Ryan Greene: Looking Forward

The PAN is starting up..

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 13:26:47 GMT

Check it out:

The Hopbit. A Bluetooth-enabled 5GB hard drive Toshiba. The Hopbit is about the size of an iPod and can connect wirelessly to Bluetooth-enabled handhelds and digital cameras. It's a great idea. It means you can have access to tons of music, movies, etc on your Palm or Pocket PC while your Hopbit is in your bag or just somewhere nearby. The only problem is, as Jason Dunn over at PocketPCThoughts points out, is that the bandwidth of Bluetooth (just 768 kbps) is just too pitifully small for moving big files around quickly. However that is just enough to stream most audio and video, which is what I suspect a good many people would use the Hopbit for. Only available in Japan in the moment, but hopefully it will hit the US sometime early next year. Read [Via PocketPCThoughts]... [Gizmodo]

So you can now stream from your camera to a local storage drive, so long as you have a bluetooth card. I suppose the next brak will come when we see low priced ($25.00) compact flash bluetooth cards that you can slip into your cameras.

Roll Up Displays

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 12:17:45 GMT

From Ars Technica:

Roll up displays in 2005?

Posted 10/27/2002 - 11:20PM, by Caesar
Cambridge Display Technology group has acquired its rival Opsys, fusing the two companies together in the hopes that flexible, rollable TV and computing displays might see the light of day by 2005. As we've reported before, Organic LEDs will be the Next Big Thing™ in flat panel displays, and Kodak, IBM, and CDT are racing furiously to get a grasp on the emerging market. CDT owns a patent relating to one of the major OLED production technologies, but this acquisition moves the target date up, so it seems. Even almost two months ago their CEO was touting the likelihood of this technology being available in 2007, but hey, let's lop two years off of that estimate.

Opsys, spun out of Oxford and St Andrews Universities in 1997, uses new polymers, called dendrimers, which are brighter and more energy efficient than CDT's light-emitting polymers (LEPs). The two companies hope to blend their technologies to improve the lifetime of the dendrimers.

While the energy efficiency and wide viewing-angles of OLED technology is exciting to me, what really gets me going is the idea of a roll-up display. Since an OLED-based displayed needs no backlight and can be printed on flexible plastic, it's a real possibility. What can I say, Semi and I want our Globals! Imagine a visual communicator with a retractable screen that fits inside something the size of chapstick. Or how about a pull-out display built into your dashboard that can display anything from maps, to TV, to websites?

I seem to recall that on Earth: Final Conflict, they had these phones that had built in screens that popped out so that they could see the caller. We already ahve phones now with built in two way video, so the larger roll out screeen is the next step in this tech. I would like to see maps that get updated via bluetooth, and/or are synched to a GPS unit, allowing for a constant update of the users postion. Imagine if you bought a subcription ($10/year) to a map service that automatically updated your atlas, with options for countries, history, and higways.

Further uses: Flooring tiles: change the pattern of your flooring whenever you want, as the tiles are all networked together allowing you to have ever shifting patterns, video feeds, maps, or visualizations that are synched to music all on your floor. For that matter, your ceiling as well. Heck, any flat surface that they can be mounted to could be used.

Buy one game board and have it include all kinds of games, chess, checkers, backgammon, monopoly, parcheesi, trivial pursuit, all from one master board, and all you buy is the data of the game and any pieces that you might need.

Instead of buying the newspaper every day, have it fed via RSS to your livepaper via bluetooth either at home from your computer, via your cell, or at a newsstand when you walk by (since you've subscribed, right?) via 802.11 You could get all your magazines in this manner, simply subscribing online, and everytime you are in range of a stand, the paper automatically checks to see if there is anything new that you are due to get. Leace the paper in a cradle overnight to recharge and goather feeds while you sleep eat, etc, and that way it's always up to date.

