wordbit

A free ride to US content? Sorry, no.

The world wants a piece of America. Not the real America mind you, with its ugly highways, guns, and inequalities, but fantasy America. US entertainment is a highly desirable commodity that is denied even to international netizens. Access to services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, and Spotify is stymied by an invisible Copyright wall where the wrong IP Address leaves you out in the cold.

Fortunately, there are ways to tunnel through that wall and get a piece of that US action. Two common methods are through a proxy or through a VPN. A proxy (such as hidemyass) allows you to piggyback on a US server so that your connection requests are made using an IP address originating in the US. A VPN (such as proXPN) encrypts your data by emulating a LAN network over the internet.

Fortunately, there are many free proxies out there (VPNs not so much, although proXPN is free). Unfortunately, these free editions have severe bandwidth restrictions. This limitation means that your dreams of streaming all that juicy US Netflix content can die right now. Unless you’re willing to pay for unlimited bandwidth. As in real life, there is no free ride to America, but money can buy you anything. 

Find your niche… in the washroom

The New York Times recently reported that 91 percent of Americans aged 28-35 have used their mobile devices while on the toilet. Disturbingly, 20 percent of men and 13 percent of women have participated in a conference call from the john. Never before has the MUTE key played such an indispensable role.

Yet, while these statistics may leave you shaking your head in disgust (or not, if you’re sitting on the throne while you read this), some companies are taking the initiative. Statistics can sometimes help you find a niche market, as the start-up HzO is no doubt counting on. They’re developing a nanotechnology coating that will waterproof your phone. They were a big hit at CES, and are sure to make a splash in the industry this year.

I just wish they would be more honest in their marketing material. They talk about accidentally jumping in a pool with your phone in your pocket, or having an outdoor conversation during a torrential rain storm. The likelihood of these events happening are actually very minuscule. Why not just come out and say it - we are there to help when your phone goes plop. Full stop.

What kind of phone do you have?

I was reading an interview with Limor Fried, the alpha-geek who founded the DIY electronics company Adafruit Industries, when I was struck by one of her answers: 

          What kind of phone do you have?
          I do not own a cell phone; however, I have designed
          a cell-phone jammer.

Limor’s response was intriguing to me because of its dichotomy between technological know-how and an anti-technology stance. Here is an ubergeek who could reverse engineer a cellphone, yet who claims not to own one.

Yet, if you think about it, why is there this lust in our consumer culture for phones? Granted, it makes life easier for a lot of people, but there’s more to it.

Some people feel a sense of shame if they don’t own a cellphone. Or even more telling, a twinge of embarrassment if they own a cellphone, but not a smartphone. Look at the poor kid who digs out a quarter and makes a furtive call on the payphone in the mall. The mom who cries inside because the other yummy mummies are tracking their kids’ progress on their iPhone apps while she scrawls in a scruffy notebook. And God help you if you’re a phoneless geek.

Perhaps it is not Limor’s answer which is unsettling, but the question itself. What kind of society have we become when the question that measures geek cred is “What kind of phone do you have?”

Rise of the book thieves

I love Apple. Especially Apple hardware. And I’m glad they’re doing so well. But one area where they really messed up is in e-book pricing.

Steve Jobs wasn’t an avid reader. According to Isaacson’s biography, he just read the same Zen Buddhist book over and over. That kind of explains what happened. You may have heard the sordid tale, or read about it in the biography:

Amazon was first in the e-book market and established a wholesale model where no e-book sold for more than $9.99 (Perfect. I remember those halcyon days). Then Apple came along and realized they couldn’t compete using the wholesale model (which they had successfully used for music with their 99c tracks). So they told the book publishers they could set their own price. All the publishers had to do was give Apple 30 percent.

Oh, and one more thing. If they sold a book through Apple, they couldn’t sell the same book for less money on Amazon.

So, the publishers went to Amazon and demanded the same deal, or they would pull all their e-books out. Amazon had no choice.

And that brings us to today, where you either pay $28 for an e-book, or buy the same book - except a real, physical book - at a bookstore for $9.99. Obviously the physical version costs far more to produce and distribute, which is why consumers are ticked off.

The resulting anti-trust lawsuits are going to stretch on for years. In the meantime, armed with Calibre and BitTorrent, ordinary book worms are discovering the enticing world of piracy. Text files are really small and quick to download, unlike those 7-gigabyte HD movies that take all week. You can literally download thousands of stolen books onto your kindle in one shot - more than enough reading material for several lifetimes. Sure, it’s almost impossible right now to find that obscure title you’re looking for - but with enough momentum, that’s going to change.

Unless the major players get their act together and start looking at the situation from a consumer’s point of view, rather than an accountant’s one, publishers are quickly going to be mired in the same rampant piracy that almost decimated the music industry.

