Technology Futures

I am constantly surprised at the number of corporate phone systems that ask you to enter your account number, and then as soon as you get a human (if you get a human), they ask you to enter the very same number again.

Disney intends to start fingerprinting inmates, er, I mean "guests" at Disneyworld. The company claims it needs to do this to prevent "ticket fraud," but this is rubbish. There are other ways to combat ticket fraud that don't include collecting biometric data. Biometric fingerprint data allows the company to uniquely identify everyone who visits, forever. It is the ultimate in marketing research and analysis, and don't think they won't try to sell it or use it for other purposes.

Henrico County, Virginia, has garnered national attention for its program of giving laptops to kids once they reach sixth grade. But if the school system is not prepared to truly transform the teaching and learning process, the results may not be what we expect. In this article, at least one mother made her daughter give the laptop back because it had become a time waster for the girl and her grades had dropped.

Just when you thought Google can't possibly get any creepier, they come up with something so far out there your jaw just drops open. According to the Register, Google's techies have been playing with the microphones on your computer. They have figured out how to turn them on and listen to the conversation in the room, and/or what you are watching on TV. Why would they want to do this? So they can better "understand" you and what kinds of advertisements to show you.

This article demonstrates how easy it is for others to snoop around in your personal affairs if you like to use "free" services like Google Calendar. The author, simply by clicking on calendar items and using the information to dig up additional detail, was quickly able to identify where a woman lived and when she would be out of the house (handy for burglars).

Swedish-Finnish telecom company TeliaSonera has started selling hybrid phones that will automatically make phone calls via the Internet when in range of a WiFi hotspot, and use the normal cellphone network when not in a hotspot. Some other dual mode phones have been available, but this is the first phone (manufactured by Samsung) that will switch automatically between the two. The firm is targeting in home use first, which is clever, because we make a lot of calls from home.

The owner of 26 Massachusetts and Rhode Island papers is thinking about selling the whole lot and simply publishing on the Web, where he says ad revenues are higher. It's about time somebody in the newspaper business acknowledged that putting gobs of ink on dead trees and tossing the finished product onto people's driveways is not the best way to do things anymore.

This new Skype-compatible VoIP phone is cordless, which fixes a limitation that has always made Skype and other Internet phone services clumsy--you had to be tethered to your computer. With this phone, a little widget plugs into a USB port and you can wander around the house or office with the cordless handset. As more phones like this become available, it will drive even higher use of VoIP.

This CNet article describes how telephone and cable companies are responding to competition with better customer service. As cable companies roll out voice services and telephone companies are slowly rolling out TV service, we are getting a glimpse of what happens when these companies have to worry about keeping their customers--they treat them better.

This article discusses Intel's belief that wireless networks in the home are inadequate for high definition television. The highly touted 802.11g, with a theoretical maximum bandwidth will only deliver about 22 megabits under the best of conditions in an in-home network, and performance could be much worse. In other words, it will barely handle a single channel of HD TV--as long as you or any one in the family is not doing anything else on the network.

David Strom has a great article about the challenges of keeping up with all our gadgets and communications channels. I have to agree with him...we have so many ways to communicate....email, phone, cellphone, instant messaging, SMS, blogs, RSS, the Web, Skype and other free VoIP services that it is hard to get any work done.

Dell has dropped out of the MP3 music player market as another casualty of the iPod juggernaut. The iPod has, as I predicted, become a platform, because it does much more than play music.

The gold of the Knowledge Economy is dark fiber. Those that have it have something of great value. Those that don't are in trouble. It is really a currency of sorts, but much better than gold. Gold's value fluctuates up and down, but fiber's value will continue to go up indefinitely. How? As the network electronics that light dark fiber improve, you can expect to be able to continually increase the capacity of dark fiber strands, creating value each time.

YouTube is beginning to change politics, as the rising new Internet service is making it easy for anyone to make video available. Short video clips with political messages are chipping away at another Old Media monopoly, the political ad. Back in the old days, as far back as a year ago, you had to have a big budget to produce and air a political ad. Limited time spots for such ads on broadcast and cable TV made them expensive.

A consortium of communities in Michigan figured out that building their own fiber network would save them millions in taxpayer funds, but if you read the article, you get the distinct impression that Verizon believes the purpose of government is to ensure that Verizon never has any competition.

Apparently, Verizon believes government should never try to save money and never try to do things differently if there is any impact on Verizon's bottom line.

Here is a story about a woman who the the Director of R&D for a high tech multimedia firm. She lives in Winthrop, Washington, and sleeps in a teepee. Now I know many of you will probably stop reading right there, but this article highlights a growing trend and the power of fiber to change rural communities. From the article, here is a description of Winthrop:

Logitech has introduced an integrated desk set: it is a completely wireless keyboard with wireless mouse, wireless headset, and wireless speakerphone. It is a neat design, but I remain wary of Bluetooth accesories, especially wireless headsets. Although Bluetooth is a low power system, I have never liked the idea of gigahertz radio frequencies going directly into my brain all day long. Ditto with cellphones and cordless phones.

If you have not tried the Snap search engine lately, you should take a look. Snap has added site preview screens, which will be familiar to those of you that use RSS readers, but may not be for others.

One of the most tedious parts of using a search engine is slogging through all the links that are not really what you want. Snap now puts up a preview of the site right in the browser window, so you can quickly see if it looks like what you are looking for. It is one more example of how far behind Google is falling in the search engine wars.

Many of us spend too much time sitting in front of a computer, often while seated in a poorly designed chair and/or a poorly designed desk space. Here are some tips for avoiding repetitive strain injury (RSI) and/or surgery.

Okay, the title of this article is a bit misleading. There will be no pictures of robots exposing their system memory or putting their power supplies on public view. Wired reports on a "robotic" car park system in Hoboken, New Jersey that trapped a bunch of cars in the lot for days. It is one of these systems that optimizes the space available for cars by eliminating ramps. Cars are gobbled up by the machine and stuffed into high rise storage slots.