News Cut Category Archive: Tech

Monticello's revenge

Posted at 1:52 PM on October 28, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Monticello, Minnesota is the poster child for what happens when monopolies are in danger of losing their monoplies.

The Web site Ars Technica has the story of TDS Telecommunications' announcement that it will soon provide 50Mbps Internet service over fiber optic cable, becoming one of these cities to have screaming-fast access. The company will also provide a free upgrade for those now on 25 Mbps service and the entire shooting match will go for $49.95.

Writer Nate Anderson has the story behind the story:

But the entire congratulatory press release glosses over a key fact: the reason that Monticello received a fiber network was the town's decision to install a municipal-owned fiber network to every home in town... spawning a set of TDS lawsuits that went all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the town.

The saga began in 2007, when the town passed a referendum approving the city-owned fiber network. The city says that it had approached TDS and was told that no such system would be installed in town in the near future, so it went ahead with its own plans.

After the referendum, the city was sued by the telco just before groundbreaking began. The suit didn't seem to have much of a chance under Minnesota law, and indeed judges at multiple levels ruled for Monticello. But in the meantime, TDS rolled into town with nine crews of its own and began installing--you guessed it--fiber to the home.

Supply your own comparison with the concept of government competing with insurance companies here.

(h/t: Jon Gordon)

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Motorizing your living room furniture

Posted at 9:07 AM on October 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The case of the Duluth man who drove his motorized La Z Boy drunk is getting plenty of attention today. Let's face it: Most of the buzz -- no pun intended -- is because he slapped a motor on some furniture.

He's not the first Minnesotan to do this.

A couple of other Minnesotans gained some fame in aviation circles years ago for a motorized couch. It was profiled in a 2006 article:

The couch is powered by a six-horsepower Tecumseh engine. Mounted on a custom steel frame, it runs up to 45 mph. A motorcycle throttle and brake lever control the speed; the same bar moves up and down to control the turns. Just like a 747 tiller, I'm told.

It has off-road tires, replaced after breaking the originals from too-fast cornering, and they've been driving the heck out of it.

Clay Adams owns it. Clay is better known as owner of a gorgeous Travel Aire in the American Barnstormers Tour. Clay lent the couch to his friend, Stein Bruch, president of SteinAir, an avionics dealer and instrument panel manufacturer near Minneapolis.

Besides being the proud owner of the Travel Aire and the sofa, he also owns a motorized Lazy Boy, and a Weedwacker Margarita Maker, said Bruch. "Plus a whole lot of other crazy stuff," he added.

Looking like something out of a cartoon, the davenport gets a lot of attention as it motors through the grass. People smile and wave.

I am trying to get an update status on the couch today. I'd heard it met an untimely demise when it crashed into the side of a hangar. The driver was sober at the time.

Want to build a motorized couch? Here's how. Inspiration can be found here.

Every Man's Dream - Katie Collins Reporting - The funniest videos clips are here

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Denying service

Posted at 1:31 PM on August 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Embed | Help

Copy and paste the HTML below to embed this audio onto your web page.

Audio player code:
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We're at Defcon 1

Posted at 11:12 AM on August 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Twitter and Facebook are under attack today.

CNET reports:

Way back when, Twitter outages were so commonplace that it was worth reporting when it didn't crash--as when it stayed afloat during the entire South by Southwest Interactive Festival in 2008. Now, a few million dollars of venture capital later, the service is far more stable.

Twitter wants to establish itself as a communications standard rather than just a social-media brand. It's been a crucial platform for information exchange in the face of global events where more traditional means of broadcasting have been inaccessible or blocked.

Some features of Facebook were also experiencing uptime issues on Thursday--one reader speculated that log-in servers may have been down--which raises the issue of whether a hosting company problem is to blame. Alternately, a denial-of-service attack could have been targeting both high-profile companies.

Facebook is "looking into" the outages, spokeswoman Brandee Barker said in an e-mail.

In the big scheme of thing, perhaps, it's not that big of a deal. After all, I'll live if I don't know you're having ham-and-cheese for lunch.

Earlier this week, some popular sites were also under attack.

Last month, AT&T's network was also attacked.

But coming on the heels of a denial-of-service attack, allegedly by North Korea, a month ago, we might be missing the big picture here. Yes, we're dependent on social media for, possibly, a bigger part of our day than it should occupy. But we're dependent on the Internet and its infrastructure for far more important things, too.

Is it up to the task? Are the same people responsible? Is this the start of something bigger?

Why feds can't stop cyberattacks, on FederalTimes.com was a sobering read.

"For the most part, a more modern infrastructure is an almost complete protection against these attacks," said Mark Pietrasanta, the chief technology officer at Aquilent, a Maryland-based IT firm that does Web development for numerous federal agencies. "And we know a couple of the agencies [that were affected] do not have real modern infrastructure for their Web sites. It's analogous to running a Web site on a computer under someone's desk."

Maybe it's time to push the cybersecurity issue up a bit higher than, say, color-coded threat charts.

I'm having soup for lunch, by the way.

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Is it possible to disconnect?

Posted at 11:57 AM on July 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Are you a more productive person than, say, 10 years ago?

The question comes in a blog post today by Mark Lewis, president of EMC Corporation, who went "off the grid" recently. Apparently he's plugged in, again:

... is all of this connectivity actually making us more productive, more innovatiove, or even making our lives that much better? Or is Facebook just the "CB Radio" of the decade (the under 40 set might even have to look that one up, or shall I say, "Google it"?). There is no doubt that staying connected with friends is fun and staying connected with work has become almost required in most organizations, but the question remains, are we any more innovative or productive?

I've heard about people who disconnect from the connected universe -- if only for a week's vacation -- but I've never met any of them, especially in the mirror.

Blame the recession, a University of North Carolina professor says. We're afraid of being left out or left behind:

"Once people know you're behaving this way, businesses expect you to be at their beck and call, so vacations become hard," said Gary Marchionini of UNC Chapel Hill's school of information and library science.

People stay connected to the office while on vacation partly because they're expected to, but also because they feel guilty and fear a backlash if they don't, said Marchionini

We don't even know if it's possible to disconnect anymore, though Salon.com's David Sirota is giving it a try.

Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. It's that urge to answer your cellphone in the middle of a family dinner, that impulse to check your e-mail before going to bed, knowing your boss expects you to. It's the urge to text message a business colleague while driving -- a problem so prevalent and dangerous that state legislatures are outlawing such behavior. And it's that reaction you get when telling people you don't have a Facebook page or a BlackBerry -- that disgustedly stunned look as if you said your name is Fred Flintstone. The expectation is that you are -- and must be -- on the grid at all times.

Technological connectivity is traveling a path previously trampled by human noise.

Utne Reader had a piece a few months ago about the search for places where there is no human sound.

It's not easy to find silence in the modern world. If a quiet place is one where you can listen for 15 minutes in daylight hours without hearing a human-created sound, there are no quiet places left in Europe. There are none east of the Mississippi River. And in the American West? Maybe 12. One of them is in the temperate rainforest along the Hoh River in Olympic National Park.

Have you tried disconnecting? How'd that work for you? Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to "connectivity"? Can you leave work behind and still have a job? Share your stories.