Given enough RAM, the paper could serve video as well, so the shows that you missed last night that you recorded on your PVR are now watchable in a comfortably sized format while you commute into the city. If you have a fat enough pipe while mobile, you could get live feeds from news channels as well, and watch what is happening in real time as you go.

Welcome to the Video Blog of the Future

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 02:02:49 GMT

DevCon 2002 Video Blog Agenda. [Jeremy Allaire's Radio]

Three Minute Offense - Straight Outta the Cortex

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 00:33:12 GMT

Thought while driving home today: hook your Apple Rendezvous server up to your Tivo/Replay device for archiving and share the shows you love with your friends. Thought spawned from Dave and Adam. Have the file server set to put pout an RSS 2.0 feed of what it has just finished taping, so that subscribed folks can decide if they want to D/L it while they sleep for viewing later. No more issues of missing recording one show because another is on (and being recorded) at the same time, and since you have to d/l the whole show, you get all the commercials as well. Now you are effectively paying the freight of the show via both bandwidth and storage space.

Who wants to set this up to see if it'll work?

UPDATE: Add in this and you've really got something going on.

A Face For Higgins?

Fri, 11 Oct 2002 13:25:58 GMT

Very cool. While AI bots for chat have been around for a while, this onw puts a flash based face on the bot, and has a decent form of voice synthesis going on. If the tech is compact enough, run it on your Pocket PC or Clie. Now you've got a wireless stream for data that you can hit for answers, as well as get information from all in real time, and by listening.

I imagine you could have different vocies/faces for differing situations, so that you can then have emergency alerts sound different from an email notification.

Bot Mots.

Lori found some interesting chat mates:

"Meet Julia, the bot, at http://www.verbots.com. She is an interactive virtual personality and she can answer what the meaning of life is, why the sky is blue, and if she does not know the answer, she brings up the term in a google search which appears on the screen. I brought Julia up this evening and had both children (Katie, 9 and Patrick 6) at my shoulder wanting to ask her questions. Verbot came out with a public library bot at the Computers in Libraries conference, but the link which was sent to me does not work. http://www.talkie.com is very interesting too. My kids really liked Barkie, the 'talkie' at www.pets911.com, a talking puppy."

Unfortunately, the kids were already asleep when I got home tonight or I would have gotten their reactions, too.

[The Shifted Librarian]

This would also make an excellent replacement for/supplement to a chatbot/AIMbot on a site, providing a more human tone to the information that it has to give.

You Are The Network

Mon, 07 Oct 2002 17:16:50 GMT

This is pretty cool, though I wonder if the networking would react badly to those with pacemakers. Still, being able to share your business card via a funky handshake would be cool as well. Lenght of contact could determine the amount of data sent/received.

10Mb/s through skin. NTT DoCoMo have released a paper on the use of human flash as a networking medium:

A device attached to a PDA can send and receive weak electrical signals through people, with human bodies as communications circuits, the paper said, citing sources close to the companies.
Apparel and handbags have their own conductivity, allowing an electrical connection to a PDA that can remain in one's pocket, the paper said.
In this way, people can exchange e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers while shaking hands, with the data automatically written into both their PDAs, the paper said.
Link Discuss (Thanks, Alan!) [Boing Boing Blog]

High Tech Wrap Up

Sat, 10 Aug 2002 16:48:47 GMT

The Future in Gear [Slashdot]

Great PC magazine article about some of the up and coming tech that will be rolling out in the near future.

Entertainment Tools Wish List

Thu, 01 Aug 2002 05:13:09 GMT

Innovate Away, Sonicblue!.

Sonicblue Revenue Up 80 Percent

"The consumer-electronics maker meets analyst earnings expectations, reporting that second-quarter revenue increased 80 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago." [CNET News.com]

See - it's true. "Those who can, innovate. Those who can't, sue." (As noted earlier today.)

