Sunday, April 30, 2006

Online photo editing...

This one has been in my edit queue for around a week, so I thought I'd throw it out into the wild, pxn8.com (via UNEASYsilence) is an AJAX-heavy online photo editing suite. I've played with it, and I've got to admit to being impressed...


The pxn8.com interface

If Yahoo isn't already talking to these guys, they better be developing something along the same lines. They should buy it, integrate it into the Flickr interface, and then we can all move on...

Wayfinder Earth

Close on the heels of the initial rumours, we now have confirmation of the new 3D Google Earth-like application for Java-enabled mobile phones, called Wayfinder Earth.


Wayfinder Earth

The application supposedly uses a two tiered solution, with a Google Earth-like 3D interface for distant views, dropping to a 2D interface when the user zooms in further.

Of course this new application will probably be seen to be in direct competition with Google's recently announced Google Map Mobile, although that is strictly two-dimensional. So as with Google Earth, which seemed initially to be in competition with the more traditional map sites, but turned out in the end not to be, you have to wonder? Will a 3D interface make as much difference on a phone as it did on the desktop?

Of course the really interesting question has to be what sort of location based awareness will the application support, and how well will it integrate into your PAN and your phone's services? Will it allow automatic cell tagging or geo tagging of photographs, and will you be able to display them on top of the Earth interface? Will it have Bluetooth GPS support? If not, why not? Surely geolocating of data is the point of having the whole of the Earth on your phone, and in your pocket?

If this turns out to be yet another "a map on your phone" I'm going to be disappointed. The Wayfinder Earth site currently consists of a count down timer, with something just over 2 days left to run, they're definitely running in stealth mode. I'm hoping that for once this means they have something up their sleeve apart from their arms...

Update: Digital Geography is carrying a review of the beta release...

Thursday, April 27, 2006

The ID card debate

With Australia joining the growing list of countries to have a mandatory in all by name national ID card, soon to be followed by our own green and pleasant land, I stumbled across a comment on Slashdot the more or less sums up my feelings on the ID card debate.
I moved from Australia to the US in 1978, in that year in both countries it was extremely unlikely that a law enforcement officer would approach you for no particular reason and ask for identification. However this very much was not the case in Eastern Europe (where I was born) and presumably the redder portions of South East Asia as well. Also at the time you did not need written permission to live, work, or just be at any certain place. So the "paper's please" thing became a jibe from the armchair anticommunists as sort of a short form of our country is so much better than yours. Indeed my own father, a staunch Anti-Communist, took us for a car trip both around Australia and across the United States in a prolonged state of rapture caused by the fact that we could go all these places and see all these things and not only not present papers to anyone of authority but not go through inspections or checkpoints (even at state lines!).

Fast forward to 2006 and world is different place. Terrorism has replaced Communism and the many of those same armchair anticommunists are now demanding the very things that they derided during the cold war in communist countries. It's a bizarre thing that I cannot travel around the US without identification, Can I refuse to show a policeman identification anymore? (I don't think so, but it's been awhile since I've been back to the US). I can not walk down most US streets with a simple beer in my hand... But I can take train from where I live now to the place where I was born and I can pass the abandoned check point which I passed as a child in a box in the trunk of a car... drinking what ever I want and showing my passport once as I pass over the border into Czech Republic.

I don't need papers in the place my parents ran from, but I need them in the place they ran to... - Bhima Pandava
I have no such experiences with repressive regimes, but I'm a good enough student of history to know that I don't want to have any experience with one in the future, and I'd very much hoped the phrase, "Papers please?", would in today's world be just that. History...

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Ads, by Google

Nicholas Carr has posted an interesting take on the AdSense hundred dollar minimum payment rule. He argues, persuasively, that Google is using the money from the uncountable number of "small" AdSense publishers as a float.

They aren't alone in this of course, the Yahoo Publisher Network also has a hundred dollar minimum pay out, although other programmes such as Amazon Associates or TradeDoubler have a lower thresholds, at least for direct deposits.

However none of these other programmes do targeted text adverts. If you want targeted text adverts, and you live outside the continental United States, then your only option for now is Google's AdSense. I'd guess that's what they'd call a market opportunity...

Update: It looks like Nicholas Carr has been reading the AdSense terms & conditions again, and has posted a follow-up article to his discussion of the Google float. He's concerned about section 6 (viii) which prohibits the publisher from;
(viii) act in any way that violates any Program Policies posted on the Google Web Site, as may be revised from time to time, or any other agreement between You and Google (including without limitation the Google AdWords program terms), or engage in any action or practice that reflects poorly on Google or otherwise disparages or devalues Google's reputation or goodwill. You acknowledge that any attempted participation or violation of any of the foregoing is a material breach of this Agreement and that we may pursue any and all applicable legal and equitable remedies against You, including an immediate suspension of Your account or termination of this Agreement, and the pursuit of all available civil or criminal remedies. - Google AdSense terms & conditions
Now I'm not a lawyer, I'm not even an American citizen so my grasp of US law is some what vague, but I'm not really sure I agree with Nick's interpretation. He argues that is is basically a gag order on publishers, denying them the right to criticise Google in press. To me it doesn't read that way, but I guess it really hinges on what the word "action" means in US law? Anyone?

