Technocrat Shilton

instant gratification isn't so gratifying

2010-10-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

I recently had an awesome conversation with a few of my friends about how our generation is one obsessed with instant gratification. As I said in one of my phone posts, I have about 5 methods someone can communicate with me that all funnel into my phone, which I always have on me. So if someone sends me a message on facebook, an email, a text message, a gchat or calls me, I will know instantly. For me it’s convenient and efficient but what if I don’t really want to talk to the person who’s messaging me or heaven forbid forget to respond? Generally people are so used to an instant response that if the person they’re trying to get in contact with doesn’t respond in 10 minutes or less, something’s wrong.

What does this mean for us? The conclusion of the conversation with my buddies ended with a sentiment that we’re all growing up impatient and needy. I guess it’s true but it has certainly changed how we do other things too. For instance, I feel really connected with the news and if something disastrous were to happen I would know pretty quick – that makes me feel safe.

On 9/11 my mother had a really hard time getting in touch with my aunt, who was a flight attendant for American Airlines and possibly involved in the attack (she wasn’t, thankfully). Now let’s keep in mind that this all happened in 2001, my mother (who was teaching at the time) had to go down to the office and use the principal’s phone because it was the only one in the building that could call long distance. In 9 years almost every person walking around has a phone in their pocket that can call anywhere in the world. Crazy. I’m pretty sure that if something of the magnitude of 9/11 were to happen again the cell phone towers would be so overwhelmed that no calls would be able to go out anyway. If that were to happen all of us instant gratification creatures would FREAK. Till then…

All of this really does make you think about our culture and how it can change so quickly. I wonder if our culture shapes our technology or if it’s the other way around. Facebook has changed the lives of young people and has evolved to meet different needs and methods of communication. I remember when the news feed came out there were petitions and everyone was really upset about it, “I don’t want EVERYONE to know everything I’m doing”. Now we rely on it; we love it. I remember when I was personally upset about the news feed I sent an email to Mark Zukerberg who told me (in a form letter) to try the news feed and I’ll learn to love it, I’ll grow to not be able to live without it. It’s true. This makes me think that for the most part, we grow into our technology, instead of our technology growing around us. There seem to be products everyday that don’t catch on or don’t seem to make sense, until we use them and grow to need them.

The reason why I decided to write this whole post at all was after reading an article about how Skype is teaming up with facebook and there will be an option call people right from the news feed. This made me think of how my friends were talking about instant gratification and how soon there will be ANOTHER way for people to contact each other. I think it’s a cool idea, I think people will use it and love it but it is a little scary that there is another way to be accessible. Sometimes is nice to be out of touch, out of communication. I’m worried that we spend too much time talking to others that we forget the introspective exercise to figure out who we are independently before we decide how we fit into society.

P.S. This article by the onion seemed inappropriately appropriate.

seriously?

2010-10-14T06:56:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry, but what the heck has AOL been doing since their attempt to drown the united states in promotional CDs in 1998? Apparently something since they've got the cash to buy yahoo. Crazy.

stick to what you know

2010-10-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Goshdarnit Microsoft. Why are you seriously putting so much effort into a smart phone? I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're niche is not the consumer market - sorry bro. Apple has the consumer market for personal computing, music and phone stuffs. Blackberry has the corporate market for phones. Why do you think you're going to break into an already dominated market? Microsoft makes me sad all the time, it's like being the little brother trying to keep up with the big boys, "oh hey guys, can I try? can I come along, pleeeeease?". Stop it, seriously. Your place is in corporate computing, why don't you just try to perfect that?

Trends, trends

2010-10-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

For the past few years I’ve kept myself up to date by reading the NYT and listening to NPR (per usual). Lately I’ve been getting a little more creative. When I was in college I had my first real realization that I was living in a bubble; unaware of the world's news. I was only a few weeks into school and without watching TV or reading the papers I had no idea that hurricane Katrina had hit or anything about it. At that point I decided to make NYT my home page and to keep an eye out for big news I should know about.

Recently I was upset when I realized that none of the American papers were covering the election in Afghanistan and no one really knew about it at all. I’m still scared that something big will happen somewhere and we as a people won’t know about it. My solution: the wisdom of crowds. I read the book by James Surowiecki a few years ago and I use the logic in my personal life often. When I found out about google lab’s “trends” site I was all about it. The site compiles the most frequently searched terms and trends. It also has a forecast about flu trends for different geographic areas based on web searches (though I find with the swine flu thing, it’s a little off for 2009). I take a look at google trends a few times a day to see what people are looking at, so far I think I’ve learned about a lot of cool things that I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.

P.S. I also wanted to note that google trends seems to be about 2 days faster at publicising a story before the NYT. For instance, I read about the experiments in Guatemala earlier in the week and today there was an editorial about it in the NYT. Cool.

for you, for me

2010-09-01T10:49:00.001-07:00

This is a bit for you (whoever you are) but MOSTLY for me - this is the best episode of This American Life I've listened to yet - do take note.

Connections

2010-05-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

Ok for my first post about how the Nexus one is changing my life I want to talk about connections. A smart phone really allows you to make (and cultivate) connections with people and places. I’ll be the first to admit that smart phones promote many unnecessary and/or excessive connections.

For instance.. on my phone I can get email, text messages, google talk chats, facebook messages, phone calls and AIM messages. WHAT? That’s 6 different ways someone could get in contact with me. WOW! While it seems like it is terribly excessive, each form of communication tends to fit a different genre of message.

Texts are easy to send to a bunch of people at once, the “what’s up for tonight” type of thing.

Email for me is almost mainly for subscriptions about job postings, mailers from my alma mater, facebook notifications, coupons and deals, stuff like that. Email tends to very seldom be for actual communication (not too different from snail mail, right?). Though one feature of the nexus one that I really love is that I can turn off the sync with email. So when I go to bed at night, I turn off the sync so I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night to learn about the ACM tech news. Also, I make it a point to turn off the sync when I’m doing something where I want to be only available to direct communications like a phone call or text message. The most important difference when the sync is turned off is I don’t get updates from facebook – which doesn’t sound like a big deal but it makes me feel a lot less involved with the greater world and more occupied with the conversation at hand/the people I’m with.

For anyone who uses these forms of communication what I’ve just said is a bit of a given. Now let’s talk about connections that are 100% new to the smart phone era.

On my phone I have all these creepy apps (that I can’t get enough of). The first is foursquare which allows me to “check in” to places that I go and tell my friends that I’m there. So when I go to a restaurant I “check in” and have the option to either tell just the friends I’m connected with on foursquare (about 5 people) and/or to post it on my facebook wall (which will reach about 900 people). Foursquare postings end up being half “hey guys, come meet me here” half “look what I’m doing, look what I’m doing – you jealous?”. To make this whole process more legitimate foursquare is pawned off as a game. Points are awarded for checking into places, you get trophies for different things but MOST IMPORTANTLY if you check into a place enough then you get to be the mayor. Whenever anyone checks into the place where you’re the mayor, your face shows up as the spokesperson for that venue, giving off another “man I’m awesome” message. So far I’m only the mayor of my office building. I’m hoping to become the mayor of my street soon too. Also, sometimes a venue will give you a deal or treat for checking into their place like a free drink or something like that. I wish more places would do that, it’s great advertising and I like free stuff – win win win.

Another creepy app (that isn’t widely used for obvious reasons) is google latitude. Latitude allows you to see where your friends are using GPS. I’m only connected with 2 other people, I rarely check it and it’s rarely right. It always says I’m about 5 blocks west of where I actually am. It also has said that one of my friends has been on the ben franklin bridge for about 2 months (highly unlikely). This app has no real purpose other than for stalking and therefore not too popular.

Sooooo in the end I feel very connected to the world with my smart phone, more than I ever did with my regular phone. Perhaps I’m at the age where this almost insane level of connection doesn’t feel uncomfortable, it’s quite nice. I like to know what’s going on, who’s doing what, the buzz of the world around me. I like having up to the minute updates and updating people about what I’m doing. Being able to check my email at every moment makes me feel powerful, it eases my mind a bit. I don’t need to worry about going home and checking my email or if I’m missing something, it’s just part of my day.

The Google Nexus One

2010-03-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

So where does this love story begin? It all started one say when I ran into some friends on a street corner. We almost literally ran into each other (but if you know anything about me and my walking pace you’d know that would never happen).. and they asked me for a good place they could grab a bite to eat since I work only a block away. I said oh you can go here or there or whatever and 2 of the 3 girls picked up their smart phones and in seconds had a list of every place within a certain radius. I picked up my phone too as a joke and made some reference about how it might as well be an analog display, maybe a sundial or some other smoke-signal type device. At that moment I realized I was behind the technological curve and that is no place for a technocrat.

Then a few days later I was hanging out with some friends and one had the Google Nexus One and I was all "ohh" and "ahh" because I <3 google and anything it touches and I <3 gadgets so I said "I'm going to buy one of those TOMORROW" in my emphatic way - and I did. I was literally shaking when the doorbell rang as I sprinted down the stairs to receive my new toy. I ripped open the box and popped my sim card in. It worked perfectly and I couldn't be happier.

Now I'm excited to keep this blog going to talk about how the phone is changing my life. I don't mean that in the drama-queen kinda of way.. I mean it in the literal, sociological movement that we as a people are experiencing. The ability to have the world in your hand is amazing. It's amazingly powerful and also at time it can be amazingly scary. I want to talk about the good, the bad and the weird. Let's do it..

Oh my god we’re back again…

2010-03-26T12:39:00.001-07:00

Oh my god we’re back again…
Not only a good BSB song but the new moto of technocrat shilton. So I know you’re all asking – where ya been? Whatcha been up too? What made you come back? To that I say YOU ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS. But... to be honest, the reason why I am so compelled to get back to blogging is that I have a new gadget – and that’s enough to make anyone jump (or perhaps hop) for joy over to the computer to tell the whole world about. I know only one group of people who would really even care to know about it – the technocrat community. I’m sure I still have about 2.5 readers somewhere so hear goes nothing…

re: cross your fingers

2009-05-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

In response to my post made yester-year concerning buying a refurbished ipod it turned out just great. It came in the mail, works great and I would totally recommend the experience. These ipods are cheaper, maybe a generation late but they work perfectly!

EEE - I'm in love

2009-05-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

Last summer I was seriously contemplating the purchase of one of those sexy little EEE computers. A lack to funds as well as a lack of confidence in these little buggers held me back. I have regretted that decision for quite some time. I thought it would be so nice to carry the little computer around to class etc. and then I was like well whatever, I can just carry my big old laptop - and I did. That dell inspiron gets mighty heavy, and I wished that I had bought the little guy. Alas, I came across this article today about asus's new EEE computer. It's so beautiful, like a macbook air but without the hefty price-tag. I really think that these laptops are going to be the future, it makes no sense to carry around huge heavy laptops, they're unnecessary. Technology has put the power of the internet into phones. Why are we still slugging these old boxes about? Purchaces for the summer: The canon rebel XS and the asus EEE 1008 HA, two beautiful pieces of equipment.

Photo project 30th street

2009-03-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

Photo Project

2009-03-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Skippy's Van

Swan Boat

Old Mill

The fall of home

Boston Skyline

Photo Project

2009-03-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

Flower

Two trees

Footprints

cross your fingers!

