February 2005 Archives

Yes, mere months after the Treo 650 became available, PalmOne got its act together enough to make a charge/sync cradle available.

Sure, given that a new unlocked GSM Treo 650 costs $699, you'd think a cradle would have been included in the box. I'm right there with ya on that.

And yes, you can now find these cradles on ebay, although currently, with shipping, they end up being more expensive than through PalmOne. Go figure.

Update (2:30pm): My order, which included only a single Treo 650 cradle, was just confirmed via email. Unfortunately for me, my order "...included backordered or advanced sale items that are unavailable for immediate shipment." Feh...a lie by any other name smells the same.

Hal, a buddy of mine, and I were just chatting last night and we came up with the bud of an idea -- the Home Positioning System, or HPS. Yeah, it's a take-off on GPS (Global Positioning System), but for comparatively tiny areas like homes and offices.

Why do we need this? Well, we're going to see an increasing number of autonomous robots wandering around buildings and homes, and unless they develop some pretty awesome (and cheap) optical systems to help the poor things figure out where they are, some sort of highly accurate wireless navigation system will have to be developed.

One application that got us to thinking about this is Hal's new Roomba Discovery. You know, those cute little tortilla-warmer-sized robotic vacuums. We expect that in a few years, it won't be at all surprising for you to be able to program the Roomba to vacuum certain rooms on certain days, etc. Of course, that requires that the Roomba know which areas are called the Family Room, Living Room, etc. and it has to know where it is all the time so it can get there and back per the schedule.

One idea for the HPS we came up with is a wireless beacon system. Using some unregulated frequency, like 900 MHz, these beacons would send out a unique blip every few seconds. The beacons could be spread around the house, plugged directly into outlets or (and this is potentially very nifty) installed into the base of light sockets, between the outlet contact and the bulb base. Once the robot was trained -- what the floorplan looks like and where the beacons are relative to where walls, steps, etc. are -- it would be trivial for it to navigate wherever it needs to go.

Another idea would be to use RFID. By putting a receiving antenna on the robot and locating differently encoded RFID tags at each doorway or division (real or arbitrary) in the house or office, the robot would know when it's approaching a new zone. This doesn't work as well as a wireless HPS, but it does afford some of the same benefits and would likely be a lot cheaper.

The reason GPS can't be used for this is the issue of accuracy -- GPS is accurate to within yards, whereas an HPS would need to be accurate to within an inch or two. Also, GPS doesn't work as well indoors, as the satellite signals are harder to lock onto.

I'm sure we're not the first two guys to think about this, so what tech is out there to address this? Anything yet?

Follow-up: Apparently, somebody already thought of this back in 1999 and offered the idea of using X10 transmitters. Not a bad idea, but I think we can do better than that with today's, if not tomorrow's, technology.

ABC News has an entertaining report on the annual Toy Fair in NYC. Some of the hot toys coming for the holidays this year include:
• A 12-inch Lindsay Lohan doll
• A Barbie doll that comes with its own reality TV show-esque movie (good grief)
• Bleeding Edge Goth Dolls (must be seen to be believed)
• The Sidewalk Stamper makes perfectly straight chalk lines for hopscotch (wtf?!)
• A version of Trivial Pursuit focusing on food/snack trivia (lame)
• Very Bunny Potty Training mascots (one fits over the toilet tank and stares at you while you try to pee)

Man, my best toys growing up were the ones that were mostly unscripted and totally flexible in that I had to use my imagination. Legos. Tinker Toys. Hot Wheels. Army men. You know what I'm talking about.

Sorry (again) for the downtime, folks. The new UPS, an APC ES 650, has been installed and seems to be working fine.

This is the first UPS I've had with a USB connection to my PC (to let it know to shut down gracefully when power fails). I'm almost hoping we have a (short) blackout so I can see it in action.

Of course, I could just pull the UPS' plug, but that's not as exciting.

