Category Archives: Technology

I Can Remember When Fax Machines Were Mind Blowing

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When I was in college I saw my first fax machine and it literally blew my mind.  I just couldn't wrap my head around the concept of how a physical piece of paper could be copied and reproduced hundreds of miles away via phone. From today's perspective the whole idea of breaking an image into bits of data that are then used to reproduce that image somewhere else is downright pedestrian, and understanding how it works goes a long way to helping me (kind of) understand what's going on in the video below, but I have to tell you that when I watched the video I had the same reaction I had when I watched my first fax transmission. 

Digital Pig Lipsticking

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After any event we host at work the most popular person in our office is Rachel, our Director of Communications.  She's a Photoshop whiz so people flood her with calls making sure that any picture they might be in is properly doctored before appearing on Facebook.  In other words she makes us all pretty, or at least as pretty as possible.  In the case of yours truly it's the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig, but I long ago learned to accept the fact that I'll never be asked to be anything other than a "before" model for some faux-plastic surgery scam so it doesn't really bother me much.  My attitude is that I'd at least like to be the best looking pig possible.

Before the pictures ever get to Rachel they actually have to be shot and thanks to the camera companies' arms race to make their cameras as idiot-proof as possible we're seeing an explosion of Ansel Adams wannabes and thus an ever rising tide of pictures being submitted.  I'd fear for Rachel's sanity (and time) if I wasn't so sure that at some point the camera companies are going to take care of the prettifying of portraits by introducing features that automatically "Photoshop" the pics much like they already automatically adjust for lighting conditions.  Think I'm nuts?  Check out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP7 digital camera (found via BookofJoe) with the "Beauty Retouch Mode."  From the NYT article that Joe references:

"The FP7, which costs just over $200, has a tool called 'clear skin' that blurs blemishes and wrinkles. Another, called 'shine removal,' is the digital equivalent of powdering your nose. A third whitens teeth. (There are still a few kinks to work out; an in-house test of that last tool whitened only the lower half of this writer's two front teeth.)"

"Another set of tools retouches makeup: digital foundation and lip color can be added, along with rouge and eye shadow. The effect can be surprisingly subtle (but downright clownish if overdone)."

Automated pig lipsticking…I like it.

It Began With Kinect

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Our big family Christmas gift (i.e. the gift for the whole family) last year was a new TV for the family room and an Xbox Kinect to attach to it.  I'm not a big gamer, but when the Wii came out I played more games in one week than I'd played in the prior ten years, and I can tell you that Kinect is even better.  There aren't many games for it yet, but that's just a matter of time.  All of that is to tell you why I think the video of a BBC story about Microsoft that I've pasted below (found via bookofjoe) should not be seen as merely a PR stunt for the company that burdened us with Office.  Methinks the next few years are going to bring us gadgets that make an iPad look like an abacus.

Netflix, How Do I Love Thee?

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We've been Netflix subscribers for years in our household, and I have to say that we came close to cancelling a few times because we'd get in DVDs and forget about them which meant our $20-ish/month plan was sometimes costing us $20 per DVD on average.  But we held on and a few years ago Netflix started offering online viewing of some old movies and TV shows for no additional charge, which was kind of cool but we still didn't use it that much because we aren't the kind of people who will watch "TV" on our computer.  We considered buying something like a Roku to enable us to watch Netflix on TV but we never got around to it.  Then we hit some kind of tipping point and we're now uber-users of the service because we:

  • Have teenagers who will use their laptop to watch shows and movies all the time.
  • Put an Xbox 360 with a Live subscription in our family room at Christmas so we're watching all kinds of stuff there.
  • Have an 18 year old son who bought his own Xbox 360 with Live and uses it to watch all kinds of stuff in between hours spent playing various war games.
  • Have kids who no longer ask to have their movies added to the DVD queue so that mom and dad can watch what they want to watch.  Currently we're having our own "The Pacific" marathon (okay, okay that's really just me but I do make sacrifices like suffering through Mama Mia!).

What's been interesting has been seeing what happens to the streaming quality at different times of day.  Some weekends when I get up early and stream a movie I'll have an HD quality picture because no one else in the neighborhood or in the house is using the high speed internet service (Time Warner Cable), but later in the day the quality degrades dramatically once the bandwidth has to be shared.  And my wife, who does bookkeeping from home, often has to kick our kids off of whatever they're doing, whether it's playing Live or watching a movie, so that she can access her clients' VPNs. All of that leads me to share this interesting tidbit from an article about Netflix's 4Q10 report:

One more interesting tidbit: Netfix says it will publish on Thursday “which ISPs provide the best, most-consistent high speed internet for streaming Netflix.” In other words, if any cable broadband services under-perform, Netflix will let the world know.

I love this idea because it would be nice to know how different ISPs do in comparison to their competition.  Of course that's assuming that there's good ISP competition where you live and that you can do something about it if your ISP stinks, and that's often a bad assumption.