2008-11-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

Last week I bought a refurbished ipod. I went with the third generation nano. I was thinking about getting a new shuffle but I hate hate hate how there's no screen. I wish there was a 1 or 2 gig ipod with a screen. I'm cool with only having a few songs to listen to- I think I actually find it overwhelming to have 30 million songs in my pocket. I'm the kind of person who listens to one playlist or CD over and over until I get sick of it or until I find something else- which makes it seem like I would be a perfect candidate for a shuffle. While I don't care to have a lot of memory or choices for the matter (at a time) I'd like to see what's playing and make a choice. Alas, the $80 refurbished 4gig nano seems to be the best choice. Now I'm just praying that I didn't make a bad choice getting a refurbished model, is it going to break? I've heard some real horror stories with ipods or apple products in general having problems with the batteries etc. I hope that I don't run into problems- but don't doubt I'll tell you if I do.

OLPC - right?

2008-11-18T10:23:00.001-08:00

I came across an article today about OLPC resuming their "get one give one" project through amazon.com. A few thoughts immediately came to my mind. The first being that I'm not sure how many people will actually be into this idea, I don't think your average joe (the plumber) has $200 just lying around, especially in this economy, to give away- but maybe they do. The second is whatever happened to the $100 laptop project? Are they giving up on this? When I went to a google info session at my school to hear about google's jobs and projects and everything the woman giving the talk mentioned the "$100 laptop project" and explained it. I wasn't going to be "that girl" who obnoxiously raised her hand and said "umm wait a minute, don't you mean the one laptop per child project" but it was definitely on my mind. If this google rep is going to toot google's horn about all their great projects and everything, don't highlight the company's inability to reach their initial goal to well-informed students (ahem). I'm not saying that I think that the project is a huge failure or anything, I LOVE the project. I'm just saying- it's double the price that they initially thought it was going to be.

back to business.

2008-10-17T06:46:00.000-07:00

I was working on my resume last night and under "activities" I have blogging- duh. I put "passionately blogging current tech news". I don't doubt that I passionately blog, but uhhh not often. So let's change that! Okkkkkkkkkkk GO!

Photo project

2008-08-05T17:47:00.000-07:00

I've been lazy with the blog lately but here are some pictures I've been working on for the photo project.

Reflection

Cobblestone

Bike wheel in the magic garden

windows live - saving my life

2008-07-10T07:55:00.001-07:00

So recently the HDD on my work computer died. I was working on an old school tablet vaio, I really loved it but it couldn't handle all the work. I had been backing up most of my files on my windows live account and it was really convenient. With windows live they give you 5GB of storage for free- can you believe it? It's so easy to upload and download files- and it can be accessed anywhere. I know this technology isn't new or anything but I've never taken advantage of it before. I can't get over how easy it is. I've talked about online storage before but with services like mozy, you have to pay a lot. Though you get a lot more storage space with mozy, I don't think it's worth the fee. I'm definitely going to be using my windows live account during the school year to back up my files (because I tend to work on a lot of different computers). I used to carry a thumb drive but why bother? How many times can I honestly say I've been in a situation where I needed to get some files from storage and didn't have internet? Very rarely. Bottom line, good on ya microsoft for developing a decent product.

Note: Windows live has many other services too, which I haven't explored. The "skydrive" as it's called is only a small portion of the windows live experience.

oyy

2008-06-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

It scares me that I need to find a job for next year. Somebody hire me.

uhhhhhhhhh really?

2008-06-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

So I guess Bill Gates is leaving microsoft many resources say (here too). So he's leaving to apparently focus on "philanthropic work" details found here. When I make that much money as a famous whatever I'm going to be, after 30 years of work I'll move onto "philanthropic" work too aka sipping lemonade on a beach, because I'm pretty sure that's all it means. Well, I guess he deserves it, creating a software empire and all.. It's hard to just ... replace someone like Mr.Gates. I'm sure they'll find someone, I mean what does he do these days anyway? He's not exactly writing code like he used to. He's like the Queen of England, going to conventions and such, representing the company while not really doing anything, right? I'd like to think so..

HA!

2008-06-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

I was bartending an event this weekend for a group of women that (after the summer of conferencing) will be presidents of colleges and universities.. hopefully. Anyway, one of them was quickly very interested in talking to me after I told her I was a computer science major. At bryn mawr anyway, we have anywhere between 1-4 comp sci graduates a year, compared to psyc or anthro with 50+ grads aka: no one is going into computer science in my little liberal arts school. So this lady is talking to me all about what I want to do when I graduate and then she asks me how I think the industry is looking right now, if I think there are tech jobs out there. I tell her about how when I was in high school, working in the grocery store, I worked with people who had been "let go" from their tech/programming jobs and how they all told me I was crazy for wanting to study it in school. Who's laughing now? There are more tech jobs than ever I mean look around! We are in the computer age maaaaaaaaaaaaan! In a class I took this past spring the professor told us that there were very few computer science majors to begin with, and in that section the amount of women was incredibly small. This is all good news for women in comp sci today, because there are more jobs than ever without the same supply of students graduating with the degree = high paying jobs. Yup, I hope that works out for me :)

selling less of more

2008-06-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

So I've been reading The Long Tail a book by Chris Anderson. I first heard the phrase "the long tail" while in Australia, taking a class in web production. It totally made sense as soon as I heard it, about how the web has brought about a new industry not only for consumer markets but also with information in general. To explain it, look at the graph on the left. Let's give the example of music. The red part is where all the "hits" are, the britney spears, DMB, nirvana. These are the CDs that are carried in retail stores. The orange part are all the other CDs and songs that aren't as popular but there is still a market for. These are the songs that are listed on itunes or in the amazon music store. What Anderson says in his book is that the amazing thing is that the tail goes on for a long long time, almost never getting to 0, that's incredible! That means for every joe-shmo garage band track that gets sold, when combined with all the other joe-shmo garage band tracks out there, those sales can (and do) account to 25-50% of the revenues of online sales. Internet stores like amazon.com or itunes are not constrained by the physical limitations that traditional retailers are. That means that they can give the option of selling many more diverse genres of a song or go into more obscure listings because they'll only sell 4 or 5 copies, but when the cost of supplying these songs is almost nothing, it can be quite profitable.

While talking to the professor I'm working with this summer, Steven, he brought up an amazing idea that TV is going to go into the long tail very soon. With cable and fios tv, we are no longer limited to the channels available on old-fashioned antennae-frequency television. MTV, and VH1 aren't going to be the only music channels, it's going to be joe-shmo TV coming live from the basement! Like.... Wayne's world or the truman show, shows that also have a niche market.

At the same time that I think this is all so incredible and amazing, I'm also worried that the niche market might just be another phrase for "sifting through all the crap to get to something good". Take you tube, there are some really clever shows, programs, projects and comedy that are completely uncensored and raw. We have all been there though when you have to watch 8 bad videos to get to a good one. I mean how many more videos do we need of babies laughing and why is that "charlie, you bit my finger" bit so damn funny? Same goes with blogging and news. Not every blog can be as informative and ground-breaking as, say the Technocrat-shilton blog. I mean there are all those live journals about "omg my bff jill is a huge jerk", but I guess there's a niche for that somewhere. I guess I'm just worried that the good information is going to get clouded by the ...crap. We'll see, we'll see.

You're so hot.. got sunscreen?

2008-06-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not REALLY sure how I feel about this ad, but it's cool that they're actually using the surface somewhere. Actually, no I know how I feel about this ad... it's dumb, it's really really dumb. I mean it takes being a creeper to a whole new level. Show the people the versatility of the surface, how you can order drinks from it and it can be like an interactive menu, who's idea was it to have it serve as a virtual pick-up line? Poor choice m.soft. I'm not sure who handles your advertisements but man this one was terrible.

ohhhhh boy

2008-06-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

One word for you....

....ANDROID.

HCI etc.

2008-06-12T07:39:00.000-07:00

The genius of Steve Jobs is that he saw how interface and product design could serve as barriers to entry (and exit). By making great, user-friendly products, Apple has achieved lock-in through customer loyalty.

That's what I'm talking about man.. HCI is so important, interface design has made Apple into what it is today. Calburn said it best in his article today bout google vs. apple. He talks briefly about how microsoft spent too much time in the earlier years fighting legal battles and putting its monopolizing foot down instead of pouring time and resources into innovation like Apple did. While I'm not sure how much validity the rest of his article has, I did enjoy the bit about the importance of an elegant and usable UI.

Nasty breakup

2008-06-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

Some people get their daily gossip from perez or tv shows like gossip girl or the OC, but not the technocrat. Obviously I get off on the gossip between Starbucks and Tmobile... It seems as though their breakup isn't going so well. As the story goes, Starbucks broke it off with Tmobile because he wanted to date AT&T because with them they could give away free wifi. Tmobile wasn't going to just let this happen and strung out the breakup, leaving articles of clothing and CDs in Starbuck's truck. When Tmobile came to do a service check she found that AT&T was wearing one of her favorite sweaters!! Yeah, so apparently AT&T was giving away free wifi on Tmobile's equipment- whoops! I still see it as just a bitter breakup and Starbucks and AT&T are the real winners here, leaving tmobile crying by herself.. in the rain.. without a jacket. (if anyone picked up on the whole dane cook thing behind that all I love you even more)

So in the end, it looks like Starbucks will be really giving away free wifi! About time I say!! "Under the new AT&T partnership, Starbucks offers two hours of free Wi-Fi Internet service to customers who have at least have $5 on their Starbucks cards." When I was really into going to coffee shops to do my work it always killed me that sbucks charged an arm and a leg for the service, something like $10 a day or something. Yo, I'm a college student, I don't have the money to pay $10 a day to use internet! But another shop opened up my freshman year, Milkboy that gave away their wifi for free and had trendy hipsters and open mic nights etc. which are always fun. So now where are the Mawrters going to go? PARADOX OF CHOICE ahhhhhhhhhh

PS: yeah, I did make that picture, what about it?

hulu.. who me? no, hulu

2008-06-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

apple apple apple apple, SERIOUSLY let's talk about something else people!!! I like apple just as much as the next person.. but when I turn to my tech news sites, I want a little variety! Moving on... Great news,Hulu is adding full-length episodes of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report nice! I've talked about Hulu before and how excited I am about this service, I really do hope it's catching on! Perhaps they should do some advertising or something because it's really an amazing service! I man I'm doing my best to all... two.. of my readers (who I love VERY much) haha but really, it's great.

at it again!

2008-06-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

They're at it again! WiMax is moving forward with their plans for total world domination! err.. I mean they're making progress in becoming a reliable broadband provider,

In May, Sprint revived its flagging $5 billion WiMax plans with financial backing from Intel, Google and major cable companies. Sprint will merge its struggling WiMax division with Clearwire to create a new company operating under the Clearwire name.

With names like that backing them, how could they not be progressing? I can't wait to see what happens with this!

The paradox of choice

2008-06-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

This is a lengthy video (about 20 minutes) but well worth it. It's a TED talk by this professor at Swarthmore. He talks about the "Paradox of choice"; mainly that our generation has too many choices and it's actually making us unhappy. Generally, I'm sold by this idea. We always leave ourselves open to the "grass is greener" problem with even the most trivial choices in our life. In the speech he talks about salad dressing. I would have never thought about that, but yeah, we have way too many choices. I don't like shopping much and I think it's because I'm honestly overwhelmed by all the damn choices there are. I like plain clothes, I like old navy. I don't want to spend hours of my time and all of my money on clothes, I want something that looks good, fits well and end of story. I can't even imagine how we deal with all these choices! I don't know if I can help this in my own life, but perhaps I'll try to limit my own choices on the daily to make my own life simpler.