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Microsoft die, die, die!

AppleMatters posted an interesting article a few days back which argues that Windows Vista will be the last operating system Microsoft ever produces. It's been sitting at the back of my mind ever since, and I think they have it right, but for the wrong reasons.

Russell Beattie had it right,
If someone's using a PC to demo the next big thing, then it's not the next big thing... - Russell Beattie
The future is in mobile computing, ubiquitous computing and location based services. If you're building something that even requires a desktop machine to access you're not looking very far ahead.

All my mail is stored on a remote server, I access it via IMAPS and I can have multiple clients connected to my mail, all seeing the same thing. My calendars reside at .Mac, although Google Calendar is starting to look good because as well as iCal import/export support they provide a decent web interface, and .Mac still doesn't. My pictures are on Flickr and my bookmarks are on del.icio.us. My source code is stored on a number of remote servers in CVS repositories, and my data is mirrored between my desktop machine and my laptop. But the data itself could just as well be on a remote server somewhere. In fact that would be preferable because at least I'd know where the master version was, sometimes I get in a muddle that rsync has trouble sorting out.

I travel a lot, and internet access is almost ubiquitous now. I spend more of my time interacting with remote services than I do poking around my laptop's local file structure, without the internet my laptop becomes a rather overlarge paper weight. The arrival of services like Amazon S3&trade is making me think about whether I should be changing the way I work entirely. We'll always need servers, but is the desktop finally dead?

The 17" MacBook Pro

Yesterday Apple released the new 17 inch Intel MacBook Pro onto an unsuspecting public, I did in fact notice the Apple store going down around 8am in the morning my time and like many I wondered why...

But I didn't blog the appearance of the new Intel MacBook when the store came back online. Why? Well, the new laptop is a pretty much uninspiring update, presumably why Apple chose not to announce it in yet another "special event". After all, you can only go to that well so many times before it runs dry.

However I'm still waiting for the somethings that's "much cooler" than a replacement for the 17 and 12 inch Powerbooks. I'm pretty much sold on the thought of a zero boot time 12 (or 13?) inch Powerbook replacement with instant on flash memory, in fact I'm going to be disappointed if a replacement 12 inch turns up and it's still shipping with a hard drive.

So why am I posting this? Well a colleague of mine noticed yesterday that the 17 inch actually costs less than the 15 inch in the same configuration, and it looks like other people have started to notice as well. What does this mean? Probably a price drop for the 15 inch, so if you're in the market for a shiny new 15 inch MacBook Pro, don't buy quite yet...

Friday, April 21, 2006

Windows apps native under OSX?

Robert Cringely gives his take on Apple's Boot Camp (via Slashdot), arguing that the reason behind the release is that Apple will not only offer dual-booting with Windows Vista, but the ability to run Windows applications running natively, without a copy of Windows at all...
... I also believe that Apple will offer in OS X 10.5 the ability to run native Windows XP applications with no copy of XP installed on the machine at all. This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5. - Robert Cringely
Perhaps so, after all Apple has had access to the full API documentation via a cross-licensing deal since the late 90's. With this as a starting point, and the long planned move to Intel up their sleeve, perhaps this isn't as crazy as it sounds...

Skype WiFi phone

The new Skype WiFi phone (via The Register) from NetGear looks interesting. If VOIP is ever really going to take off in the mass market, then this is the sort of gadget that needs to be produced. People look at you strangely stuck with a headset and a laptop in your average coffee shop, but this is just another phone. Not only doesn't it look weird, everyone will automatically know how to use it. Software phones scare the average consumer, so something like this is exactly what's needed...


The new NetGear Skype WiFi phone

You can now pre-order it via Amazon.com at a $50 discount off the $300 RRP. No official news of a UK or European release date or pricing, but several sites are suggesting that it might be released simultaneously here and in the States around the end of June.

Disappearing teaspoons...

After the publication of some recent research in the British Medical Journal detailing work on a comprehensive longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute that my wife found the other day, I think I may have to carry out some follow-up work here in Exeter. Unless anyone can tell me where all the teaspoons, a large bag of several hundred plastic ones, from the senior common room have disappeared to? Anyone..?

In other news...

