Ryan Greene: Straight out of the cortex

It's Later

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 13:42:41 GMT

OK, I foresee a time when you walk around with about 10K Gigs of storage on your person. You have your medical records, all your music, entertainment, personal correspondence, contacts, EVERYTHING with you ALWAYS.

Too much, you say, why would I want to lug all that around with me? I'd need it to be secure so that no one could rip my data from me. There is a simple solution. You have a Personal Area Network (PAN). There are three to five layers to it, as follows:

WAN - Wide Area Network - This is the equivalent of today's cellular networks, wide coverage, easily/always connected, relatively small amounts of data/information being sent around. Information that you don't really mind others hearing/accessing can go over this, and normal privacy rules apply. Communication is point to point, and you have control over who you send to at any given time. It would be slow to upstream/downstream large media files over this, but because you have such a large amount of data on you at all times, it would rearely be needed.
NAN - Near Area Network - This is a 100 meter range around you, for accessing media intensive applications and light duty file sharing, everything from music to actual binaries and programs, good for when you are going to be in one spot or on one network for a period of time. I can forsee a time when food courts in shopping malls offer time on this type of network. Usage could be metered based off of the dollar value of items you have bought. Around the holidays you could really rack up some time on the account. New home developments might also offer it as a part of the cost of your home.
CAN - Car Area Network - You have a massive amount of storage in your car, a couple of drives that live in the trunk probably. They hold songs, movies, TV shows, maps and directions. Mount an antenna on the car itself and it can serve as a mobile access point for the passengers.
LOS - Line of Sight - I can see you, and now we can send lots of data very quickly. The closer we are, the more secure we become, as it gets harder and harder for someone on the fringe of out LOS to read off the edge of our signal.
TAN - Touch Area Network - This is when I make contact with someone (or something), as a means of sharing data. No more PINs, simply touch the person and share very small bits of data, or passwords that allow for much larger amounts of data to be sentvia any of the above technologies.

I hate to tase about this, but I have to run, I will finish all these thoughts and wrap them up into a cohesive whole soon, I promise.

Reference:

wide spectrum laser networking

Wed, 12 Feb 2003 14:43:49 GMT

Hmmm, Let's take Jenny's toy, and put it together with John's toy, and see if we can get them to talk to each other eh? Now, where would you keep that fat drive in your house? In case of fire, you want it to be something that you can grab and run with (Kids/pets/photos, right folks?) So that leaves out the basement. In the hall closet, grab it on your way out the door? Now you have all your photos, TV shows, and any movies that you've archived in one handy unit. A great way to take them with you on the road, and as a means of remote storage.

More later tonight, I have to run to work.

Some thoughts on RF tags

Mon, 03 Feb 2003 11:56:33 GMT

I was thinking about RF tags and possible uses for them that are not too intrusive. FOr vendors, you want to be able to restock someone that you have a contract with quickly and easily, so that they never run out and need to call you for an emergency delivery. For users/business people, you want your items to work and always be there when you need them.

Solution: For disposable items and inventory, embed the RF tag in the wrapper of a disposable single serve item (a roll of toilet paper, pens, notepads) so that when the wrapper is taken out with the trash, the item no longer shows up in inventory.

But how will you do inventory? Servers are getting smaller and smaller, as are wireless solutions. Place multiple stations throughout your facility so that the inventory system simply consists of playing "Marco Polo" with the tags, you could do an inventory every shift change. Compare/contrast that with the numbers you get from the running totals of your picks/restocks and you've got a great means of tracking theft.

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 12:00:42 GMT

I was stuck in traffic yesterday morning, and I was thinking some of these same thoughts.

Autoblogging anyone?? -> What is autoblogging?

