to URL or not to URL, that is the question

Since Phil Windley did an interview with Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan of Posterous that was recorded June 8th and posted shortly thereafter, I've been playing with Posterous, linking it to my Blogger and Twitter accounts and the simplicity has really dawned on me as to how significant something like Posterous is. Simply: Just email your post to yourself and you have a blog post.

None of this write here or go to this URL "stuff". None of this Wordpress complexity, either. Now granted, for some of us engineering geeks, we like the complexity. But for Mom and Dad, not going to happen. Maybe they can make something like Blogger happen, but then again, maybe all they can handle is email.

Take Twitter for example, pretty simple interface, 140 characters, micro-blogging - call it what you want, but the bottom line - 140 characters and that's it. Some people are filling their accounts with nonsense, like what kind of coffee they are getting or what kind of weather there is where they are. I admit it, I have done some of the same.

The 140 character limit originally came from SMS, the Short Message Service, the text messaging "thing" that your kids are using on their cell phones. It's this short because in the original designs, SMS was carried in the control channel. These days, it's application will eventually head to IP, as all of the carriers figure out how to move the app into the IP world since it will be less expensive to deploy there, especially as the massive SMS apps (which the "reality" shows like Idol caused to happen) continue to have popularity with the masses.

Oh, but "some" have said Twitter can be extended, use SnipUrl and you can put a short link in your twitter feed that will redirect (using the basic HTTP redirect capabilities, that's all SnipUrl is after all is one big mesh of a database of redirect links). And low and behold that's how you are supposed to "post a picture" to or using twitter. This would work for any link you can get to on the world wide web. But this adds complexity to something already simple.

Posterous reminded me about the short URL phenom because if you link your Twitter account to your Posterous blog, then they will automatically create a twitter post with a short url linking back to your Posterous post. Pretty cool, because they are making it simple to use.

Simple is what it's all about.

I had a similar discussion in a slightly different vein with a marketing person for a project I'm working on for her, and I was telling her to be careful on the business case because you can't count on people typing into the URL bar, which she disagreed with. Well, missy, I say, I have kids, so I have a built in test group right in my house, so I tried my little theory out on these two and I found out that neither of them really know what the URL is or what that thing at the top of the browser window is for. I am pretty sure that both of them have typed something in there at some time in their short "internet" lives, but they really prefer not to do anything with it. They both get links in email or forum posts and they set them as favorites/bookmarks and then they navigate back there using that mechanism.

With the movement of mobile devices from phones to "smart" phones, I would (and to my marketing person) strongly suggest that with limited screen real estate and with the urgency of the mobile tasks, people will just naturally gravitate toward using links or bookmarks or widgets or whatever the new technology is at the time. Manually typing in a URL into an address bar is about to be a thing of the past, especially for a mobile device.

That's where I think we are going, to the continued use of bookmarks and linking and a bit less of the " W W W . YOURSITEHERE . com stuff.

Technorama Last Episode

The last episode of Technorama was today, I'm sorry to hear this, having enjoyed the show for so long and participated a bit as well. My own contribution, that I found on Engadget, for the last show was this strange contraption, the Uno Electric Unicycle:

Interesting uses for the Wiimote

I ran across some of the work of Johnny Lee while listening to Phil Windley's Technometria the other day. You can read (and listen to) more at the Conversations Network, a great resource of ideas and material, or you can click the link above to Johnny's website at Carnegie Mellon University.

Because the Wiimote has bluetooth built in and an infrared camera, you can interact with it via your computer, reverse it's normal gaming orientation to the TV and expose a whole new range of potentials.

Here are some direct links to some of the YouTube video's he's posted regarding potential apps for the Wiimote, yes beyond just gaming...

Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote (my personal favorite)


also, see more...
Tracking fingers with the Wii Remote

Foldable Displays (tracked with the Wiimote)

Head Tracking for Desktop VR

Update on Analog TV

A little bit ago, I reported on the death of analog TV, but one should note what the industry is trying to do... Here is an excellent story on what the future holds.

(this link is to an MP3 file, which will probably play just fine on your computer... You will need speakers to listen to the story)

Analog TV Death Delayed

as reported by SOSF,

This decision will require both network and cable broadcasters to continue providing an analog feed to their customers even though all of them have spent literally multi-millions of dollars gearing up and getting ready for the new digital age of television viewing.

