Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Computers and Internet

  • OLPC

    That stands for One Laptop Per Child – a project aimed at providing a cheap and robust laptop to children in developing countries. It’s aimed at bridging the so-called Digital Divide.
     
    It’s certainly an ambitious project, and has caught the attention of both the UN and the geeks. And while I’m certainly not decrying the value of education alongside solving other problems like disease and hunger, I’m not convinced that this device will turn out to be the best solution. The phrase "cheap and robust" sounds too much like an oxymoron when applied to computers. Even when it’s "expensive and robust" it’s often the same – witness Apple’s problems with its iPOD Nano – they couldn’t make that robust, and it’s not even a proper computer, just a playback toy.
     
    Lee Felsenstein dissects the OLPC in greater depth, and the prognosis is not good.

  • Orb – Too Good to be True?

    Mike Torres, over at his Torres Talking blog gushes about Orb – a new application that enables media streaming from your home PC to any web-based device – a remote PC, a mobile phone, a PDA, etc.
     
    I have to admit, it does sound intriguing, and it’s free (what on earth is the business model of Orb?). I suppose one area of concern is the security issue – what are the points of weakness about the mechanisms used? I think I’ll let others kick the tyres for a little longer on this.
     
    The other issue would be about using it to stream to mobile phones. Mike claims that it turns his mobile phone into an iPod on steroids. Well, yes, I would have access to a vast vault of media sitting at home – far more than on an iPod slung around my neck. But, ahem, what are the costs of streaming all that to the mobile phone? I speak as someone who refuses to get a monthly subscription, preferring to pay as I go. So far it’s cost me all of 20 euros for 18 months usage. The phone companies clearly aren’t going to get rich through people like me. They need people like Mike.

  • USB Gloves

    Do you suffer from cold hands? Find it difficult to blog on a cold day? Here’s just the thing for you.

  • Cerf’s Up

    I see that Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn are being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom today – the highest civilian honour in the US. It’s being awarded for their work on the TCP/IP protocols – the core networking protocols of the Internet.
     
    Interestingly, the award comes on the day when the US Congress is debating a bill that could fundamentally alter the way in which the Internet is run, giving rise to concerns that broadband operators will govern the nature of activity on the Internet. Cerf shares those concerns, so he has written to Congress about them. Here’s hoping that Congress pays him some attention.

  • Flickr + Google Maps

    Kai Yung has built a website that integrates photos held in Flickr with Google Maps. It shows the power of what can be done using the APIs of the two services.
     
    One thing I find somewhat amusing is that on this site, the navigation of the mouse scrollwheel is consistent with Yahoo and Microsoft maps. Yet one more datapoint to show that the scrollwheel navigation on Google Earth is out of step with the rest of the world…

  • Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

    Here’s a turnup for the books, as it were. Amazon has just announced its Mechanical Turk – what it defines as artificial artificial intelligence. It’s a brilliant idea – but I’ll bet that its network of humans inside the mechanical Turk are outsourced to low cost countries such as India faster than you can say Wolfgang von Kempelen.

  • Google Earth

    I mentioned the user community that has grown up around the Google Earth application earlier today. As an example of how Google Earth is being used, Frank Taylor, over at the Google Earth Blog, writes about how the spread of avian flu around the globe is being tracked by a member of the Google Earth Community. Here’s a screenshot showing a sample of the data (click to go to the original on Flickr, where you can choose higher resolution versions of the shot for greater clarity).
     
     Google Earth Snapshot
     
    Update: Frank Taylor, over at the Google Earth Blog reports that Declan Butler, a senior reporter at Nature Magazine, has published a new version of the avian flu outbreak map. He advises this new map be used for accuracy.
     

  • Yahoo Maps

    A new version of Yahoo Maps was launched yesterday. It uses Flash technology, instead of Ajax (which is used by its rivals, Google Maps and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.
     
    It’s a good thing it’s a beta, because it crashed on me within seconds when I tried to use my mouse’s scroll-wheel to zoom.
     
    By the way, one thing that I find supremely irritating is that Google’s use of the scroll wheel to zoom is the exact opposite of the way in which Microsoft and Yahoo use it. Google wins the Donald A. Norman award for piss-poor user interface consistency in my view. They don’t even give you the option to reverse it. 
     
    Google Maps (despite the user interface cock-up) works the best for me. Microsoft’s offering returns blank map tiles too often for my liking. And all of them are either sketchy or non-existent when it comes to showing maps outside of North America.
     
    But my favourite map application is still Google Earth. The combination of the PC application fed by data from Google’s map servers is still a far richer user experience than any browser-based map application that I’ve yet seen. There’s a really vibrant user community adding data to the maps. I’ve recently been visiting all of the locations mentioned by Shakespeare in his plays. All added by enthusiastic users.

  • Thin? – It’s Anorexic

    Thin-client computers were all the rage a few years ago, with some vendors claiming huge savings over the costs of infrastructures built with traditional PCs. Thankfully, the hype has been exposed for what it was, and thin-client technologies have settled in alongside PCs as a useful and sensible alternative in particular situations.
     
    Now Chip PC have announced the Jack-PC – a thin client so thin that it’s actually installed inside the wall socket. This is not thin – this is anorexic.

  • OTT Workstation

    The Total Immersion PCE takes the term "couch potato" to new heights. I confess that I wouldn’t mind having a ride on it though.