WiFi car-stereos

WiFi car-stereos. A new generation of WiFi-equipped in-car MP3 players is shipping. The possibilities are endless -- imagine a traffic-jam-area file-sharing/streaming net, or synching up with your home PC while your car is in the garage! Link Discuss (via WiFi News) [Boing Boing Blog]

See the USA with a Wi-Fi array

See the USA with a Wi-Fi array: I'm trying to hard to fit the jingle to the story, but automotive Wi-Fi may take off, with units in the car talking to mobile components to transfer music, misc. Imagine having a gateway in your car that provides an Car Area Network (CAN). Imagine bridging the CAN to GSM/GPRS as needed. Imagine bridging the CAN to a hot spot location when you're near one. Imagine that you can do that today with...a Macintosh running OS X or a Windows XP box with the right hoo-ha. But in-car, permanent components would be better. [via TechDirt]

[80211b News]

The WiFi Caravan

The Wifi Caravan is a mobile wireless network comprised of participating vehicles within range of each other using 802.11 networking equipment. A variety of local resources will be present on the network and forwarding to the Internet will be handled transparently when we have an established uplink.

[via TechDirt]

[Audioblog/Mobileblogging News]

Specifically, I had my laptop in my backpack next to me, and I was bemoaning the fact that I had no mechanism to play the songs in it without having to open it up, perch it on the seat next to me, and then listen to it via the little tiny speakers that came with said laptop. I was also mad that there was road construction that started AFTER rush hour, so none of the radio stations were reporting the 1/2 hour delay that it was causing me. lastly, since I was crawling along at 3 MPH, I could have been making follow up calls for my job as a Realtor, if I could have gotten to my contact list that is on the laptop.

My ideal solution? I dock my laptop into the car somehow, preferably via a wireless connection. The stereo can then access the songs on the laptop, and if the car is stopped, a heads up display appears on my windshield that allows me to navigate files and folders as well as running programs. An in car version of the MS Smart Display might do the trick. The controls are all built into the rim of the steering wheel, including a teeny joystick for my mouse. The HUD brightness could drop off rapidly as your speed increased, for safety, but that would make it hard to see what song it is you are playing.

So, how do I keep from running down the battery in my laptop? Simple, the bottom of my docking station is a power pad. That way, I can keep it topped off and still use it. If there is enough space, I could drop in my cell phone and PDA as well, and via bluetooth, make calls and possibly schedule appointments while I'm at it.

Wed, 15 Jan 2003 13:45:03 GMT

I don't really understand the point of Brendan O'Neill's essay arguing against the significance of weblogs. [Davos Newbies]

At the time that Gutenberg made his printing press, the impact was not immediate. Literacy was a rare skill to have, but what his tool did was give the masses the ability to have what were painstakingly coded texts in their homes, even the homes of the middle class of that society.

It took time for his device to have an effect becasue not enough people knew how to read, and not enough people knew how to operate his press. Contrast this with now, when most people can operate a word processor as well as email, so they can easily set up and maintain a weblog. The adoption curve on this is much steeper, as the barrier to entry (computer, internet access) is something that most interested parties already have.

What do weblogs do? They give people who have a passion for a subject a means of easily setting up and maintaining a website, no need to hand code the HTML (writing out long hand), and when combined with news aggregators, they can now see all the pamphlets (I think my publishing metaphor just ripped) that any of the other webloggers are putting out.

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 16:02:23 GMT

This is nice. Especially the resolution (1920 x 1080), which would allow you to use it as a computer monitor as well as to watch TV. Price has not been announced at this time, but I i8magine that it will knock a few grand off the cost of current (smalller) LCD screens once it ships.

InfoWorld: Samsung to unveil 54 inch high-definition LCD at CES. [Hack the Planet] [lawrence's notebook]

As an aside, I spent new years day watching the Court TV NYPD Blue 3rd season marathon. What a great show. During the commercial breaks I flipped t to ESPN2's World's Strongest Man marathon. I was in heaven. My wife, on the other hand, was wishing that I had the TV in the bedroom working so that she could watch one of her shows. This brings me to my point, many of the HDTV units that are on the market now have a dual tuner built in that allows you to display two channels side by side. If you can adapt to having two shows on at once, I imagine this could end the disputes over what show to watch, as well as allow one person to watch two shows at the same time.

A Means of Bookmarking For Audioblogging?

Mon, 16 Dec 2002 12:56:52 GMT

If this could be inplemented with regards to audio files (and play the files seamlessly in the order they are included) it would serve as a great means of marking up audio files so that a listener could get to the part of the program that they are interested in, instead of having to listen to the entire stream.

