World Usability Day | Making it Easy!

World Usability Day | Making it Easy! - I am so amused by this, it's left me speechless! hehehehehe

TechWeb | News | Consumers Poised To Dump Wired Phones For Wireless

From the CTIA NewsWire: "The percentage of consumers who make a mobile phone their only phone will increase from 9.4% today to 37% in 2009, predicts a report by In-Stat. The report says lifestyle changes are driving the shift, and that people who currently are heavy wireless users are more likely to consider cutting the cord. TechWeb Network (10/25)"

I am not sure about "cutting chord" in a society where your phone # is related to so many services and a cell number doesn't agree with those. In some places you can't get food delivered if there is no "landline" on the premises, in others, it is difficult to open a bank account or a credit card without a landline. However, the most useful aspect of having a landline is actually in using it in a way similar to a junk email address - this is where all the "semi-insolicited" phone calls from your phone company and credit card companies go - the ones where they try to sell you all those services you really don't need. Its nice to know that I can give out my phone number without a fear that I will have to listen to stupid offers and hang up on weird marketing calls time after time. It only costs me about $13 a month and I can have a DSL on the same line. In my mind, its worth it. Would $13/mo cover Verizon's wire maintenance and service? probably. Will it make them profit? unlikely, but my subscription is worth it to me for this much. So maybe not so much dumping wired phones, as making them into junk-phone numbers.

Apple unveils video iPod and iTunes finally figures out to sell Music Videos

from the CTIA NewsWire:
Apple Computer unveiled a new iPod model that can play videos as well as music. The company's online iTunes store will sell video content at $1.99 a piece and signed a deal with Walt Disney Co. to offer five ABC programs -- including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" -- on the new device. The New York Times (free registration) (10/13), New York Post (free registration) (10/13), Los Angeles Times (free registration) (10/13), BusinessWeek (10/13), CNET (10/13).

Ok.. so Apple decides to make a fairly ambitious step and get into a not-so-hot-up-to-now market of video on demand to be played on little screens like the ipod. I've heard several people wonder whether this is smart and I, personally, think its taken them too damn long to realize they could be making a whole lot more money on video content. Very specific video content, though. Nobody wants to see movies on the iPod, at least not at the moment - the screen is too small, fidelity is too low, why? Music videos on the other hand? of course! bring it on! Besides, Apple has a brilliant business model where they add functionality to a piece of hardware, simultaneously providing the content for that functionality, thus driving buying for early adopters for both hardware heads and music heads. Except, of course, Apple is not above being evil. They are still doing this whole - "renting rather than actually selling digital content". The music videos that one can buy from ITunes are "unburnable", meaning that they can not be burned on a CD and can not be transported and shared and can not be actually played anywhere outside the itunes environment. As usual, that eeks me out. In fact, I suspect this in particular may actually affect Apple's viability in the long run, when others start selling the same content but with few restrictions.

Selling digital content is tricky though. It seems that the way big companies have tried to "solve" their problems is buy changing the meaning of "sale" for this type of content. Unlike physical things that contain digital content, when you buy online and download, in many cases you aren't actually buying the content itself. You are buing the rights to use the content you want, in a way that is defined by the limitations the company puts on that content and everything else you try to do with what you "thought" you bought is actually illegal. Its like saying that you can only use your books or any other things, for just the purpose they have been prescribed for, not for anything else (in case of books, for example, you couldn't use them to hit your little brother over the head, stack them as paperweights or use them as bricks for imaginary architectural structures). Most importantly, you can't use digital content as gifts. Oh, you certainly can gift a "gift certificate" but we all know how impersonal those are. I suspect, in part, this particular limitation will create a problem for digital content sellers in the future (or at least i certainly hope so). Any good product designer will tell you unabashedly that whatever you "think" your product will be used for, its only one of a zillion of its uses. People are creative, you can't predict their behavior, but that's what makes life fun! Digital content providers seem to fully think that they can predict what people whant to do with their product, and produce resrictions heavily based on these predictions. They get a bit of clammoring about it, but their customer base is still small enough and there are enough alternatives that this hasn't backfired yet. I wonder when it will. Maybe the day E-bay allows people to auction off digital content... that day, things will get very interesting

In any case, going back to the iPod and Apple's plans for world domination through the device, there are some interesting side-effects both of Apple's recent Nano offering and this one. Harddrive companies where having major terror moments when Nano came out - the reason? there is no harddrive in the Nano. In general, the Nano removes the reason for a regular iPod and a Shuffle combination for people who like to be active (can't run with an iPod, the harddrive doesn't like that activity) and who want more than a few songs on the device. The hard-drive industry has largely been dependent on the iPod for its livelihood, so the idea of a larger hard-drive for a new ipod with new capability of video which suggests more and more hard-drives is good. Besides, it ensures that a move to solid-state memory will not be happening any time soon. There were a lot of people who heaved a sigh of relief at the news.