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Minnesota broadband

Posted at 1:16 PM on June 8, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

This map, showing the availability of broadband in Minnesota, is one of a handful of broadband maps that will be used to figure out how to spend $7 billion in stimulus funds nationwide to improve broadband Internet service. (More maps can be found here)

With so much money at stake, some states are battling over the maps, contending the firm that produced them -- Connected Nation, Inc. -- is overestimating the availability of broadband in some states and has ties that are too close to the telecommunications companies, according to an article last week in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Some cable companies worry the stimulus money will be used for municipal broadband systems that will compete with them.

Diane Wells, the manager of the telecommunications division for the Minnesota Department of Commerce, stood by the integrity of the mapping process in a post on the Connect Nation blog.

" As [the Federal Government] develop[s] a plan for mapping broadband availability across the United States, we invite and encourage you to look closely at Minnesota's broadband mapping process. We believe you will find an excellent model for mapping broadband availability in such a way that is transparent, verifiable, continuously updated, and perhaps most importantly, practical and valuable for identifying those unserved and underserved areas of Minnesota," she said.

One upshot of the maps:There's more broadband coverage in Minnesota than I would have imagined. But the map looks different when it's broken down by download speed:

Shades of yellow and green represents download speeds beween 200 kilobytes per second (light yellow) and 6 megabytes per second (green), which isn't much.

Meanwhile, the group Free Press today asked the Federal Communications Commission to increase the amount of competition among broadband providers, suggesting the government should "move past availability" and look instead at speeds that "are too slow and prices that are too high."

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Fade to black

Posted at 7:46 PM on June 7, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

We're just a few days away from the end of analog TV broadcasts or the arrival of the analog TV doorstop, depending on your point of view.

There aren't that many Minnesota households that get over-the-air TV -- about 350,000 or 17 percent of the households. People who subscribe to cable or satellite don't have to do much. Everyone else had to buy converter boxes (or new TVs).

As of last week, Minnesotans had requested 1,314,770 coupons from the federal government for discounts on the converter boxes. Only 763,814 had been redeemed. The possibilities are endless with the math: People ordered coupons when they didn't need them, or people are delaying buying the converter boxes, or people are cutting down on the number of TVs in the house. The coupons redeemed so far suggest two TVs per over-the-air household. Perhaps they decided they didn't really need a TV in the linen closet.

But more than 10 percent of the homes in the nation that rely on an over-the-air signal, will stare at black screens come Friday, officials say. In one area of West Virginia, it's a big enough problem that firefighters are pitching in.

Here's a page of resources for the conversion. Let us know how it goes for you.

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The power of Google

Posted at 11:40 AM on May 14, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Is Google too big not to make us fail?

Although the Internet, what with all of its tubes and all, is a huge and diverse place, Google has its tentacles in much of it and when things aren't going right at Google, they're not going well on the Internet. Today, there was a good example of how Google has become the Internet.

An outage of more than three hours brought many sites down this morning. "The Internet dies without Google. Can't get to my bank Web site because it's waiting on google-analytics.com.' This is made of lame," said Twitter user Tadiera, reported on CNet.

"Typically, these outages have never lasted for long, but once again, this outage shows how depended we have become on Google for so many of our daily tasks," says the blog ReadWriteWeb in a post, "The Day Google Stood Still."

Coincidentally, the display of technological vulnerability came at the same time the Minnesota House was debating election reforms and discussing whether voting online is safe.

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A forced relationship with Apple?

Posted at 2:53 PM on May 13, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The Wall St. Journal has picked up on what appears to be a growing controversy: Colleges requiring students to own iPhones and iPods. At least one college in St. Paul is requiring it so that students can download lectures. Notetaking is so old-school.

The purchase was -- is -- to be covered by financial aid. But in Missouri, it's rubbing some of the kids the wrong way, according to a WSJ blog :

But some students felt that they were being cajoled by the school into "an unnecessary and expensive relationship with Apple" that "comprises journalistic integrity," according to a Facebook group called "Rotten Apple" that was launched by student Elizabeth Eberlin. At the time this story was written, only 37 students had joined, and after the administration clarified that Apple products weren't actually required, she backpedaled, writing, "I was just worried that students were being forced into a brand, that no matter what percent of the market it really is, is not a good fit for everyone, especially those who are low income but have no subsidies."

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Fakes on Facebook

Posted at 3:50 PM on April 10, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Alas, my term filling in for Jon Gordon on Facebook is over, otherwise I'd have to delve into this a little bit more.

In advance of the NFL draft, teams are creating "fake" Facebook accounts to try to get their potential draftees to "friend" them, thus allowing the potential employer to take a look at what's on their Facebook page.

"It works like magic," said a personnel source that was familiar with his team's tactic of using counterfeit profiles to link to Facebook and Myspace pages of potential draft picks. The source directed Yahoo! Sports to one of the team's "ghost profiles" - a term he coined because "once the draft is over, they disappear. It's like they were never there."

(h/t: Chris Dall)

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Deep tech thoughts

Posted at 10:59 AM on April 6, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

As I indicated earlier, I'm filling in for Jon Gordon this week on Future Tense. So I'm thinking deep tech thoughts, which gets more and more difficult with every birthday. Seriously, am I really supposed to be excited about Nintendo DSi? The cool kids are, I hear. Then there's Google Voice, and all things Twitter, which the media -- bowing -- is overdosing on just to prove it's a "cool kid," even though we all know it's not.

Whenever Jon is away and I start jumping back into the tech life, I'm drawn back to 1984. The scene: The newsroom at the RKO Radio Network in New York. Anchor Jim Cameron is muttering something about the incredible power of his new 1200 baud modem. It makes patrolling CompuServe so much faster.

What's new and what's hot is often new and hot for a short period of time. The things that are going to change the world with their potential, often don't.

Yesterday's AOL instant messenger is today's Twitter, which is tomorrow's... well, who knows? Ten years from now, maybe it will be as archaic as the 1200 baud modem. Maybe not.

Which technology is most likely to fulfill its promise? And which is a solution in search of a problem?

(h/t: Cyberjournalist.net)

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Facebook's flood fighters

Posted at 10:59 AM on March 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Disasters, Floods, Tech

The coming flood in the Fargo-Moorhead area has already been a test of social networking sites in an emergency. So far, the sites have passed with flying colors.
Photographer Kevin Tobosa, who lives in South Fargo, has helped organize volunteers to fill and move sandbags, and hit paydirt with Facebook, organizing the Fargo-Moorhead Flood Volunteer Network.

"I got an e-mail last Thursday with a call for volunteers. It just kind of hit me that we can really get the word out quickly... to a lot of people in real time using a social network like Facebook. We also have a Twitter account set up. People have this up and running at work, at home, going to their cellphones. E-mail seemed a lot slower, which is funny since it's always been known as a fast method to communicate," he told me today.

Tobosa says when he told Fargo's volunteer coordinator about his idea, "she thought maybe we could get about 50 volunteers and they'd mostly be young people." Tobosa set up the Facebook group on Thursday, sending out 100 "invites" to his network (he runs his photography business via Facebook.)

