Wednesday, January 29, 2003

Bluetooth GPS module for handhelds So, can I buy a consumer digital camera with bluetooth, and have it work with this to encode GPS data on each photo? Pretty please!!! New GPS module from Emtac that connects to a PDA over Bluetooth and comes with a year subscription to Mapopolis mapping software. Read [Gizmodo] 10:01:11 PM

Prior Art On SBC's Ridiculous Patent Claim Last week we posted the story about SBC threatening to make use of a ridiculous patent on consistent navigation elements in a web page, such as frames or a navbar. Dan Gillmor asked readers for examples of prior art, and they came through. I imagine that shouldn't surprise most people. Two interesting things mentioned in the article. (1) SBC owns Prodigy, which was sued by BT after BT thought they owned the patent on hyperlinks. Clearly, as Gillmor points out, SBC learned the wrong lesson out of that experience. (2) It is not hard to realize that a vast majority of websites out there violate this patent in some way or another. Included on that list, though, is the US Patent & Trademark Office's own website. Think the patent system needs to be reformed? [Techdirt] Indeed it does. But until then, companies must still pursue IP protection. The question is only how far to push the boundaries. 7:27:03 PM

Companies Test Prototype "Smart Dust" Wireless-Sensor Net Yikes! The wonders and horrors of science fiction are no further than my blogroll these days. Sheesh dsg writes in with a link to the latest happenings in "smart dust". We first mentioned smart dust all the way back in 1999 when we joked about the coming dust age. Now, however, it seems that the idea is certainly moving forward, and prototypes are being tested. The idea is that these tiny, tiny wireless sensors can be littered all over the place (specifically on a battlefield) where they can secretly communicate with each other, and feed information back to the other side. The team working on this smart dust wrote an operating system and a database system for the mini-sensors called TinyOS and TinyDB (nothing, if not descriptive) and released them as open source, so that plenty of other uses are being experimented with - from enivornmental monitoring to healthcare monitoring. The idea and potential for having such tiny wireless sensors that can be used for so many different applications is fascinating. However, the article doesn't mention that there's also (clearly) the potential for misuse. With all the questions being asked lately about eroding privacy protection, it would seem that smart dust also has the potential to invade people's privacy without them realizing it. [Techdirt] 7:24:42 PM

What is bigger than a blog? desktop apps are definitely back in favor! Thank god! web based apps make sense for quick deployment, but if its a serious power tool, it needs to be local! weblogs have reached that critical mass, where everyone wants a better integrated weblogging experience (both reading and writing). Mike Wilson rants from his pulpit at The Universal Church of Cosmic Uncertainty. The sermon: 24 things he wants from his blog desktop. He wants it to be a fat client so he gets local storage, integration with other desktop apps and voice mail, tickers. A few quotes: 4. To use a blog ... for a personal desktop heads-up-display console from which I work at all times. 5. A contact-management system that would make Harvey MacKay faint from information overload. 19. Built-in mind-mapping and diagramming toolkits for charting ideas and representing them textually once the "virtual whiteboarding" session is done. (Not to mention the automated post-session analysis and discovery phase designed to extrapolate on behalf of the participants.) A great wishlist. Thinking really big. And he's gonna build it. Want to help? [Phil Wolff: klogs] 7:17:56 PM

RSS feed Wow, that was fast. How soon before we see Craig's List provide RSS feeds? Here's an RSS feed for classified ads. [JD's New Media Musings] 6:58:15 PM