Tuesday, June 3, 2003

Auto Technology News from Wired News - Driving While Intaxicated. Oregon wants to know more about where people are driving -- a lot more. And it's looking at some high-tech ideas to generate tax revenue by billing drivers for every mile they travel on the state's roads. The Oregon Department of Transportation is evaluating a scheme that uses the global positioning system to keep track of the distance every car travels in order to impose a road-use tax. While the state sees the concept as the perfect replacement for its existing gasoline tax, privacy watchdogs are calling foul play over a plan that turns Big Brother into the ultimate backseat driver. And environmentalists are concerned that the plan reduces the incentive to purchase fuel-efficient vehicles. [ ... ] "This technology has the potential to be incredibly invasive," said "David Sobe"l, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C., watchdog organization. "There are some very serious privacy and constitutional issues that arise when the government requires a technology that tracks where people go." [Privacy Digest] 10:22:46 AM    comment []

I get calls daily on how to deal with Telemarketing callers. Check with your local phone company to see what they have to offer. That in tandem with your state's No Call list (go to google and type in your state name followed by No Call List, to see if your state has one)and this up coming should go a long way to assist in cutting down in the number of calls. FTC Moves up "Do Not Call" List Registration [Slashdot] 10:16:24 AM    comment []

Alfredo Octavio asks "Why would you want to use your laptop standing up?" Some scenarios -- remember, before I came to Microsoft I was a Tablet salesperson, and the group I worked for sold thousands of Tablets: 1) An Indy Car pit crew. The Tablets were used in the pits last week. 2) Lawyers who need to walk around the courtroom and bring their notes over to the jury box. 3) Salespeople who need to make pitches to clients in elevators and other places where there aren't necessarily desks. 4) Teachers/professors. These folks don't do their best job sitting at a desk and stuck in one place. Ever watch Don Box teach? He runs around the audience. Well, OK, he gave a talk in a bathtub once. 5) Newsbabes on TV. You know, the folks who stand in front of a wrecked building reporting the news. No desks there. 6) A factory worker. Ever see how people build cars? They don't sit at a desk. They need to enter data while standing up. 7) A retail salesperson. Imagine a salesperson coming over to you with a Tablet and showing you a wide range of choices of shoes that they don't have space to put on display. 8) Restaurant workers. There's a restaurant in Las Vegas that has tens of thousands of bottles of wine in stock. All displayed on TabletPCs. 9) Hospital workers. Last time I watched a nurse work, she needed to stand up and couldn't stop at a desk to look at and enter information. 10) Digital photographers. I watched a photographer at the World Series do photo editing on a Tablet. Much better than using a mouse. And he didn't need a desk. You got a desk out in center field? I have a lot more too. You want me to continue? [The Scobleizer Weblog] 8:37:42 AM    comment []

Keep in mind, Mickey Williams is a software developer. Tablets just aren't good yet for programmers. At least if you set the argument that tightly. Compilers only understand ASCII. They don't understand ink. So, trying to draw on the screen just wouldn't be an efficient way to program. But, I'm watching programmers at Microsoft figure out Tablets (many of the programmers here have purchased Tablets). I'm getting emails that are done completely in ink. I'm seeing people architect systems in ink and then email the drawings around. That kind of conceptual work is just better to do in ink than when typing. I've seen that using a pen and a tablet is a little nicer in meetings. I sure like taking notes better with a pen than with typing. Why? Because it's hard to show relationships with typing and when you're in a meeting you often want to put things in boxes and connect them graphically. Like a flow chart. Or, someone will draw something on a whiteboard, and I'll want to copy that down. The problem is that most people frame the argument as "tablets will kill keyboards." That simply isn't true. Stop framing the argument that way, and you'll see the value in tablets. Not to mention, I regularly read stuff on my computer while waiting in line. Can you read a weblog on your laptop while standing in line at Starbucks or at the cafeteria? If I spend 10 minutes a day in line, that's quite a bit of time that I get back in my lifetime. Let's say I get paid $40 an hour. That's $6.6 worth of time that I get back every day (not to mention that I can collaborate with people while waiting in line). [The Scobleizer Weblog] 8:35:00 AM    comment []

It is great, clean and easy to use. Now what doesn't work for me is the fact it doesn't have the posting capabilities of NetNewsWire and Brent and I are working on getting that fixed as my current version of NetNewsWire kinda died. NetNewsWire Lite : There are no better RSS news readers around at the moment, and I certainly can't find any faults with NetNewsWire at all. (TopTechTips via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu] 8:27:17 AM    comment []

It had to happen. Following the FCC's near-complete relaxation of media ownership rules, this very blog, among many others, has been sold to FanapCo, the holding company behind Fanatical Apathy. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 8:19:24 AM    comment []