"Within 24 hours, we'd broken 1,000 (group members), within 48 hours we'd broken 2,000 and today we're at 3,000 people who are receiving our updates as they need volunteers," he said. "When we do put out a call for volunteers, we get that push, and now they're using that as their primary push and the press releases follow shortly thereafter. Just from the messages we've received via Facebook, people are thanking us for organizing it. A lot of people are out on spring break and hadn't realized how serious it is. People don't read the news when they're on vacation, but they are checking their Facebook and Twitter accounts, so that was a significant communication breakthrough."

Over the next week, Tobosa does not intend to change the purpose of his Facebook/Twitter efforts to a full-blown news-reporting effort. "The intent of this was never as a news outlet; there are a lot of news organizations that are already covering that. They have blogs on their sites. It was simply to be a voice for first-link volunteer coordination, to tell people where they were needed and what their urgencies are."

Tobosa has spent lots of time at "Sandbag University, in Moorhead and Fargo, locations where volunteers are filling and moving sandbags. "It's hard work. It's certainly back-breaking work, but there are a lot of people doing it," he said.

After our interview, he headed out to a dike being built a block from his house, which survived the '97 flood, but is on "the bubble" for the flood which is expected to crest Thursday or Friday.

Listen to the entire interview with Kevin Tobasa. Listen

(I'm heading to West Central Minnesota today. If you're in the area, please let me know.)

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The death switch

Posted at 5:01 PM on March 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

If you die, how will your online friends know?

Many of you have "the envelope" tucked away in a desk somewhere. Scrawled on the front is something like, "do not open this until I'm dead." Maybe inside you've got the important stuff -- insurance papers or the locations of key documents. More often than not, the first time a family knows the envelope exists, is when they stumble across it years later while looking for a paper clip.

With more of our lives being spent online, who will know when you're gone? What will happen to all that stuff locked behind passwords only you know? What if there's stuff online that your survivors need to know that you never got around to telling them?

Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist David Eagleman has set up the online version of the envelope called Deathswitch.

Here's how it works: You sign up for this and configure it the way you want. It sends you an e-mail however often you want to be "pinged," so that the Deathswitch can make sure you're still kicking. If you don't respond, it goes into "worry mode," and eventually, if you don't respond, it announces to the online world that, yes, you've gone toes up.

Here's an extended version of the Future Tense interview I did with Dr. Eagleman, who, incidentally, is also a writer of fiction. His first book is "Sum: Forty tales from the afterlife."

Listen

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Weapons of mass mosquito destruction.

Posted at 5:54 PM on March 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Tech

Here's another bonus, courtesy of my fill-in work this week on Future Tense:

Picture this: Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are heading toward a village. A drone aircraft, armed with a laser weapon, blankets the village, killing the mosquitoes, sparing everything -- and everyone -- else.

Astrophysicist Jordin Kare has spent his career doing things many people consider far fetched. He hunted for supernova explosions with an automated telescope, and designed interstellar propulsion systems. Now, he and astrophysicist Lowell Wood -- they also worked on President Reagan's Star Wars initiative -- are working on building the laser weapon the mosquitoes.

Life imitates art. It was just a few years ago when this spoof went viral:

But this is no joke. It's serious business with serious Bill Gates-like money behind it.

I know what you're thinking. "Give me one of those babies and a warm summer night." And while it's true that Jordin Kare says he wouldn't mind seeing his project be used for that, it's not the priority.

Here's an extended interview with Jordin Kare. Listen

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A plug for productivity

Posted at 6:27 PM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

I'm balancing filling in for Jon Gordon on Future Tense with the crushing burden and awesome responsibility of News Cut this week.

For tomorrow's (Wednesday) show, I interviewed a professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, who has developed a system that my makes my cubicle neighbors weep, but appears to put a glint in the eyes of the bosses.

While you're reading this entry, the chances are pretty good that you'll get some e-mail. You'll stop what you're doing and read it, and it probably won't be all that important. That's the problem. Every time you get some e-mail, you drop what you're doing to read it.

Ashish Gupta, an operations management professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, along with his colleague Ramesh Sharda at Oklahoma State University, has developed a computer model -- called SIMONE -- that allows your organization to release e-mail to you in batches, and you wouldn't miss the important ones -- the ones that are important for you to do your job.

It can be configured to allow messages from your boss to zip through. Through the use of keywords, other important e-mail can get through. But the e-mail that isn't critical to your job, wastes up to 30 minutes of your time each day, compared to a structured four-times-a-day release of e-mail to you, according to Gupta.

Some of this you can already test. Just set your e-mail client to check for new mail every two or three hours instead of shooting it to you instantly. But would you want that? Do you hang on every e-mail? Does it interrupt your day and if it does, how much of it has anything to do with your work?

Here's an extended interview with Professor Gupta. Listen

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Wikileaks banned

Posted at 10:05 AM on March 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The Web site that published the database of Norm Coleman's campaign contributors has been banned in Australia.

Australia's Communications and Media Authority added the site on its blacklist for leaking a list of Web sites that have been banned in Denmark. "It comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The will be blocked for everyone in Australia if the federal government there implements a planed Internet filter.

Unclear in all of this is what the overriding interest is in the Australian government over what people in Denmark can or can't see in their country.

Wikileaks was created by an Australian and more than 100 Australians reportedly work on the site.

(h/t: News Cut reader Kyle)

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The Twitter experience

Posted at 8:25 PM on March 16, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Tech

On Monday, John Moe, doing a great job filling in on MPR's Midmorning, jumped into the mainstream media hot tub with Twitter. There's only been about 100 stories about Facebook and Twitter in the Twin Cities in the last week,so while I enjoyed the show, I declared myself a conscientious objector to any more infatuation with Twitter.

But that's before I saw the blog, New Media Chatter, in which a guy stranded at an airport, issues a call for help to the airline that stranded him.

It's a good lesson about what Twitter is and what it isn't where business is concerned. Twitter won't rescue you if you have lousy customer service, so there's no reason to use it just so you can say you're one of the cool kids now. If you have poor customer service without the latest gadget, you'll probably have poor customer service with it.

The guy's airline never helped him, so he issued a call -- via Twitter -- to see if Southwest Airlines could help him. In the end, it couldn't, but it tried; it tried a lot.

The message from all of this? The blogger says:

(Twitter) is not about posting links all the time, cool videos or such. It is about dealing with your customer and creating positive brand awareness at that moment. If you are a company, you see an unhappy customer out there, you need to move quick and communicate! @JetBlue could of said "got your tweet, will follow up soon" something to let me know they were working on it. Something..just let me know you have not forgot about me. Cause if you do not your competition will do this:

My take-away? People are getting hung up on Twitter and missing the more basic picture.

How do we get this deep into a recession and how do some companies still not understand that just showing the customer you care about them doesn't cost you a dime, and probably will keep you in business? You can't lay off people fast enough to offset the lost business from poor customer service.

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No Wonder

Posted at 9:20 PM on February 26, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

TPT, the local PBS affiliate, heavily promoted the White House honors for Stevie Wonder. For many in the Twin Cities, though, they needn't have bothered; audio problems made the program unwatchable.

It's still unclear what the problem was, since viewers in other parts of the country reported no similar problems.