Find-A-Human Service

Find-A-Human -- IVR Phone S... - Approved* In a world of increasing mechanisation of labor, computer-phone systems (especially the ones that function on voice recognition alone) are extraordinarily annoying. More often than not, frustrated customers end up yelling "get me a human, you stupid thing!" only to get "i did not understand your request, did you mean .... ". Maybe there is a reason for stalling customers, by making them go through automated menus to get to speak to a human representative, but our voice recognition software is just not good enough to do things without causing frustration quite yet. Imagine a friend of mine who happens to be an Australian living in London. Her accent, understandibly, is rather far from "American". None of the voice recognition systems were able to understand a word she said, much to her frustration. Menu systems that require navigation via numbers are also not much simpler, requireing constant attention while the system slowly reads off menu items. If you didn't pay attention - you are lost. You may, however, get utterly lost even if you did.

So... this website, forwarded by a friend, does something ingenious - provides a set of shortcuts for getting "to a human" in many customer service IVR phone systems. Yay!

Rita preliminiary damage reports

Rita Slows Over Louisiana After Sparing U.S. Gulf Coast Worst - as of right now it seems that Rita caused structural damage and caused loss of power and connectivity (yet again). However, the only victims so far seem to have been the elderly folks on the bus that burned before Rita arrived. New Orleans is back to square one in terms of clean up which may reduce the likelyhood of it really regaining its population back... the longer they can't come home the more likely they are to try starting lives elsewhere and be too tired of moving to move back again to an area as striken as NO is right now. sad...

Katrina-related links

Louisiana Government Katrina resource page
Allegheny County Emergency Services Hurricane Katrina relief
National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Natural Hazards Center
American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Resources
Wikipedia - general info page Hurricane Katrina
Katrina Help: Disaster recovery wiki
Dinha Mehta's Katrina Help Blog

FCC plans $211M to rebuild communications

USATODAY.com - FCC plans $211M to rebuild communications - FCC finally put a number to a promise. It's an interesting number - some proportion of it goes to pay for reconnecting low income customers, libraries and schools. This is nice... but how long will those customers be able to maintain this connection because it looks like all this will cover is the one time connection fee and one month of service.

New Orleans rebuilt as a beacon of high technology?

New Lines of Communication - this article describes what seems to be a current common sentiment among a number of technologists and beurocrats - rebuilding NO is an opportunity to make it ultra top-technology. This could be an experiment in less infrastructure-reliant communiation mediums available to all as well as an attraction for residents and businesses - the two resources that NO officials fear they will have a hard time attracting to come back. The current disaster certainly demonstrated just how fragile are our communication infrastructures and how vital they are to well organized relief efforts (although i am having doubts whether this relief effort would have been that much more organized even if governmental agencies did not have the "lack of communication "excuse). An interesting point in the article is the idea that the new "high tech" services must extend to "poor people". Ok... what does "extend" mean? that every household should be able to pick up 802.11? that's nice but useless without the necessary technology and skills. Certainly creating a wifi-mesh like communications structure in NO would be beneficial to many - it would be relatively cheap both to build and to use, and it would be relatively robust - able to exist for weeks on little power. It makes sense to add to a city if the costs are low and the benefits are likely.

Yet I take issue with "we will earmark some money to provide poor families with access". Well that's nice, but access is not the same as having the hardware and the know-how to access. It's not going just going to take money for the poor population of NO to suddenly "get on the Internet" and "get connected" It's going to take educational centers, donations of hardware (refirbished computers for example), volunteer tech support centers. It's going to take equipping every school in the area with state of the art technology so that every child has access at least while they are at school. It's nice to talk about "earmarking some money" but how much? and where is it going to go?

