The other day at work some colleagues and I got into a rather enjoyable conversation about Moore’s Law, (I know, you’re thinking about the countless number of times this has happened to you.) The Moore from “Moore’s Law” is Gordan Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel. In 1965 he observed that the number of transistors, (tiny electronic on/off switches), that could inexpensively be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every year. This has held true for the last 40 years but we may be approaching the physical limits of what is possible with our current technology.

Scientists are working on technology that may power the computers of the future. These are all currently at very early stages in their research and if you were to see one of these future “computers” it would probably just look like some random lab equipment strung out across a laboratory work bench.

Quantum computers would operate based on certain qualities of quantum mechanical phenomena. In a transitor-based computer, information is stored in a two-state bit, (0 or 1), but in a quantum computer, information is stored in a qubit, (quantum bit) which can be a 0 or a 1 or any value in between. It’s complicated but, in essence, a quantum computer could do a lot of calculations simultaneously. Quantum computing is still mostly theory but there has been some experimental success at computing by manipulating the spins of a molecule’s nuclei or using laser and filters to create and manipulate those weird quantum mechanical phenomena mention above.

Another approach is DNA computing. This approach uses enzymes and DNA molecules to do many calculations at once. A few highly specialized DNA computers have been built that were able to do certain calculations thousands of times faster than traditional computers.

Yet another computer technology that is being researched is the optical computer. A computer that operated by manipulating light could be much faster than one that depended on the movement of the much slower electron.

One question I asked my co-workers in our conversation was, do we really need faster computers? What if what we really need is better software? Niklaus Wirth, (a computer scientist that created several programming languages), made the following observation in 1995: “Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.” This has come to be known as “Wirth’s Law” and I think it pretty much sums up the shape of computers today. Building efficient software is hard and expensive and programmers use all kinds of tricks and tools that take care of the harder parts of the work for them. This abstraction, or moving further away from the language the hardware speaks, (ones and zeros), makes the software run slower. So far, the approach that most software companies have taken is, “well, it takes too long to write efficient software and there’s no need to anyway, because next year’s hardware will run it twice as fast anyway.” This assumption may not be true for much longer and I hope that we soon see a shift in software where programmers (or their purse-strings holders who decide how long they spend on projects) start focusing on building better, faster running software.

One positive change I see coming is Apple’s next month release of OS X 10.5 Leopard. This new operation system includes changes that help developers make use of the multiple-core 64-bit CPUs that every new Apple computer ships with. Leopard has several other advantages over Mircosoft’s new OS, Vista in that OS X 10.5 will run all the old 32-bit applications and drivers seamlessly and there is only one version of the operating system, (as opposed to Vista where if you choose to install the 64-bit version, none of your 32-bit drivers will work.)

This article was going to be about my favorite technological doodads and the way that they have changed my life. This list would have included things like my iPod, DVR, Mac Mini, cell phone and Pikepass. I sat down to write it and pretty much immediately realized that, because of something I’d read recently, I honestly couldn’t say that I liked the way that I’ve let certain pieces of technology change my life.

I recently finished reading Tim Ferriss’s The Four Hour Work Week and to quickly sum it up, in 2002 Ferriss was a twenty-something entrepreneur in Silicon Valley working 80 hour weeks. He realized that he was working for work’s sake and that he could cut down his work schedule massively by automating as much as possible and empowering the people that work for him to make decisions without his acting as a bottleneck. He lays out how he accomplished this in thorough, but not boring, detail and describes how he now spends nearly all his time doing the things he really wants to do- like break-dance in Taiwan, race motorcycles in Europe and scuba dive in Panama. It’s a really incredible read and while on the surface it may seem like one of those cheesy “get rich quick” infomercials you see on very early-morning television, it’s not. You will not regret reading this book.

While I usually only have to work 40-hour weeks at my job, after reading Ferriss’s book I realized that over the last few years I’ve picked up the habit of forcing myself to experience certain forms of entertainment whether I really wanted to or not. I was “working” close to an extra 50 or 60 hours a week trying to keep up with all the hours of entertainment my technology was diligently serving up for me to enjoy.

On any given day, I get home from work and am faced with the following:

• Google Reader has over a thousand posts for me to read
• My DVR has about 53 hours of TV for me to watch, (not to mention hundreds of channels of live TV)
• I’ve got to choose another 27 downloads from eMusic tonight or I lose them, (usually this means “discovering” new bands… no simple or quick task)
• I’ve got several Wii games I’ve barely scratched the surface on (including the 70+ hour Zelda:Twilight Princess)

About a year ago I nearly had an entertainment-overload-induced break down. I was trying to keep up with most of the things listed above and was subscribed to both Netflix and Yahoo Music Unlimited. I was paying a monthly fee for the latter services and felt a serious obligation to enjoy them to their fullest, damnit! With YMU, I had potentially millions of songs to listen to, (and of a more time-consuming nature, convert to MP3s), and a growing queue of movies on Netflix. It was too much “fun” stuff to do and not enough time and I got to where the sight of a stack of unwatched DVDs on my TV just made me uncomfortable. I trimmed off Netflix and YMU and instantly felt better and more in control.

However, since then I’ve let my technology creep back into control of my free time. What am I going to do about it? Despite my previous article raving about RSS Feed Readers, it turns out keeping up with eighty feeds for a long term is just not that fun. I recently unsubscribed to some of the worst time-consumers, (digg.com, I’m looking at you), and added Scoble’s shared items. (Robert Scoble is a tech-guy that, among other things, spends hours each day filtering the good stuff out of thousands of new blog and tech site posts.) As for my DVR I’ll choose just a few shows for it to record, probably things like Heroes, Mythbusters and The Wonder Years, (thanks a lot for this new addiction, Sydney Brown!) and watch them in marathon sittings. eMusic is the one thing I’m not going to change. I’ve found some great music there and I can do other stuff while listening to it. I’ve actually considered selling my Wii but I probably won’t because some next-generation games for it will probably be pretty incredible.

I realize that it’s pretty lame to complain about not having enough time to keep up with entertaining myself, so I’m proposing an experiment to help me get past these artificial-stress inducing, entertainment-overload hang-ups.

For the next month, I’ll only let myself turn on my computer or television one night a week, including weekends! Stay tuned for a follow up report in a future issue of Nerd City.

The thought of going “technology-free” like this actually has me nervous and I feel like I should probably think this through a bit more thoroughly before I just jump off the deep end, but, what the heck, I’ll give it a try.

I’ve got a whole shelf of books I haven’t read, friends I can hang out with and (when it’s not raining), some great weather to get out in.

Lately I’ve been reading books about technology companies and technological entrepreneurs, in particular taking in lots of early Commodore and Apple history. I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve found this to be just about the most interesting stuff I’ve ever read. As a computer programmer I think it’s a subconscious search for heroes, an attempt to get to know a little more about the giants upon whose shoulders I’m trying to climb.

These two companies, Commodore and Apple, offer some interesting comparisons. Both broke into the computing world in the late 1970’s and in the mid-eighties both released a computer they thought would change the world, (”put a dent in the universe” in Steve Job’s words), Apple with their Macintosh and Commodore with their Amiga.

The Macintosh

Apple had been working on a new computer that would sport a feature yet to be seen outside experimental computer labs, the Graphic User Interface, (GUI), driven by a mouse. This computer was called the Lisa, (besides being the name of several Apple’s employees’ daughters I haven’t tracked down a great reason for this name.) It was originally designed to be a $2000 computer, but by the time they were finished it cost an exorbitant, (especially in 1980’s dollars), $10,000.