Scripting News -> "With all the talk about outlines these days, perhaps I should rev up the evangelism jets for a couple of ideas from the past, one implemented and one not. The one that's implemented is OPML-based directories, like the directories on Yahoo. We have all the software written, and it's ready to be cloned in PHP, server-side Java, Cold Fusion, you name it. It basically takes an outline, in OPML, and turns it into a browsable hierarchy. It's got a zinger in its design, called inclusion, which is like inclusion in C. In C, you put a #include in a program where you want the contents of another file to appear. Unfortunately the HTML Web doesn't have inclusion (big missed opportunity, imho) but the OPML Web does. It allows the author of a directory to delegate branches of the directory to other people, and the suggestions for new links go the author of the sub-directory. For the reader the connection is seamless. For the author it's a matter of right-clicking on an outline node and entering a URL in a dialog. It's even more decentralized than DMOZ is, and like the Web, is open to many home pages, not just a few. The other outline-related idea that I never got around to implementing, but do know how to implement (I think) is what I called "timeless weblogs". Basically you'd route a weblog post to a section of an OPML directory, as described above, using the element that's been in RSS since 0.92. Then it would appear in a news box on that category, so you'd get persistent links on the left hand side, and new bits that are not permanent, in the news box. As with all these things, if you have an idea, the time may not be right. Maybe it's right now for these ideas. Just a Sunday morning pondering." [Audioblog News: The Next Big Thing]

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 14:16:16 GMT

Thought - The other week I was talking to my Dad, and he was telling me about a system that was used for tracking cattle. The cattle wears a collar that bounces a signal off the ionosphere, and there are listening stations set up that can then triangulate the postion of said cattle, anywhere they might be.

Now, a few years back, a scientist came up with a pair of boots that generated power from you walking in them. Piezioelectric generation, IIRC.

So we have a tracking system, we have power generation, what purpose? Special shoes for kids? We already have all kinds of shoes that light up when you walk, why not a pair that light up a map? It makes tracking the child a little easier, and also for a subtle means of doing so. The device could likely be made into an insole for the shoes, allowing for the

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 13:26:44 GMT

Ars Technica had a great article earlier this week on the future of solar cells. Researchers have found that indium nitride is a far better material for the conversion of light to electrical power than previously thought.

The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectrum of sunlight -- from the near infrared to the far ultraviolet -- to electrical current.
"It's as if nature designed this material on purpose to match the solar spectrum," says MSD's Wladek Walukiewicz, who led the collaborators in making the discovery.
What began as a basic research question points to a potential practical application of great value. For if solar cells can be made with this alloy, they promise to be rugged, relatively inexpensive -- and the most efficient ever created.

This is great news, as it should drive down the cost of manufacturing solar cells as well as increasing the efficency of them at the same time.

Dozens of different layers could be stacked to catch photons at all energies, reaching efficiencies better than 70 percent, but too many problems intervene. When crystal lattices differ too much, for example, strain damages the crystals. The most efficient multijunction solar cell yet made -- 30 percent, out of a possible 50 percent efficiency -- has just two layers.

Hmm, I wonder of the same tech that Foveon is using can help in that situation?

Like Father Like Son

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 02:30:39 GMT

Yesterday was my niece's third birthday party. A good time was had by all, and I got to have a conversation with a guy who now owrks where I last did, doing work more on the opublishing than web side, but in the same department. Small world. Regardless, I also go to spend some time talking to my father, who has been touring the country for the better part of the past two years with my stepmother in their motorhome.

Now, Dad is as much of a geek as I am, and in many ways morso, as he had a GPS system for his laptop long before I did, as well as various pagers and other cool devices. I'm just starting to catch up now. All that said, one of the devices that he wants to get/see made is a digital camera that has a built in GPS system. This will let you take a photo of a national park and when you download it, automatically embed the time, date, and location (either as long/lat deg/min/sec compass heading or as a text string [Yellowstone Park, near Old Faithful]) in the photo. I pointed out how this would work with a bluetooth set of tools on a utility belt, and Dad jus smiled at me and said "Yeah, but I'd rather just have the one tool."

