UAV flights in Antarctica Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

The British Antarctic Survey has just completed a series of test flights of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Antarctica.


I know one of the people involved and this is a cool project, with a lot of potential for interesting bits of computer science and engineering, as well as climate science, to get done. I've been meaning to write it up properly since Phil's press release came out, but time is passing and it's been sitting in my edit queue the entire Easter weekend, so I'll just point you to the release about the test flights and leave it at that.

I've also been meaning to write up my own playing around, although only in software at the moment, where I've been investigating flocking and cooperative behaviors for autonomous UAVs, which is something that's come out of my work on autonomous agents for the eSTAR Project. Hopefully I'm going to break out the Arduino boards, and my soldering iron, and find the time to do some basic hardware demos soon. So perhaps I'll write it up then. Until then, go look at Phil's project, it's worth your while...

More on the iPhone SDK Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

So it turns out that, despite what Apple insisted, the iPhone SDK works pretty much out of the box on PowerPC based machines, and you don't have to be a member of the iPhone Developer Program to download the SDK. Both these things are good news, because as a Brit, I don't get to be part of the developer program, and I still don't have an Intel machine running Leopard.

So I've downloaded and installed the SDK on my G5 iMac, and it seems to work okay...


The problem? Like others I'm suffering under the frustration of Error (34) which means than, presumably due to the lack of a signing certificate, I can't even upload my applications to my own iPod to test them.

Interestingly when building for Aspen, rather than the Aspen simulator, and unlike others, I'm not getting any complaints about my missing signing certificate, just the predictable warning about target architectures.

My initial reaction is to guess that the mysterious Error (34) is probably down to the fact my iPod touch is running firmware 1.1.4, rather than the new revision 2.0 which won't as far as I know be available till June. Or possibly it's something to do with the apparent problems with 64-bit architectures and the new SDK. Who knows, Error (34) is a bit opaque after all...


Suffice to say I've gone back to working with the rather less friendly hacker SDK, at least till Apple gets its act together. There isn't a lot of point writing applications if I can't upload them to actual test hardware.

Update: So you don't need firmware 2.0, but you do need the signing key? Wonder how long the developer program will take to roll out to the UK?

Update: Okay, that's interesting. Despite Error (34), the applications are uploaded to the iPod, but rather than ending up the /Applications/ directory, they end up in /var/mobile/Media/PublicStaging/. Moving one of these applications from PublicStaging to Applications and restarting SpringBoard drops the uploaded application onto the SpringBoard display. But, it has a default icon rather than the icon that's included in the package. Not a good sign. SSH'ing into the iPod and poking around inside the application bundle, shows that the binary doesn't have its execute bit set. Setting the application so that it can actually be executed, and clicking on the icon on SpringBoard, does actually get us somewhere. The Default.png background image opens, but then the application crashes.

At this point I think I've demonstrated, at least to my own satisfaction, that all that's missing here is a signing certificate. I just wish Apple had provided a more understandable error message to tell us this, you'd think it wouldn't have been that much more effort? and it would have saved a lot of people, a lot of trouble.

Update: Ah now that's interesting as well. After plugging my iPod back into my development machine I get a pop-up to say that the iPod contains diagnostic information that might be useful to Apple. Clicking on further details, and it's the crash logs from my test applications...

The "official" Google Sky Maps Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

So we've been playing around with Google Maps for Sky, as opposed to Google Earth for Sky which has been around a few months longer, since December last year. But yesterday Google got round to releasing the 'official' Sky Maps site. It's pretty cool, and I'm glad I never got round to fiddling with opacity sliders for multiple wavelengths, because they've done it better than I would have done.

ETech: Closing Keynote Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in the closing keynote of ETech. First up is Alex Steffen talking about Building a Bright Green Future.


If those 4 billion people on their way out of poverty in the third world adopt our life style, we're 'all cooked'. We need sustainable development.

Interestingly, Alex is arguing that one of the key ways to encourage sustainable development is the education of women. That the example of the first world shows that giving women rights, and choices, means that less children are born.

