36 posts tagged “technology”

It's no joke. Everyone (okay, techies and media types) is in a tizzy about a virus that has infected an estimated 10 million computers worldwide and is designed to do something (no one knows what) on April 1. It could be a massive prank, a giant spam campaign, or nothing. Be that as it may, here are my bets:

5. Empty all of the AIG executives' bank accounts

4. Switch all the pages of The Huffington Post with pages of The Onion (but no one will notice)

3. Start Twittering all of President Obama's private BlackBerry messages

2. Send a post to all of your Facebook friends telling them that you've been secretly in love with them for years

1. Delete every blog on the Web so that people will have to buy a newspaper

Got your own guesses? Comment!
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George Washington

The signs are there: technology is finally coming to the White House.

When Barack Obama insisted on keeping his mobile e-mail device, it was a sign that the times they are a' changin'. Despite security objections from the old guard ("But he'll see the big board!"), the President will be able to use current technology in his job. Indeed, President Obama has sent a message (pun intended) that it is no longer acceptable to be ignorant about technology. If you are serious about your business you must be able to stay connected and communicate with others. Of course, there are many other signs that President Obama has his head screwed on straight when it comes to technology:

- Choosing a new FCC head, Julius Genachowski, who reportedly supports Net neutrality shows common sense (by the way, in chatting with the last FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, it was clear to me that he was for Net neutrality, too).

- Insisting that one of the most backward businesses in the U.S. begin using basic technology: The healthcare industry (okay, doctors) have resisted using computers for more than 20 years. But the truth is  that they kill too many people each year simply through clerical errors (never mind the amount of money that is wasted and information lost and not shared in those walls of useless paper files). Every other business in the country uses basic computer technology (even lawyers), and it's about time Theodoric of York did so as well. Universal use of e-prescriptions would be a good start.

- Spending $9 billion in the stimulus package to expand broadband Internet coverage in rural areas: Many rural areas remain poor simply because they lack Internet access. Why? Because no business--not even the romantic ideal of farming--can communicate properly with clients or suppliers without a high-speed connection (and in this world, a dial-up 46 kbps connection does not mean you have Internet access). I have one friend in the country who keeps an office in town just to use the Internet access (a waste of fuel and time). Others have moved from the country to the city simply because the home-based business they started wasn't feasible without a broadband connection.

Now if someone would just invent a more efficient solar panel and a rechargeable car battery that lasts forever, we might just get somewhere.

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Airblade

Testing a new product is one thing. Seeing it in action out in the real world is something else, a fact I was reminded of yesterday in the Time Warner Center perched on the corner of Central Park.

Between meetings I happened into one of New York City's rarest of commodities, a public bathroom (and you thought I was going to say "courtesy" or "good manners" or "proper grammar"). I wasn't loitering in the men's room, unlike some politicians we know, honest. Nature called, so I followed a long line of tourists into the facilities. The first thing I noticed in the room was a pair of Dyson Airblades stuck to the wall.

For those unfamiliar with the Airblade, it's a rapid hand drying machine made by the snooty Dyson vacuum cleaner company (for a complete description see, "Blow It Off"). It's not unlike the machines in public restrooms in Japan and elsewhere (not that I'm on a world tour of men's rooms or anything). It's better than the hot air blowers because it doesn't make your hands chapped and it's faster. It also saves trees because it obviates the need for paper towels--although if you wash your face...you have to go back to paper towels. But I digress.

Seeing the Airblade for the first time in a public space I was intrigued to notice a few things. First, no one else in the men's room even noticed the devices; they clearly didn't know what they were. Second, I was the only person to use them in the crowded facility. (This is not intended as some crack about how people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom. People did wash their hands while I was there--especially the tourists--but they used the paper towels provided.) Third, the Airblade worked, but it took two passes of my hands through the machine to get them really dry.

So clearly Dyson has to spend some marketing money if the Airblade is going to really going to take off (you didn't really think I was going to pass up on that obvious pun, did you?). And my experience proves once again that the greatest technology in the world won't make a wit of a difference if no one knows what it is or what it does.

