Scoble Discovers the Mac Mini

Scoble just discovered he could connect his Mac Mini to his HD TV in the living room.
(guess he should have read my blog - my Mini has been connected to my LCD screen for a year now ).

Here's a quote I liked:

Now I’m pissed that it took me so long and I’m pissed at the industry that it just doesn’t get what’s coming and they keep trying to lock me into closed boxes like the Apple TV or the Xbox.

Read his full column and recommendation here.

Sleeping at Airports

While I wouldn't make a night at an airport part of a planned trip, many people who travel on a budget around the world do.

If you are one of those travelers, who'd rather break his back than spend his money, this site is for you: SleepingAtAirports.net will provide you with essential airport-sleeping tips, lists of best and worst airports to sleep in (constantly updated by users) and reviews of certain airports.

It comes as no surprise to me that people fave Schiphol airport in Amsterdam (as you may remember, I like this airport too). And one of my worst airports, Chicago's O'Hare, is also one of the least favorite. The worst on that list is Bombay, India - and I agree with every word in the review.

You can also post your airport sleeping stories on that site - and you can post them here if you'd like. Sadly, all of us have spent at least one night of our life trying to catch some Zs on a hard bench, waiting for that f$#*ed up weather to clear...

Gadget Review - Flip

Following my PMP post, here's the review of the second gadget I bought this holiday season, the Flip.

Short Description
The Flip is a simple video camera for people who can't operate a video camera. If you just want a casual short video of the family, or a location, and you don't overly care about image quality, the Flip is for you.
With just one button to start/stop recording, auto-focus and internal memory, the Flip is ideal for people who are less technologically savvy (e.g. my parent - the recipients of this gift).

Usage
The Flip, like all cameras, has 2 modes: Record and Play.
In Record mode, just hit the big red button, point at the subject and hold your hand still. The Flip fits comfortably into the palm of your hand and the small 1.5" screen makes it easy to align your shot. The up-down arrows allow you to use a 3X digital zoom. But still, the Flip is much better for closer subjects, not wide backgrounds.
Click the red button again to stop recording.

The Play button allows you to play the clips. Use the arrows to skip to the next/previous clip, or the Trash Can button to delete a clip. You can either play the clips on the small screen, or connect it to any TV (Flip-to-RCA cable included).


Every operation on the Flip is accompanied with a visual and audio cue. When in Record mode, the timer on the screen switches to red, and a light turns on in the front of the camera - so it's easy to know if you're filming or being filmed.

The Flip has an internal memory store, good for 60 minutes of video. No memory card is available (although I've seen a hack online where someone opened it and doubled that time by using a flash card).

When it comes time to download the clips to your computer, you'll find an extending USB arm (which lends the Flip it's name). Connect it to your computer and either use the software (conveniently hosted on the internal disk of the Flip, so you can use it on multiple computers), or use Windows Explorer to browse to the files on the camera itself (appears as a Removable Storage device under explorer).

Technical Stuff
The Flip shoots VGA videos (640 x 480 at 30 frames per second). Files are compressed into MP4 videos (.avi extension) and are playable with any media player. It has a 2GB internal flash memory, good for 60 minutes.

It operates off 2 AA batteries, which would carry you for 6.5 hours. You can use rechargeable batteries, or carry extra batteries with you.

The Flip connects to the computer through a USB 2.0 link (supports 1.1, as I've seen with my parents old computer - although transfer time is noticeably longer).

Software
The Flip's software resides on the Flip itself, and will auto start as you plug it in (if autostart is turned off, as was the case in my computer, just browse to the disk and double-click the icon).

The Flip's software allows you to manage the Flip's memory, archive files, send clips using email (in which case it compresses them further, at the expense of quality), or share them online (upload to YouTube etc.). It also allows you to edit the clips and add some effects. It doesn't rival video editing suites, but it fits the spirit of the camera (simple interface, big colorful buttons).