Sometimes simple is best I suppose.

It's late, I'm tired, here's a quickie

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 03:14:50 GMT

Smart Objects. You knew something like this was coming sooner or later. At Comdex next week Microsoft is planning to unveil Smart Objects, a whole line of household items like alarm clocks, kitchen appliances, and stereo equipment that can connect to the Internet. In theory this means alarm clocks that can wake you up earlier if there's particulary bad traffic that morning. Read... [Gizmodo]

Also, this article at Gizmodo talks about what Sony is up to. man, do I ever want to work for them, if only to have first access to the altest and greatest toys and gadgets.

I Swear This Will Make Sense Later

Thu, 07 Nov 2002 11:13:16 GMT

Were I in a business that required a lot of form filling, I think that I would make it a priority to use the Flash Communication Server in tandem with a Tablet PC. This would allow the forms to auto-populate and make it a bit less intimidating to the end user, as they could then simply sign off on a series of documents that you print out at the end of the tranzaction, instead of having to manually fill in every one over and over again.

Quick Thought:

Wed, 06 Nov 2002 12:22:44 GMT

Is anyone out there working on a Voice over IP program for the Palm OS 5.0? I'm not finding anything readily over at Google, and I can't really research this at the moment. Thanks!

Tue, 29 Oct 2002 14:20:13 GMT

Fasten Your Seat Belts.....

I don't have much else to add to this except to echo Ryan's thoughts. Pardon the pun, but this rolls into one "device" much of what I talk about in my presentations - constant information feeds (RSS style), The Heavenly Jukebox, mobile labs (OQO + VKB + roll up monitor), etc.

Notice, though, that Ryan doesn't mention libraries anywhere in his speculations. And why should he? Have we proven ourselves yet that we're ready for this brave new world of digital content, delivery, and preservation? We need to make sure we stay in the dissemination and distribution loop so that we can serve patrons (like Ryan) with these types of devices.

As a whiplash turn to make the point, witness the lack of understanding about the role librarians can and will play in a society drowning in information. Even Tom Peters doesn't get it:

"Round two of the revolution is underway. We have a term for job positions occupied by travel agents, stockbrokers, bank tellers, librarians, receptionists, reservationists, and many customer-service oriented jobs--Toast! Not crunchy, cooked-just-right toast. We are talking about burned to the crisp and then left on the counter for three days toast. The kind of toast that leaves a thin layer of toast sweat on the counter. Toast that’s only palatable if you soak it in milk for an hour, plug your nose and swallow." [People & Places that Rock, link courtesy of Simon Chamberlain]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Hey, I did leave libraries out of that. Libraries are going to be more important than ever, and I can forsee users being able to access them and get information from them without stepping through the doors. How?

Wireless access. I go to the site for my local library, login, and fill in a questionairre about the information that I am looking for. They are probably using a finely tuned Library AIMbot (LAB) for this part of the interview. Once that is complete, I'll start getting basic data fed to my system, most likely a synopsis of the information via a custom RSS feed that the library runs to my account. If I need more information, I can tune the results I want by weighting the articles that I am sent (1-10 scale, 10 being the best).
Walking through the door. I walk in, and get greeted by a live human, or use a research kiosk where I enter keywords and phrases, author names, etc, all in an effort to get as much information as possible. While I should be able to do this from the net as well, the AIMbot insures that I am getting as specific with my search as possible, and actually conducts an interview, as opposed to just googling for results. I can then go and sit down at a display equipped table (which they should all be), and sift through the data, looking through the data and sorting it according it's usefulness to me.
Phone. VoiceML combined with your AIMbot above would make for a wonderful combination, assuming that the system can handle a wide variety of accents and impediments in the users speech. Since you would log on over the phone for any inquiries beyond the basics (Hours, events schedule) the system could then email or again RSS feed you abstracts of your own results. This would be great for people on the go who need to learn about a specific topic quickly.
Scenario: A Real Estate Agent (RA) is in a new town, and wants to check his library to see if there are any EPA superfund sites in the area, or if there has been any heavy industry that may have contaminated the soil.

