Illusory Follies

Think Photoshopping people out of pictures is pretty high-tech? This video-processing technology is amazing… (from Centripetal Notion)

… at least in some cases.

It’s easy to store information on your cell phone by typing some text in. It’s more advanced to be able to send text messages. But what about providing a “universal” interface (meaning a web services interface) that can receive text and makes text available?

This is what Twitter does. I wasn’t very impressed when I first heard about it a while back because it seemed so… simplistic. Anyone can write a simple database with users and allow them to post text messages. But I was missing the point.

I can now use my cell phone to send a message to Twitter (there’s a program called MobileTwitter that I just downloaded and installed. This text messages pretty much instantly wings its way to the Twitter servers. From there, people can subscribe to my “stream” of messages using desktop-based clients (I use Spaz on my MacBook and my Windows PC). However, I’m not stuck using one companies application — all I need to do is poll the web service. A simple curl call will easily retrieve my latest Twitter message

curl -u andrewflanagan:mypassword http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline
/andrewflanagan.xml?count=1 -s -o /var/twitter/andrewflanagan.xml

and a few lines of PHP will make it displayable on my web page:

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement('/var/twitter/andrewflanagan.xml', 0, true);
$status = $xml->status->text;

Alternatively I could have the PHP script directly call Twitter but I ran into some problems since it takes longer to load the pages each time someone visits and Twitter unfortunately limits requests to 70/hr which results in ugliness when I get too many hits on my site. So instead I set up a cron job that runs every 5 minutes (using the curl call above) and updates the locally-stored XML file.

But anyway, the point of this is that you can easily define new interfaces for entering, receiving, and displaying text. It’s simplistic, yes. But it means that on my way back from work (in the car) I can update the front page of my blog with a message using my cellphone. I can also be pulled over by a state trooper. They have no appreciation for the depth and usefulness of this technology!

Well, the high-def video format war is over. Blu-ray is the winner. With Toshiba and now Microsoft pulling out from supporting HD-DVD, we can finally feel at ease buying a video player. Interestingly, the DAY of the announcement from Toshiba (February 19) I got an email offering me a $89 HD-DVD player with 7 free titles! Someone’s triyng to clear some stock… I’m glad to see the format resolved and looking forward to my Blu-ray purchase (coming soon!).

Anyone out there reading this purchased a Blu-ray player yet? If so, any details — recommendations? I’m considering getting a Playstation 3 and using the built-in Blu-ray player on that. We’ll see though. Currently the electronic focus at our house is on my wife’s brand new, high-tech, sewing/embroidery machine. It’s pretty spiffy and can create some high-def embroidery patterns with ease!

I’ve been looking for a multi-function (print, scan, copy, fax) printer for the last few months. I’ve been really disappointed with what I’ve found.

What I want to be able to do is the following:

• Print documents from any modern operating system across the network
• Scan documents/pictures from an auto-document feeder or a flatbed and in some way have this data end up on whatever system on the network I want
• Copy documents/pictures by standing at the printer unit itself
• Receive faxes and send faxes from anywhere on the network

I know that there are problems with some of these — specifically Scanning and Faxing. I see multiple issues with these:

1. Storage (where does the scanned or faxed document get stored physically?)
2. Notification (even if a fax is stored, how does a user know when it arrives?)
3. Configuration (the above should ideally be accomplished without configuring anything on the end-systems)

I see a solution but I’ve not found a sub $1000 printer that accomplishes it. Some of the high-end “counter-top”-sized systems (that run $10,000 and above) have something similar but are usually way overblown.

• Storage would be provided by flash memory (something as simple as 1-16GB Compact Flash card).
  • Sharing of this storage would be accomplished by using a Samba server running on an embedded Linux kernel (similar to the sort of functionality that currently exists on home routers).
  • Samba shares would be exposed to Linux, Mac, and Windows systems by using something like Avahi (or whatever the Linux version of ZeroConf is that works best at the time). Bonjour could be used on the client end if you’re running Apple to easily see these auto-configured shares but it would have to be installed specially on Windows clients.
• Notification could be accomplished via email. If a simple SMTP setup is configured once on the printer unit itself, it could automatically route emails to a specific user, multiple users, or different groups depending on the fax number used or other variables. There are many other alternatives using things like the XMPP or even SMS for notification.
• Configuration — as mentioned this would work like magic on a Mac and slightly less magically (and unfortunately much less beautifully) on a Windows PC. Any system on the network could access recently scanned or faxed documents or perhaps be only restricted by a username/password (heck — even tie it into an LDAP server if you’ve get centralized directory services). Basically, this largely gets rid of the need for client software other than just the printer driver itself. In reality, I’m not clear why we even need a specialized print driver when a web interface (again, hosted on the device) could likely provide any custom features (software-based maintenance, looking at the queue, etc.)

So why isn’t it out there?

Vertical Farming is a neat, futuristic approach to producing food within urban environments. I’m not terrified of running out land and of populations booming too much nor am I running scared of global warming or cooling or whichever it is but I still think that the idea is very neat.

I think it could actually be made a cost saver in large cities. The idea is sort of similar to terracing unusable land to make it usable but instead of making land flat, you stack it. I really do think that the answer to a lot of “society’s woes” is that these things will at some point become cheaper than doing them the “old” way. I just see this one as becoming worthwhile sooner than some of the other wacky ideas. So I guess I view this as more of an investment in new technology than just philanthropy to support these projects.

The reality is that shipping and transportation is becoming more and more difficult and massively increases the price of products. I’ve not seen it mentioned, but why not have the first floor be the “fresh produce” grocery store?