Month: July 2010

Social Studies

Suggestion Software: Perfect match for idle CPU cycles.

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I recently tried a silicon oracle called GetGlue.  I’m genuinely impressed at how racks of CPUs can quickly navigate through an enormous knowledge graph and grab a suggestion node that matches some characteristic of my preferences. Great searching capabilities, but I’m less than excited about the results.

Like other recommendation software (say, Hunch), you register preferences by initially rating a sample list of movies, books, TV shows, and music. I told GetGlue that I liked The Breakfast Club, Goodbye Columbus, The Great Gatsby, and Nina Simone.  GetGlue quickly responded with a list of predicable tips: lots of Philip Roth novels, Catcher in the Rye, American Beauty, and Sara Vaughn.

I suppose if I had lived in vault, then some of these suggestions would be novel. One quibble for the GetGlue crew: how about adding a “like, but already know about” classification.

On the plus side, GetGlue deserves credit for bringing swing band leader Jimmie Lunceford, who I hadn’t heard known about, to my attention.  Thanks.Continue reading

The Rack

Dueling Headlines on Apple's Magic Trackpad

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Magic Trackpad: “Swipe me!”

For the record, I do most of my work on a MacBook Pro.  One reason I was able to break the spell cast by Dell and live happily ever after in Steve Jobs land is the Mac’s magical multi-touch trackpad. He/she  that masters it—and it doesn’t take much—will enjoy effortless web navigation, healthy wrists and knuckles, truly higher productivity, and never having to shlepp their mouse in endless circles on their desks.

So it is amusing to read the conflicting headlines on Apple’s announcement yesterday to introduce this Mac technology to PC users in the form of the Magic Trackpad.  Over at Silicon Alley, Dan Frommer lobbed this headline at the Apple gadget: “Hands On With The New Apple Magic Trackpad: It’s Weird But Could Be Useful.”  At TechCrunch, MC Siegler has, for my money, a  more insightful take:  “Apple’s Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era.”

I realize writers don’t necessarily choose their headlines, but Frommer is pretty clear that he thinks the Trackpad is kind of a novelty — an incense candle for those that need to connect with their Mac spirituality.

He is wrong.Continue reading

Social Studies, The Rack

Freebase: Semantic Sandwich for Google

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There actually was some significant news last week in the technoverse, and it didn’t involve another episode from Mark Zuckerberg’s reality show: on July 16, Google purchased Metaweb, the semantic database company and the force behind the freewheeling Freebase.

No doubt, the semantic web has entered into your own knowledgebase during the last year.

If it hasn’t, quick go to Google: enter empire state building height in the search box. Notice that the numeric height “1250 ft. ( 380 m.)” is highlighted in the search results. Google knew to answer this query with an actual number, instead of merely returning text snippets in which those search keywords were found. This flavor of artificial intelligence comes courtesy of an analysis of the knowledge space.

In a way, Google comprehended that “empire state building” is a structure, which has an attribute or property known as height, which itself has a numeric value associated with it measured in distance units.

Impressive.Continue reading

@NYC, The Rack

Android: The Evil Side of Openness

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Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures (Foursquare), recently called Apple an evil company. The reason?  “They believe they know what is best for you and me. And I think that is evil.”

It’s a definition of evil I think most of us would not agree with. On the other side of Wilson’s argument, you’ll find a few light-weight thinkers such as Socrates (see Plato’s Republic).  So … doctors are evil because they claim to know what’s best for us. Add to the list accountants, plumbers, carpenters, and architects.

I think Wilson has a different gripe with Apple. Apple has successfully shown that the America consumer has an appetite for quality products, even though they’re based on walled-off hardware and software.  While passing Wilson’s test for goodness, Google’s open-source Android platform is not necessarily a path to quality and may actually do some evil.Continue reading

Quote of the Day

Our analysis of broadband subscribership data and the broadband availability model constructed for the National Broadband Plan indicates that while a substantial majority of Americans …

Archaic Telecom

FCC: 14 Million Americans Without Adequate Broadband

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On Tuesday, the FCC released its sixth annual report, as required by law, on the state of US broadband. Their conclusion:”… broadband deployment to all Americans is not reasonable and timely.”  This differs from the five preceding reports.