If you notice GearBits going bye-bye intermittently, it's due to a faulty UPS that I need to replace. Sorry for the hassle...it should be fixed this weekend at the latest. :-/

If you recall, I was mildly (OK, extremely) distraught when I found out that my award-winning, local, independent, alternative radio station -- WOXY 97X -- was being sold and going off the air. Well, fate intervened (kinda) and, with the help of some investors, 97X's new online offspring, WOXY.com, is keeping me in tune with modern rock.

If you really enjoy new music, especially alternative/modern rock, you owe it to yourself to check out WOXY.com. With great, live, professional DJs (most of every day) spinning a terrific mix of new, local, and on-request tunes, it really is the highest quality web-only radio station out there.

Check out the WOXY.com website or jump directly to their MP3 or WMA streams (both 64K).

I came across a Dell 700m today and it looked like a really decent notebook. Not very heavy, nice screen, integrated optical drive, and only about 4 lbs. I was impressed to find that these are reasonably priced as well ($1000-$1500). Here are the tech specs if you're interested.

I don't think I'd trade in my Panasonic W2 for the 700m, as I'd be adding well over a pound to my bag to do so, but anyone in the market for a light laptop might do well by this (at least by the looks of it).

So...anybody have one of these? What do you think about it?

See anything you like? Go bid...please. :-)

Star Trek Enterprise Phone and Phaser Universal Remote!

Unlocked GSM Handspring Palm Treo 270 Smartphone+Extras

Brookstone Smart Find™ Wireless Remote & Key Locator

Replacement Lamp BP96-00224A for Samsung DLP Television

Generally, USB 2.0 3.5" HDD enclosures run $30 or more. TigerDirect.com has one for $19.99, so I ordered one (if you're like me, you have one or more previously used IDE hard drives sitting in a closet gathering dust). It's very bare-bones and was missing a couple of screws (standard HDD mounting screws work just fine), but it functions perfectly well for what it's supposed to do. Here's a link in case you want to grab one for yourself.

Sabrent 3.5" USB 2.0 Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure (TigerDirect.com)

Apparently, according to the Pope's new book, gay marriage is evil.

It would have been refreshing if language that strong had been used when the church learned about Catholic priests raping young boys.

Apparently, two gay adults entering into a public, monogamous relationship is worse for humanity than supposedly celibate religious leaders secretly having their way with children. Certainly an interesting moral position.

p.s. No, there's no "tech" aspect to this post...get over it.

Ever since I started using a Treo 600 in late February of 2004, I've kept track of the amount of wireless data I use each month. You know, just out of curiosity, because I constantly wonder whether I get more value out of my voice minutes or out of the $19.95 all-I-can-eat data plan I have with my carrier.

So, here's the breakdown over the past year or so:

Interestingly, I don't see any obvious correlation -- either positive or negative -- between the monthly voice and data numbers. One thing I'm sure about is that I'd give up wireless voice service before I gave up wireless data.

One way my carrier keeps those data numbers so low is that their GPRS throughput is pretty slow -- I'm lucky to get uninterrupted 33Kbps -- so downloading any serious amount of content takes a whiiiile.

So, how do your numbers stack up? Do you choose to be more voice- or data-centric, or does your phone/device make that decision for you?

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sued Jack Murthy of Winnetka, IL over alleged copyright violations related to Mr. Murthy's memory-enhancing brain implants.

The MPAA contends that Mr. Murthy broke US copyright law when he entered the entirety of the film Harry Potter 7: Yet More Trouble at Hogwart's into the artificial memory he had surgically implanted last year.

Murthy had been suffering from the increasingly common ailment known as Electromagnetic Field Induced Memory Atrophy, or EFIMA. EFIMA is often caused by extended use of phones and other wireless communications devices when placed near the head. Murthy purchased the surgical procedure that implanted several terabytes of silicon-based RAM into his brain in order to overcome the debilitating effects of EFIMA.

The MPAA's suit against Murthy partly stems from the recently overhauled US copyright code, which forbids any and all duplication of copyrighted work "for so long as any party with intellectual or financial interest in the work exists." The MPAA claims that by retaining his memory of watching the movie in his artificial memory, Murthy effectively made a perfect duplicate of the content without permission of the movie studio.