In the Twin Cities, however, some viewers couldn't hear any of the audio from singers or comments by Michele Obama.

"My parents called me to ask about the audio. MTS multi-track sound button fixed it for me. WCCO's CSI also had similar problem," one acquaintance on Twitter told me.

Perhaps this is fallout from the digital conversion. Perhaps we've entered an era where some older TVs aren't compatible, despite assurances to the contrary. Or perhaps TPT just messed up. Or it was the cable company or satellite service (so far, people with problems have been Dish Network and Comcast subscribers). We don't know. A call to TPT's offices only yielded a taped message that because of the snowstorm, the offices were closed.

We'll try to follow up on this (I'm off Friday, but will try to check) after sunrise.

Here's some terrific pictures from the White House on the event.
(Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty Images)

Updated 11:15 a.m. -- Through the kindness and connections of Twitter, it's been relayed to us that an audio processor failed.

Updated 5:53 p.m. 2/27 - Email from TPT

We sincerely apologize for this problem and would like to explain how it occurred. Recently we installed a new piece of equipment in order to alleviate some audio fluctuations. Unfortunately this new equipment failed and our engineers worked throughout the program to try and restore sound, but were unable to do so. We were also not able to insert a "crawl" to alert our viewers to this issue because we do not currently have the equipment to insert this bit of information while a program is in progress. This equipment is on our list to purchase as soon as funds become available.

We apologize for the late response, but we have been checking into the broadcast rights of this program. We have determined we will be able to air it again in the near future, but do not have rights to do so until after our March pledge drive which begins this evening. We will inform you via email when we have a specific broadcast date and time for this program. We appreciate your patience and, again, apologize for any inconvenience.

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DTV assistance

Posted at 11:17 AM on January 13, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Tech

I wrote last month about an initiative to provide assistance to low-income people for converting their analog TVs to ones capable of receiving digital transmission signals. At the time, the people putting the effort together, could not say where in the Twin Cities (One of seven cities in the country targeted) such people could get help.

Now they have:

Lao Assistance Center
503 Irving Avenue North, Suite 100A
Minneapolis, MN 55405
(612) 374-4967

Main Street Project
2104 Stevens Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55405
(612) 879-7578

The official opening is tomorrow afternoon. It's a bit of a pity a center couldn't have been opened in St. Paul.

Coincidentally, I got my "coupons" for discounts on converter boxes yesterday. They're not really coupons at all, actually. They're ATM style cards. Initially, I ordered the cards because I've been thinking about getting rid of Dish Network and going back to the old days of sticking an antenna on the roof, and pocketing the cash I'd save.

Instead, however, I'm going to donate them to people who need help and for whom TV is important.

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A time to Tweet

Posted at 12:19 PM on December 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Mike Wilson of Denver is something of a media star today, mostly because when his jet skidded off a runway and into a ravine, and burst into flames in Denver, he thought it would be a good time to send a note to his Twitter followers (language warning). Twitter, the microblogging social network ummmm... thing ... has gotten plenty of props recently because of its ability to keep people informed with short microbursts of information from people living the news (in this case). And today there are plenty of stories around about how valuable Twitter has become in this regard.

But, still, it raises a somewhat minor question of whether our social networking capabilites are separating us from real life just a bit.

To everything there is a season. A time to be born; a time to die. A time to weep; a time to laugh. A time to tweet; a time to get the heck off a burning jet.

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Who do you trust?

Posted at 8:12 AM on December 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Of all the people and firms you do business with, who do you trust the most?

Nationwide, American Express tops the survey (again), followed by eBay (really?), IBM, Amazon, and Johnson & Johnson.

Google has dropped off the list entirely because of concerns that all of the personal information you willingly -- or not -- give to the data giant isn't secured properly.

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Is the Internet all it's cracked up to be?

Posted at 2:14 PM on December 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The Pew Center has released its third in its series of reports on the future of the Internet. Its executive summary's opening paragraph is riveting in itself.

A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major technology advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.

They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

OK, I'll bite. When and how has the Internet ever led to more social tolerance, forgiving human relations, or better home lives?

Where do you think the Internet is heading and how is your life enriched by it -- if at all? How much has constant connectivity changed your life and relationships?

Here's the full report.

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DTV

Posted at 12:00 PM on December 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

I'm listening in to a conference call at the moment announcing the opening of DTV assistance centers. It's the first time I've heard race raised as an issue in the conversion of television from analog to digital signals. But the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund has identified Minneapolis-St. Paul as one market where the communities of color, low-income workers, and the elderly are in danger of losing their TV.

The local TV stations are doing their part to alert viewers that the switch-over to digital transmission is coming and they better do something about it, while assuring people if they've got cable or satellite, they don't have to do anything about it. KARE has recently cut its analog transmitting power by half, amid rumors that its newscasts now only feature only one anchor, only half of sports scores are now given, and the weather map no longer shows the entire western half of the United States.

There are some positive aspects of the end of analog signals. For one thing, Jon Gordon reported on Future Tense, it makes earth a "quieter place," and -- potentially could keep aliens from finding us.

Let's hear what the conference call has to say. Hosting are: Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Meredith Baker, acting administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an office of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which has partnered with LCCREF on the DTV Assistance Centers; and Anni Chung, president and CEO of Self Help for the Elderly, a San Francisco, CA group that will be operating a DTV Assistance Center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Live-blogging:

12:04 p.m. Henderson is providing background most of us already know. He says the shift is different than the switch from black-and-white to color. "At least then, if you didn't have a color TV, you didn't lose the signal."

12:10 p.m. -- Baker says 40 million coupons for converter boxes have been distributed to 11 million households. The average home has four TVs? (update 1:13 p.m. - I went back and listened again. 40 million coupons have been distributed to over 21 million households. 11 million of them say they actually needed the coupons.)

12:11 p.m. - If you haven't applied for a coupon yet, you're running out of time. Baker says it'll take 6 weeks to complete the process. She says she's asking state broadcaster associations to make donated converter boxes available for the elderly and low income. She also is asking people to help out the elderly by picking up the coupons and converter boxes for them -- sort of a Converter Boxes on Wheels program.

12:17 p.m. - Filling out a page to request a coupon. I have satellite TV so I don't really need one, but maybe some old person near me will need it on February 17.

Questions and Answers

Q:Who are you partnering with?

They're still trying to find partners in each city (including the Twin Cities) that work with people of color, low-income, and elderly.

Q: How many people have done what they're supposed to to TVs.

Consumer "awareness" of DTV conversion is 90 percent. But that percentage has not led to 90% action.

Q: Where is the funding for this coming from?

A: The money originates from the DTV Transition Act. We reserved up to $4.5 million for this.

Q: Some people in Detroit say stores are telling them their coupons have expired. People were advised to get their coupons early. They did but went to the stores and there were no converter boxes. So people through no fault of their own have worthless coupons. Why are there expiration dates on these. (Here's a Detroit Free Press story on this)

A: Congress mandated that the program start in January. Retailers couldn't update their software during the holiday season. We monitored product shortages and we've addressed it. It's important in our tracking to have a 90 day expiration.

