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Friday, May 24, 2002 |
What if We Made the Sale of Our Time More Obvious?
"What is your time worth? Not what do you earn hourly now, but what is the time when you are not working worth to you?
Suppose you were to wait an hour in the doctor's office for a 10 minute visit. What if at the end of that visit, the bill were reduced by the time you waited?
Suppose you went to a motion picture, and it was horrible. What if the theatre returned not only the $9.00 cost of the ticket, but also compensated you for the three minutes before you walked out? Blockbuster is halfway there: they give you another "Blockbuster Favorite" gratis if you hate the one you rented.
Or, take an industry that is only a reseller: broadcast television. Our time is currently bought only with interesting shows, in the hope that we'll sit through the commercials. What if we were compensated monetarily for the time we spend in front of the tube? Advertisers pay the broadcaster; the broadcaster pays us, in coin and entertainment. The advertiser may wish to pay us directly, but the rate would likely be higher — we need that spoonful of sugar to make the advertising go down. Similiarly, a boring show would cost more to the broadcaster than an entertaining show.
This would need to be a variable rate. Spare time is more valuable to a single mother of three who works 12 hours a day at $8.00 per hour. A movie for her, at New York rates, is a net loss of $2.00 — $3.50 if she watches Titanic, not counting what it would be if she took the children. She can't afford to not work those two hours.
Right now, the exchange is a barter of our time for their shows. We care nothing for the advertisements; there's no contract requiring us to watch them. They resell our time to the advertisers on the assumption that we don't have legs." [The Peanut Gallery]
11:04:35 PM Permanent link here
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Google Web API & Web Services
"Rael Dornfest has an interesting article on the Google API. One function which is described in the article is the use of Google's spelling feature. I have been using dumps from WordNet for this kind of thing but the Google API really does this well. Here is another possible illustration of the advantages of component-based library systems. You can wire in the Google API with SOAP for supporting "did you mean" kinds of searches for your catalogue if you are not tied to a monolithic ILS. The API is unfortunately limited to 1,000 searches a day, and Google may eventually pull the plug, but it's an interesting example of how libraries may be able to take advantage of web services." [/usr/lib/info]
Finally - someone proposes a valid use for the Google API within libraries. I'm still trying to get my mind around this whole thing, so it's nice to get some help. What else could we do with it?
10:51:26 PM Permanent link here
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Hilton Garden Inn Testing Free Internet Access
" 'When the chain's access provider went bankrupt, however, [Hilton Garden Inn manager] Kurre began hooking up guest rooms free of charge to the hotels' own [high speed] internal lines. The free service, which is being tested at three dozen Hilton Garden Inns, has increased the usage rate to 25 percent [from 3 percent, when the hotel charged $9.95/night]. But isn't Kurre losing money by giving away a service he once tried to sell? " I'm leaving zero revenue on the table because I'm making it back on rate and occupancy," he says. "Travelers are checking out of other hotels and coming to us and paying $5-to-$6 more a night just to get the high-speed access free.' [Joe Bercantelli's Tactical Traveler]
"Amen. Charge me whatever you want - just give me high speed access. I'm sick and tired of dialing up on rusted copper. I actually connected to AT&T's network this week at 12,400 baud (on a 56k modem). I wrote about this a few months ago; I'm thrilled to see that some hotels are getting creative. I haven't stayed in a non-Hilton chain hotel in nearly a year (I'm a slave to the HHonors program, where I'm a Diamond member), but I would switch allegiance in a heartbeat if it meant I could have reliable connectivity when I travel. Are any chains listening?" [Rick Klau's Weblog]
10:43:06 PM Permanent link here
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Games Get Real With Tactile Tools
"None is more notable than Essential Reality's P5 glove controller. In the works for years, the P5 will finally reach store shelves in August. At $150 it's not for the casual gamer, but serious PC or console game fans will certainly want to try the futuristic-looking device. The lightweight glove of the two-piece peripheral slips over your hand and communicates with an infrared USB base that tracks your hand movements in six directions....
