Tablet PC Thoughts

I actually like this idea ... a USB drive with a way to display a message, along with the free space!

A new window on USB drives. Blog: Memorex unveiled its next USB drive with an LCD screen it says takes the guesswork out of remembering what is stored on the... [CNET News.com]

I know that this is older news, however I still love reading articles about this race. This is truly amazing and is going to alter a lot of things. The fact that a computerized car can drive itself 131.6 miles and avoid getting stuck. Oh yeah ... and this is only 2005. So what are we going to be hearing about in 2010?

With the current rate of technological advances, five years is a huge amount of time for amazing developments to occur.

Driverless robots reach milestone in DARPA race. Stanford University's Racing Team has accomplished a historic feat of robotics, finishing first in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 131.6-mile driverless car race that no artificially intelligent machine has ever conquered before.

Stanford's "Stanley,... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

I liked reading Phil's post about the word 'Identity'. This is one of the core issues surrounding the subject ... the definitions and understanding of the words. Without a common language and lexicon it becomes very difficult to nail down specifics on anything!

Years ago while looking into Identity I came across an article that discussed the origins of the word ... and it was a real breakthrough for me. From Dictionary.com, Identity is:

[French identité, from Old French identite, from Late Latin identits, from Latin idem, the same (influenced by Late Latin essentits, being,, and identidem, repeatedly), from id, it. See i- in Indo-European Roots.]

"Being the same as" ... so the two core thoughts in this are that it is something that is derived from observing, and it is relative or comparative. There is an observer who assigns you identity by comparing you - or some aspect of you - to something else that is known. I believe this is the cornerstone of identity.

On the Word 'Identity'.

On the way back from a meeting in Salt Lake this afternoon, I was pondering the word 'identity' and the way it is used in the physical world and the way we use it in the world of IT. Something I heard on NPR set off this navel gazing--I can't remember what. Coincidentally, when I got to my office, I found this post from Tim Greyson on the living language of identity. And so, a post...

If I ask my wife, kids, or neighbors "what is identity?" they answer in various ways that I think reduce, at their most basic level, to this: "identity the sum total of who I am...my uniqueness." It includes not only attributes like height, eye color, and so on, but also their personality, hopes, and dreams--everything that makes them them. One way of sussing this out is to ask: do identity twins have different identities? We would say yes, even when we can't tell them apart.

...

[Phil Windley's Technometria]

My father worked for Westinghouse Electric Corporation for over 30 years. While growing up I was introduced to the broad range of products created and produced by Westinghouse ... from appliances, to power generation, to nuclear power plants, to military radar. To me is was amazing the breadth of products and markets that Westinghouse participated in ... from consumer products to advanced military weapons.

This article reminded me of this same scenario with a slight twist. The folks at iRobot are not only the producers of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, but also some very advanced military robots. If you haven't yet listened to the talk by Helen Greiner - co-founder and chairman of iRobot - she gave a great presentation at Accelerating Change 2004. It's very cool to see a company like this involved in such a wide range of applied technologies.

iRobot unveils sniper detector. The robot maker equips its PackBot combat device with gear to help soldiers find enemy marksmen. [CNET News.com]

There are many ways in which the interface between humans and computers has evolved in recent years, however I think that the biggest jumps are about to occur. This article is an example of just how far things are progressing. We are now able to isolate specific thoughts with electrodes placed strategically around the scalp.

My thoughts are not about how to detect thoughts of walking ... but instead how the detection of thoughts can be converted to new forms of communications. What if I could think about sending a message to you, and the computer would generate an e-mail or an SMS message to you? I actually think that research like this is taking us closer and closer to 'artificial telepathy' ... technology that will allow us to 'think' to each other.

Computer users move themselves with the mind. Computer scientists have created a brain-computer interface that can read your thoughts. It allows you to stroll down a virtual street. All you have to do is think about walking.

The technology detects brain waves by using electrodes placed at st... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

In most of the conversations about "digital identity" we want to stick to us humans. How we make our lives better, easier, more secure, more private. There are a couple of flaws that I continue to see in the process and thinking that, IMHO, are only going to grow and continue to impart new pressures on our thoughts.

• Most of the planning is being done by "old people" who have a lot invested in legacy "identity" systems.
  

As part of the more "mature" component of the computer industry, I can say that the conversations that I hear about identity are often oriented towards solutions for people who have not had their identity gathered and managed for them from birth. As I wrote in my earlier post about Tracking Identity ... Cradle to Grave, there is a whole new generation of children on this planet who will have their identity accumulated - and available - in whole new ways. I believe that the digital identity management solutions ought to consider a focus on younger generations, rather that how to deal with legacy Internet 1.0 humans.

My analogy in this is thinking about digital music collections. For many people my age or older, the thought of digitizing their music collection is a monumental task ... having to find ways to encode audio for record albums! But for the average teen today, there is no problem ... all of their music is already digital as MP3s, or maybe they have some CDs ... which are easily ripped. With the next generation of humans, few will know anything but digital music, aquired via the Internet.

If we focus all of our time looking for ways to solve the "legacy human" problems, I'm not sure that we'll do justice for the 2.0 and 3.0 humans coming after us.

So what is the other issue?

• We keep thinking about humans like us ... not the humans, or non-humans, of the future.
  

I read this article this morning on CNN: Mice grow human cells after injections ... wow, very cool. More work that is leading to the potential of some very interesting life forms. And this is only the beginning. Yes, I fully understand that these experiments are not creating human-like entities today. But this is only today. Where are we going to be in 10 years?

For those of you who have not read Accelerando I would suggest that you do. Much of the content of this book is one possible extrapolation forward of the current day research that we are doing. There is already a considerable amount of thought around mind uploading, and even the personal identity of uploads. I started to really think about the issues of "identity of uploads", and even "rights of uploads" ... since these are going to be the issues facing our society in the coming years. (What is considered the 'murder' of an upload?) It's not about if ... but when.

In the CNN article about the mice, they claim that 0.1 percent of the brain is based on human cells. When this number increases, what will emerge? If not in mice (since the brain cavity might not be able to contain enough cumulative neurons to cause emergent behaviors) then in what strange hybrid entity might we see human-like behaviors emerge? When they do, will we be able to integrate these new entities into society? If not in physical meat-space, but in the Internet, new forms of consious life emerge ... will the various digital identity systems being designed today take into account how to verify their identity, and track their attributes? Are we even thinking about these coming events?

I have another post that I want to write eventually ... about the fact that "Uploads don't have fingerprints" ... not in the same sense as we do!

I have been following the work that Microsoft is doing in their Windows Peer To Peer Networking. This is actually some very impressive technology that allows for a distributed set of users to create peer-to-peer groups for exchanging data and information. I'm working on some applications (actually plug-ins for GoBinder) that are going to exploit this technology. Microsoft has put together a Peer To Peer SDK allowing you to perform name-to-IP name resolution (PNRP - a serverless DNS technology), along with graphing and grouping APIs for the transfer of data between the peers. It's all very impressive stuff ... and is in all Windows XP SP2 machines ... and will be in all Vista machines. The bottom line ... this is going to drastically alter how ad-hoc groups of users on Windows machines will be able to locate each other, communicate, and collaborate.