Mr. Murthy's defense is to include at least one epistomologist, who will likely argue that the nature of memory and knowledge does not allow it to be subsumed under US copyright law.

Sony-Miramax-Pixar, the movie studio that made the film in question, had no comment for this story.

---
Read previous editions of Headlines from the Future

Since I moved out of my Treo 600, and no cradle is available yet for the Treo 650, I came up with an alternate use for the old 600 cradle - a USB-powered business card holder!

Capacity: about 25 cards

USB function: none

Yeah, you've seen this somewhere else already -- I'm mostly adding it here because I want to be able to reference it easily in the future.

The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time

I'm saddened to say that I've only owned 4 of their top 20 gadgets. Is it too late to grab an Atari 2600?

Visiting SpreadFirefox.com just now, all I get is a blank page. Viewing the page source reveals only this:

<html><body></body></html>

Has the site been hacked, or did somebody just accidentally delete everything?

There are lots of blogs out there employed for personal uses, such as posting pics of one's vacation trips, complaining about politics, and raving about the latest new laptop. Many of these are excellent, too. But, are there any (many?) examples of how executives and/or academics have used blogs in their professional communities or as part of their job?

One exemplar site I've found is in the area of law. Larry Lessig's blog, at www.lessig.org/blog, is chock full of legal curiosity and insight. Another great professional site is Clay Shirkey (www.shirky.com), which is clearly a good pick from the (all-too-popular) "tech futurist" niche.

From the business world comes Mark Cuban's blog at www.blogmaverick.com. Cuban's blog is one example of how an executive might write about his industry.

Does anyone know of any other stellar examples of academics/researchers/executives employing a blog to further their own voices and make an impact in their communities?

Panasonic apparently has decided to wade into the consumer notebook arena with its Toughbook Elite line. To hawk these portables, it's using some fairly alluring photos of buff/hot supermodels holding the notebooks (apparently, Panasonic thinks it seems totally normal for a scantily clad babe wearing football shouldermapads to need a laptop).

Panasonic is also now making the Elite available in four colors -- white, red, black, and silver.

Just as a sidenote, these notebooks are excellent. Last summer, when the Toughbook line was marketed only as a specialty corporate purchase, I purchased the W2 (what Panasonic now calls the "Toughbook Elite") because it was the lightest notebook (2.8 lbs!) with an integrated DVD/CD-RW drive and a 12" screen. My dad was so impressed with it that he went out and bought its big brother, the Toughbook Y2 (14" 1400x1050 screen, 3.4 lbs). So far, we've both been very happy with them.

But whether these laptops, even with the new name and supporting supermodels, will appeal to Joe Consumer or not is yet to be determined. Let's hope they do, as it would be nice to have more devices like them available in the market.

It looks as if the Treo 650 has tremendous I/O capabilities via the Secure Digital slot. Some comparative testing shows that it even out-performs the Tungsten C, which has more RAM and a faster processor.

Four Secure Digital cards were tested:

L to R: SanDisk 512MB (SD512), SanDisk 256MB (SD256), Smart Modular 256MB (SM256), and Palm 64MB (P64)

The results, using VFSMark 1.1, were as follows:

Device Key: 650 = Treo 650 (OS 5.4.5), 600 = Treo 600 (OS 5.2.1), TC = Tungsten C (OS 5.2.1)

The VFSMark score is an average of all the scores above it.

Now I'd like to run these tests with one of those high-speed (45X or 60X) SD cards...anyone have an extra you can send me?

Everyone's favorite hilarious sci-fi novel, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has (finally) been adapted for the big screen. Catch the trailer here (looks reasonably funny). Or, check out the film-makers' blog (not so funny).

Since HHGTTG is one of the few books I've willingly read multiple times, I'm happy to see it come out in movie format if only to get more people to read the books.

