twentysixtyseven

Make me a better speeller

2005-07-12T16:28:00.000-04:00

I (like most) frequently misspell the same words. I try to take note each time Gmail or MS Word dings me, but I'm still slow to learn.

Wouldn't it be great if Gmail or MS Word ran background analytics on my spelling errors? It could produce a monthly report of the top 5 misspelled words, so that I could work on fixing them in the next few weeks. Maybe even chart my improvement on some words and highlight where I'm just not cutting it.

I posted into Outerspace

2005-03-14T19:49:00.000-05:00

I'm guessing I was one of these, I 'checked' off the "Post this into outerspace" checkbox.

http://www.cnewmark.com/archives/000369.html

Brick cellies becoming retro-cool

2005-03-14T18:17:00.000-05:00

I've been saying for years that this would happen:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000410035703/

(From the Guardian)

Science Olympiad

2005-03-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

I just came across a homemade rube goldberg device posted on /. It made me think of my old days on Science Olympiad. Man was that a great competition, so much fun prior to each competition day.

I checked out the 'Offical Science Olympiad' homepage and filled out an alumni survey. If you were part of the SO crew, drop me an email.

Proposing Tax On Downloads

2005-03-12T20:59:00.000-05:00

From /.
- A Wisconsin Governor is Proposing a Tax On
Downloads. Now this got me thinking. In the future, when 3D
Printing is abundant, I would assume most sales would consist of
only digital information. When this happens, what will happen to
sales tax? Just something to ponder.

If you think this is all fantasy, check out what you can do for $25,000.

Important Wiki's not to be overloooked

2005-03-10T00:11:00.000-05:00

Adult Encyclopedia
http://www.wikiafterdark.com

Learn how to do anything
http://www.wannawiki.com

Wiki Screencast

2005-03-09T23:49:00.000-05:00

Thank's Martin for sending me this most excellent screencast about the evolution of a Wiki page.
Jon Udell: Heavy metal umlaut: the movie

Cell Phone Tele-Prompt

2005-03-08T18:51:00.000-05:00

I was calling Kristine the other night and she had a special voicemail set up for another friend arriving by plane, it went along the lines as: "This is Kristine, if this is Marquessa, my address is ....."

That got me thinking, why don't we have the ability to set up tele-prompts on our voicemail? Think about the possibilities, you could give out public information and use caller ID to allow access to private information.

For instance:

Give out your home/work address
Store directions to your house (so you only have to say them once!)
Give out your email address
Give out your home/work phone number
Create quick adhoc informational prompts

The list could go on, but those are a few key points that I think people would love to have on there cell phone.

My thoughts on the 'private information' is that you could create/maintain a list of your close contacts, either by manually typing in a phone number, voice command, uploading your phone book somehow?, or a web based interface. Personally, I wouldn't mind giving out my address even to strangers, because they could find that easily enough via a white pages or the internet.

Adding ringtones to a Treo

2005-03-06T16:43:00.000-05:00

I was having a difficult time figuring out how to add a ringtone to my Treo 650. Turns out you can't directly copy a MIDI from your computer to the phone, you have to do it some back-asswards way. You have to beam it via IR or send it as an email attachment. Check out the info here.

Outsourcing

2005-03-03T08:12:00.000-05:00

Recently I've been noticing that a lot of the call centers I call are Americans. For instance, I just got a Sprint PCS phone and have been calling them for some pretty basic questions (that they should have answers to in a forum on their website.) I'm actually annoyed that I'm not hearing an Indian voice on the other line. Having americans answer my calls just makes my service more expensive, I'm only asking basic questions. I think some call centers may not be outsourced because the company fears the public will be turned off by somebody with an indian accent, and that's probably true.

We need to better educate the public on the benefits of such social changes as outsourcing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with moving call center jobs over to india, and for that manner, there is nothing wrong with moving any 'skilled' jobs offshore that are cost effective.

The Dude

2005-02-15T20:17:00.000-05:00

Brent's brother Ryan outfitted his vehicle (short school bus) with a Grease Fuel System.

Ryan's pimped out ride allows his diesel motor to run off of used greased (vegetable oil) which he picks up from a local Applebees, for FREE. So not only is he environmentally friendly, but he's saving a few bucks doing it.