Today, I found yet another amazing technology out of Microsoft Research. For years I have been tracking the "wireless mesh networking" space. This is where each node in a wireless network is a repeater/relay for any other node that is within range. With true mesh technologies I can communicate with other users, even if they are beyond the reach of my wireless signal, if there are one or more nodes between us that are part of the "mesh" network. Mesh networks are the next big thing ... even the cellular carriers are talking about adding emergency mesh capabilities into cell phones.

What I found today is that Microsoft Research has code available today that will allow you to experiment with some pretty advanced mesh networking using your Windows XP machine! The Microsoft Research Networking Research Group has released their Mesh Networking software, and even an Mesh Networking Academic Resource Toolkit. I've started to go through the documentation, and so far this is a very impressive solution. They have embraced and extended some of the standards that are currently being developed:

We implement ad-hoc routing and link quality measurement in a module that we call the Mesh Connectivity Layer (MCL). Architecturally, MCL is a loadable Microsoft Windows driver. It implements a virtual network adapter, so that to the rest of the system the ad-hoc network appears as an additional (virtual) network link. MCL routes using a modified version of DSR (an IETF protocol) that we call Link Quality Source Routing (LQSR). We have modified DSR extensively to improve its behavior, most significantly to support link quality metrics.

The MCL driver implements an interposition layer between layer 2 (the link layer) and layer 3 (the network layer). To higher layer software, MCL appears to be just another Ethernet link, albeit a virtual link. To lower layer software, MCL appears to be just another protocol running over the physical link.

I am really impressed to see this work this far along. I have been waiting for years to see mesh networking hit the masses ... and this is now getting close. I'm now going to upgrade some of my wearable computers to Windows XP just to experiment with this!

When I read something like this, I start to wonder just how portable a system like this can be made?

Brain imaging ready to detect terrorists, say neuroscientists. Brain-imaging techniques that reveal when a person is lying are now reliable enough to identify criminals, with 99% accuracy, claim University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers.

When someone lies, their brain inhibits them from telli... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

It is only a matter of time before this is going on almost everywhere. It seems today that most of our government tracked actions are recorded ... but in many different and separate databases. This appears to be an effort for the Dutch citizens to see a unification of their identity information for a variety of sociological benefits. Yes ... I know that many people are cringing at this. To me it only makes sense that it's going ot occur ... it's inevitable.

Dutch Treat: Personal Database. Starting in 2007, every baby born in the Netherlands will receive a Citizens Service Number and will have an electronic dossier opened in a central database. This will allow Dutch authorities to track each citizen from cradle to grave. [Wired News]

It was recently at Accelerating Change 2005 that I heard Ray Kurzweil talk about more advances in RNA Interference. This is a powerful process where we can now alter the expression of various genes using RNA. This article demonstrates yet another powerful use of RNA in our continuing exploration of genetics. Just imagine where we are going to be in the next five to ten years!

Purdue scientists treat cancer with RNA nanotechnology. PhysOrg.com Sep 14 2005 7:02PM GMT [Moreover Technologies - moreover...]

This morning was the November/December CTO Breakfast that Phil Windley put together. The breakfast started with a question about hiring good talent. One of the employees from Canyon Bridge said they have been looking to hire some good engineers, and have been finding that few can answer some very simple questions. The example that they gave was about reversing the order of a linked list.

There was a lot of talk about how to alter the hiring process, and also what types of questions people ask: What do you do outside of work? What Open Source projects do you work on? There was also a lot of talk about how to gather names. Examples were leverage your existing employees to get the names of "known good" co-workers. The problem with this approach is that you can quickly run out of references.

The conversation went on for a long time before it finally went over to the CP80 issue. CP80 is the "Clean Port 80" initiative to create laws which forbid certain types of content to be delivered over port 80 ... the standard port used by web browsers. It again becomes an interesting way to attempt to legislate morality. In the end, it will not be technically possible, but could give lawyers a way to go after the producers of "unacceptable" content. Yeah ... "unacceptable" to who? ([tags: cp80 clean filter porn])



The conversation at one point moved to downloading content from the Internet, and the subject of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Several sites were mentioned where you could get free content - Pandora (which is a very cool streaming site - part of the Music Genome Project), and one of my favorites Epitonic. ([tags: free music learning])

There was a brief exploration of the whole area of Wikis and the inability of the "average" user to use "yet another markup language". I have to admit that it truly aggrevates me that the various Wiki platforms have subtle differences ... and most do not provide WYSIWYG editors. and we spent some time discussing the fact that there is a not a really good - Open Source - AJAX/WYSIWYG editor. I mentioned the fact that my parents can use Microsoft Word, but that having to learn a whole symbology wasn't going to happen. It reminded me of a great Podcast by Robert Lefkowitz @ OSCON 2005 ... I'll have to blog about that one! ([tags: wiki wysiwyg editors language])

Phil Burnes through out comments about Flock ... a very cool Mozilla-based project, I brought up a very cool article that a friend sent me from Make Magazine ... it was about Mologogo ... which is a very cool mash-up of Cellular phones with GPS and Google Maps giving you a very cheap "real-time" geopositioning/geolocation system. We wrapped up on one of my favorite subjects ... wearable computers. We didn't spend a lot of time on it ... I'll have to bring some of my toys to one of the next breakfasts! ([tags: flock make mologogo gps google googlemaps geolocation wearables])

On the way out, Phil brought up a good point. His gatherings bring together an incredible group of people with diverse interests and experience. It is the level of experience of some of the people that really brings a great spin to the whole conversation. We ended up going almost 2.5 hours ... and it was a great conversation the whole time ... and we could have gone longer! I'll look forward to January!

Every now and then you buy a product that really just works. I recently bought a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone - a Jabra BT250v - and I have to admit that I am truly happy with this product. I've always used a headset, but the wired type. When I upgraded cell phones and bought a Nokia 6820 one of the features that I wanted was Bluetooth for a wireless headset. But I stuck with wired headsets for a year or two.

After destoying the wired headset for the second time by jerking the headset out of my ear or catching the wire on various things, and having to untangle the wire one too many times, I broke down and bought the Jabra. It is now something that I would not go without. The sound quality it great, it has a 'vibrate' feature so that I have now turned off the ring on my phone, and the buttons on the earpiece allow me to answer a call, and change the volume.

I have had two problems with it over the last month that I have had the device. The first I was warned about ... if I am outside and there is any wind, the people I am talking to immediately complain about the wind noise. I have learned to mute the phone, or warn people that I am talking with. The second was that one time the headset locked up and would no longer communicate with my phone. The on-line support indicated that I would have to 'reset' the Jabra, and that meant re-inserting it into the charging base ... which was at home. That did piss me off.

One other thing that I have learned is that every now and then it will 'disconnect' from my cell phone, for example if I set down the phone and walk away with the Jabra on my ear, or hooked in the neck of my shirt. Its easy to 'reconnect' by simply clicking the button on the Jabra. Likewise, if I switch my phone to speakerphone, and then back to 'normal' the Jabra will be disconnected. One quick click on the Jabra button and it reconnects. I have to say it is one of the best investments I have made related to my cell phone. A very nice design, and very easy to use.