Here are 4 more pairs of photos taken recently with the Treo 600 (top) and Treo 650 (bottom):

Two things are obvious:
1) Focus and resolution (not in terms of pixels, but in distinguishing detail) is generally better on the Treo 650 (the blurriness on the one shot is likely due to me -- it was cold and my hand was freezing). It seems that the JPG compression is higher on the 600, which may explain part of this.
2) Saturation and contrast are much higher on the 600 (too high, IMO) than the 650, which may be a tad low. Why don't they add settings in software for this stuff just like they do on $59 digital cameras?

Also, take a look at another website (PhoneCamPhotographer.com) that has some good Treo 600/650 comparison shots.

There seem to be as many arguments for having Wi-Fi (802.11 wireless networking) integrated into handhelds (PDAs and smartphones) as there are against.

ARGUMENTS FOR:
- Wi-Fi is MUCH faster than cellular data
- Wi-Fi is more stable than a cellular connection
- Wi-Fi enables VOIP

ARGUMENTS AGAINST:
- Wi-Fi uses more power than cellular
- Wi-Fi adds bulk and cost to the unit
- Wi-Fi's speed advantage decreases as cellular data speeds increase

So what's your opinion? Do you want Wi-Fi in your handheld or not? Why? Leave a comment...people who make these decisions will read them.

I was at Staples last night and picked up a good bargain: a 50-pack spindle of Staples brand 8X DVD-R for $14.99. That's less than 30 cents per disc, which is a really decent price. I don't see this product listed on the Staples.com website, so it might be a store-only deal.

CNET News.com has a nice pictorial on various robots, both concepts and actual field-ready units, designed for military functions (e.g., the SWORDS bot pictured below).

Nothing good can come from giving guns to robots. Did we learn nothing from Short Circuit, people, hmm?

According to CNET News.com, Microsoft has suggested that it will be releasing the update of Internet Explorer before Longhorn comes out in 2006 or 2007. This is important for two reasons:

1) It validates the impact that Firefox, an open-source (and better) alternative to IE, is having.

2) It reminds us that Microsoft's statements (back when it was getting sued by the US government for anti-competitive practices) that Internet Explorer is an inextricably integrated part of the Windows operating system is a stinking load of crap. If you can update IE independently of Windows, and you can update Windows independently of IE, how again are they inseparable?

While I'm glad to see Microsoft improving its products, it's incredibly overdue. How much you wanna bet that IE7 has tabbed browsing??

According to Wired, one public school system will continue to allow children to leave the building during school hours to attend "bible classes" at nearby churches.

"In the Weekday Religious Education program, first-, second- and third-graders go to nearby churches for Bible classes during school hours.

Some parents had asked the board to eliminate or modify the program, saying children who choose not to go are stigmatized and lose valuable class time."

What I wonder is what those kids who choose not to go to Bible class are doing while the other students are off-site. The article doesn't specify, but if this public school isn't making other classes available to the non-participators, then there's a serious problem here.

Beyond that, how is a Bible class furthering this nation's goal of producing well-educated citizens who are able to compete in a global marketplace? Taxpayer-funded time spent studying religion doesn't seem consistent with the separation of church and state (only churches were mentioned; does that mean only Christian religions are available through the program?) and doesn't seem consistent with the "No Child Left Behind" program (unless only Christian children are being worried about). Would it be OK to go study ancient Greek religion (i.e., mythology) or Native American religions off-site during the school-day? If not, then this government-run institution is favoring one religion over another, which is precisely the sort of thing the Constitution forbids.

Given that the US' children aren't even close to keeping up with many other countries in math, science, and other areas of important knowledge, this program seems a very poor use of these students' publicly-funded educational time.

I recently posted some comments about upgrading from my old (1 year) Treo 600 to my new (2 days) Treo 650 to the Treo 600 Yahoo! Group, and I thought I'd share 'em here as well:

I just got my Treo 650 Saturday, so my thoughts are based on all of 2 days' worth of messing around with it. I've used a 600 for a year and have been very happy with it. I've used the camera a lot, despite it being horrible quality. I used the 600 more for wireless data than voice, so that's important to me. Finally, I'd consider myself a "power user" since I've replaced most of the built-in apps with other things.

