Becoming a designer
Boy, it’s been a while. An oxymoronic combination of being lazy and busy, I guess. Anyway, for this post I wanted to talk about design. It’s a topic that comes up a More »
Support for Windows 7 ends today
It is a sad day, as Microsoft is officially ending updates and security patches for Windows 7, the popular OS still being used by a large majority of PCs. Windows 7’s popularity More »
Returning Home: World of Warcraft Classic Comes Online
On August 26th, fans of the original World of Warcraft (henceforth referred to as WoW), and those who are just curious to see what all the hubbub is about, were finally able More »
The Lawnmower Man, and Vintage CGI
Inspired by a couple of Reddit forums to which I am subscribed, VintagePixelArt and VintageCGI, and being a fan of all things historical as it pertains to technology, I uploaded to the More »
Jony Ive leaves Apple
As someone who teaches extensively about design as it intersects with technology, and is also a computer and technology historian, I am conflicted about Jonathan (Jony) Ive leaving Apple. Mainly because he’s More »
LED lights are a surprising security risk
We’re all familiar with LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights, they’ve been used as decorative and accent lights for years. We are only recently beginning to see suitable LED replacements for the warm light of incandescent bulbs – bulbs that use filament in a gas-filled globe – in standard household fixtures, and with the manufacture of regular incandescent bulbs now banned by federal mandate and major efficiency standards put in place, the switch to LED takes on more importance.
LED bulbs are a marked improvement over incandescents in many areas; They use substantially less power, about 95 percent less than an incandescent (The seven gigantic pine trees in my backyard are wrapped with LEDs, and if I were to leave them on all year long, the total cost would be about $6), they last for decades, they emit almost no heat and what heat they do emit is re-absorbed by a tiny heatsink.
They have had some major limitations, however, but with the cost rapidly dropping the two most glaring become their design and the quality of light they give off. Many LED bulbs have an unsightly plastic base, and until only recently they tended to give off a ‘cool blue’ light that looked very artificial. That’s in contrast to the warm, yellowish light of an incandescent.
How Color Temperatures are Measured
Now, however, LED lightbulbs have finally improved their design and are being made with a wide range of color temperatures that should suit any home. Not only that, we now have color changing LED bulbs whose color choice and cycling can be controlled from a smartphone! Pretty neat stuff.
But therein lies the huge, hidden problem.
We are seeing a major push for the creation of the Internet of Things, in which all electronic devices are connected to the Internet. This would allow for additional functionality, such as a refrigerator being able to monitor what is left inside of it and order more food, or a door lock that be remotely locked or unlocked, or a thermostat that can be remotely set and monitored. Incidentally, that Honeyell Lyric from the last link is actually the first in what is expected to be a whole host of connected devices, all under the Lyric brand.
Honeywell Lyric and Google Nest smart thermostats
In order for connected ‘things’ to work however, you have to have credentials, such as a username and password, that allow you to access them. And it is because of that, and with little surprise, that LED smartbulbs have been hacked to provide a third party with the username and password used to connect them. Specifically, it was the Kickstarter-backed LIFX bulbs that were hacked, however any bulb that becomes part of a network of connected bulbs within a location would be susceptible. If you’re wondering why all the bulbs in your house need to be connected together in a network, it’s so they all act accordingly, and you don’t have to, say, dim all of them in a room one by one; just tell them to dim and they all do it at once. The LIFX bulbs are, to be fair, pretty remarkable. I’ve considered adding a few for when I listen to disco.
The vulnerability has been fixed, but it shows the danger of having things that are always connected. If they are always connected, you are always connected. Even your lightbulbs aren’t safe.
Now this is how you record fireworks!
This was surprisingly incredible. A hobbyist used a remote-controlled drone – the only kind of drone, really – to film fireworks displays from above and within. I’m not normally a fan of music behind videos, but in this case it really adds to the visuals. Plus, if you ever heard what a drone sounds like, you neeeed music.
