Connecting the Dots

Brain not like a computer...it's continuous

Cognitive science is continuing to deliver compelling and intriguing new data that makes one ponder. This Cornell news release highlights some very interesting new research: "The theory that the mind works like a computer, in a series of distinct stages, was an important steppingstone in cognitive science, but it has outlived its usefulness, concludes a new Cornell University study. Instead, the mind should be thought of more as working the way biological organisms do: as a dynamic continuum, cascading through shades of grey."

This paragraph was the essence of the study: "In his study, 42 students listened to instructions to click on pictures of different objects on a computer screen. When the students heard a word, such as "candle," and were presented with two pictures whose names did not sound alike, such as a candle and a jacket, the trajectories of their mouse movements were quite straight and directly to the candle. But when the students heard "candle" and were presented with two pictures with similarly sounding names, such as candle and candy, they were slower to click on the correct object, and their mouse trajectories were much more curved. Spivey said that the listeners started processing what they heard even before the entire word was spoken."

Isn't that really parallel computing of some kind? While reading this news release, I immediately thought about how a robot built with multiple sensors and parallel processors -- all aware of each other and in sync managed by the primary "brain" CPU -- would more quickly make decisions of this type and could be set up to outperform a human on a task like the one in this study. I understand the independent yet parallel processing each of us do (touch a hot stove and the autonomic nervous system processing has an immediate reaction pulling your hand off without "main CPU" involvement) and would bet that each of these processes could be boiled down to an "on" "off" binary-like state.

YAHAHRiFPP (Yet Another "Hey, Apple Has Released iTunes for Podcasting" Post)

Today is the day: Apple has released iTunes 4.9 with podcasting support. It's a big deal -- not just for the new opportunity it presents for hundreds or thousands of people -- but that the company which dominates the mp3/music player space has embraced podcasting.

I've already had several conversations with people about their ideas for shows...but they are all concerned about quality. Why? If you download the new iTunes 4.9 and look at the content that Apple has chosen to place front-n-center (Disney, ABC News, National Public Radio, etc.) along with "indie" shows (Dawn-n-Drew, 5 Minutes with Wichita, Gillmor Gang) you can see that Apple has opted to go with mainstream content providers as well as with clearly the top-rated independent shows.

While they *do* provide a "publish your podcast" link, they undoubtedly reserve the right to screen potential candidates for inclusion in the podcast section of the iTunes music store. Will this be a form of censorship? Will Apple only take, say, the top 50 shows? What will happen when there are maybe thousands of shows in a genre? How will people even find shows let alone download or subscribe to them? How will people -- whose shows become hits -- handle the resulting bandwidth costs? Will there be a bittorrent download option?

To me, Apple jumping in to this raises-the-bar in a good way so that those of us who have the talent, produce quality product and, most importantly, focus in on volume content that people care to listen to, will have an opportunity to build an audience and possibly monetize these efforts over time.

This is VERY exciting.

CTD podcast for June 26, 2005

A spirited group of 22 leaders from a diverse group of organizations convened in Redondo Beach, California June 20-23, 2005. The goal? To successfully complete the Spencer/Shenk/Capers & Associates (SSCA) "Leadership Process: Motivating Achievement" workshop led by Dan Collett and Susan Peirce of SSCA.

Partially based on the work of the late David McClelland of Harvard, the workshop focused on providing participants with a deep and intuitive understanding of motives that drive each of us (achievement, affiliation and power/influence). Most enlightening was our receiving our own "motive profile" which had been measured from data gathered by our completion of pre-workshop assessments.

This adventure made a quite an impact on me and I briefly discuss it in this week's podcast. This weeks show is an 11 minute, 41 second overview of the impact it made on me and some thoughts about how it could impact you too.


Download MP3 File

The Operating System is Dead

I've posted in the past about my daily use of WindowsXP, Linux and my preferred OS, Mac OS X. When I think about what I'm interested in doing with any of my computers (photo work; video & audio editing; print/web/blog publishing; using my iPod; surfing the Web) I realize that these tasks simply perform better under Mac OS X. It's also a more elegant OS with a "fit and finish" that is far superior to Windows or every Linux distro I've ever experienced.