Look for him as he makes a trip across the country this summer. I'm sure the ladies will be all over him.

Alternative efforts like this show that it is very viable for the private sector to come up with new energy means - no need to complain to your local gov't anymore.

NYC Taxi advertising

2005-01-02T15:58:00.000-05:00

I think taxi cabs in NYC should run a special promotion. Picture this, a classy Kenneth Cole ad on top of a cab with a little offer: "Mention this ad and take $0.50 off you fare!" This would get people looking and remembering the Kenneth Cole ads.

In case too many individuals take them up on this offer, maybe they could run an advertisement locally in the city (not on the cabs) that mentions to take a cab with a Kenneth Cole sign on top of it and mention Kenneth Cole to get $0.50 off.

Take the Blue Pill

2005-01-02T15:56:00.000-05:00

After trying Viagra once and swearing to never try it again unless I had 6 women lined up and ready to go, I came across this article, quite a funny read:
http://www.zug.com/pranks/viagra/index.html

Brining your bathroom to the 21st century!

2005-01-02T02:40:00.000-05:00

Why the hell does my shower still have a "hot" and "cold" knob? I want real temperature control. I would like to get into my shower, hit the "on" button and have it warm it to my preset 72'. Is this really that difficult of a task? Do shower companies refuse to make this step because it will kill the all so profitable knob market?

Showers should be temperature controlled similar to modern cars. Separate preferences could be saved for each user. This is not a revolutionary idea, why isn't it in my shower yet?

Improve Recycling with RFID Tags

2004-12-20T09:45:00.000-05:00

I think recyclable products should include RFID tags. Recycling plants would be so much more efficient. Consumers wouldn't need separate containers for normal trash and recycled trash. All the trash could go on a conveyor belt where a robot could pick out the recyclable products. The recyclable could easily be spilt into glass, paper, plastic, etc. Different types of plastics could be sorted quickly and with greater refining.

Google's hanging algorithm

2004-12-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

Hanging algorithm? What the heck does that mean?

Well, I think Google has left a big hole in their searching algorithms for email and desktop searches. Now I'm a BIG fan of both services from Google. I can honestly say that they have changed my computing habits and make my day more efficient. However, there is a flaw.

One obvious flaw is the inability to link separate "conversations" in Gmail. If you start two different threads of emails with different subjects, Gmail will not let you combine them. I hope there will be an option for this in the future. But even if that was the case, it may be annoying to manually "join" all of your conversations.

So what happens if you have a few emails (or Word Documents) talking about your trip to Cancun, the people you are going with, the time you are leaving, the hotel you are staying at, and a short itinerary. Not all of these emails or documents may have the word "Cancun" in them. So how do you search all of them? Well, some objects have the name of people, some objects have travel dates, and other objects may simply be referenced in multiple threads.

Wouldn't you like the capability to search for the word "Cancun" and have Gmail or Google Desktop Search (GDS) know that your 15 emails with the word "Cancun" may also have:
- Some of he same 10 people in common
- some of the same travel dates
- some of the same items mentioned (suntan lotion, rum, hot chics, etc.)

Google should create a whole algorithm based on "relevance " via a networked mesh of terms. (Think of Friendster and searching for your friend "Todd" and having it return Todd and all of his friends.) Maybe this hotel itinerary email doesn't actually mention the word Cancun, but it says Mexico and has some travel dates in common with your Airline itinerary to Cancun. All of these objects could come up in your search. No need for you to assign categories to emails. An entire "relevance" thread can be created, bringing in much more information then was previously searchable. Without this suggested method, a human is required to do these "network mesh" calculations and guess what other words should be searched to find relevant information.

Share Everything!

2004-12-14T11:26:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year, the day after Halloween, my girlfriend, her dog, and I attended a pet costume dog show down in the East Village. There were hundreds of people and hundreds of dogs, almost all in costume. Many photographers, both amateur and professional, were snapping pictures. That night, when trying to remember the website of one photographer, I pondered about an idea:

If my cell phone had it's location logged via GPS (or cell towers) and there was some service (ala Friendster) that could comb though the millions of daily logs and place you on a time/location map with individuals that you appeared to have been in contact with for a few minutes, you could create a dynamic network of physical social interactions.