About the time that Lisa development was cranking up, an Apple manager got the idea to build a cheap and simple computer. He put together a rag-tag group of engineers and developers and they started designing what would eventually become the Macintosh. They built it in secret for the first few months, afraid that if the higher-ups found out about it they would cancel the project. Eventually Steve Jobs discovered the secret Mac project and came in to take it over. (Jobs was one of Apple’s co-founders, but at this time he was not much more than that. He had been removed from the Lisa project and from what I’ve read, it seems like he just kind of drifted around the Apple offices looking for a promising project to take over and then take most of the credit.) He basically ran off the existing Macintosh manager and then started exerting his unique style of management which consists mostly of plowing through the office, dropping his opinion on what everyone is doing, (often something like: “That’s shit”), and then moving on. That being said, the guy gets results and lots of people that have worked for him say that they would do it again.

The original Macintosh, for all the ground it broke GUI-wise, had some major flaws. It had less RAM than it needed and only had one floppy drive. When you don’t have a hard-drive, these two design choices can combine for some pretty terrible user experiences. For example, to make a back-up of a floppy disk, (and the computer booted off a disk since there was no hard drive, so disks were much more important back then than they are now), you had to switch out the source and the destination disk sometimes over 30 times as the computer copied sections of the disk in and out of memory. If the computer had come with a second floppy drive or more RAM, this wouldn’t have been an issue. The original Mac also had a black and white screen and a relatively low resolution. Mostly because of these design issues and its price, (they ended up selling it for $2500, much more than the engineers that built it intended), the original Mac sales were pretty bad. Jobs more or less turned a blind eye on the poor sales, acting like everything was going great. The next year Jobs was removed from any meaningful position at Apple and soon after he and a lot of good people left to start NeXT, (which would go on to do cool things like build the operating system that OS X is based on and take some artists and engineers off George Lucas’s hands for cheap and turn them into Pixar, but that’s another set of stories…)

The Amiga

Throughout the first half of the 1980’s Commodore experienced immense success with their Commodore 64, (C64), computer. During this time Commodore was run by one of the most ruthless businessmen I’ve read about- Jack Tramiel. (I highly recommend Brian Bagnall’s “On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore” for a lot more about this.)

Tramiel was all about selling computers for impossibly low prices. He was able to do this because he built every part of his computers in-house, including the difficult-to-produce CPUs. Just a year after its launch, Tramiel was able to cut the C64’s price by two thirds, ($200, which in today’s terms is around $400 – an incredible price for what was a very capable computer.)

Tramiel had a way of burning bridges. Tramiel would do things like take out a huge order for some parts from a company, get that company to spend all its time and resources supplying the order, hold out on paying them until they were desperate and then offer to buy the whole company for a cut-throat price. Tramiel acquired more than one company this way. He was pretty shady with his retailers too. He would sell a batch of computers to a trusty retailer like ComputerLand for a certain price, and then turn around and sell the same computers to K-mart for half that price. ComputerLand would be forced to sell their lot at a loss. Needless to say, Tramiel made a lot of enemies in the computer and retail industries.

By the time the Amiga entered the Commodore picture, Tramiel had been ousted, (for no very good reason, really.) Commodore’s majority shareholder and chairman of the board, Irving Gould, believed Tramiel was receiving undue credit for the C64’s success and decided that it was time for Tramiel to be put in his place. Tramiel went on to buy one of Commodore’s biggest competitors, Atari, and from there did what he could to be a thorn in Commodore’s side.

Commodore needed a new computer and one of the hottest computers at the trade shows was built by a company called Amiga. After some intense negotiating, (which included paying off a loan that Amiga owed to none other than Atari), Commodore acquired Amiga in 1984. A year later Amiga released their first computer, what would later be known as the Amiga 1000. The Amiga had a few things in common with the Macintosh. They both used the same Motorola CPU and they both had a mouse-driven GUI.

In pretty much every other way though, the Amiga was superior to the Macintosh. It was a true multimedia computer years before the word “multimedia” took it’s current meaning. It had a high resolution monitor and special graphics chips that supported thousands of colors. It shipped with twice the amount of RAM and supported multitasking. (The Mac wouldn’t get multitasking until later versions.) And it cost $1000 less than the Mac.

So why is it that “Macintosh” is a household name and most people have never heard of the Amiga? In a word, marketing. In the past, Commodore had a good record for marketing. One of their first spokespersons was the ever-popular William Shatner (watch this if only to hear the Shat say: “Coming soon, Gorf! The wonder arcade game in a home version!”) With the Amiga though, Commodore botched its launch in a stellar fashion. Until late in the game, the few advertisements they did run were mostly print ads and for some reason, those were printed in sepia tone. When you’re the first company to launch a really incredible color computer, don’t you think you’d run some color ads to show it off? Apple on the other hand launched the Mac with what is generally considered to be the Greatest Commercial of All Time – the Ridley Scott-directed 1984 Superbowl commercial with that girl throwing a hammer through a video screen showing a Big Brother-like dictator.

Commodore was in financial trouble after paying millions more than necessary for Amiga, (the company), and Tramiel at Atari was putting up some tough competition with their Atari ST computer. Commodore also faced problems finding distributors for the Amiga. Tramiel had so thoroughly ruined Commodore’s image in the retailer’s minds that most were hesitant to deal with Commodore, even though Tramiel had moved on. It’s sad, but it’s probably the case that Commodore simply couldn’t afford to produce the sorts of ads that their hardware deserved. The Amiga engineers, who had been recently acquired in the Commodore/Amiga merge, expressed their feelings by coding a hidden message into the Amiga: “We made the Amiga, they f*cked it up.” Here’s one of the Amiga engineer’s talking about the easter-egg:

You had to do this keystroke where it took eight fingers and both thumbs to press all the keys that you needed to get the first message to come up that said, “We made the Amiga.” Then, while you had that message up and while you continued to hold all of those keys down, if you could some how get the floppy disk inserted into the machine (for instance, if you leaned over and shoved it in with your nose) then for 1/60th of a second, the other message would show up. It would blink up and go away

This prank, hidden as deep as seemingly possible, was never-the-less discovered a few weeks after the Amiga launched and tens of thousands of units had to be recalled and modified. This didn’t help Commodore’s financial situation.

Between the lackluster ad campaigns and poor management, mostly on the part of chairman Gould who more than once fired a CEO because they were more competent than he was comfortable with, the Amiga did not have much chance for success. Commodore was on a downward spiral and would be out of the picture by the early 1990’s.

Apple generally handled things better than Commodore. They continually pushed out better versions of the Macintosh and had success selling to schools. One of the world’s first “killer apps”, PageMaker, was available only on the Mac and when paired with Apple’s LaserWriter, invented the whole desktop publishing industry that took off in a big way. So, though their machine was the lesser of the two, Apple was able to outlast Commodore. Unfortunately for both Apple and Commodore, 1985 saw the launch of another significant piece of computer history. Microsoft released version 1.0 of their GUI program, Windows. It would be years until Microsoft would build a usable version of Windows, (insert smart-ass remark here), but eventually their operating systems running on cheap IBM-clone PCs would come to dominate the computer market.

“I named my Wii Mii McGeeky.”

When Nintendo announced that they were naming their new video game system the Wii, I thought it was a really lame name. Especially compared to the code name they had been using up to that point – the Revolution. The Revolution is infinitely cooler sounding than Wii. The name is slowly growing on me though. One thing I like is that you find yourself saying ridiculous, (and potentially dangerous), sorts of things when talking about the Wii. When a friend of mine said the phrase at the beginning of this article he drew a roomful of blank stares and doubled-over laughter. Besides the obvious, (to a fifth grader), male genitalia connotations, the name implies several other things that I’m sure Nintendo had in mind: it sounds like the word “we” which implies groups of people can play it and it sounds like the word “wee” as in “Fun!.” Also, if you flip the “W” over you get the word “Mii” which is what Nintendo calls the avatars you can create for yourself (see below).