Perhaps I do this naturally sometimes.. When I went to Australia I could only bring two bags, and taking away those choices really did make my life easier. I had only a few pairs of pants, a few pairs of shoes, shirts and one sweatshirt. I'm really into perfumes and I only brought one bottle with me- simplicity. When I went back to college in the winter I tried really hard to only bring what I needed, and that was nice. I'm going to try to do more of this, especially now that I feel like there's actually a reason to. Sorry for my rambling..

whoop-de-do

2008-06-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood but who really cares about Steve Job's latest keynote? A new iphone? REALLY!? I MEAN REALLY, REALLY?! duh. It's going to be faster and better? You don't say.. I would have figured that the second generation of a product would be slower and worse than the first.. I hate it when even the tech news is sensationalized, there has to be some other news going on..

Yelp

2008-06-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking for a while about how I'd like to introduce this beautiful and addicting service to you, my adoring readers. True, I have probably already sent you an invitation to join. True, I've most likely already yapped my head off about it to you in person. Still, my blog shows no sign of my love for yelp, so here it goes.

Yelp is basically a social networking sight centered around user's reviews on different products/services/restaurants etc. I know, do we really need another social networking site? My life is already so involved with facebook, should I even do this to myself? A good friend recently told me how amazing the site is. Real locals review their faves from cafes to pet grooming facilities. I like the social networking aspect (obvi), furthermore I love hearing what unbiased individuals have to say about this and that. Looking for somewhere to go out to eat tonight consumed a good hour of my time today because I got so involved in reading reviews about every kind of restaurant I could possibly imagine! I also heard that there are many yelp events where restaurants and bars will give members a free taste of whatever they're trying to promote- I'm soooooo into this! So please, go sign up and friend request me.

Your awesomeness guru,
the technocrat

A day in the life

2008-06-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

At left is what my life looks like these days (click to enlarge if you actually want to be able to read/see anything). I'm working in Mathematica, as I've said before. Locators, manipulate, graphics, toggle bar are some of my "buzz words". I've been working pretty well lately, making a lot of progress. Right now I'm trying to make it so that you can change the settings of the toggle boxes while in the module. It's much harder than it looks. I'm also worried because (like most computer science things) my work and time will probably not be accurately depicted in the outcome. I will have worked for weeks and weeks on a bit of code only 3 or 4 lines long. Though for anyone who has worked in Mathematica, they will know how hard that is. Anyway- welcome to my life.

foto friday

2008-05-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

A building from historic Auckland, NZ

Alex and Katie in Savannah, from above

a video for good measure..

2008-05-27T11:18:00.001-07:00

This is what it's like to go to bryn mawr. This is a video of May Day, the last of the four traditions of the year. Enjoy..

is this counter-intuitive?

2008-05-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Blogging, along with many other web 2.0 technologies have changed the way we communicate in a very big way. I often wonder if blogging (yeah I know..) is a good thing or is clouding the information airwaves. I mean how wrong can I really think it is if I am participating? I guess my point is that I think that I'm writing relevant commentaries and am furthering information that is ... important. I think there is a lot of blogging that isn't relevant or beneficial at all. When I was talking to a few of my professors yesterday about how I have a blog both of them got this kind of pained look on their faces and I could only imagine their internal dialog "am I going to have to read about the fight she got into with her best friend and the name of her cat" aka: many people blog about personal information, especially people my age.

Blogs have become a good way for people to communicate in politics, and in the news. People running for office keep blogs to try to give people a better sense of who they are and such. News blogging is really hot right now. I guess you could classify the technocrat blog as a sort of news realm. But more specifically blogging offers journalists a non-affiliated space to publish unbiased (in terms of the big news companies) news very quickly. There are many journalists, for instance, blogging about the war in iraq through blogs. This is one of the first times that such raw, unbiased information about a conflict like this has been so accessible. humm.. something to think about.

oh by the way..

2008-05-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
I write you as a customer and as technocrat-shilton. I would like to bring it to your attention that people do not like change. Do you remember how people had a minor heart attack with your newsfeed stunt? At that time I even took a minute to write you an email in which you responded assuring me that once I got used to it I would love it. I changed all my personal setting so as little as possible would show up on the news feed, I like it more than I did at first but I still don't like it too much. Now you've done it again, you've made it so that people can't minimize the mini-feed, you know what? If you saw everyone minimizing the mini-feed all the time than maybe that should have been your hint that people don't like it. Instead it feels like you're holding our throats trying to force-feed this "amazing service" of yours. I don't appreciate being force fed. Furthermore I understand that you're doing a total overhaul of the UI. I'm not excited about this and I think people are going to get very upset. We have come accustomed to a certain look and feel with the layout of the pages- we know where everything is and we like it this way. Please don't make tabs for the profiles, it's a bad bad idea. Please don't change the colors, we like the familiar blue and white pages. I'm not sure you know what you're doing here Markie, perhaps you should hire me and I can stare you in the right direction. Until then, good luck digging your own grave. I told you before I was one step away from deleting my account, this might just be the straw that broke the camel's back, we'll see.

Best,
The technocrat.

netflix roku- you know what, I like this...

2008-05-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have started once again to keep myself up-to-date with the tech news etc. and while browsing the google tech news I came upon an article about the new Netflix Roku. For some reason I never got into the Apple TV idea, I guess because I'm not a big fan of the apple store in general. My main gripe with it is the damn DRM stuff. I feel like downloading music legally from the itunes store is so pointless- you can't do anything with the songs once you get them For instance, I was making a youtube video the other day and I really wanted to use this particular song. Instead of sifting through all the bittorrent websites (yeah, I use bittorrent- what about it?) I decided to use the itunes store. I found the song and downloaded it and then quickly realized that I couldn't use the damn thing because of the DRM certificate. I digress..

I dove further into the hub-bub over the new roku player and I think it's a pretty good idea. A simple, stripped down media player that allows users to rent and stream movies and tv shows right from the internet. Netflix is doing a good job bridging the gap between on-demand video and traditional DVD rentals- I dig it. Critics have mixed reviews but there is still a lot of support for the new product saying that it is definitely a cheaper rival to the apple TV. I said not too long ago that I was excited about amazon.com "renting" movies and TV through the internet and could easily make it into this same streaming idea- this roku player is doing the exact same thing just making it a bit easier. I'm not sure about it but I also think that netflix may have a better selection than amazon, but who knows. Bottom line, I'm into this roku idea.. I'm not sure I would get it for myself (right now anyway) but I think it's worth investing in if you have the time and money to watch a lot of movies. Update on my life: I haven't been using netflix anymore because I found it to be a bit expensive for my college taste and the time I spend watching movies is the time I'm not sleeping, so that's that.

OLPC = a secret microsoft mission

2008-05-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

I recently read that OLPC is thinking about using windows instead of the open source os, Sugar, that they had originally planned to use. When I first read this I though, damn, another one bites the dust.. meaning how in the world does microsoft get its hands in everything? The one laptop per child mission is a good one I think, giving computers to children in underdeveloped countries. Part of the mission is to make it a charitable, not a profitable act. Though I guess there's always money to be made. If microsoft can make some money out of it then more power to them I suppose. I'm surprised though that some linux or other open source company isn't jumping on the opportunity to market and make "Linux" a household name. I think that linux in general is good, it's just a good operating system, secure, customizable and in many instances it's free (like free beer) what could be better? Money quote- "Will using Windows help kids in developing countries? Or is One Laptop Per Child compromising its mission and just helping Microsoft spread its software into new markets?" good question, right?

getting back on the horse

2008-05-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus I'm getting back on the horse of blogging. I know they're all excuses but I've been terribly busy with finals and moving etc. but I'm back. Update on my life: I've moved into summer and my summer job, working at the Haverford CS department. I will be working with another student on the transitive closure problem for directed acyclic graphs in mathematica. My main job (right now anyway) is trying to develop a UI to represent and manipulate a visual representation of the problem in a graph where the user can manipulate the nodes and edges and recalculate the function in (hopefully) linear time. I'm not quite sure why I'm doing this right now, but I am. I'll link up some sort of lab blog sometime soon where I talk about what I'm doing for all my adoring fans/readers. Also, I'd like to develop some sort of summer project with the blog, any suggestions? Something along the lines of my photo project from Sydney. Maybe some kind of video project, since I got a video camera for my birthday. Lindsay, Katie K, I'm lookin for you two to give me suggestions, PLEASE. PS: I hope you'll continue to read this. Ok, I should get back to "work" so farewell for now!

Bryn Mawr

2008-04-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know I've been a little "video happy" lately but I've been watching a lot of youtube. Guess what I came across today? Apparently Bryn Mawr (the school I go to) has been making videos for perspective students, I'm so into them. While abroad I kept trying to explain bryn mawr and what it was about, I think these videos do a pretty good job. Enjoy.

Hulu = awesome

2008-03-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

So in response to a previous post I've signed up and started using hulu.com and it's AWESOME! The video quality is amazing and there are tons of videos up everyday. I feel like it's too good to be true but I would recommend you all go join and see what it's about!

grrrrrr

2008-03-28T07:41:00.003-07:00

This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I know this doesn't follow my technology trend but I thought it should be put out there.

making linux usable

2008-03-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

"Um, yeah. Put it this way. When you're giving something away free, and people still don't want it, and in fact would rather spend money on something else, you've got a problem." ~FSJ

Perhaps there is some validity to what FSJ says about linux and open source (free source) software. Ok, I love open source software, let that be #1. I think that it's amazing that there are tons of people working on a single project together. One huge benefit is that mistakes are more quickly fixed, like Eric Raymond says, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". Although I love open source and everything, I'm not sure the large consumer market is really ready for it yet. I mean a lot of popular software isn't compatible with it and the EXTREMELY customizable operating system can be very daunting. There are so many setting that a person who is used to the "one size fits all" default setting of windows or the mac OS that people will think that linux is harder to use because they need to do more to set it up.

So what should linux distributors do? I guess the way to keep the customability (yeah I think I'm making that word up) and make it easy to use would be a series of wizards that will walk users through the initial set up. It's tough because then what does the user do if they need to go back and change things? Going into the system files can be a scary experience if you mess something up. I'll think more about this... Good talk, good talk.

::nerdy laugh::

2008-03-19T07:39:00.001-07:00

Soooo I know this a.) doesn't have anything to do with technology (really) and b.) is REALLY nerdy but I'm really into this bag that is made from pieces of the tent from a Mt.Everest summit camp. I don't even care that it's $115 for a bag. I mean it's FAMOUS.. think about where that material has BEEN. amazing. I'm so into it.

ouch!

2008-03-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

it seems like spam doesn't pay. I also read something recently about how they're trying to add more digits to IP addresses to expand the internet. Somehow this leads to less spam, stay tuned kids- more on that later.

You Tube move over!

2008-03-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

I don't know how this can be legal. I mean I'm so into tv-links.cc but now there's a new site called hulu that promises viewers the ability to "watch your favorites. anytime. for free". It almost seems too good to be true! But I guess it isn't.. this article tries to clear up some of the confusion (though not too well),

"Web video, despite its fresh-faced allure and burgeoning consumer demand, is one that is for the most part unprofitable for large networks now. Web advertising prices don't yet amount to a valuation that can be considered amply supplemental to the networks' present-day income. The tried-and-true standard broadcast and cable television mediums are by far the cash kinds of television at the moment," he added.