Another product shown at last year's E3, and now ready to ship, is the CyMouse from Maui Innovative Peripherals. The $180 product, available through Maui's Web site, includes a lightweight headpiece and an infrared Universal Serial Bus base. You can program the unit to perform macros plus keystroke and mouse click combinations, but the CyMouse will not replace the mouse, says a company executive.
"We don't want to replace the mouse, we want to enhance it," says Jim Whitman, company founder. "Plus, you can tell this device to do whatever you want it to do."
Maui is also preparing to ship a similar product called Miracle Mouse geared toward users with disabilities. It includes specialty software that helps users with restricted mobility make better use of their PC and sells for $700....
One advantage of PC-based games is the keyboard affords users considerably more ways to manipulate the action than a console's basic controller. But mastering all those spread-out keys can be difficult (especially for those with small hands). The $60 Space Devilfish from Idizm is designed to change that.
The unique hourglass-shaped device, scheduled for release in July, offers large keys in a palm-size configuration. Built-in wrist support, plus retractable stabilizers that let you rest it on your leg, make it relatively comfortable to use. Add to that force-feedback features and complete programmability, and you may find yourself giving your keyboard the cold shoulder the next time you sit down for some action." [PC World]
In addition to the fact that my kids will grow up with all of this stuff that will accelerate the path to true "virtual reality," I wanted to post something about video games in order to point Rick to the Slashdot post about MMORPGs Matrix and Star Wars.
"Jedi2099 writes "Warner Bros., Monolith Productions and EON Entertainment are combining forces to create a new massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on The Matrix using Monolith's new LithTech Discovery System. " Personally I'm much more interested in the fact that the Star Wars Galaxy Beta that has started taking beta apps."
10:40:44 PM Permanent link here
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"E Ink Corporation's 'Ink in Motion' displays will look like a piece of cardboard (like the back of a chewing gum display box), but will flash a graphic at you. To follow: larger indoor and outdoor signage, screens on PDA devices, etc. Better angle visibility, brightness, contrast, than electronic screens; runs forever on a small battery. Comprehensive and informative site about technology that has gotten little attention but could revolutionize display technology, the sign business, point-of-purchase marketing, and publishing." [MetaFilter]
TV on a T-shirt "It could mean never again being stuck wearing the same outfit as someone else at a party - you could use a mobile phone to download a whole new look into the fabric from a computerized database." [Nature, via MetaFilter]
10:30:49 PM Permanent link here
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"It's cool that The Industry Standard Archives are still up—and even without ads." [EVHEAD]
It's very cool, because that means one of my all-time favorite IS articles is still available online. I always use this one in my presentations, except when I'm a dork and forget to check the link like I did this last week. So if anyone from Jim's class is reading this, please be sure to click this link and read the article for yourself. I didn't come close to doing it justice. Even though it was published in October, 2000, it's still very relevant today (sad to say).
Handy Dandy
"Ilkka Aura is sad because he can't download a picture of a dalmatian onto his cell phone. He is Finnish, so this is understandable. Aura is the U.S. manager for Sonera, the largest cellular service provider in Finland, the country with the highest cell phone penetration rate in the world. There are a lot of clever and quirky things a person can do with a cellular phone these days, but most of them are available only to people who live in Scandanavia or Japan. Back in Finland, Aura could use Sonera services to customize the tune on his ringer and the graphics on his display. He could instantly look up phone numbers throughout Europe or send someone a quick text message. He could even use his phone to pay for a bucket of golf balls at the driving range.
Then he moved to Silicon Valley. It's been downhill ever since.
'I remember going to buy a cell phone,' recalls Aura. 'I said, 'I'd like to have it with green faceplates.' And they said, 'We only have black.' I couldn't believe it - 'What do you mean you only have black? You carry only one color?' Well, I suppose I like black. Actually I hate black, but what can I do? So my phone was black - without an icon. And for the first few months I had to use the ring tones that came with the phone.' At this point Aura's emotions carry him beyond the limits of his vocabulary: 'I felt really stereotyped.'