RA: I need to do some research on Townsville.
LAB: What do you need to know?
RA: Is there any history of contamination, chemical spills, or heavy industry polluting in the area, or any nearby superfund sites?
LAB: Is there a time frame you want me to look within?
RA: Anything at all please.
LAB: Let me check, (Search parameters: Townsville, contamination, superfund, EPA [this gets thrown in because of the context], pollution, chemical spills)
LAB: Looking. (10 second pause)
LAB: Still looking.
RA: Can you email me the results?
LAB: Certainly, please confirm your email address. You are REA@famousagency.com?
RA: Correct.
LAB: I will send you the results within the next hour. Thank you for your patronage!
Lastly, there is the issue of having books available electronically. This is a hot button issue in publishing with authors, publishers, and and users all having differing opinions. I'm not going to get into that here, but I would love to be able to read all the books I own anytime, any where, ina any format I choose. I would love to be able to download books I own to the device of my choice. Lastly, I dream that one day, I will subscribe to a magazine and get a special annual archive edition that has all the articles of the year (as well as some bonus material) in a format that I can store, search, and index locally, obviating the need for me to keep huge stacks of paper. Simply load the contents onto a server in my home, and it gets indexed, noted and kept for as long as I please.

Now, as to Tom Peters, he's out of his head. Librarians play a vital role, as do all of the above people he's mentioned as the front line between users and the information they want. While their postions can be automated, and portions of what they do will likely be automated, there should always be a human on the end of the line for someone to talk to. Computers can't give you a discount of you've been getting horrible service from a company, or make the judgement call to cancel a late fee because your child just broke her arm and you haven't been able to make it into the store to return a film.

It appears that his point is more to the idea that a database can do what humans used to (pushing bits of data about) far more efficiently. But who is going to write that database, and maintain it? A DBA? Which is just basically a librarian who moves bits not books.

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.

Robotic Bloodhounds?

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 11:19:23 GMT

OK. so this thing can follow a marked trail. Pretty cool, but robots have been doing that since the early 80's if not late seventies in home kits. Now imagine if it could follow a trail of say, blood, using this. No more bloodhounds, sure, but an autonomous robot that can see both footprints (via IR) and the blood trail left by a fleeing assailant would be a huge boon for law enforcement.

Lego Segway [Slashdot]

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.

Que Neoesque "Whoaaa. . ."

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 03:39:17 GMT

Boom chacka boom chacka boom. This is some pretty killer stuff. Read on for details, I'll ramble in a minute.

A Different Way Of Looking At Blogs.

On the SIGIA-L mailing list, Peter Van Dijck pointed to something very cool.

"Tanya Pixelcharmer's weblog as viewed through Facetmap: http://facetmap.com/demo/browse.jsp?map=pixelcharmer. Tanya exported her metadata as XFML (http://xfml.org) using a template in Moveabletype, and imported it in facetmap."

I'm still wrapping my mind around this one, but it's an interesting alternative view of a blog. Kind of a cross between liveTopics and Yahoo with more format options.

[The Shifted Librarian]

You want to index your data, fast easy, and make it easy for the automatic indexing of your information: this is the way to go, as the k-log that it generates makes it far easier for other users to search through your archives, in a hierarchical fashion, as well as broken out by topic.

Project documentation is as easy as getting someone to blog it as they go. No more lost phone numbers, vendor names, and you've got all your dates tracked in an easy to use package. Now if you need to know a piece of data, you've got the what/who/where/how, which will bring you to the when through the search function.

Killer.

It's late, I'm tired, and likely will not be back here until sometime in mid november. I'm desperately searching for a job, and am about to start on two opportunities part time, one of which will hopefully pan out. Details later. G'night!

Note To Self

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 03:24:41 GMT

When In Milwaukee, Drink Here.

I Know I'm Obsessed. So What?

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 03:18:27 GMT

Thought for the Day - Use this with the optional camera and firewire attatchments, and this, and you can now archive your daily TV show, or Jackass-like Gonzo program quick and easy, then take the latter to the editing suite (or your laptop) for final production work.