The last bit in the article is the best A. Townsend quote I've heard to date (I am becoming a bit of groupie I think ;): He pointed out that all of these "hi tech" "infrastructureless" ideas are good and great, but the main reason most of the communication infrastructures failed in NO this time was not because they were broken themselves, it was because ELECTRICITY went out. As long as everything we build relies on the traditional electrical grid that can go down when an employee mixes the wires, let alone when a hurricain hits and a city floods, no matter what we build, it will still shut off. We must change the way we think about infrastructure at a very basic level - water, power, trash. Only then would we be able to build something truly innovative. At that point, we also must think about making that something innovative truly accessible to all.

this makes me want to scream... very loudly

AddieStan
After several meetings, exchanges of emails, talking... I am getting a sense that technologists around me seem to think they can save the world if only they could put all this information online and streamline it... It makes me want to crumple on the floor, roll up in a ball when the "large research proposal" PI's are interested in the "Internet response" - the person-location web-sites and the "look to see if your house is ok" websites...

I want to say - but there are people there, they are hurt, and we don't know how to help them best right now (aside from horrible horrible aweful government inpetitude) - we could, we really could provide something to ease the pain and suffering of those who lost it ALL, who don't HAVE A COMPUTER ANYMORE! and maybe never had it either! We need to understand how people cope with this thing because we only vaguely know how they could potentially do that - we have never seen anything like this happen here, in this country, let alone actually study it. Why study it? because then we can have better answers for what is needed, for how to build services and infrastructures to help these people and those in the future. The help, what the red-head psychologist writes about, the initial response is something that is necessary and the general inadequacy of this response will haunt us for years to come. Yet what will also haunt is that adjustment to this disaster for the victims, the "getting over it" is not going to happen soon - this will take years.

Those years, when Red Cross help is not available anymore, when the kindness of strangers and even friends trickles to nothing, but the monsters of water, stench, disease, lost friends, relatives, pets, will haunt the dreams, will haunt the memories. We need this research now so that we can set up long term support. We need it, so that we can understand things now and help people over the course of time, time that will heal wounds and time that it will take to rebuild half a million lives.

In Close Quarters, a Moment's Peace Is Rare

In Close Quarters, a Moment's Peace Is Rare
The human tragedy of shelters as transient spaces not designed to live in, just to wait in, have been finding their way into the media. in a certain way, it is impressive just how well these things are currently run and how many people volunteer. It is also impressive just how crowded these spaces have to be right now because there are so many people displaced. This overcrowding makes for a tough time, requiring a lot of patience from people who have been torn away from all they had, from people they knew, from everything familiar, and plunged in the middle of another version of a minor human hell.

More pet links

STUFF : WORLD NEWS - STORY : New Zealand's leading news and information website
Animal Refuge Strives to Corral Pets -- and Despair - Los Angeles Times
First Coast News | Top Stories - Local Man Rescues Pets in New Orleans
Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Katrina's Aftermath
more links - probably the most striking thing here is that neither Red Cross nor FEMA were set up to deal with pets and have even had to refuse rescue to people who wanted to take their pets along. considering the emotional bond with pets that owners develop, forcing people to leave their pets behind is making their road to recovery that much longer and harder. While officials dubbed those who wouldn't leave their pets behind as "crazy" or "dumb" other pet owners certainly understood. For some, while it's not quite like leaving your children or relatives behind, it's certainly pretty close.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Nation -- Uniting pets, families is an emotional task

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Nation -- Uniting pets, families is an emotional task - the less seen and talked about tragedy of the hurricain is the story of abandoned pets, often locked in aprtments and houses, often drowned or sick from contaminated water or starved and dehydrated. Pet owners often have an enormous emotional attachment to their pets and the trafedy of loss of all their possessions may pale in comparison with the tragedy of loss of their pet. This is especially true in instance of relocation when few familiar things are left to the victims and their pets, those emotional anchors that they have been able to rely on for years, are also gone.

Cingular, Sprint give Katrina victims bill breaks | CNET News.com

Cingular Wireless said in an FCC filing that it will give customers in New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., a 50% credit on their monthly bills for the period spanning from late August through Sept. 30. The carrier also said it would not charge for roaming, extra minutes, long-distance or text messaging during the period. Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel announced it would give one month of free service to subscribers in the areas hit hardest by the storm, and that it also would give free long-distance, additional minutes, roaming and text messaging. Verizon Wireless said it is dealing with the situation on a case-by-case basis. Cingular, Sprint give Katrina victims bill breaks | CNET News.com (9/10)"

The trendsetter Verizon seems to lag behind on the generosity bit. They also don't seem to have set up any large donations as Sprint and Cingular did over the last two weeks. Of course, it could be they are simply humble and are not disclosing their charitable acitivities... could be, no really... hmmm naaaah.