I'll admit that there is more software for Windows but I will submit that I strongly believe an OS choice no longer matters -- and that the OS is dead (or at the very least a moot point). With the release of alternative applications (like NeoOffice in the screenshot at left) it makes using a non-Windows OS a lot easier for those that need to interoperate with users of alternative OS'es (like Windows). The release of NeoOffice for Mac OS X provides a free, robust alternative to Microsoft Office -- arguably the killer app required for cross-over OS use -- and makes it easier to use the platform *you* want vs. the ones your friends tell you that you should buy.

What other reason is there to state the OS no longer matters and is dead? Just about anything interesting and meaningful is available on the Web and, thank God, people have become smart enough (most of them anyway) to actually embrace open standards vs. tying their offerings to a specific OS-centric model.

Don't agree about the "interesting and meaningful" quip above? Well then...how often do you buy a piece of software that's standalone for your computer? If you *do* use a piece of software, how many do you use in isolation on your computer vs. those that gain A LOT of additional value through an internet connection (consider Quicken and the value it gets from a 'net connection)? Would you buy a multimedia CD-ROM of the Encyclopedia Britanica or use one available via the Web that can be instantly updated when information changes? How about news? Blogging? Collaborating with family and friends on something like Yahoo Groups?

I rarely buy software anymore but spend money monthly on Web-based services. How about you?

Blogging on the Go

Good article in Business Week about "Blogging on the Go". Though mobile blogging (moblogging) and email entry to a blog (post title is the "Subject" line and the body of the email is the post itself) have been around for some time, it's the combination of blog hosters, image uploading, and on-the-fly posting that has become easier over the last 12 months or so.

My blogging provider (Typepad) is mentioned as a "not so easy" site to accept moblog photos from a cell phone. To that I say, "who cares?" since the immediacy of crappy mobile phone images seems to be minimally interesting at best.

Still, I recall hearing a lecture about the power of moblogging, blogging, text messaging and all the digital tools now in the hands of mere mortals. The setup was like this:

"Imagine you're standing on a sidewalk on a nice sunny day waiting for an event to take place. You have your mobile phone in hand to take a snapshot of President John F. Kennedy's motorcade wending its way through Dealy Plaza. You notice dozens and dozens of like-minded citizens...along with many more dozens of photographers, people holding video cameras, and even some guy called a "podcaster" with a portable audio field recording device."

How would that have changed our analysis of that fateful November day in 1963? How will future events be changed because of the recording capability we have at our fingertips today?

The Prisoner's Dilemma and Open Source

I'm at a leadership seminar near Los Angeles this week and today two teams engaged in an exercise that was remarkably reminiscent of The Prisoner's Dilemma. Though it clearly hit the mark for me with lessons as a leader, it also provided me with an unexpected twist: I thought alot about open source software and the cooperation vs. individual gain that this development paradigm represents.

In the Prisoner's Dilemma it is assumed that each individual player ("prisoner") is trying to maximize his or her own advantage, without concern for the well-being of the other player. The classical prisoner's dilemma (PD) is as follows:

Two suspects A, B are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and having separated both prisoners, visit each of them and offer the same deal: if one turns evidence against the other and the other remains silent, the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence and the betrayer goes free. If both stay silent, the police can only give both prisoners 6 months for a minor charge. If both betray each other, they receive a 2-year sentence each.

The win-win is if both prisoner's cooperate rather than defect (i.e., rat out the other)...though there are clear incentives to defect. In today's leadership exercise, I was on the team that defected (though I was a dissenter) and, for some reason, it made me think about open source software and the "why" and "how" a diverse community of coders could somehow come together and cooperate on such a massive scale.

Developers have to decide -- on an operating system or application -- should they cooperate or defect? Invest energy and effort in development of an open source project or one for pay? Take a peek at this too.

Hacks: PC's; Cars; now a Rotary Phone?

