News Cut Category Archive: Tech

That jerk on Facebook is probably a jerk in real life

Posted at 10:20 AM on January 13, 2012 by Michael Olson (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

I remember being rather excited when Facebook authorization came along. I wasn't alone in thinking that if people have to use their Facebook accounts to make comments on blogs and news stories they would naturally be better behaved because they wouldn't want to look like a fool in front of their 500 closest friends and family members. It wasn't the panacea many had hoped for. Ultimately jerks are jerks.

ReadWriteWeb unearthed a study from the University of Texas Psychology Department that puts some meat on this feeling. Researchers found that the way people behave on Facebook mirrors how they are in real life.

"The study determined that online social networks are not an escape from reality, but rather a microcosm of peoples' larger social worlds and an extension of offline behaviors," writes RWW's Alicia Eler.

Professor Samuel D. Gosling and his team focused on the Big Five personality traits that include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

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Why you should call your mom more

Posted at 12:33 PM on January 6, 2012 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia, Tech

There were a significant number of interesting complaints about digital manners on this morning's Midmorning on MPR. There was the guy who objected to people taking pictures at his wedding and then posting them on Facebook instead of his professionally photographed images. There was the woman who gets annoyed when her texts aren't answered, and of course the loudmouth on the cellphone.

But a study shows what may be the biggest digital insult of all -- our communication tools are neutering the power of mom to make things better.

The study, reported on Wired.com, comes from the University of Wisconsin. It measured the effect of mom's voice on "girls who were stressed," separated by method of communication:

After finishing, the girls were assigned to one of four groups. One didn't talk at all to their mothers. Another group talked by phone, another had a face-to-face conversation, and another communicated by instant message. The researchers then measured their cortisol and oxytocin levels, and compared them to pre-test measurements.

As expected, girls who heard their mother's voice, either in person or on the phone, were consoled. But among girls who used IM, hormone levels barely changed. Translated into words on a screen, mom's words seemingly lost their comforting power.

The researcher suggests that mom's voice triggers soothing effects. What she actually says may be secondary.

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Facebook aims to help prevent suicides

Posted at 9:54 AM on December 13, 2011 by Jon Gordon (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

A new service launching today is designed to make it easier for people who express suicidal thoughts on Facebook to get help.

Users will be able to make instant connections with crisis counselors through Facebook chat.

"One of the big goals here is to get the person in distress into the right help as soon as possible," Fred Wolens, public policy manager at Facebook, told The Associated Press.

How the service works is if a friend spots a suicidal thought on someone's page, he can report it to Facebook by clicking a link next to the comment. Facebook then sends an email to the person who posted the suicidal comment encouraging them to call the hotline or click on a link to begin a confidential chat.

Facebook on its own doesn't troll the site for suicidal expressions, Wolens said. Logistically it would be far too difficult with so many users and so many comments that could be misinterpreted by a computer algorithm.

The AP story points to recent high-profile incidents of people posting suicidal thoughts on Facebook.

Last month, authorities in California said a man posted a suicide note on Facebook before he killed his wife and in-laws then himself.

In July, police in Pennsylvania said they believed they were able to help prevent a man's suicide after the man's friend in California alerted police about a distraught Facebook posting. Police met with the man, who was committed to a hospital.

What do you think -- can Facebook help?

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The digital crunch

Posted at 11:15 AM on December 2, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

It's a common saying that the "public owns the airwaves." But it really doesn't.

Comcast just made a killing selling it -- or at least part of it. Verizon has purchased $3.6 billion of the wireless spectrum from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. The government sold the spectrum for $2.37 billion in 2006. That's a pretty nice five-year return on a $2.37 billion investment, which is probably why Comcast didn't do much with the frequencies except sit on them.

Mashable points out today, however, that the government might have given a lot more away than frequencies in a spectrum:

While the agreement has potential to create many new product innovations, the implications may conflict with some fundamentals of Net Neutrality, which generally holds that services should should not be given preferred status over an Internet connection, regardless of who's providing that connection. In the Federal Communication Commission's recently published rules on Net Neutrality, however, some exceptions are made for wireless services.

We are, of course, becoming a wireless world, a world that requires an inexhaustible supply of frequencies and spectrum. The problem is, there isn't an inexhaustible supply of spectrum.

The government set aside part of it for broadcasters, and there's a push on to raid those frequencies, the Wall St. Journal said last month:

The concern among broadcasters is that in conjunction with the auctions some broadcasters would be moved to new parts of the spectrum and some viewers may lose one or more stations. But the FCC has committed to minimizing any potential reductions in service, including holding talks with Canadian authorities about interference issues near the border. And it has made clear that it doesn't intend to relocate stations to inferior spectrum that would limit their product development.

While final details of the plan remain to be seen, there is no reason to think the FCC won't live up to these commitments. The broadcast industry and its contributions to the economy are not in danger.

Until recently, broadcasters steadfastly denied the existence of a spectrum crunch. But now, with the bipartisan congressional supercommittee on debt reduction poised to endorse spectrum auctions, some in the broadcast lobby have changed their tune--acknowledging the urgent nature of the coming spectrum shortage and claiming that, if left alone, they can ensure the status quo produces innovation and economic renewal.

The "digital crunch" revealed itself in a bad way in Nevada last year when the FCC approved a plan by a company, LightSquared, to build a wireless network with satellite communications. One problem: The frequencies on which the FCC said LightSquared could operate, overwhelm the relatively week GPS signals that operate on a nearby spectrum.

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A Thousand Words: iJoy

Posted at 8:28 AM on October 15, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

This person just bought a phone.

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Rough day for portable communicators

Posted at 4:33 PM on October 12, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Today has been brought to you by the word, "wait."

First, an outage of BlackBerries is spreading quickly. The outage, blamed on a network failure, was originally limited to overseas, but it jumped to Canada and the United States overnight.

"The resolution of this service issue is our number one priority right now and we are working night and day to restore all BlackBerry services to normal levels," RIM said on its website.

The situation has left the door open for a hoax, the company also says:

RIM is aware of a hoax message that has been circulated recently amongst certain BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) users. This is a hoax chain message. The message did not originate from RIM and does not impact the security of BlackBerry smartphones. Hoax messages are unfortunately an industry-wide issue. Any social messaging application on any platform, mobile or PC can be used to attempt to convince users to forward such hoax messages to one or more of their contacts. RIM recommends that users simply ignore the message and do not forward it, since this would only serve to expand the reach of the hoax message.

This is the hoax message:

"This is the real broadcast from Blackberry All rights reserved. Broadcast this message to every single contact on your BBM to reset your display picture, sorry for any inconvenience. This message is to inform all of our users, that our servers have recently been really full, so we are asking for your help to fix this problem. We need our active users to re-send this message to everyone on your contact list in order to confirm our active users that use BlackBerry Messenger, if you do not send this message to all your BlackBerry Messenger contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts Symbol will automatic update in your BBM ,when you broadcast this message. Your blackberry will be updated within 24 hours it will have a new lay out and a new color for chat."

Don't do any of that.

But most of the online screams of anguish today have involved people trying to upgrade the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to iOs 5 that Apple made available today. Apparently, if you attempted to update your iPhone, and it went well, it might be a good day to buy a lottery ticket.

Most users with problems are getting a 3200 error, with the message that an "internal error" occurred, and that the upgrade process has been cancelled. Other users, CNET reports, have had problems after the update, with iTunes reporting error messages.

Apple is not yet responding to the reports of problems, but the site, Razorianfly, has diagnosed some of them.

The 3200 error: This error is usually associated with the use of the "Update" option, instead of the "Restore" option. To those people, we suggest grabbing yourself a copy of iOS 5 from Apple's servers directly.

Once downloaded, while holding the Option (Shift) key, click the "Restore" button under iTunes' Summary tab. Navigate to the copy of iOS 5 you managed to download from Apple's servers and iTunes should do the rest.

