Author Archives: Scott C. Lemon

About Scott C. Lemon

I'm a techno futurist, interested in all aspects of humanity, sociology, community, identity, and technology. While we are all approaching the Singularity, I'm just having fun effecting the outcomes of the future!

Another release of our videoWrapplet

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nume.com

I’ve been working on my videoWrapplet some more, and just added a few new features, and fixed some bugs.  I’m really restructuring the internals of the code to prepare for some of the bigger features … more flexible playlists, and preferences.

With the new version the videos will automatically advance to the next video if they can (the Flex video player events are pretty hosed!), and I’ve also added a video info button next to each title to see, and copy, the URL of the video.  All of this to make it easier to put videos into your playlist.  And yes … I’m working on a way to do a one-click add of a video into your playlist … stay tuned!

Also … Scott has been jamming on the home page of NuMe to show the users who are getting the top plays, and who have recently updated their playlist!

The one reason I have a Laptop *and* a Tablet PC

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I saw this article, and imediately read through it … it’s #5 that I agree with the most.  The reason that I have a laptop *and* a Tablet PC is the screen.  The screen size and resolution that is included on most convertibles is still just too low for me.  I heard that the Gateway was a full 14″, but then the resolution is still only 1280 x 768 pixels … too small for what I am used to.  I’ll look forward to seeing what Dell does in this space … but I want pixels!

As for the value of a Tablet PC … I love the Tablet PC for notetaking.  It is still the most amazing computer to take into presentations or conferences, or when walking around having to take notes and sketch diagrams of things.  For these purposes, the Tablet PC beats out the laptop any day.

Eight reasons tablet PCs have missed the mainstream. Tablet PCs haven’t caught on with consumers and remain a niche market for certain users, such as medical personnel and insurance adjusters. Cost and technology problems are among the reasons, according to analysts.

[Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]

Global Warming Caused by Sun!

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No … it’s can’t be!  <sarcasm>There is no way that I can believe for a second that the earth is at all warmed by the sun!  Although I haven’t yet seen Al Gore’s movie, I’ve heard it’s all full of hard evidence that Global Warming is caused by us humans.  How could it be otherwise?</sarcasm>

Uh … wow.  This scientist is probably going to come under a lot of attack from folks about this … but he’s saying that maybe … just maybe … there are bigger forces at work than us humans.  Imagine that.

Sun May Be Warming Both Earth and Mars.  [Slashdot]

Numenta Research Release

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A few years back I attended a conference at Stanford and watched a presentation by some of the folks at Numenta.  It was very impressive, and discussed the architecture of the hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) system.  There were several other presenters that discussed the learning of how the brain stores patterns, and does pattern matching.

What I really like is the thinking that dovetails with other articles and books that I have read, and how the brain – from childhood – constructs a model of the universe, and we the interact with the world using that model as a base reference for predictions and “next moves.”

Numenta has now released their Numenta Research Release.  It is now at the stages for researchers to begin to look at and experiment.  Of course it’s not just download and run … in Jeff’s own words:

We have found that it takes some developers months to get familiar with the
concepts, and maybe a year to get commercially useful results. It also is
possible that your first attempts at using HTM will be valuable for learning,
but not valuable for commercial applications. The learning curve is similar to
the learning curve for writing computer software. It takes anywhere from several
months to a year to become proficient in writing computer software; HTMs have
similar complexity.

The best part that I like about these theories and examples of possible brain models, is that we can learn a lot about ourselves from these.  How we work.  If the brain creates a model, and that is then used to interact with the world, then that model begins to define the limits of our interactions.  The funny part, is that most people fail to distinguish that it is simply a model … not the “truth”, and not fixed.  And so quite often their own model of the universe constrains their behaviors and actions, limiting what they can do.  I took a number of courses from Landmark Education
that focus on this specific area … learning to distinguish that model, and to then learn to evolve and update that model.  It is amazing experience each time I distinguish something new about how flawed my model of the universe is.