(The reporter here is really pushing the person in charge here. "You mean we can have a charity drive to give our coupons to other people?" )

Q: Are your centers going to just tell people with expired coupons to "go home and find a friend or neighbor who has a coupon."

A: Chung says some people living in apartment buildings couldn't get coupons because they shared the same address with someone who already got them. So she helped set up a drive in San Francisco to get people to donate converter boxes to give to people who had expired coupons.

Q: How many assistance centers will there be?
A: Seven cities, including Minneapolis-St. Paul, will have assistance centers.

Q: Do you know how many people these assistance centers are targeted to reach?

A: No.

Q: When will you provide people with the location of these assistance centers?

A: We hope to finalize the partnerships soon. People can check our Web site at http://civilrights.org/dtv . We hope to have them set up by early January.

They wrapped up the conference call before they could take my question, which was: If people are being advised to request their coupons by the end of December, what good is an assistance center that won't be set up until January?

Update 1:42 p.m. One Minnesota community is among the lowest-participating communities in the DTV converter box coupon program. In Mankato, 3,513 households requested the coupons. That's an estimated 54% of over-the-air households in Mankato. About a quarter-million Minneapolis-St. Paul households have requested the coupon -- a 61% participation rate. Duluth (75%) has one of the highest participation rates. For what it's worth, three of the four worst participation rates are in Alaska . See the report.

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News Cut: Evening Brief

Posted at 6:30 PM on November 18, 2008 by Steve Mullis (0 Comments)
Filed under: News, Tech, Things that are puzzling

Another evening round-up of news and bits that might have fallen through the cracks or that you might have missed during your busy 9-to-5 day:

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Codeweavers promotion crashes site

Posted at 5:05 PM on October 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

I wrote yesterday about the promotion from St. Paul-based Codeweavers to give away their software free today. It allows Linux and Mac users to run Windows on their machines. The promotion got away from the firm, though, and the server crashed at one point:

A revised home page replaced the Web site at mid-afternoon, however, and the company was back in the free-software business. By late afternoon, according to the CEO Jeremy White, about a half million users had flooded the company's site.

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Free software

Posted at 11:55 AM on October 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

I'm not much of a software geek and I don't own a MAC, but I'll pass this along anyway. A press release in the inbox today from codeweavers.com says the St. Paul company is giving away online versions of its software tomorrow. The software allows Windows apps to run on MAC OS X machines.

The release is pegged to a promise to allow the free downloads if gas fell below $2.80 a gallon, which seemed like an impossibility a few months ago.

A few of my software-literate friends (via Twitter, the terrorist tool) says it's more publicity stunt than useful information.

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Is Twitter a terrorist tool?

Posted at 8:48 PM on October 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Monday's Future Tense (already recorded) was the last one on which I get to fill in for Jon Gordon. Too bad, because the U.S. Army's assertion that Twitter, the social networking/microblogging/instant messaging service, poses a threat as a terrorist tool is worth exploring.

"Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.

Vegetarians? Are they on a watch list now?

GPS cellphone service was also highlighted as a potential threat.

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The price of progress

Posted at 12:08 PM on October 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Here's a subject affecting millions of Americans that will never come up in tonight's presidential debate: the cost and availability of high-speed telecommunications in the home.

Late on Tuesday, Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin proposed a change in the "intercarrier compensation" system, which is telecom carriers figure out how much to pay each other for using each other's networks. It uses the "universal service fund," which -- back in the days when AT&T was broken up -- wasn't much of a big deal at $1 a month. Now it's up $6.50 and Martin proposes it be raised to $8.50.

Part of Martin's plan is to encourage rural carries to provide broadband service to rural America. The Associated Press story cited above says only about 10-percent of America doesn't have access to high-speed service. Others, says there's no real way to know, because the FCC has been adamant about not collecting the data that would tell them.

Says Scot Bradner of Network World:

The law also requires that the FCC figure out how U.S. broadband deployment compares with that in other countries in a systematic, apples-to-apples way. The results of this study will be useful at least to the degree that they may devolve a consistent agreement as to where this country sits. I've seen rankings that vary between No. 8 and 20 in the world -- the number seems to heavily depend on the goals of the person.

Today, a story in a Muskegon, Michigan newspaper chronicles a typical effort to bring the Internet to a rural area: Long delays, poor service when there is some, and a price higher than imagined.

Even for people in metropolitan communities, and especially in a crumbling economy, the promise of high-speed Internet fades with rapidly escalating monthly costs of being connected.

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Spam crackdown

Posted at 11:32 AM on October 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Who says there's no good news anymore?

Federal authorities in Chicago say they've shut down one of the largest spam e-mail operations in the world. They promise details later today.

This could be bad news, however, for deposed Nigerian dictators, dogs with claws that need clipping or men who, well, you know.

Updates to come. Let me know if you notice any reduction in the amount of spam you receive today.

Symantec's State of Spam report says 78% of the world's e-mail is spam. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest you can't beat spammers.

Update 12:34 p.m. - Here's the FTC's news release.

One product called "VPXL" was touted as an herbal male-enhancement pill. Advertised as "100% herbal and safe," it supposedly caused a permanent increase in the size of a user's penis. The agency alleged that not only did the pills not work, but they were neither "100% herbal" nor "safe," because they contained sildenafil - the active ingredient in Viagra. At the FTC's request, the pills were tested by the FDA. According to medical experts, men taking nitrate-containing drugs - which are commonly prescribed to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease - can experience an unsafe drop in their blood pressure when they also take sildenafil.

The defendants also used spam e-mail to sell prescription drugs. They claimed that the medications came from a bona fide, U.S.-licensed pharmacy that dispenses FDA-approved generic versions of drugs such as Levitra, Avodart, Cialis, Propecia, Viagra, Lipitor, Celebrex, and Zoloft. In fact, the defendants do not operate a U.S.-licensed pharmacy. They sell drugs that are shipped from India. The drugs have not been approved by the FDA and are potentially unsafe. FTC staff made two undercover pharmacy purchases and were not asked to provide verification of a prescription. The drugs they received contained no dosage information or doctor's instructions.

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Web sites crash for most reps who voted 'no'

Posted at 3:57 PM on September 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

As of 4:06 p.m. the Web sites for most Minnesota representatives who voted 'no' on the bailout bill aren't working. The ones for those who voted 'yes' are.

Is it directly related to the bailout bill, which failed today? The main House Web site has crashed.

"We haven't seen this much demand since the 9-11 commission report" was posted on the site in 2004, said Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the House Chief Administrative Officer. "We're being overwhelmed with Web traffic about the bill."

Among the "no" voters, Rep. Tim Walz' page and Collin Peterson's page loads a blank page. Rep. Jim Ramstad's site connects but doesn't load a full page. But Rep. Michele Bachmann's page is working.

Among those voting "yes," the Web sites of Rep. John Kline, Rep. Betty McCollum, Rep. Jim Oberstar, and Rep. Keith Ellison are all working.

Ventura told the Associated Press the Web sites are working, but many computer users
are getting the equivalent of a busy signal when they try to visit the site. Once users are on the site, it works at reduced speed.

Still, it would appear many more people are interested in contacting the "no" reps, than the "yes" reps.