Therefore, he said, the more viewers the networks can reach online to generate more ad revenue, the better. The best way to reach more viewers online would be to participate in a concentrated effort like Hulu backed industrywide, he noted.

I guess what they're saying is that it's not profitable for networks to show their own shows on their websites. They seem to think that it's better to participate in a website or service that offers many shows in one concentrated place. Well I for one can't wait for it to be open. One day. Lately I've been setting up one of the less popular computer science labs with the projector and surround sound. It's pretty amazing, I'll tell you. Remember when I said I was going to use my computer as a tivo? Well I haven't yet. BUT I'm really into the projector thing in the comp sci lab, I don't care how nerdy that sounds.

I'm in love.

2008-02-20T12:23:00.000-08:00

I just keep watching the video over and over, I think it's hypnotic or something.

wooooooooooah nelly!

2008-02-20T10:21:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard of a company called DoubleTwist? Me neither, until I read this article about their DRM-stripping application for both music and movies. Yikes, this doesn't sound legal! According to the article not only can the application free your files of the constricting DRM protection but you can also upload and share your files through facebook in a little P2P action. As I was reading I kept thinking "this can't be legal, this can't be legal" but it says "And there’s an excellent chance we’ll see a flurry of lawsuits against DoubleTwist in the near future since the application most likely runs afoul of the DMCA. However, since DoubleTwist is, according to the EULA, owned by a company named SpiceFlow, which is incorporated under the laws of the Cayman Islands, U.S. laws may not be able to touch it". This will NEVER fly. Of course the article also warns users that to use the program you must register it online (for free) but this will allow the company to track usage. I can't wait for the big companies in music sales (ahem- apple) to come down on these fellas! Grab your popcorn kids, this is going to be quite a show! choo-chooooo, *train wreeeeck*!!!

Integrated E-Mail/Calendaring @ BMC

2008-02-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

To: shilton
From: Mark Colvson
Subject: Coming Soon: Bryn Mawr College's New Integrated E-Mail/Calendaring
System
Information Services recently completed an intensive review of our current
E-Mail and Calendaring (i.e. Meeting Maker) services, partly in response to
community requests. In late December we received the approval and support of the
senior administration and Board of Trustees of the College to begin a major
upgrade to these systems.
We are now developing an implementation plan to migrate the community from
our current wide range of email and calendar programs to a single integrated
email and calendaring service, with full-featured web-based email/calendar,
campus address book accessible from anywhere, to-do lists, and collaborative
workspaces. The new system will have a powerful server “back end” with much more mail storage space than the current system and continued security and privacy for the College’s data. Deployment will begin for most of us in late spring.
At that time our email and Meeting Maker calendar information, including stored
older data, will begin to migrate into the new system.
For more information about the decision-making process and details about the
software selected, we invite you to read the Proposal submitted to the
President’s Cabinet. We will host a demonstration session at Coffee Hour on
March 21. Feel free to bring your questions then, or email them to either of us.
We will also discuss the new system at the Administrative Office Heads meeting
on February 20, and the Faculty Meeting on March 5. We will post this
announcement and responses to the most frequently asked questions to http://is.blogs.brynmawr.edu/.
Heartfelt thanks to all of you in the community who helped us evaluate and
test the candidate systems. We were gratified to find a strong community-wide
consensus in favor of a system which provided support for both Macintosh and PC
users, while providing sustainability and strong privacy protections for our
email and calendar communications.
Sincerely,
Mark Colvson, Education and Outreach Project Mgr
Janet Scannell, Director of Computing Services

Ohhh! This sounds like fun! Is BMC going to give me something to rival my gmail/gcal pair? We'll see!

THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-02-17T11:31:00.000-08:00

Congress Considers New Net Neutrality Bill Thanks to Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican legislation has begun to have net neutrality! This is great! I have nothing else to say, read the article.

~Shil

Those circles will get ya

2008-02-13T11:29:00.001-08:00

Hilarious video of how graphics don't always make too much sense. Props to Alex from my HCI class for the link to info aesthetics which seems like a site that I'm going to be visiting A LOT! Horay!

Yikes!

2008-02-13T10:57:00.000-08:00

censor, censor, censor!! Yikes! look around people, we're being held down by "the man". This is not a new topic for my avid technocrat-shilton readers. Not too long ago I talked about net neutrality. If you'd like, I'd recommend flipping back to that old blog post to watch the youTube video. Lately there has been a lot of talk about how some cable companies are slowing down traffic to bittorrent downloads. This scares me... a lot. I'm worried about how the internet is going to change, for real. I understand the concern over bittorrent downloads. Bittorrent is very hard to control, it's not like the conveitional P2P file-sharing sites. Cable companies slowing the traffic is just about one of the only ways to deter the illegal downloads. I really hope that this lack of net neutrality doesn't come back to haunt us later, though it only seems to be getting worse.

I think I'm going to throw up..

2008-02-12T10:44:00.001-08:00

Oh and on another note, there's a guy who comes to the bryn mawr fitness center to work out occasionally. He's middle aged, fluffy (not terribly thin) and while I usually don't pay attention to people of the like I couldn't help but notice him toting around a laptop of the famous one-laptop-per-child variety. I appreciated seeing one of the devices in real life and everything but WHY OH WHY ARE YOU BRINGING IT TO THE GYM!?!?!?! And why do YOU have it?! This is supposed to be a laptop that will break boundaries and change lives in third-world countries for CHILDREN, not furthering your ego as a main line millionaire. This laptop was brilliantly engineered to be in horrible conditions for poor poor children! I guarantee that the designers didn't sit down and think "now what about the middle-aged male demographic that want to watch the news while they work out on the elliptical". Arghghghghghhg!!

I like my memory like I like my coffee.. fast and cheap

2008-02-12T10:28:00.000-08:00

I've talked about mozy in my blog before but focused on the consumer benefit, rather than the commercial use. I came across an article today about how companies are using online servers as opposed to conventional hardware. It makes sense I guess, one of the most costly parts of the computer is the hard drive/server, why not just get it from somewhere else? The article says that the memory is cheap, "Amazon charges 15 cents for a gigabyte of storage and 10 cents an hour for a server, services that customers say are up to 90% cheaper than rental alternatives from computer-hosting companies like Equinix and Rackspace". I bet a lot of companies use these services, being so cheap and all. I tend not to think too much about what or how big companies run their systems, perhaps I should pay more attention. This stuff it really interesting, it's like there's this whole underground of activity happening right under our noses.

Let's all copy the iphone!

2008-02-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Do me a favor.. look away from the screen and then look quickly at the three phones pictured and then look away. I know, you're confused... Why would Shilton post a photo of three models of the same phone? Well let's be honest, we know they're not all the SAME phone, but they're damn near close. This can't be the only interface that a smart phone can have. This is getting out of hand people!!! While browsing the news I came across an article about Sony Ericsson's new phone- the Xperia X1 aka a knock off of the iphone. Apple is not as good as everyone makes it out to be, stop feeding into it! Apple is like the captain of the high school football team. He walks around being a jerk to everyone but we all still adore him. Someone PLEASE stand up to this company!

"You are smarter than your computer"

2008-02-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

Today in my sociology class we were learning a program to analyze our sociological data. In class my professor actually said "You are smarter than your computer". This practically made my blood turn cold, it pretty much goes against everything I've ever been taught etc. etc. A similar situation would be for a lunatic to go into an Evangelical mass and yell "THERE IS NO GOD! JESUS IS A HOAX!" .. alright that might be a bit of an exaggeration but still, there is no human that is truly smarter than a computer. I guess it depends on your definition.

First of all- computers are never wrong. What I would have loved to yell out was "actually.. you are NOT smarter than your computer, but perhaps the person who designed and/or programmed this particular program did so in a way that didn't really make sense". That would have been better for me. I really hope that this class of 20-some odd people don't walk out of this classroom thinking that they're smarter than a computer.

We've been talking about this phenomenon a lot recently in HCI, about how people don't trust computers. In a lot of the plane accidents and such if people weren't involved the accidents may not have happened. Argh, how frustrating..

Foto Friday

2008-02-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

From the graffiti tunnel, University of Sydney

May be used as a certain *CRAFT* for all you Mawrters ;)

My backyard after a snowstorm

the Human and Computer Interaction

2008-02-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a class this semester called the Human and Computer Interaction (aka: HCI). Almost every class I just sit there and feel like the Professor sat down and wrote the class specifically for me. I love the topics we cover, I love listening to people talk about how to improve interfaces and how to make computers more user friendly. When I explain the class to people I tell them that it's a topic in computing that combines psychology and technology, and continue by explaining the importance. I truly think that HCI is something I could go into for a career; I strongly believe that HCI is the hottest topic in technology these days. For the most part the technology has already been developed, now it's time to make it more usable for the masses. Honestly, the companies that are doing a better job at their HCI are doing the best, like the whole apple line. Apple's motto is to make things as simple, sleek, and elegant as possible and people love it!

I came across this blog article today with the money quote "Yes, Linux does some things better than Mac OS X and Microsoft's Windows Vista on the desktop (security, maybe), but let's be honest: the Linux desktop is "utter crap" compared to either OS X or Windows when it comes to the thing that matters most: usability. If normal people can't use it, it just doesn't matter how beautifully architected it is...". Gosh that is so true! I LOVE THIS STUFF.

smart > invasive

2008-02-07T06:31:00.000-08:00

"This country doesn't permit the phone company to listen to what you say and use that information to target ads. The computer industry doesn't permit a software company to record everything we type and use that information to target ads," he said. "Yet with this merger, Google seeks to record nearly everything you see and do on the Internet and use that information to target ads." (all quotes from forbes)

Woah, woah woah... wait a minute here! This could be a GREAT thing! Listening to private conversations on the phone is not a fair comparison to information posted on the web. Even in emails, I don't think that targeted advertising for the content of that conversation is unjust in any way. I personally would much rather an advertisement targeted to my interests than a random one that I don't care about. That is SMART, not invasive.

money money money!

2008-02-06T05:07:00.000-08:00

"But what developers are really excited about is a chance to earn some money. MySpace plans to announce a plan Tuesday that lets developers attach ads, sponsorships and product sales to their applications and keep all the revenue those ads generate. " -Forbes

Finally. We're making money from these social networking sites! But wait- how is MySpace benefiting financially from this situation? I see, "Social networks love widgets because they help boost traffic and ad revenue on their sites." Well with MySpace it's easy because they're flooded with advertisements. Facebook is much more modest in their advertising, in the US anyway. I wonder if this openSocial project really will make a difference in the social networking world. I guess we just need to sit back and wait. The trouble with web 2.0 stuff is that in a bigger sense, it's never been done before. This is a whole new realm and companies are using trail and error to see what works and what doesn't. It is a dangeous business method I would imagine, trying things out like that. If something fails it could ruin the name of a company or service. Let's see how it goes...

And we're back!

2008-02-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

You're right, my "strike" was just an excuse for my busy life, I apologize. Now I have a few moments I would like to react to the recent proposal for the Microsoft/Yahoo merge.

Microsoft struggles to keep its head above water so to speak with the recent trends. Apple is all over the younger generations for computers and mp3 players. Google has certainly taken control of the whole search thing. I don't really understand why M.soft keeps trying to buy into these little kinds of things once there is a clear dominator of a market. Google is good at what it does, people like it, why try to compete? Microsoft is really good with their corporate work, a ridiculous percentage of companies and governmental programs all use windows machines, why not just try to make that better and leave the consumer stuff to those who do it better? I mean there are always ways to improve a product or introduce a new service that people will like but it needs to be done selectively.