I have analog coming into my home right now, mostly because it's cheaper than digital plus the cable company wanted to charge me a lot of money for "home-runs" to the TV's. At the time I had no digital TV's either.

Today, I don't really have digital TV yet (it's been an expense thing) -- I have a lot of component video and I do IP streaming from the video server near my router to the living room.

Until you get a larger and more recent TV in place, it's hard to justify the extra expense, both to install and recurring.

Once the incoming signal is digital, you will need these digital-to-analog converters for each analog TV you have. At the store, if you have to buy them, it's going to cost you about $20-30. Not counting whatever equipment your cable company wants to charge you (probably built into a set-top-box)

Note that some of the problems with DRM have been reported, and also all of that DRM code in Windows Vista has had various folks up in arms.

DRM strikes yet again

Wil Wheaton (yes that Wil Wheaton) posted problems with his DirectTV-HDMI connectivity. All due to software which "protects the content" from people who have legally paid for the content.

DRM is totally a mess right now, and it's not going to get better until customers speak up and force the content management and delivery mechansims to change.

Wil: How many DirecTV customers are currently hosed by this DRM-related nightmare? I'm not sure, but I can tell you what the number would be if the damn studios and networks weren't so dead set on treating their customers like criminals: zero.

Breakfast Computing

Heard recently on the pod-a-sphere:

"My inbox is full of SPAM and BACN.
I burn my CD's with Toast.
I get my podcasts with Juice.
Are there any other breakfast computing items out there?"

Gavin, forum/member on Buzz Out Loud.

We need to fund basic science research

As some of you might know, I often write about technology topics in Telecommunications or Electrical Engineering. Today, however, I thought it important to pick a slightly different slant…

This weekend, I was listening to my backlog of podcasts and included in what I listened to were two different podcasts for TechNation where

• Dr. Moira Gunn (the host) interviews Greg Lucier, the Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen. In the interview, the point that is put across on why society needs to fund basic science research.
• Science journalist David Ewing Duncan discusses the "The Bio-Issue of the Week" with Dr. Gunn, in which drug spending (R&D) is up, but results in the from approved drugs are down and some drugs are about to come off patents, so revenues for these companies will eventually dry up.
  

In both cases, as I’m hearing and reading many other articles on diverse topics, it may be because our country doesn’t support the basic science research enough. For example, in the latter podcast, the point was made that there is a mountain of data out of the human genomics project that really needs detailed analysis; e.g. we know what a gene does, what we don’t know is exactly how it does it. Or considered another way, the genes that a human shares with a mouse is really a high percentage, something approaching 98%+, but what makes the difference between the human and the mouse is when and how the gene does it’s job.

Without interested people, without post-doc programs to provide research topics, … well, would you work in a field that is apparently drying up? But, it’s not really drying up, other countries, like Korea, China, and Australia have tremendous programs for this sort of thing. We are giving our best and brightest lost of reasons to leave this country.

The lack of sensible policy at the federal level, the lack of proper funding, in cross-disciplined approaches, to projects that are going to benefit us all, … well, I fear for the future (next couple of decades)…

You might say this isn’t important, but you’d be missing the point. The direct investment that DARPA, NASA, and other agencies had with science and technology research provided some glamour for the space program stuff of the 60’s, but it also lead to communications satellites and other mundane things like cellular telephone networks and devices.

Some like to say that Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise “invented” the cell phone, because of the use of the communicator on each Star Trek episode, but the fact of the matter was that the imagination of a whole generation was sparked, because of the believability of those episodes, and a market demand (for cell phone technology) was later satisfied, not only by companies trying to make money, but by a whole generation of engineering and scientific students that brought a passion to creating not only the mobile phone technologies we take for granted today, but the internet, the progress toward improvements in the cancer situation (many people can live out their lives today in remission, whereas 20 – 30 years ago, cancer was a death sentence) and countless other technologies we so easily take for granted.

We need to continue to improve upon this situation. Can you imagine a world without Diabetes? Did you know, we stand on the brink of figuring out how to accomplish this? This isn’t a would it be nice thing to do, there are huge costs in both medical support and human suffering associated with just this one disease. Make the investment – reap huge benefits; just like we did in mobile phone and internet technologies.