I just listened to a great podcast from ITConversations that was a presentation at Pop!Tech 2005. It was a wonderful talk by Graham Flint about the Gigapxl Project. This is some amazing work where they are now taking pictures at extreme resolutions - close to 4 Gigapixels! That is close to 4000 Megapixels ... a LOT more than the digital cameras that you can buy today. They are using some highly custom cameras to be able to take pictures with incredible resolutions, built out of old U2 spy plane parts. These are still "film" cameras, but he also discusses the work on fully digital versions of these cameras being built.

In his talk he mentions some interesting things that they find when they are able to zoom in on these extremely detailed images. He talks about this image of paragliders on the coast of California. When his wife was reviewing the image, she found people watching with binoculars and telescopes ... but they were looking down ... not up! When they followed the track of the people's vision, they found that below the paragliders was a nudist beach! When they put this particular image in a museum, the resolution was so good that they had to mask the faces and heads of the nudists! This opens a whole new conversation about privacy ... and continues to beg the question "Is there such thing as privacy?"

The site has got a lot of very cool images, and examples of the abilitty to zoom. They even had a cityscape of my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!

I'll have to check which podcast had the Q&A, however they did bring up the questions of privacy. In this image of PETCO Park he talks about the fact that they have detailed images of ~15,000 people ... and how would you ever get a release from all of these people? As a friend and I talked about this, it means that a single photo of a demonstration or rally might give details images of the people attending. Uh ... what are you doing in that hotel room on the 15th floor?

It is truly some amazing work, and the podcast was a great listen. I've attached the link to this post ... we'll see if it works for you!

I love this article ... and I'm almost amused at the perspective presented in this article - Blogger Blocked at U.S. Border. A Canadian citizen was blocked from coming into the U.S. from Toronto when U.S. border guards found references in his blog to being based in New York. The blogger seems to be surprised that someone would hold him accountable for what he wrote!

"One of them, a very sharp guy in fact, started to read every single post on my blog. And it didn't take long until he shocked me: 'So you live in New York, right? That's what you've written in your [blog].'"

Derakhshan did, in fact, write that he was based out of New York—mostly because it sounded "sexier" than saying he was based out of Toronto, he said.

But between his offhand blog comment and the fact that he was carrying a Newsweek magazine sent to him at a New York address, the guards found grounds to refuse his entry into the United States, for at least the next six months.

According to U.S. policy, as a Canadian citizen Derakhshan may be legally entitled to stay in the United States for up to six months.

Canadian citizens entering the United States as visitors for business do not require either a passport or a visa, although visitors are required to satisfy border guards of their citizenship, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's site.

"It was obvious the guy was trying to find an excuse not to let me in, and he found something," Derakhshan told Ziff Davis Internet News. "He found that I said in the blog that I said I'm based in New York now. He said being based in New York is illegal."

Uh ... excuse me, but it seems to me that Mr. Derakhshan made the choice to be irresponsible with his writing ... he publicly claimed to be in violation of the law. The "sharp guy" realized that not only was this Canadian carrying a magazine with an address to him in the U.S., but he outright claimed to be "based" in New York ... in direct violation of the law!

So what is the big deal? You got what you asked for. You were more interested in "looking good" ("Derakhshan did, in fact, write that he was based out of New York—mostly because it sounded "sexier" than saying he was based out of Toronto, he said.") and are now surprised at the consequences of your actions and words.

It is always amazing to me when people want to act surprised when they get caught in their inauthenticities. I remember being taught to be very careful what I say ... and to understand the consequences of telling lies. It appears that either he really was based in New York illegally, or that his claims to look good have simply caught up with him.

In either case, I love the idea of the border guards using Google!

Every now and then I find another thing in Linux - or a particular distribution - that really impresses me. Tonight was one of those times. My home network is connected through a Fedora Core Linux box, to a wireless link to my communications shed up on the mountain above my house. The shed then has a ~6 mile wireless link to my office up at the Heber City Airport.

I have actually overlaid two different IP subnets on the wireless network, one being the small subnet provided by my DSL provider, and then other being a 10.x.x.x subnet that I created for a set of hosts that I use for testing. When I set up my Fedora Core Linux box as a home gateway, I gave it a public IP address that is part of the fixed range through my DSL modem. So I can get in and out of my house just fine, but was unable to access anything on the 10.x.x.x network from my house.

To resolve this, I had to bind a second address to the same NIC card ... something that I had done with other operatings systems in the past, but never with Linux. After a quick search on Google, I found a couple of articles that outlined a manual method of configuring this, and then realized that I ought to look at the GUI config tools that are a part of the Fedora distribution. I opened the Network Configuration tool, and simply clicked the "add" button ... chose the ethernet card, and provided address information. I was impressed that the tool added the new binding perfectly! I clicked the "activate" button, and up came the secondary IP address.

In a matter of 10 minutes I had the secondary binding working, and now have a host that is connected to both the public IP address range, and my private 10.x.x.x network through the same ethernet card. Yeah ... I know ... simple stuff. But I had to comment how impressed I was that the config tools managed this in such an intuitive way!

Last night I was talking with a 13 year old who is creating some impressive works in Photoshop. He created some very cool graphics for his Counter Strike clan web site. I have to admit that I was really blown away by what he created.

As we talked I asked him what he used to create the graphics, and that is when he told me about using Photoshop. I asked what else he was doing on the web and he replied "Some Javascipt ... and a little PHP." Wow ... I was surprised. We talked about Javascript, and although his knowledge was not incredibly deep, he had a good grasp of the basics of the language. I showed him some of the stuff that I have been working on lately and he asked some good questions. We then progressed to talking about PHP, and he explained some of the small things that he is learning there. Impressive.

What struck me today is the shift in learning to "speak" different "languages". Decades ago, or even hundreds of years ago, it was seen as important to learn to speak other languages from around the globe. People in non-English speaking countries learned English. Most of the schools here in the USA taught middle and high-school students Spanish, French, German, and other languages. (I actually spent years learning Spanish ... although it is very rusty at this point!) It always seemed to me that the intent was to give me a leg up on interacting with people of other countries and origins. I have, from time to time, found value in my Spanish learning.

Today it now appears that the future is more in "talking" to computers and the Internet. And so now it seems there is more value in learning "computer" languages ... then "foriegn" langauges. As I thought about this today, I realized that this is probably true. More and more people from around the globe are learning English, and much of the Internet - and computer technology in general - is based on English. So where do children turn? To "interacting" with computers. And so understanding the languages used by computers is becoming more and more important.

Its fun to think about the evolution of computer langauges, and to see the various roots of the popular langauges. In addition, most of the scripting languages are becoming so high-level, and the component libraries so rich, that even a beginner at programming can create powerful applications. With the Internet as a platform, Web Services, XML, RSS, and many other standards are emerging as the APIs independent of operating system ... or programming "langauge". I can only imagine what a 13 year old, who today is learning Javascript and PHP, might be developing in 5 or 10 years. I know that it will be fun to see!

Tonight I posted the lastest version (v3.2) of my RadioAtomBridge tool for Radio Userland . This tool is a way to mirror blog posts from Radio Userland to blogs that are hosted at Blogger.com. The tool has been working great over the last year, but recently Blogger.com changed their API (wisely!) to require the use of SSL. I discovered this when my tool failed and stopped working.

