVE these, highly recommended)
• Big padded ones for make-believe DJ'ing (Sennheiser HD 202 -- nothin' special)

When I travel I actually have three of these in my backpack. That's ridiculous. What is my problem?

Posted at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

October 13, 2005

iPod concerns

Dear Apple, I have some questions for you.

First, did you just break every gadgety add-on ever created for the iPod by removing the extended headphone port at the top? I'm not sure who you've pissed off more, your customers or companies like Belkin and Griffin. (Update: if that doesn't irk 'em, this will.)

Also, what the !@$%&? happened to the 80GB iPod? We know you bought the big hard drives from Toshiba. What are you using them for?

Lastly, so you're giving us rights-managed video and disallowing us from burning to CD/DVD? Must we submit a urine sample too?

C'mon, give me some love here! Please. I want to give you more of my money, but you are not making it easy.

Your friend,

John

PS - Front Row only for new iMacs? You think we PowerMac owners didn't need this about two years ago?

Posted at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 18, 2005

Social voicemailing

Recently my office switched over to VoIP telephony. Cool enough, but the best thing about it is that I can finally check voicemail online without picking up the phone. Voicemail queues up on a website as WAV files. I periodically download them to a local folder that feeds into iTunes and is tagged as Voicemail. A local colleague* recently noted he could access my voicemail via iTunes since I was sharing my music library. This gave me an idea. Why not share voicemail with trusted colleagues on your local LAN? Or, better yet, podcast it? Here's how my message would change:

"Hi, you've reached John Tolva with IBM. I probably will not return your call, but you should know that many of my office colleagues will have access to any questions you might have. They may even provide answers. Thank you."

This could be big. Social voicemailing.

[*] The same colleague from this post. I found him!

Posted at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mac nano

First things first. I didn't receive a cease-and-desist from Apple. I took down the original post about getting OSX Tiger to run on an Intel-based laptop because I, you know, panicked. Not sure why I did that, but then Katrina came and life got nutty for a while and you all must have thought I had been arrested, fired, or sent to geek nirvana. Or all three. But no.

(You'll never know if this is Photoshopped, will you?)

So here's how it works. The laptop has two 60GB physical drives. One is partitioned into NTFS for XP and FAT32 for data files. The other has Mac OS on it. The PC is running MacDrive so it can see the HFS volume, but almost all working files reside on the FAT32 partition so that both OS's can access them. At startup I just specify the drive to boot from (default is Windows for now). Nearly everything in Mac OS works -- even crazy stuff like Bluetooth and 1600 × 1200 resolution. It is astonishing. Having a portable Mac that also boots to a real version of XP is life-changing, I tell you.

So while this is all happening out comes the jaw-dropping iPod nano to replace the iPod mini. You have to wonder if the same thing will happen to the Mac mini. And then you have to wonder, how long before doing what I do -- carrying around a stealth copy of Mac OS inside (or alongside) a working PC -- is something Apple encourages. Sure, I could have installed Mac OS on my iPod and could boot from that, which would be pretty much a Mac nano, but with perfect driver support and updates a real Mac nano would be unstoppable.

Think of it, Apple equips certain iPod models with a full version of Mac OS for Intel so that when they are connected to a PC you can boot to it and convert your PC to a Mac right then and there. What a better way to steathily convert PC users -- not by having them buy a new machine but by taking over what they already own. Problem is, Apple does not want to do this. They'll put iTunes on a Motorola phone, but not OSX on a non-blessed Intel chip. Sigh.

Posted at 6:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 27, 2005

One big ass text file

Recently I successfully migrated most of my personal information apps (calendar, mail, addresses) to a new system. The only thing the new setup lacked was a way to keep track of the hundreds of scraps of information (password, registration codes, etc.) that I had previously kept in Outlook's cumbersome Notes. Like the other aspects of my personal info I wanted local access with complete online redundancy. Nothing seemed to fit the bill. Then I came across this post at 43 Folders describing über-geeks who actually put all their information into a single, gigantic text file. I laughed at this as completely impractical and moved on.

But I kept thinking about it, specifically about the actual difference between hundreds of tiny files and one huge file. In both cases search is the only practical way to find anything. But a single file reduces redundancy to the act of merely uploading the file ocassionally. And ASCII is the ultimate cross-platform, app-neutral, read-anywhere format. As long as you have a good text editor, you'll be fine. But even if you don't you can always at least open the file and roam around. Call it the toilet paper roll method of info management.

Mark thinks Tinderbox is a better solution. I'll give that a spin when the Windows version is released. But, for now, my life happens inside a single unnavigable-except-for-search text file. Restaurant notes, aborted blog posts, credit card info, SMTP server information from seven years ago, words I like, a Blackjack cheat sheet, domains I'd like to own one day, hundreds of pairs of login info, and on and on. It is stranegly comforting to know that it is all in there, including stuff I will never see again because I don't know the keywords for it. But it is there.

Posted at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 13, 2005

PIM system, now with pretty icons

What's missing? It isn't a perfect solution. Here's what would make it so.

- Faster Mozilla Calendar with functional equivalence to Outlook's calendaring.
- Full integration of calendar functionality into Thunderbird. (This is underway in the Lightning project, as I mentioned below.)
- Some way of moving sent and saved e-mail from years past into the Gmail environment without just mass-forwarding it all.
- Stable auto-publish of changes in Mozilla Calendar. Right now auto-publish eventually corrupts the data file locally and on the server. I have to manually publish. Shouldn't be that way.
- Robust PC-based phone synching. Right now I'm going from PC to online to Mac to phone (and iPod). This is easy but needlessly complex.
- Two-way synch between Mac Address Book and Plaxo, just 'cause.

Posted at 8:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)