He's also arguing that out small steps at home, like recycling, aren't going to help. We need systematic change. We tend to think the way to solve cars' ecological problems is to invent better cars. But the big problems with cars aren't under the hood.

Vancouver car ownership is down by 40% and 70% of the trips made are by foot. It is possible to build livable downtown communities, the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon.

But density also allows us to think about how we deliver goods, webfronts like Nau, and delivery companies like City Cargo, a pilot project in Amsterdam to test whether using cargo trams to deliver goods in the inner city is viable.

Just by showing people the effect of their actions, then people's actions change. Cars that have real time mileage meters get better gas mileage than the same model car where the only difference is that it doesn't have the meter.

Update: Next up is Lew Tucker talking about Twine and the Social Graph Meets the Semantic Web. I'm really surprised that people are still talking about social graphs so much, especially here which is supposed to be an emerging technology conference.


Lew is giving a demo of Twine, which is an invite only social network. Looks pretty cool, but it also doesn't look such a big step change to Facebook that someone on the street with be able to tell the difference. I can see the difference, I can see how semantic tagging is a step forward, but I can tell you straight off that people who aren't alpha geeks won't be able to...

The interface is also way, way, too complicated. I'm sure it's going to be really popular with the Silicon Valley crowd, but the outside world? Anyway, social networks are well, over. They aren't particularly interesting anymore, geeks might not be bored of them yet, but the rest of the world is getting tired. They'd rather go down the pub and talk to people...

Update: Next up is Micah Sifry talking about Digital Democracy, and using technology to engage with the democratic process. Maybe it's just me being cynical, but is anyone engaged in the democratic process these days?

Update: The final talk of the conference is by Timothy Ferriss talking about his 4-hour Work Week.

I don't trust an inbox in my pocket in the same way I don't trust dark chocolate in my house, I don't have good enough impulse control

Interestingly he came up with the title of his book by running a Google AdSense campaign, with the suggested titles are the text. He went with the highest click through rate.

...we're done. Time to head to the bar.

The iPhone SDK is here, or not? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

So Steve Jobs did indeed announce the iPhone SDK this morning. Things are better, and at the same time worse, than I feared. You can sign up for the developer programme for only US$99, the bad news, you have to be running Leopard on an Intel Mac for the SDK to run. My problem, I've got a Mac running Leopard, but it's PPC. I've got an Intel Mac, but it's running Tiger. I really don't want to upgrade the machine running Tiger right now.

However, it doesn't look like it's going to be a problem, because I'm the wrong type of developer anyway. In a totally insane move Apple have restricted the programme to developers in the US only. What's going on here? What happened to globalisation?

Unlike the licensing restrictions which lead to the iTunes divide, there is absolutely no legal reason that I can think of that would prevent Apple rolling out the SDK to 'the rest of us'... so why restrict it to the US?

Update: So things turn out to be at the same time better and at the same time worse that I initially thought...

ETech: A Bomb Shelter for the Climate Crisis Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I picked the next talk just based on the title, there wasn't an abstract, so it's touch and go. I'm in A Bomb Shelter for the Climate Crisis given by Natalie Jeremijenko.

She's talking about translating global problems into locally actionable items. We're faced with a global climate destabilisation, at other times (for instance during the cold war) we mobilised on a local level to build shelters. Natalie is advocating building Urban Space Station, an optimised urban greenhouse...

ETech: DIY Survival Projects Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in DIY Survival Projects for the Apocalypse with Bre Pettis.


There are number of realistic ideas about the end of the world; nuclear blast, warfare, fire, volcano, tsunami, hurricane or earthquake, robot uprising.

You need to have a plan. You need to get used to making things, because you won't be able to go down to the corner store and buy a biege box any more.

It's really important to buy beer and condoms, disaster preparedness can get really boring in hour seventeen... but don't buy beer, buy pop tarts

Bre is arguing that it's really important for survival to have a community and that everyone should start or join their local hacker space. Communication is also really important, get your ham radio license.

But most of all you need to know how to make things, and getting into the habit of learning how things work, attempting to fix things that are broken and making things from scratch.