I spent the last several weeks making a number of changes, and cleaning up the tool in general. There were several fixes that I wanted to get in place, and I think that I have covered the majority of them. The primary change was to allow you to specify using SSL/TLS for the ATOM posts. This does require a download from Userland of the Radio Userland TLS module ... but it's a free download.

I've done a good bit of testing, and have actually posted this article with the tool. I believe that I have things working well enough to release a build as v3.2 ... so go and grab a copy and give it a try! If you have problems, please post comments on the RadioAtomBridge blog ... I'll look for them there!

I am always a bit skeptical when I read articles like this. Yes ... it's all marketing speak. How can anyone know until they actually experience the migration/upgrade process? I'm not being "pro-Vista", nor "anti-Linux" ... I'm working to be "pro-realistic". I believe that there are multiple points that Jack is not addressing here.

First, I am curious about the "in-place" migration to Vista, vs. the "in-place" migration to Linux? Is there even an "in-place" migration to Linux? I have to admit that I have not looked into this in detail, however I can almost promise you that we will see an in-place migration tool, that will allow any user or company to migrate to Vista with minimal (yes - minimal!) pain. Will there be some problems? Of course. But lets now compare that to a migration to Linux from Windows. Could I go to a Windows user, and perform a clean "in-place" migration, and have them productive when it completes? I have my doubts here.

Second, I have to admit that hardware evolution is against Jack and Novell. As people upgrade hardware - which they will - they are going to get that Windows Vista license, instead of the older Windows XP license ... and they will migrate. And it will be almost painless. The cost of the "upgrade" of the OS will be hidden in the cost of the new hardware.

To me, the mentality is still all wrong. To continue to fight against something only continues to strengthen it. Even Novell employees heard the old saying "embrace, extend, extinguish". Its all about creating more powerful abstractions ... there is much more value in Mono, then Linux ... IMHO. There is much more value in the applications then the OS. There is even more value in the services hosted in the Internet ... enabling the use of the Internet Platform for business.

To fight these fights, and make these claims, is just old school thinking and behavior. Microsoft knows this, and the real Open Source community knows this.

Novell: Vista will drive users to Linux. Jack Messman claims that the cost of moving to Windows Vista will prompt users to consider moving to desktop Linux. [CNET News.com]

So as the world evolves, so will the requirements for tracking identity and digital identity. It's no longer enough to have attributes for "mother" and "father" ... now we have to account for the possibility of multiple parents! This article talks about some research going on where an embryo will be created with genes from two mothers. So a child born of this type of research will have to be able to list their mother and father ... and other mother. As we continue to explore digital identity, I hope that people realize that the old ways of thinking about identity are long gone.

This reminds be of some foresight used by the authors of HumanML ... the Human Markup Language. When I was reading through their schema I was surprised to see that they have already accounted for the possibility that someone has had a gender-change operation! They already define the attributes for 'gender', along with 'gender at birth'! Yep ... they might not be the same.

The ironic issue is that this might not be enough ... what if they change their gender numerous times? May we live in interesting times. The world of identity is going to be rocked.

The cloned baby with two mothers. Daily Mail Sep 9 2005 8:10AM GMT [Moreover Technologies - moreover...]

This is my first post using my new tagging tool within the Radio Userland

blogging application, using Mozilla. It really has been quite an adventure in learning Javascript at a much deeper level ... for me. Radio has a WYSIWYG editor within it's web interface that can be used for writing posts, and there are two flavors (of course): one for IE and one for Mozilla.

What I wanted to do is add a new toolbar button in the WYSIWYG editor to allow me to enter a list of comma-delimited words, and have those words converted to the proper HTML for tags ... like the tags at the bottom of this post. What an adventure!

I was actually able to get the code written and working for IE first ... but not exactly what I wanted. I wanted to have the tags 'inserted' at the cursor position, but could only get 'append' working. So the tags would always end up at the end of the post. I then worked on the Mozilla version of this, and got everything working perfectly! There was already some sample code on how to do an 'insert' in Mozilla. Well ... if I could do it in Mozilla, then I had to find how to get the same functionality in IE. The problem is that the Mozilla code (of course) would not work with IE. In the end, it was three simple lines of Javascript!

win = document.getElementById("idEdit");
var sel = win.document.selection.createRange();
sel.pasteHTML(insertNode);

First, get the iFrame object that the user is typing in, then get the selection range, then simply paste the HTML/text into that selection. Simple! In fact much easier than the Mozilla code that I was looking at. Of course, finding those three lines was a real pain ... until I found this great article at WebReference. WebReference has always been an incredible site for reading and learning about HTML, CSS, and Javascript. They came though again with this article which finally gave me the details to resolve this issue. Now I'm on to adding toolbar buttons to ease the way that I insert images into a post. We'll see how quick that goes ...

Few people seem to understand what all of these viruses and malware are really about. Yes, there is a certain amount of spam that you get that is designed to then barrage you with pop-up ads ... as though you would say "Wow, what a great ad! I'm glad I get these pop-ups ... I'll have to go and spend money with these folks!"

One of the real business models behind all of this - the real people doing business in this space - are the ones that use large numbers of compromised computers at business and homes to launch DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) Attacks. These attacks are used for good ol' conventional extortion. It becomes a very simple case of "Pay me, or your Internet presence will be shut down!" The person who controls the compromised machines can easily "task" them to attack various web sites, at various times, and for various amounts of time. Reading this article, you can begin to get the idea that large scale "Internet vandelism" can quickly grow into a profitable - yet illegal - business. I recently read another article where a California 20-year-old had over 400,000 machines under his control as a massively distributed "botnet" that he could divide up and control as a virtual military force. Yes ... 400,000 machines!

A while back I had one of my Linux boxes compromised through a hole in a Open Source PHP application. The attackers were able to install and execute a small script that pulled down and ran a larger script. That one actually attached to an IRC server and waited for additional commands. I found that they then sent a command to download a DDOS script, and would then begin to run it from time to time attacking various sites. I discovered this whole scenario when I noticed that my DSL line would get swamped from time to time and isolated the traffic to that Linux box. I actually had some fun before cleaning everything up. I did patch the hole, but I modified the DDOS script to simply log information about the command and the target, but not actually generate the traffic. It was fun to review the log and see that my box was being controlled by a compromised machine in South America, and that I was being to used - at one point - to attack an on-line gambling site.

This got me thinking a lot about what we don't know that we don't know about the whole world of the Internet, spam, viruses, and malware. In addition, it reinforces the levels of indirection that can easily be created to hide the identity of the controller. But not forever!

Hackers Admit to Wave of Attacks. With their ringleader on the run, two cybervandals own up to using an army of compromised PCs to take down sites for commercial gain. By Kevin Poulsen. [Wired News]

[tags: botnet security ddos virus trojan hackers internet ]

I know that this type of identity theft is why so many people are working on identity solutions. I believe that these types of incidents are going to be on the raise for a while. What is interesting to me is that I am not sure that this can prevented except through the use of harsh penalties.

What we have is a company who specializes in outsourcing various work, and number of companies who have entrusted their customers - and their identity data - to this outsourcing entity. Within the outsourcing entity, there are employees - or this one employee - who saw the opportunity to compromise the system from the inside!