There's also the not-so-insignificant issue that's been brewing for years regarding the impact that Netflix and its ilk are having on the available bandwidth, and the use of this impact by the ISPs to argue for capping bandwidth for their subscribers. (BTW, a couple of years back Greensboro's tech crowd was at the forefront of fighting successfully against Time Warner's proposed bandwidth caps.) I truly hope nothing like this comes to pass because I'm really liking the evolution of this service.  If it keeps going in this direction I can see the ISPs becoming a utility, there to provide the pipe, and the Netflix's and Hulu's of the world being the content providers.  Not that this is really much of a prognostication since Netflix says it already has more than 20 million subscribers, which is more than Showtime or Starz and isn't far behind HBO. I'm thinking we'll see Netflix pass HBO in pretty short order since Netflix lets people choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Yep, my and my 20 million Netflix compatriots' future couch potato-ing is going to be very interesting.

Shocker: Teens are Dense

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Anyone who's the parent of a teen will read this story and say, "Well, duh." An excerpt:

Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.

That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit.

Just remember folks, just because today's teens grew up in a world where the internet has always existed doesn't mean that they miraculously grew a gland that gave them more common sense than the generations that preceded theirs.  Heck, they're just as dumb and narcissistic as we were, but now they're armed with the means to show the world what idiots they are.  In our day the only people subjected to our idiocy were our parents, neighbors and teachers.

Libraries Building Out Digital Loan System

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An interesting article (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal about libraries' efforts to lend more books electronically.

Starting Tuesday, a group of libraries led by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, are joining forces to create a one-stop website for checking out e-books, including access to more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles available at many public libraries…

With its latest project, the organization is making inroads into the idea of loaning in-copyright books to the masses. Only one person at a time will be allowed to check out a digital copy of an in-copyright book for two weeks. While on loan, the physical copy of the book won't be loaned, due to copyright restrictions.

The effort could face legal challenges from authors or publishers. Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild—which challenged Google's scanning efforts—said "it is not clear what the legal basis of distributing these authors' work would be." He added: "I am not clear why it should be any different because a book is out of print. The authors' copyright doesn't diminish when a work is out of print."

Mr. Kahle said, "We're just trying to do what libraries have always done."

Winston-Salem City Council Needs to Be Aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences

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According to this story on WXII's site the Winston-Salem city council is considering a new set of fees for Internet cafes.  From the story:

The city of Winston-Salem could stand to generate more than a $500,000 if City Council members approve new taxes on Internet cafes.

The City Council has proposed a $2,500 license fee and a fee of $500 per machine for the nearly 50 new locations operating inside the city. Currently, the businesses pay no taxes to the city or state.

"We're getting no revenues from these very rapidly growing businesses that are in our communities," Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said. "Our budget is very difficult right now, so any revenue enhancement we can come up with that will not really impact a business, we're trying to look at. We believe these are very lucrative businesses and could easily afford this fee we are proposing." 

I haven't seen the actual proposal so I can't speak to the specifics, but what worries me about this is the definition of "Internet cafe".  If the definition is too loose then here are some of the businesses that could get sucked into this:

  • Any business that charges for wi-fi access – for instance Starbucks – could conceivably be charged for each person that pays to access the network.
  • Hotels that charge for internet access in rooms, or that provide internet access on computers in their business centers and lobbies.
  • Even coffee shops that provide free wi-fi could get hit for $3,000 – $2,500 for the fee and $500 for the computer/router.  They aren't making a dime off the wi-fi, but if the proposal isn't worded correctly they could get hit with the fee regardless.

It sounds to me like the City Council is trying to target a specific type of business (essentially legal gambling parlors), but sometimes when fees or ordinances are adopted to target specific types of businesses then other "innocent" businesses get caught in the crossfire.

I can guarantee you this: if every company that offers free wi-fi learns that it's going to be hit with a $2,500 fee then you can bet your bottom dollar that free wi-fi will disappear in Winston-Salem.  Paid wi-fi might survive, but you'd have to sell a LOT of daily access passes to justify it.  As for hotels that charge $15.95 a night for internet access in your room?  I'd like nothing better than to say "Hit 'em with your best shot!" since that's one of the most annoying business practices in the hospitality sector, but if you do they'll just pass it along as a higher daily rate.

That Winston-Salem is looking for additional sources of revenue is not surprising, and neither is the fact that the targeted industry is a "sin" business, but let's hope the City Council is smart enough not to tax itself.  After all, this is the city that just a few years proudly unveiled its own free wi-fi on Fourth Street.  The description of the free wi-fi service from the city's own website sounds to me suspiciously like what the rest of the world considers an Internet cafe:

Fourth Street Wireless Internet access is a free service provided by the City of Winston-Salem. Citizens in restaurants and businesses along Fourth Street can access the Internet through high-speed connections and enjoy browsing the Web, checking and sending e-mail, or chatting through instant messaging services.

Like I said, I just hope the City Council is very careful with this thing.  

One last thought: Can anyone think of other fees that are targeted at specific industries?  I'm sure there are some out there, but my fatigue-fogged mind isn't hitting on any right now.