I also should make a clarification about drones: We often think of them only in terms of their military applications, especially here in Nevada since almost all military drones around the globe are piloted from right outside Nellis Air Force Base. However there is a vast community of private drone pilots who use them for all kinds of fun stuff, this video being just one example. Here you can read about someone crashing a quadcopter, there’s another site for people who want to try building their own, and on this page you can tour locations all over the world through the use of drone-filmed footage. You can even buy them on Amazon, who wants to deliver your drones using drones in the drone future.
Anyway, on to the fireworks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4sCVDA-rms
So this is what it has come to
As someone who has spent the last 20 years teaching about technology, about its development and history, its use and impact on society, its capabilities and concerns, I have also attempted to impress upon people the importance of not becoming burdened by it or dependent upon it.
We’ve all seen the family at a restaurant – mother, father, kids – sitting around the table with their faces buried in some electronic device. That isn’t good, it’s not how a family unit is meant to interact. By allowing that, the risk is that it becomes the only way individuals know how to be, that the skill of communication, like a muscle that goes unused, starts to atrophy until it is all but lost. Then, when actual communication becomes required or necessary, the individual is incapable of response. As an additional clarification, this type of thing is not limited to the scenario I have provided here; texting someone in the same house or having a Facebook-based conversation with someone in the same room as opposed to talking directly to them are also examples.
Don’t be like these people
Now, the fears I’ve had for almost two decades are, it appears, starting to come true. In a study conducted jointly by the University of Virginia and Harvard University, researchers asked subjects to sit in an empty room and do nothing, for periods ranging from six to fifteen minutes. Around fifty percent of those subjects indicated they really did not like that experience, so the researchers asked them to do the same thing at home. Most of the subjects admitted they cheated, and did so by checking their phone or tablet.
But the most shocking part (foreshadowing!) is that when given the opportunity, well over half of the men and a quarter of the women administered electric shocks to themselves rather than sit quietly, alone with their thoughts, and this was after admitting they would pay to avoid being shocked!
The issue I’m bringing up here, and the authors allude to as well, is that we have such short attention spans thanks to always-on and accessible digital devices, that a mere fifteen minutes alone in thoughtfulness and repose is, if not something completely adverse to us, something we would prefer less than to a self-administered electric shock. Perhaps that’s why there’s a market for this thing.
Keep in mind that people who tend to be dreamers, as well as people who are generally happy overall, did much better in the study than others.
The research itself is behind a paywall, however you can read more about it at Ars Technica, The Verge, and ScienceMag.org.
It’s the Fourth!
On Fridays, I usually post something so random it defies classification, such as How Long Can You Watch Ned Flanders Riddly Diddly? or Twitter being the source of the announcement for Ronald McDonald’s overly-creepy makeover.
However, since today is the 4th of July and you should be out celebrating the ultimate in Freedom and Liberty, I’ll just put up a brief post talking about the technology behind putting together a fireworks display.
As you can probably guess, with the spectacular fireworks displays you see today like we have right here in Las Vegas for the Fourth and New Year’s Eve, sync’d to music as they often are, it requires not just the fireworks themselves but a major amount of computerization and automation as well. Besides the mechanical triggers and fireworks themselves, there is actually software that is designed solely for the purposes of controlling and synchronizing the firing, timing, and music of the displays.
CueMaker firework controlling / timing software
If you’ve ever used music-editing software such as ProTools or Audacity or anything in-between, then you already have an idea of how the software works. You use a timeline to indicate when specific triggers should launch, and if necessary make them in-line with music. It’s pretty nifty.
If you’re interested, here is an interesting, interactive explanation of how a firework gets launched. Keeping that in mind, Disney, which puts on some of the most unbelievable fireworks displays I’ve ever seen, developed a method for launching fireworks with compressed air as opposed to gunpowder all the way back in 2004! That’s a good use of technology.
Bing!
Before you read this, go visit Bing then come back. If you are reading this after Thursday, July 3rd, click on the little ‘left arrow’ in the lower right corner of the Bing homepage until you get to the panda to see what I’m talking about.