The reason for this agency’s change of mind?  The FCC decided— justifiably— to set the benchmark for high-speed Internet access from a piddling 200 Kbps to a somewhat more meaningful 4 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Afternoon in NYC with Galaxy, iPhone, and Droid

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Why not see three of the newest smartphones during a hot Saturday in NYC?  Since the  Apple store on Upper Broadway is a five-minute walk from where the Samsung Galaxy S was receiving visitors in the Time Warner building,  we could hop from one air-conditioned venue to another without getting broiled.  Along the way we could also check out the Motorola Droid X at a cell phone shack.

It seemed like a good idea when my friend, let’s call him Dr. Smartphone, suggested it to me this past weekend.  He was anxious to see how Galaxy’s 4” super AMOLED 800×400 display performed, and I had yet to gaze upon the iPhone 4.  Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

OnSIP: Real PBX Flavor in the Cloud

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Junction Networks is a hosted PBX app provider that lets startups and small businesses pull a VoIP phone systems out of thin air or, more accurately, out of the cloud.  The company was founded in 2004, and open standards were practically written into their constitution.  In other words, they support SIP.

Their OnSIP hosted PBX service has a maturity level that will appeal to businesses—tech and otherwise—that want a phone system and not a collection of APIs with some sample apps.

I spent a  morning setting up and testing auto-attendants, hunts groups, conference bridges, and voice mailboxes on my OnSIP demo system.  It worked without a hitch.   And it was rewarding, in a telecom kind of way, to  finally use my collection of free SIP softphones (X-Lite and SIP Communicator) as true office phones and bask in the glow of emulated message waiting indicator lights.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Google Puts its Foot Down on Title II

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The FCC just posted an ex parte filing from Google in which the search giant makes it feelings on net neutrality and Title II reclassification crystal clear. Here’s the money quote:

“The FCC needs to assert affirmative oversight and enforcement authority regarding the broadband services sector, much as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission uses its more general jurisdiction to oversee other industry sectors, such as providers of Internet applications and content. In that regard, I discussed how, in light of the Comcast decision, continued use of Title I ‘ancillary’ authority to oversee the broadband sector likely would expose the agency needlessly to repeated significant litigation risks affecting a wide range of broadband- related policy priorities. ” Continue reading
The Rack

Get Ready for the Cruz Reader

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First sighted back in April, the Cruz Reader from custom PC maker Velocity Micro is an inexpensive (under $200 MSRP) 7″ color Android-based ebook reader —browser included. It really is more than a book gadget, supporting full screen video (MP4), music (built-in headphone jack), and games. Velocity will also sell a sibling 7″ Cruz tablet.

Both are scheduled to ship next month. This may be the Android gadget I end up buying.

More specs below.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Dueling Headlines on iPhone 4

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Duct tape: also helps iPhone reception

I’m getting a little dizzy reading the opinionating and newsitorials on Apple’s antenna problem in its newest iPhone.  The latest data point that’s being argued about is Consumer Reports’ lab test. The venerable pro-consumer testing magazine couldn’t recommend the iPhone 4 after detecting signal degradation in their radio frequency isolation chamber.  And  CR placed the blame on the iPhone rather than the AT&T network.

However, they did suggest a quick fix: afix duct tape or another non-conducting material to the lower left hand corner of the iPhone.

In any case, the Consumer Reports story has generated some amusing  headlines.  Take a look at two Dan Frommer’s pieces today in Silicon Alley Insider: Suddenly, Everyone is Talking about an iPhone 4 Recall (this morning, 9:51 am) and Sorry, But This Whole iPhone 4 Thing is a Non-issue and Will Blow Over (11:17 am).Continue reading

Social Studies

Foragers and Foodspotters

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So why was I sharing a picture of a roast chicken  (food source) at a Spanish restaurant in NYC (foraging spot) with Foodspotting.com (my tribe)?  I’m not getting paid for this activity, though the cost of taking the pic and uploading is vanishingly small. Am I being purely altruistic or is something else at work?

Inspired recently by Clay Shirky’s talk on his newest book,  Cognitive Surplus, I took a brief tour through some of the foundational ideas behind generosity and altruism.