(h/t: Willie Vogt)

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State of the blogosphere

Posted at 4:37 PM on September 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Technorati is releasing "The State of the Blogosphere" in five installments this week. That's how big the blogosphere is: The State of the Union can be summed up in 39 minutes. For the state of blogs... five days. There's an obvious joke there if you'd care to make it.

Among the key findings: There's a distinct difference between bloggers in the U.S. and overseas. Fifty-seven percent of the U.S. bloggers here are male, while 73% of overseas bloggers are male.

The majority of bloggers are 35 or over. Only 26% are single, and just over half are employed full-time.

Personal bloggers, however, tend to be male, between 18 and 34, and earn less than $75.000 a year.

Tomorrow the State of the blogosphere will look at the "hows and whys of blogging."

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The end of lying as we know it

Posted at 12:12 PM on September 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Tech

India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question, reports the New York Times.

Psychologists and neuroscientists in the United States, which has been at the forefront of brain-based lie detection, variously called India's application of the technology to legal cases "fascinating," "ridiculous," "chilling" and "unconscionable."

It's a short distance between "intriguing" and "creepy."

Take the Army's mind control project, which also uses the power of an electroencephalogram...

... improvements in computing power and a better understanding of how the brain works have scientists busy hunting for the distinctive neural fingerprints that flash through a brain when a person is talking to himself. The Army's initial goal is to capture those brain waves with incredibly sophisticated software that then translates the waves into audible radio messages for other troops in the field. "It'd be radio without a microphone, " says Dr. Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program. "Because soldiers are already trained to talk in clean, clear and formulaic ways, it would be a very small step to have them think that way."

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The Large Hadron Collider: Huh?

Posted at 11:07 AM on September 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Don't let the high falutin' physicists kid you. The real job of the Large Hadron Collider is to make a large number of people (including me) feel especially stupid.

Mission accomplished. Good job, professor.

The LHC is supposed to reveal the secrets of the universe, but when it finds them, how are we going to know? The people who are in charge of this thing are smart, too smart for mere mortals, and they speak a different language.

Take, for example, this paragraph from the Salt Lake Tribune today:

Paolo Gondolo, an associate professor of physics at the U., looks forward to the research on "super symmetry" - a theory that each particle has a superpartner, which could lead to a better understanding of dark matter, which pervades the universe and is still a mystery to physicists.

Mystery? You want mystery? Here's a mystery: What are you talking about?

The article, like many others this week, was actually about fears that the giant "atom smasher" would instead destroy the earth. Why are those fears getting so much attention? Because we great unwashed can understand the concept of the end of the earth (Psst: It's when Tom Brady gets injured) more than the Higgs Boson particle, which -- as you know -- is the subatomic particle responsible for the existence of mass.

Wired Magazine, which usually prints in English, gave it a go in laying out the best- and worst-case scenarios. And the magazine did well, right up to a point -- the first paragraph.

Best Case: Scientists detect certain types of supersymmetric particles, aka sparticles, which physicist Michio Kaku calls, "signals from the 11th dimension." This would show that string theorists have been on the right path and that the universe really is made up of the four dimensions we experience and then seven others that unite the forces of nature.

Worst Case: String theory's basic assumptions are violated. The LHC will be the first particle accelerator capable of allowing scientists to study W bosons, the elementary particle responsible for the weak force. If they don't scatter in certain ways, it'll be back to the drawing board for a generation of string theorists, or as one physicist told New Scientist, "If we see these violations, people will start working very feverishly on some sort of alternative that will produce these violations."

Say what?

MPR's Midmorning this morning, presented three scientists -- Roger Rusack, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota; Joseph Kapusta, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota; and Joe Lykken, a particle physicist at Fermilab -- trying to cut through the science jargon.

Asked by a caller to explain how this beast is related to M-string theory (an obvious question, right?) Joe Lykken explained it as well as anyone. There might be another dimension or two "out there."

"Where are they? How are they hidden and why haven't we found them yet?" he asked.

The mind fairly boggles at the possibility of life in that dimension. Maybe it's where the Twins have a decent bullpen. Or where a pig with lipstick turns into a giraffe.

It's no surprise, really, that one of the most popular YouTube videos this week is the one that attempts to explain these concepts the old fashioned way -- in a manner people like me can understand.

Another lesson learned from the LHC? We need Schoolhouse Rock now more than ever... with or without its superparticle partner.

Update 11:36 a.m. - Hackers inflitrate LHC, according to telegraph.co.uk. Does this mean hackers are smarter than physicists?

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The digital test

Posted at 2:28 PM on September 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Wilmington, North Carolina today became the first community in the country to experience digital TV transmission. The switch-over, which occurred at 11 a.m. CT, was expected to show whatever flaws exist in the plan to end analog TV signals next year. The biggest problem appears to be telling people analog transmissions are going to end. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed in Wilmington didn't know that today was the day the old Zenith would stop working.

It'll be 162 days before Minnesota's TV stations turn off the analog signal. Most of those affected are those who use rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna to receive the signals. Cable TV and satellite TV customers may be mostly unaffected (but it wouldn't hurt to call the company to find out).

Eighty-five percent of people in this country now get their TV from either cable or satellite. About 500,000 people in Minnesota get their TV "over the air."

So how's the big test going in Wilmington? There was a last-minute run on converter boxes, and some stores ran out.

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Twitter: The anarchist tool?

Posted at 8:14 PM on September 2, 2008 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)
Filed under: Tech, The political conventions

Twitter got a lot of attention from the various press outlets today for its value in following yesterday's rampage by anarchists and the response by police.

One aspect of the social networking service is getting less mention: It's being used to coordinate the violence.

This evening, for example, the Twitter feed for the anarchist group at a protest outside the Xcel Energy Center, where the Republican National Convention is being held, warned, "Cops near Excel are searching people's bags for goggles and gas masks-- hide them!"

From the looks of things, the anarchists set up separate Twitter accounts for "sectors" of the city on Monday, giving the go-ahead at a coordinated time for the anarchists to break away from the peaceful protest and initiate a day of combat with police.

The system was also used to report places where protesters could get to delegates without police protection. At 2:31 yesterday, for example, one reported:

bringing in delegates at st peter and kellog WIDE OPEN

As the police moved on one sector, Twitter was used to move in protester reinforcements:

sector 2 requesting backup at kellogg and wabasha, massive amounts of riot cops

It's unclear whether the police, themselves, are also monitoring the Twitter feeds to try to stay ahead of the protesters, or whether they're doing anything to disrupt the communications. Nonetheless, the main Twitter feed for the anarchists reported on Tuesday afternoon that all of the "sector feeds" were not working.

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The Twitter convention

Posted at 9:49 AM on September 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Tech, The political conventions

Twitter, the "micro-blog/instant messaging" program is proving to be an excellent way to follow the convention from a variety of perspectives.

For the delegates/bigshot view, check out @sanuzis. It's coming from Saul Anuzis, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. The delegation is also writing a blog, but it's nowhere near as interesting as the Twitter feed.

However, we do get word via that blog that the Michigan delegation is starting a blood drive at the Northland Inn, where the delegation is staying. The drive, of course, is directed at the victims of Hurricane Gustav, although it seems that the only people in harm's way are the TV reporters, standing out in the middle of the street, telling us to get out of harm's way.