Even with the understandable doubts expressed by the author of this article … I am impressed with Jeff and his work, and believe that he is on the right track.

Quest for the Thinking Machine. Jeff Hawkins created the Palm Pilot and the Treo. Now he says he’s got the ultimate invention: software that mimics the human brain. By Evan Ratliff from Wired magazine. [Wired News: Top Stories]

Heading to Apollo Camp!

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Ok folks . .. time for Apollo Camp!  I’m going to be heading out there to participate, and some of our G3 team members from mediaFORGE are going to be there with me.  If you aren’t yet familiar with Apollo, you ought to be.  I’m very impressed with what Adobe is doing, and we are fully committed to Flash, Flex, and Apollo development.

Apollo, IMHO, is going to truly alter web applications beyond what Ajax has done … and I’ve been working with Ajax for quite some time.  My issues with Ajax are that the most popular web properties on the Internet will not allow you to embed Ajax in their pages … but they’ll allow Flash!  Apollo now adds to that since it allows the Flash applications to be “installed from the web” … so now cross-platform applications can be created and distributed through embedded web objects.

I’m really looking forward to this evening … and if you’re there, we might even demo some of the projects that we’ve been working on!

Microsoft Robotics

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I know that some people are going to say that this is old news, but today I came across some very cool software from Microsoft … the Microsoft Robotics Studeo.  Where the heck have I been?  For all of my life I have loved the interaction between computers and the outside world.  I remember writing my first code that controlled a floppy disk drive, and it was fun to use keyboard commands to control the heads … stepping them back and forth and returning them to track 0.

I came across this offering from Microsoft while looking for information about White Box Robotics back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I’m going to be taking a vacation back to Pittsburgh this summer, and am lining up various things to do.  I want to stop over and check out what White Box is doing, as they are looking pretty impressive on the level of research and development that they are doing for “home” robotics.

White Box Robotics was founded in 2001 by Thomas
Burick to fulfill the vision of changing the world one robot at a time.

We remain committed to the ongoing development of the
PC-BOT, a new class of networked mobile robots that delivers exceptional value
and ease of use. This achieved by leveraging mature PC technologies, adopting
open standards and creating a plug and play environment that allows just about
anyone to build exciting PC-based robots.

The White Box Robotics
laboratory is based in Pittsburgh PA and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Frontline Robotics Inc. Thomas continues to pursue his vision as the company’s
Chief Robotics Officer and now is part of a new enlarged team of
multi-disciplinary and highly experienced engineers. This team delivers the
depth and breadth to catapult this technology into the rapidly emerging market
for personal, commercial and security robotic applications.

What I really like about this is that there are a number of vendors all working together to create some standards for the platforms.  The Microsoft Robotics Studeo press release lists an impressive group of companies and researchers in the robotics field.

I’m reading … and I think I’m going to download this for my new laptop tonight!  Cool to see robotics making some good jumps!

Mass media and virtual worlds . ..

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I have been a long believer that the mass media – television and radio – are still poised to be the dominant powers of the Internet … if they can let go of their fear of the Internet.  Their current position reminds me of the stories of the railroads way back when … ignoring and afraid of the airlines.  If the railroads had recognized that they were in the transportation business … they could have had it all!

It seems that still to this day, TV and Radio are all around us, constantly pushing their content at us, and – sadly or not – the masses still flock to it.  Millions of people across the country are scheduling their lives around their “favorite” TV show that they can’t get enough of.  Even the news draws millions of people to learn more about all of the events that occurred around the nation, and in their local area, they they *must* know about.

With this huge audience, this medium is still, IMHO, the most untapped mechanism to get people to the Internet.  It is the *only* way that you can impact so many people – at nearly the same instant – with some message or meme.  TV was the original way that people or companies were “slashdotted” … when something runs on TV there might be hundreds of thousands of immediate responses.