For quite some time I've been well aware of car hacks (adding neon, paint, and tricking them out) as well as all the fun PC mods doing the same stuff.

Came across this at Boing Boing: some guy over at MAKE magazine has laid out how he's turned a rotary dial phone in to a GSM cell phone!

I know several people that are watching the trends in hacking and modifying stock products. It's an extension of the narrowcasting phenomena that is driving us all toward individual products, microcontent (blogs are a great example of this) and other customization. Pretty cool.

Hey...I thought the world was getting in sync?

In a couple of weeks I'll be on a 12 hour flight to Tokyo. My Powerbook gets less than three hours on a charge (my work-issued Thinkpad four and a half) so I checked with Northwest Airlines on seat power. None. Wifi? None. Guess I'd better buy another battery. My iPod also won't last very long so I may be forced to read my book without tunes.

Then I checked with my two mobile telephony providers (TMobile for personal and Cingular for work) to see if either Blackberry would have service. Voice? None for either since Japan is on an incompatible, 3G system. Email? Yes...but limited.

My Nikon D70 will work fine and batteries, Compact Flash cards and more will be generally available. Same for miniDV and my Sony camcorder batteries should I need any for these two devices. Discovered today, though, that Wifi in our hotel will be US$25 per day to connect to the 'net. So I poked around and TMobile hotspots in Starbucks there have a US$0.12 per minute surcharge. What?

So the world isn't in sync on standards and travel with all these tech devices isn't easy and seamless yet. But when my Dad and I took our trip to Germany in 1997 to see where my ancestors came from (his first international trip), he was absolutely amazed that we would be in Germany in 8 hours...and it took them one month to travel from Germany to Minnesota. On that trip the 'net was new and I was standing in phone booths with an acoustic coupler modem most nights since I was building a web site on the fly.

Oh poor Steve. No non-stop power for his laptop. A whole 12 hours to Tokyo. Semi-ubiquitous and fairly affordable connection to a worldwide network for pennies. I'll stop my whining now.

iPod *can* be a high quality podcast recorder!

Several weeks ago I purchased the Griffin iTalk microphone to plug in to the top of my iPod -- in the hope that I could use it as a portable podcast field recorder. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware that the software in the iPod itself limited voice recording to 8khz (pretty crappy phone call quality) which is, I guess, why Apple dubs iPod voice recording as "voice memos".

When I did my Edirol R1 podcast review on June 7th, I was already wondering *when* Apple would move forward on making the iPod in to a premiere podcast field recorder. Maybe Apple will...maybe they won't...but I know where I'd place *my* bet.

So imagine my delight today when I read this article on The Linux iPod which proves the capability of the iPod hardware itself. It states in part, "You can record mono audio at up to 96kHz. To put <that> number into context, CDs are 44.1kHz, and Digital Audio Tape (DAT) is 48kHz. Most pro studio recording is done at 24 bits and 96kHz. Newer DVD-Audio discs also go up to 96kHz. The higher the quality you have up front, the better your recording will sound in the end."

Methinks a high quality iPod recording capability is close...especially in light of iTunes 4.9 coming with its embrace of podcasting.

"Print" 3D Objects on Demand

Remember the replicator in Star Trek? It was the device in the ship that a crew member asked to make something and it automagically appeared out of thin air by rearranging subatomic particles in to new things.

Here's an interesting first step toward making that science fiction a reality that I came across today reading one of my favorite sites Gizmag. It's a 3D printer that produces prototypes on demand from CAD drawings, etc. (Interesting video here) (WMV).

If you have time to go to Z Corp's web site, make sure you peek at "Industries" and "Applications" for some very interesting and fun output that will give you a feel for what this technology does and can do. If you can think it up and create it on your computer or CAD workstation, you can manifest it into prototype atoms.

So how far are we away from 'printers' that can create finished goods? Imagine buying and downloading a CAD file, tweaking it and outputting it at a service bureau (though eventually this could be cheap enough for the home in some fashion). I don't know how close it is to create finished goods...but they boast on their site about "From CAD drawing to metal cast mold -- in hours."