So as I mentioned in class, while I have nothing against anyone having a favorite company, to direct undue hate or vitriol against their competitor is unnecessary. I like all companies equally for what they contribute, and I’ll castigate any company if I feel they’ve gone the wrong direction. That being said, one of the services that seems to get a lot of ridicule is Microsoft’s Bing. If you’re unfamiliar, Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, a competitor to Google. No one bats an eye if they they hear the phrase “Google it,” there’s even a webpage that will do it automatically, but if someone says “Bing it” they risk getting beaten up.
I personally use both. Bing – in my opinion anyway – is better in some aspects such as image, travel and technical searches, while Google is better for pop-culture, academic and news searches. In the interest of full disclosure, when I took the Bing-it-on challenge, Google won hands down. It was a rousing defeat of Bing.
These things happen.
Even so, what I like most about Bing is their homepage. Google has always prided itself on its superlative user interface, which has since the beginning consisted of not much more than a search bar – or has it? When it was released, it competed with disasters like Alta Vista (which now looks a lot like Bing, surprisingly enough), Dogpile, and Yahoo, which made it a breath of fresh air.
Bing is similar, however it includes a usually stunning image as its background, with hotspots that provide additional information about the picture. Back in 2011, though, they started occasionally animating their backgrounds using the HTML 5 specification, and some of those animations have been spectacular. The collapsible, filmstrip-like news stories along the bottom are a nice touch as well, although they are sometimes entertainment-heavy in their stories.
In this recent image from the Bing homepage, you can navigate around the mountains. it’s still available if you click on the little ‘left-arrow’ button in the lower right of the page a couple of times.
I mention this because for all the hate and ridicule it gets, it’s not a bad search engine, and I have had just as much difficulty with Google providing me relevant results as I’ve had with Bing. One isn’t better than the other, they are just different, and on Tuesday we’ll find out why. You want to be careful not to dismiss something simply because it isn’t Google, or isn’t Microsoft, or isn’t Apple, or because it is.In the future I’ll be talking about alternative web browsers you can use, alternative operating systems you can use, even alternative search engines you can use. In the meantime, animated pandas!
It’s still a clever idea.
Have any of you heard of Christine? You may think of the car that killed people, I think of my friend’s ex who we think also killed people, but in this case we should be thinking of a very clever idea for PC design by none other than the purveyors of premium performance PC peripherals, Razer.
Well known for their outstanding, competition-grade mice and keyboards, they decided they would get into the custom PC market with the concept of a modular PC they dubbed project Christine. It’s a unique idea for a PC, in that whatever you need to add or swap out can be done so with modules that are easily replaceable, and adding or removing one doesn’t affect the rest of the PC or require complex installation. Not only that, it’s fanless and silent thanks to its liquid cooling.
The concept of modularity is not new, in fact Google is right now working on a cell phone with a similar modular design known as Project ARA, which allows the user to upgrade parts as necessary; for example you could upgrade the camera just by swapping out the module rather than replacing the whole phone. If it can work there, it makes just as much sense for a PC. Plus, Razer’s concept just looks incredible – a true vision of the future. Here is a great video that goes into great depth about the machine.
Unfortunately, it also looks like it is now on indefinite hold. Apparently, in order to get it designed and built Razer would have to partner with other PC manufacturers, however those PC manufacturers are, according to Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, more interested in selling what they have rather than designing something new.
That’s too bad. I love this concept and want to see it succeed. The language used is dire, but not terminal, so I will hold out the thinnest sliver of hope. In the meantime, I am more excited about their Nabu project than I am about any other wearable tech. So I’ll latch on to that instead.
Happy 35th birthday to the Sony Walkman!
The Sony Walkman, precursor-of-sorts to all things portable-audio, turns 35 years old today! Back in the glory days of ’80s analog audio – which is still alive today since analog is a superior sound reproduction process than digital as we will learn – walking around listening to Iron Maiden on cassette with a Sony Walkman was the ultimate yet understated way to let everyone else know you were cool.
They went beyond being simply a music listening device. Some had very advanced features, some looked like they were waterproof (but weren’t), and in the ultimate proof of their dominance, they became a fashion statement, especially for exercising (that was actually the image on the box the player came in). Their ultra-creepy ads couldn’t put a damper on that. I had one and loved it. I may still have it around somewhere; my garage is the technology version of the Island of Misfit Toys.