Microsoft needs to find its niche in the consumer market, and I'm not sure that they're going to find it with purchasing Yahoo. Though forbes reports "If Microsoft succeeded in acquiring Yahoo!, Chester argues, the software giant would be buying the e-mail, instant messaging and search information of hundreds of millions of Web users. Added to Microsoft's own Web properties, a "MicroHoo" merger would host 80.1% of the Web's traffic to e-mail services and 27.8% of users' Web searches according to the most recent data from the Web measurement firm, Hitwise". This could be a HUGE market for targeted advertising on Microsoft's part. It seems as though this is M.soft's new kick- advertising. If they plan on bringing in the ads they have going with facebook and the potential of knowing a lot of information from millions of users they could do something AMAZING.

I did find FSJ's point interesting that perhaps Microsoft is trying to lure google into a bigger battle. Perhaps we're not always so informed to the bigger picture with this kind of thing. Maybe this really was a good move.. who knows. Till then. I'm back.

I've had it!

2007-12-26T16:15:00.001-08:00

I'm very upset. Recently FSJ (also listed on my facebook profile under my religious views) is being harassed by the Apple company. Dude, he invented the friggen iphone, have you heard of it? Let him be, he's writing about your company, in a good way. Have you ever seen his interviews about the blog? He often admits that he has a secret man-crush on the real Steve Jobs. Bottom line- keep on keepin on FSJ, and buzz off Apple, I'm on strike.

foto friday

2007-12-21T17:20:00.001-08:00

Fire cloud

best view in town

Time passing

Kleenex

2007-12-16T23:56:00.000-08:00

You know when a brand name becomes so famous that the it becomes the popular name as the product? Like with tissues, one of the most famous brands is kleenex to the point where if you went up to someone and asked if they had a kleenex, they would hand you a tissue, no matter if it was really a kleenex brand tissue or whatever. That's what google has done as well as wikipedia. To the point where searching for something on the internet is to "google it" the same way the most popular wiki site for information is wikipedia. An article that I read recently talks about a new site that will "rival wikipedia". All I can say is good luck, it will be hard to come close to the fame and somewhat dependability that wikipedia has established. I'm still away (writing from beautiful Hawaii tonight) but I just thought I'd share that. Much love.

No, I'm not kidding

2007-12-12T02:41:00.001-08:00

proof I actually went somewhere

gchat + AIM = a very happy Shilton

2007-12-04T18:23:00.001-08:00

So I'm in Alice Springs, AU on a 3 hour lay-over, what better way to spend my time (and FREE public wi-fi) than to catch up on a little tech news!! I took a glimpse of my favorite little cheat-sheet, google tech news and came to an article about how google is bringing AIM to their chat interface. WA-WA-WE-WA! I immediately clicked on my gmail tab and discovered that it's true! You can sign into AIM through the gmail chat! I love the gchat feature, it's discrete in that it can sit in the gmail window or pop out for a more intense chat session. How fantastic that gmail has brought the chat interface I love to the chat service that I'd rather use!! I hope that google hasn't had to venture too far into the dark side to have to work with the likes of AOL/Timewarner but I'm sure they're doing just fine. Anyway.. a quick post to say here's to you google, one more step to making my life a little less complicated.

I'm sorry... so sorry

2007-11-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

To my avid readers (Lindsay),
I'm sorry I haven't posted in ...forever. I haven't been reading the tech news, I'm oblivious to the goings on in silicon valley and I'm embarrassed. Please tune in when I get back to the states (around Dec 18) when I will resume my position as your tech news provider. Much love

~Shilton

Money Monday

2007-11-12T06:12:00.000-08:00

Alright it's really tuesday.. and it's 1:12AM.. but here are your money quotes.. in no particular order..

FSJ On the gPhone: It's like, Hey, we've got forty spazzo companies that can't fuck their way out of a paper bag; let's put them all together and maybe they'll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse.

That's why iPhone has taken off. Because it's beautiful. It's amazing. It works. It restores a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. It wasn't made by a consortium. It couldn't be created by a committee. It is the product of one vision, one man, one genius -- that would be me -- with, to be sure, a bit of help from a few other people who played minor roles.

comment on FSJ: That, my Jobsian friend, is the kind of one sentence deliverance that sends people crawling back for multiple free samples, when they know they'll get a fork in the hand if they take more than one.

FSJ on windows: "That's the beauty of Windows. The wow is now. As in, Wow, that OS is wicked unstable, isn't it?"

FSJ "I'm not a suit. Never have been. I'm a totally progressive Mother Jones-reading leftie. That's why I wear jeans and turtlenecks, to make a visual statement about who I am and what my role is in this world."

the back-up round-up

2007-11-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

While reading an article about Leopard I got caught up in the idea of the new Time Machine feature on the new OS. I thought man, what a great idea. If there's one thing people don't do it's backup their files. While I don't have anything terribly important, I do have thousands of music files that I would have a hard time parting with. I have my sexy little 40gig external hard drive that goes pretty much everywhere with me. It mainly contains music and video files that I don't have room on my laptop for. I really should work harder at backing up my files. On spring break last year with the lacrosse team I was in Colorado and a piece in my external broke off. I had to do without some of my jams for a few weeks until I could get the necessary parts to fix it- I didn't know what to do with myself.

A really cool service that I don't think too many people know about is the lala.com music storage and store. You can upload all your music on this site and listen to it anywhere. Also it has a really cool music store that competes with the itunes store.

Anything you buy from us is ready for your iPod. Whether you choose to buy physical CDs or digital albums, your purchase is about owning the music you love bundled with the convenience of having it accessible online.

What an innovative idea. Lala is an awesome service not to mention a convenient backup system for all your precious music files. Anyone with an extensive digital music collection should definitely look into this service. You can also sync with your ipod (and I would guess your friends ipods) with the site. This is a really awesome idea, the music is as crisp and clear as it would be on your own computer- give it a try!

On the businessweek article there was a comment about the Mozy online backup system which I think I will invest in. Once I get back in the states I will pay the $4.95 a month to have my HDD backed up online. I've been hesitant thus far to put all my files up on the internet but what the heck. I still think I will also invest in a bigger external that I can just throw in my closet and forget about, only backing up my files every once in a while. The thing with having to manually update files on an external hard drive is that, like the article says, I would have to keep connected to the external all the time. I move around a lot bringing my computer to class or studying in a library etc. it wouldn't be likely that I would want to lug around an external with me all the time. Though my little 40gigger isn't really a problem. It's no bigger than a TV remote and has a nice little leather case.

What would be cool would be if I could finally set up my room to be wireless. Last year I wanted to set up the printer in my room so my roommate and I could print wirelessly off the same printer. Having my external and printer set up wirelessly to my computer would be pretty hot. I also want to look into using a nice TV as my monitor.. seeing as how I'll already be using my TV as a TiVo as previously mentioned. Dream it you dreamers.. I need some money first. The thing with being a tech-nerd is that all our toys are so damn expensive! If you would like to fund my projects please send a check to...... alright, just kidding. Keep dreaming.

Foto Friday

2007-11-08T22:30:00.001-08:00

One way jesus
(Poster in the window on the top middle room - click to enlarge)

Thomas Hall, Bryn Mawr College

One laptop per child

2007-11-08T01:25:00.000-08:00

Productions went underway today for the formally "$100 laptop project" now one laptop per child. They couldn't get the costs under $200 but in the grand scheme of things I think that's alright. $200 puts a brand new kid-friendly "XO" laptop in the hands of the poorest kids in developing countries. What an amazing idea! Everything was specially engineered from the network to the power supply,

for use at home and where power is not available—the XO can be hand powered. It will come with at least two of three options: a crank, a pedal, or a pull-cord. It is also possible that children could have a second battery for group charging at school while they are using their laptop in class.

The website goes into extreme detail how everything works. The best part is how the network works, if one computer is connected to the internet, the laptops connect to the internet via the one connection. So where resources are limited, internet can be shared between computers that aren't necessarily connected through a landline. So the computers are kid friendly, environment friendly, and resource friendly- brilliant. I really think this movement will do a lot of good for the children of developing countries, let's sit back and watch what happens!

Iphone, Apple tablet and gPhone - oh my!

2007-11-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

Lately I've really been thinking about getting an iphone. I know, I know.. how cliche. I need a new phone when I get back to the states, and I need a new ipod (my mini from 4 years ago keeps shutting off for no reason and won't hold a charge). So why not combine them into one device? And I'm not going to pretend that I don't love the idea of having my email with me at all times, as well as a web browser and all the other cool things that the iphone has to offer. Alas, I have a dilemma. If I get a iphone when I get back to the states, will I be kicking myself in 8 months (or so) when google releases its gphone? I would HAAAAATE myself if I bought an iphone and then google comes along with this bad ass product that would be more practical and .. well just cooler. Google's cool factor will push the gphone to be ten times more popular than the iphone. Also, they say that the gphone isn't going to be just a phone but a collection of companies and services.

Earlier this week FSJ ranted about how he thought that google was coping out because they couldn't develop a phone on their own. While I know FSJ is a satirical blog, I thought this idea was a bit true. Why doesn't google just produce a phone on their own, I mean they have the money and everything. Then my buddy lindsay said that she thought it was a good move for google, as a sort of open-source thing. She knows me too well- I do love open source. This could be a really good thing. Forbes.com tv thing says that google is working with over 35 companies to develop not just one phone but the potential for thousands of phones with a common service of third party applications on a linux operating system. Wow- why wouldn't I like this? Open source software, open source OS, not to mention it will all probably be free (as in free beer).

OK, shift gears. Hey Apple, why haven't you told me about your idea to make a tablet? I'm a little hurt by this, I thought I would be the first one you would tell. I think that apple will be the company to make an AMAZING tablet. Tablets are such a good idea but the models out thus far are still lacking. I think that if there's one company that can make tablets easy to use, marketable and trendy it's apple. Good on ya, now keep me in the loop.

Money Monday

2007-11-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

oy, here ya go!

FSJ on trust: "We trust users. It's true. The reason we do this is because we want to start a chain reaction. We trust you, and then you trust someone else, and then they trust someone else. Pretty soon everyone is trusting the people around them. What happens then? No more war. Instead, peace. You see? And it all starts with a little piece of software. Like a butterfly's wings starting an earthquake, as the story goes in that old Chinese proverb."

FSJ on his tour prep: "After rehearsal I'll be doing some yoga and meditation. Then I've got my colorist coming in to work on my beard and hair until I get the perfect salt-and-pepper ratio."

forbes.com brian caulfield on the gPhone: "Even the best technology needs a sugar daddy"

FSJ on Andy Rubin stealing the apple iPhone slogan: "Or he figures he can just sweet-talk me and blow sunshine up my butt and I won't figure out that he's trying to stab me in the back."

FSJ on eWeek slamming Leopard: "I know people don't realize how software gets created. They think it just falls out of the sky or something. They don't realize all the people who work so hard for so many years to create something really amazing. And then in five minutes some dipshit from eWeek takes a crap on it."