  • XBOX 360

    Apparently Microsoft’s XBOX 360 has just been released. I doubt very much that I’ll be lining up to purchase one – all the gee-whizzery seems to be devoted to games of the first-person shooter variety. This is a genre that appeals to me not one jot or tittle. Perhaps it’s just me, but I get a real feeling of dissonance when I read this in Greg Hughes’ blog entry of first impressions of the XBOX:
    The crowd was excited. A sign is taped to the end cap where the 360 resides that says "5 minutes, please." The crew of giddy people (mostly adults by the way) quietly contained themselves and politely took turns splattering people with their virtual firearms. It pretty much rocked. Ooohs and Aahhhhs abound.
    "Politely took turns splattering people"? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it.
     
    And if you want to see something really depressing, then watch and listen to this video of a 9 year-old (a 9! year-old) child playing a first person shooter game. It’s linked to by PZ Myers in his blog entry here. The child is a brat, his mother is completely ineffectual. I don’t know which is worse. All I know is that I think there’s going to be trouble around him when he gets older.
     
     

  • Turing’s Cathedral

    Interesting piece penned by George Dyson that has been posted over at the Edge. Dyson is reflecting on his visit to Google in the context of the history of computing, from von Neumann and Turing onwards.
    My visit to Google? Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people," explained one of my hosts after my talk. "We are scanning them to be read by an AI."
    And he raises a nice little frisson in the mind of this reader with:

    Google is Turing’s cathedral, awaiting its soul. We hope. In the words of an unusually perceptive friend: "When I was there, just before the IPO, I thought the coziness to be almost overwhelming. Happy Golden Retrievers running in slow motion through water sprinklers on the lawn. People waving and smiling, toys everywhere. I immediately suspected that unimaginable evil was happening somewhere in the dark corners. If the devil would come to earth, what place would be better to hide?"

    Is there a John Connor in the house?

  • Recognising Faces

    We humans do it easily – at least with people we are familiar with. But it’s a bit more tricky for computers to do it. At least, it used to be.
     
    I’ve just upgraded my copy of Adobe’s Photoshop Elements to the latest version, version 4.0. While some aspects of that software irritate me beyond belief, there are some interesting features. A new feature with version 4.0 is the ability to pick out faces in your photographs. It’s surprisingly effective, even if not always 100% accurate. It also picks out the faces of cats…
     
    But there’s a difference between picking out an area in a photograph and saying that "this is a face" and actually identifying the face, e.g. "this is your uncle John".
     
    However, that day may not be far off. TechCrunch has news of a new software application – Riya – that promises to do just that.

  • The Softer Side of Software

    The material from Microsoft’s Professional Developers’ Conference for 2005 are now up online as video streams as well as downloadable presentations. 
     
    One aspect of software development that has always interested me is that of user interface design and usability. There’s a fascinating, opinionated presentation on user interface design given by Hillel Cooperman. Well worth watching. In addition, he uses as an example the photo-sharing application Max developed in Microsoft to show off some of the features of Vista. It’s interesting (well, to me at least) that the sharing aspect is a P2P experience like Groove – i.e. it’s really simple and transparent to use.

  • Who Owns The Root?

    In the Unix operating system, the Root user is the equivalent of god, with absolute power over every aspect of the system, including all other users.
     
    There’s a somewhat similar concept in the Internet itself – there’s a bunch of servers – the root servers – that dictate Internet addresses, and how the numerical addresses are mapped to domain names such as www.google.com or www.bbc.co.uk.
     
    Up until now, these servers have been very firmly under the control of the US government. Not surprisingly, since the Internet has its origins in a US military network project. Equally not surprisingly, now that the Internet is a global phenomenon, other governments have started voicing concerns about the degree of control that the US has over the Internet. Those voices have gradually been getting louder, until now it seems as though some sort of inter-goverment body is likely, according to this report in yesterday’s Guardian.
     
    Personally, I would prefer to see the political governance of the Internet invested in some form of UN-related body. Naturally, some people see that as a very bad thing, but then, Mandy Rice-Davies Applies…

  • Third Time Lucky?

    Those of us who use Microsoft products have probably often had the feeling that it takes Microsoft until version three of a product before they start to get it right. It seems to be the case now for version 3.0 of Windows Sharepoint Services. Here’s the list of new features. I see that built-in breadcrumb trails on every page is at the top of the list. About bloody time. I’ve been asking for this since version 1.

  • Pointless, Incessant Barking

    I’m beginning to feel like the dog in this New Yorker cartoon…
    (hat tip to Geoffrey K. Pullum over at the Language Log)

  • Am I Real?

    Jason Striegel is a blogger. He’s recently come to the conclusion that in this wired world, he’s unable to convince some people that he’s a human being. The Turing Test as seen through the Looking Glass, perhaps?

  • All I find Is Dust…

    …but this guy found a chameleon inside his computer…

  • WinFS Beta 1 Released

    Once upon a time, long long ago (well in 1991, to be precise), Microsoft announced the Cairo project. Sometimes it was touted as an operating system, sometimes it was a project to develop new technologies, but whatever it was, it was something that used to remind me of the attempts of the Brown Booby bird to get off the ground, and never quite managing to do so. Still, over the years, more of the technologies that it was supposed to deliver have in fact finally appeared from Microsoft. All except one – and arguably the most important one – the "radically new" Object File System.
     
    Now, the first beta of that has arrived in the form of WinFS. Channel 9 has a video interview with some of the developers, and a demonstration of some of the capabilities. The beta itself is currently only available to MSDN subscribers. I think it’s significant that the beta is available for Windows XP, and not confined to the next generation of the Windows operating system family, Windows Vista. But that does raise the question of what will be the value proposition of Vista, if all the major technologies (WinFS, WinFX) are also available for Windows XP.