These days everybody's throwing around theories about why cellular options in Europe and Japan are so much cooler than those in America: sender-pays-for-calls this, common-GSM-standard that. In Finland, you can explore the cold, desolate reaches of Lapland and never lose reception. 'Here in the U.S.,' Aura gasps, 'I was in Disneyland and I hit a dead spot. And I kind of went ... ' He makes a noise that sounds vaguely like a reindeer dying."
This is the passage I always read to the audience, and I've always wanted to find a WAV or MP3 file of "a noise that sounds vaguely like a reindeer dying" to punctuate the passage. So if you know of one....
10:14:04 PM Permanent link here
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eBooks: Dead or Read?
"So what are the ways forward?
Content providers could drive the market by heavier content investment in pilot projects and stimulate a critical content mass. Unfortunately, the current risk-averse environment to technology investment is unlikely to change the mindset of content providers.
Pricing practices must be more imaginative and creative. Currently some publishers price eBooks higher than the printed book. The consumer cannot yet see that there is any added value in the eBook to reflect a similar price let alone higher price than the physically printed word.
There are prospective commercial opportunities of partnering with traditional libraries, both public and academic, at a time when they are vulnerable to the predatory actions and short sighted, narrow objectives of financial management. They see them as a wasteful resource in both consumption of space, use of personnel resources and actual use versus capacity use. eLending is a natural extension of a library's function. Technical browsing functions and dowloading full text to local readers would bring the technology to the forefront of the potential consumer market.
The magazine and periodical subscription markets provide a continuous and, in the immediate and near term, captive market for introduction of eBook devices and production in digital form. Magazines and periodicals are high visibility, widely distributed markets.
Exploit commercial opportunities through on line retailers such as Amazon.com. It is a very logical step for enterprises such as Amazon to move into eLending. In this vein there are very real opportunities through web based services which offer access to web based titles. Indeed, they could link with libraries to provide outsourced library eBook lending services." [it-analysis.com, via h2Oboro lib blog]
I agree with every one of these ideas, with the exception of proposing that Amazon move into eLending. It's not their mission, they're not set up for it, and it would distract from what they do best. Libraries, on the other hand....
Oh, and I would add my mantra of standards, bride of standards, son of standards, return of the standards, and standards V.
10:00:26 PM Permanent link here
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"Peter notes, among other things, J.C. Herz's 4 types of gamers that she outlined in her Etech presentation last week. I wrote the same four points down in my notes in a slightly different way:
1. beat the system
2. model the system
3. run the system
4. kill the system
J.C.'s point was that you can look at software, online communities, and Web sites in the same way. Players in those systems break down into similar groups. MeFi is a great example...you see folks exhibiting all four of those behaviors. In most situations, as much as I get caught up in beating a system (which I shouldn't do because I'm not very good at it most of the time), I'm a system modeller. I'm much more interested in finding out how the system works than beating it." [Kottke.org]
9:51:07 PM Permanent link here
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"The final session of the day was my favorite. What was it about? Metadata. I'm sure there are those who, like me, appreciate that metadata is important but feel that it's as exciting as watching paint dry. Hard to believe, I know, but this session was far from dull. I give credit to the speakers for getting down to what we, mostly users, though I noted at least one serious programmer and one GIS vendor in the room, need to know. Ron Matzner of FGDC made sense of the jumble of federal initiatives including GeoSpatial One-Stop, the National Map, NSDI, I-Teams and the role each plays in the over-arching goal of data sharing. And, in turn, he focused on the role of metadata in making each initiative successful. He pointed out that no one program is the "be all and end all," but rather that each contributes to moving things forward. He also emphasized, and I've not thought of data this way, that data is a capital asset for the country. Said another way, it has real value. He also explained that the 'bottom up' approach to data sharing-currently underway via I-Teams-came from suggestions from local governments themselves. The key benefit of I-Teams, he suggests, is that they bring instant credibility with folks in the budget department.