Another state party chairman -- Chris Healy of Connecticut -- is Twittering (tweating?), but mostly just to call attention to the blog posts Healy is writing (Today a Medal of Honor winner spoke to the delegation).

For the well-connected-but-not-a-delegate view, the A-List is headed by David All, a Washington communications consultant (@DavidAll).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, Twitter gets props from media analyst David Brauer, for coverage of Friday/Saturday police raids.

For comedy -- the intentional kind of comedy -- you'll want to follow @TheInDecider. It's Michael Kraskin of The Daily Show on Comedy Channel. He, too, is also writing a blog.

If you've got a favorite, please add it below. (And please use html to do so if you can)

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Free wireless during the RNC? Maybe.

Posted at 6:18 PM on August 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech, The political conventions

While St. Paulites were scurrying about trying to make sure the national media got the name of the city right when they mentioned the Republican National Convention, Minneapolis was doing its own thing, and you have to show a little love to that other city across the river.

On Friday, city officials will announce a plan to provide free wireless Internet for residents and visitors during the convention. But it might not be quite as fabulous as it sounds, freebie lovers.

Mayor R.T. Rybak, Lee Brenner, MySpace's executive producer of political programming and director of IMPACT, and Joe Caldwell from USI Wireless announce plans to offer the City of Minneapolis free use of the citywide wireless network to connect visitors and residents to the Internet during the Republican National Convention, according to a news release.

The release says there'll be MySpace kiosks in downtown Minneapolis. And a (as in "one") free access day.

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Are cellphones a company perk?

Posted at 11:03 AM on August 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Your company gives you a cellphone. Should the income tax meter start ticking when it does?

There's considerable pushback developing, the L.A. Times reports, over the IRS rule that few employers -- and even fewer employees -- know about. You, the employee, are supposed to keep detailed records of which calls are "personal" and which are "business." If you don't, the IRS figures the phone and the wireless service are perks, and taxable.

Most employers were unaware of the rules until the last few years, when the IRS began cracking down and requiring additional taxes to cover the value of the cellphone service provided to employees.

UCLA, for example, was hit with a $239,196 bill this year after IRS auditors found that employees with cellphones were not keeping logs. UC San Diego had to shell out $186,471 for the same reason.

"It's completely unreasonable to have to keep track of calls at that level," said Mike O'Neill, payroll and tax manager for the UC system. "Especially as the costs of these devices have come down, you can get these mega-minute plans where there's really no additional cost" for personal calls.

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The next big thing

Posted at 4:43 PM on August 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

It's amazing the turns that a newsroom conversation can take. A few minutes ago I was engaged in a conversation about Twitter and technology and the next thing I know, editor Mike Mulcahy and I were excitedly recalling the phenomenon of the Amphicar.

The Amphicar, in our youth, was what Twitter is today -- the next big thing. In my hometown, the old guy who owned the local radio station (where I would later work) regularly drove around town in his Amphicar, which allowed people to drive down the road, and into the lake if there was any sort of good reason to do so.

The Amphicar never caught on because (a) Other than for a few months in the spring, when's the last time you really needed your car to splash into a river or lake? And (b) there weren't enough crazy old guys in America's small towns interested in showing off their latest technology.

An MIT student has an aerial version of the Amphicar in mind. Carl Dietrich wants to be able to fly a plane to an airport, convert it into a car, and drive away, BusinessWeek reported a few years ago.

But, it's already been done.

In the 1940s, the Aerocar was developed and sold for about $25,000. It never caught on. Go figure.

A testament to the continuing spirit of America is there's always a "next big thing," that has no prayer of actually becoming the next big thing, that some people will always want to buy simply because for that brief moment in time, it might be.

We saw this last week at the big AirVenture show at Oshkosh. Virtually every flying machine in the world shows up each year at Oshkosh. But what was the big draw this year? The jetpack:

The company that is trying to develop the jetpack had the biggest crowds at the show. As envisioned, it'll fly on regular old gasoline for about a half hour. At a public demonstration, the "pilot" got about 3 feet off the ground, and then thanked everyone for coming. That might be enough to separate a few crazy old guys from their money.

It was a defining moment, perhaps, for the jetpack. And a familiar one for followers of the Amphicar. A Web site dedicated to the beast carried this story:

We lived in Hoboken NJ from 1960-68, and the Amphicar importer was about 10 miles west in Moonachie - acres covered with Amphicars. We had a 1959 Triumph TR10 (Standard, predecessor of the Herald) at the time, nearly the same engine.

The Amphicar importer decided to market the vehicle as an ideal way to beat the rush-hour traffic across the Hudson River from NJ to NYC. They announced that they would show how the Amphicar could simply drive to the river, cross it as a boat, and drive up into Manhattan. Lots of folks from the Press were at the ramp in Weehawken NJ when 2 guys from the importer drove down a boat ramp and sailed east. The problem is, even on a calm day, the Hudson has about a 1' chop, and the water began to splash over the windowsills. About 50 yards out, the driver made a u-turn, drove back out onto the boat ramp, and kept going. There was no further promotion of the Amphicar as a cross-Hudson commuter vehicle.

The demise of the "next big thing" has a universal underpinning: They don't work and have no practical purpose.

Beat that, Twitter.

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Off to camp

Posted at 9:48 AM on July 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Arts, Media, Tech

It's a beautiful day in St. Paul, so we're spending it indoors.

PublicRadio Camp is in session. MPR and MinneBar/MinneDemo pulled together the best-and-the-brightest from the online world, just to try an experiment on changing the way information is used.

High falutin' stuff, to be sure. And, like any experiment, it may succeed, it may fail, but ultimately something will come of it that may impact how you process information. The results may pop up on some of the more innovative Web sites.

The larger group has broken down into groups of various interests and they've been given a CD full of data -- audio of an unedited interview with a band on The Current, for example. Each group is kicking around ideas in such areas as user-generated content, political information, maps, using timelines, media sharing, laying content out in a different way, etc.

There are some Twitter feeds among the group members and I'll try to find a link to them.

In the meantime, stop back from time to time and see what they've come up with.

Updates

This group -- Jon Gordon and Julia Schrenkler of MPR are shown -- is noodling on user-generated content. Bruno Bornstein points out an important element of this. Media companies who want to do user-generated content, are going to have to "share the secret sauce," and give the audience -- you -- access to servers and content that traditionally companies have guarded. But when you think of it, what could be more public than that?

I was just with this group diagramming how a radio story is produced. Now we're talking about worldwide editing, and trying to figure out the challenge of meeting standards, without beating the creativity out of the author.

Note to self: Check with this group later.

This is the flaw of having your News Cutter telling you about this stuff. I'm decidedly not tech savvy. But these folks (above) are considering the power of metadata. They're talking about geocoding, for example. One of the notes on their board says "violent agreement." We'll check back.

update 10:45 Twitterers here (Tweeters?) include Andy Beger, the brains behind apps such as Select A Candidate (@thrym), @juliaschrenkler; Phil Wilson (@philson)

10:54 a.m. - This group has selected Neuvo Radio as its idea. I have nothing against radio, of course. I've been in it in one fashion or another for 35 or so years, but I long ago stopped thinking it was going to carve out a significant new role in the American media landscape. As one of this group's goals is "keeping/making the medium relevant," I'll keep an open mind.