Several users on Facebook who have reported problems have indicated that by trying again and again, the update eventually will hold.

Cult of Mac says the problem stems from the demand for the update. "If you haven't already started to update your iPhone you might want to wait until either tomorrow or later this week," it suggests.

Maybe you could pass the time by reviewing the new features you'd have if you could get the update:

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The case for spying on your kids

Posted at 2:12 PM on October 6, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

There has been -- and rightly so -- plenty of observations about the change that Steve Jobs brought to the world through his products that allowed people to be connected in ways previously unimaginable.

But you have to take the good with the bad, especially if you're a kid growing up today. Technology has made it easy for parents to invade the privacy of young people.

The Washington Post today profiles safetyweb.com, a $10 a month subscription service that is "a new way for parents to monitor their children's online activity without spying!"

And by "not spying," they actually mean... spying.

The firm provides an example of it on its website. Enter your child's e-mail address and see what they're posting online. Does it work? Not really, at least by my experience. I entered my own email address and it found a Facebook account that doesn't exist, and a Flickr account I don't use.

It missed my Twitter account (to which I post about every 45 seconds), my YouTube account, this blog, two other blogs I write, two other websites I've created and maintained, and a Picasa account where I upload pictures.

But that's the "free" account meant to entice you to throwing down $10 a month.

It's not very impressive but the Washington Post reporter doesn't mind...

I can almost hear the collective gasp from a generation of parents for whom social life begins and ends at the Germantown Soccerplex; parents who rebelled against their parents' strictures and who want nothing more than to be Little Johnny's confidant and friend. "What about trust?" comes the collective cry.

In the words of onetime liberal Ronald Reagan: Trust but verify.

The words of P.T. Barnum would also work. You might just want to rifle through the underwear drawer and check under the mattress.

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Unveiling the iPhone 5

Posted at 10:39 AM on October 4, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

It is alternately a depressing and exciting day for people who need to own the latest gadget. The new iPhone 5 is being unveiled. Your formerly-latest-gadget that you paid dearly for in exchange for all the admiration that comes with it, is now a liability that singles you out for shame. You might as well walk around with the Easy Bake Oven.

Apple is holding the unveiling at noon (CT) at the "Apple Town Hall" at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. For this event, however, Apple is not providing a live video stream on its website.

However, there are several live blogs that will be underway. Slashgear, Electronista, and Engadget are among the go-to sources.

And Vertex says it will provide some sort of narrated video stream and pregame "show."

But, the Wall Street Journal says, the iPhone may be losing its "cool factor."

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Today's ain't-technology-wonderful moment

Posted at 1:42 PM on September 30, 2011 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Tech

There's no better way to end a week of news than the face of joy.

This was Sloan Churman's big news story this week. After 29 years of living in silence -- she was born deaf -- she heard her own voice this week, after getting a hearing implant.

Her husband was doing the filming here and Ms. Churman said she wished he had kept the camera going longer, but he was crying.

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Scenes from the cellphone culture

Posted at 11:15 AM on September 27, 2011 by Bob Collins
Filed under: Tech

President Obama was heckled last night by a man shouting, "Jesus Christ is Lord." That's a news story today.

But check out the crowd when the camera pulls back. Nothing can happen anymore without dozens of cellphone cameras capturing the moment.

It's hard to overestimate how the cellphone is changing our lives. Once considered an evil, some schools are using them as educational tools.

The Detroit News today documents how teachers in Michigan are having students use them to get kids interested in Shakespeare, for example:

Once considered a distraction best banished to lockers during the day, cellphones increasingly are becoming an educational tool. While some high schools still ban phones in class, some districts -- such as Plymouth-Canton and Chippewa Valley -- are allowing teachers to explore the benefits of instant class connectivity and feedback.

In Palmer's English class, for example, students can text full-length responses about "Romeo and Juliet" to a website that allows him to simultaneously display the best responses on the board.

Science teachers can send students on nature hikes to use their camera phones to photograph their findings. Even using the social media network Twitter can teach students how to write in haiku, said Patrick Dickson, an educational psychology and educational technology professor at Michigan State University.

"We're in a world where people have to learn continuously and they're not going to just do it in classrooms," Dickson said. "More and more learning is going online. If they want students to remain economically viable, our schools have to teach them how to do this."

In New York today, an experiment is beginning to provide cellphone service in the city's subway system. It's the last gasp of a dying civilization, some people insist. From a New York Times blogger:

Their forecasts are rooted in a lesson painfully learned over many years: For leather-lunged cellphone addicts, no subject is too inane and no personal detail too private to be withheld from anyone within a 100-yard radius. When you think about it, it is a small miracle that we've had no reports of a murder committed by someone who snapped after listening to one high-decibel phone conversation too many in which every third word was "like."

Others advise the gloom-and-doomers to get a grip. This is really more about providing wireless Internet access than enabling phone conversations, they say.

And in a move that will strike terror into the hearts of teenagers everywhere, TG Daily writes today, India's telecoms regulator has today introduced a cap on the number of text messages that can be sent from a mobile phone.

A breakthrough in news intimacy

Posted at 12:16 PM on September 6, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Is this your idea of a perfect start to the morning? The New York Times R&D lab is working on a bathroom mirror that serves up data, the Neiman Journalism Lab reported recently.

The device, within its notional home, would replace the standard bathroom mirror. And like the R&D Lab's screen-topped table, it's all about bringing a new kind of intimacy to the news experience. You can use it, say, to browse Times headlines, or watch Times videos, while you're brushing your teeth. You can use it to schedule events on your personal calendar, or to shop online, or to exchange messages -- from the classic "buy milk" on up -- with other members of your household. While the mirror is capable of serving (relatively) traditional forms of content -- individual articles, videos, etc. -- via its screen functionality, even more striking is its experimentation with information that has, directly, very little to do with the Times itself. In exploring the realms of health and commerce alongside more standard editorial content, the Times Co. is hinting at the products we might see when news organizations expand their scope beyond the news itself.

New York Times R&D Lab: Health and the "magic mirror" from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

The mirror can also select what tie goes best with the shirt you're wearing,.

Is a bathroom buddy what you're looking for? Be honest: Do you take your smartphone to the bathroom with you?

Update 4:02 p.m. - I knew I've seen this idea before. I just couldn't remember where until just now.

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Facebook's phone number caper

Posted at 2:01 PM on August 11, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

If you're on Facebook, one of your friends has probably posted this ominous warning about the latest alleged Facebook privacy violation:

REPOST: ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now on Facebook. No joke - go to the top right of the screen, click on Account, then click on Edit Friends, go left on the screen and click on Contacts. All phone numbers from your phone (FB friends or not) are published. Please repost this on your Status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse if they do not want them published

"If a friend hasn't included her number on her Facebook profile, it looks as though Facebook has just given you her number when in reality it came from your own phone," the website, Mashable, says.

But, it points out, Facebook isn't giving you anything you didn't already have. The numbers came from your contacts list on your cellphone.

"Our Contacts list, formerly called Phonebook, has existed for a long time," a Facebook statement says. "The phone numbers listed there were either added by your friends themselves and made visible to you, or you have previously synced your phone contacts with Facebook. Just like on your phone, only you can see these numbers."

Nonetheless, Facebook's matching of data is impressive, and scary. If it finds a number in your cellphone that matches a number someone has posted on Facebook, it will suggest you "friend" that person.

This 1999 project from MPR on privacy seems more quaint every day.