What is the Wii?
The most noticeable thing about the Wii is the controller. It’s a wireless device that looks like a fat television remote with several buttons on the front and one trigger on the back. An optional attachment called the “nun-chuck” offers another joystick and two more triggers. Both the remote and the nun-chuck are motion sensitive and in most of the games that are out now you control the game by mimicking whatever action is taking place on the screen, (swinging your arm to hit a tennis ball, flicking your hand to swing Link’s sword.) Basically what this means is that where there is a Wii, there will be much flailing of arms.

The Wii can connect to the internet using its built-in wireless network card. (I think they will be releasing a wired network card at some point in the future). There aren’t any online games out yet, but eventually you will be able to play against your friends over the internet which is cool.

Another cool feature of the Nintendo Wii are mii’s. These are on-screen characters that you can customize to look like yourself or pretty much anyone.)

Admiral Ackbar, anyone?

Some games are mii-compatible meaning that the mii’s on your system and mii’s that are shared from your friends’ Wii will show up in your games. I was playing Wii Sports bowling the other day and saw a friend’s mom, dad and wife bowling in the lane next to mine. It’s really cool how seamlessly the whole mii integration works.

The biggest negative about the Wii is that it is terribly under-powered compared to the other new video game systems, (the Xbox 360 and the PS3.) Both of the latter systems boast much more powerful processors and push out graphics in high-def, (up to 1080p.) The Wii gimps out a meager 480p on hardware that is marginally better than the Wii’s predecessor, the Gamecube. One nice-ish side effect of the Wii being mostly a Gamecube is that it will play all the Gamecube games, (and there are a few that are worth playing.)

What are the games like?
So far I’ve only played 5 or 6 games on the Wii. One game, Wii Sports, comes bundled with the system. It’s fun, but it’s basically just a nice demo of some of the stuff you can accomplish with the motion sensing features of the Wii. The sports – tennis, baseball, boxing, golf and bowling, with the exception of bowling, are all very simplified versions of the sports. In Wii baseball, for instance, you don’t have control over the fielding or base running… you simply concern yourself with timing your swing right and the system handles everything else. It’s still actually a lot of fun, but it leaves you wanting a more complete baseball game. It was probably a really wise decision to leave the bundled game relatively simple… the last thing Nintendo wants is for people to quit because the games are just so hard they’re not fun. (And within a year or two there will probably be several baseball games offering more complete control over the action.)

Speaking of games so hard they are more like work than fun… I’ve been playing a lot of Trauma Center 2: Second Opinion. In this game you are a surgeon and the remote and nun-chuck become the tools of your trade: scalpels, forceps, syringes, bandages, etc. I was joking about this game being “work” because most of the time this game is a blast. There are a few levels, (ie: surgeries), that take a few tries and some that require what I’ll call a trick to pass, and the details of the trick are basically left up to you to pull out of thin air. On one level in particular I kept doing something wrong because after about 7 minutes of complicated procedures my patient kept dying. I finally googled for some help and found that I needed to do one particular thing at a particular time or else it was impossible to pass the level. Attempting to increase the difficulty of a game by requiring the player to perform arbitrary and mysterious actions is pretty lame. Besides this, everything about Trauma Center 2 is great.

The Wii also emulates a ton of old video game systems, (NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Genesis, Turbo Grafix 16.) You have to buy the games and they range from $5 to $10, which seems a little expensive to me. Nintendo will be releasing 4 games each Monday and there are already some pretty great games available. I have not bought any Virtual Console games yet, but I’ll probably pick up some of the old classics like Kid Icarus or Metroid. I haven’t seen this myself, but I read that you can suspend these emulated games, save this saved state to the Wii’s memory and restore them later. Most of those old games wouldn’t let you save at all, (or used passwords), so this is a huge improvement. I’m hoping that Nintendo goes through the trouble of adding some internet multi-player functionality to some of these old games. I can just imagine turning on my Wii, noticing a friend is online and challenging him to a quick race in Super Mario Kart.

The Wii is a great video game system. I was a bit skeptical about the control system, but the few games I’ve played so far have convinced me that it works really well. I can imagine future Wii games exploiting the new control system in cool and ridiculous ways – like strapping a remote to each of your arms and legs and controlling your character by running in place, jumping and just generally acting like a lunatic.

What do you get when you mix Back to the Future II, a naive twelve-year-old and a format war? You get one of the more disappointing experiences of my childhood, (and it’s not even that bad so I should probably just shut up.) What happened was I had been loaned BttFII, which I had been told was a really cool movie, (”Hoverboards?!! Are you serious?!!”), and was really excited about getting home to watch it. (By the way, I grew up in Taiwan and things like new movies and American TV shows were sometimes hard to come by.) To my dismay, the tape did not even fit in our VCR Recorder, (I technically shouldn’t make this Borat reference because we had a lame VCP Player.) I was a casualty of the Betamax/VHS war and I was not happy. I think I eventually tracked down a Betamax player from a neighbor, but there was still something wrong with the tape because I don’t remember actually getting to watch BttFII until years later.

You would think that we would learn from the past and not let another format war like Betamax vs. VHS spill out into the consumer world. Unfortunately, this is just what is happening with the two formats, (HD-DVD and Blu-ray), fighting to replace standard DVDs. DVDs store from 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes of data, which translates to about two and a half hours of standard definition video, (the sort of video we’ve all been watching for the last 20 years.) The new formats can hold a lot more data, which opens the door for movie studios to release much higher quality versions of their movies. High-definition (HD), TV’s will eventually become the norm and we will need a supply of actual HD video to watch on them. These new DVD formats offer one way to get high definition video delivered to your living room. Other methods include HD broadcast feeds through the airwaves, HD cable and satellite, and HD downloads to devices like the XBox 360, (more on this later).

A word about HD video. One assumption that is made when talking about these next generation DVDs is that you will have an HDTV to watch them on. If you don’t, then they don’t really make much sense. Regular non-HD TV’s, (aka Standard Definition TVs or SDTVs), go up to 480i, which means there are 480 lines of detail in the video image from the top of the screen to the bottom. The i stands for “interlaced,” which means that the screen only shows every other line and then quickly switches out to show the other set of lines. It happens so fast that we don’t really notice that we’re only seeing half the detail at a time. So SDTV’s use 480i. HDTV’s come in several flavors: 480p, (which is also called Enhanced TV or EDTV), 720p, 1080i and 1080p. The p stands for “progressive” which means that all the lines of detail are displayed simultaneously, (as opposed to interlaced, where they are constantly traded out.) The result is a clearer picture. 720 and 1080 mean that there are that many lines of image detail from the top of the screen to the bottom. Most computer monitors these days run at a resolution of at least 1280×1024. The second number, 1024, is referring to the same thing as the 1080 in HDTVs, so your computer monitor is in effect high def, (and this should be pretty obvious – computer monitors are much clearer than SDTVs… that’s why we work in front of monitors and not televisions.)

So what are the differences between these competing formats? The main differences that I’ve seen are in the amount of data they hold and the price of the players.