I'm going to have to order another ReplayTV now, just to show my support.... ;-)

[The Shifted Librarian]

I was talking to friend tonight about how there are three shows on this friday that he wants to tape: Monk, Farscape, and the Comedy Central Rollins special: Up For It. THe problem is that they are all on at the same time. He wanted to know if there was a TIVO/Replay device that could tape all three at once. I told him, unfortunately, no, that you would need multiple units in order to do that.

I Can't Wait* to Get My Hands On My Precioussss

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 03:40:49 GMT

EE Times: "Currently, DVD recorders from Panasonic and Philips sell for between $600 and $1,000 at places like Circuit City. Once the Taiwanese enter the market, Wu believes that can come down to under $300 by the end of next year." [lawrence's notebook]

I've been lusting for these things for a while now, and once the price point is right I'm going to have one.

*Assuming that broadcast flags allow me to record the shows at all by the time these are released.

Business op for Apple

Fri, 26 Jul 2002 14:43:07 GMT

Apple's new .mac strategy is great, but why would I want to switch all my Windows gear over for it? Especially for the honor of paying an extra $100 a year for the services, in addition to having slower hardware.

Thought: Market the services for free to Mac users, but offer the apps for Windows machines for the aforementioned fee. A couple of corporate adoptions (at a reduced rate, of course) could fund the cost of the program for all Mac users.

AND/OR

Offer the .mac services as a part of the new rackmount servers, so that people can host their own .mac solution either in their homes or offices. Include this as apart of the suite of tools that the server arrives with, all the documentation on .pdf preloaded, and you'll have everything you'll need to get the admins rolling. This provides a back door entry into the market by letting the server admins play with the software and see if it's any good before it gets rolled out throughout a corporation. The last three companies that I worked at could would have benefited massively from this tech, as they all had people that would work from home during the week, and in the case of some, put in crazy hours from home as well. For those users, being able to synch up everything would have been a massive boon.

Either way would allow for greater market penetration by co-opting the existing Windows users without compromising the hardware control that Apple seems to need to have so very badly.

Glad to see that someone is doing it

Wed, 24 Jul 2002 14:12:59 GMT

Ideas Aplenty From Idealab Head. After launching a string of famous Internet failures -- and a few successes -- Idealab founder Bill Gross hasn't given up on starting new companies. He lays out his modus operandi in a Wired News Q & A with Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]

One of the companies that this guy is working on will make a personal printer that makes objects. This would be one of the first tools in the home shop that I described back in February.

Signs I need to switch to decaf

Sat, 13 Jul 2002 05:58:38 GMT

FCC Chief Slams TV Makers on Digital TV Conversion. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell slammed consumer electronics makers on Friday for an inadequate commitment to accelerating the transition to higher quality digital television. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]

The digital transition, which was designed to be completed by 2006, has been slowed in part by limited available content, potential piracy of content, and high-priced equipment needed to receive the higher-quality signals. (emphasis mine)

I've spent far too much time lusting after the HDTVs they have at the local Best Buy, and you know what? Pirating content isn't one of my plans, for the same reason that I rarely watch movies on my PC: It looks like crap. I want to see the full blown, super crisp picture that God (and the folks who made the content) intended. I don't want to have my movie hiccup because I'm getting an email, or my system is checking for an update, or my screen-saver is trying to take over. I want to see it in frighteningly crisp, clear video that is going to serve as the glue that keeps my butt in the la-z-boy and my hand in the popcorn. I want to hear it in sphincter thrumming bass that makes the windows rattle, along with my belly. I want to turn down the lights, crank the volume, and look over my shoulder when I hear a gun cock behind me in surround sound.