Southern Co. unit operations restored

From the CTIA NewsWire: Carriers continue to make headway restoring service

Wireless carriers are making progress restoring service to areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. Sprint Nextel as of yesterday had restored nearly all service in Alabama, more than 80% in Mississippi and more than 60% in Louisiana. Verizon Wireless said it has restored 300 of the 400 cell sites put out of service by the storm, while T-Mobile announced service is running at nearly all of its sites. Cingular Wireless reported it has 75% service in the region, and SouthernLINC Wireless said it has brought back 100% service in Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi.

Southern Co. unit operations restored
USATODAY.com - Some areas inch toward normality
Cingular restores 75 percent of service in hurricane zone - 2005-09-09
Carriers Boost Efforts to Restore Service to Gulf Coast

Wired links on Wireless activity in NO - Katrina aftermath

Satellite phones -- one of the least successful product introductions of the late 1990s -- are in fresh demand in the wake of Hurricane Katrina from storm-ravaged communities without functioning cellular and wire-line networks. Wired News: Sat Phones Surge After Katrina

Acting on an emergency request from the American Red Cross, the FCC on Friday handed over control of the toll-free number 1-800-RED-CROSS to the nonprofit group, unceremoniously plucking it from the hands of corporate digit-squatters who'd been hoping for a six-figure payday. Wired News: Red Cross Gets Squatter's Number

About 8000 wireless ISPs are standing at the ready, prepared to provide voice over IP service to relief shelters around the country, at the direction of the Federal Communications Commission. Wireless ISPs ready to heed call for help “They are trying to show alternative methods to the traditional way of doing things,” he said. “We can do this so more rapidly than the cellphone technologies. I’m not trying to indicate that those guys are less worthy. I’m just saying here’s an alternative – we can do it fast.” One Part-15 member is already provide communications to about 11 shelters north of New Orleans that were hastily assembled to give the hoards of people fleeing the city a place to be and the ability to communicate with their families, Anderson said.

--the last one in this batch is really neat - throughout the relief efforts it has become clear that newer technologies are more flexible and are capable of providing immediate support where older technologies fail. However, the question remains - which of these technologies are capable of withstanding the brunt of the disaster as well? so far experience has shown that landlines, buried deep in the ground survived the onslaught better than wireless towers, yet disruptions that did occur for landlines have been far harder to remedy.

Segregated Saudis Utilize Bluetooth for Flirtations

From the CTIA NewsWire: "With the help of Bluetooth technology men and women in Saudi Arabia are finding new ways to flirt in a society where it is forbidden. Wireless Bluetooth technology permits users to connect without going through the phone company. Users activate the Bluetooth function in their phone and then press the search button to locate anyone else with the feature within a 30-foot range. Once this happens a list of ID names appears and the user can click a name to begin communicating. This utilization of technology has raised concerns because many women are posting their pictures, which is strictly forbidden by the Saudi Arabian government. (Source: USA Today)"

Technology strikes again at the monoliths of social etiquette. The very discreetness of the medium and ability to control who sees communications and why, allows women take dating into their own hands, in countries where such actions are strictly forbidden... You go girls :)

Wireless Phone Virus Contaminates Helsinki Championships

From the CTIA NewsWire: "The world athletics championships in Finland, home to the world's largest wireless phone maker, Nokia, experienced the world's first wireless phone virus; Cabir. Cabir uses Bluetooth short range wireless signals to transmit between wireless phones. In a crowded stadium dozens of phones are at risk. The recipient needs to download the virus in order to be infected, which means the risk of receiving it is small, despite thousands of phones already hit around the world. (Source: The New York Times)"

Hmm just like with email - if it's an odd message trying to download itself to your phone, don't push the "ok" button. Just like email, I have no doubts that most people will still push the "ok" button, probably overcome with curiosity... Phone viruses have arrived.

File Share and Share Alike - BitTorrent used for legal purposes (gasp!)