Blu-ray

• Blu-ray holds 25-50 gigabytes of data which is good for about 5 to 9 hours of HD video.
• In theory, blu-ray discs eventually could hold up to 100-200 gigabytes, or a lot of hours of HD video.
• 7.1 surround sound.
• Blu-ray movies currently cost from $25-$35 (btw… does anyone else think $35 for any version [HD or not] of Click is too much?)
• Blu-ray players are currently really expensive: $1000 for a Samsung Blu-ray player at Best Buy.
• Sony’s PlayStation 3 has a Blu-ray drive and plays Blu-ray movies. Eventually you will be able to buy one for $600. As of press time, though, (which was the PS3 launch date), pretty much the only way to get one is to drop over $2000 for one on Ebay!

HD-DVD

• HD-DVDs hold 15-30 gigabytes of data or 4 to 8 hours of video, (from what I’ve read, the video on Blu-ray disc will be higher quality than HD-DVD… that’s why Blu-ray holds fewer hours of video relative to HD-DVD.)
• According to the official HD-DVD website they have a theoretical limit of 60 gigabytes.
• Like Blu-ray, they can handle 7.1 surround sound.
• HD-DVD movies currently cost from $25-35.
• HD-DVD players cost less. Best Buy is selling one for under $500.
• Microsoft will have an HD-DVD add-on for their Xbox 360. It will cost around $300.

So what does all that mean to me?

It really sucks that the industry is letting this format war be decided by the consumers. People will have to choose one and hope that their format wins. It’s also possible that both formats will survive. (This happened with writable DVDs: there are two formats: DVD+R and DVD-R and eventually hardware manufacturers just supported both.) However, the two next gen DVD formats are different enough that building machines that could play both would be challenging and expensive.

If I had to guess which one would win, I’d have to lean towards Blu-ray. Blu-ray players cost more, but there’s one built into the PS3, (as opposed to the $300 HD-DVD add-on for the 360.) Sony is really struggling to get these systems out, but eventually there will be millions of them in households and this will go a long way towards solidifying Blu-ray’s hold on the market.

If I had to make a recommendation, I’d say “Don’t get either.” You’ll really be kicking yourself if you buy a $500+ device and then have nothing to play on it in a year. Just keep watching your regular DVDs for a year or two.

Finally, as if two options weren’t enough, there will soon be a third way to get HD video. Microsoft recently announced that they will offer HD video downloads to Xbox 360s. This is kind of cool because it’s good quality video delivered to a device that is already in your living room. From what I’ve read, the HD movies they rent, (I don’t think they plan on selling downloads yet), will be about 6 gigabytes each which will really tear through the 360’s meager 20 gigabyte hard-drive. Hopefully Microsoft will soon announce larger, (100 gig+), drives, which would make this HD download service a little more appealing.

Do you find yourself going to the same five or ten websites every day, multiple times a day? Over the last few years the lists of sites I frequent grew to over fifty and keeping up with them was becoming a daunting and not so enjoyable task. I was suffering from information overload and it was really starting to ruin my whole web-surfing experience. I had even started to consider taking some pretty drastic steps, like leaving my computer off all evening at home just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. What I needed was a tool to help manage and deliver all the content of my favorite websites. This is exactly what RSS feeds and feed readers do, and depending on the reader, they can do a really good job.

Any website that gets new content posted regularly and is database driven, (the content is stored in a database instead of just HTML files), probably has an RSS feed. (RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication). An RSS feed is a file that describes the last twenty or so articles or posts, (the number of which is specified by the website creator). The descriptions contain at least the headline or title of the post and either part or all of the contents of the post. A feed reader is an application or website that manages a list of feeds you “subscribe” to and puts the contents of the RSS feed on the screen in a useful way. I prefer the web-based feed readers because you can access your list of feeds, (and what posts you have read or not read) on any computer, instead of just the one that your feed reader application is installed on. With some application feed readers there are ways to sync your read/unread lists between multiple computers, but this seems kind of unnecessary when the web-based feed readers work really well.

On a regular basis your RSS feed reader checks if there is any new content on each website you frequent. If it finds a new post or article, it adds it to your “unread” list. When you log in to your reader, all the unread articles show up in one place. This makes it simple to keep up with a lot of websites. One of the coolest things about feed readers is that you can save up all your reading for a convenient time such as the weekend or evenings. I usually come home from work and sift through all the day’s news and articles in about 30 minutes.

I have used several feed readers over the last year or so. The best one is actually one of the newest ones. Google’s Reader is really easy to use and allows you to quickly skim through headlines (I only actually read about 30% of the articles that get posted each day).

Here’s a screenshot of Google Reader. On the left are some of the feeds I subscribe to with the number of unread items in parenthesis. On the right is the list of unread items. You can add feeds by clicking the Add Subscription link and just typing the URL of the website or blog you want to subscribe to. Google Reader goes out and determines the link to the actual RSS feed file for you.

When you click on an item, it opens, revealing the contents of that post. This article is from one of my favorite blogs, Boing Boing.

The current Google Reader is actually their second attempt at building a feed reader. The first one had some design issues and started feeling really clunky if you were trying to keep up with more than a few feeds. Google’s redesigned Reader is actually just a blatant rip-off of another web-based feed reader, Bloglines. Bloglines was one of the first web-based feed readers and it is pretty good. Google’s new interface is just a little easier to use and I like the way it doesn’t mark items as read until I actually click on them. Bloglines automatically marks all items as read when you click on a feed or group of feeds which can lead to some time-consuming mistakes, (accidentally click the “All Items” link and you’ll have marked everything as read, even if you don’t have time to actually sit down and read all the items.)

Reading the Internet through a feed reader has a few drawbacks. For example, all the articles look exactly the same. All the design and colors of the original site are lost. For me this isn’t a big deal, but YMMV. If you want to read the article on the original site you can do so easily by just clicking the headline link. Also, sometimes an article’s images do not show up in Google Reader.

The other big drawback with feed readers is that you don’t get to see comments left on posts. Some blog engines offer RRS feeds for the comments of each post, but trying to keep up with comment feeds for each post of a blog seems pretty unwieldy to me. If I’m really interested in a certain post, I usually just click through to the original website to see if there are any interesting comments.

While feed readers are probably not for everyone, I think everyone should at least give them a shot. Just subscribe to a few of your favorite websites or blogs, (assuming they have RSS feeds), in Google Reader and see what you think.

As consumers we have found ourselves in a strange place when it comes to technology and content. Up until a little while ago, the limits placed on technology were “natural,” meaning engineers could create as cool or tricked-out a device as they wanted and the only limitation was their creativity and/or skills. Lately, though, a rather troubling trend has emerged. The people that create the content that is played by these devices have started exerting control over the design specifications of the devices themselves. DVD players must be approved by, I think, the FCC and the FCC will only approve players that include certain anti-piracy solutions. These solutions prohibit most of what we as consumers have grown to understand as fair-use, (ex: the ability to make a backup of a DVD so that the original doesn’t get scratched).

A good question to ask yourself is: “Whose interests are being served?” When Tivo makes the new version of their DVR, are they really trying to build the ultimate recording device for their consumers? Or are they caving to the demands of backbone-less content providers? For me, the ultimate TiVo would include the following features:

• The ability to quickly and easily move my recorded video onto a device such as an iPod Video or some other video playing device. (Note: this would require that Apple made the iPod more flexible than it currently is… again the technology industry is catering to the content providers instead of the consumers)
• The ability to quickly and easily move my recorded video onto a computer in my house to do things like edit out commericials, (assuming the ultimate-TiVo didn’t do this for me already)
• Maybe a built-in DVD burner to burn shows or movies to DVD
• WiFi enabled, (to easily move files to and from a computer or other wifi-enabled device)
• Support for high def video
• No DRM (Digital Rights Management)

Nothing in this list would be crazy difficult to implement. Ten engineers with a decent chunk of money could probably spit out a prototype of this device in a few weeks. A 13-year-old hacker dude could make his computer do most of what I’m talking about in one afternoon with software that is either free or relatively cheap. With a tiny bit of marketing, these would sell like frickin’ hotcakes too.