FSJ on network TV writers: "You're latched on to a dying system like so many fat babies sucking on so many big fat Hollywood fake tits. Now the tits are drying up. "

Digital downloads Vs. movie rentals

2007-11-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

Businessweek brought up the idea that services like netflix may be threatened by movie downloading services. A quick trip to Amazon.com's unboxed site shows that you can rent movies via download for .99 and the file will expire in 30 days and once started will expire after 24 hours. Very interesting. Now I had netflix last semester and I LOVED it. I paid $15 a month for the two-at-a-time unlimited plan. On top of that plan I had 15 hours of online movie viewing a month, pretty sweet I thought. On average I probably watched about 2 movies every 5 days or so ~12 movies/month. It looks like I could save money as well as having the convenience of not waiting for snail mail if I took advantage of amazon's rentals.

I'm sure I'm not alone. About 5 years ago movie rental businesses noticed that digital services like comcast's OnDemand and netflix were cutting into their physical store/disc profits. Now online movie rental sites like netflix are noticing a similar change for consumers to download movies rather than waiting for the mail to arrive. It makes sense I think, the way the internet is these days. The service amazon has is a good one, and young people I'm sure are into the DRM free files, as I've said before. Bottom line- with a few cables, next semester I'll turn my computer into a TiVo using Amazon's movie and TV downloads :)

foto friday

2007-11-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

Walking down George St.

Giraffe looking at the opera house

neat-o: WiMax

2007-10-31T23:16:00.000-07:00

So this definitely deserves a post, apparently network giant Cisco has put a great deal of money into WiMax technologies. As D.Ewalt says,

But it's cool stuff: When these networks are installed, providers will be able to beam a broadband data signal over an entire city, and users will be able to get online anywhere, any time.

I was very excited when I was in San Francisco that the parks and public areas had wifi access, or so I was told. Wouldn't it be nice if we no longer has to rely on those annoying hot-spots and could get reliable internet service wherever we are? Though it will be a damper on the satisfaction of stealing wireless internet from your neighbors; it will be a lot more regulated. Though perhaps this is good, neighbors sharing a single internet connection must put a strain on isp's and everything. Hummm, aside from giving up free internet, I think I like this idea..

open source saves companies money

2007-10-31T22:52:00.000-07:00

MONEY QUOTE- Oh, the words are as sweet as honey that have since been starved the pleasure,

Open-source software, such as the Linux operating system, has saved big companies hundreds of millions of dollars in software licensing fees.

Bah-ha-ha, this is why I love forbes. They seem to write about exactly what I'm interested in.

Well hello, Google

2007-10-31T00:42:00.000-07:00

Well well well, here I am with my foot in my mouth. Shilton of Christmas past says Google missed out on quite an opportunity with facebook, I believe I was mad Google couldn't "man up". Seems as though google let facebook slip between it's gargantuan fingers because it was working on an even bigger project. They're going to make a universal standard, OpenSocial, will be used on social networking sites such as Orkut, LinkedIn, hi5, friendster, Plaxo, and Ning (edit 5/11/07: myspace too!). They're trying to pull software developers away from writing programs that will only work on facebook. Seems as though the little guys are teaming up against mighty facebook. I wonder if this will affect the popularity of facebook. The NYT article does doubt the productivity of this move,

Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America. For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States

True, as a US college student I haven't been too persuaded to join any social networking site besides facebook, myspace and linkedin.. though I know of quite a few people who still use friendster from pre-facebook times. Even in Australia (where I've been studying for the past semester) I've only run into people who use facebook and myspace, though they are almost american when it comes to that kind of thing. Nevertheless, the possibilities are quite vast here- google, you amaze me. As soon as I think you've gotten yourself into trouble you show me that you're still on your game. Good on ya. As the picture shows, I still love you google, we just hit a rough patch, consider it our first fight. *kisses*

Money Monday

2007-10-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry this list is a bit short, I have no excuses..

FSJ on a meeting in LA: "There's no real agenda. Maybe some hatha yoga and wheatgrass smoothies followed by some meditation or primal scream therapy. We'll play it by ear."

FSJ on IBM: "Unlike IBM, which used its monopoly and market power to abuse customers, we at Apple are using our monopoly and market power to make the world a better place."

FSJ on their earnings: "Apple faithful, I know what you're thinking, and please, you're embarrassing me. My office is already piled high with flowers that started arriving this afternoon and never stopped"

From Valleywag: "If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know."

FSJ on facebook snoops: "Heck, we've been reading people's .Mac mail since day one. We've got a kind of primitive search algorithm that crawls around looking for sappy love letters or cheating spouses, stuff like that, and we keep them in an archive."

Sarah Mackin on riding on her motorbike in vietnam: "It's like real life frogger, only the stakes are REAL"

What's next for facebook?

2007-10-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

But Facebook, like Apple and Google, has so far been successful in crafting its image so that even many industry insiders are continually convinced that something borderline revolutionary is in the works behind closed doors. The $15 billion valuation was, essentially, a sign of confidence in the shaky fact that Facebook's current advertising strategy is that it's developing an advertising strategy.

I too think that our beloved facebook is on the verge of something big. The buzz around the microsoft/facebook deal has propagated much anticipation of what facebook is planning; microsoft knows something that the rest of us don't. Some believe that it will be in the realm of advertising. I suppose there's not much else that the site can do to bring in huge revenues. I think that facebook should have used their application venture as a money maker, too bad that ship has sailed. If facebook charged the application writers a nominal fee their profits would increase exponentially. Thus far facebook users have experienced a luxury that myspace users have not- an advertisement free experience. This will soon change, but as I said in my last post, targeting advertising is the wave of the future, and what better place to really see it flourish than in a social networking site. People post such personal information, ads towards their personal interests would be of unmeasurable use to advertisers. That is the problem with most ads, they're not personal enough. Google has a good thing going with their adwords, placing non offensive (not tacky flash banner ads or banner ads in general) ads on the sides of pages that coincide with keywords from the site. If a powerhouse like microsoft can work with the genius of facebook to effectively harness targeted advertising I think it can be good for everyone. On the otherhand, mess it up and facebook will lose a lot of users. If facebook gets to be anything like the over-commercialized myspace, users will go running to other networking sites.

foto friday

2007-10-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

The shadow of the Harbour Bridge

The Sydney Opera House

Late night

Social Networking

2007-10-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

How did social networking sites come to be? I suppose it would be the next logical step after the boom of reality TV started by the Real World. I remember even when I was very young, being interested in the daily lives of normal people. At a time when unbelievable feats could be constructed with special effects, young people would rather watch someone in an almost god-like way than be dazzled. Reality tv was soon adopted by all walks of life, especially with the popularity in shows like Big Brother right down to Top Chef and the Amazing Race.

Then one day a man by the name of Mark Zuckerberg came around with a novel idea- to make reality internet. I tried to think of why I really liked facebook, what made it something that I wasn't joining but truly enjoying. The conclusion that I have come to is that it is simply a good way to keep in touch. Email was a good way to keep in touch, but facebook allows people to stay in touch to a large number of people, effortlessly. My 565 friends on facebook can see me though all my journeys in Australia and all I have to do is post a few photos now and then. The best part is staying in contact with people who would otherwise fall between the cracks. "In Hollywood it's not what you know, it's who you know" and you never know when Timmy from middle school is going to be your tie to your next dream job. Personally I think facebook and the social networking sites are good, but could be better. The reason why I wanted to join facebook over myspace was because at the time it was only for college students. Somehow that made it safer in my eyes. Now anyone can join and everyone does. I wish that there was a social networking site for adults (or anyone above.. say 18 years old) that was as secure as facebook was when they still checked email addresses to the universities.

I also fear for the people who get too wrapped up in these fake lives and forget that there's a real one going on. I was reading recently about the anti-social networking movement to try to get people to realize that there's more out there. Second life is a program that I don't even understand yet. I read an article about it maybe 6 months ago and I downloaded the program and tried to understand it. Second life is another world where people buy and sell fake property and objects with real money. Some can make a living off the site alone. I understand that the properties can be amazing and everything but how are real people getting so into this? Is it just so close to reality that people would rather live in second life that in the real world? In this life there's too much going on around us to get wrapped up in a video game- that's all it is. I would much rather be out enjoying my life than entrenched in a fake one. If this is what social networking is leading us to then I'm not so sure I want to be apart of it. Like the photo says, get a first life.

Microsoft backs F.book

2007-10-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't really want to write about this topic, but it seems everywhere I look there are articles after articles after articles about how microsoft (or as FSJ politely names "the borg") nailed a deal with facebook for a $240 million piece of their $15 billion company. From what I can tell they want to be the ones who control the advertisements that facebook users will enjoy in the next few years. I don't know if I'm happy about this deal or not.. I mean, good on ya Mark for one heck of a company you've made, seems Harvard isn't just a name. As an avid facebook user myself, I really really hope that they don't bombard our pages to resemble the tacky pages of myspace. I don't want to see flash banners stuffing up the site or any general ads that have nothing to do with me. I guess it's a good move on the microsoft's side to try to regain some sort of attachment to our generation, one that is almost wholeheartedly engrossed with the apple company. Though I think I would have preferred that google man up and make an acceptable offer to the social networking site. Think of the possibilities google, you hip little giant- being where the hipsters are.. That could have been amazing! There is a wall post about I don't know, what movie so-and-so is going to that night and to the right are some non-offensive ads about movie times etc. That would have been nice. Oh well.. so much for dreaming. I guess there's no stopping the microsoft/facebook team to revolutionize the way we think of advertisements, perhaps something good will come of this for everyone... let's see

Dear Apple, my love is not unconditional

2007-10-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

Ever since my post this morning about Amazon and its DRM free music downloads I've been doing a lot of thinking.. The conclusion I've come to is itunes sucks. Apple isn't doing us a favor generally. I really truly love the Apple company, I think they've done an amazing job from the business perspective, but personally I think they're ruining us. My roommate last year, Mary would always say Starbucks ruined local coffee shops, in the same way I think itunes has ruined music. Mary would ask, "When you think of a coffee shop, what do you think of? Starbucks. That's wrong." similarly, when you think of a MP3 player, what do you think of? Ipod. So everyone has an ipod and wants to be seen strutting around town with those famous white ear bud cords streaming from their ears, but is it truly a superior product? Itunes has changed the way we download music but the copyright limitations are horrible! Again, I understand that the music company is struggling to regain their financial grasp on the sales of music files, but the industry has to change. I have become too comfortable with not paying for my music, I'm sure I'm not the only one. Everyone loves itunes/ipod because it's so easy to use, but that can't be the only driving force in our music player selection. What made me post this rant was this article about how the iTV has been a flop but this one quote in particularly really stirred my blood:

But its biggest problem is that it's a locked-down device shackled to a third-rate media service, kind of like the iPhone, which is tied to AT&T.

He's right, the iTV was a third-rate media service like the iPhone and I can't help but say the same about the iPod. Though their iTv movie/tv selection is a lot worse than the music selection in the itunes store, it's not the best by any means. There are many obscure artists that can't get in the itunes store; has apple become our musical gatekeeper? Why are we allowing apple to dictate what we listen to? Also, some of the best CDs I've downloaded are compilations that itunes doesn't offer. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but Apple, I'm not very happy with you right now. My love is not unconditional, you're going to have to work harder!

Amazon: upsetting the waters of big companies

2007-10-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

With the release of the third quarter earnings for the year, reports tell us that amazon's up and ebay's not doing so well. These two companies are interesting to look at together because there has been a trend recently of third-party sellers looking to host their goods on amazon over ebay for various reasons. Ebay has been generally the powerhouse for sales of random goods from roller skates to celebrities' garbage, and amazon more of a book/media company. A quick visit to Amazon.com shows that books aren't all they host anymore; with categories like "baby" with the sale of diapers and toys, "Home & Garden" stocking leaf blowers and bbq grills and even a listing of wireless phone plans, I think ebay's feeling the change. Ebay's not doing too well either with their $2.6 billion purchase of skype, whoops!