I’d like to ask you today, to write your congressman, tell them this is important to us, as a country, to change this situation. Invest in science. It doesn’t have to be preachy, it doesn’t have to any more than a 1-2 minute phone call or a 1 paragraph email, but do something to be part of the solution to change from an almost anti-science policy to one where, similar to the 60’s, we are on the road to great things.

Home Entertainment

Some in the UK say that "no one" reads the Daily Mail. But from the perspective of how technology impacts, say home entertainment, well--- many of us, wouldn't believe that from a human factors perspective this has any chance of catching on.



the link is here

Thought provoking piece

Here is a great video at YouTube by Michael Wesch (Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State university). Arjun Roychowdhury and Sunil Veluvali of CorporateRat and ElusiveCheese fame is where I noticed it first. Evidently also on Alec Saunders weblog.

This is a great piece from Professor Wesch and his group at KSU.

keep your speakers on




Currently Wesch is launching the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University to examine the impacts of digital technology on human interaction.

Vista and DRM - *updated*

Recently, Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, and Peter Gutmann talked extensively about what Microsoft put in the base of the Vista OS.

• For an introduction on the issue, click here or listen to a podcast by clicking here.
• The next week, they get into the Vista details here or listen here.
• In the 3rd week, they wrap it up here or listen here.
• ** Microsoft later responded in a blog post, read about it here or listen here
  

I've just reviewed all of these sessions, and I agree with the speakers:

Two questions do come to mind after digesting all of this.

1. Why did Microsoft do this? I mean, I wouldn't think they would be "beholding" to Hollywood for anything, heck the other way around, Hollywood would be interested in getting to 95% of the personal computing screens.
2. Considering all of the issues around SPAM, and related issues of identify theft, zombie PCs, etc., one would think that the same amount of effort in these latter issues would improve the situation for a very large number of users.

This work appears to do nothing except make users very unhappy, at least once they find out about it and are faced with real issues like the inability to "RIP" legally procured content that you have "fair use rights" to. Or perhaps your display manufacturer went on the "cheap" and didn't include the licensing keys for the crypto involved. Vista supposedly will not play the HD content on a display that doesn't "abide" by these rules. The policy that sets this thing is not in the display card or even Vista, it's in the content itself. People are reporting in forums this simple fact: I'm putting in an HD-DVD and it's not playing. It's still beta, so anything might happen between now and February.

As I say, we are left with the basic issue of Why?

** Update 1/21/2007
found via boingboing, click here

"...misses the larger issue: the stark demarcation that will arise between legal vs. pirated movies. On Windows Vista, the only way to get true HD movie and TV content from your $2000 home-theater PC will be to download illegal pirated content!

I cannot believe Microsoft/Hollywood haven't seen this coming ... Blu-Ray and HD-DVD protection schemes are likely to be completely broken in a matter of months, and once that happens, the various crippled features in Vista will only affect one type of user - the law-abiding ones who would never pirate a movie. Those users will suffer, while the pirates will party on. What's the point, Microsoft?"

Broadband Wireless - Now with WiFi!!

This week the NYTimes noted in the technology section that a company by the name of AutoNet had struck a deal with Avis to provide a wifi experience "in your rental car."

While aimed at the business person renting a car (and perhaps specifically targeted at the person with a wifi laptop but not yet having a broadband wireless access card or tethered phone, the concept is interesting (notwithstanding the safety and legal issues involved). Interesting, because it provides local access to a "router" - this is the wifi part - and wireless "wide area network" access to the Internet.

This isn't the first time this has been around, Kyocera has marketed a similar device for some time to the public (Link to rfwel website). People on InternetbyCellPhone (groups.yahoo.com) have been talking for quite awhile about how to do this with the basic laptop and Window's Internet sharing feature.

More players probably means this is starting to get real. Safety issues aside, the more connected we get, the easier it will be to travel with those "connected" kids of ours.