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Net Neutrality

Finally, something that Canadians can crow about to their oh-so-smug neighbors below the 49th parallel: Internet access.

According to a recent study commissioned by the Communications Workers of America, the median download speed for U.S. "broadband" Internet access users is a mere 1.97 megabits per second (Mbps). Canadians enjoy a median speed of 7 Mbps! Pretty good, eh?

Well, maybe not if you compare those speeds to what's available in other developed nations. In France, they get a median speed of 17 Mbps. In South Korea, it's 45 Mbps, and in Japan, it's a whopping 61 Mbps. Now those are speeds that can truly make downloading a movie an instaneous event.

While interviewing a Motorola executive the other day for another story, I asked him about the report and he pointed out that we could have much faster speeds in the United States. Motorola has already demonstrated cable modems that can achieve speeds of 100 Mbps over traditional cable networks. According to him, it's a matter of consumer demand. (And I always thought it was a matter of "if you build it, they will come.") Of course, there are some higher speed services availabe from the likes Cablevision and Verizon Fios, but you have to live in area's covered by those new services (and good luck with that).

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Thumbs Down iPhone

13. It uses a non-standard headphone jack, so you can't use better headphones or earbuds without buying an expensive adapter.

14. It doesn't have voice dialing or voice recognition.

15. It doesn't support wireless Bluetooth stereo, so you can't use wireless stereo headphones with it.

16. You can't shoot video with the phone's camera.

17. It does not have a GPS receiver for important location information.

18. Owners cannot remove the battery, so if there's trouble, you'll have to send your phone in for service.

19. It does not use a SIM card, so owners are forever tied to AT&T--even after the two-year contract expires.

20. No instant messaging.

Can't remember the other reasons not to buy an iPhone? Revisit the Web page at J-Q.com and reasons 11 and 12.

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Thumbs Down iPhone

To add to our Top 10 Reasons Not to Line Up for iPhone, here are a couple more:

11. It will not play Flash files, the de facto standard for animations on the Web. (So much for that full Internet experience Apple keeps claiming it has.)

12. The sun. No matter how bright the iPhone screen is, it can't overcome the power of sunlight to create glare and wash out colors. So expect to see iPhone owners scurrying for the shade every time they want to place a call.

If you really want a slick, touch-screen phone, why not consider the original iPhone: the Prada by LG. It is smaller than the long iPhone, doesn't lock you into iTunes (just plug the Prada into a USB port and download any music you like), and it doesn't lock you into a two-year contract with Cingular, er, AT&T. The Prada is an unlocked phone, so it will work on T-Mobile or AT&T.

Of course, the Prada is wicked expensive, too. But is $750 really too much to ask to be cool?

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Broadband for the rest of us?

I like WiMax, I think WiMax is an excellent solution for broadband Internet access. I've got nothing against WiMax. But I think WiMax has a major, perhaps fatal, problem.

WiMax, as the name suggests, is an extension of the popular wireless Wi-Fi standard--a big extension. Basically, rather than just covering an office or home with wireless access, WiMax would offer wireless Internet access to people up to 30 miles away. Of course, towers would need to be built and you would have to buy a new antenna (the first models are smaller than a DirecTV dish, but bigger than a bread box).

WiMax is a great idea because it can quickly enable high-speed Internet access without digging up streets or stringing cable. More important, it could offer access to places that cannot be reached by cable or DSL, specifically rural areas where stretching cable is impractical and making DSL work is next to impossible (you need to be within a couple of miles of the phone company's local central office for DSL to work properly). 

There's also another reason to feel optimistic about WiMax: Intel has been throwing its support behind it in the form of chipsets and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in WiMax startups (to see some examples, check out WiMax: Intel Capital's big bet).

The problem: Most of the initial WiMax focus has been on cities, where WiMax isn't really needed. Most municipalities already have cable, DSL, and local shops offering free Wi-Fi. None of the early WiMax rollouts are in rural areas, but if WiMax is to catch on, that's precisely where it needs to be.

The argument for why WiMax isn't going into the netherlands is that there are simply not enough customers to support the service in those areas--which is precisely the reason cable and phone companies give for failing to develop a way to extend high-speed access to these areas. Cellular companies could fill the gap, but their monopolistic lethargy makes it unlikely they will do so.