"But Ryan" you say "You can get than on your computer." Excuse me, did you read the second sentence of my post? I'm on a plane, a bus, whatever, fine, laptop it is. I'm at home, I want to be able to reach into my cooler, grab a cold one*, put my feet up, and enjoy. I don't want to worry about how warm my UPS is, or what cord I have trapped between my toes. I want to sit back, and enjoy the movie, and you know what? I CAN'T, because some team of industry lackeys has decided that I, the consumer, am more likely to pirate their precious content than buy it. Never mind the collection of 200 movies that I have, half of which are on DVD. Let's ignore the mountain of CDs, the cassette tapes, and the LPs. I won't even get into my rental habits because I think you get the idea. As far as these bastards are concerned, I'm a pirate, and their afraid that I'm going to use my DSL connection to try to view some grainy, reduced quality version of their works, without watching the commercials, without paying for the content that they have slaved to create in an attempt to garner my attention. God knows that they are just paying out the ass for those airwaves, Hey wait, aren't a lot of these content creators on cable? How does that work? What kind of broadcast fee structure are they under? Doesn't matter.

Simply put, Gimme. I want my MTV, my VH1, my HBO, my Discovery channel, animal planet HGTV food network jumping monkey gator catching high speed chase from a helicopter in full surround sound on an HDTV that I can watch with funky 3d shutter lenses and I want it all and I want it right now. I am your market folks, I just bought the laptop equivalent of a ferrari and it'll be here soon. I work hard and dammit, I play hard too. Get your product out, drop the freaking early adopter tax and just like Ozzy, I'll put it in every room of my house. Because if you don't folks, if you big companies drop the ball that you've been bobbling since 1994 when I first read that a standard had been agreed to in Video Toaster magazine, folks you will be well and truly fucked, because you're already losing your precious eyeballs. Most of my friends don't watch TV, and when they do it's a special event like the Super-bowl. Mostly they play games, or surf the net. Your one way conversation is more boring than a lecture from a droning college professor, and we ain't being graded for watching this one bubbah.

We're too busy working on our homes, building up our own businesses, and getting our next degrees to be bothered with you old boy. We grew up watching you and we know all of your tricks. This is why Survivor was such a hit: It broke the formula of set up and payoff, it introduced a random element into the very structured programming that you've been throwing at us for years. What's sad is that a show can now consist of nothing but homages to other things you've thrown at us and we'll think it's irreverent and new, instead of the thinly veiled retread that it knows itself to be. Bore us and we flip flip flip away from you, surfing the channels and using the remote one handed like the extension of ourselves that we know it to be.

But you can change all that. Make a better mousetrap. Give us the bigger, bolder prettier spiraling shape and we'll pick it up and call it wonderful and denounce it and play with it and love it and hate it but more importantly, we'll buy the damned thing if you'll just get it out there. The longer you sit there in your board rooms and worry about the things that we, the unwashed masses of scurvy ridden entertainment pirates, are going to do with your precious content, the less likely we are to be here to buy it when it comes out.

You're not the only game in town anymore boss, and really, you never were. And for every day that you sit back and bicker, we're going elsewhere to be distracted from how bored we are by you. Every day that you snipe, we start entertaining ourselves. Photoshop tennis is just the start, wait until home video editing hits critical mass. Then you're going to see an explosion of crazy, half baked, wild and entertaining indeciferable, beautiful madness the likes of which you've never seen, let alone approved from your office in the sky. Jackass was the first flake of snow, the first drop of rain in a torrent that is coming. We've learned at your feet, the tools got cheap, and you no longer control the means of production OR distribution. We've got peer to peer video on demand 24-7 and every time you knock out a channel, another three pop up daddy. This is the hydra all over again, and this time, you ain't got a torch Herc.

This isn't to say that you're dead, oh no, we still need heroes to watch, doing things we can't do, someone to follow for fashion and lingo. We love paying five bucks for ten cents worth of popcorn, and sitting in small seats to gather and watch what you tell us is acceptable. You tell us who to love and like dutiful soldiers, we'll follow your commands until it's time for something new to come along. Then you'll act all suprised until you can either co-opt it and drown us in it, or sic your lawyers and political hacks on it till it's dead. But that'll only last until we figure out another way to go around you. Our desire is like water, it goes wherever it can, either wearing away or going around it's obsticles, roaring when the resistance overcome, and wiping itself out when the momentum takes us too far.