Our kindness to strangers may be mostly in our genes, but as Shirky and other point have pointed out, being in a network has its own benefits.
Continue reading

@NYC

Building Castles in the Virtual Air with Atmosphir

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It’s been a slow Friday afternoon at the end of a four day heatwave—it’s now a chilly 84° in NJ.  When my beta invitation to Atmosphir, the do-it-yourself virtual world startup, appeared in my mailbox, I decided to take the bait and escape reality for an hour or two

I’m not really that interested in multi-player games, but after seeing what a 12-year-old boy  did with Amosphir during a what-kids-are-doing-with-the-Internet interlude at a recent New York Tech Meetup, I was impressed. At his age I was making paper-mache volcanoes.

What’s unique about Atmosphir is that it gives users a well-developed tool kit to create their own multi-level games on a 100×100 grid.   While it looked easy when demoed by that tech-savvy child, this adult was having his share of design challenges.

As Groucho said, “it’s so easy a four-year old could do it, quick someone get me a four-year old.”

After the jump, you can see a few virtual worlds built by members of the Atmosphir community.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Deal of the Day in 2015: “No Data Limits btwn 8-9 PM”

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You can sense where the Internet may be heading by looking at the bandwidth policy platforms that core infrastructure vendors are offering to carriers.

With equipment from Tekelec, a major networking equipment player, cable companies can monitor and allocate bandwidth dynamically, as well as grant special deals to subscribers.

For example, a video web site could temporarily allow downloads to not count against a customer’s data limits as set by the cable ISP.  Or the web site of a content provider could purchase better QoS—lower latency or more bandwidth—between its servers and subscribers’ endpoint devices.

Tekelec’s Camiant Policy Management platform would handle all this.

There’s nothing inherently illegal with allowing carriers to price discriminate based on volume, service, or even time of day.Continue reading

@NYC

Summer in the City: Shirky, Kind Strangers, and Neat Startups

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Last night was my fourth NYC Tech Meetup, and I think the first time I’ve been in Manhattan in recent memory during a major heat wave. Thankfully, the electro-mechanical HVAC at Skirball worked flawlessly, far better than this new venue’s Internet access.

One of the highpoints for me was listening to Clay Shirky talk about his new book, Cognitive Surplus. Shirky is a gifted narrator and explainer, and the TED videos I’ve seen of him only hint at the powerful thought waves he radiates during a live presentation.

He is an optimist, a true believer on the Internet’s ability to beneficially channel otherwise wasted human CPU cycles devoted to legacy TV watching into crowdsourced content creation: Wikipedia, Amazon book reviews, Aardvark experts on tap, tweets, and as you’ll see after the jump, food photography.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

Cisco Cius: Unimaginative, but Slightly Intriguing

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Cisco Systems Logo
Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps only a company of Cisco’s still considerable market heft can foist its recently revealed Cius (pronounced “see us”) tablet on the citizens of cubeland. Many of the tech bloggers are underwhelmed and ask the question, “Why?”.

This tech blogger has the same query. Once upon a time the gadgets in the office were not obtainable on the street; now consumer gadgetry is far better than what’s available or officially allowed in walled off corporate castles.

For the record, the Cius is a 7” tablet that supports a multi-touch screen, WiFi/BlueTooth, HD video (720p), HD audio, 8-hour battery, and front and rear (for taking pictures of your coworkers?) facing cameras. The company expects to ship the tablet in 1Q2011.

Price? Under $1000. (long pause) Now for the intriguing part: Cius will run a modified version of  the Android OS.Continue reading

The Rack

Phone in Your Blog Post With Twilio

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WordPress just announced an interesting—let’s say somewhere between quirky and neat— addition to their hosted blog site.  You can now phone in a blog post!  With help from  Twilio’s unified communications APIs, the WordPress.com software will deposit an audio file attachment to the post. Now roving reporters can literally call in their stories.  Continue reading

Social Studies

Quirky Product Idea Factory

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At Internet Week in June, I got a quick look at a 3-D printer or fabricator that was being demoed by the  folks at MakerBot Industries.  Their device is one part of a larger do-it-yourself movement in which both serious inventors and designers or ordinary hobbyists can prototype products in their own living rooms.

Inventing is a lonely process and development costs, though they have come down with this new crop of 3-D printers, is still a consideration.  So why not crowdsource the design, protoyping, and marketing phases? That’s kind of the idea behind NYC-based Quirky.  Continue reading