While I was working at Novell, we often saw the hacker/security breach reports that floated around, and in almost all of the cases that I could remember the biggest breaches were from the inside! We can do everything that we want to protect the identities of others, however when we have someone within our company - within our community or context - that is committed to exploiting our identity for their own purposes, there is little we can do. This becomes a fundamental breakdown within that community ... and for significant violations in the past there were severe punishments. This truly gets at the roots of the meaning of being fired!

Indian call center worker arrested. In a new case of alleged data theft, Indian police have arrested a call center employee in the outsourcing hub of Gurgaon. [CNET News.com]

[tags: identity digitalidentity fired community security ]

Today we are working hard to complete the next beta build of GoBinder 2006. It's taken a number of weeks to get it completed, however I think that it is well worth the wait. The engineers have been doing a lot of work on performance, bug fixes, and a lot of enhancements. Things are really getting a lot more solid. If we get a good build today, then we go into code lock-down for a week or so to clean-up and fix any last major bugs before doing a public release.

We'll also be releasing a new version of the GoBinder SDK which allows you to easily create new plug-ins for GoBinder, Backpack, or the new version of Plan Plus. I'm working on several new sample plug-ins for doing peer-to-peer sharing, chat, and some RSS/Blogging tools. I've got numerous other ideas ... but can only do so much right now.

I'll post later today, or Monday, when we will release the next beta on the Agilix Forums ... it ought to be within the next week.

[tags: gobinder backpack planplus plan plus gobinder 2006 agilix tabletpc tablet pc beta ]

I really like reading an article like this. These researchers are pushing the limits of our thoughts, and introduce new ideas that cause our brains to go 'huh'? In looking to create new theories that would explain our observations of the universe, these researchers are positing that there could be numerous more dimensions that exist in the universe ... and that they are too "small" for our senses to detect them!

I really like this type of thought because it challenges the traditional thinking that we have been trained to think. It forces to re-evaluate the facts that we are very primitive biological sensory machines, and that in reality it takes very little to fool us. Additionally, we fall into the traps of "conventional wisdom" which only limits what we believe is possible! Why only three dimensions? Why only six?

I believe that over the next decade we are going to begin to "see" that there is much more to the universe that we thought!

Dark matter highlights extra dimensions. University of Oxford scientists say extra spatial dimensions can be inferred from the perplexing behavior of dark matter, which behaves differently in small galaxies and large clusters of galaxies.

Three extra dimensions are altering the effects ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

[tags: space perception belief universe ]

The Wall Street Journal web site had this interactive web app for Tracking Avian Flu ... it's a good resource to see the details on the spread so far ...

[tags: wsj avian+flu birdflu H5N1 ]

I have to admit that I really like Google Maps. It's an impressive web application, and has completely altered how I use maps - and send map information - to friends, family, and coworkers. It's now so easy to quickly locate something on Google maps, get the link, and send it.

As of yesterday I started to experiment more with Microsoft's Virtual Earth, and I now think that I found something I like even better than Google Maps! I was listening to the Virtual Earth podcast from Where 2.0 and Stephen talked about the features that are there ... many of which I hadn't realized.

First, if you put in a query, it will display the results contained in the map you are viewing. As you pan the map, the query results update. You can use the compass for "game-panning" by clicking your mouse on the compass and holding the mouse button down. You can also use the Tools->Scratchpad to drag and drop locations that you want to keep. It's then easy to e-mail these to a friend.

I'm going to continue to use both, and comment on which I like better. I also am going to start to experiment with the developer APIs. I have some ideas of some data that I want to place on a map.

[tags: virtual+earth mapping Microsoft google google+maps Where+2.0 ]

It's actually too late to sign up ... but you could have had your name included on a disc being sent via a spacecraft to Pluto! Be the first one on your block to have your identity known to Plutonians? Click here to read more.

Send your name to Pluto. Want your name to be included on a list in a spacecraft headed to Pluto, and be returned to earth in 50,000 years? Click Here [The Hawker Squawker]

[tags: identity scottclemon digitalidentity pluto space ]

Anyone who has followed the entire life of Apple Computers knows that they have been involved in several User Interface disputes and lawsuits. The whole desktop idea was born from a visit to Xerox PARC. Now it looks like Creative Labs has quietly patented the way that music can be navigated using the ID3 tag information.

The interesting part is that the Apple iPod might be in violation of this patent! It will be interesting to see what comes of this ... I have to admit that I like my iPod!

After patent, Creative examines all options. Creative Technology is "evaluating all alternatives" now that it has received a patent for music player interfaces such as those found on rival Apple iPods. [Computerworld News]

[tags: apple ipod creative+technology patents ]

I sat here tonight and did some hacking on Radio again. I'm working on my RadioAtomBridge tool, but I also wanted to add some new functionality to the WYSIWYG editor ... making it easier to add tags to posts.

I added a new toolbar button, and wrote some code that allows me to enter a series of space-delimited words. Now I can simply click the button, and enter words and hit enter ... and I get the tag that you see below!

I'm not quite done with it ... but it's working. I want to change the icon of the button, and I was hoping to figure out how to insert at the caret position ... something that I just could not get working within an iFrame. Oh well ... I got closer!

[tags: scottclemon radio userland tags technorati javascript ]

Well ... while checking out Logogle, I then found:

• Toogle - displays images in text characters
  
• Woogle - will display "Words in pictures"
  

People are having *way* too much fun! :-)

Yeah ... I know about the personalized Google home page ... but check out this one! Scottoogle!

It's actually kinda funny. I found a link to Logogle ... and you can create a similar "home page" using any words. The net is always full of fun new adventures!

In the worlds of 'virtual reality' and 'augmented reality' one of the important technologies is 'head tracking' ... knowing the orientation of the users head. If you want to create an artificial world, or add an object in the field of view of the user, you often want that object to 'sit still in space' allowing the user to move around the virtual object. In the past many of the systems were based on gyros, or accelerometers, or even some 'base station' that the user is near.

In recent years there is a lot more work going on with 'video head tracking' or the use of a camera attached to the head of the user, and using software analysis of the image being sensed to determine movement and rotation. I have seen some amazing demonstrations of using this technique in the wearable computer realm, and the software is becoming more and more available.

This article caught me off guard as the develop is now using this same technique to create a virtual version of the 'wooden labyrinth' game. This is an impressive application of the technology ... all implemented on off the shelf hardware! What you can do with a Tablet PC, a Webcam, and some software!

Casey hacked a Tablet PC with a Webcam to recreate wooden labyrinth game.

I had to get this one in. Phillip Torrone wrote me and said this Tablet PC hack is something I had to check out. I'm glad I did. Casey Chesnut did /cameraFlow. I wanna see this working.

Awesome.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

I remember talking with Phil Windley about one of his ideas to leverage OnStar as a distributed sensor network. He posited that all of these cars tend to have temperature sensors, some form of GPS, and the wireless communications ... they could be used to create a nationwide temperature map.

Now here is another article about taking this further to use cell phones as the source of distributed sensor information. Very cool idea. Everyone carrying the right kind of cell phone could opt-in to providing sensor data to one or more servers. A huge variation on SETI@Home!

Let's see ... what would someone pay me to participate in this? And protect my identity ...