The main reason we as consumers don’t have and will probably never get this wonderful machine is DRM. The content providers are terrified of piracy and in their eyes DRM is part of the solution. I think DRM is a terrible solution. It gives the content providers a gross amount of control over what we as consumers do with the content we buy. I’ve already written a whole article about how much I hate DRM, (to read it, go here), so I won’t go on about this too much longer. But to support some of the stuff in this article, here is a list of my main beefs with DRM:

• DRM breaks fair-use. If I buy music or a movie, I should be able to play it or convert it so that it will play on any device.
• DRM doesn’t work. Thanks to the so-called “analog hole” as long as we are still allowed actually to experience the content, (listen to it, view it, etc.), there’s a way to copy it, (recording it off the sound card, using a camera to record the video off the screen.)
• DRM is not needed. Every single drm’ed song or TV show that is available for sale online is also available DRM-free on some sort of p2p pirating website. It is not like putting DRM in a song will keep it from ever leaking out onto the web. Piracy has always been an issue and will always be an issue but there are ways to make a profit selling content without DRM. Not many have tried this, but eMusic is an example of a company that has Just Said No to DRM and is still doing incredibly well.

For consumers, buying from a legitimate online store is more convenient than searching for a pirated copy of the item they want. If I had to choose between A) searching for 15 minutes for a song and then downloading it from an unknown source at potentially slow speeds, and B) logging into a legitimate online store and pay a dollar or so to download the same file quickly, I’d choose option B every time… IF there was no DRM on the file. I wish more companies would follow on the path that eMusic has bravely blazed.

What I am asking for here is nothing short of complete interoperability between all the devices in my house, where applicable. To get this, digital content needs to be stored in open, non-proprietary formats. This would require a change in the mindset of all content providers. Start selling your content in open, non-DRM formats. If this happens, the people who make the technology that plays your content will be free to pull out all the stops and create some kick-ass hardware, hardware like the hypothetical Tivo described above. iTunes and eMusic have gone a long way towards proving that people are willing to pay money to have access to commercial free music, TV and movies. Imagine a future where you could download a TV show from iTunes for a dollar or two in HD with 5.1 surround sound and be assured that it would play on any TV or video-playing device in your house. Until the content providers get over their infatuation with DRM this sort of exciting technological future is basically impossible.

About a year ago I read an article in Wired Magazine that really intrigued me. The story was about this old guy in Hawaii who had a plan to power the world with cold water from the bottom of the sea. The man’s name is John Pino Craven. He’s not just an old thinker… he’s got some interesting creds to back up his seemingly hair-brained idea: a PhD in ocean engineering, a law degree, and he was once the chief scientist for the US Navy’s Special Projects Office. The technique he uses is called ocean thermal energy conversion, (OTEC), and it’s actually not a new idea. (The first OTEC plant was built in 1930.) Craven’s implementations of OTEC have been some of the most successful and the ways he uses the by-products of OTEC are pretty unique.

OTEC works by bringing deep ocean water that is just a few degrees above freezing up to the surface. Once it is pumped up you can use the temperature differential between it and substances at sea level to generate electricity. Historically, this process has been incredibly inefficient, (something like 1 to 3% overall efficiency.) In recent years, though, new approaches have led to more efficient power generation. Even with the inefficiencies, cold ocean water is a renewable resource, which means that huge amounts of cold water can be pumped up, generating large amounts of energy. In the 90’s a group was able to produce 50,000 watts of power from OTEC during an experiment. But this dream of clean, renewable energy still has its nightmare elements. OTEC plants have been short-lived due to the expense, (dropping a mile-long pipe into the ocean), and the poor efficiency of the process.

Craven’s facility in Hawaii, (the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii), currently uses OTEC for a multitude of purposes. They have generators to test power generation, but Craven also uses the cold water to cool the facility’s buildings, generate fresh water, improve the growth of plants in the facility’s gardens and to mend his body.

I guess I should explain a few of those. As the cold water warms up, condensation forms on the tubes the water runs through. They collect and bottle this water for drinking. Regarding the plants… they run the cold water pipes through the ground below their facility’s gardens. This cools the soil and Craven claims this speeds up his plants’ growth. According to the Wired article, it seems to be working. Craven’s facility sits on hard, dry lava rock and yet he’s been able to plant a vineyard and flower garden. And if that isn’t spooky enough for you, consider the fact that Craven has also developed a system of applying cold water to certain points on his body and claims to have healed his arthritis.

Even with its limited success so far, the potential for using OTEC for power seem pretty huge. Craven believes there is enough energy in the oceans to supply “1,000 times the world’s need.” That’s encouraging. I’d find it kind of amusing if OPEC’s replacement actually was just one letter different.

As a side note… Craven’s personal website is pretty interesting and a bit strange. It’s full of poetry, political writings and Psalms. Though I guess for a visionary of Craven’s caliber, this is probably pretty standard stuff.

“By Walt Disney’s Frozen Head!*� What is this cryogenics you speak of?”

It’s one of my favorite concepts in science of both the fictional and non-fictional sort. A quick and dirty definition of cryogenics would be the study of extremely cold temperatures. A field related to cryogenics is cryonics, which I’ll say is the use of technology and science to bring life forms down to extremely low temperatures, therein stopping decomposition and prolonging their life. One application of cryogenics is to use it to suspend human life during long space flights. This is used, for example, in the Alien movies where their much-slower-than-the-speed-of-light ships take months or years to reach their destinations.

Cryonics is still a relatively new science. It’s currently illegal to cryogenically freeze a human while they are still alive, so nearly all research is done on animals. There are about 140 humans stored in cryogenics labs around the country.

One of my all-time favorite movie scenes is from Aliens, where Ripley is revived from “hypersleep,” (cryogenic sleep in the Alien universe), and discovers that she has been under for decades longer than expected. She hoped to be picked up soon after her ship made it to space shipping lanes, six weeks away. Instead, she floated silently through space for nearly sixty years. The world she knew and the life she had is gone.

In this way, cryonics, even in current fledgling form, is a sort of one-way time travel. I often think about what life will be like fifty, a hundred, or even a thousand years from now. In theory, (in my imagination at least), I could tomorrow pay $200,000 to a shady cryonics lab in a former eastern bloc country to freeze me for a specified number of years, say 250. Doing this when you’re basically a corpse is one thing, but doing this when you’re a living, breathing being is a pretty massive show of faith in humanity. It’s saying for example that you believe that in a hundred years there will still be humans there to check in on your frozen ass every now and then and that the electrical outlet your freezer is plugged into will be getting uninterrupted power the entire time you’re in there.

Vanilla Sky is another great movie that uses cryonics, (though in retrospect I wish that it starred someone other than Tom Cruise). I’ve already partially spoiled this movie for those that haven’t seen it, so I’ll just finish the job by saying that David, (Cruise), puts himself into cryonic sleep after a terrible car accident and then, in his subconscious, has to decide whether he wants to remain asleep, or take a chance by waking up to an unknown future. It’s a really cool movie and deals with the concept that even in a frozen state, our minds might keep going, dreaming strange or beautiful dreams for decades while our bodies lay motionless. That’s kind of a frightening thought.