File Share and Share Alike - New York Times - this article marks an interesting change in the attitude of the "culture industry" as it calls the oversized producers of digital entertainment content. In this case, it's a very large US Anime distributor. Instead of trying to quash use of BiTorrent among it's biggest fans for distributing early pirated versions of new series, they decided to see if they can benefit from it... and... "drum roll"... it worked! (and the lawyer people were happy).

Over the last decade, the "culture industry" looked like a dinasaur who refused to die, and cobbled onlookers in it's death-throws. Nobody had warned it that the rules were about to change, and, when the rules changed, the "culture industry" just didn't want to play by them. Instead of harnessing the energy of early tech adopters, who, incidentally, were also it's biggest fans, it decided to persecute them and use fear-mongering tactics. It didn't work, although it did spurr a form of an arms race between the lawyers and the tech developers. It was stunning that the largest behemoth's of the "culture industry" did not immediately realize the marketing potential of this medium. They for some reason assumed that every single person who downloaded a particular song, would have bought the CD if the song weren't available for free. Most wouldn't have of course. What's more, most would have never even heard the particular artist or the less radio-played pieces. They did not capitalize on the sheer volume of listener preference information and persecuted rather than supported their biggest fans - people willing to put in time, money and even risk that persecution to share music, films, anime.

ADV, to it's credit, suddenly realized that the very people that steal and distribute versions of their new series or films before these things are even out, for the most part aren't evil. They don't do it to hurt the company. Instead, here is a group of hard core fans, for whom the ability to see something "before it is out" via a not-so-user-friendly technology, is a huge marker of cool. It's a statement, a way to assert their dominance among peers. What happens when you give them something to play with that is legal? They love it! Just let them at it, they will write you reviews and help with distribution. They will build fan sites and contribute free advertising. Be nice to them, and they will be nice back to you. Try to scare them and they will steal your content, feel just as cool, and laugh at you. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising - any marketer will tell you that none of the other forms come anywhere close to the power of human-to-human advice. The internet has made it possible to extend the number of people that can give you that advice. It is surprising the "culture industry" still hasn't figured out how to harness it. Until then - tech geeks 1/culture industry 0

London Suspect Betrayed by His Cellphone

London Suspect Betrayed by His Cellphone - New York Times - So if you ever wondered whether your cellphone can be used as a tracking device to track YOU... the answer is, yes it can be, and quite effectively. What amuses me most, is the idiocy of the bomb-suspect who actually called his family and friends in Italy, while travelling from London to Italy, probably out of sheer boredom produced by travelling for a long time, thus revealing their locations as well. This last spring at ICA, there was a paper delinieating the types of protection provided by use of VOIP vs. cell phones. The main protection is privacy - yes an individual can be pinpointed at the time of making the phone call, but they can not be tracked as they leave an internet cafe. Not so with a cell phone, unless one remembers to actually turn the thing off. With a social pressure of always keeping your cellphone on, we are effectively continuously tracked and voluntarily so... go GPS + cell tower triangulation techniques! Really, does using wifi enabled locations as a method of location identification make any sense anymore?

Mind savers

Mind savers
Originally uploaded by xeeliz.

a friend on Flickr posted this picture from her recent transcontinental flight. "Can't fly without these now" she commented and tagged the photo "quiet". A recent NYT article about noise-cancelling headphones talks about a similar idea - there is too much external noise in our environments and it hurts to think. Sometimes, we need to technology to stop "alerting" or "entertaining" us, we need it to MAKE THINGS QUIET! Quiet is a privelege, a commodity. It has always been something difficult to achieve in many spaces and is becoming a rarity nearly everywhere. With the FCC trying so hard to permit cell phone use on planes, travellers look on in horror and reach for $200 noise-cancelling headphones if they can afford those. What I find curious, is the amount of push-back from the very consumers on behalf of which, supposedly, FCC is trying to remove the ban. Most want the ban in place, the LIKE the relative quiet of an airplane flight. It is unclear why the FCC thinks is to necessary to allow cell-phones in flight (even with Cingular suggesting it is not necessary and the CTIA being of two minds about it). It was rarely a burning issues, few people ever really pushed for it. Does FCC simply want to look like it's doing something important? This one seems at the expense of consumers, not to help them. Ah well... where are those noise-cancelling hedaphones? I gotta get myself a pair.