Saving the World With Cell Phones. Scientists work to turn mobile phones into a distributed network capable of measuring pollution levels -- and possibly detecting biological weapons before they can be launched. By Rachel Metz. [Wired News]

I really have put off working on my RadioAtomBridge for a while now. It worked for me, and that's what counts ... right? :-)

Well, over the last week, it stopped working for me ... and I was frustrated. I haven't seen any comments on the blog about it, and so I figured that it was probably ok, but the more that I looked into the problem it appears that there were two issues:

1. It appears that Blogger/Google have lived up to their promise of requiring SSL/TLS to secure the ATOM posting. This really does make sense, and I'm not against ... I just didn't want to have to edit code again. But I have, and I am now testing this new version that I worked on last night. If all goes well, I'll post a new version for people in the next day or so. Oh and another note ... this is slowly becoming the Radio Blogger Bridge again since I am slowly hardcoding some things to work with Blogger, and removing some options. I might see how easy it is to add an option for SSL/non-SSL ... but don't count on it.
   
2. I also found that Blogger will not allow you to create a post that does not include a "title". So if you post, and the title is empty, it causes a java:Null Pointer Exception on their server. Wonderful. I haven't yet fixed this, but am looking at what I might do ... maybe force a default title of the time and date?

Anyhow ... it was fun to get into Radio again ... and it was also a pain. I hate that I have not yet found a fully supported blogging tool that really does what I want it to do. But I am working on it!

Keep your eyes on the Radio Atom Bridge blog for update news!

Ok ... this is a cool web site: Pandora

I know that it might be old, but I just found it and it's pretty cool. You enter a artist or song and it begins to stream music to you that they feel fits that "sound". The best part is that you can then vote if you feel that a song applies or not ... so that your feedback continues to mold the genre of music.

I'm listening now for a bit. It would be cool if they did a "custom podcast" that I could download.

I now own an iPod ... and I can now understand a lot of the buzz about them. It really is amazing. Not the product, but the experience that Apple has created. I have to admit that I underestimated what Apple has created. I kept thinking "Yeah ... another MP3 player, but a little cooler looking." But after having it and using it for one week I am thoroughly impressed.

I'm working on ways to integrate the iPod with our product, and so I got one to begin to do the research. I wasn't sure if I would use it much or not, but I am now hooked. It is so well thought through ... again, not the iPod device, but the entire solution of iTunes and the iPod. I am now using both of these on a daily basis, and the synergy between the two products is well thought out and polished. Apple has done a lot of thinking about all of the details.

I do have a few complaints ... but they are very few. What I did like is that I can now add iCal and vCard objects to my iPod and they are accessible via the UI. I found a lot of information from this link about iPod synchronization sent to me by a friend.

Anyhow ... expect me to post more about my iPod experience ... so far it's amazing!

A friend of mine sent me these two links for some new gaming projects. Or they are new to me. :-)

Alice is a "3D Authoring system" ... I haven't yet had time to look at it. GameMaker is "a program that allows you to make exciting computer games, without the need to write a single line of code".

Both of these look interesting and I'm going to go and check them out.

While at Internet Identity Workshop 2005 I really enjoyed meeting Kim Cameron in person, along with Mike Jones ... both from Microsoft. They seem to be the current human-side of InfoCards.

I was really waiting to see a good demo of what they are up to, and I have to say that I like the overall solution. It's a very well thought through solution, and I can see why Microsoft is going to move forward with it. I'm not going to get into the good vs. bad debates ... and I'm not going to argue about the evil empire wanting to own all of our identities. Its not about that, and I can see all sorts of places where my companies can participate, and where even those in the Open Source world could jump in if they felt like doing so.

There was one interesting place where I felt that InfoCards is lacking ... and that is removing the tedious re-typing of identity information from the user. I hate entering data into forms. This is why I really like the possible Firefox/IE enhanced form-fill solution. The browser can start to enter information for me ... and only require my approval before posting.

Why I believe that InfoCards is lacking here is the example that I asked Kim about during his demonstration. I wanted to write about it here, hoping that he might offer a different perspective, or explain how I missed something.

Kim explained how I can create new "self issued" identity cards, or can have a card issued to me by a web site or other entity. What was interesting to me was that if the site wanted to issue a card to me, InfoCards would not provide any assistance in providing my information to the issuer about my identity. I understand the security choices here, however this is what I see coming ...

I go to Domino's web site ... they offer to issue me a card. I get a form and hand enter all of my information: my name, phone number, address, favorite toppings, favorite drink. I get a InfoCard from Dominos.

I then go to Wells Fargo's web site ... they offer to issue me a card. I get a form and hand enter all of my information ... again: my name, phone number, address, employment info, etc.

I then go to E*Trade's web site ... they offer to issue me a card. I get a form and hand enter all of my information ... again: my name, phone number, address, SS#, employment info, etc.

I then go to Delta Airlines web site ... they offer to issue me a card. I get a form and hand enter all of my information ... again: my name, phone number, address, seat preferences, etc.

I then go to JetBlue Airlines web site ... they offer to issue me a card. I get a form and hand enter all of my information ... again: my name, phone number, address, seat preferences, etc.



Great ... I get all these cards that are later useful ... but I have had to enter my info over and over and over again. Yes ... I hear the Liberty Alliance folks out there yelling "But we'll federate all of these companies behind the scenes so that they'll all know you!" But I DON'T WANT THAT!

Maybe it's going to take the full combination of technologies to solve this ... I use the Firefox solution (Mike ... hurry up and write that thing!) which actually fetches the form-fill values from a LID or SXIP Identity Store, and then auto-fills the form that gives me an InfoCard. Uh ... it's sounding complex ... but maybe that's it.

Oh ... sorry Drummond ... I'll have to think about where I used the i-Name in there. ;-)

Every now and then I find a really well written document on the Internet that explains a perspective very well. This site contains a very well written perspective about life, the mind, and The Meaning of Life. I really like this first page which offers a wide range of options depending on what you are after in this explanation. If you are able to truly be open to possibility, then it offers The Meaning of Life - Part II which more thoroughly explores the subject in a very deep way.

I'm very impressed with this ... and would recommend it as reading to anyone exploring the subject, and inquiring about life.

While at Internet Identity Workshop 2005 this past week, one of the interesting issues that came up several times related to name spaces. Specifically, there were numerous times where people voiced their opinions about how name spaces "should" map onto the Internet, and they used DNS as an example of how things "should" be. The problem is that they demonstrated, by their words and arguments, that they were ignorant of how DNS works. The infrastructure of the Internet has become so transparent, that it seems to me people have begun to make gross assumptions about it's architecture, and this is what is the root of many of the security and privacy issues that we are seeing today.

I was looking forward to the presentation by Drummond Reed about XRI/XDI. One of my concerns in any solid digital identity solution is the freedom to choose. I am not a big believer in compulsory community membership, but instead believe that true freedom is represented by our ability to move in and out of various communities at will, and to create new communities as we want. I really like this thought from "The Meaning of Life - Part II":

Groups also serve as symbols in the social world. Groups with different beliefs than your group provide you with viewpoints you wouldn't have otherwise considered. They also represent parts of your own mind that you are not focusing on. However, if you fear those parts of your mind, this representation can degenerate into projection, which is a bad thing.