One point... the NYT article notes Autonet as the company involved with Avis. Autonet's website notes a Skype application of the technology (i.e. travel with your Skype client on the laptop or a Skype standalone wireless phone) make calls all day long on the wireless "data" network... This is something that the wireless carriers TOU spell out as something "not good" - not for technology reasons - really - but rather because the pricing for data plans is all messed up. Today's plans are designed for the "occasional" data user, not a cable modem user... Perhaps more pricing plans are headed our way?

NTP gets sued - Business Week

The company that initiated a patent battle with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is now being sued over credit for its patents.

Oren Tavory, a software developer, says he did it first. Tavory says he did much of the work developing the technology behind NTP's patents.

Time will tell if this has any effect on things or not.

IPTV

IPTV, or Internet Protocol delivering TeleVision (and not Iowa Public Television) is supposed to be a big market. These last few years, lots of companies have been investigating and some have been actually doing something. The subscriber levels for this year, 2006, is supposed to be 8.3 million, worldwide. But, only 500,000 of these subscribers are in the U.S. That is 6.02%... A lot of these subscribers are in western Europe, with Gartner indicating 3.3 million are there, this year. Other deployments are starting in Shanghai, Guangdong, and other Chinese cities.

The market is supposed to explode. Gartner is indicating a 5 fold increase in 4 years in western Europe and others indicating a roughly 4 fold increase worldwide, over the same timeframe, to 34 million total subscribers. At the high end of the speculation, 63 million subscribers have been quoted in the press.

If the U.S. has 500,000 subscribers now, who has them? Parts of Rural America, in that there are hundreds of Independent Operating Companies (IOCs) who are running IPTV today. Places like Ramondville, Texas and Lenora, Kansas. Nearer to me; Fallon, Nevada.

Outside the U.S., IPTV is rolling along, in places like Belgium and Brazil, Sweden and Slovenia, Ireland and Italy. With price sensitive Germans, the expectation of interactivity is expected to help generate money for the carriers. In France, it’s sold in consumer electronic stores, similar to our Best Buy or CompUSA. Gartner, again, predicts that by the end of this year, roughly half of IPTV subscribers will be in France. As the other western European country’s growth catches up, France will still keep a third of these subscribers.

Why haven’t we heard about this much here?

1. Elsewhere, the combination of low entry prices from competitors and incumbents (like France Telecom) and the idea that content from firms like the Pay per View players are willing to embrace new distribution channels. According to Gartner, however, a lot of the subscribers captured via this aggressive pricing have yet to be completely “hooked” on the IPTV service itself, it’s simply packaged as part of their “triple play” bundle. The factors that follow contribute to situations unique to those of us here in the U.S.
   
   
2. The phone companies, here, usually have copper, “twisted pair” for the “last mile” to your house. Running voice at 64kbps is what this last mile distribution was designed for. A pair of wires, and thus 2 possible phone lines for each house, who could want for more? A couple of decades ago, this was satisfactory thinking. DSL internet services, rolled out for the demand for broadband internet, uses this same twisted pair copper wire to get to a “DSL modem” in your house. The investment they’ve made in DSLAMs in the central office may not yet have paid off enough, for them to start to look at upgrades to this infrastructure. The newer services, such as streaming HD TV, or even a basic DVD movie compressed in MPEG2 (a popular video compression technique) is 5-7 Mbps of bandwidth that will obviously put a strain on this kind of infrastructure. So, either they must add hardware in the “last mile” part of the network, to enhance and strengthen signals to go farther or stay stronger or they must go to something the industry calls Fiber to the Curb (FTTC). Verizon calls this FiOS, or Fiber Optic Services, and they are pretty much ready to push the button. Very expensive stuff, but the market is seeing some action here from these smaller operators, the IOCs, rolling out fiber. In Sanborn, MN, where I grew up, Cable TV (which is also the phone company in Sanborn) service was so troublesome with an aging HFC network, that about 5-6 years ago, the Cable company dug up all of the streets and laid fiber to everyone’s house. My dad has fiber at his back door. Sanborn, MN – population 434. No IPTV yet, but he certainly has a pipe large enough if and when they finally offer such a service. A bigger population area, different fiscal issues, but as operators such as Verizon are demonstrating, not necessarily impossible to solve.
   