They never skipped, something that happened with early portable CD players and hard-disc based digital music players, but since they were mechanical there was always the risk of an eaten tape. You can buy digital media players that still bear the Walkman name, but I’m not confident of their quality.
A couple of side notes: it appears that cassettes might be making a comeback, and the video below shows that backwards, technologically-deficient kids these days have no idea how to operate even the most basic of machines. Get those kids some technology!
Welcome!
Welcome to IS301! As you should know by now, this is the blog to which I make posts about all aspects of technology, whether it be regarding its impact on society or us as individuals, how technology is used in business, robotics, security, mobile technology, law, policy, prosthetics, history (this deserves its own post, I love seeing early predictions of what today would be like), ethical use of technology, anything technology related is fair game.
I used to use the Blogger platform for this blog at is301fornsc.blogspot.com, and will likely continue to make dual posts to both sites while I use this summer class to determine which platform is ultimately better as an educational tool. It is this site that will be used for comments and guest posts, however. If it is successful, I will most likely give it its own domain (www.is301atnsc.com or something like it) which will give me much more flexibility.
You will need to register with WordPress in order to make comments on posts, which is a requirement of the class as laid out in the syllabus. I will talk more about it in class, and I will also allow students to make guest posts for a little extra credit (not too much!).
Beyond that, if there is something you feel is interesting – a news story, a personal experience, if you have a question or would like more clarification about something related to technology, let me know I will be more than happy to consider making a post about it.
You’ll learn a lot through this blog. You’ll be surprised!
Old school pixel art, modern animation technique
This post will tax some of your machines, but it’s worth it – I promise. In searching for the coding behind Atari’s well-known color-cycling routine, I discovered a fascinating webpage that uses the HTML5 specification (a version of the language in which web pages are created) and a more technical but plain-text standard known as JSON to animate a series of old pixel-art images with color cycling.
To give you the basic idea, color cycling allows for the shifting of an image’s palette of colors, with each pixel cycling through the colors that are nearest to it in the palette, giving the illusion of motion. It might not sound like much, but the results are spectacular. Unlike traditional animation, the image itself is not actually changed in any way; it remains a single image, only the pixels are cycling through different colors – the images in this post are animated gifs, however on the linked webpage you’ll see the same images with many others but they are not animated, their movement is an illusion created by shifting colors! The site gives a very good example of it being similar to how movie marquee lights give the impression of movement, when they are simply turning off and on at very specific intervals.
When you visit the site, you can launch the images with sound or without, and you can alter some parameters such as zoom and cycle speed, as well as see the actual palette cycling through the colors; it’s spectacular and the pictures are stunning. I have linked to the main website of the person who developed the animations, but it appears they are based off of Amiga files from years ago (although it states they were created in DOS with DeluxePaint. I had an Amiga, so maybe I’m getting platform and format mixed up) originally created by Mark J. Ferrari. If you’re familiar with the old LucasFilm games such as Loom which was mentioned in the Q&A with Mark, or similar games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or The Secret of Monkey Island, Mark did work for Lucasfilm Games in their heyday when those titles were popular.
(Incidentally, if you’re interested there is a version of The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel in the iTunes app store, that allows you to swipe to shift between the original pixel-art and brand new watercolor-quality graphics. One of the best apps I’ve ever seen).
Think hard drive space is expensive?
Another history-type post here, but I have to begin by stating that I have been thinking about adding a very high-capacity NAS, or Network Added Storage, drive to my system at home. They’re expensive, but they can serve as your own personal cloud and recover all your data without interruption in case of a crash. They also connect to a router as opposed to a PC so they can share data to all devices on a network, or in fact devices all over the world if they have the proper permissions. You can read more about them at this link.
Storage is important today, but in the glory days of the ’80s it was at an absolute premium. Just to give you an idea of the level to which that was true, have a look at these couple of ads for 10 MB hard disks from way back when, meaning the 80s (the first and third are from vintagecomputing.com, a great site!).