*Sadly, this is either Gatorade or Poland Spring bottled water of late

(I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas today, just finished Gonzo Marketing, and am starting Hot Text. This may well explain a lot about this post.)

Fri, 12 Jul 2002 22:36:21 GMT

Light therapy tackles eye injuries [New Scientist]

Cool. LED UV lights in the 670 nanometer range promote activity in the mitochondria of cells that have been damaged. Imagine if instead of going into a tanning booth, you go into a rejuvinator to help your body recover from injuries, or to inhibit scarring for people how have been badly burned or otherwise injured. My usual snake oil disclamers apply.

Thu, 11 Jul 2002 16:38:34 GMT

SJ Merc: "Sales of the Segway, priced at $8,500 each for now, have been anemic." [Scripting News]

The price-point on this has to drop for mass market adoption, down to the $2k range at least. Even for the SUV version with the beefier tires, battery, and power, it should not be more than $4k, or else they are going to price themselves out of the market.

I am looking forward to the stirling powered version of this, and I wonder if it will be able to go even faster.

What I find interesting in this article is that one of the investors only has a fiduciary interest in the balancing technology that has been developed, not in any other part of Kamen's businesses. I would live to see this tech deployed in cars, as it would serve to massively increase skidpad ratings, as well as smoothing out bumpy and or uneven roads. I know that similar tech has been around for years now, pioneered by Citroen, I think, and deployed in the Catera from Cadillac, but to see it in other vehicles would be very cool.

Thu, 11 Jul 2002 16:10:06 GMT

MacOS PVR a-comin'. ElGato software will launch its MacOS personal video recorder (like a software TiVo) at MacWorld New York this weekend. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

I imagine that they will have to add some kind of coax-in for the signal, likely a USB based converter. What's cool is if you then go and spend another grand or so on FInal Cut Pro, you can burn full length DVDs of the programs that you have recorded.

If they want to be super slick, they'll have the signal converter able to handle HDTV, so you can then start burning the wide-screen versions of your shows. Somehow I don't think that is going to happen though.

If you have the scratch, after you record the show, throw it on one of the new servers, and be able to stream it (hmm, how to stream it...) anywhere in the house. Your own TV station showing the shows and movies you want, when you want them (I know, I'm a broken record.)

Wed, 10 Jul 2002 03:22:14 GMT

CNet. China to become manufacturing powerhouse. They are welcome to it. Why? Manufacturing is rapidly declining. Both the number of people necessary to do it and the percentage of personal income devoted to manufactured items is falling. This is very much like what occured in agriculture. Today only 2% of the population in the US is in agriculture (much less than Europe -- 7% -- and Japan -- 15% -- but that is due to protected inefficiencies). Agriculture is also a commodity business, highly competitive, and mostly still family farms (90% plus of all farming output is still done by family farms and not agribusiness). It's a 100 a week business for $50k a year. Food is now a small portion of the budget of most homes. Manufacturing is following a similar path. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Well, when they have a large enough manufacturing base, as well as the tools to make cruise missiles (Thanks Bill!), mixed with the rumors that they are getting nuclear subs from the Russians, I start to worry. Plus they have been building dams for power generation, which they can in turn use to drive their manufacturing base. They have no shortage of able bodied young folks to fight for them, the only real problem they have is the logistics of feeding and transporting their soldiers.

Yes, I know full well how paranoid this all sounds, thank you, I've told it to myself many times over the years, and I really and truly hope that I'm wrong here. But looking at the evidence, looking at past history of nations that build up their forces, I've got a very bad feeling about this.