What would it be like to awaken 300 years from now? Everything would be so foreign. Over the decades and centuries of your sleep, many others would have probably put themselves in cryogenic sleep. Would there be a new batch of people, (I’ll call them “Frosties”), unfreezing each day? I picture it happening like this: You’re a Frostie with some deadly illness, terrible injury or just a curious time-traveler. Your thawing day arrives and they warm you up and quickly cure or heal you with their Medical Tricorders or whatever it is we use 300 years from now. As part of your freezing service, they supply you with clothes of that day and enough money to get your feet on the ground. They might even supply a “Friend from the Future” – someone to tag along with you the first month or so, helping you adjust to society in the year 2307. Eventually though, you would be left to fend for yourself and I think the culture shock would be daunting to say the least.

From our perspective today, the thought of waking up in the future seems pretty cool, but how do we know we’d even be welcome? Would there be some sort of temporal prejudice against Frosties? Would there be movements to stop reviving them? I imagine historians would love Frosties… living specimens from humanity’s past. Would there be wars waged between historians and the anti-Frosties? The Great Cryonics War of 2429: An army of thawed Frosties led by the world’s leading historians battle the cultural elite of the future, who use hordes of merciless robots to fight what they consider to be blights on society. Perhaps humans of the future would ship all the freezers to Mars or some Pacific island and let the Frosties live amongst their own kind. The societies these Frosties form would probably end up being strange mashups of their original societies and times, which would basically defeat the whole purpose of freezing yourself to get a glimpse of the future.

Cryonics isn’t quite as simple as it seems on the surface. It raises so many social, ethical and practical questions that I really have to wonder if we will ever legalize freezing healthy, living humans. The thought of waking to the hypothetical dystopia of the last paragraph has pretty much convinced me that I wouldn’t want to freeze myself, even after death. Who wants to be brought back from the dead only to be scorned and hated by their descendants?

*As “cool” and strange as this would be, Disney’s head is not sitting in a freezer somewhere… it’s an urban legend.

You just made a sweet podcast or shot a video with some friends and you’re excited about showing it off. The webby goodness of interconnectivity that is the Internets is a great way to get this new creation out to potentially millions of users. As we have all recently learned though, the internet is not a truck that you can just dump stuff in. It’s a series of tubes and it costs money to move stuff through those tubes and in the case of large files (such as that movie you just made with your friends), it can cost a LOT of money. Assuming you’re going to host it from your own site you would have to foot the bill for the extra bandwidth your files use. It’s not hard for these bills to reach the hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month.

What is BitTorrent?

Back in 2001 Bram Cohen saw this problem and sat down to come up with a solution. The solution he came up with is BitTorrent. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (p2p) protocol that allows you to decentralize the load from one server, (yours), and distributing the load across all the computers trying to download your file. Since fewer people are downloading directly from your server, you can cut your bandwidth usage drastically. This link contains a thousand more words worth of explanation in picture form.

To download a file through BitTorrent, you need a BitTorrent client. This is an application you download and run on your computer that manages your BitTorrent downloads. Cohen wrote the first client and released it and the source code on the internet for free. There are now dozens of clients that can use the BitTorrent protocol. On Windows, the best client I’ve seen is µTorrent. It’s really small, free and has just about the perfect number of features.

A file shared through BitTorrent starts with a seed. The seed is the original file on the file creator’s server. When the first person starts downloading this file, their BitTorrent client downloads the file in small chunks that they in turn share with additional downloaders. Basically, if you and I were both downloading a file through BitTorrent your client would check with me to see if I had any chunks that you don’t have and if I do, then you would download some chunks of data from me and some from the seeder. As more downloaders join in, there are just more potential places for you to download chunks of data from. In theory it’s a great idea and, for the most part, Cohen’s implementation actually works. There are some, (kind of), technical things you have to do to get it to work really well (like open some ports on your router and firewall), but once you do this, you can easily get download speeds above 100 kB/s and often much faster.

BitTorrent is relatively new and doesn’t really have very widespread usage, (read: my aunt or grandma aren’t using it yet). And, honestly, it has some hurdles to jump before it’s as widely known as, say MP3’s, (primarily the port issue in the last paragraph). Despite its current membership in the nerd-only club, one traffic monitoring service announced a few years ago that it accounted for over 30% of internet traffic. This number always seemed high to me, but I guess it could be accurate. In general the size of files moving through BitTorrent are huge compared to most traditional downloads.

Legal Uses

There are plenty of legal uses for Bit-Torrent. Linux distributions are a great example. These are large files, (usually at lease 700mb), and are usually put together by groups of volunteers that do not have a lot of money to put towards distributing their product over the internet. Most Linux distros are available as BitTorrent downloads. I’ve downloaded a few over the last few years using BitTorrent and have always gotten really good speeds.

It really came as a surprise to me, but recently at least one movie studio, (Warner Bros), announced that they would start selling, (or renting?) movies through BitTorrent. I’m assuming the movie files would be DRM’ed (which kind of blows, but is to be expected). It’s nice, though, to see the MPAA embracing this new technology instead of just labeling it as a tool for pirates. Really, using Bit-Torrent just makes good financial sense and it’s kind of funny that it’s taken this long for companies to start utilizing it.

Some game companies use BitTorrent to release patches and updates. World of Warcraft is an example of this. Also, a lot of small companies or individuals offer BitTorrent versions of their downloads to keep bandwidth usage and bills to a minimum.

Illegal Uses*

Unfortunately, a ton of people use BitTorrent for not so legit purposes, such as downloading pirated movies, music, TV shows, computer games and applications. This really irks the content providers and some of them, (specifically the music and movie industries), are fighting back. Unfortunately, instead of coming up with a legal digital distribution system that still allows for fair use, (which is what people want), they have been suing their users. This is pretty effective way to drive-off potential customers and I’ve always found it a bit counter-intuitive.

The argument can be made that BitTorrent should be shutdown and/or Cohen somehow held responsible for all the pirating that has been going on. I think this is a pretty lame argument. If you are going to blame BitTorrent for piracy, why not just go a step further and blame the Internet as well. We wouldn’t even be in this mess if not for the Internet. For that matter, computers and the digital age they brought on could be made the real criminals here. If not for them, we’d still be making copies of movies and songs on analog tape in slow-as-molasses real time.

It would be a real shame if BitTorrent got shut down on account of its efficiency. I don’t think this will happen. The big content providers have done some lame things lately, but I think they’ll eventually come around. Big industries like the Recording Industry change slowly and are especially resistant to new disruptive technologies. In the case of BitTorrent, the technology is compelling and works great so I think it’s only a matter of time before they realize they need to adapt and embrace it, or face irrelevancy in the new age of legitimate p2p distribution.

*Nerd City does not support the use of BitTorrent for illegal activities.

A term I’ve seen cropping up in blogs lately is ‘disruptive technology’. It’s basically the introduction of a new approach or solution to a problem that replaces the old dominant solutions. Over the last five to ten years broadband internet, (of either cable or DSL variety), has introduced a lot of disruptive technologies and has itself been disruptive. One of the latest disruptive technologies made available through broadband is Voice over IP (IP in turn means internet protocol, but no one ever actually says these words). I’ll mostly refer to it as VOIP, (pronounced “vee-oh-eye-pee” or “voip” with an oy sound.) VOIP is basically any technology that allows for voice conversations to be sent over the internet. Since it uses your existing internet connection, and the internet already covers most the globe, you can talk to anyone anywhere in the broadband enabled world for no cost beyond your internet fee. This is by far the most appealing feature of VOIP and it is what potentially has telephone companies loosing sleep, (more on this later.)