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Email most definitely not dead

Posted at 2:00 PM on August 9, 2011 by Jon Gordon (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Check out these recent-ish headlines from the Intarwebz:

"Email is dead: Check out these 8 innovating alternatives instead" (Business Insider)

"Nine reasons e-mail is dead" (PCMag.com)

"Is e-mail dead?" (Discovery News)

"The end of the e-mail era" (Wall Street Journal)

I've never bought the premise that email is on the way out. New research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows just how entrenched it is. From the report:

Search and email remain the two online activities that are nearly universal among adult internet users, as 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web, and a similar number (92%) use email. Since the Pew Internet Project began measuring adults' online activities in the last decade, these two behaviors have consistently ranked as the most popular, even as new platforms, broadband and mobile devices continue to reshape the way Americans use the internet and web.

I conducted an interview with report author Kristen Purcell. By email.

Your report says that over time, the most significant change in email and search is that those activities "have become more habitual." What do you mean?

For both email and search, while the overall percent of adult internet users who "ever" engage in these activities online has increased a bit over time, the bigger jump is in the percentage of adult internet users who do these things on a typical day. Our surveys asked not only "Do you ever use the internet to send or read email?" is also asks whether the person happened to do this "yesterday" meaning the day before the survey.

We do the same for search engine use. This gives us a good sense of not only how many adults ever engage in these online activities, but how many are doing so on a given day. The latter number has grown considerably in the past decade.

Today, we find that about six in ten online adults engage in each of these activities on a typical day; in 2002, just 49% of adults internet users used email each day, and just 29% used a search engine on a typical day.

What does it say about search and email that they've remained on top of users' activities, despite the seemingly constant development of new activities and platforms?

People used to talk a lot about finding the "killer app" and I think email and search are two great examples of that.

Pew Internet has found consistently over the past decade that the two major roles the internet plays in people's lives are communication and information gathering. Email has been the core of online communication for a long time, and remains so for most people. This is due in part to the fact that many people use email for their jobs, and/or use email to communicate with older family members and friends who may not be texting or instant messaging or Skyping or on social networking sites.

You can see in the report that even among online adults age 65+, 87% use email, including 49% who use it on a typical day. Those figures are MUCH MUCH higher than you would find for that age group for other kinds of online communication.

I still hear tech pundits saying, "Email is dead." Which is kind of funny and quite wrong, no?

Yes, this seems to be a popular position today. Our data tell us that not only is email not dead, it continues to thrive. Whether that will always be the case we don't know. But what was most surprising in this survey was that among adult internet users, the youngest adults (age 18-29) were the most likely to say they use email. While it is true that this generation also engages in things like texting and social networking at very high rates, they have not abandoned email.

We find that young adults (and teens) recognize the nuances between different forms of communication and learn to use them in the settings in which they are most appropriate. So, texting is good for some things, like making plans with friends, but email might be better for something else, like asking your college professor a question about an assignment. Email is just one tool in a vast communication toolkit.


Anything in this survey, or other Pew surveys, that outlines what pre-teens and teens are doing with email? Lower level of use?

Yes, in our last teen survey we found that 73% of online teens (12-17) use email. That number has two caveats, however.

First, remember that this age group is not yet in the workplace, so we may see their email use increase as they age into the full-time employee cohort.

Second, the survey was conducted in 2009 and we do not know if the percent of teens who email has increased or decreased over the past two years. We just completed a new teen survey to update these numbers, and those results will be out shortly.

Do you see anything on the horizon that suggests email has a limited life?

We get this "crystal ball" question quite a bit. It's really impossible to say, since we never know what might come along in the digital world and turn everything upside down.

For now, what we can say is that for the ten years we have measured it, the trend line on email has been fairly flat, meaning there has been no significant increase or decrease in the percent of adult internet users who engage in the activity. So if there is a sudden decline in email use, that would be a major shift in US adults' behavior and somewhat of a surprise.

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The unsophisticated hack

Posted at 9:54 AM on July 19, 2011 by Michael Olson (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son James testified Tuesday before a committee of the British parliament responsible for investigating the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

The technical savvy needed to pull off a News of the World-style phone hack is nil.

Public media college John Keef at WNYC was able to hack (with their permission) cell phone voice mail of his co-workers. He says we was able to access messages on AT&T and Sprint phones. Keef's attempts to hack Verizon and T-Mobile accounts were unsuccessful.

How easy is it? It's so easy that even Paris Hilton can be accused of doing it.

To do the hack, one simply needs to mask their caller ID to display the number they are calling with a service like SpoofCard. The voice mail behaves as if the call is coming from that phone.

The easiest and most reliable defense is requiring a password be entered every time you check voice mail. Keef has more:

But quick access to your messages is pretty convenient. Our in-office experiments suggest another way to help protect yourself is to delete (not just skip) messages you've already heard. That way there's nothing to listen to.

And here's a big red flag: A missed call that looks like it's from your own phone number. That was a byproduct of the trick we used — and a clear sign of our "hacking." (WNYC)

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Spotify launches in U.S. today

Posted at 7:16 AM on July 14, 2011 by Jon Gordon (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

A digital music service for which Europeans have gone nutso launches in the U.S. today, after a couple of years of promises and waiting.

"If Apple's iTunes ushered in digital music's first phase as a large-scale business, then Spotify and other services like it could be its future," writes Ben Sisario on the New York Times.

Rather than selling individual tracks to be downloaded, subscription services sell monthly access to vast catalogs of music, with whatever songs a listener wants to hear streamed directly to his computer or mobile phone.

Spotify will be offered in the same three-tier plan that it has in Europe: a free, ad-supported version; a basic ad-free version for $5 a month; and a premium service for $10 a month that adds access on a mobile phone, higher audio quality and other perks.

Spotify will be available first to U.S. customers who got themselves on a waiting list beforehand.

Spotify is the best music service of its kind, says the lifehacker site.

Will Spotify be able to duplicate its European success? Probably not -- the marketplace is more crowded with like services than when it launched across the pond in 2008. But I will be trying it for sure.

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The Internet and the Anthony verdict

Posted at 4:05 PM on July 5, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Perhaps it only seems as though the Internet was taken over today by people closely following the Casey Anthony trial.

The worldwide flow of information did not jump measurably after the verdict, although it appears to have dropped slightly during it. But without seeing data from other days, it's hard to say such a sudden drop is attributable to people glued to their TV sets. It's possible people went to lunch or -- since this is a measure of global traffic -- bed.

A more parochial view of data shows a big spike after the verdict...

There are smarter people than me who have access to more data to draw better conclusions. Feel free to send it to me.

Herewith ends any discussion of the Anthony trial.

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The junkyard above us

Posted at 10:52 AM on June 28, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

There was a close call aboard the International Space Station today when a piece of space junk came within 800 feet of the ISS. The astronauts were told to scramble into the Soyuz capsule and prepare to return to earth if the junk hit and crippled the space station.

It's surprising there aren't more of these alarms, given the amount of pollution in space. This latest image from NASA, for example, documents the current position of space junk (if you're bored at work today, by the way, click on the image for the large view and then see if the objects appear to move).

It's believed that any space junk bigger than about 1/4 of an inch could penetrate a spacecraft.

All around the world today, people went to jobs whose sole purpose is to watch the flotsam and jetsam of our advanced technical civilization.

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Transparency has never looked so good

Posted at 3:00 PM on June 15, 2011 by Michael Olson (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The amount of attention the media has given the release of Sarah Palin's emails by far outweighs the significance of the emails themselves. The Daily Show take down is on point. But the ability to display copious amounts of information in elegant ways continues to show promise for the future of journalism. Case in point: The Sunlight Foundation's sarahsinbox.com.

Here's a good window into what the AP's Jonathan Stray did with the WikiLeaks data dump:

Investigating thousands (or millions) of documents by clustering from Jonathan Stray

(h/t Maria Popova)

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The keel of Minnesota

Posted at 3:49 PM on May 20, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The expression of the gentleman on the far right makes me want to have a caption contest, but instead I'll simply tell you that the submarine Minnesota is coming along after almost three years of construction. They held the keel laying today in Newport News.