OK, the good: Everything I like about the 600 is as good, if not better, in the 650. The screen is truly a marvel -- I've never seen one with such crispness and pixel density. The camera is amazing -- even VGA looks excellent. In many cases, the extra CPU horsepower is obvious; many things are faster (better). The keyboard is indeed more finger-friendly.

Now, the bad: The RAM issue* sucks. I tried a simple "migrate everything over using the standard 'upgrade' instructions in the manual" approach and it worked OK. But that was after moving everything I possibly could to SD card on the 600. When I migrated, I had nearly 13MB of free RAM on the 600 -- I ended up with less than 2MB of free RAM on the 650. Since then, I've been able to remove some other (redundant) files and have gotten up to nearly 5MB of free RAM on the 650. And believe me, that's important -- many bizarre things happen (none good) when the 650 tries to operate on low open RAM. Beyond the RAM issue, which I really believe is at the heart of every bad thing I've seen before, I can think of only a few other negatives (there may be fixes to these that I haven't read about yet): shortcuts are no longer user-editable (WTF?!), no cradle is available (again, wtf?), and there are a couple of minor annoying UI things (e.g., when changing the speaker volume with the side buttons, you have to "confirm" the new setting by hitting another side button -- not easy to do when you have the phone at your ear).

With that said, am I glad I upgraded? So far, yes. I think the less "moved in" someone is to their Treo 600 or 300/270, the easier the upgrade will be. But, as with any change, some things are different and worse, but most (IMO) are better.

*You can read an overview of the Treo 650 memory issue here (Engadget).

Apparently, I wasn't the only person to think Dell CEO Kevin Rollins' comments about rival Apple were off-base and suggest a lack of insight (see "Dell CEO Disses iPod/Apple", Jan. 19, 2005).

In his Jan. 31 online article, Business Week writer Nicholas Carr basically says the same thing:

"Rollins dismissed Apple's mega-selling iPod as a 'fad,' calling it a 'one-product wonder,' and he pooh-poohed the eye-catching Mac mini as inconsequential.

Rollins' comments are more than uncharacteristic. They're troubling -- and not just for their snippiness. They raise real questions about how well Dell understands the home market."

There's no doubt that Dell is a world-class institution in many ways, but for a CEO to issue such questionable statements about the market and a competitor, he really must be feeling his oats.

In short, it's awesome.

I've only had about 10 minutes to spend with it so far, but here's an interesting comparison of the camera on my 1-year-old Treo 600 (top) and my new 650 (bottom). These two pics were taken less than a half-second apart holding the phones next to one another, so the lighting, etc. is identical for both. Dramatic difference, eh?

One interesting observation is that the camera in my Treo 650 seems to be rotated off 'plumb' a bit -- I hadn't noticed that until I tried to shoot something with very vertical lines. Not a big deal, but a bit peculiar.

I travel enough to know that the rates for Wi-Fi in hotels varies a lot. Some are free whereas others are fairly expensive ($20/day or more).

At the Park City Marriott, where I am right now for a conference, wireless is $9.95 for each 24-hour period -- not terrible, but certainly not free. Granted, I can get dial-up speeds via my Treo's GPRS connection, but Wi-Fi's speed advantage really makes a difference (to me, at least).

So what price are you willing to pay for hotel Wi-Fi? Anything?

"Warning: Geek Works Here"

This is the desk of my colleague, Scott Sampson at BYU. Scott takes his
tech very seriously (e.g., check out SNewMail)

Walking through CVG this morning, I wondered why gaming hasn't been adopted as a money-making time-waster in airports yet.

Imagine spending that 2-hour layover engaged in a multi-player WWII firefight or running around in mechas. Two hours would fly by in a heartbeat.

Tired of those little, teensy maps that Mapquest and other mapping sites give you? Check out maps.google.com...they're huge, draggable, and the business/location finder is oh-so-pretty. Once again, Google does it right.

Now if they'd just link up one of those satellite photo services with their maps, that'd totally rock.

I think things are mostly usable, if not completely available, now after combining the records from my new blog with GearBits' archived contents. There are still a few little niggles associated with my virtual server setup, but I'll work those out.