By the way, it sure appears that these guys could use some marketing. I love and look for this stuff and have never heard of them before.

 

"Podcasters have to grow up"

The words in the title are from a friend of mine who knows computing, imaging, video, film and audio. Smart guy whom I called with glee when I received my Edirol R1 -- and called again with my profound disappointment. After we talked for awhile and I told him my tale of woe, his comment was, "podcasters have to grow up when it comes to what it takes to capture quality audio."

He's right. Today I returned the Edirol R1. Originally purchased for mobile podcasting, the amount of post-processing I had to perform on the file was too profound and time consuming to be useful. I tried everything: recording at multiple resolutions; buying two different types of microphones; talking at length with Edirol tech support; reading multiple articles online; trying a myriad of normalizing/compressing techniques after learning "what real sound engineers do".  All to no avail.

I get great quality from my desktop setup (Audio Technica AT3035; M-Audio MobilePre; nice stand; Apple's Garageband); which gives me surprisingly good results. Most times I can crank out a 10 minute podcast in an hour and a half (tweaking it; re-recording; adding music; outputting the file then transcoding it to mp3, etc). The kicker with the Edirol file? It took me about that SAME time to get the file sound level to be decently synchronous with the output from my desktop setup -- and THEN I had to build the podcast for an hour and a half!

I'm not naive. I don't expect that a $200 field mike and $450 field recording will rival a computer/desktop setup worth $3k or so. Still, it 'felt' like the sound quality was roughly half the quality which just wouldn't work for me or for my bride (who wanted to perform field interviews with the setup).

So back it went and I'll pay shipping and a 10% re-stocking fee.

Maybe not all is lost with the experience though. I'm thinking back to the days of desktop publishing where there was an explosion of fonts on a page. Really crappy design. All white space used. Violations of every known technique learned by paste-up artists and page layout experts for decades. I know that it was pretty painful for me to figure out how to produce professional looking publications from my desktop and I bought A LOT of books and wasted A LOT of prepress hours before I finally got a workflow going that consistently produced superior and repeatable results.

Guess I've got some work to do and some more investments to make with audio for this here podcasting thang...

INNOVATION: 940 Executives Surveyed -- Apple, 3M, GE, Microsoft, and Sony are top five innovators.

Most of us know intrinsically that innovation drives sales. We also know that people are always on the hunt for better, cheaper, faster, and new ways of doing things.

I was never a fan of vinyl. It scratched and was noisy. When CD's hit the scene, I began voraciously consuming music. Same thing with videotape (hated it) which is why I was such a fan of the cool, new LaserDisc (size of an LP vinyl record but was an optical medium for video) when it became the videophile medium of choice. It wasn't until the very innovative DVD medium hit the mass market (and killed LaserDisc, by the way) that I became a rabid fan buying DVD delivered content.

The iPod innovation has taken my use of audio to the next level. Not only am I consuming significantly more music, audio books, podcasts and more...I'm now doing my own podcast content! The podcast phenomena is a direct result of the innovation of Apple (and the work of the RSS god Dave Winer along with the popularizing of it by Adam Curry). With the rebirth of the iMac in the late 90's (think candy colored iMac's) along with the iPod, Apple has innovated their way out of being the moot point of the computer industry.

Business leaders are getting the message. Innovation drives top-line growth.

This study (link is a PDF) by the Boston Consulting Group, is about their second annual global survey of senior executives on innovation and the innovation-to-cash (ITC) process. This process covers the many interrelated activities involved in turning ideas into economic returns. It goes well beyond new-product development, to include such issues as portfolio management, life cycle management, and organization.

A total of 940 executives, representing 68 countries and all major industries, participated. Their executive summary highlights some of the top-level findings from the survey. The rest of the report explores the implications of the findings and provides more detail. Key findings in the study include:

• Seventy-four percent of the executives surveyed said that their companies will increase spending on innovation in 2005, up from 64 percent in 2004.
• Almost 90 percent of the executives surveyed said that generating organic growth through innovation has become essential for success in their industry.
• Less than half of the executives surveyed said that they were satisfied with the financial returns on their investments in innovation.
• Executives ranked Apple, 3M, GE, Microsoft, and Sony as the most innovative companies. Apple rose to the top spot from number five last year.
• Globalization and organizational issues were cited as two of the biggest challenges facing many companies in 2005.