Dave LaShell gave a real world example of how to create and publish metadata in ArcGIS 8.2 and ArcIMS 4.0. The process seemed a bit complex to me, but the fact that the tools are there is significant. Bruce Wescott, SMMS Metadata Consultant and admitted metadata geek, finished up by highlighting the differences between FGDC standards for metadata and the newly adopted ISO standard. The FGDC format is designed for us humans to read; the ISO format is for applications, or said another way, for machines. The ISO standard, Wescott argues, is the future since, 'no one cares what it [metadata] is, they care how to use it.' These days the ultimate users are our software packages, not our eyes. Again focusing on the 'what we need to know,' Wescott went on to introduce ISO-MTX-a product built by Intergraph, in partnership with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), for upgrading 'legacy' spatial metadata to the newly adopted ISO format." [GIS Monitor]
The GIS community as a whole is starting to understand the importance of metadata. The blogging community needs to catch up.
I really wish we (SLS and the ISL) had time to work with Nina at the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission to collaborate on GIS metadata projects that would help make the Illinois Government Information service (IGI) a better product.
Side note: if you're at all interested in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or Global Positioning System (GPS), GIS Monitor is a great site to track. Another one that I'll have to try to get into my aggregator some day.
9:17:26 AM Permanent link here
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E3: SimCity 4 Preview Goodness
"Anonymous Coward writes 'Wowie! The folks at Electronic Arts look to be working hard on the next installment of SimCity! Although there's no official, dedicated release date, they plan on demoing it at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Gamers.com has an article, as does GameSpot, and both seem to have a number of screenshots. Interesting: there now seems to be a nighttime mode, and perhaps there's some weather effects? The note from MaxisJoseph claims there will be a personal angle to every high-level action taken; will there be a chance for dynamic screenshots of our cities during, say, lightning storms, blizzards or sandstorms? And will they ask Koch or Guiliani for endorsements?' I know I'm not the only one who wants to play the Sims in the SimTower in the SimCity on SimEarth with the pesky SimAnts in the balcony garden." [Slashdot]
12:11:58 AM Permanent link here
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Lost in Fun World of Robinson Crusoe
"Introducing today's plugged-in child to classic literature can become a daunting task, but a slick CD-ROM program might make it a little easier. Robinson Crusoe takes Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel to the computer screen as an interactive wonderland of adventure for children 8 and older....
The centerpiece of the title is the interactive book that contains text, audio, video and gaming components. The text, though abbreviated, is rich with the feel of Defoe's classic tale. Players can choose to read the story or have it narrated by British actor Martin Jarvis. The work is beautifully illustrated with pictures that come to life with animations showing a 'live' actor against illustrated backgrounds.
As they read, players are challenged through 'hunt, point, click and drag' action to help Crusoe accomplish tasks — such as returning to the ship to gather the tools and wood needed to make a raft that will allow him to salvage more items — for the story to continue....
Tivola has programmed the island to feature nine different locations touching on key narratives of the literary work — Crusoe building shelter, salvaging the wrecked ship, surviving illness, growing grains, making bread, hunting for food, avoiding cannibals, surviving natural disasters and, finally, escaping the island.
The different areas of the island are accessed via corresponding text in the book or from the map at the bottom margin of the book. As more tasks are accomplished and the reader advances, the island map becomes more detailed, showing the player beautifully drawn 360-degree panoramic settings to explore.
The program's sound effects and music are varied with the noises of the island and the sea popping" [Washington Times, via Lockergnome Bytes]
It's too bad it's not portable, because this concept could work well on my Sony Clie, too. However, it's only $20 and comes in PC and Mac flavors. This might make a good demo during my presentations to show how interactive and appealing an ebook could be (assuming it's as good as it sounds).
12:06:30 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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