And thanks for the "welcome backs"...hopefully this interruption will be a one-time thing.

After letting GearBits languish since June '04, and after working on my new personal blog since last November, it really makes sense to combine the two. That should help (a) preserve all that great content that my GearBits co-authors produced, (b) provide new content to the thousands who still visit GearBits each week, and (c) simplify my life by reducing the number of blog installations I have to worry about down to just one.

So, over the next week or so, I'll be trying to fix all the little things that were broken when I migrated GearBits from its original server to mine -and- upgraded it to Movable Type 3.1x. Some things, like archive links, may never work 100% -- I'll just have to let the search engines figure that out (sorry). If you notice something else that's wonky, please leave me a comment -- I do read those and will try my dangedest to work everything out.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the "new" GearBits...
- Craig

Sorry we can't help, but check out our bitchin' WordArt while you're getting mugged/burning alive/having a heart-attack.

On either side of the copyright-technology war, the claim is that innovation will suffer.

The media companies -- movie studios and music labels for the most part -- claim that innovation by artists will suffer unless we crack down on piracy by outlawing the breaking of copyright protection schemes and restricting technologies that permit copyrighted material to be duplicated and conveyed.

Pretty much everyone else, especially those who understand technology, claim that innovation will suffer more if we limit technology, restrict fair use, and extend copyrights indefinitely.

So, who's right? These two opinions are in direct opposition to each other. Innovation can't suffer equally under both situations.

Personally, I think the arguments made by the entertainment industry are bunk. Innovation flourishes most in open environments, while locking things down to be controlled by a handful of organizations usually has the exact opposite effect.

So, to the RIAA and MPAA I say this: stop stating that "protecting innovation" is your objective -- it only weakens your argument to obfuscate the debate.

Now, I think I'll go photocopy a Grisham novel and mail it to a friend. If we need to stop all technologies and networks that can aid and abet copyright violation, then Xerox machines and the postal service gotta go, too.

Of course, that's today. What happens when we aren't allowed to remember a copyrighted image/movie/song without paying a royalty? After all, aren't we duplicating that protected content in our mind by replaying it for ourselves from memory? It's a slippery slope, this protection of content -- let's not travel too far down it and cede too much control to a small number of increasingly profitable corporate entities.

OMFG!!1!! W00T!11!

OK, enough 1337 speak, but I'm darned excited -- I just placed my order for an unlocked GSM Treo 650 from palmOne.

I've been excited about the 650 since it was rumored to be on the way, and a recent up-close-and-personal session with my buddy Bob's CDMA version convinced me it's a terrific upgrade.

Due to the backlog, it won't be here for a couple of weeks. Oh, the agony! Anticipa-a-tion...

I've always been a fan of nuclear energy. It now seems that Wired is as well:

"Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with 6 billion energy-hungry souls can't afford. There's only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.

We now know that the risks of splitting atoms pale beside the dreadful toll exacted by fossil fuels. Radiation containment, waste disposal, and nuclear weapons proliferation are manageable problems in a way that global warming is not. Unlike the usual green alternatives - water, wind, solar, and biomass - nuclear energy is here, now, in industrial quantities. Sure, nuke plants are expensive to build - upward of $2 billion apiece - but they start to look cheap when you factor in the true cost to people and the planet of burning fossil fuels. And nuclear is our best hope for cleanly and efficiently generating hydrogen, which would end our other ugly hydrocarbon addiction - dependence on gasoline and diesel for transport."

Yes, there are things we have to worry about, but Watt-for-Watt, nuclear is far better for the planet than any other large-scale energy source currently available to us. Well, that is until someone delivers me the Mr. Fusion I ordered back in 1987.

It seems that the evil scum of the planet who have nothing better to do than create comment spam have come up with a NEW way of torturing bloggers: trackback spam.

When another blog references one of my blog entries, they will usually create a trackback (so people can find their way back to the original post). Now, since we've gotten better about locking down comment spam, spammers have decided they'll add trackback spam to muck our blogs.

This is so damned irritating. I'm off to the Movable Type website to see if they have a fix yet.