Scientists have now proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that men are distracted by looking at beautiful women. Apparently just looking at a pretty girl is enough to throw our decision making skills into disarray.
If a man is being asked to choose between something being presented by an attractive woman and an ugly men, they might not be as dispassionate as they could be... - Dr George Fieldman
They got money for this study? Really? You could have gone down any local pub and asked just about anyone in there, and they could of told you this for free...

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Bad parking?

You don't see this level of bad parking (via digg) every day...

CREDIT: Associated Press and Yahoo News

Gesture based computing

One of the big unanswered questions is how we're going to interface with the ubiquitous computing devices that are going to start appearing over the next few years, or have in fact already started to appear. All that computing power that will be surrounding us, or already is, and no really way of accessing the information except via a "traditional" computer interface. The real problem is that the abilities of the underlying technology grow much faster than innovations in user interfaces come along.

Gesture based computing is one possible answer to the user interface question raised by ubiquitous computing, and I was therefore really interested to see Minority Cube (via digg and MAKE: Blog). This is gesture based computing out in the wild, if you can do this with Flash, to control a cube on a screen, why not something a bit more distributed?

CREDIT: MAKE: Blog
The Minority Cube in action...
Minority Cube allows you to control the rotation of the cube on the screen by moving your hand (or yourself) in front of your webcam. It understands up, down, left, right and screw (a motion a bit like if you're trying to screw a light bulb into your webcam's lens)... - Mario Klingemann

Back in transit...

I'm currently sitting in the departure lounge of Tucson International Airport, en-route to Heathrow via LAX. Time to go home...

Friday, April 14, 2006

Solaris on an iMac?

Jan Setje-Eilers reports that he now has Solaris booting on an Intel iMac (via TUAW). Interestingly it was done using Boot Camp rather than trying to bringing Solaris up in native EFI mode, which I thought it was capable of..?

CREDIT: Jan Setje-Eilers
Solaris on the new Intel iMac

Optical SETI

The BBC is carrying a story on the Planetary Society's new 1.8m telescope, the first research class telescope to be dedicated to optical SETI. The new telescope will be based at Harvard's Oak Ridge Observatory, where it'll operate along side the 1.5m Wyeth telescope and its existing optical SETI programme.

CREDIT: The Planetary Society
The 1.8m Optical SETI telescope at Oak Ridge

Thursday, April 13, 2006

More video iPod rumours...

Think Secret is reporting (via Gizmodo) that the Apple's much rumoured video iPod has been delayed yet again. Can we just go a week without another video iPod rumour? Or worse yet, yet another iPhone rumour? Either they're going to release it or they're not...

Google Calendar

It looks like the long awaited Google Calendar (a.k.a. CL2) has finally been released. Although there hasn't been any sort of official announcement, I've just managed to login into the site, so it looks like it's gone live...


The Google Calendar interface

First impressions, it's fast, it's very Web 2.0 and you can import calendars from both iCal and Outlook. You can publish and share calendars, and the service is integrated with GMail which should now recognise when messages mention an event, so when you get emailed about an event, you can add it to Google Calendar with a couple of clicks. It also supports event notification via SMS, which is nice...

The down side? As usual with Google, it doesn't support Safari, and if you live outside the US you're flat out of luck with event notification, it looks like Google is only supporting US based carriers. Which isn't so nice...

Update: Predictably, the release of Google Calendar has restarted speculation on the much rumoured Google Office.

Update: Google has finally officially announced the release of Google Calendar, and TUAW has published a how-to on subscribing to Google Calendars using iCal. Handy...

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Flashbag?

Ignore the awful name, innovations in the user interface for physical devices don't come along that often. The Flashbag (via Gizmodo), is a USB flash drive which changes size in line with how much data it contains, and while it's just a concept right now, the designer does apparently have patent pending.

CREDIT: Dima Komissarov
The Flashbag

This is a classic ubiquitous computing concept, far more so that the intelligent spoons I mentioned in a previous post. The computing power is hidden, and the user interface is obvious and tactile, and doesn't need intervention to understand and react to the changing state of the device...

Intelligent spoons

First there was the smart clothes peg, now comes the intelligent spoon (via MAKE: Blog). The spoon is equipped with sensors that measure temperature, acidity, salinity and viscosity...

CREDIT: Connie Cheng and Leonardo Bonanni
The intelligent spoon

The concept is not exactly practical, the spoon itself is too large and the interface to the sensors is opaque to the user, it needs an external computer to retrieve the data. However like other, less savoury, innovations it does hint at a future where ubiquitous computing is, well, ubiquitous...

Sheep-verts?

I thought I'd seen virtually everything, but sheep wearing advertising?

via We Make Money Not Art

Monday, April 10, 2006

The .eu landrush

Bob Parsons has posted an interesting diatribe on the .EU landrush (via Slashdot), complaining that the process has been gamed by several "big name" US companies. Erm, I'm surprised anyone thought that this wouldn't happen. I'm also surprised that he thought that the process would have been fair even if it worked in the way it was supposed to have done...