With all that being said, Amazon also is the talk of the town because of their cheap music and tv downloads. Anyone who has downloaded music from itunes has probably realized that they do a pretty good job of limiting what you can do with their DRM-protected files. For instance, at uni I'm on a network with my house, but I can only authorize 5 computers with my name for them to listen to the music I've downloaded through the itunes shared music service. Also, if I make a CD for a friend with the songs and they try to put them on their computer, the same issue will arise that their computer isn't authorized to listen to those songs. Has anyone realized that amazon lets you do whatever you want with the music you download? I know it's against copyright agreements and everything, but that's the way the world works, people want to share music. Also, there are rumors that itunes dropped the price of their drm-protected downloads to contend with amazon's drm-free download price. Who's getting scared now?!

Scoreboard:
Ebay 0 Amazon 1
itunes 0 Amazon 1

Amazon's the company the big boys are worried about, and frankly they should be.

I'm on a high..

2007-10-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

So this has nothing to do with technology at all but..
HECK YES RED SOX! Let's hear it for the sox going to the world series! Sorry for all you rockies fans (*cough* jamie) but you don't stand a chance. The sox are going all the way! I feel like Papelbon in this photo right now, god life is sweet. :)

sunday "Money quote"

2007-10-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

Ok.. what I'm gonna do is post my favorite (favourite) money quotes from my life.. but generally from FSJ and here we go.. this list might be short.. but I'll work on a better one for next week

FSJ on vista: "Startup took five minutes from the time he produced the laptop from his briefcase. Felt like five hours."

Lindsay's FSJ money quote: "Imagine my sexy breath on your neck, my lips next to your ears, saying, Boom. Eighty gigabytes. That's right. All eighty. Boom."

The nerds were like, "Yeah, but Jobso, who cares, it's just going to developers, the code all works fine and those guys don't care if it looks pretty."

And I'm getting involved too with weekly code reviews. Not that I can read code, because I can't. But I know how code should look on a screen. Which frankly I think is way more important. Don't tell that to the nerds though.

FSJ on France selling unlocked iphones: "You know what? I hate the French. I really do. Always have. Almost as much as I hate Scandinavians. And the media. They're number one. But the French are right up there, believe me. Sneaky pricks."

"New survey shows most Americans want a computer for Christmas. Guess who's going to have a sweet new operating system dropping on Oct. 26, generating a whole fresh new round of rave reviews from the likes of Goatberg and Smurfy Pogue?"

FSJ on college students downloading music: "Kids, BTW, FWIW, we don't give a shit what the law says and neither should you. You stole our idea. If we want to fuck you up, we will fuck you up. Plain and simple. If we want to make your life a living hell, we can and we will. If we tell you to take down the posters and paint your asses red and jump around like baboons and send us a videotape of yourselves doing it, you'll do it. Got it? Good. Now don't you have a paper due? Get back to work. And stop stealing music."

FSJ on Doug Morris: "
As I told BusinessWeek: "Doug's a very special guy. He's the last of the great music executives who came up through A&R. He's old school. I like him a lot."

Inside joke: At Apple when we say someone is "special" we mean as in "special education." As in, "rides the short bus." When we say "old school" we mean "likely has Alzheimer's." When we say "I like him a lot," it means we can't wait to rip out his heart and eat it in front of him."

FSJ on employees cashing in the $100 rebate on iphones they got for free: "But we're management. We can do stuff like that. Clerktards cannot. It's right there in the employment contract that retail people sign when they join the company. We have a signed copy for every employee, along with their blood sample, retina scans, home phone logs, dating history, medical records and data from the chip we've implanted in their necks... Guess what? You're iFired, you iAssholes."

FSJ on business school: "My theory is that education in general only serves to clog your creativity and shut down your brain. I imagine the brain is like this giant honeycomb, with all these open cells, but every class you take just fills some of those holes and seals them shut. Getting an MBA is like going back and double-sealing those doors with cement."

alright, that's all I have for now, it's kinda just funny stuff I read today, I'll have a MUCH better list next week. till then..

Comcast is smart-assed

2007-10-19T20:22:00.001-07:00

Damn you comcast! This is the first account that I've heard towards measures to block bittorrent traffic. I always thought that bittorrent would be the hardest of the peer-to-peer networks to stop because it's entirely web based. Programs like napster were easy to shut down because it was one concentrated network that had a centralized base that could be destroyed. Bittorrent is different because there's not one website that has all the bittorrent files, they're literally all over the web- much harder to track down. Alas, comcast seems to be doing a good job of targeting the traffic and shutting it down. As I said in my net neutrality post, I'm afraid that we will look back at the web as we know with a sour taste because of how limited we will be in the future. Until then my friends, take advantage.

Photo Project

2007-10-16T21:58:00.003-07:00

So I was busy in class yesterday not paying attention when I decided to play in Photoshop. Tell me what you think of these:

The sydney tower at dusk

"Imagine" banner at APEC

The Fake Steve Jobs

2007-10-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

While I have a link to it in my blogroll, this blog deserves its own post. The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is written by my favorite forbes writer, Daniel Lyons and like his forbes articles- it's HILARIOUS.
So please, please, please look at his blog if you get a chance, might I suggest starting with Today's AOL layoffs: Complete list here because I haven't laughed out loud like that over an article in a long time. Daniel also has a much anticipated book coming out, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody hilarious, can't wait.

Ubuntu re-do

2007-10-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

When buying a new computer for most people the choice is apple or microsoft for the operating system- but not for long. Ubuntu is coming closer and closer with every new release to make a product that is truly user friendly and can be accepted by the masses. Apparently they're trying to make their OS appealing not by the code but by looks. With gutsy gibbon releasing on thursday with 3d graphics that are comprable to vista and osx, they're getting closer. This article explains Ubuntu's aims to move towards hand-held computers and and OS that has generally better graphics to appeal to those who don't see the technological benefits of using a linux OS.

I'm not sure what the new OS has that can't already be done, but I bet it's similar to the beryl option that can be downloaded to any Ubuntu version (pictured at left). After working very closely with Ubuntu last summer, I still don't think it's ready to be labeled as "user friendly". You can read in my lab blog all the trouble I had configuring it to work on a network. I had to research heaps of unix command lines to make it work the way I wanted it to. Your average person won't put that much time into configuring their OS. Though the benefit of a linux OS is that it's completely custom. Windows/Apple have a lot of generic configurations that work well for most people but there might be something that doesn't work exactly the way you want it, while ubuntu is a lot harder to set up in the beginning but in the end it fits like a glove. Perhaps with a few releases into the future Ubuntu will get it right... I hope with it though, they don't lose the customization options that Linux users have come accustomed too, it's a tricky balance.

Net Neutrality

2007-10-15T19:23:00.001-07:00

Alright.. well.. I'm not sure if you know what's going on, ok, before reading any more.. watch the youtube video..

Now that we're all caught up to speed, wtf?! There are companies trying to limit what we can access on the internet! I guess we could all see something like this coming. Remember the days when downloading music from napster and morpheus was a joke; frankly you were stupid not to take advantage of it. The internet always leaves me with this "too good to be true" feeling, and it seems that's exactly what some companies think it is. I don't want it to come to a point when we all sit back on our rocking chairs as old farts reminiscing about the good old days. I'll think back with a twinkle in my eye to when the web was as vast and free as the air we breathe and I'll curse the man for what it's become! Perhaps if we all come together in true democratic fashion we can squash the industry's aim to squeeze every last cent out of us (or in some cases completely limit us) so go to

Firefox

2007-10-15T02:17:00.000-07:00

Firefox has 50 in-house developers, but, in open-source tradition, 1,000 volunteers worldwide regularly contribute code. The result is what its users will tell you is a superior piece of engineering to Microsoft IE. Firefox was first to popularize tabbed browsing and first to integrate pop-up blocking, spell checking and antiphishing into the browser. It has a nifty word finder that doesn't require opening up a separate dialog box as in IE. Some 3,000 software extensions have been written to make it more versatile... Firefox had only a two-day window of exposure, on average, to malicious hacker exploits, the lowest of any browser. ~Quentin Hardy

This article explains the woes that mozilla has faced in their "david and goliath" fight against microsoft. I think firefox is better in general, but obviously I'm biased against closed source development. I truly believe that an open source project will always be better than a closed project. There are just simply too many people to debug the program to mess it up too much. The best thing about firefox is its security- obviously. There are people working constantly to patch up vulnerabilities in the firefox code. Not to mention the cute little fox in the icon is like so totally better than that stupid "e". SO THERE!

Could this really be something?

2007-10-14T23:15:00.001-07:00

Alright, if you know me at all I'm sure you've heard me talk about the "paper thin battery" and this is where it came from. If this revolutionary finding is real then we're in for some AMAZING things! The combination with the super small battery and MIT's development of wireless electricity could really change the way we use electronics. You remember when you were a kid listing to one of your parents telling you that they didn't have TV when they were young and having your jaw hit the floor? I feel like our generation is going to have a similar situation with this wireless electricity, "When I was a kid we had to plug the TV into an outlet and the TV was a cube that you put in an entertainment center near the power source!!"

With the wireless electricity, or "wiTricity" we don't need huge batteries the way we do now. If there's pretty much always a power source floating around, we may only need a little bit to keep us going through the times when the wiTricity isn't available or a power outage etc. Think about how small laptops and cell phones are going to be! Also perhaps we won't have the same woes that we have now with batteries harming the environment in landfills, maybe they'll be a more permanent fixture in our electronics as opposed to a disposable nuisance that looses its juice too quick.

HealthVault

2007-10-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Wow- what a great idea! Robert Langreth of Forbes reports about Microsoft's launch of HealthVault. HealthVault is a website that allows users to upload a cohesive account of their medical history. This is brilliant because, as the report says, "Current recordkeeping is a mishmash of files. Chronic care patients can wind up taking multiple medications prescribed by doctors who may be unaware of one another. Care of critically ill patients gets mismanaged because doctors can't find the right records" (Langreth). The article goes into more detail about the security risks.

Microsoft is the company that everyone loves to hate, but somewhere in the back of my mind I'm always rooting for them. Lately they've been beaten out by the sexy styles of Apple and the trendy nature of their products. I only wish that Microsoft would take their good ideas and produce products that are actually good. Bottom line: I like the idea of HealthVault but I doubt that anyone will trust their personal health information on the web, or more specifically with Microsoft. As a friend of mine who works in security says, "Once a piece of information leaves your hands, your physical grasp on it, you can no longer call it secure."

"You’ve got a friend in me" :Aristotle on “Toy Story”

2007-01-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

“When the road looks rough ahead And you're miles and miles From your nice warm bed Just remember what your old pal said Boy, you've got a friend in me You've got a friend in me You've got troubles, well I've got 'em too There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you We stick together and we see it through You've got a friend in me

Some other folks might be A little bit smarter than I am Bigger and stronger too Maybe But none of them will ever love you the way I do It's me and you And as the years go by Boys, our friendship will never die You're gonna see It's our destiny You've got a friend in me”

The theme song to the movie, “Toy Story” is very indicative of what the movie is generally about. It’s a movie about friendship and how we treat our friends and how we should act in friendships. While Aristotle was around quite a long time ago he would have a lot to say about the friendships surrounding the main character, Woody. The movie Toy Story is a tale of friendship centered on Woody, the lovable cowboy doll who has up until now been the long time favorite of his boy owner, Andy. The story begins with Woody rounding up the group of toys to talk about how Andy is having a birthday party and reminds them that they’re moving to a new house soon. Andy’s birthday party is a big deal to all the toys because of the threat that Andy might get presents that are new toys, which might be bigger and better than the older toys. Everyone seems worried about the birthday party except Woody. Woody has been Andy’s favorite for such a long time; he doesn’t even think that anything could change that. Come to find out that Andy gets a new toy, Buzz Light-year, who ends up being Woody’s replacement. Much of the story revolves around Woody coming to terms with Buzz’s existence and his jealousy over losing Andy’s affection.

