Technology Futures

It is a bit of a stretch to call this gadget a "robot," but since it comes from the iRobot folks, who pioneered the robot vacuum cleaner, it is hardly surprising. I don't think this gutter cleaning "robot" has much more intelligence than a remote control toy, but it is still a pretty good idea.

Anyone who has cleaned gutters knows what an unpleasant and potentially dangerous chore it is. With this device, you set your ladder against one end of the gutter, drop in the Looj (tm), and off it goes, crawling its way down your gutter and using a rotating paddle to eject all the leaves and trash out of the gutter. Once it reaches the end, you signal it to come back, and it backs up so you can remove it and go to the next section of gutter.

It would be most useful with homes that have long stretches of uninterrupted gutter. If you have a house with a lot of gables (and by extension, lots of short lengths of gutter), this won't be nearly as useful.

Fights over WiMax spectrum are slowing deployment of WiMax. The FCC, which manages the WiMax spectrum, has been renewing the existing spectrum, called EBS (Educational Broadband Services). The problem is that the EBS spectrum licenses, in many cases, belong to local educational institutions. Sprint wants to build a national WiMax network and thinks that the FCC should require the schools not using the spectrum to give it up.

To make things more confusing, Clearwire, another WiMax provider, has taken the route of simply negotiating licenses directly with the schools, who make some money from something many of them were not using.

The end result will be extensive overbuilding of WiMax networks, which raises costs and makes it more difficult for users to roam from network to network. Wireless broadband operators have never been able to work out roaming agreements the way the cellular industry did. Cellphones did not become popular until roaming agreements were in place, meaning your phone would work pretty much everywhere. Today, in most airports, as one example, there are often two to five WiFi providers, and paying for service on one operator's network does not let you roam on any other operator's network.

The bigger problem here is overbuilding. With several different companies all trying to build wireless broadband networks in a community, costs go up for all users because of duplication of infrastructure. The solution is for the community to build a multi-service network that allows multiple providers to use a single network. Users gain the benefits of true competition, and prices are lower because there is no duplication of infrastructure. The FCC could play a valuable role here by encouraging the development of multi-service networks, but instead, continues to try to put band-aids on outmoded policies.

BoingBoing has a short article about a dumb crook that stole an iMac. What the crook has not realized is that the computer, which has a built in camera, is running a little program called Flickrbooth, which automatically takes pictures and uploads them to a Flickr photo account.

So the Flickr account now has some nice pictures of the crook, complete with high resolution images of tatoos on his upper body. This guy should enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame on the Internet, because it is not likely to last long.

Sometimes the technology wins one for the rest of us.

A lot of companies are frustrated at Apple's domination of the portable music and video market via the popular iPod, which has about 80% of the market for such devices. NBC recently announced it is pulling its TV programs from the iTunes store, and now Universal is going to distribute its music catalogue via SpiralFrog, which will compete directly with the iTunes store.

SpiralFrog and Universal have decided that the music it sells will NOT play on iPods. Apparently ego and stupidity have combined in some entirely new way at Universal, where they apparently think they can simply walk away from 80% of the market. Why would anyone buy music from Universal if it won't play on your music player and can't be stored with the rest of your music in the iTunes software on your computer?

One of the enduring myths of the iPod is that it will not work with music that is not purchased from the iTunes store. This is not true, and never has been. Another myth is that music purchased from iTunes won't play on anything other than an iPod. This is also not true, as you can simply burn a CD and play the music in any device that reads music CDs.

Apple gets beat up for its market share, but it actually has done a better job than most other online music vendors of trying to be fair to its customers. The music industry is still struggling with the sea change in the distribution of music, and the SpiralFrog/Universal partnership is yet another attempt by music executives to control customers. It is not likely to work.