But I bet what they come up with makes some use of online. We'll see. It's worth noting this group has -- at least for now -- the most members.

11:09 a.m. - The folks who were working on data have apparently merged with the "visualization group.

By the way, how would I feel with I were an old-school newsroom editor/executive? Not too good. We -- the societal "we" -- are just now beginning to recognize that "news" and "content" is becoming much more collaborative. "The people" have the tools and, for the most part, the knowledge. Traditional news media has said "we'll tell you what the news is when we've finished it." But those days are ending and it's alternately frightening and exciting to go through this change.

Take this blog, for example. And take last night's weather posts. It's run by a media company, of course, but it had no problem directing you to other media that had information (like that Willmar photo). That wouldn't have happened 5, 10 years ago; media companies were interested only in the content that they developed themselves. Now expand this a bit, and add non-traditional media sources. Voila!

Can standards of integrity and traditional journalistic values survive this? Of course. How? I don't know.

By the way, if you're looking for the model of today's event. You can read about it on the Minnov8 site.

11:27 a.m. -- Did I mention what a gorgeous day it is in Minnesota?

11:38 a.m. - One question I've been thinking about. How do you accomplish opening up this era of a more collaborative media environment, and not have it be more Twin Cities dominant. Outstate Minnesota -- possibly by choice -- is disconnected from this process as it exists now. Is it that outstate Minnesota isn't interested? Is it that the infrastructure doesn't exist. I think there are tons of stories outside of the Twin Cities and this process is perfect to get to them.

11:47 a.m. The "data" group has broken off from the "visualization" group again. I still don't know exactly where they're headed, but from the looks of things, it's going to be interesting.

I was just remarking to Phil Wilson (remaincomm) that this is the group that makes me think that if I'd paid more attention in school, I could've made something of myself. The gentleman in the black is Ivan Stegic, known on Twitter as @ten7. It takes 5 -- maybe 6 -- seconds of talking to him before you realize he's a genius.

12:26 p.m. We're wrapping up with a "science fair." The various groups are telling us what they came up with.

The "Fun with Data" group -- Says MPR needs an API (application programming interface). All of MPR's content and data could become available to all who desire it. The API would have a location, timerange and a keyword. People could use the API to develop applications surrounding MPR content.

"I think there's a lot of cool applications," Ivan said. "You could generate a cloud of words that describe content and the size of the words vary depending on their importance. You could draw a rectangle on a map and then see what all the words are for an area on a map that are important to that community. The API would reveal all of the relevant information. They could be articles or Twitter feeds. As you move a rectangle around on the map, the words would change."

Jon Gordon wonders whether MPR produces enough "localish" content to create geographic specific content. But with collaborative content, users could contribute to this. I
Bob notes: This is really an example of media companies are going to have to think in a new way -- that their content is part a whole, and not the whole.

User generated content - MPR is a "well-oiled journalism machine," so the idea is to give people tools to create content in general and, possibly, for MPR. The group went over the current process by which content is created, and analyzed where the collaborative point is. One big idea was creative copyediting. Also putting the editorial process into the hands of people, whether or not they contribute it to MPR. A key part of this is a how-to guide somewhere on the MPR site regarding how to write, produce, interview, edit etc. "It's franchising an idea," Julia Schrenkler said.

"There are a lot of things to think about in considering a story," Renee Schaefer said. What form does a story take? Is it better online? Different on the radio?

Part of this isn't really difficult. What if, for example, we simply told you -- the audience -- what stories we were working on and then asked for help. In some ways we do that now, but the editorial process happens behind closed doors.

Jason DeRusha is, perhaps, the media member doing this on a small scale now with his Good Question, segment.

If people were to contribute content to MPR -- or anyone else -- how do they get paid? Do they get paid? Maybe it's a different way of being a Public Radio member.

Where this process can make a difference, is the ability of the public to produce follow-up stories. Presently, we put out a story and then move on to another, but there's usually a wealth of information that comes back to us as a result of a story that should find its way almost immediately into another story.

Visualization group - If you're a regular blog reader, you've probably seen these applications (I think the NY Times does this) where a group of keywords get larger and smaller based on their importance. This group considered an idea where what people are talking about would make itself apparent online.

WCCO is doing something like this outside of its building in Minneapolis, with a series of projected words and such that change as the "tone" of the news changes.

This was demonstrated with something called "wordle."

So one of the people here created a version of this with colors. He took various MPR RSS feeds and found the words that occurred most often and assigned importance via colors.

These would change from minute to minute and hour to hour. Someone remarked this is the new version of the old "weather ball."

Here's an example of this sort of visualization:

code_swarm - Eclipse (short ver.) from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

This is called "code_swarm" that represents a collaborative software project, showing people involved and changes made.

Neuvo Radio group - Keeping radio relevant. The group says it morphed into opening up radio and production and distribution mechanisms to users to create their own content and disseminate that content.

Jon Gordon had a "radio coffee shop" idea where people could go not only to have coffee, but also to use computers and other equipment to create radio, which would then be broadcast. This is an easier process now with the advent of high-definition radio.

Phil Wilson outlined ideas for radio to become a more integrated member of the community. "What was interesting was we started talking about that could happen, and Jon and I joked about taking the 'dying medium of radio' and the 'dying industry of libraries' and putting them together."

Wilson says as they talked, they realize all of this comes down to more user involvement. Is the future of radio as a social media? "It has to be more controlled by the audience," he said.

Another idea was an audioi stream of some fashion from a place like MPR that people could download as raw information, and use it to create their own stories.

An example: the MPR series on University Avenue. It would've been even more relevant to people on University Avenue, one presenter said, if part of it were written by a resident. So why not make elements available to initiate that follow-up story. That's not to say the original wasn't relevant -- it was, to a wider audience.

Here's an interesting idea outlined by Wilson: Getting radio away from being enslaved by the clock. "Does Future Tense really need to be on at the same time every day? What if it moved around from day to day?"

It was a fascinating four or five hours and, ideally, will result in more noodling on the changing media around us. Perhaps we can start in the comments section below.

Update 2:54 p.m. At Julia Schrenkler's suggestion, I ran News Cut through wordle:

That would make a great coffee mug.

Not to throw water on things but on the way home today I remembered hearing a conversation in the newsroom this week. One person was asking another person what's the point of having text-messaging on a cellphone.

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iLine for iPhone

Posted at 8:31 AM on July 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The long line for a new gadget is always a comforting confirmation that things are never as bad as they seem in this country.

Today, we can report that things are not as bad as they seem.

Long lines have broken out around the country for the new iPhone. The iPhone 3G fixes the big complaint about its more-expensive predecessor: that its Web connection was too slow. Apple is also providing a slew of new applications to work on the phone.

Future Tense host Jon Gordon was at the Roseville store this morning and reports he was not the first in line.

Via Twitter, the Pioneer Press chief geek, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, reports "About 135 lined up and the queue now moving quickly and smoothly. News nonevent."

Want to bet?

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