Why don't you have this yet?

About a month ago I realized that I was writing way too many notes for me to keep track of them. My ideas would be scattered all over the place and it was hard to find "fresh information" - notes only a few days old.

I did a little searching and came across this toy. Well, the Logitech io2 pen is hardly a toy. It is an amazing piece of machinery. It has a built in optical sensor, similar to an optical mouse. The pen requires special "digital" paper though, merely a normal notepad with special dots printed all over it so the pen can generate it's coordinates on the page.

The pen is supposed to be able to convert your handwriting to text, but you'd have better luck flying by just flapping your arms. However, the totally awesome redeeming quality is that it can "search" through your handwritten notes with what ever phrase you throw at it. This is because it's easier to search for the typed word "T-R-A-I-N" through your handwritten notes of: "train", "rain", "trip", "plain" then to handwrite the word "train" and have your computer figure out which one of 100 words it could be.

So if you were to search though your notes for some random word, let's say "STAPLER" it would find "stapler" and anything similar to that word. It lists these searches with a "% Accuracy" metric. If you are a person that take's a lot of notes, it's unbelievable how powerful of a tool this will be to you. I wish professors would adopt something like this when they write on transparencies (assuming you can get it to work on a transparency.) Just think of the possibilities!

For me the best benefits have been:
- Searching through old notes.
- Putting up an informal meeting minutes into a network share for all attendees to review. (The Logitech Software can save a copy of your notes as an image embedded into a Word doc.)
- Keeping a duplicate "soft-copy" of everything you've ever written.
- It vibrates if you write off the edge of the page ;)

I highly recommend this toy, (I mean tool,) tool to anybody interested in making their day a little more productive.

How to fight terrorism

Reliable ole' /. has pointed me to this worthy news story.

It turns out that some Texan has invented the idea of "Virtual Shooting." I've already purchased www.killadeer.com and www.ehunt.com.

From the article:
The Web site already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday.

Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world.

The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.

"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head," he said.



Well a lightbulb just went off in my head too. At $10,000 a pop, the US DoD can afford to put one of these puppies in every mall and gas station around America. Freedom fighting Patriots can log on to www.killaterriost.gov and keep an eye on the malls of America. If you see a terriost you can just point and click to rid the world of this problem.

Think about our new "distributed" defense systems. "Evil-do'ers" won't stand a chance in this country. While we are at it, why not install a bunch of these in Iraq. Fighiting insurgents has become so difficult and trying these days. If a few of these things were attached to tanks, helmets, public squares, .... even our leader will be able to take a direct hand in fighting for the safety of our country.

Why spam will go away.

I was just reading an article outlining "The Webmail Wars" between gmail, hotmail, and yahoo.

I have a few thoughts on this. One is the portability issue, but I'll get to that in a bit. Now the real light bulb that just went off is that Adam Smith is right once again. I think I have the business model of why spam will disappear without government REGULATION.

How does Gmail make money?
Generally speaking, Google places advertisement in your Inbox. If you click though the advertisement, they make money. Google is happy, the advertised website is happy, you are happy.

How do Spammers make money?
Generally speaking, Spammers place advertisements in your Inbox. If you click though or purchase their product, they make money. The Spammer is happy, the advertised website is happy, you are most likely unhappy and that is why you are buying Viagra.

Right now it costs about $20/month to send a spam messages to 5 million individuals. I would honestly guess that for most products, the amount of click through's is in the hundreds at most. My guess is that if that the click though rate was any higher, there would be a higher margin to rent the email list.

Wouldn't it be beneficial for spammers to target their audiences? Of course, but only if the cost wasn't prohibitive. That's where Google's AdWords comes in. Google's AdWords is an open cost model. I would say it works similar to bidding on an auction, ie. "How much are you willing to pay to have somebody click though to your website?"

Cost-per-clicks (CPC) range from $0.05 to $100.00. For a spammer, I would imagine they would be willing to spend $0.05 per click. At $20/month, that yields 400 visitors to their site. I am sure that number is very similar to their current marketing efforts (if not better.) With increased competition between email services, as the above Webmail War article mentioned, the cost will only be driven down lower, maybe even reach a point of only incurring a cost if an item is actually purchased. Other metrics for deciding a cost may be based off if a consumer asks an inquiry, or a consumer spends more then 1 minute on the website, etc. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to non-intrusive responsible advertising on the internet. I live in nyc, I am bombarded with advertisements on every street corner, every taxi and bus. We even have bike messengers in this two horse town with advertisements on their bikes.

Now the only problem would be the solicitation of illegal or inappropriate materials, (child porn, porn to youngsters, american eagle ads to hipsters, ...) most likely Google will not allow that, but there appears to be a large market for it. Maybe one solution could be hashcash. The idea has been around for a long time, but if the email market adopted a system like this, I think it could have a substantial impact. Especially when computers become so powerful enough, that it takes minutes to bruteforce an email message to every hotmail account 15 characters in length or shorter. Hashcash could account for this by relying on strong, more complex hashing algorithms.

Also, we will have to watch out for the next wave of attacks, SPIM. However, I envision one day we will all use Gim, Google's answer to Instant Messaging. I would envision AdWords being built directly into our instant messaging conversations. Ohh, you're heading to a party at Brad's house, and Brad lives 12 blocks away in downtown Philly? Well here is a link to 5 liquor stores between your apartment and Brad's house. Click though now and place your order online so it can be ready to be picked up on your walk over.

...

Back to the email portability factor, you know, like the cell phone number issues. A few years back, I had purchased my own domain name to host my email so I could have reliable service and keep an email address I would be happy with. But when I found out that Google was offering an email service with revolutionary searching capabilities, I was all over it and left my old account in the dust. I sent out the necessary boiler plate of "I have moved email accounts, ...." and that was the last time I looked back.

I still check my old email account and reply with updates or change my profile on websites as needed and this has ended up working very well for me. What I haven't done which could be beneficial to a lot of people is to just set up a default email fowarder to my new gmail account. For all intensive purposes, this would keep an existing email address "portable" for those people to scared to loose their precious address.

day one

I don't know why it took me so long to get started blogging. I remember experimenting with it back in 2000 at 302 Summit Ave. in Brighton, MA. I put up a few days worth of info on some website somewhere and then never bothered again.

I've always wanted to set up a webcam to take a daily picture of me so I could look back and watch me "grow up" like a flip book. I've thought of having a webcam just take a picture around 00:30 every night when I'm most likely in front of my home computer. But I never got around to it, like most of the ideas I have. At least now I'll have a "log" recording all of these ideas of mine.