Technology
Entries related to technology.
The Google Virtual Wave Biennial
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 10:03It has been a while since I’ve written about Google Wave, Virtual Worlds, or for that matter the Whitney Biennial. However, since attending the Biennial with two of my daughters, I’ve been kicking around the idea for this blog post mashing up ideas from Google Wave, Virtual Worlds and the Whitney Biennial.
One of the things that jumped out at me as I looked at paintings in the Whitney was how different we approach the visual from the written. With the written word, we typically start at the beginning and follow read the material sequentially. As I’ve written about before, some people get bent out of shape when emails are not sequential, but the most important content is posted at the top of a reply, instead of at the bottom or interspersed in the email.
Google Wave was set up, in part, to address some of that and material is added at various appropriate points throughout the wave. To address the chronological sequence, Google Wave gives you the ability to playback a wave over time so you can see where the content fits, not only on the page, but in the time stream. Material is arranged in an order created by the artist. At the Whitney, it is typically shown over and over again, and people may walk in at the middle and only watch part of it, or may watch the end, followed by the beginning. Yet there is still a sequential aspect. The same applies to music.
While Google Wave does have the ability to add rich media content, it is predominantly text based and there does not seem to be much of intermixing sequential audio and sequential video content with the static text content. Likewise, the various pieces of content are not arranged spatially as they would be in a painting.
One way to expand the use of Google Wave for artistic expression would be to look at better interoperability with virtual worlds like Second Life or OpenSim. Imagine, for a moment, a virtual world where people could interact and not only add three dimensional models, but pictures, text, and music in a Google Wave style where you can playback the modifications in the order in which they were added.
To add to the spatial component, the scene could be presented more like a painting with the video, audio, or text being played back when the user moves the mouse over the content, so the viewer could start at whatever point and have more control over the experience.
It may be possible to do some of this already with virtual worlds, but I haven’t seen any good examples of this. With a system like that, some interesting installations could take place in a Google Virtual Wave Biennial. What do you think?
The Design of Design
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/09/2010 - 09:46How does Frederick P. Brooks new book, The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist compare to his classic, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)? How much time do I want to spend trying to find out?
These were questions I asked myself as I received an email from his publicist asking if I would review the new book. I decided that it was a book I wanted to review and I wanted to look at the whole book, and not just a sample chapter or portions online. As I noted before, I’m pretty picky about which books I take time to review, and while the new book might be really great, it could also be a big disappointment and not live up to the previous book. The Mythical Man-Month is a book of mythic proportions. It is a book that I used to require any developers working for me to read. It sits in a special place in my book case. It is a tough act to follow. Nonetheless, I took the plunge, and asked the publicist for a review copy of the new book, and I’m glad I did.
I received my copy of The Design of Design earlier this week. I’ve been taking time here and there to read it and still have a long way to go. However, I’ve read enough already to state that it deserves its place next to the Mythical Man-Month. It takes a broader view and is applicable not only to those of us working in computers, but to people involved in any sort of design. As an example, it provides a great contrast between computer design and other types of design such as architecture.
He starts off each chapter with various interesting quotes, and starts the first chapter with a quote from Francis Bacon:
[New ideas would come about] by a connexion and transferring of the observations of one Arte, to the uses of another, when the experience of several misteries shall fall under consideration of one mans minde.
I have always been fascinated by how new ideas come about as well as by the connections between people with different viewpoints. This is a book for a reading club with computer scientists, architects and fashion designers. (I would love to hear a fashion designer’s thoughts about this book.)
The question of where new ideas come from is one of those great questions that many great thinkers have pondered. The book seems to offer pointers in the right direction, but at least to me, the question remains somewhat intractable.
Brooks starts off by looking at a good look at the Rational Model of design. As I read through this section, my mind wandered to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In many ways, the Tractatus is to twentieth century philosophy what the Rational Model of design is to design.
The final proposition of the Tractatus is “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, and it seems as if something similar needs to be said of the Rational Model of design. Yet Wittgenstein went on to write the Philosophical Investigations, which explore so much more. Likewise, Brooks goes on to explore so much more in The Design of Design.
As Brooks explored the issues of the goals and desiderata of design, my mind wandered to the question of ‘What is Quality?’ It seems as if this book needs to be read alongside Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Another diversion my mind took as I read this was thinking about how both the Mythical Man Month, as well as The Design of Design relates to what is going on in the world of the Nokia N900, and for that matter in the broader areas of Linux development and cellphone development. When you get right down to it, the IBM System 360 was a much less powerful computer than the Nokia N900. Yet the System 360 went through a design process that everyone refers back to. What has the design process for the Nokia N900 really been like? What about the design process for Maemo or MeeGo?
Readers may suggest that these are very different situations, it is like comparing a The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I think this is an important point. The System 360 is a Cathedral and everything going on with cellphones, tablets, slates and Linux is a Bazaar. The Design of Design needs to take its place in the special section of beloved books wedged between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Over the next few weeks, I expect The Design of Design will color my thinking about various topics I write about here. You should go out and get the book, read it, and share your thoughts.
Tapping the Real Power of Google Fiber
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 03/23/2010 - 08:44The webpage, Google Fiber for Communities starts off by saying, “Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone.” Almost everyone seems to be focusing on faster and fiber and not on better and communities, and I think they are making a big mistake.
Yes, having fast fiber to the home is a great goal, and while there isn’t a lot of fast fiber to the home in the United States, the idea isn’t really all that new or ground breaking. In 2008, PCWorld ran a story about KDDI offering home gigabit broadband for around $50/month. The United States has significantly lagged in broadband.
Some of this is because there is no very little real competition or innovation in the United States telecommunications industry. Instead, the large telecommunications firms are pretty happy keeping things the way they are, and the barriers to entry are so high that it takes either a really large company or a really innovative idea to break through.