When I used my Flip the first time on my laptop, it had some problems in synchronizing the clips and lost connection several times.
It turned out this is a known issue and a patch to the software exists on the company's site. As soon as I connected the Flip to a computer connected to the internet, it patched itself (the firmware, software, and it even re-encoded all the movies in memory). Total patch time: 15 minutes. After the patch, operation is smooth and I wouldn't have written this review without it.

Cons

1. Transfer time is still a bit slow.
2. No software exists for the Mac, which is a big minus for me (although my parents could care less ). The company promises a version would be available on January '08.
3. The location and shape of the USB plug can also be uncomfortable (think about crawling behind a desktop and hanging your camera from the plug). I recommend getting a USB extension cord ($3-5).
4. Despite it's "young" and "cool" attitude, it still feels a bit plasticky to me.

Bottom Line

The Flip is compact and easy to use and serves it's purpose. For it's price range it delivers what it promises: simple video shooting, easy transfer and sharing. Ideal for casual video capture and for people who are intimidated by more complex cameras.

The Flip is available in various colors and in 2 configurations Flip (30 minutes) and Flip Ultra (60 minutes) which was the one I've used for this review. It'd set you back either $100 (Flip) or $150 (Ultra).

I give it 4/5 stars. Get it here.

Lab Tour

If you want to know what new technologies await you in the future, you should visit the research labs of technology companies today, and look at the alphas and betas of proposed technologies.
Some will turn out to be useless, impractical or just a fad. But some would become the kernels of a new technological future.

In this post I'll review some of those pending ideas, stewing in the labs of 4 big technology companies. I can't even begin to cover everything, but since this is my blog, I can cover what interests me . I will, however, leave you with all the links and material to conduct your own independent research. I do recommend at least a quarterly visit to these research sites, to learn about new innovations.

1. Mozilla Labs
Mozilla gave us the source on which the Firefox browser was built. It is a true collaborative lab - everyone can contribute and the source is open. In the past, I've touched on their Prism approach to disconnected web applications. Today, I want to concentrate on 2 new approaches, but first, a challenge:

1. How many red letters do you see in the picture?
2. How many times does the letter 'K' appear in the picture?

Have you noticed that providing the second answer took much longer than the first? That's because our brain can process color much faster through our visual system, than it takes to actually read content. Many new technologies can arise from this observation (think about highlighting content in a document or a web page in different colors, based on the content type) and here's a first practical use I'm actually testing now.

Chromatabs is a Firefox add-on that colors each tab based on it's name. The algorithm takes the web site's URL, turns it into a hash and assigns a color to each tab based on a conversion of the hash to HSL values (Hue, Saturation, Light - another way to codify colors, similar to RGB). The result, once you get used to it, means I can tell you how many tabs are pointing to the Google domains (purple), my blog (brownish) or Mozilla Labs (pink) without bothering to read the titles.

Since it's not overly obtrusive, you can leave the add-on running and find that you subconsciously learn the color patterns over time. Here's how my browser looks now (click to enlarge):
Read more about Chromatabs here.

The second technology from Mozilla is a take on an old idea, the weaving of desktop and web together. This idea is offered by Google (through it's bookmark add-on and search toolbar) and Microsoft.
Mozilla Weave is another take at trying to convince you to store all your personal information (bookmarks, history, passwords, form completion strings etc.) in "the cloud" to allow access from different computers. Since I own more than one computer and I find myself needing a URL or a password from time to time, I find this technology appealing. But until I understand who protects my content and privacy in "the cloud", I think I'll stay on the sidelines and wait.

2. Digg Labs
Digg.com, the social network site, allows you to submit a link, an image, or a video you have "dugg" and others to join you in promoting that link (read more here). Like many other sites, they have found that they have too much information and not enough space/time to share it with the visitors. For a while, there was a limited list of links, that had enough "diggs" to make it to the front page. And the competition was fierce (with the occasional cheats, hacks and fights). But what about the real, interesting content that was buried under the Paris Hilton pictures? How do you expose that?

My Master thesis dealt with visualization of data mining results, so I can relate to this problem. Indeed, I'm currently raking my mind on how to expose the contents of this blog to the casual user (all he sees are the 7 last posts, 10 hand-picked posts on the right side - which may interest me, but not that reader, and 10 topic tabs - which again, might not meet his taste). That's why Digg Labs approach to visualization knocked me off my feet.