What's happening here. According to Navy News:

In a time-honored Navy tradition, ship sponsor Ellen Roughead, wife of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, had her initials welded onto a steel plate that will be permanently affixed to Minnesota's hull. Mrs. Roughead, a former educator, has been a tireless supporter of military families and continuing education initiatives for Navy spouses.

Let's zoom back a little for a better perspective...

(h/t: Bill Catlin)

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Osama online

Posted at 12:10 PM on May 2, 2011 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

This is a chart showing hourly traffic to the MPR News Web site yesterday. I've taken one of the axis labels out because that's the kind of information we'd have to kill you over if you knew it, but the point is the same: Even late on a Sunday night, people -- a lot of people -- are getting their information online.

It's an interesting chart, mostly because every TV station in America was covering the build-up to last night's presidential announcement, which was delayed by more than an hour.

Akemai, a company which hosts many of the larger news Web sites in the world, registered 4.1 million page views right around the time President Obama began his speech to the nation.

The spike represents a 24% increase in global web traffic compared to the averages for the time period when many people have gone to bed.

That number seems low. But it still represents 4.1 million page views per minute, about the same as the Super Bowl, which is all about TV.

By comparison, last week's royal wedding drew about 5.3 million page views per minute. But nothing compares to the all-time online audience winner: Last year's World Cup qualifying matches, which coincided with the longest-ever Wimbledon final. That drew over 10 million page views per minute.

At least online, you can beat terrorism with soccer and tennis.

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Once upon a ribbon

Posted at 10:48 AM on April 26, 2011 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

It's a sure sign of my age, I suppose, that I felt a twinge of sadness today when I read Marianne Combs' post that the alleged last typewriter manufacturer in the world has closed up shop.

Even worse, the first thing I thought of was this:

Most interesting: The firm was still selling 12,000 typewriters a year to someone.

Its last shipment consists of 500 typewriters, which presumably will be a hot item. A classic restored Underwood, for example, currently runs about $1,200. If you really want a typewriter, you'll be able to find one. They're still being made, actually.

Why? Because people still want them, of course.

What's the best part about owning a typewriter? You can get work done without the distraction of the Internet. Also, if you spill beer or coffee on the keyboard, you're still in business.

Once you try it, you'll never go back to your PC.

The company says it intends to concentrate on a refrigerator business. We'll always need refrigerators.

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Best commencement speech ever?

Posted at 3:36 PM on March 4, 2011 by Jon Gordon (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

New Yorker Magazine reporter Ken Auletta spoke at St. Thomas University in St. Paul last night as part of MPR's Broadcast Journalist Series. Auletta covers technology and media, and is author of the recent book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.

Auletta shared some good anecdotes about the tech figures he covers, including one about Google co-founder Sergei Brin. Auletta said Brin has arrived at all interviews on roller blades. The scribe also talked about Steve Jobs, saying the force behind Apple never talks about himself -- he's all business. Auletta mentioned one exception, however: Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. Auletta said it was one of the best speeches he ever heard. Here it is:

Auletta's interview with MPR's Kerri Miller will air Wednesday on Midmorning.

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Crazy cool hackers create visual WiFi

Posted at 2:54 PM on March 1, 2011 by Jon Gordon (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

With tomorrow's unveiling of the second generation iPad, tech is on our brains today. So let's watch a groovy tech video, shall we? Some Norwegians have come up with a way to visualize the WiFi signals that surround us.

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.

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Airplane Mode yes, but the phone stays on

Posted at 11:03 AM on February 8, 2011 by Jon Gordon (2 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

A blog post by St. Paul-based tech consultant and blogger Patrick Rhone is showing up on the front page of Techmeme today (Techmeme is a digest of the most-trafficked tech news, a must read for geeks and insiders).

Rhone tells a short story about a meeting with a very busy friend whose iPhone was going nuts. His friend shows respect by setting the phone to "Airplane Mode" which turns off Wi-Fi and 3G. Excerpt:

"...it got me to thinking why he chose Airplane Mode versus turning the phone off. After a few minutes at lunch it became readily apparent. We were showing photos across the table about our recent travels and activities. We were sharing tips, ideas and links and taking notes....I think far too often we deride the use of such technology when we are having a conversation or in a meeting as a distraction. This was a reminder to me that the technology can, when used effectively, provide a enhancement to the stories we tell and allow us to capture the things that matter..."

Are you bothered by friends who fidget with their phones during conversations? Are you an offender yourself? And do you believe that a smart phone, in a partially disabled state, can enhance friendly communications?

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From tech to trivia

Posted at 11:33 AM on January 11, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The Verizon iPhone was unveiled today. Or, to put it another way, we got to see tomorrow's trivia question today.

The very excellent Blog of the Nation reminds us that the pace of technological miracles that are supposed to make our lives easier is accelerating. Or so it seems. The time between "that's so cool" and "what the heck is that?" is getting shorter.

Which means the age at which you will feel old because your children have absolutely no clue what that item is that you found indispensable just a few years ago -- wasn't it just a few years ago? -- is probably shorter than the age at which that occurred for me.

Watch it and weep, whippersnappers:

John Asante at Blog of the Nation appears to know this all to well:

A few months ago, my friends and I were chatting with a few teens after a soul concert here in D.C. We got into a discussion about the evolution of rap.

And I kid you not, one of them said the first rap album he listened to was Kanye West's The College Dropout. The choice of artist wasn't the shocker -- it was the fact that this album came out when I was a senior in high school. I'm not that old, am I?

And that's the thing. You are now "old" at an earlier age.

But back to the present. People are actually arguing these days about the phone they use, in the way we once had that infernal PC vs. Mac debate (go ask your parents).

That sort of thing, Linda Holmes of the Monkey See blog says, should stop:

Here's the thing: To my knowledge, no one is going to line you up and require you to purchase an iPhone if you are happy with the monkey-friendly phone you have now. You can choose to be in bed with whatever companies you like, or you can dislike mobile technology, or you can put a rotary phone on your desk and call yourself Commissioner Gordon. As long as I have what serves me and you have what serves you, I feel no need to explain to you why you would be better off with my phone, and I'll thank you not to explain why I would be better off with your phone. Why? Because these things inevitably devolve into battles about how the brand name on the thing you use to type "I'm down the street -- I'll see you in 10 minutes" says something about whether you are an independent free thinker or a tool of The Man.

Enjoy your new toys, then. Because tomorrow, it's all trivia.

In the meantime, if you want to cram for that afternoon lunch with your tech friends, here's the cheat sheet on the new iPhone from John Moe:

NPR's Talk of the Nation will kick around the delights of the Verizon iPhone this afternoon between 1 & 3.

(Photo via Flickr under Creative Commons license)

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Google pulls a Grinch and steals our fiber announcement

Posted at 1:09 PM on December 15, 2010 by Jon Gordon (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Oh Google, how you disappoint us.

Duluth and other Minnesota cities that applied to be home to a super-high-speed fiber network promised by Google are being forced to wait until next year for a decision. Google has concluded it got too many applications. From Google:

Earlier this year we announced an experiment we hope will help make Internet access better and faster for everyone: to provide a community with ultra high-speed broadband, 100 times faster than what most people have access to today...

We had planned to announce our selected community or communities by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible--nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement--and exceeded our expectations. While we're moving ahead full steam on this project, we're not quite ready to make that announcement.

We're sorry for this delay, but we want to make sure we get this right. To be clear, we're not re-opening our selection process--we simply need more time to decide than we'd anticipated. Stay tuned for an announcement in early 2011.

It's hard to handicap the contest, but Duluth appears to have a decent shot, according to a recent MPR News report by Tim Nelson.

And take a look at the map above (provided by Google). Those darker circles are a measure of community interest in the fiber network.