Mon, 08 Jul 2002 17:50:54 GMT

The Economist. Dirt cheap organic solar cells about to take off. This is one more step towards a hydrogen economy. Excess energy from solar cells on the roof of a home could be stored as hydrogen through simple electrolysis (as an adjunct to hydrogen extraction from natural gas). This eliminates the need for expensive and bulky batteries. Additionally, this hydrogen could then be used to power power-plant fuel cells for use in the home or cars. Refuel your car at home! Good-bye OPEC. Hello decentralized energy. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Given that there are home power generation systems out there that run on either hydrogen or propane, Imagine if you used captured rainwater and or greywater. Now you have a constant supply of power, locally generated, and hopefully fairly easy to maintain. Again, do this in a rural area for a small co-op and you've got local power, off the grid. Either vent or bottle the leftover O2.

The trick to this is building cheap, reliable systems that are small enough to be easily transported, and reliable enough to handle harsh environments. Let's forget about the home for a moment. Imagine being able to fly in a town center wherever you wanted it. Power generation, communications, a health care center, mess hall, etc. Now instead of going to war, drop these units in place and use them as central distribution points for food and medical care. Have servers set up to show people how to recognize mines and other ordinance that is left behind, how to care for injuries, and who to contact for help in removing the ordinance.

That would generate some serious good will.

Sat, 06 Jul 2002 14:46:36 GMT

Why not, indeed? You listening, cable guys? This is your market talking. We're making our own TV now. We're our own Kodaks. Deal with it. [Doc Searls Weblog]

Imagine a P2P network that was set up for your family. Home movies, scanned photos, Timmy's first school play, all that, shared and hosted for you, at high speed, on demand. This is the next big market folks, lets see if someone can figure a way to make it work. Schools could have and share archives of their events (games, graduations, awards) no more fighting over who gets what photo form the family album either. iPhoto is a part of this, and Apple is already starting it. Sharing home movies is the next phase, and I think that Apple is all over that one as well. Let's see if they can make it work.

Sun, 30 Jun 2002 13:45:37 GMT

I was just reading about Boeing's "new" "Blended Wing Body" or BWB jet. The plane is one massive wing, reducing crag, and thereby increasing fuel efficency. Since the entire surface is a lifting body, the plane cuts through the air more efficently.

I know that the flying wing form factor has been attempted before, and there were problems with stability under certain circumstances. I hope that these engineers can get this new design to overcome these issues that existed in the past and get this plane up there. It is more fuel efficient than an Airbus A380-700, and would weigh around 19 percent less.

Pics here , homepage for the design on geocities here.

Fri, 28 Jun 2002 14:21:35 GMT

The Realities of "Minority Report".

In Future, Ads Could Rely on Eyes

"In 1999, Spielberg convened a three-day think tank to pick the brains of 23 futurists about likely changes technology would bring during the next 50 years.

'The futurists that I assembled around that table didn't agree with each other on every point, but one of the several things they did unanimously agree on was that the entire advertising industry is going to recognize us as individuals, and they're going to spot-sell to us,' Spielberg said. 'They will sell directly to you....'

In one key scene in "Minority Report," detective John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, is fleeing agents of the Pre-Crime police unit chasing him for a murder he is foretold to commit. As he runs down a street, electronic billboards scan his retinas and hurl personalized pitches his way....

In the future, it seems, the eyes are the window to the wallet....

'It's amazing how events have caught up with us after Sept. 11,' said Alex McDowell, the production designer for "Minority Report" who began imagining the world of 2054 in 1998.
'We know we want security, and we're willing to give up some of our civil liberties to have that,' he said. 'And Pre-Crime is really, in the end, the total loss of civil liberty. That's the extreme of it and the consumer-driven part of the film is the parallel extreme.' " [Excite News, via LibraryPlanet.com]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Neat idea, but I disagree. I think that the ads will ping the area for the wireless connections you have going, possibly scanning for the logos of the clothing that you are wearing (or the RF tags therin) and then tailor the adds to the widest market segment that is in it's area. These would then also serve as a way for companies to figure out just who their demographic is, as well as where they are at (literally).

There's no point in trying to sell FUBU to a pack of lawyers, they'd probably want an Armani or Lands End ad instead.