So the fear is that WiMax will face too much competition in urban areas and fail before it ever reaches rural markets, which are better suited to accept the technology. Perhaps Intel should reconsider some of its investment strategies....

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Is this a violation?

There has been much ado over the past few days about a new Google maps feature. It's called "Street View" and rather than using virtual images of landmarks along the road, it uses actual photographs to give people online a 360-degree view of the environs. Well, not just the environs--people too. And therein lies the problem.

Immediately, desk potatoes posted links to Google Street Views that revealed women sunbathing, apparent burglars, children, men ogling (or should it now be "googling") the posters outside of a strip club, battered women entering shelters, and one very miffed cat. What about our privacy!? screamed many. (What about all we already know about stalking, identity theft, etc., I wondered.)

It's an understandable concern (unless you're as unreflective and lacking in intellectual acumen as Scott McNealy), and one that Google immediately ducked. The company's position is simply, it's legal (these are public places) and if you don't like it, file a complaint and maybe we'll consider taking the photo off line. It's an amateurish response, especially coming from such a large company. It reveals a general lack of expertise and knowledge on Google's part, something the company would do well to address.

There are well understood policies and guidelines for those of us in the broadcast and print media business regarding how, when, and why we use images. On TV, for example, many organizations I work for have a strict policy about showing any images of children (you need parental consent in most cases), and there's a professional ethic about using pictures of people arbitrarily. That's why whenever CNN uses b-roll for the umpteenth story on obesity in America, you only see people's bodies waddling down the street and not their faces. (I could do without the body shots as well, quite frankly.)

Speaking of expansion, as Google moves into areas where it has no previous experience, the company would do well to seek out the council of professionals. It could have, for example, set up basic guidelines about Street Views before it just put it online with about as much deliberation as a teenager uses to post a Facebook entry. (It's a simple matter, for example, to digitally remove identifiable people from images using an automated program.)

Of course, very cynical readers out there will submit that Google dosen't make such mistakes due to teenage brain chemicals. The company does it on purpose to get more press coverage. I certainly hope not. It would be awful to be covering some murder next week just because a crazed man found his ex-wife on Street Views.

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PS: The answer to the question in the caption above is that the photo isn't a violation of the kinds of guidelines professionals use because I was careful not to include any children, exhibitionistic neighbors, or cats in the shot.

Look Familiar?

Microsoft is getting into the kiosk business. Of course, because it's Microsoft, the company's kiosk introduction--called Surface--is wrapped in a welter of hype and hyperbole: Will it have the kind of impact that, say, the PC, cell phone, or Walkman had?!

Uh, no.

The mooing and braying over Microsoft's Surface system today is partly due to The Wall Street Journal hyping its own conference (translation: we need to make money on this show and so we have to hype it by "reporting" about it in our pages). That hype has had the effect of forcing every other outlet--yeah, including me--to write about the darn kiosk.

Essentially, Surface is a table with a built-in computer that uses the table top as a touch screen. Not terribly useful for most things one might want to do with a table, but the company is insisting that Surface has world-altering implications. Okay, really all it has are some limited commercial applications: gambling games, shopping, etc. Okay, and Surface's touch screen does raise some hygiene issues, but that never stopped us from using the ATM.

Microsoft Surface

What Surface should have but does not: gesture recognition technology. This is something IBM has demonstrated many times over the years. Basically, gesture recognition uses video cameras and motion detection software to follow your hand movements. Just wave your hand in the air to have the screen wiped clean. Point to a picture and the computer opens the program for watching TV (or editing a photo or playing a song, etc.). You don't have to touch a thing.

What else Surface should have but does not: voice recognition. Ask a question (How far is it to the theater? How much is the lobster special?), and get an answer. That's what the waiter/concierge/whoever is there for. If the Surface can't accomplish the same task more efficiently, it's not of much use.

But for all its lack of pizzazz and technical prowess, there are some peole who might be impressed by Microsoft's Surface: anyone too young to remember playing Pac-man or Galaga on a table computer more than 25 years ago.

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