Now I know there have been plans in the works for cell phone based social networks for sometime. For example, you step into a bar in the middle of some little town on the southern tip of Germany and suddenly your phone starts vibrating because somebody you took a class with back in college is sitting at the end of the bar. Now this is an excellent idea, but I'm thinking of taking it a few steps further. This is where my "Share Everything" campaign comes in.

I'll outline an alternative solution to my Halloween example and show where it fails. For instance, the professional photographer could have simply handed out business cards to dog owners that he took a picture of. He could have used this to maybe attract individuals to his site and maybe even make some money off of advertising or charging for photos. Either way, he would have had to give me a physical item, i.e. the business card. Another solution may have involved beaming a website from his cell phone to my cell phone in order to remind me to visit his website the next time I was in front of a computer. Now this would be a pretty efficient method, but to me, it is still limited. For one thing, what if I decided at the time not to accept his cell phone beam (It could have been spam for all I know.) Now that transaction is lost in time, and very difficult to recover. Or maybe I was talking to another dog owner who snapped a pic of my dog, but we decided there was no need to exchange info. But let's say a month letter, the photo gets placed in some magazine and he wants to add the owner's info, he can't, that transaction was lost.

Now we turn to my "Share Everything" campaign. Yes, as a privacy advocate, I know this is a difficult concept to swallow. But forgot that for a minute, who knows how the future will change our perceptions.

If their was a transactional log, this is where I coin the term "XOG" pronounced "zog" Derived from "TRANSaction", X and "log", OG. If this XOG was able to record all of your daily transactional activities along with everyone else's transactional activities, and a good percentage of these folk allowed their activity to be shared with individuals that appeared to be in the same physical location at the same time; a new world of information sharing could be had. Maybe you're walking though Washington Square Park and somebody snaps a picture with your big head covering half of the Washington Arch. Wouldn't it be fun to have some website throw that photo in your Inbox? Only if the photo taker agreed of course. Maybe you are hanging out at some party up in Spanish Harlem and you meet some chill cats, wouldn't it be cool to log in, check out who you were talking to, and send them a note?

We are living in a society where the amount of information being shared is enormous. Kids are walking around with library's full of information in the palm of their hands. The amount of information we carry and share will keep growing, we will always face a problem on how to organize and store it. Why let physical transactions get in the away. Avoid the issue of physically transferring information from one individual to another. By using a service like I've mentioned above, we will not be required to physically transfer information from one individual to another. Information will be automatically recorded and shared, no work on your part, lazy boy.

Career Aspirations

2004-12-03T10:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my manager/coach asked what were my career goals in order to justify my choice of Extreme Blue. "What are my career goals?" he asked.

Well, there is no one ultimate career I would like to end up in, nor a profession. However, what I do know is this:

- I want to enjoy what I'm doing.
- I want to have a broad range of experiences, across lifestyles, cultures, education, work experience, etc.
- I want to continue learning, forever.
- I want to change my career path a few times over my lifetime
- I would rather make this world better then merely just generate revenue (I would rather do both.)
- I want to be creative and inventive.

So I don't have a "profession" that I can name off, and from my list of aspirations, there does not seem to be any one posistion to fit these goals. So in response to "What are my career goals?" I would have to list the above items as guides on my path, they will take me wherever I need to go.

Extreme Blue Interview

2004-12-02T14:48:00.000-05:00

So I had my Extreme Blue (EB) phone interview with Kevin this morning. I think it went pretty well. I think all of my answers where along the lines of what he was looking for. I may have sounded a little nervous or stuttered a few too many times, but that should be the only thing going against me. Hopefully I'm accepted to the program, it would be totally cool. I may find out as early as next week (early Dec.).

I still can't believe how much kickback I'm getting from my managers about this opportunity. They constantly question "How will this help my career?" Well as Kevin said, those who understand the program don't need to ask that question, those who don't understand the program always ask that question.

Wish me luck on two fronts. I have my EB decision hanging in the wind and an upcoming LSAT on Saturday.

Will the LSAT be a waste of my time? Wait a year to find out.

Why don't you have this yet?

2004-11-19T01:03:00.000-05:00

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

2004-11-18T04:43:00.000-05:00

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.

2004-11-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

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

2004-11-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

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.