   
3. The U.S. legacy cable operators, the MSOs, have been delivering your standard TV over coax cable and this is called Hybrid/Fiber Coax or HFC (From the head-end to your neighborhood, it’s fiber, to a device on a telephone pole or in a vault, appropriately called, the “fiber node” and then it’s coaxial cable to your house). All of the channels are “broadcast” in separate frequency channels along this infrastructure simultaneously. Telephone service and regular internet service to your “cable modem” is delivered similarly, in a channels right alongside the video. Digital TV is delivered right down these same channels, encoded in something called QAM, decoded by your digital set-top-box. There is a lot of money invested here in this infrastructure and it is not yet financially compelling for the MSOs to change.
   
   
4. Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006 – Specifically, this is the house version of the major overhaul of the last Telecom bill. The senate had it’s own involvement in the issue, but basically, we have a lot of rule making to be done before it’s clear who/what/where/when money will be made by this or that operator, distributor, content provider, etc. – too many rules, it’s hard for anyone to predict and thus only agile companies, ready to move after rulemaking, will gain rewards.
   
   
5. Telephone companies have never delivered TV content before. Sure, some are supplementing their voice and internet offerings with satellite TV, but let’s face it, they are just putting their name on the satellite TV offering from another company. Licensing, broadcasting, distribution rights – well, the MSOs have a lead in this space.
   
   
6. The MSOs and satellite companies offer premium content right now, some of it in High Definition, or HD. To compete, and IPTV offering must be better than the MSOs level of the playing field. Better technologically: Effectively, it must be better than what European and Asian operators are delivering in the early MPEG2 encoding technology. It’s almost expected now, that a true offering must be multiple HD streams, each 12-20 Mbps – not 5-7 Mbps. They also must offer DVR or “TiVo-like” services, either home based or network based, for the streams coming into the home or the movie libraries the carrier is involved with. Sometimes it is barely likely that 5 Mbps is getting down to you, must less multiple HD TV streams. The “broadcast flag” issue over who owns the right to push advertising at you and force you to watch it (also tied into the Senate bill) may hinder IPTV’s acceptance, particularly if it screws up who can and cannot produce the devices that will “play back” IPTV. Better services: Interactivity (think sports betting in some countries) may be key for adoption, something that is harder to do in today's world (not to mention that gambling is a real political problem here in the U.S.). The success of SMS texting linked to reality TV has shown the desire for the public to interact, paying real money, but with SMS the revenue is going to a wireless carrier, not necessarily the IPTV carrier. So, interactivity within the platform (think "Deal or No Deal" kinds of interactivity.)
   
   
7. Finally, distributing this streaming mess of bits around the house to what ever device needs it, The HDTV set, a desktop computer, a 2nd TV set, a laptop computer. Should this be Ethernet? Or Ethernet over Power cabling? Or WiFi? It’s this last point that a small company, named Ruckus Wireless, with several announcements this last week, is becoming a key player. They secured $16 million in additional financing from telco and electronics company’s VC arms. They also announced shipping wireless product for reliably delivering these video streams within the house, thus eliminating the potential wiring mess a consumer or professional installer would have to undertake. A lot of their technology is involved in the dynamic tuning aspect of the antenna systems. Essentially, they “beam” the bits to the TV set, instead of 360 degree broadcast to everyone nearby, because the antenna system locates the remote station and “locks on”. Problems with walls and beams are resolved in this manner. Essentially, Ethernet performance, without the physical cable. Ruckus has indicated that industry-wide there is an approximate cost of $400-500 for a 3 room install as part of IPTV launching. This is per subscriber.
   

So, quite a lot that has to come together before you can literally sit down in your favorite chair, flip on the HD to watch your favorite game over an IP infrastructure. Except, if you are in Wyoming or Kansas.

InterVideo makes move to mobile devices

This is great news! iVideoToGo will allow consumers to copy video content from DVDs, etc., to iPod and Sony PSP devices.

Note: they will support DVD-Videos, AVI, MPEG, WMV, MOV, MP4, DivX®, ASF, DVR-MS, 3GP and others--more than any other program of its kind allows just about any player on any other device to also work with thie video content.

Brilliant!

Audio Books delivered automatically - Podiobooks.com

This is a terrific post. You can look at the books I'm currently into on the sidebar to the left
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