If the large number of applications is the real reason for the delay it seems like Google should have been able to anticipate the problem and announce the delay earlier. It's worth at least wondering if Google has been less committed to the fiber project than it appeared, and what its level of enthusiasm is going forward.

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Twitter: Gets more attention than it deserves?

Posted at 12:56 PM on December 9, 2010 by Jon Gordon (8 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Mr. News Cut is under the weather and not blogging today but to make him feel a little better we'll tackle one of his favorite mediums: Twitter. You do follow him on Twitter, right?

Twitter looms large in the public imagination, yet only eight percent of Americans who are online use Twitter, according to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. I was an early adopter of Twitter and am a fan, and as social media editor at MPR News, I find it to be a very valuable tool for distributing news, engaging our audiences and improving our reporting. But given the Pew numbers, it's probably fair to ask whether Twitter gets more attention than it really deserves.

I just chatted with Pew Internet's Aaron Smith about the new data. A transcript follows. What do you think?

News Cut: So eight percent of online Americans use Twitter?  I can't decide whether that's a big or small number.  

Smith: So obviously terms like "big" and "small" are fairly subjective. But to give you a sense of how that stacks up with some other internet activities, about as many online adults use Twitter as use online dating sites (8%) or buy and sell stocks, bonds or mutual funds online (11%). However, it is less mainstream than things like watching online videos (66% do this) or getting news online (75% do this).

News Cut: Does Twitter's growth trajectory suggest it will get as big as those activities?
 
Smith: This is actually our first "pure" read on Twitter use--in the past we've asked about the usage of status update services more broadly--so we won't really know the growth trajectory of the service until we ask this question a few more times. How it evolves will be very interesting to track. On the one hand, the lingo and abbreviations the site uses can make it somewhat challenging for new users. On the other, if I had told you five years ago that in 2010 people over the age of 50 would be the fastest growing cohort on social networking sites you would have thought I was crazy--yet that's exactly what we've found in our recent research. So things can change very quickly in a short period of time.

News Cut:  How does Twitter stack up against Facebook?

Smith: Around six in ten adult Internet users use social networking sites, and of these Facebook is the most popular. We haven't asked specifically about which sites people use in a little while, but in September 2009 we found that about 75% of social network users had a profile on Facebook.

News Cut: Your research identified some groups where Twitter use is notably higher: African Americans and Latinos, younger people, and urban dwellers. Interesting.  What's going on there?

Smith: It is interesting, and a lot of that has to do with demographics and mobility. As a group, urban dwellers, African Americans and Latinos each tend to skew relatively young, and are also heavily engaged in using mobile technologies (cell phones in particular) to access the web. Additionally, young people of all stripes are more likely than average to use social media in general. As a social technology which was designed with the mobile environment in mind, Twitter fits quite well with the way those groups access the world around them.

News Cut: With only 8 percent of online Americans using Twitter, why has it captured or imagination so much?

Smith: I think it really depends on whose imagination we're talking about. I think for the people who regularly use it, it serves as a hub (often one among many) where they can communicate with friends, tap into the conversation around important issues, and connect with politicians, pop culture figures, sports stars and everyone in between.

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Google unveils Chrome-powered netbook - Should you care?

Posted at 2:23 PM on December 8, 2010 by Jon Gordon (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

One of the top stories in the tech blogosphere today: Google is planning to send to a select group of guinea pigs a netbook computer powered by its Chrome operating system.

Seventeen months ago Google announced it would build a lightweight OS based on its Chrome browser as an alternative to machines powered by Windows and the Mac OS. With the Chrome OS, the Internet is essentially the operating system, and all apps will be Web-based.

You can apply to be one of the testers of the Cr-48. No word yet on when we'll see Chrome netbooks for sale.

Features of the Cr-48 include:

-12.1-inch screen
-Full size keyboard
-3G chip for Verizon data in the US, your carrier of choice internationally
-802.11n dual-band WiFi
-8+ hours of active use, 8+ days of standby
-Webcam
-Flash storage

News Cut just conducted a Web-based chat on a Chrome browser with Houston Chronicle tech expert Dwight Silverman. Here's a transcript:

News Cut: Why should we care about the Cr-48?

Silverman: It's just one more attempt to create what techies have been wanting for years: A network computer. Only this time, it's got the King of Clouds behind it: Google. So, it may actually succeed where others have failed. The problem has been both one of available bandwidth and "real user" apathy. Techies love the idea. Real people may or may not.

News Cut: Cr-48, eh?  What a poetic name.

Silverman: Cr is the atomic symbol for Chromium. Google calls its browser and this operating system Chrome. Chromium is the open-source version of both. Hey, it reminds me of Sony's naming convention, only with fewer letters & numbers.

News Cut: It's a stinky name.  I don't care what you say. The pictures I've seen make it look as bland as its name, too.  Why not a sexier design?
 
Silverman: It's a prototype, not really designed for commercial marketing. Eventually, you'll be able to buy Chrome OS netbooks from companies like Samsung and Acer, and those will be sexier. Hopefully. This really is a trial product. Google's getting the basic design into users' hands and asking, "What do you think?" It could end up being different if the feedback warrants changes.

News Cut: What will a Chrome-based netbook have going for it that I cannot get anywhere else?  What is its reason for being, ultimately?

Silverman: If you're a heavy user of Google products, it should make it easier to access them. It will have built-in support for Google Docs, Gmail and a lot of Web apps being designed for it. These mostly live in the cloud, along with your data. There's not much storage on it and you'll work primarily when you're connected - which, with 3G connectivity from Verizon, could be all the time. But there's a downside to that, too. You really will need to be online to access your data. You probably can work offline to a certain extent, but it will be heavily reliant on Internet access. That may not sit well with a lot of people.

News Cut: Final question: On a scale of 1 to 10, what's your lust factor?

Silverman: I don't know that this invokes lust. More curiosity, I think. I don't know if I can compute in the cloud all the time - I like having native apps, they're far more powerful. I like the relative security of having control of my own data. But I'm open to new ways of doing things, so I'll give it a try . . . that is, if I'm picked as one of the applicants to receive this.

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How to survive a Comcast outage

Posted at 9:37 PM on December 5, 2010 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

There's a major disruption in Comcast's ability to connect its customers to the Internet tonight. Reportedly it involves most of the Midwest. It's nearly identical to the problem that hit the Northeast a few days ago.

There is a workaround, thanks to Google. If you're not comfortable with doing this, just wait it out.

(the following is from Google)

Important: Before you start

Before you change your DNS settings to use Google Public DNS, be sure to write down the current server addresses or settings on a piece of paper. It is very important that you keep these numbers for backup purposes, in case you need to revert to them at any time.

After changing your settings, if you encounter a problem and cannot connect to the Internet, please call our support numbers for troubleshooting instructions.

We also recommend that you download this page and print it, in the event that you encounter a problem and need to refer to these instructions.

Google Public DNS telephone support
•877-590-4367 in the U.S.
•770-200-1201 outside the U.S.
Google Public DNS IP addresses
The Google Public DNS IP addresses are as follows:

•8.8.8.8
•8.8.4.4
You can use either number as your primary or secondary DNS server. You can specify both numbers, but do not specify one number as both primary and secondary.

Changing your DNS servers settings

Because the instructions differ between different versions/releases of each operating system, we only give one version as an example. If you need specific instructions for your operating system/version, please consult your vendor's documentation. You may also find answers on our user group.

Many systems allow you to specify multiple DNS servers, to be contacted in a priority order. In the following instructions, we provide steps to specify only the Google Public DNS servers as the primary and secondary servers, to ensure that your setup will correctly use Google Public DNS in all cases.

Note: Depending on your network setup, you may need administrator/root privileges to change these settings.

Microsoft Windows

DNS settings are specified in the TCP/IP Properties window for the selected network connection.

Example: Changing DNS server settings on Microsoft Windows 7

1.Go the Control Panel.