Aristotle’s theories about friendship are very relatable to the movie Toy Story and the main characters. The relationship between Buzz and Woody is interesting to analyze because the two really don’t get along at first. Mainly because Woody is so jealous of losing Andy’s love. The real climax of the movie occurs when Woody and Buzz end up in the hands of Sid, Andy’s evil next-door neighbor. It is clear that if the two toys don’t escape from Sid’s home then they might be destroyed. Also at this point Andy and his mom are moving to a new house and if Buzz and Woody don’t get back with him soon they could be left behind.

Aristotle, a classical philosopher, has said many things on the basis of friendship. He talks about three kinds of friendship, one for utility, another pleasure and lastly friendship that is genuinely good. There is also a discussion that Aristotle brings up in his Nicomachean Ethics about the friendship between someone in power and his subordinates. Aristotle also tries to decide what it means to be a good person because he says that true friendship can only exist between good people. Another major focus of Aristotle is the problem of self-love to attempt to decide if it is best for one love his friends most or love himself best. If Aristotle were around in the time that Toy Story was made, he would have a lot to say about the friendship dynamic between Woody and Buzz. Since Woody is the main character and the movie is seen through his eyes, it is only appropriate that Aristotle’s argument is focused on him.

Being inherently good, by Aristotle’s definition, is essential to true, and lasting, friendship. Because Aristotle says that friendship for good cannot exist if both friends are not good, a question to consider is whether Aristotle would consider Woody to be good. On friendship between good people, Aristotle says “It is the friendship of good people that is friendship most of all, as we have often said. For what is lovable and choiceworthy seems to be what is unconditionally good or pleasant, and what is lovable and choiceworthy for each person seems to be what is good or pleasant for him; and both of these make one good person lovable and choiceworthy for another good person” (Other selves, 36). Woody is presented as the lovable character who has made a few bad choices. In one example, as the long time “favorite” of Andy, he becomes overcome with jealousy over Andy’s new favorite toy, Buzz light-year. In one scene in particular, Woody wants Andy to take him on a trip and knows that he will probably choose Buzz over him. In this instance Woody plans on pushing Buzz off the bed so that Andy wouldn’t be able to find him right away and just concede to taking Woody. Unfortunately, Woody accidentally pushes Buzz out the window and puts him in danger of being lost forever.

It is quite obvious that this is an example that proves that Woody isn’t inherently good. It’s true that good people can do bad things, but he repeats these patterns over and over. Another reason to believe that Woody isn’t good is that after he accidentally pushes Buzz out the window he immediately backs up and becomes defensive towards the accusations about him trying to hurt Buzz. Perhaps a better person wouldn’t worry so much about themselves and focus on rescuing his friend. Already it seems as though Aristotle would agree that Buzz and Woody don’t have a true friendship, seeing as how both participants aren’t good. Perhaps Aristotle would say that this friendship is a better example of a friendship of utility, one of his three types of friendship.

One of Aristotle’s three types of friendships, friendship of utility, is one that he says is most commonly practiced, along with friendship of pleasure, among young people. Aristotle admits that friendship for good can only occur between good people and is very rare. More commonly though, friendships of utility can be seen everywhere. For example, a student who is particularly bad at math might become friends with someone in their math class that is good in the subject so they can help them with their homework. In many situations this is a really fake friendship that will have no need to continue after the class is over; the person who is bad at math won’t need the utility of friendship to get their homework done if they’re not in the class anymore. In Toy Story, there are also examples of how Woody tries to use Buzz. In the scene where Woody is trapped under the crate because a toolbox is on top, Woody befriends Buzz for the first time in hopes that he will help him.

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It would be one thing if Woody was trying to be Buzz’s friend the whole time, but ever since they met Woody was just trying to get Buzz out of the picture. In the lasts scenes from this point on, Woody and Buzz work together to get out of Sid’s house to be back with Andy. When the movie ends, the viewer is left with a feeling that the two toys have found a common ground and are now friends. Aristotle would probably see their friendship as building on nothing more than utility. Going back to the first scene where Woody pushes Buzz out the window, and the rest of the toys jump all over him accusing him of trying to hurt Buzz, Aristotle would view this as a by-product of a friendship of utility. Aristotle would explain Woody’s friendship with the rest of Andy’s toys to be of utility as well, “Accusations and reproaches arise only or most often in friendships for utility” (Other selves, 47). Woody seems to have only friendships of utility, as explained by Aristotle.

Aristotle would not consider the relationship between Woody and any of the other toys to be a good friendship because of his superior status. It is very clear from the beginning of the movie that Woody is Andy’s favorite toy and consequently the leader of all the toys.

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From this scene it is clear that Woody is the one in charge. He talks down to the other toys and runs the “town meeting”. Aristotle says that someone only aims to be friends with someone who in a position of superiority if along with greater power they have greater virtue, he says this is quite rare (Other Selves, 38). Therefore Woody’s character is predisposed to not have healthy friendships with any of the other toys. As per the examples where Woody makes bad decisions like pushing Buzz out the window, it’s clear that Woody does not possess superior virtues to any of the toys. I would also assume that Aristotle would agree that a person might want to be friends with a superior if they could gain something; a friendship of utility. This would be support of the theory that the relationship between Woody and Buzz is one of utility.

A key aspect of Aristotle’s theory is the problem of self-love. Aristotle’s solves the problem of self-love by explaining that if everyone loves himself or herself in the right way, then people’s good actions will reciprocate each other’s and all the world’s problems will be solved. He says, “…if all men were to compete for what is noble and put all their efforts into the performance of the noblest actions, all the needs of the community will have been met, and each individual will have the greatest of goods…” (Nic. Eth., 1169a7-10). In this he is saying that if everyone does what he or she is supposed to do, with their own best interest in mind than the collective good will fall into place like puzzle pieces. Another part to Aristotle’s argument is that if each person acts in the highest morality, everyone will benefit. The assumption that a community acting in a self-loving way will work is based on the idea that each person will act with high morality and many of the actions will actually come across as selfless, though the person will get honor and nobility in return. Looking at Toy Story, Aristotle would see examples of self-love with Woody. Woody obviously loves himself and thinks that he should be Andy’s favorite. The problem with Woody is that he isn’t entirely virtuous and makes many mistakes. Often his mistakes are the result of his self-love and jealousy, which comes at the expense of others. Aristotle concludes that if everyone loves himself or herself most and acts in the noblest way then everyone’s needs will be taken care of. Though Woody is a toy he acts in a human way and human beings aren’t perfect - they make mistakes. Along with Aristotle’s self-love theory in relation to Woody, I’m not sure there are any examples of Woody trying to be friends with anyone. All his actions in fact are pretty selfish, until the end of the movie where he rescues Buzz from Sid. Even in helping Buzz in this scene he is acting a bit selfishly. Woody’s ultimate motive for helping Buzz is because he can’t go back with the other toys if he doesn’t have Buzz with him because they’ll all blame him for leaving Buzz behind. In the end Aristotle’s self-love solution isn’t ideal, as exemplified by Woody, even when people act strictly for themselves things don’t work out perfectly, especially when it is at the expense of others.

Aristotle would believe that the friendship between Woody and Buzz is not an ideal example of what friendship should be. Four of his main points exemplify this argument. The first fact is that that true friendship can only happen between two good people. Through examples of Woody being selfish and expressing that jealousy in a malicious way are sufficient to conclude that Woody is not good, by Aristotle’s standards. A second point that Aristotle would argue would be that the friendship between Woody and Buzz is simply a friendship of utility. Thirdly Aristotle says that relationships between superior and inferiors cannot exist unless along with their superiority the person possesses greater virtue. Exemplified through his ignoble actions; Woody does not possess superior virtue than any of the other toys. If Aristotle’s explanations between Woody and the other characters can conclude that he isn’t the best candidate to have relationships with other people, then perhaps he has a better relationship with himself. Aristotle’s idea about self-love proves that Woody doesn’t even have a good relationship with himself. A central argument about self-love is that the person should act in the noblest way, and Woody definitely doesn’t do that. Aristotle would conclude that the friendship between Woody and Buzz is not an ideal friendship and Woody’s relationship with himself is flawed too. It seems as though Woody isn’t a good candidate to be friends with anyone.

After analyzing Aristotle’s theories, it leaves me a bit confused as to why Disney and Pixar would use Woody as a character in a movie where the theme song is titled “You’ve got a friend in me” if he isn’t really a good friend to anyone. I’m not saying that the relationship between Woody and Buzz is completely ideal but I think there are good lessons to take away from the story. I agree and disagree with Aristotle’s theories but ultimately conclude that Woody is fallible but lovable and though he makes mistakes, he learns from his mistakes and is good after all.

First of all I would disagree that friendship can only happen between good people. Most people try to be the best that they can be and that I think is enough to make them good. Aristotle’s definition of “good” seems to only include individuals who act nobly all the time. The thing with human beings is that we all make mistakes at one point or another. The fact that Woody makes mistakes here and there is understandable. Most people, even kids, can relate to Woody’s jealousy. I’m not endorsing Woody’s reaction of pushing Buzz out the window; I don’t think that the solution to problems is removing the cause of the problem. In the end I think that even though Woody makes mistakes he in the end is good.
In reaction to Aristotle’s theory of friendships of utility, I would agree that the relationship between Woody and Buzz is a friendship of utility. I think that Aristotle was correct in his theory that there are three different types of friendship. There are many everyday examples of friendships of utility pleasure and friendship of good. Though I would disagree that only friendships of good are desirable. Friendships for utility and pleasure have their place in society and in our everyday lives. The way our society works is that we’re all pretty dependable on each other for different things. The dependency that we have on the local dry cleaner or the guy who plows the street isn’t the same as friendships of utility but they are similar. The main problem that I have with Aristotle’s classification of three types of friendship is he doesn’t leave a gray area. Most things in life are not cut and dry, black and white. Many friendships of utility probably consist of a bit of friendship of pleasure and even some friendship of good. I don’t think that it’s fair to say that the relationship of utility between Woody and Buzz isn’t a good or desirable friendship. Part of friendship is being able to depend on each other in times of need. When it came down to it Woody helped Buzz escape from Sid and get back with the rest of the toys and in the possession of Andy.

To conclude my reaction to Aristotle’s theories I don’t think that the filmmakers of Toy Story did the American youths a disservice by presenting this type of friendship. Aristotle was around a long time ago and perhaps his theories are a bit outdated. The story of the characters in Toy Story show everyone that it’s ok to make some mistakes as long as you rectify them in the end and do the right thing. An important thing for kids to learn is that we all make mistakes and to be a good friend you have to learn from them and challenge yourself to be a better person the next time a problem presents itself. I’m not sure Aristotle would agree with the overall theme behind this movie but perhaps he, too, would find the good in the end.