"The Stack" provides a visual quantitative approach to data: stories fall from the top of the screen to create stacks. The higher the stack, the more diggs the story received:
"BigSpy" utilizes font size to highlight mostly "dugg" articles:
And "The Arc" takes a diffrent approch at showing the "diggers" themselves:
Try some of the other visualizations. And you can also download them to your desktop as screensavers. Oh, and don't forget to digg this article .

3. Google Labs
So many ideas to choose from... A company that allows its workers to work on whatever they like for 20% of their time, is bound to come up with some great ideas. Many of the technologies in the Google Labs mature into a Google product later on (indeed, the main page contains a list of "lab graduates", such as Reader, Docs, Notebook etc.).

In the past, I've written about 2 technologies I predict would become crucial in the future: GData and Gears. Today, I'll focus on 2 new ideas that grabbed my imagination:

Experimental search allows new visualizations of search results (Google's bread and butter).
Here, for example, is a Timeline View of a search for "space exploration":
And here's the Map View of the same query:
There are some more interesting views, along with keyword suggestions, different results navigation schemes and keyboard shortcuts.

Trends would allow you to compare searches between diiferent terms. For example, if you're interested in a new hard disk, you may try comparing the 3 leading HD manufacturers and arrive at these results:
Try comparing "PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii" for example. Think about future possibilities. If you could assign weights to certain criteria, a tool for global data comparison would become rather handy.

4. Microsoft Research
By far the oldest and biggest of the research labs mentioned in this column and rivaled, perhaps just by IBM research labs. Microsoft researches dabble in so many areas, paradigms and methodologies, that it's hard to highlight just 2. In the past, I've written about Virtual Wi Fi, now I'll try to avoid the temptation of picking up software development advances (such as parallelism, or new .Net technologies) to avoid boring people.

VIBE (Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment) is a lab concentrating on utilizing visualization techniques to improve interfaces of business applications.
GroupBar, for example, allows you to arrange your windows better in the taskbar. It can also be downloaded now as an application (as opposed to some of the other researches, still in early stages).

We have all seen CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) before, those annoying characters, printed on unreadable background, designed to separate humans from computers on web sites. Well, not only do they cause grief to humans, but, as I've recently blogged, OCR apps are getting better and better at deciphering those strings.

Enter Assira - a project that intends to replace CAPTCHAs with pictures of kittens. You see, a computer may be able to tell a "c" from a "d", but it can't tell a cat from a dog in a picture - while a human can do so quite easily. Powered by a database of 3 million cat pictures, Assira is just another way web services can prevent non-humans from accessing data.

That's it for now. Expect more lab reviews in the future.

Vote for a Technology Savvy President

Techcrunch wanted to call attention to the fact that technology is now a big part of our life, and we can scarcely afford to have ignorant rulers preside over issues they are far from understanding.

If you want just one sample of an ignorant (and believe me, I'm being very kind here) person of authority, look no further than Ted Stevens (Republican-Alaska). Stevens was sent to talk for a bill against Net Neutrality, unfortunately without being explained what the bill was about (charging more money for certain content going through ISPs), or what was the internet. Some of the "pearls" you can find in this instant classic are: "The internet is not a big truck - it's a series of tubes!" and "people can now sign up for a service that will deliver video movies to their real mailbox!". The 3 minutes of bumbling can be listened to here - and is highly recommended for anyone who has to talk in public about something he understands nothing about.

Back to the original program: Techcrunch asked all candidates 10 technology-related questions (Net Neutrality, Internet taxes, identity theft, H1B visas etc.) and allows you to look at all the answers, compare candidates and vote for your favorite in a site they call Tech President Primaries. The poll is open open till Jan. 18, when Techcrunch will announce one Republican and one Democrat "tech candidate" for the 2008 presidency.

What I found most surprising was that most candidates support more H1B visas. While, in a clear "follow the money" example, Democrats support Net Neutrality and most Republicans oppose it.