2.Click Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Center, and click Change adapter settings.

3.Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:
◦To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, right-click Local Area Connection, and click Properties.
◦To change the settings for a wireless connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection, and click Properties.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

4.Select the Networking tab. Under This connection uses the following items, click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), and then click Properties.

5.Click Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server IP addresses listed there, write them down for future reference, and remove them from this window.

6.Click OK.

7.Select Use the following DNS server addresses. If there are any IP addresses listed in the Preferred DNS server or Alternate DNS server, write them down for future reference.

8.Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

9.Restart the connection you selected in step 3.

10.Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings below.

11.Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change.
Mac OS X

DNS settings are specified in the Network window.

Example: Changing DNS server settings on Mac OS 10.5

1.From the Apple menu, click System Preferences, then click Network.

2.If the lock icon in the lower left-hand corner of the window is locked, click the icon to make changes, and when prompted to authenticate, enter your password.

3.Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:
◦To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, select Built-In Ethernet, and click Advanced.
◦To change the settings for a wireless connection, select Airport, and click Advanced.

4.Select the DNS tab.

5.Click + to replace any listed addresses with, or add, the Google IP addresses at the top of the list: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

6.Click Apply and OK.

7.Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings below.

8.Repeat the procedure for additional network connections you want to change.

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Our disappearing life

Posted at 3:29 PM on November 23, 2010 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Yesterday, Netflix announced that it will begin to offer a lower-priced package for people who would rather stream movies than get a DVD in the mail. It's big news in tech circles today and judging by the number of blogs I've read today, people are switching their plans without giving it a thought.

I, however, did.

Netflix's announcement has spawned another panic attack that my family's analog -- and now, digital -- history is disappearing in a hurry and I probably shouldn't put off saving it any longer. But save it... to what?

Over the weekend, I crawled into the space under the stairs to get the Christmas tree and decorations (the earliest I've ever done that so I'm not completely losing the non-procrastinator war) and stumbled across this:

It's a Super 8 mm movie projector, still apparently in good shape after 20+ years of no use. Inside was this treasure:

A take-up reel (this was once an "every day expression"), a rusty shoe horn (beats me, but I think I've used the projector more recently than the shoe horn) and the only roll of film I ever shot of my oldest son, on his first days home from the hospital more than 25 years ago.

What would you do now? That's exactly what I did.

Unless I get around to finding some place that will convert Super 8mm film to digital, that history is gone. Forever. When I was growing up, my parents had a huge drawer of these films, documenting the lives of me and my four brothers and sisters. As far as I know, that's all gone now, too.

My house is full of disappearing history. In closets and cabinets all over the house, there are VHS cassettes -- unindexed -- occupying space. I didn't shoot a lot of video of the kids -- I didn't want to be that guy -- but what little I shot is around here somewhere.

And if I ever find it, this is the last remaining VHS player in the house: the old TV.

Another one died a month or so ago and has left us permanently. When this one goes, all that VHS history probably goes too, unless I get around to transferring it to another media -- perhaps DVD. Underneath the TV is a DVD player we bought when VHS started to disappear.

This week, an old desktop PC which has most of my digital images started dying. Of all the important data that's on it, my first action was to save the pictures -- our history. I burned them all onto a DVD.

And that will work fine, until DVD players disappear too. That will probably happen in my house, because last month we bought this:

It's a home-entertainment system that connects to the Internet and allows us to stream video. No DVDs necessary. This is why Netflix did what it did yesterday. And this is why all the other media in the house is nearly obsolete.

I'm not recommending we go back to the old days. But as technology moves along at an ever-increasing pace, it makes it difficult for us to preserve our visual histories. Maybe today you'll upload your images to Picassa, or a blog, or Flickr, or Facebook, or leave them on your phone, not thinking that there's no guarantee Picassa, your blog, or Flickr, or Facebook, or your phone technology will be there 30 years from now, any more than there was a guarantee that my movie projector would work today. Maybe that doesn't matter to you now, but it'll matter in 30 years. Trust me on this.

Now here's the odd part: Of all the technology that exists and has existed to preserve our histories, this is still the one that seems to work the best over time in my house: a shoebox.

Beat that Netflix.

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Franken, Klobuchar on wrong side of Internet, bill's opponents say

Posted at 9:42 AM on November 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Minnesota's two U.S. senators, who normally come down hard on the side of an open Internet, are being criticized by the popular tech blog, TechDirt, for a vote this week that it characterizes as "censoring" the Internet.

"What's really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it's seen as a way to make many of their largest campaign contributors happy," TechDirt said.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Al Franken were among 19 senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee voting for the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which allows the government to strip a Web site of its DNS function (the numerical address that translates a URL to an actual location on the Internet) if it "aids piracy."

Few people, of course, could be against thievery and piracy, but the problem is -- as it usually is with legislation -- how it will be enforced.

A group of law professors says the targets of the bill could have nothing to do with piracy, and still lose their place on the Internet:

The Act would also suppress vast amounts of protected speech containing no infringing content whatsoever, and is unconstitutional on that ground as well. The current architecture of the Internet permits hundreds or even thousands of independent individual websites to operate under a single domain name by the use of unique sub-domains; indeed, many web hosting services operate hundreds of thousands of websites under a single domain name (e.g., www.aol.com, www.terra.es, www.blogspot.com). By requiring suppression of all sub-domains associated with a single offending domain name, the Act "burns down the house to roast the pig," ACLU v. Reno, 521 U.S. 844, 882 (1997), failing the fundamental requirement imposed by the First Amendment that it implement the "least restrictive means of advancing a compelling state interest."

To recap, COICA gives the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers, in particular the ability to make entire websites disappear from the Internet if infringement, or even links to infringement, are deemed to be "central" to the purpose of the site. Rather than just targeting files that actually infringe copyright law, COICA's "nuclear-option" design has the government blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system -- a reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech.

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The day in airport screening

Posted at 11:49 AM on November 17, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

James Ehrler of Stanchfield, Minnesota got some national Web love from The Atlantic's James Fallows today for a letter he wrote to Sen. Amy Klobuchar about the increased security screening at the nation's airports:

Ehlers

Fallows is calling on Klobuchar and other members of Congress "to help set the liberty-versus-security balance."

What is that balance? For one thing, Noah Shachtman writes in today's Wall Street Journal, it means a security system that focuses less on what terrorists tried last time, and more focus on an intelligence-based program, to head off the most likely assault in the future:

It's the same kind of trade-off TSA implicitly provided when it ordered us to take off our sneakers (to stop shoe bombs) and to chuck our water bottles (to prevent liquid explosives). Security guru Bruce Schneier, a plaintiff in the scanner suit, calls this "magical thinking . . . Descend on what the terrorists happened to do last time, and we'll all be safe. As if they won't think of something else." Which, of course, they invariably do. Attackers are already starting to smuggle weapons in body cavities, going where even the most adroit body scanners do not tread. No wonder that the Israelis, known for the world's most stringent airport security, have so far passed on the scanners.

And, finally, the Taiwanese animation firm, NMA, which has made a name for itself by quickly animating news events, today released its version of the current airport screening controversy.

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Heroes of the Internet

Posted at 12:47 PM on November 5, 2010 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Brainerd mother of four, this week lost yet another court battle over whether she committed copyright infringement by distributing 24 songs on the KaZaA peer-to-peer file sharing network. She has to pay $1.5 million. That works out to over $60,000 per song.

How is that computed? TechDirt has the answer today, saying it's in the instructions to the jury.

Under the Copyright Act, each plaintiff is entitled to a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 per act of infringement (that is, per sound recording downloaded or distributed without license). Because the defendant's conduct was willful, then each plaintiff is entitled to a sum of up to $150,000 per act of infringement (that is, per sound recording downloaded or distributed without license), as you consider just.

