Month: July 2003

GPSML

There is a growing requirement for a standard way of sharing GPS location information between disparate systems, devices and users. For example, to transmit location data from a GPS-enabled client application (possibly running on a handheld device) to a central server running location-aware Web Services. Another example would be to enable users to share waypoints, routes and/or track logs more easily, regardless of their GPS device or application. Chaeron will submit the GPSml specification to the W3C for adoption as a standard once it stabilizes and is released in a final version.

adding location-awareness will allow the web to track the real world much better. it would allow to reduce the impedance mismatch in user interfaces, and allow the web to recede more into the (ubiquitous) background, where it belongs.

The memex is coming

Within 5 years, terabyte hard drives will be common and inexpensive (<$300). Thus, purchasing an additional terabyte of personal storage every year will be feasible for the average computer user. It turns out that filling 1 terabyte is not easy. It is hard to take/view enough pictures, read enough documents, or listen to enough audio in 1 year to fill 1 terabyte. Only video is up to the task of readily filling 1 terabyte in a year. Therefore, we must prepare for the era of profligate users that Vannevar Bush predicted. Users will eventually be able to keep every document they read, every picture they view, all the audio they hear, and a good portion of what they see.

gordon bell is preparing for that day with his MyLifeBits project at MS research, as is the MIT haystack project which drew lots of applause at the W3C conference this year.

We have begun using MyLifeBits, and initial experience is a success. Gordon Bell, our alpha user, has digitized nearly everything possible from his entire life, and will have eliminated all paper (except those legally required) by the time this paper is published.

one question that bloggers get asked a lot; why are you replicating your life online, can be asked of this effort too. the answer, it appears, is rooted in human psychology, and the wish to endure.

Supposing one did keep virtually everything would there be any value to it? Well, there is an existence proof of value. The following exist in abundance: shoe boxes full of photos, photo albums & framed photos, home movies/videos, old bundles of letters, bookshelves and filing cabinets. While many items may be accessed only infrequently (perhaps just a handful of times in a lifetime) they are treasured; given only one thing that could be saved as their house burns down, many people would grab their photo albums or such memorabilia.

Dust

Al Molnar recently devised a transceiver-on-a-chip that’s 50x smaller than a cell phone, consumes 1000x less power, yet operates at the same frequency. Outfitted with their own TinyOS operating system, the motes self-organize into ad hoc wireless networks and pass their data from one to another bucket-brigade style until the information reaches a central computer for processing. In March, members of the Smart Dust research team, including graduate students Jason Hill, Ben Cook, Mike Scott, and Brett Warneke, took a major leap forward in their quest to combine ultra-low power computation, communication, and sensing into a single tiny device. Hill successfully tested his design for a new single-chip “spec” mote that’s only 5 millimeters square and includes a transmitter built by Molnar.

related notions: swarm intelligence, emergence, transparency, future shock levels

Memetic assault

Popularized and raised to a fine art by now-defunct website Adequacy, the Adequacy Style Troll, or AST, brings a blender to the ordinary practice of shit-stirring. The AST achieves its goal by a combination of proven techniques:

  • A tone of calmness and rationalism is maintained. This creates an enhanced contrast between the AST itself and the responses, which are likely to be emotional and less thoroughly considered.
  • The initial starting position for argument is unassailably sensible.
  • Each step of the argument is completely reasonable.
  • Substantial, even excessive, documentation is provided.
  • The final conclusion is outrageous and completely unacceptable to the target victim group.

in the fine tradition of sokal, trolling is being elevated to an art form. interesting.

No bargains

When I checked the emails for my sister today, I learned to my surprise that she is an avid ebay user, with ebay toolbar installed and all. Then I learned that the recent ebay user conference drew 10K attendees. I never paid attention to ebay and its ilk, but these data points alerted me to the volume and the relevance of efficient auctions.

  • there are 400M transactions on the ebay backend per day
  • 69M users (11% of global internet users)
  • annualized sales at $21B

if ebay and its competitors manage to capture a larger share of the $1.8T global market for their kind of products, there will be enormous efficiency gains that should easily be detectable in the GDP. of course, with efficient markets, there are no bargains anymore:

We passed a booth with a beautiful, extensive assortment of fountain pens for sale when my son, Adam, 15, decided to take a look. So we stopped, and the gentleman who owned the pens started showing us his stock.
This one’s a Parker from 1972, he explained, and this one’s a Waterman … Then he started talking prices.
You can have this one for $250 US, and look, it sells for more than $300 on eBay.
He pulled out a Web screenshot showing an eBay sale for that particular model pen. For me, the nature of the antiques market suddenly changed. No longer was it a local fair on the streets of Sao Paulo, where Paulistas could haggle over a painting, table or kitchen set. Now it was just another cog in the global antiques marketplace, facilitated by eBay and the Web.

Vector web

here are a few data points

maybe we will finally see rich vector graphics, and new user interfaces that do not suck, and are accessible? also, a google search that could interpret vector graphics would be far superior to the fuzzy matches we get today one presumes. back in 1997, when dave was still a thought leader, he called for the lineto moveto web.