No serious reader wants to steal from the authors they love. But they don’t like being ripped off either. Let’s fix this before it’s too late.

Virtual Windows 7 - free!

Here’s a recent offering that didn’t get much press as it should have, but it’s really cool. As you may know, OnLive is a cloud-computing company that allows you to play games on your underpowered computer by streaming the content to your screen. All the grunt work is done on their servers.

They’ve now expanded into the enterprise market by offering a free virtual Windows 7 environment. You can use the full versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint online and save your data in the cloud (2 gigs free). Right now, the OnLive Desktop is for the iPad only, but is coming soon to PCs, Macs, Android, and even TVs. As all the processing power is handled on their end, you could presumably run the virtual Windows on any crappy computer with a decent Internet connection.

The trend towards OS cloud integration and a more seamless user experience in cloud computing is most welcome and makes Moore’s Law increasingly irrelevant. So hold on to that old 486 PC you were about to toss out. It could soon be given a new lease on life.

Pirate’s sanctuary?

Last month, the Swedish government recognized The church of Kopimism as an official religion. The central tenet of this church is that the exchange of information is holy. The church has its own constitution, symbols, and even hymns. Worship consists of a digital service in which files are shared. Of course, to avoid litigious persecution, participants in “worship” must encrypt their traffic.

Now, you may have gotten sufficiently caught up in the recent SOPA and PIPA protests to think this is fantastic. Except, it isn’t. A free and open Internet is a noble cause, absolutely. Free = good. But listen: piracy = bad. When does the free and open exchange of information cross over into base thievery? Who knows anymore. The debate over creative ownership and copyright rages on and a complete solution continues to be elusive.

But one thing I do know - The church of Kopimism (Copy+Me+ism - get it?) is a thinly-veiled mockery. Take a look at this video as a Christ-like figure bathed in an eerie blue glow shows us how to perform the sacred Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V cut and paste gestures:

These guys make The Jedi Church and The Church of Scientology seem mildly credible. A pirate’s sanctuary? More like a desperate joke that undermines the whole open movement.

The real textbook dilemma

Yesterday, Apple announced the arrival of interactive textbooks on it’s new iBooks2 platform, as well as an online course delivery system through iTunesU. Thus fulfilling Steve Jobs’ dream to take on the textbook industry and relieve students everywhere of their back-breaking packs filled with dead trees.

A digital textbook seems like a great idea, but that’s where it ends - just a nice idea. The reality is that our educational landscape is so uneven and broken that the idea of iPads for every students seems a pipe dream at best. This sobering editorial says it best - the devil is in the hardware. Who’s going to pay for all these iPads? And who will replace them when they inevitably break? Can families afford it?

It seems that a few pilot projects in the richest schools is about all we can hope for, leaving poorer school districts drooling in envy. If you’ve seen the excellent documentary Waiting for Superman, then you’ll know that the education system, in the US at least, has a lot of catching up to do before entering the digital age.

What about university? I can really see the value of digital textbooks shining here - but not on the iPad. Students have enough to distract them without the temptation of tweeting or playing Angry Birds during that boring biology lecture. Perhaps it would work if there was some sort of classroom equivalent of “Airplane Mode” where you could lock the iPad into textbook mode. I can’t see that ever taking off with students though.

Am I being a bit of a Neanderthal? Perhaps. But I was educated with a blunt pencil and the back of a ruler and turned out just fine.

Transparency - the new aesthetic

One of the coolest kinds of fictional tech has to be the transparent window, as seen in Minority Report, and by extension, the transparent tablet, à la Avatar. How long will it be before these futuristic interfaces become a reality? Not too long at all, it seems.

Science looks to science fiction when identifying an aesthetic that resonates with people. And it’s becoming apparent that the transparent touch user interface is the next big thing. At CES this year, Samsung showcased the Smart Window:

With space at a premium in our shrinking condos, a window that doubles as a screen seems insanely logical. I can also see touch applications with HUD displays in vehicles and airplanes happening really soon. And how about the transparent tablet? Samsung has that covered too, as seen in this concept video:

Seem far-fetched? Well, the technology, the flexible AMOLED display on show here, is very real - and coming to a future near you.

Dry and dorky

I came upon this recently - perhaps you’ve seen it in your neighbourhood? Nah, didn’t think so. This atrocious umbrella is a fantastic example of great engineering, but poor design. Terrible, insufferable design.

The Nubrella has a spec sheet that would make a meteorologist drool: aerodynamic, ergonomic, hands-free, and will never invert in a hurricane-force gale. But the trade-off is that you are transformed into a giant bobble head.

Nubrella, you can shower me with pictures of fashionable models sporting this monstrosity all you want but that will never impute a sense of style to your product. You can now join Vibram Five Fingers and full-body mosquito nets in the pantheon of most embarrassing trends of the 21st century.