Post-apocalypse currency, gold are more likely t maintain value than the US dollar, you can't get to safe deposit boxes, so bury it in your back yard. But it won't hurt to carry a thousand dollars in your wallet. If your airlifted out a disaster, your in a better situation that you would be otherwise.

You have tools handy, right?

ETech: Disaster Tech Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm in Disaster Tech: What is working and what is coming given by Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron. They're examining how technology is used in mainstream emergency management.


Apparently disasters are really simple, and you don't have a lot of time to respond, so you pick the tools you have available and know will just work. After the disaster there will generally be a champion that emerges that takes the new technology that was used during the disaster, and pushes it forward, supports it, so it can be used for the next disaster.

Jesse is showing photographs of the damage done during Katrina, and pointing out that highway signs don't survive disasters that well. Apparently a lot of people started to rely on Google Maps, but of course that's less helpful when (for instance) bridges get destroyed.

ARC: Take the I-90 bridge..
Jesse: The bridge is destroyed.
ARC: No sir, Google says...

The model doesn't keep up with reality, the world changes too fast. So Mikel is involved with OpenStreetMap, and he feels that this is a better model for collecting geo-data, especially during a disaster.

One of the big challenges during a disaster is how you communicate, how do you tell people you're safe and well? One of the primary sources of data during the San Diego fire was twitters from Nate Ritter. The Red Cross has picked up on this...


Interestingly to the general public people think that anything accessed via a cell phone is as reliable as the core services, like dialing 911. That presents interesting technological adoption challenges.

ETech: Project Sun SPOT Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm the in the Project Sun SPOT talk given by Roger Meike and Arshan Poursohi. They're talking about 'new gadgets', where have all the gadgets gone? All of the recent startups are just software. Hardware only really seems to come from big companies now.


The good news is that things are changing, there is a resurgence in building DIY hardware. Roger is arguing that wireless sensor networks are going to be the 'next big thing'.

Sun has been amazingly sucessful getting Java onto cell phones, over 1 billion shipped. But what comes next? That's where Project Sun SPOT comes in...

Sun SPOT is 'small programmable object technology', it's designed to be flexible, and make hardware projects into software projects. The Sun SPOT is a battery powered device, with wireless connectivity, and runs Java on the metal. Java is the operating system. So people who are normally high level programmers, can play around directly with hardware.

ETech: Wednesday morning keynote Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

The Wednesday morning keynote kicked off with Nat Torkington, without his traditional OSCON shirt, introducing the first speaker of the day. The father of Lisp, the creator of Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy. He's talking about natural language and Elephant.


Next up is Steve Cousins talking about an Open Source Platform for Personal Robots. He's talking about the STAIR the Standford AI Robot, and Willow Garage.


He's trying to build a open source platform for robotics, but how is this different from a normal open source operating system? It'll have SLAM Navigation, it'll be able to track where the robot is and take commands to go safely to a new location. There will object recognition, using a database of pictures to identify object. There will be a 3D object map, maintaining a map of known object locations. There will be manipluation libraries, which plans how to safely pick up an object.

Next up is Kathy Sierra talking about How to Kick Ass. She's arguing that the difference between world class and average, generally isn't anything to do with natural talent, it's about putting in the time. Natural ability just isn't as important as we used to think, it more about the ability to focus.


Update: Next up is Tom Coates talking about Fire Eagle a new information brokering service he's been developing. It lets people share their location online.


Services should be available from anywhere the network touches, it should play well with others and services should decouple the creation and the use of data. Fire Eagle does two things, allow a number of different services to update your location, and then parses this and provides it in a consistent format, at whatever level of granularity you want to authorise, to further services.

The last speaker of today's keynote is Peter Semmelhack from Bug labs who has the longest talk title I've ever seen, he's talking about Personalizing the Device: How Communities Will Help Actualize User-generated Hardware and the Long-tail of Gadgets.


He's arguing that we're on the cusp of a big change in the way electronics are produced. There are lots of examples of devices, which we'd all want, but under the current economical model would never get produced. There is a long tail of electronic devices.

...and we're done.