Odds and Ends

What technology tells us about society

Twitter has become an excellent way to quickly scan headlines. It's terrible at just about everything else. It's hard to have a coherent discussion in 140-character soundbites, and even harder when the architecture of Twitter is set to "broadcast" rather than "discourse." But maybe, just maybe, Twitter's not to blame. We are.

After all, Twitter is simply a creation of our society, and reflects our priorities.

Not all of society, of course. After all, as The New York Times reported, teenagers, usually technology's early adopters, hardly use Twitter at all, with only … Read more

Have Mac, will open-source

Some in the open-source camp would have you believe that open source is an all-or-nothing proposition. For such people, to believe that Linux makes for a superior server operating system is also to dedicate oneself to using open source for business applications, personal productivity, mobile, and likely brushing one's teeth. Open source on a proprietary platform like Mac OS X? Perish the thought!

But life is more complicated than that, and it turns out that there is exceptional open-source software for the Mac (or for Windows, for that matter).

The H Online has kicked off a nice "Open Source Stars for Mac OS X&… Read more

Getting shallow in the attention economy

Did we like music more back when we had to pay for it in bulk?

That's essentially the question writer Nick Carr asks in yet another provocative post on his Rough Type blog. "Slanted and Enchanted" revels in the one-hit wonder but also asks if we are losing something by dumping albums for tracks.

I've suggested that artists may find new ways to more deeply engage their fans by focusing on singles rather than albums, but there's something to Carr's logic:

Today, we're quick to dismiss those ancient days of "scarcity" … Read more

Kill yellow teeth with USB microscope?

Japanese uber-gadget maker Thanko continues its drive to turn the entire universe into a USB gadget after giving us our last fix with its e-cigarettes.

The retailer, based in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics mecca, has launched a USB dental microscope that can turn your teeth into glorious 640?480 images or 1280?1024 video.

The 12-inch wand-shaped device has 6 LED lights and a 1/4 inch CMOS camera with 40x magnification. A shutter-release button is built into the underside. The device connects to a Windows XP or Vista PC with USB 1.1 or 2.0 and is available … Read more

Turn your iPhone into a humanoid robot

When it's not enough to let your iPhone control your life, you can have it control a robot.

An enterprising tinkerer in Japan has turned an iPhone 3GS into a humanoid robot by wiring it to a mechanical body.

Meet "Robochan."

Check out the video. Robochan is perhaps disturbing, but undeniably cute. The anime face and leek-waving are nods to Hatsune Miku, a character created for Yamaha's Vocaloid singing synthesizer application. Hatsune is a virtual idol in Japan; one of her albums topped the Oricon music chart last month.

Robochan consists of a 3GS wired to … Read more

Business intelligence is nice, personal data apps are better

The business intelligence community has made much of its ability to transform the way enterprises operate, and even the way the world works. Open source takes this to the next level, as OStatic recently described. And yet, as exciting as open-source business intelligence is, it's not what gets me out of bed every morning before sunrise. What drove me out of bed to climb 2,474 feet on my mountain bike this morning is the personal intelligence movement or, more accurately, the personal data movement.

Tim O'Reilly talks eloquently about " data as the Intel Inside" of … Read more

Mark Shuttleworth wins Wimbledon?

On Sunday I tried calling Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, to warn him that Google was going to announce a competitor to Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Alas, he wasn't answering.

Turning to the sports news, I understood why:

Shuttleworth, masquerading as Roger Federer, had just beaten Andy Roddick to win Wimbledon and beat his own record for most Grand Slam singles titles in men's tennis history.

Not bad for a computer geek.

Shuttleworth was, of course, the first African in space, but it's nice to see him getting some exercise and devoting himself to terrestrial pursuits from time … Read more

What soccer team would your company be?

If your football club (soccer team) were a software company, which would it be? Martin Veitch, editor in chief of CIO.co.uk, has written two wonderfully insightful (and painful, depending on which team you follow) analyses of which football clubs lost their software twins at birth. See here and here.

Among my favorites:

Google would be Arsenal: Fancy footwork, nice location in central London, clever ideas, and easy on the eye. The players are all young but a lot of the time all the good work goes nowhere. Best players have recently ended up demanding transfers. (OUCH!)

IBM would … Read more

Off-topic: Why can't I have this job?

I wake up at 5:30 AM to write this blog, then spend the rest of the day (and sometimes evening) working my day job at Alfresco, an open-source applications company.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, Josh Robbins, taunts me by sending pictures of him chumming around with Thierry Henry (FC Barcelona), Ryan Babel (Liverpool FC), Alessandro del Piero (Juventus), Mathieu Flamini (AC Milan), Steve Nash (Phoenix Suns), Tony Parker (San Antonio Spurs), and others at a Steve Nash Foundation event. His job? He's director of finance at Calle, a cool street soccer sporting goods manufacturer that he helped found.

Yes, … Read more

Expedited airport-security service shuts down

Despite pulling in 260,000 travelers at $199 each, Clear's expedited security-clearance program in 18 airports has shut down.

Verified Identity Pass, which operates the Clear service, said via e-mail and on its Web site that it was "unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations." The Clear service was suspended at all 18 airports as of 11 a.m. PDT Monday.

The message to Clear subscribers like myself: "Get back in line."

Ironically, Clear was apparently charging Clear subscribers' credit cards right up until the announcement, as revealed by the … Read more