What does this have to do with DNS and digital identity? It is that I want the freedom to NOT have one name, one identity, or one reference across all communities. Yes, there might be some places where I would benefit from some level of federation. At Internet Identity Workshop 2005 I actually saw where OpenID is intended to not only provide Single Sign-On, but also is specifically designed to cause a level of federation across web sites. I DO NOT want this to be a requirement. I am ok with it being an option. It is this flexibility that I believe will allow a particular solution to become successful and ubiquitous.

So ... I really wanted to hear more about XRI/XDI and i-Names because I specifically wanted to learn if they were going to try to "root" the entire name space into one fixed community. My real question was: "Is XRI/XDI yet another Internet 'tax' like Domain Names (DNS), where you have to pay some entity on an annual basis to use the value of the technology?" Or, was XRI/XDI simply one solution that could be "rooted" anywhere, and allow for the emergence of various communites to use the technology, and have the naming relative to the community. To my relief, the latter was true. XRI/XDI is based on specified root servers, and so naming resolution is based on what root servers you choose. In the end, what this means is that my i-Name is only relative to the community. It is not necessarily a globally unique identifier for me. It also means that any community can set up their own root servers, and create name spaces of their own. In the end this means that =drummond.reed only refers to Drummond within the context of a particular community! Bingo! I like it!

What shocked me was the almost immediate upset expressed by numerous people at the conference. They wanted these names to be absolutely globally unique . .. so that no one would ever be able to get "my" name, and there would never be any ambiguity about who was being referred to by an i-Name. I fully understand the desire, however what shocked me was the references to DNS as having this characteristic! People actually believe that DNS provides an absolute unique identifier in any context! The DNS system has become so transparent, and ubiquitous that people no longer realize that it is simply one community for naming on the Internet ... and there is nothing locking people into using it. These people do not seem to realize that I can set up my own root servers, and resolve and DNS name to any IP address that I like! In fact, I'm quite surprised that the Open Source community has not stepped up to revolt against the "Intenet tax" imposed by ICANN and re-ignited the efforts of OpenNIC, AlterNIC, and many of the other early pioneers in creating a truly free naming system on the Internet.

DNS naming only works because our servers, workstations and laptops all obey the rules, and the default configurations imposed on us by our Operating Systems, ISPs, and DHCP servers. Anyone who has installed a DNS server could easily find the default InterNIC root server list in one of the files on their system ... /var/named/named.ca on my Fedora Core 4 install. I could go into my DNS server and define "www.amazon.com" to be any IP address that I want. If you then happened to route through my DNS server (by being on my network) then you would get *my* name resolution ... not InterNICs. If I was an ISP, or even an Internet Cafe, there is little that you could do, and in fact you would most likely just trust that the DNS server you were using was trustworthy. Another common hack used by trojan horses on the net is to modify your local hosts file. Most all systems have a hosts file that will resolve naming on your local machine without requiring DNS at all! If I put an entry in your hosts file for "www.amazon.com" then it will never even use DNS to attempt to resolve the name correctly.

There is nothing in DNS that stops me from adding other root servers, and creating my own free Top Level Domains (TLDs). It is only because people just fall in line with the DNS configuration that it works. It is only because we allow our machines to automatically join the ICANN community. It is only because of our ignorance and lack of education about how all of this works that we think that DNS names are globally unique in all situations. DNS names, and all naming, are the products of specific communities or contexts. Although these communities might grow to be so large that we can't seem to see anything else, there still is the something else. I actually like it that way.

After getting home from Internet Identity Workshop 2005 there are a number of thoughts on my mind. Probably the best conversation that I had was with the group around Mike Shaver from Mozilla.org. He suggested a conversation about what client solutions could be developed to enhance digital identity ... and I love client solutions.

The value of a client solution, and the core of this conversation, is that client solutions can often be created without having to touch the server! Mike wanted to hear what might be done in the browser - Firefox - that could enhance digital identity, without any server integration. My suggestion was - enhance the form filling!

Today we are all familiar with the "form fill" capabilities in the browsers. They keep track of previous entries in text fields, and also in username/password fields, on the various web pages and web forms that we use. The browser is in a unique position to truly add value to everything that I do ... this is greasemonkey++ for digital identity. The browser could begin to keep a local or remote (e.g. LID, LDAP, etc.) store - that I can edit and alter - of all of the bits of my identity that are asked for by web sites. It could allow me to alter the values - on a per site basis - to custom tailor what I give out to anyone. It would keep track of what I gave to who. It could even incorporate functionality to automatically post to web sites when I change my local information ... like when I move to a new home, or job. Mike suggested that a repository of web forms could emerge as users develop and document the multitude of sites and their forms and how to interact with them. That is a grass-roots digital identity solution.

It seems to me that Firefox and Internet Explorer are best positioned to take on this challenge, and to begin to incorporate truly useful functionality that would remove much of the tedium of entering personal information. In addition, they could allow me to stay "in control" of what I am giving to web sites and automating much of what I do today when filling out forms. What is cool is that if Firefox did it, it would have a huge leg up even if IE failed to adopt and implement the capabilities. It could really become a killer app for Firefox.

The current implimentations are far too limited. Some of the issues that I have thought of so far are:

1. There is no easy way to view the information that was stored, to edit these values, and to manage how they are used. I want to delete a mis-typed autofill value, or change a password.
   
2. I am not prompted, on a per site basis, if I might want to use a previously entered value - even if the form uses a different field name. I want to associate a field named "phone" with the values that I have entered for "phone number"
3. When filling in a value, I want to enter a "lie" for that particular site. Hey ... I'm just being honest that I lie to some sites!
4. I want a full audit of where I have given out my information, when, what information, etc. This allows me to review what I have provided to which sites and when.
   
5. I want to specify where the browser gets and stores the information used in form filling. I want to use LID! I want to use a LDAP directory!
6. I want assistance in accumulating my digital identity over time. Bit by bit as I am asked for my identity I want it kept so that I don't have to keep typing the same info over and over again.
   

In my opinion, this type of enhancement could truly alter how we interact with web forms, and share our personal identity information. What is really cool is that this can be done today ... on the client ... without requiring any server changes, and without requiring sites to adopt new servers or technologies. Users benefit regardless of what the web sites and servers do ... imagine that!

This last weekend I was in California and spent some time with my family. My sister brought up the question about buying a laptop for teens ... my nephew has the opportunity next year to get one as a part of a school program. She asked, and then also mentioned that she has the freedom to choose ... as long as it's an Apple iBook!

I do have to say that I don't have that much issue with an iBook ... it is funny that Apple is the company that finally creates a UNIX laptop with real adoption! The issue that I do have is that I now see some real amazing value with the Tablet PC. This isn't to say that Apple will never create a Tablet PC, however they do not have one yet ...

To show my sister what a Tablet PC is like, I brought out my new HP tc4200 and showed her some of the Tablet PC enabled applications. Of course I showed her GoBinder, and then Ink Art, and the Physics Illustrator. When we called my nieces and nephews into the room to show them the Tablet they immediately thought it was cool ... and of all things they began to play the most with the Physics Illustrator. It was amazing!

The kids jumped up on the stools and started playing on the kitchen counter ... and didn't want to leave! They began to draw and experiment with physics ... and my sister was amazed.