RFID, for good or for ill?

The BBC has joined the many raising the alarm over the introduction of RFID tags on the high street to track products from producer to consumer.

There has been several nightmare scenarios over the last year or so concerning the possible uses that RFID tags will be put to, although people have also been taking the technology into their own hands, in some cases quite literally...

I'm currently visiting the NOAO and as a result I'm carrying my very own RFID tag to get me in and out of the building. I'm somewhat ill at ease with RFID, despite realising the interesting possibilities they raise. After all the technology is almost mandatory to implement any sort of ubiquitous computing environment, which is where computing is heading over the next ten years.

I guess I've talked about this before, and for good or for ill, the technology to activate and read RFID tags is trivially available. Like a lot of other things the information these tags contain will be available to everyone, decide now how you want to feel about it, because you won't get any choice about whether it happens or not...

A DIY WiFi Digital Photo Frame

Popular Science is carrying a great article about how to make your own wireless digital photo frame (via Gizmodo) from an old laptop. It's so simple I should have thought of it before, I've got several old laptops hanging around that would be perfect for this..

CREDIT: Popular Science

Update: Looks like there we've got a meme going on here, Instructables is carrying an article (via Gizmodo) on how to turn a busted up Powerbook into an Apple powered DIY photo frame...

Americans discover PAYE...

Amazingly it looks like the Americans might be on the verge of discovering PAYE income tax, which after all was only introduced into the UK in 1944. Shocking...

Tags:

Windows Vista on an iMac?

Following the recent release of Apple's Boot Camp, it's being reported (via Engadget) in the OSx86 Project Forums that some people have successfully managed to get Windows Vista to boot on their new Intel iMac, although there are some teething troubles as you might expect...

CREDIT: AirmanPika/OSx86 Project
Windows Vista running on the new Intel iMac

Initial reports were single boot only solutions, as installing Vista over wrote the existing OSX partitions, despite claiming not to, however if you scroll down the thread it looks like you can work around this by removing the 200MB EFI partition created by Boot Camp. Although of course, this does give you some problems if you want to remove Vista again afterwards...

Sunday, April 09, 2006

That was the week, redux

I spent the week just gone at NAM, which was held in Leicester this year, and looking back it turned out to be a pretty good meeting. I even, eventually, got round to writing my talk for the Virtual Observatory track, although admittedly with only about twenty minutes to spare between finishing the slides and standing up to actually give the talk...

However this week also marked the beginning of this year's trek around the globe as I'll be in the UK for only two weeks between now and the middle of July. Looking at my schedule I think I end up crossing the Atlantic eight times, and travelling a respectable 40 or 50 thousand miles between now and then...

I'm currently en route to the States and holed up in the Red Carpet Club at Heathrow waiting to board UA 955 to SFO where I transfer onto a puddle jumper into Tucson. Funnily enough, so soon after my last trip, this is giving me a case of acute déjà vu...

Update: Sitting in the Red Carpet Club at SFO which at least has a view of the gate area around Terminal 3, and the runways. I've got a couple of hours to kill here before I catch my onward flight to Tucson, and it's going to be a struggle to try and stay awake long enough to catch it, more free coffee...


The view from SFO's red Carpet Club

Update: Arriving into Tucson, and despite the GPS in the rental car, or maybe because of it, I got lost on the way to my hotel and ended up going around in what turned out to be a gradually reducing spiral towards the hotel rather than taking a direct route. My only excuse, it was dark, and I was tired. Or is that two excuses? Anyway, it's definitely time for bed...

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Apple Boot Camp

Well that didn't take long, close on the heels of the first sucessful hack to boot Windows XP on the new Intel iMac, Apple have made the surprising announcement that they'll be supporting dual booting officially with the release of Mac OS X Leopard. At the same time they've also produced a public beta release of their own Boot Camp software that looks like it'll make the entire process fairly painless.


A screen shot of Boot Camp in action

In other news, hell freezes over...

Update: UNEASYsilence has updated their video tutorial and have a walk through of how to use the new Boot Camp software. I've got to admit, it looks pretty easy to use...

Update: The Apple share price soars by over 10 percent on news of Boot Camp's release. Go figure...

Update: Well I guess we should have expected it...

CREDIT: Dan Baxter (via TUAW)
The first blue screen of death on an iMac

Update: Looks like Boot Camp can handle booting Windows Vista, abet with a few teething problems...

Monday, April 03, 2006

A day in Leicester

I'm in Leicester a day early for NAM, so I'm currently camped out in the AstroGrid developer's room in the Department of Physics and Astronomy here in Leicester trying to finish (or should that be start?) writing my talk for Wednesday...