Category Archives: Web/Tech

I Wonder if Teachers are Using This Stuff

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The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission has a website that features a report they’ve published about the epononymous event (thanks to Ed Cone for the link).  It is still exciting to me that I can get this kind of information without leaving the confines of my own office and the thought it sparked is how wonderful it must be for teachers in this day and age to have these resources available to them.  My next thought wasn’t so pleasant: do teachers even use sites like this as a resource, or more accurately, given the atmosphere of "teaching to the test" that they work in today do they have the flexibility to incorporate this kind of resource into their curricula?  Unfortunately I suspect the answer to the latter is a negative.

I know for a fact that my kids use the internet to do their own research (with a lot of guidance from their parents seeing as they might be tempted to quote Runescape as a historical reference), but I can’t think of any recent occurrences of a teacher pointing them to a web-based resource.  Is it because the teachers don’t want to use the web in this way or is it because they can’t?

One More Good Idea I Can Forget

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I’ve always thought that it would be very cool to build a database of voting records for members of Congress, but I was hampered by the fact that I don’t know diddly squat about building databases and I couldn’t name 15 members of Congress if you spotted me 12 of them.  Still, it’s a cool idea.

Well, the Washington Post has done it.  One more get-rich-not-so-quick idea down the drain!

And I Thought Hooking My Tivo to Wi-Fi Was Cool

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A company based in Rhode Island called AmBio has come up with a cool use for 802.11b (i.e. WiFi) technology.  They’re hooking their Mosquito Magnets up to a network that will create a kind of invisible fence for mosquitos around things like golf courses.  From the story:

We got the idea from institutions that were jury-rigging our
technology to computer networks and mesh networks, with PC panels, to
see how many mosquitoes they’d caught or how much propane they had
left…It’s unbelievable the lengths people will go to, to get rid of
mosquitoes," said Hosea, a former National Science Foundation Fellow in
artificial intelligence.

"We’ve meshed a great mosquito-catching machine with a computer
technology on top of it, and wireless network technology on top of
that, and then turned it into a great defensive shield against
mosquitoes coming into your habitat," he said.

I sure hope they come up with a home version so we can enjoy our deck in months when the temperature actually gets above 80 degrees.

Reading List October 25, 2005

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  • You’re Pre-Approved = A Real Family Application (The Post Money Value) – Rick Segal points out something I’ve been saying for a long time: while there are services out there that people can use for sharing family information (shared blog, shared photo, etc.) there isn’t one that is really non-techie, geared to people who have just gotten used to email.  He smells opportunity and so do I.
  • What Did Cheney Know? And When? (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire) – Did the VP lie when he said he went on Meet the Press two years ago and said "I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson…. And Joe Wilson
    — I don’t know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I
    ever saw when he came back." Three months earlier his chief-of-staff had documented a conversation with the VP about Mr. Wilson and his wife.  Hmmm.
  • The Earthquakes Changed Kashmiri Politics (StrategyPage.com) – The US has the opportunity to make strong inroads into Pakistan and the region in general via its relief efforts in response to the earthquakes in the Kashmir region.
  • Innovation is Bursting Out Again (Don Dodge) – Microsoft’s emerging tech guy looks at some of the areas that are seeing a burst of innovation, and highlights some of the companies providing said innovation.
  • White House Insisting on Torture (Bayosphere) – Links to a piece in the New York Times about the Bush administration’s stance on a pending bill before congress, and an amendment proposed by John McCain in particular.  "Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of
    detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence
    Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of
    suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists."      Make sure you read the comments.
  • Dickless: W Without Cheney (Davenetics) – Not a particularly revealing post, but I kind of like the headline.

Reading List October 24, 2005

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  • The Entrepreneurial Mind Set (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn is entering the entrepreneurial realm himself and it has caused him to take that position that countries like China and India are developing more entrepreneurs, the US education system stinks and the Baby Boomers have killed the golden goose (the last are my words, not his).  It’s an interesting take on our society right now.
  • The Fall of the Warrior King (New York Times Magazine) – The story of Col. Nick Sassaman, his role in Iraq and how it led to his fall from grace.
  • Good News: People are Social Animals (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin talks about why peer-driven services on line have developed, and how/if they will continue to work.

Reading List October 20, 2005

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Tivo is cool, but 2.5 GB files aren’t

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I’ve had Tivo for a while, but only in the last day or so have I added it to my home network.  By adding my Tivo DVR to the network I’ve opened up a couple of features.  One is that I can add any photos or music from any of the home computers to a shared folder and we (the family) can view/hear them on the TV that our Tivo is hooked up to.  Since the Tivo is hooked up to our big-screen that should be pretty cool.

The other major feature that we can use is that we can go to Tivo’s web site and download a desktop viewer to any computer on the network and then transfer any of the recorded shows currently on the DVR to the computer(s) for viewing.  That’s a really cool feature, especially for a household that regularly hosts arguments about what we’re going to watch at any given time.  What’s not so cool is that when I installed the software on my laptop (no problems with that) and then went to transfer a one-hour show I realized that the file was 2.5 GB and it would take me about three hours to transfer to my computer.  Yikes!

But, I can see some uses even with the large file sizes and excruciating transfer times.  One, I could download a couple of shows to my laptop and watch them on a flight, or during a really boring meeting.  Two, I could burn the show to a DVD if I wanted although it would make more sense to hook a DVD burner directly to the Tivo, which is what I’ll probably do in the future.

Realistically, though, I can’t see chewing up so my disk space for a one or two hour show when I could just rent a few DVDs for a trip.  Now when Tivo and Netflix launch their combined service that might make things more interesting.  I can definitely see downloading a couple of movies from Netflix via Tivo and saving them to my laptop before a road trip.  In the meantime I think the main utility will be looking at family pics on the big screen.  Hopefully you won’t be able to see any of my increasingly common nose hairs.