The next day I went to visit my sister at her house, and I figured that I would throw the Tablet PC in the car ... just in case. When we arrived the kids all grabbed my son and went to play. Not too much later by nephew came over and asked "Did you bring your cool computer?" I gave him the computer again and it immediately became the center of attention. Which application? Physics Illustrator. What was amazing to me was that the group of boys *and* girls were creating shapes and objects that I would have never though of. They were using the pins, rods, ropes, and springs in all sorts of combinations.

I think that eventually Apple might understand and embrace the Tablet PC concept - primarily the digitizer and recognizer technologies - and incorporate them into a future iBook. Until then, I have to say that it is a major limitation of the Apple product line ... and is still not well understood even in the PC world.

I'm sitting here today thinking through all of the various posts that I want to write coming from Internet Identity Workshop 2005. It was a great workshop, arranged by some great people, and attended by some amazing people. It was fun to meet - face to face - some of the people that I have read on-line and e-mailed with.

I've got thoughts on LID, OpenID, Sxip, and InfoCards ... all of which I'll write about in the upcoming days. I also was glad to meet other people there and engage in conversations about other software solutions, hosted services, and open source projects.

If only I had a lot more time to focus on this space ... I'm committed to add some very cool identity management and social networking to our GoBinder products ...

If you have not yet read Accelerando I suggest that you purchase or download (Yes! He has a free version that you can download!) a copy. I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson's SnowCrash and Diamond Age, and this is yet another a fun book to read. Charles Stross has done an awesome job of extrapolating today's technology and research into a great possible future.

Go get it ... read it. Welcome to the future ...

Well ... I kept playing around with Radio prior to the Internet Identity Workshop 2005 and all of the sudden it began to work! No idea why ... maybe it knew that I had my first two Drupal sites up and running ... :-)

Of course, it did me NO good at IIW, since the wireless network completely sucked and was unusable. Now that the workshop is over, I'm on my own network where connectivity exists.

For all of the people who think that "bandwidth and connectivity will be everywhere", I'd like to believe the story, but this workshop was the second example in the last month where a "high-tech" conference was unable to live up to the promise.

Ok ... sorry for the complaining ... now I'll get to my blog posts!

I am now committed to locate a new blogging tool ... although I know that the search is going to be tough. For years I have used Radio from userland Software, however it keeps giving me fits and I have now been unable to get a blog post to "post" for weeks.

Radio has some incredible features that I exploit, and I have grown so used to how to get things done I really like it. If only it would work consistently.

I'm doing this as a test to see if threatening to leave this piece of software might cause it to work again ...

Who knows ...

Carver Mead is an amazing speaker ... I always love to hear him speak. Here at Telecosm he is the after dinner speaker, and the title of his talk is Science and Society: timing the crests and troughs of opportunity in life and science.

His talk started with a conversation about the vacuum tube, and how Edison created the foundation. He elaborated and explained the next series of experiments with vacuum tubes, and how they progressed, and eventually how this research led to the creation of the transistor. From there he progressed into a discussion about the discovery of the first superconductor. What makes his story telling so amazing is his presentation of the subject, his in-depth knowledge of the subject, and his ability to communicate so clearly.

It's funny to hear his mild disdain for Bohr and others who, in his words, discouraged alternative views of quantum physics. He jokes about how students today are not taught collective quantum systems, but instead a strange model of photons. He refers to his "little green book" as the source of learning about collective quantum effects. His little green book is titled: Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism ... I'm going to have a buy a copy.

He closed his presentation by referring to the few people, from his perspective, that are truly thinking again about physics at a different level ... from a different perspective ... instead of just blindly following the directions that were laid out decades ago.

I haven't been blogging ... since it was just too much of a pain. The wireless network here at Telecosm - of all places - was a complete joke this year! I've taken lots of notes, and will post when I get someplace that there is decent bandwidth ... like back in my room.

The guys from Tropos Networks were supposed to be providing wireless, however what they provided was crap. I had to argue with them on Tuesday to get them to even get it working ... and then it has been up and down for the last two days. When it was working, the bandwidth sucked.

It's amazing in this day and age, to be at a high-end conference that is talking about the Internet, and not be able to get high-speed wireless Internet access.

If I come next year, I'll be bringing all of my own equipment to provide wireless for the attendees!

Chris Anderson was up next ... I saw him speak at eTech a while back. I actually sat next to him at eTech before he spoke ... although I didn't know it until he got up to speak.

He gave his Long Tail presentation, and there were some updated details. It's a insightful presentation that talks about one way that the Internet is allowing more companies to exploit the "long tail" ... the vast market that exists outside of the high-volume markets.

As he progressed through his thoughts, he brought up his Set of Three Forces ... something that I had forgotten:

• Force 1: Democratize the production
• Force 2: Lower the cost of consumption
• Force 3: Connect consumers

As he talked about the first force, I got sidetracked as I explored the companies that he brought up - Flickr, Typepad, GarageBand, Movie Maker, Lulu. I had heard of the first three, couldn't find the fourth, and started to read about the last one - Lulu.

I like to think about this in the context of Agilix Labs and what we can offfer to students. Force 1 and Force 3 seem to be the easiest to pursue.

I haven't been to Telecosm in years ... the last year that I registered was 2001 when 9/11 occurred and caused a lot of conferences to change their schedules. I'm here this year to catch up on the capitalist view of the world ... Forbes conferences are always impressive to me.

George Gilder did a brief introduction and kicked things off. He immediately went into a short story of how he met Ray Kurzweil ... and then invited him to the stage.

Ray told the story of his Telecosm introduction of The Age of Spiritual Machines. For anyone who has not read this book, I highly recommend it. Ray went on to explain how this led to his indepth research and study of the trends that he outlined, and how he is now using this as a foundation to forecast future trends ... 3, 5, and even 10 years out.

He spoke about how his research is getting very good at predicting longer range trends with surprising accuracy ... even being very conservative. His new book - being released today - is called The Singularity is Near. I got my copy here at the conference, and even had it signed by Ray after the evening session at the fireside chat. He indicated that information is becoming the most important aspect of computing.

It's funny seeing Ray just weeks after Accelerating Change 2005 ... he's giving (of course) almost the exact same presentation. It's always cool to hear though ... the constant reminder of exponential growth. His graphs including showing the Mass Use of Inventions - the World Wide Web being adopted far faster than the cell phone.

He had a great chart that showed the growth in supercomputing - measured by calculations per second (CPS) - and said that the estimates of the power of the human brain range from 10^14 to 10^16 CPS. His estimates on when we would reach that point were confirmed as being sooner when a group in Japan just annouced last week that they will attain 10^16 Calculations per second by 2010!

He next went to The Biotechnology revolution: the intersection of biology with information technology. He talked about the research into biology and what is now possible with new technolgies. RNA interference is a newer technique to turn-on and turn-off individual genes, and is now being widely tested and moving towards human trials. United Theraputics (Nasdaq: UTHR) is one company that Ray is involved with doing research in this area.

As Ray wrapped up, George and Ray went into a brief chat on stage. It was interesting to hear the difference in questions here at Telecosm. They were more economic based, and global society based - Where are the profits going to be made? Will America keep up? Will this solve global war issues? How will people deal with this radical growth? How will this be regulated? A great opening night!