TechDirt says there's not much a juror could have done:

They're exactly what the law basically says the judge should say. But, if you're the average person in the jury box, these instructions effectively say "pick a number higher than $30,000 and less than $150,000." That's basically it. The numbers are framed right there, and the jury just has to pick. So, the last two juries picked $80,000 and now $62,500. If you're on the jury, you're not really thinking about what this actually means, or if the punishment fits the actions. You're told, by law, you should pick a ridiculously high number, and then you just sorta pick one within that frame, which has already been set for you.

To many people, Jammie Thomas-Rasset is a hero in efforts to "free" the Internet. But this week, the Internet made a hero out of someone whose situation is more closely aligned, perhaps, to the dastardly recording industry -- a woman whose work was stolen via the online route.

Monica Gaudio, of Pennsylvania, found out a magazine, Cooks Source, lifted her online work and published it in the magazine. So Gaudio sent the publisher a note asking for a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism, then got this note in return:

..Honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

That's when the Internet went nuts.

The magazine's Facebook page has been today's most entertaining read:

Humorous as it is -- and it is -- the outcry raises a big question: How can two people on opposite sides of a copyright debate, both be Internet heroes?

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Turning a pumpkin into a camera

Posted at 9:25 AM on October 30, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Some NPR employees tried out some newspaper's instructions for turning a pumpkin into a camera. For their next trick, we're hoping they figure out how to turn one into a big-screen HDTV.

How To Turn A Pumpkin Into A Camera from NPR on Vimeo.

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Congress cuts through the noise

Posted at 2:59 PM on September 30, 2010 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Tech

Do-nothing Congress? We'll just see about that.

The Senate has passed a bill turning down the volume of TV commercials.

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act -- get it? -- requires broadcasters to turn the volume of commercials down.

But, wait, there's more! It also permits the FCC to grant a waiver for one year if a broadcast station, cable operator, or other multichannel video programming distributor could demonstrate a financial hardship. Because we all know the financial hardship of turning the volume down.

"I think there is a certain contract when one decides to watch broadcast television that you're going to be sold stuff in annoying ways," Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told the Los Angeles Times when the bill passed the House almost a year ago.

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You are your license plate

Posted at 12:09 PM on September 30, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Remember way back when people protected their privacy?

Wired.com has a story today about a new social networking site that links you with your license plate and eliminates one of the last vestiges of personal space: your car.

The article about bump.com is the type of story that makes you want to double-check that you're not reading The Onion.

Thrower said the technology might actually be able to cut down on road rage, allowing drivers to constructively communicate with each other. Software is used to filter obscenities, and if you're the passive-aggressive type you can leave a negative rating for a driver that follows them around online. Thrower assures us the rating will never be seen by insurance companies, which is a promise we sure hope ends up in writing somewhere.

Constructive communication with the person who just cut you off? Sure, that's going to happen.

The promotional video focuses on all the good stuff -- rescuing dogs and kids in cars, turning off an errant car alarm, allowing other drivers to tell you your brake light is burned out. What's the down side? Other than the stalking, of course.

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Too connected?

Posted at 10:44 AM on September 28, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Tech

One of the top stories in the nation today is the shooting in the library at the University of Texas. NPR is following the essential details, but it's a clip of tape in the 10 a.m. news on NPR that caught my attention. It was from a student who also works for the public radio station there.

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Students heard about the lockdown on their smart phones, monitored the news and kept parents informed via their laptops, and used Facebook to check on the safety of their friends.

In Texas today, no one's complaining that college students are unable to disconnect from technology.

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Did feds just blow a hole in the closed door of Apple's App Store? Probably not.

Posted at 12:33 PM on July 26, 2010 by Jon Gordon (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Big news in the tech world today: The U.S. Copyright Office declared it legal to "jailbreak" iPhones and other smartphones.

Jailbreaking is the act of hacking a device's operating system so it can run programs not approved by the device maker. It was previously considered a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but the feds today issued several exceptions to the DMCA.

Apple is famous for tight control over which programs are allowed to to run on iPhones and iPads. Today it's lost a certain measure of control. The ruling doesn't mean Apple will get all warm and fuzzy toward developers trying to crack the App Store. But it does mean Apple has lost the weapon of using the law to go after iPhone owners from tinkering with the gadgets they paid for.

Here's what some of the tech blogosphere is saying about the ruling on jailbreaking:

Ars Technica writes,

The most surprising ruling was on "jailbreaking" one's phone ... replacing the company-provided operating system with a hacked version that has fewer limitations. Make no mistake: this was all about Apple. And Apple lost.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that jailbreaking one's iPhone should be allowed, even though it required one to bypass some DRM and then to reuse a small bit of Apple's copyright firmware code. Apple showed up at the hearings to say ... that the idea was terrible, ridiculous, and illegal. In large part, that was because the limit on jailbreaking was needed to preserve Apple's controlled ecosystem, which the company said was of great value to consumers.

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing.net, a prominent critic of Digital Rights Management (DRM) is uncertain what the ruling means, but he puts forward some interesting possibilities:

I'm not clear on whether these rulings now make it legal to traffick in circumvention tools that can accomplish this trick: if so, it would mean that you could sell DRM-ripping software in stores, or open a fix-it shop that jailbroke iPhones so that they could access unapproved software from third-party suppliers (including online stores that competed with Apple's App Store).

Lest you think Apple is going to change its ways as a result of the copyright ruling, Engadget advises,

... you should know that this in no way requires Apple to jailbreak your phone for you, or lay down its arms in this ongoing fight. Basically, they just can't sue you for the specific act of breaking their protections, but there's nothing stopping them from putting those protections in there in the first place, or for suing you for an infringement not covered in this exception -- like distributing Apple code in a non-Apple-approved way, or installing illegal or pirated software.

And on Daring Fireball, John Gruber writes,

This is good news, but I don't think there will be much of a practical effect -- just because it's legal doesn't mean Apple must support it.

What do you think, iPhone users?

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Laser beam weapon unveiled

Posted at 11:01 AM on July 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Tech, War

The big air show opened in Farnborough, UK today. Unlike the one that opens at Oshkosh next week, this one is all about selling the latest commercial jet, or the latest weapons system.

A video released today is bound to strike some terror into the hearts of, well, just about anyone.

It's a laser weapon:

The Star Wars-like weapon was made by Raytheon.

At face value, such a weapon would appear to have little use in either of the two most recent wars fought by the U.S.

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Hiding your online tracks

Posted at 9:49 AM on July 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

A Wired Magazine writer tried to hide online. It didn't work.

Continue reading "Hiding your online tracks"

The Twitter excuse

Posted at 2:42 PM on June 23, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Politicians pretend their Twitter accounts are really from them, until it serves their purpose to deny it.

Continue reading "The Twitter excuse"

The laptop never sleeps

Posted at 11:22 AM on April 20, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Just for the heck of it, call your I.T. department today and double-check that they've not taken privacy invasion to new heights the way a suburban Philadelphia school has.

Unbeknownst to te 6,900 students in the Lower Merion School District, the free Macbooks they got from their high schools came with a surveillance program, which was supposed to be used to track missing laptops.

But a lawsuit claims the webcams were switched on to see what some of the kids were up to. Here's senior Blake Robbins engaged in some mighty suspicious deed.

Robbins, who has sued the district, was disciplined by his school, however, for the pill-popping the camera allegedly caught.

Could it happen to you? The Louisville Courier-Journal says "maybe."

There are several control packages out there that allow remote access to webcams and microphones, which are equally risky to your privacy. The vast majority of these pop up a warning that someone is accessing your computer and ask you if you wish to allow this access. So the odds of someone installing one of these without your knowledge is pretty low, but you may want to scroll through your running programs for software you don't understand.

There are some Trojan horse programs out there that can turn on your camera or microphone; they are not terribly common, but they are out there. The defense for that, of course, is to make sure your security software is up to date. If you have a Mac, consider Norton; If you have a PC, get the latest free version of Security Essentials from the Microsoft Web site.