Reading List October 17, 2005

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  • All the News That You Can Use. And More. (New York Times) – A new service called Inform aims to be a better Google News.
  • ADPrentice (Feld Thoughts) – A venture capitalist spends a little time giving back to his fraternity at MIT, and it was a lot more than beer.  I think it’s a useful template for how any of us can create ways to give back to the groups that helped form us.

Reading List October 14, 2005

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  • CNN Seeks Blog Guru to Work with Blitzer (Micro Persuasion) – Everything about this potential gig sounds interesting, and I was seriously considering it until I read the part that says the blog guru will be working out of the DC bureau.  I just escaped D.C. and there’s no way I’m going back, even if it was working with a short guy named Wolf.
  • Grassroots Journalism: Actual Content vs. Shining Ideal (Online Journalism Review) – A review of "10 citizen journalism sites" including Greensboro101.com.
  • Why Google Wants AOL (Business 2.0) – It’s all about IM, installed user-base, protecting search territory, and…oh hell, just go read it.
  • Getting Flat, Part 1 (Linux Journal) – Doc Searls looks at Tom Friedman’s "The World is Flat" from the open-source software point of view.
  • Getting Flat, Part 2 (Linux Journal) – A must read.  Doc continues what he started in Part 1, and here’s just one of many good excerpts I could pull: "I can save Microsoft a pile of time and money by reporting a fact no school wants to admit, one that will
    flatten the world far more than any other factor: pretty much everybody is smart. What’s more, they’re all
    smart in their own ways."
  • For Future Journalists, It’s Cash, Not Causes (Cleveland Plains Dealer) – An opinion piece on the shocking news that today’s journalism want to make real money.
  • "Journalists Have to Get Smarter About Business" (Manship School of Mass Communication) – In a speech Peter Copeland, Editor and GM of Scripps Howard News Service, says that journalists have to get better at business in order to survive and thrive.
  • The Open Source Business Model (Moore’s Lore) – Dana posits that it isn’t enough to provide relevant space to advertisers, you also have to show them how to communicate with your audience. He says a lot more than that, but you get the gist.

My Dream Machine

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In the last year my Grandmother has lost a significant amount of her vision.  Basically she can see shadows and that’s about it, and since she’s 85 she has that many years of ingrained habits that rely on her being able to see.  I know how hard it is for me to adjust to major change at 39, I can only imagine how hard it is for her at 85.

My aunts have been very busy helping Grandmother, taking her to appointments, taking her grocery shopping and all the other daily chores we take for granted.  They’ve also enlisted the help of an agency (sorry, I’m not sure which one) that has provided some guidance in dealing with services for the blind.

One of the things the agency did was provide a special tape recorder (looks like it was made in the 60s) that has symbols on the keys so that a blind person can tell the "Play" button from the "Stop’" button.  To be honest the machine is a real clunker, and I honestly don’t think many of the tapes interest Grandmother.  I also think she misses reading the newspaper and I know she feels more isolated than she ever has, despite my aunts’ best efforts.

So I decided to do a little research and find out what kind of technology is out there that might help Grandmother, and while I’ve found some interesting stuff I don’t think any of it is quite right.  For instance I found a machine that will scan any printed matter and convert it to speech in a couple of different voices and languages that the user can select.  Very cool (and about $2,600), but after watching Grandmother struggle with the buttons on the tape recorder I wouldn’t want to subject her to having to figure out this machine. 

The scanner is just one example of some of the technology that’s available, but I don’t really think any of them will work.  Another example is all the computer stuff I found.  There’s a lot of software out there that lets blind people use a computer for work and play in traditional ways (software that converts screen text to audio) but that still requires someone to know how to use a computer in the first place. What I’m looking for is a machine, probably a computer that can be manipulated via voice by anyone.

That’s led me to imagining what kind of machine I would build for Grandmother if I were a sufficiently talented engineer.  Unfortunately I’m not an engineer by any description, but particularly not "sufficiently talented". I’m going to outline my dream machine below, and if anyone has a suggestion for how I might find or build a product like this please let me know.

My dream machine would:

  1. Work off of voice prompts.  No button pushing or reading necessary.
  2. Could be managed remotely for tech support.
  3. Would provide audio output of information (news stories, directory listings, audio sent by family and friends, etc.).
  4. Would be navigable by voice prompt, and if it doesn’t "understand" commands would provide audio feedback.
  5. Would also act as her phone.
  6. Would be "always on."

I guess what I’m imagining is HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, of course without the thing going evil on my Grandmother.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention any features like email, web surfing, etc.  That’s because I seriously doubt Grandmother would ever do those things, but I’d imagine any machine equipped to do what I ask would also have the standard computer stuff available as well.

Actually I think the biggest deal here is the user interface.  It needs to feel familiar to Grandmother, to be analagous to devices she’s accustomed to like a phone or a radio.  I know if we called it a computer she’d never use it, so it could be her fancy radio that she can talk to and it talks back.  Or the phone that has a radio attached.  Whatever, as long as it works and she doesn’t have to push anything.

So maybe she would email, but really it would be her saying "Do I have any messages?" and the machine replying, "You have three new messages."  She’d then say "Play the first one" the machine plays it and asks "Would you like to reply?" and then Grandmother says "Yes" and so on.  To her she’s talking, but to you and me she’s sending an audio email.

Well, I think you get my drift, and now you know why it’s my dream machine, not my reality machine.  What with the aging of our population I hope these voice applications come along sooner rather than later, because I think we’ll need them.  Here’s to hope.