There are different ways to implement Voice over IP. Some forms of VOIP use software and a microphone on a computer. Others use a special stand-alone VOIP phone that can plug into your internet router. VOIP has been around for a long time in the business and research world, but only in the last few years has VOIP really made it into the home.

Vonage, Cox digital telephone and others offer VOIP solutions that reuse your existing regular telephones. In both cases you need a special router that has a phone jack built in. This router knows how to translate what you are speaking into data packets that can travel over the internet. These packets are then sent to some servers at Vonage or Cox that are connected to the real, existing phone network.

The other main approach to VOIP uses your computer. Most, if not all, the main Instant Messaging clients (Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, AIM) now have some sort of “voice chat” feature that is basically just VOIP. It takes what you say into your computer’s microphone, translates it into data, compresses it so that it takes less time to transmit, and sends it to another person, (or persons if the program supports conferencing.)

There is another set of instant-messaging like programs that are primarily about VOIP. A few such programs are Skype and Gizmo. These offer some features that the other IM apps don’t have, (yet.) Things like the ability to call a real phone from your computer, receive voice mail, and record conversations. Kind of an interesting side-note… EBay recently bought Skype for the pretty inconceivable price of 2.6 billion, (with a ‘b’), dollars. Skype charges a small fee for some of its advanced features, (calling real phones, voice mail, etc…) but you can use its basic features for free. Only a small percentage of its customers use its paid services, (only like 5%, I think I’ve read), so people were pretty much at a loss to understand why EBay would pay such a high price. Since the buyout they’ve released some plans for integrating Skype into the EBay auction process, (for example: a potential buyer could push a button to talk to the seller about the item.) It’s a great technology and all, but I still think they paid way too much for it.

Several companies are building new kinds of VOIP enabled devices that are looking pretty cool. One such device is a cell phone-sized Wi-Fi phone that can get on Skype’s network. With this device you could make free calls anywhere you had access to a Wi-Fi connection, (work, your friend’s house, Panera Bread.)

As for what VOIP is like on a day-to-day basis, I can say from personal experience that it is a huge time and money saver. I work from home twice a week and I will get on Skype or MSN Messenger and talk to my coworkers on and off the whole day – sometimes, for an hour at a time, if we are working through the details of a project feature or troubleshooting something. My notebook has built in speakers and a microphone, so it really just seems like the other person is in the room with you. Before I started using VOIP, I would use up a ton of cell phone minutes just during the work day. My parents live in Asia and since I don’t have international calling on my cell phone plan, VOIP makes talking to them possible and cheap.

If I had to come up with a complaint about VOIP it would be the way your voice data is compressed. Compressing the sound makes it quicker, (and cheaper), to transmit over the internet, but compression always degrades sound quality. Of the various VOIP clients I’ve used, you could usually tell that there was some kind of compression involved, but mostly it’s not that bad. Also, every now and then your VOIP conversations will skip or drop. This is probably related to what you are doing with the rest of your broadband connection. If you’re maxing out your upload quota with Bit-Torrent, (see a future Spotlight on Technology), VOIP is probably going to have some performance issues.

Is VOIP something to be afraid of? If your business depends on the old way we communicated, (standard long distance telephone calls), then I would say, yes – VOIP has the potential to do a lot of damage. We are quickly moving towards a time when all forms of media and communications, (phone, TV, internet, [insert non-existent future medium here]), will move digitally over one giant pipe in and out of our homes and businesses. If your company’s service or product uses a pipe besides this one, (analog phone calls, for example), I would say your days are numbered. Maybe I’m just insensitive, but my stance on companies who are on the losing end of a disruptive technology is that it is just too bad that they didn’t see where things were heading and bring about the innovation themselves.

Dr. Rog here, reporting from Boston, MA. I just finished up the week at Tech Ed 2006. It’s one of Microsoft’s annual conferences for IT people of all sorts where Microsoft and other vendors show off their new applications and technologies. This year over 12,000 developers, network people, and other IT types attended the five day event at Boston’s huge Massachusetts Convention Center.

A ton of Microsoft employees and managers were on hand to give presentations and answer questions. Most of the hour-and-fifteen minute presentation sessions were lead by Microsoft program managers who know pretty much everything there is to know about whatever topic they’re talking about… as they should, since they or their employees wrote the software. Most of the sessions I went to were really good and I learned a lot of interesting and useful stuff. Along with the sessions, the Microsoft people were available to answer questions face to face on the convention center floor. It’s really kind of a unique experience to just be able to walk up to the guy who created a certain feature in Visual Studio and ask him specific questions about it.

We had these small Mini-Guides that outlined the sessions for each day. Session titles ranged from the strictly descriptive (“Next Generation Data Access in .NET Applications with ADO.NET vNext”) to the slightly creative (“Software as a Service: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”) to the rare metaphor-inclusive (“Bits to Bolts: Bridging the Gap Between the Solutions and Infrastructure Architecture”) to the wow-that’s-ridiculously-long (“Deep Dive into Increasing Your Information Worker’s Productivity with Tight Integration between the Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Dynamics AX”). Bad session names at a Microsoft event should not come as a surprise, though, because Microsoft has a habit of giving their apps long names. (The next version of Office is called 2007 Microsoft Office System instead of just Office 2007 and Hotmail is about to be renamed Windows Live Mail. I much prefer Google’s simple and straightforward name, Gmail.)

People who know me will vouch that I am no Microsoft fanboy. Over the years I’ve been critical of how slow they are to roll out new stuff and how, because of their giant user base, they are basically forced to design their applications to fit the needs of the lowest common denominator, which usually makes for a pretty boring, under-powered application. From what I’ve seen this week, I have to admit that Microsoft is actually doing some really cool things. From a developer standpoint, they are really focusing on helping web site authors easily create really cool “Web 2.0” sites, (think Google Maps, Yahoo Mail beta, and Gmail), AND they are actually going out of their way to support Firefox. At some of the sessions the presenters actually did all their demos in Firefox which was really surprising, and everything worked cross-platform, which was even more surprising. I saw a lot of new Vista, (the next version of Windows, out in early 2007), stuff and it was all good – nice graphics, new features for experienced users, and just an overall better and more responsive system.

It’s been a really long week and I’m exhausted. I was kind of reluctant going into the conference. Based on their general track record, I doubted that Microsoft would have much of anything really great to show. It may not be the “cool” thing to say, but from what I saw this week I’m actually optimistic about the direction in which Microsoft is heading. They’ve made a lot of changes to their developer tools and to the Vista operating system with the goal of making things work more easily and better. Overall, it seems that Microsoft is really focusing on salvaging the image they’ve let slowly corrode over the last 10 years and with their next generation of applications, I think they may actually go a long way towards accomplishing this.

Wi-Fi – the wireless networks that your computer can connect to and surf the web. Some times it’s free (possibly at your home, at work, at certain businesses like Panera Bread) other times there’s a charge (like at Starbucks). Fon is a new movement of broadband subscribers that aims to create a world-wide Wi-Fi network that is free for all those that participate by adding their broadband access to the overall network. As an aside, it’s pronounced like “phone”, but has pretty much nothing to do with telephones. In this issue of Spotlight on Technology I’ll discuss the details of the Fon system, how you can “join the club” and a few of my hesitations and questions.

One interesting note about Wi-Fi in general is that the word, “Wi-Fi,” is not actually short for anything. From what I’ve read, it seems the term found its origins in the phrase “Wireless Fidelity”, but the people who invented the term (the Wi-Fi Alliance) now discourage people from making this connection.