Sick, Busy, and Kicking Some Ideas Around

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 23:08:04 GMT

I'm fighting off another cold (and losing), I have two job related interviews in the next three days, and I've been letting a few things percolate in the old brain-pan in the meantime.

There has been a bunch of news lately, one item of which interests me quite a bit - a crossover that has not yet been considered, I think. Methanol fuel cells just got approved for use in electronics that passengers carry in airplanes. Robots are getting more and more complex all the time, and soon will be at the point where your robot serves as your own personal baggage handler, seeking you out at the baggage claim and towing your gear for you. Path navigation could be as simple as incorporating the AI schemes from existing video games, with some additional real world programming. Have a kiosk at the airports that the robots can slip in and out of in order to refuel, charging the costs to the owners credit cards or providing fuel as a part of lease, similar to the minutes on a cell phone. Go over, pay extra.

Since we don't want the robot to be a single purpose item, it can also serve as a part of your PAN, allowing you to synch all your data in and out of your systems, as well as playing back messages, and shooting video. Imagine a tripod that is programmed not only to follow you, but to make sure that you are in frame as well.

Why limit the market though? Why not sell a basic version of the robot, stripped down for kids, and let users load as much (or as little) onto it as they like? Navigation and path-finding is similar be it in a busy airport or in a school, so why not let one program handle both. Kids are already starting to use rolling backpacks to carry all their school books, so the luggage handling abilities would be welcome here too. The unit could house a cell-phone as well, so that the kids can call in to their parents, or it can alert the police if the kid hits the panic button.

Now you have the must have executive item, something that tracks you and your gear, as well as the kids market. Allow for wireless file sharing, and now you've got a great mobile system that goes with you and hauls all your kit.

Jaw On Floor

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 14:41:42 GMT

This is huge.

Flash Player for Palm.

Phillip Torrone noticed that Sony has listed the Flash 5 Player as software included with their new Clie.
You can visit the Sony site here.
[via FlashEnabled]
[mesh on MX]

While just having a flash player on a Palm device is pretty cool, this is even better, given the wireless capabilities that the PEGNX70V has going for it. Now, I can forsee not only a digital dash, but a first gen personal assistant, living on a server that updates you wirelessly over the network.

While I admit that "Clippy" comes to mind when I think of a personal assistant, I am thinking more along the lines of the Higgins product I keep going on about. So how does Higgins help you while you are on the road? Since you can't get updates, it would work as an overlay to your existing datebook, reading and writing to the data, and synching when you are in range.

Seperately, you could have PC games that allow you to play while away from your machine, as well as playing mini games against others while you are both on your Palms. This is nothing new in terms of gaming, only in terms of platform.

The Music Industry, and Why We Should Sic Washington On Them

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 13:53:17 GMT

Two stories that I find, interesting, to say the least:

Dan Gillmor: "The music industry, denying it's done anything wrong, decided to pay $143 million in cash and contributions to settle a price-fixing suit filed by two states."[ lawrence's notebook, 10/2/2002; 8:22:12 AM.]

MusicDish: "In a shocking statement made by Back Street Boy, Kevin Richardson, he testified that they have never received a royalty check." [ Scripting News, 10/1/2002; 9:00:18 PM.]

Hmmm, so on the one hand, we have price fixing, and on the other, we have artists getting ripped off. Dig into that second story for more of just how the labels have lied to and stolen from their artists, as well as the arcane audit process that is in place. Hey, the IRS seems to have more time on it's hands since it had to go all nice nice a few years back, let's get them to audit the books of the labels. An entertainment tax code, if you will, that labels will have to follow.

A Vision of an Ideal Geek World

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 20:28:33 GMT

Yesterday my wife and I were trying to find a restaurant to go to that we had not yet tried. I brought up Yahoo and looked to see what restaurants were in the are that we were going to be in, as well as to see if they were open, The first restaurant was remodeling and opening tomorrow, the second answered with voice mail, had me press one to make a reservation, and then told me that they didn't take reservations via voice mail.

Silly really.