Marketing would then change massively, as it would no longer be amatter of selling AD space, it would be a matter of selling to a market based on how well an billboard owner could track who was walking past their ads.

When I went to go see Spider-Man, I saw two neat new (in a theater anyway) ad delivery systems. First was the "Rolling Poster" where there are a series of advertisments on a plastic roll that changes every five seconds or so. This one had movie posters on it. The other was a plasma screen, rotated 90 degrees so that it had the same form factor as a poster, and it alternated between showing the meanings of different ratings, and hawking popcorn. While these are static ad systems, they are a step in the right direction, as the plasma display feeds could easily be tailored to show ads based on the movie that you are going to see, or based on the peak of what movie has just had tickets sold for it.

Smart insulation

Wed, 26 Jun 2002 03:46:36 GMT

"Gah". Thought for the day: Nanotube (or larger) system that forms capilaries on the outside of a building.

How it works:

As the capilary heats up, it expands, the increase in diameter drawing water up into itself from a ground tank. This water is cooler, which helps shrink said capilary, and the water drops down into the tank as a result. There is a return feed at the top of the capilary system as well, so that water is the automatically returned once it has reached it's maximim temperature. All the capilaries feed one way only, so that when the constrict, the water goes out a side vent and returns to the tank.Since the tunes are flexible, freezing should not be an issue.

Since a cell can only return water if it's compromised, it becomes easy to notice problem areas.

Application: passive cooling system for the sunny side of a house in summer, to help keep the structure itself cool.

Problems:

How does paint adhere to a constantly expanding and contracting structure?
How do you attach it to a building without compromising the system?
What happens if the water becomes an anaerobic germ farm?
Durability: What happens when a large object strikes the surface?
How is leaking handled?

Possible solutions:

Material is grown in an overlapping series of fractals, and is set in place in sheets that automatically self align and repair (nano machines?) on installation. Applying a slight charge to system reactivates the bots and gets them to repair leaks. Solar cells (or house current) attached to the fabric then jolt them to life from time to time for periodic maintenence.

Material is applied beneath other siding materials (under aluminum, over foam board), and given it's small size the expanding/shrinkage is dealt with by having small spacers to offset the actual siding from the tubing.

Fun with 'bots

Tue, 25 Jun 2002 13:29:11 GMT

Library Chat Greeter.

Roll Your Own IM-bot

"WiredBots: simple toolkits for making AIM and MSN Messenger IM bots." [Boing Boing]

This is too damn cool! If I was only a programmer, I would play around with it and create a library bot that patrons could query for bestseller lists, library hours, and eventually OPAC & database queries. Anybody else want to try until that day when pigs fly?

Alternatively, maybe Andy B. could provide some assistance on this one....

[The Shifted Librarian]

Given that they reccomend doing the programming in perl, it could probably also be done in python as well. I know with python it is supposed to be fairly easy to build in a GUI, which in turn would allow you to create the forms and fields to generate answers from. I know that perl has that capability as well, but I have books on python here, and it is already on my machine... Now I have a reason to start learning it.

Thought: Set the bot with security such that it will only give certain answers to people that you have on a list. For example, you would have it set to tell a close friend where you were, or give out your cell number in case they had lost it, but it would not hand this out to complete strangers. It could also pester you with reminders form your appointment book, or to do list, or even take short messages from your friends (if they knew the keywords to get it started).

Example:

Friend: hey! Where is Jane?
AIMbot: (checks name against list of trusted folks) Jane is on her way to work.
Friend: Leave Message?
AIMbot: Handjive? (checking for the password to allow this functionality)
Friend: Annabobanna
AIMbot: Go ahead.
Friend: Meet you at Phil's restaurant after work, 6ish, k?
AIMbot:...
AIMbot:...
AImbot:... Will that be all?
Friend: Yup, later!
AIMbot:Goodbye

Then, when the user goes online later, the bot lets them know that there are messages waiting. Since AIMbot only records messages from people that you allow, and if you want, only from those who know the password (as above).