Google is a really large company that, while gigabit broadband is not innovative, their approach for marketing it is. They have announced their intention to launch a product and have asked people to compete to become their customers, and the competition has been fierce.
Potential customers have used social media and earned media to advertise for Google. They have lobbied local governments to encourage Google to offer the product in their locale. I live on the outskirts of New Haven, CT, where community activists are working together with the city government on the New Haven Google Fiber Project. Activists are involved to help spread the word. Small businesses, especially those savvy at marketing online have joined forces to help the project, and the Mayor’s office has taken the lead. There is great energy and community around this project and if New Haven becomes a test bed for Google Fiber, it will do great things for the city.
Looking around the country, there are plenty of other similar efforts. Many cities have Fiber Fan pages on Facebook. Grand Rapids, MI has over thirty four thousand fans. Hunstsville, AL has over ten thousand fans. Fresno, CA has over eight thousand fans. Sarasota, FL has nearly seven thousand fans. Columbia, MO has nearly six thousand fans. Anderson, IN has a very impressive effort going on in their community with over forty-four hundred fans. Memphis has forty three hundred fans, edging out the forty-two hundred fans in Madison, WI. Durham, NC has over twenty six hundred members. Austin, TX has about eight hundred, as does Burlington, VT. At last check, there were over 150 fan pages for Google Fiber on Facebook.
Some community is going to be very happy. Others will be disappointed. I’ve worked on many campaigns that I believed would make our communities and our country greater. Too often, my candidate has lost and the energy and community around the campaign dissipated. While I hope that New Haven gets Google Fiber early on, and Google rapidly expands its fiber offering to many other communities, my greater hope is that the communities remain engaged and active, working together to provide better services and better work environments for the twenty first century.
The first round of applications is due on March 26th. I hope everyone gets good applications in and at the same time find ways of keeping their communities engaged and active.
LoKast: A Disposal Social Network?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/15/2010 - 09:06Today at SxSW, NearVerse is launching their iPhone app, LoKast. The application lets people locally share content from their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads. There are plans to go cross platform in the future after some of their other applications get launched.
LoKast looks like a really cool app. In a press release, they about swapping demo CDs or video reels and how with LoKast you can do it easily from your iPhone. It uses a combination of WiFi and Bluetooth so that you can swap content even when the 3G network is swamped. It seems like the great tool for artists touting their wares at SxSW, but it seems like it has a lot of other interesting potentials.
The video that they have produced for the launch makes it look like the tool for parties, or networking events. I could easily see some gathering where everyone is LoKasting their pitches; speed networking or speed dating on iPhone steroids.
Beyond that, I’ve been to movie theatres that share video clips via Bluetooth. I’ve never gotten it to work, but LoKast could end up being a nicer way to do it. For that matter, there are a lot of interesting ways this could be used for other types of marketing; just imagine a local grocery store that LoKasts specials – You could add the Green Giant to your disposal network.
Yet there are other features that don’t get talked about quite as much. For example, they have shared browsing. Instead of trying to get everyone to look over your shoulder as you browse a specific site, with LoKast, it appears as if everyone could pick up your signal and watch the websites you’re visiting on their own iPhones.
The press release says they think LoKast will be this year’s breakout mobile app. We’ll see. It depends on how quickly they can get people load the app and spread the word. I know that if I were at SxSW this year and I was carrying an iPhone, I’d want LoKast on it. Instead, I’ll have to wait until they get it on the Nokia N900 and I can use it at some other venue, like a Podcamp or Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
The Great International Open Source Conspiracy
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 13:55“Russian immigrant” Sergey Aleynikov was indicted for “theft of trade secrets, transporting stolen property in foreign commerce and unauthorized computer access” according to a story in Friday’s New York Times. The article goes on to say that:
Prosecutors also asserted that Mr. Aleynikov, during time he was at Goldman, transferred thousands of files of computer code related to Goldman’s proprietary trading program to his home computers.
In a Bloomberg article from last summer it was reported that Mr. Aleynikov copied source code to Xp-dev.com, a website run by London resident Roopinder Singh utilizing servers in Germany. The website was providing a source code control system popular among open source developers. It is common for open source developers to share software around the world.
I do not know what software Mr. Aleynikov copied to the server in Germany or whether or not he unintentionally copied more software than he should have. However, there are several issues that come up.
Back in July, I wrote about Sergey Aleynikov and Open Source software. There, I listed a couple open source projects he had been involved with. Other articles report that Mr. Aleynikov was working on Erlang, an open source general purpose concurrent programming language. Erlang is covered by the Erlang Public License which requires that you provide copies of covered software that you modify. It is worth noting that this is covered by Swedish Law. This is a common feature of many open source projects.
Without knowing what code Mr. Aleynikov intentionally copied, we cannot know whether he was breaking U.S. law or simply fulfilling his legal requirements of Swedish law. Since Erlang and some of the related software is open source software from Europe, it does make some of the ‘foreign commerce’ issues sound a bit more dubious.
Of additional concern is the allegation that the code was ‘related’ to Goldman’s proprietary trading program. If any of Goldman’s proprietary trading program was written in Erlang, than the source code for Erlang, which law requires to be transported to foreign companies is ‘related’ to Goldman’s proprietary trading program. Goldman Sachs could be inadvertently forcing their employees to violate their own confidentiality agreements and U.S. law.
Companies get great benefits by using open source software. However, they need to understand what they are doing and their requirements about sharing changes they make to the open source software with the broader open source community. If Goldman Sachs and the United States Attorney’s Office is going after Mr. Aleynikov for fulfilling his obligations to the open source community, then they are doing a disservice to everyone who benefits from open source software, including themselves.