Meanwhile, data turned over by the school district has since shown that 56,000 images of students were taken in about 80 cases, and that the webcams were kept on long after "missing" laptops were located.

In other privacy news, you may want to stop photocopying those personal papers on your office computer.

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Pushing back against Apple

Posted at 6:23 PM on April 16, 2010 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

When does Apple start coming in for the same kind of widespread anti-big-company criticism that Microsoft got when it tried to dictate what Web browser (and other programs) you had to use with its operating system?

Apple keeps a tight fist on who can develop applications for its iPad and IPhones and this week Mark Fiore exposed the company's policy when he revealed that Apple had rejected his app because it violated the rules Apple requires of developers. Apple rejects content that "may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic or defamatory," such as cartoons that mock public figures.

Mark Fiore? He won a Pulitzer Prize this week for his cartoons that mock public figures.

The iPad, clearly, has great possibilities for expanding the dissemination of creativity, but in the process, isn't Apple setting the rules for content and isn't that everything the online universe has historically hated?

Today, Nieman Journalism Lab reports, Apple is "reconsidering" Fiore's application.

After our story ran, Fiore got a call from Apple -- four months after receiving a rejection email -- inviting him to resubmit his NewsToons app. Fiore says he resubmitted it this morning. We'll keep you posted on what happens. If history is a guide, though, this is likely to be good news for Fiore. Tom Richmond's Bobble Rep app was initially rejected, then approved after a firestorm of online criticism. Daryl Cagle went through something similar last year.

Easy enough, then. All you have to do is win a Pulitzer Prize.

But this is serious business. It's a question of who has the right to publish? And who has the right to silence those who have something to say? Ryan Chittum at the Columbia Journalism Review says the news media should be pushing back. Hard.

The press has got to step back and think about the broad implications of this. It would never let the government have such power over its right to publish. It shouldn't let any corporation have it, either. While it's at it, the media should campaign against speech restrictions for everybody.

And this is a good excuse to more closely scrutinize the market influence that Apple, now the third largest corporation (UPDATE: by market capitalization, I should have said) in America, behind Exxon and Microsoft, is gaining on markets, including software development.

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Net neutrality

Posted at 3:34 PM on April 6, 2010 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The Federal Communications Commission lost its battle with the big cable operators today, when a court ruled that the government agency doesn't have the regulatory authority to require cable companies to treat all Internet traffic equally.

This is one of those issues where the court's decision can easily get lost over the question of whether cable companies should treat all Internet traffic equally. Most reasonable people, it would seem, believe it should.

Common Cause's treatise on the subject explains why:

For example, if you are shopping for a new appliance online you should be able to shop on any and all websites, not just the ones with whom your provider has a preferred business relationship. Or if you want to use your high-speed Internet connection to make phone calls, your provider should not be able to impede your ability to do so.

But the court didn't rule on that aspect of the argument. It ruled on whether it's a role the Federal Communications Commission has.

Jen Howard, from the FCC, hit it on the head:

"Today's court decision invalidated the prior Commission's approach to preserving an open Internet," said Howard. "But the Court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end."

The cable under your street? You don't own it. Comcast does.

Megan Tady of the group FreePress, however, says there's an easy fix to that:

Here's the deal: under the Bush FCC, the agency decided to classify and treat broadband Internet service providers the same as any Internet applications company like Facebook or Lexis-Nexis, placing broadband providers outside of the legal framework that traditionally applied to the companies that offer two-way communications services.

That's the loophole that let Comcast wiggle out from under the agency's thumb.

Change it back

There's an easy fix here: The FCC can change broadband back to a "communications service," which is where it should have been in the first place. By reclassifying broadband, all of these questions about authority will fall away and the FCC can pick up where it left off - protecting the Internet for the public and bridging the digital divide.

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The Apple cult

Posted at 8:47 AM on April 4, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

The coverage of the release of the iPad fits the definition of "over the top" for most newsrooms in America. It also confirms a tenet of the media -- the bias in the media isn't what politics a reporter/editor favor, it's found in what interests a reporter/editor in the first place. Show me breathless coverage of the release of the iPad, and I'll show you a reporter/editor who (a) wants one (b) is an Apple disciple to begin with and (c) needs to put down the computer and go for a walk in the woods.

In other words, they're members of a cult covering the cult.

Or, as listener Samantha Kennedy of St. Paul puts it:

Why on earth are you making such a big deal of this? Apple has not invented anything. They have not discovered anything? They have simply done what many companies do, which is update, remodel, etc., something or even come out with something "new" in line with existing technology. I feel like they are paying for this "news" coverage. Who cares???

For the record, Apple is not paying for the news coverage. Why would they have to when they get it for free?

Walt Mossberg and David Carr have a different view, although hearing the word "intimate" and "iPad" in the same sentence is a little disconcerting.

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Minnesota communities in YouTube battle

Posted at 12:48 PM on March 26, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

Duluth has been the Minnesota front-runner in producing YouTube videos to convince Google to select it as the first site for a free high-speed Internet access network.

Now there are more in-state video competitors that have surfaced in recent days.

One is Scott County:

And Lakeville has just uploaded this one:

Step forward, Austin:

Today is the last day for communities to submit their requests. When the final selections have been made, perhaps we can turn our attention to why a music city like Memphis, Tennessee can't carry a tune.

Update 1:53 p.m. - Duluth's latest upload:

(h/t: JP Rennquist via Twitter)

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About those drones

Posted at 9:30 AM on December 17, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Tech

MPR's Dan Gunderson produced a short series this week on the University of North Dakota's unmanned aircraft program. North Dakota, thanks to the number of predators that operate out of the state, has become the UAV capital of the world. The school believes there will be a growing commercial use of UAVs, according to Gunderson.

But a Wall St. Journal report today reveals a major flaw in the assumption. The Journal reports that insurgents in Iraq have hacked into the drones' data used by the U.S. military.

The tool September 11 hijackers used to rain destruction was a 99 cent box-cutter. In this case, insurgents used a $25.95 program downloaded from the Web.

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said.

It didn't help that the data in question wasn't encrypted.

Are we too complicated to envision the simple work-arounds to our security infrastructure?

And it was simple --ridiculously simple -- according to CBS News.

Still, the wide-open pathway to the drones seems obvious. Why wouldn't anyone involved do something about it? John Biggs at Tech Crunch says he's "flabbergasted":

See, all of the "*Grabber" programs - there's also a LAN program - sniff packets on the Internet and intercept downloads. If you were on my LAN downloading a copy of the Spiderman over an unencrypted connection, I would, in theory, be able to watch this and grab the download alongside you. The same, in theory, can be said of satellite connections apparently used by the freaking US military. This suggests either they're storing video on MegaUpload or that the US military has a plaintext, uncoded FTP server set up in NORAD for the quick and dirty uploading of images from Predator Drones... you now, because the IT staff wanted to rock some Quake 2 instead of using quantum-encrypted connections for matters of national security.

Of course, what we're dealing with here is data being downloaded. The more serious "hack" would be the feed that controls the drones in the first place. Today's story leads to the obvious question: How secure is that?

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After the fact policing

Posted at 12:15 PM on November 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Tech

Here's another reminder to be careful about what you post on social networking sites.

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Adam Bauer posted a picture on his Facebook page showing him with a beer. The 19-year old was summoned to the police station where he was given a ticket for underage drinking.

"I just can't believe it. I feel like I'm in a science fiction movie, like they are always watching. When does it end?" Bauer told the La Crosse Tribune.

"Law enforcement has to evolve with technology," a La Crosse police officer said. "It has to happen. It is a necessity --not just for underage drinking."

Facebook isn't just for stalking parents anymore.

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

(h/t: Than Tibbetts)

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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