Fri, 21 Jun 2002 13:48:24 GMT

Another Reason Libraries Should Become WiFi Hotspots.

Ben Hammersley on Setting Up a Open Wireless Node

"Ben Hammersley writes about setting up his public WiFi node in his Guardian column. Ben's experience is a little unusual -- within a day of setting up his access point, Doc Searls (who was 9000 miles from home), stumbled upon it (and Ben). Later, at a group dinner with a bunch of British geeks, Matt Jones suggested chalking 'WiFi hobo-runes' on the sidewalk marking discovered wireless service, so that other netstumblers and war-walkers may connect to it." [Boing Boing]

From the article itself:

"...As a writer, with no need to be anywhere but at the end of an internet connection, an email address and a mobile phone number, it's a revolutionary step.

But the wondrous convenience of writing in a place designed to bring me regular blasts of caffeine is really nothing compared to the serendipitous meetings it has created: for as the network I set up is free for all to use, and somewhat advertised on the web, this cafe has seen a steady stream of like-minded technology enthusiasts, bloggers, and geared-up layabouts united in the joyous realisation that they never need go to the office again. A correctly enabled laptop, and a coffee addiction later, your first delivery of email over a community wireless network seems to come with angelic music and a parting of the clouds....

Since then, he and many others have used the spare bandwidth on my internet connection, and I've drunk plenty of coffee. In fact, with the caffeine, the only thing wired around here is me."

[Jenny Levine: Tech Goddess]

Tie this in with Autodesk's location suite (original report) and you can be alterted every time that you are in a location that you can get wireless access, which gives you the hobo runes mentioned above in a universal (and geeky) format.

Fri, 21 Jun 2002 13:43:09 GMT

Nanotech Tubes Could Form Basis of New Drug Purification Techniques [Scientific American]

Dope the inside walls of a nanotube with antibodies that will attach themselves to the chiral molecules that you are looking for in the solution. Next, the tubes extract the chiral molecules that you are looking for, at a rate that is much faster than the molecules that you don't want.

While this is currently being researched for use in making medicines, I imagine that this would have a variety of uses in other fields. Any kind of filtering (now THAT is good coffee!) or waste management would benefit from a selctive filter of this nature. Home greywater treatment could get the water back to pure rather quickly, or use it to filter the water that is coming into your home, knocking out lime etc. The trick would be to get it to work fast enough to be viable for high volume use.

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:16:50 GMT

Are we starting to see a Moore's law at work in power?

Business Week: >>>Good news is ahead, however: Unlike the relatively mature internal combustion technologies, fuel cells are improving in efficiency by about 30% a year, according to McNeil. "It's moving so fast," says Joseph Cargnelli, the vice-president for technology at Toronto fuel-cell concern Hydrogenics. "that a fuel-cell engine that we developed a year ago is outdated today due to new materials, more power density, and more robust construction."<<< Note that fuels cells represent a jump in substrate for personal power generation. As a result, the price performance improvements may accumulate quickly. Right now, it is on a 2.5 year doubling rate. Further, by decentralizing power production (fuel cells that run in the basement for $2 k a pop), transmission loss is eliminated. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

I particularly like the rack mount generator from Hpower. 500W maximimum output, and it'll fit in a standard 19" server rack. Put a couple of these in your basement, coupled with your home servers, and you'll never have to stop surfing when the power goes out.

Alternately, if you have greater needs, and don't like the thought of hydrogen in your home, you can go with this unit. 3 to 10 kW and it runs of propane.

Having reliable power is a key part of helping business and industry thrive in rural and developing areas/nations. If you have the infrastructure where you can get propane delivered, this makes local power generation a possibility. Also, harsh winters where the power lines can break due to ice formation are no longer as issue, as again, you can locally generate your electricity (and heat) with these modules.