Each of us has evolutionary ideas of how to innovative our products, services or even our own personal brand equity. What new ideas and innovations -- either evolutionary or truly revolutionary -- are *you* bringing to market for your company *or* for yourself?

CTD podcast for June 12, 2005

Today's show covers MNSpeak.com (Minnesota Speak); Eric Rice and an "Edirol update"; PodcastMN.com (shortlist of Minnesota podcasters); and my friend George and some stuff around audio streaming and recording.


Download MP3 File

A patent that'll kill podcasting?

I'm not a lawyer, but a buddy of mine sent me this link with a "Hmmm...." attached.

I did a "Hmmm...wha!?!"  too when I thought about what Apple is doing with iTunes/iPod (and soon podcasting) and whether or not this patent from Command Audio will have any impact. On their site it states in part (I've bolded in blue the most germane part):

Command Audio's patents cover the audio aspects of consumer devices and services that store broadcast media for playback at the consumer's convenience.  Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) and the "on-demand" services they enable are presently the best-known embodiments of this technology.  These patents predate the development of the PVR market and cover a wide range of broadcast transmission technologies, devices and systems that incorporate on-demand functionality, an essential component of PVRs.

Below is one of several claims in Command Audio's patents:

USPTO PATENT NO. 6,330,334, CLAIM 44:

     A receiver comprising:

• a television tuner;
• a controller coupled to the television tuner and which provides audio from a signal received at the television tuner, wherein the audio is carried in an audio or video portion of television signals received at the tuner;
• a memory coupled to the controller and which stores the audio;
• a user interface coupled to the controller and which provides a menu; and
• an output device coupled to the controller and which outputs the stored audio in response to a selection from the menu, wherein the stored audio has a designation associated with the menu.

That last bullet sure looks to me like an iPod connected to a computer with audio managed by iTunes.

If that's not bad enough, Command Audio says their patents are relevant to any device that filters and caches broadcast audio for later access by a user, for example:

• Radios with digital storage
• PVRs (Personal Video Recorders), including cable and satellite set top boxes
• HMGs (Home Media Gateways), including PCs with PVR capability.

Will these patents be enforceable for, say, an iPod that can record satellite radio? How come we haven't seen Microsoft, HP and other PVR vendors getting sued for patent infringement?

According to Command Audio's News section, in January of this year the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ruled against Sony Electronics, Inc. (NYSE: SNE), rejecting Sony’s contentions that Command Audio purposely misled the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the early 1990s while seeking its foundation on-demand media patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,406,626). Consequently, Command Audio’s lawsuit against Sony for infringing two related Command Audio patents will continue to move forward. In June 2004 the Court ruled summarily that Sony had been infringing at least one of those patents, U.S. Patent No. 6,330,334 (the “’334 patent”).

Videoblog...no....podcast...hey, it's both!

One of the key players in Web 2.0 is a guy named Eric Rice. I came across his site, Audioblog.com, right after I started my blog last December. I wanted to be able to stream audio and he had video to boot. His offering is *very* affordable, brain-dead-simple to use and attractively delivered (as Flash content) wrapped in graphics and animated buttons/sliders.

Eric hits my blog: After my podcast yesterday (which admittedly had audio too low in volume but I understand what happened now), Eric found my Edirol R1 review and came "back at me" with a kinda videoblog and kinda podcast in this post. The fun thing is to have a guy I've observed from afar -- who "gets it", is plugged in and has already built an enabling technology people are scrambling to use -- pay any attention to some guy up here in the Northland dipping his toe in the Web 2.0 water.

Here's the other cool thing: Eric came back at me with his Archos video player (that doubles as an audio recorder) which I'd never even considered before buying my Edirol! (Can you say, "EBay"?).