The Fon system depends on some special software that is installed on your Wi-Fi router (the device that transmits the network signal through the air). Currently only one wireless router is supported (the Linksys WRT54G) but Fon is planning on supporting more as development continues. This software allows other Fon users (they’re called “Foneros”) to connect to the wireless network that extends outside the walls of your house (usually for 100 feet or so) using a username and password supplied by Fon. They are calling each of these routers Fon hotspots. The plan is to have enough of these hotspots spread out across each city to create a seamlessly connected world-wide Wi-Fi network.

Besides the hardware, the other main component of Fon’s world-wide movement is a really slick mapping system, based on Google maps. Their maps show the locations of all registered Fon hotspots, so if you plan on traveling you can find out what parts of town will have Fon access before you leave. On your next trip to Europe or Asia, you wouldn’t have to worry about paying exorbitant hourly rates for Internet access… just find a Fon hotspot and log in. This mapping tool makes finding Fon hotspots so simple that I imagine this feature alone will account for Fon’s eventual success.

To become a Fonero and get in on the action, all a person needs to do is get the supported wireless router, install the router software and register at http://www.fon.com. Once registered, your hotspot will show up on the map. Fon states that your privacy is protected, but, ultimately, this was one of the reasons I have not signed up yet. It may be a while before I’m really comfortable advertising my address, even anonymously, to the rest of the world.

Currently in Nerd County (OKC) there are only about 6 Fon hotspots – hardly thorough coverage. However, in bigger metropolitan areas (such as Dallas) there are quite a few more, and the movement is still relatively young. Below is Fon’s map of the Dallas area.

I came really close to signing up for the $25 router (which has apparently dropped down to just $4 as of June 2^nd) and registering for a Fon account. In the end though, I have not yet done this. Besides the privacy issue mentioned above, I was also reluctant to sign up because 1) I’m almost certain my contract with Cox (my Internet Service Provider or ISP) does not allow sharing my bandwidth with individuals outside of my house and 2) I don’t really want people doing illegal things on my bandwidth.

Any website visited by a Fonero using my router would, from Cox’s perspective, look as if I were the one visiting this site. Fon’s system is not totally anonymous – anyone using my Fon hotspot will have logged in using their Fon username and password. Fon states that this lack of anonymity will deter people from doing illegal activity over someone else’s Fon hotspot. However, I’m not really convinced – even though people log in with a username, once they are on my network, I don’t think Cox can differentiate between their Internet activity and mine.

There are several ISPs around the world that are cool with Fon so maybe Cox will eventually come around and allow users to share their bandwidth. One alternative, I believe, would be to get Cox’s business-at-home service which is about $15 more a month but allows you to do more with your account.

If Cox were to allow bandwidth sharing, I would probably eventually talk myself into joining Fon. The potential of having Wi-Fi readily available everywhere is really appealing, especially if this network were built from a grassroots movement such as Fon.

This November will be a big month for gamers. Assuming there are no delays, Sony and Nintendo will be unleashing their next-generation video consoles, (the PS3 and the Wii, respectively), on the world. Microsoft got a head start by launching their Xbox 360 last November. These new systems are capable of unprecedented graphics and introduce some very innovative features into the gaming world.Last week all three console makers and everyone else in the video game world were in LA for E3, (the Electronic Entertainment Expo). This event can be like a competition between the different companies, each trying to outdo the others with things like bigger booth setups and hotter booth babes. I don’t know who won as far as presentation is concerned, but from what I’ve read and seen, the consensus is that Nintendo’s Wii was the most impressive offering of the three systems. Microsoft has some surprisingly good-looking games for their Xbox 360, and Sony pretty much dropped the ball with their PS3.

Nintendo’s Wii (probably $200)

Most “grown-up” games (such as Grand Theft Auto) were not ported to Nintendo’s last console, the Gamecube. For many, this cast the system as a “kid’s only” machine. Adult gamers tended to prefer the PS2 or Xbox 360. With the Wii, Nintendo is trying to rid itself of this image by creating a system that is so innovative and that plays games that are just so much fun, gamers of all persuasions will want it. They got a lot of flak when they announced they were changing the system’s name from the “Revolution,” (which I still prefer), to the Wii, (pronounced “we”). Nintendo is hoping to reach non-traditional markets with this system, (such as the elderly), and probably has a better chance of this with a friendly name like Wii.

The feature of the Wii that is making the most noise is its new controller. It’s a long remote-looking device that has some sort of gyroscope in it that senses the movements of your hand. At E3 Nintendo showed off a tennis game where you actually swing your arm like you’re holding a racket and the character on the screen swings likewise. It could differentiate between the types of swings, (backhands, forehands, slams), as well.

Another notable feature of the Wii is the “Virtual Console.” The Wii will be able to emulate several old systems, (NES, SNES, N64, TurboGrafix16 and Genesis), and most, (if not all), of the games for these systems. You will download these games as files from Nintendo’s servers. It has yet to be announced if this will be subscription-based or not.

The Wii is significantly less powerful than the other two systems and will not feature the high-definition (HD) graphics that the other systems have. Nintendo has said that this is a measure to keep consumer costs down.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 ($300-$400)

There was some question about Microsoft’s releasing their system a full year before their competition. Sega did this with their Dreamcast and it turned out to be the final nail in their coffin. The Dreamcast got trounced by the PS2 and Sega eventually closed the doors on its hardware business for good. However, it looks as though Xbox 360 will come out of this fight in one piece. Their E3 showing was strong. The 360 games had arguably the best graphics at the show and supposedly at one booth an “exclusive” PS3 game was actually being run on a hidden Xbox 360.

Microsoft offers a great online experience with their Xbox Live service. Your stats and achievements in games show up on your online account page which offers a new social dimension to gaming. At E3, they announced that eventually PC gamers will be able to play against 360 players, which is pretty cool.

Microsoft scored a coup of sorts by getting Grand Theft Auto IV as an Xbox 360 exclusive. (Presumably it will eventually be ported to PS3 and PC). The previous three installments of this game debuted on the PS2. According to John Carmack of Doom and Quake fame, the Xbox 360 is the easiest system to develop games for. I read a while back that the PS3’s super-powerful technology was very complex and made creating games for it a headache. This is just speculation, but this could have something to do with Rockstar’s switch to the Xbox 360 for their Grand Theft Auto series.

Sony’s PS3 ($500-$600)

It seems the only news you hear about the PS3 is bad. It’s going to cost $600. It may be delayed until ‘07. There may not be many games available at launch. Sony needed to have a good showing at E3 to stifle this bad press. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much to say or show.

On paper, the system looks really nice. It’s got tons of power, potentially will play games at higher resolutions than the other systems, and is the only system to support high capacity DVDs, (Blu-ray DVDs), out of the box. Whether the game developers will be able to make use of all these features and power is yet to be seen.

One interesting note about the PS3 is that it will support Linux. It’s not clear yet if the main operation system of the PS3 will be based on Linux or if it will be able to dual boot into Linux. Either way, the potential for customization seems far greater on the PS3 than on the other systems.

Over the years I have primarily been a PC gamer. The last console I bought was a PS1. But I find myself really excited about these next-generation systems. The potential for the Wii’s controller is off the charts. The online components of all three systems are going to be cool. The graphics of the Xbox 360 and PS3 are going to blow our minds. As for which system(s) I want to get? I’ve got the High-Definition TV bug really bad and will probably try to get one some time this year. If that happens, I’m seriously considering getting an Xbox 360 to really make use of the high-def resolutions. I will definitely get a Wii- all my old favorites through emulation, the controller, and shiny new versions of all my old favorites make getting this system a no-brainer.