What I thought as I was heading into the place we finally settled on, was that it would be great of I could synch my Clie with an iCal community that consisted of the entertainment section of my yellow pages, and then use my phone to either IM or email reservations, as well as the tickets to the movie that we watched (The Tuxedo). Lastly, in my ideal little geek world, it would be nice if we could reserve/prepay for the snack,s so that all we would have to do is walk into the theater, get our tickets form the machine (which then prompts the snack bar to make our order), and then proceed to our seats. I was reminded of this by the CNET story below:

Apple releases iSync beta. update The Mac maker's latest "i" application can be used to synchronize contact and calendar data with Palm handhelds, the iPod music player, and a number of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones. [CNET News.com]

Three (OK, Four) Cool Stories

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 13:21:10 GMT

Three cool stories about what I see as converging technologies:

Networked Video gets a Chip. ViXS is ready to deliver its XCode processor for delivering broadcast quality video at a full 30 frames per second over wireless LANs.
Samsung Looks for Middle Ground in Handheld Market. With the size of a PDA but the face of a notebook, Samsung is hoping its new NEXiO will appeal to mobile professionals that want more out of their handheld devices.
[Both from allNetDevices Wireless News, 9/26/2002; 12:43:56 AM.]
Labels shoot selves in foot by focusing on stopping P2P. A new KPMG study concludes that the RIAA and its member companies are hurting themselves by focusing on cracking down on P2P sharing instead of figuring out ways to earn a living with it. Link Discuss (Thanks, Michael!) [ Boing Boing Blog, 9/25/2002; 12:01:23 PM]

So, we are now at a point where your wireless handheld could have an embedded chip that decodes all availalbe MPEG streams, and, should labels wise up, this could be streamed to you wirelessly. Oh, combine this with
Can Libraries Circulate Videos To PDAs Now?.

"Despite the imbalanced nature of several panels, the conference was still well worth attending, with some terrifically sharp questions from the audience and some combative give and take on panels such as the State of the Industry roundtable, where Intertainer CEO Jonathan Taplin said his startup was willing to take on the Hollywood studios in court, after the studios had cut the number of movies available to his company from 1,500 titles to 15. The verbal shot across the bow, as it turned out, was accompanied by court papers, which were being filed the very same moment in federal court, alleging that the studios had violated antitrust laws by forming their own cartel, Movielink. (The San Jose Merc has the story today here.)" [JD's New Media Musings][http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/"> The Shifted Librarian, 9/26/2002; 12:43:51 AM.]

Now we have the opportunity for your local library to stream a file to you, wirelessly, wherever you are in the range of their WiFi network*. Imagine if you could "check out" public domain recordings that are streamed to you, allowing you to listen to music, read books that are from Project Gutenberg, watch movies, or access the internet, all from your home, and all because instead of a library card, you've got a NEXiO that the library lends out to users, allowing them to get all kinds of information that they have on hand.

Instead of giving kids full blown laptops, give them NEXiOs (or OQOs) and then they have something small enough to be carried easily, but so useful that they will not soon forget it. Get the school or library to use a P2P network like a customized version of The Circle for file sharing, or better yet Frontier so that the kids can upload/download their homework, check their grades via a Flash based digital dash, and keep an eye on their schedules (Userland, have you considered this market?) Parents can keep track of their kids performance, as well as keeping an eye on their schedule from wherever they might be.

Now imagine that the library/school/town has an IMbot that retrieves information for you, just the basics for now (Library hours, is a particular title available), but later it could be programmed to do an information request interview (Forgive me Jenny, for forgetting the proper term) to help you get the info you need, either from home, on the road, or via the NEXiO.

So how do labels fit into all of this? They should be using local libraries as a means of distributing music files, either as a donation to the libraries, or by helping to convert their existing music banks to MP3 in order to share the music with local users. By providing the hardware and training to do so, they would then help the communities to get a leg up technology wise, and get some local good will going.

*I've been reading about WiFi networks that are getting a 20km range through a combination of directional antenna arrays and masts. A new use for the town clock tower, water tower, or co-locate with a hidden cellular tower? regardless, this would more than cover most towns, if not some smaller cities.