What happened today is one of the absolute best parts of the blogging/videoblogging/audioblogging/podcasting <insert your buzzword here> phenomena: the exchange of ideas that build upon one another; the connections that are made; the fun richness of these experiences and the ability for more of us to communicate than ever before.

CTD podcast for June 7, 2005

A 10 minute podcast discussing my new toy: the Edirol R1, portable WAVE/MP3 Recorder/Player...a perfect device for mobile podcasting.

This is quite a nice, small, compact field recorder that I'm just beginning to understand. Not yet fully pleased with the results I've achieved, but the problem is not with the hammer...it's the carpenter that needs more experience!

Still, I can sense the possibilities that a device of this quality and capability will bring to mobile field recording. Can't wait to get better at using it and the results it's sure to bring.


Download MP3 File

Apple on Intel

Since Google News has 1,048 articles about Apple's intention to support Intel and 1,398 blog posts on Technorati about it, I feel compelled to weigh in with my opinion (like anyone will notice!).

This is a good thing. Faster chips. Cooler chips. Different devices (maybe a tablet?). The opportunity for Apple to some day license OS X to all comers when the timing is right. Perhaps the ability to run binaries -- with the acceleration of emulation like Apple's Rosetta and the open source WINE -- will be a beautiful thing possibly allowing the running of Windows applications on Mac OS X. (Great editor's note on MacCentral that is a brief yet balanced analysis of this announcement).

One troubling thing....

When I told my wife -- who owns 7 Mac's in her small business and we have 4 at home -- about the rumors of Apple on Intel being true she said, "Well then let's not buy any Mac's until they have the new chips." Yikes. It'll be interesting to see how they can avoid the Osborne effect.

CTD podcast for June 5, 2005

Today's 10 minute show discusses the Griffin radioSHARK, an AM/FM antenna that connects to USB on your PC/Mac for time-shift recording of live radio. A couple of recorded snippets are included so you can hear the quality.

The show ends with a brief overview of This Week in Tech (TWIT) from the former show staff of The Screen Savers on TechTV (learn more at www.twit.tv).


Download the MP3 File

Backpack: Web service online organizer

Can't tell you how often I come across cool new web services when surfing blogs -- even when I end up thinking that it's only marginally useful. Tonight I was at 43 Folders and read a post about a hosted web service called BackpackIt and checked it out.

Though their free service (5 pages, 10 reminders) is interesting, the paid service adds reasonable amounts of pages and storage ($5/month (20 pages, 40 MB disk space for images/files, 100 reminders), $9/month (100 pages, 100 MB disk space for images/files, 200 reminders), or $19/month (500 pages, 250 MB disk space for images/files, 300 reminders)). Still, with my cable modem access ($45 per month), web site ($9 per month), blog ($15 per month), and audioblog streaming service ($5 per month), that's $74 per month for what I consider to be basic stuff. Now add, say, another $9 per month and a service like this had better be REALLY useful or needed before I'd cough up more dough.

It's nice that one can password protect pages...but my blog provider (Typepad) let's me setup unlimited blogs with storage for photos, etc., and no "page count" required -- and each blog could be password protected! So what sets these guys apart from a blog provider?

Reminders. This is what is particularly cool in my view since you can have reminders or ticklers show up on an aggregated dashboard or be sent to you via email or SMS. I still think that -- if I really need a reminder -- I have my calendar on my Blackberry that works just fine, thank you (but of course, that would require every to-do be entered twice). Maybe PDA support and sync'ing is required?

Here's another thing I struggle with when considering any hosted web service offering: Is it secure? Will people use it? Can I easily aggregate and connect it with other stuff internally and externally in our organization? Even with a personal site such as Backpack (they have a commercial project management offering called Basecamp) this is an issue.

In its current form, I'd say Backpack is a stretch for anyone that would or could sign up for a blogging provider with unlimited blogs (heck...I could setup a blog per subject and allow guest authors, etc., and do almost everything Backpack does without paying more money).