This article demonstrates a powerful TV brand utilizing it’s communications vehicle to move people to a new medium on the Internet … and to go beyond the “reality” TV of today, and into virtual worlds.  MTV is now creating a television program, that is then being used to drive people into their online virtual world.  This, to me, is a prime example of good marketing … using the power and reach that you have through TV to then create awareness and drive the people to your web properties.  Nice!

MTV launches ‘Virtual Hills’ based on There.com platform. Blog: MTV Networks on Monday announced the launch of Virtual Hills, a new custom virtual world created using the There.com platform,… [CNET News.com]

Sending E-mail from Cingular SMS Text Messages

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When I got my new Nokia E70, one of the things that really disappointed me was the different way that e-mails were sent from the text messaging. No matter what I did, I was unable to figure out how to send an e-mail using the “basic” SMS text message. Instead, I was forced to use the “multimedia message” … which I quickly found out was being charged to me per message, even though I was just sending simple text. 🙁

So why do I really care about this? Well … I have formed the habit of using SMS text to e-mail as a way to send reminders to myself that I later will find in my e-mail inbox! If I am out and about, and away from my computer, I can quickly jot a message on my phone and e-mail it to myself. When I get back in front of my laptop there are my reminders sitting in my inbox! Also … I’m working on a cool SMS text messaging site that I have had under construction for years now … and I am sending messages to it also … for purposes to be announced soon. 🙂

With my older Nokia phone, I could easily send a basic SMS text message, and specify an e-mail address … the phone handled dispatching a properly formatted message to the SMS e-mail gateway at Cingular and everything worked. With the E70, although I am able to add e-mail addresses to my contacts, when sending a basic SMS text message, I am unable to pick an e-mail address to send to! Instead … I have had to use the costly “multimedia message” format, and then I get a pick list of numbers and e-mail addresses to send to.

Tonight, while experimenting more with my phone I realized something … that I could reply to a e-mail that was sent to my phone as a “basic” SMS text. If I could do that, then I figured that there must be a way to properly format a basic SMS text to send as e-mail. By searching Google, and remembering some obscure settings, I finally figured it out. So for anyone interested here it is:

To send a SMS text message to an e-mail address on the Cingular network:

  • Address the message To: “0000000000” (ten zeros)
  • Write the text with the format “{e-mail address}({subject}) {body of e-mail}

Now the exact format has to be followed. An example would be:

joe@somedomain.com(This came from my phone) I figured this out!

The key points in this are that the e-mail address and subject are separated from the body of the message by a space! Do not put a space after the e-mail address … it must be the e-mail address, then the subject – in parenthesis – with NO space between them. Then a space before the body of the e-mail message. If you want to, you can leave out the subject and the parenthesis, and just get a message with no subject.

Now I do have to admit that I am still very disappointed with Nokia, in that I can not find how to get the e-mail address from a contact to appear in the text message … so I end up having to type this EVERY time. But the cost of these messages is included in my plan … so it’s worth the extra effort!

What is up with Firefox Updates?

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For the last while, I have been aware of the Firefox v2.x release.  What has really surprised me is that the Firefox Update check has never told me to go and get it!

Just today … for the last time . .. I launched Firefox, and then went to the “Help -> Check for Updates …” menu.  The dialog that appeared stated “No Updates Found.  There are no new updates available.  Firefox may check periodically for new updates.”  What?  No notice at all that there is a whole new generation of the browser?

As a general marketing rule, it seems to me that you always make sure to let the customer know about products that you want them to use!  I can’t believe that Firefox would not tell me that v2.x is now out there and available to download.

P.S. If people want to tell me about the difference between an Upgrade and an Update … or that v1.5.x is a different product from v2.0.x … I don’t want to hear it.  This is all about marketing and getting the word out.  For the general population that doesn’t follow the tech news, Firefox would benefit the most from making these blatant announcements!

Materials Science … gel body armor!

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I love to read about new technologies like this … something truly futuristic … a “viscous gel” in a vest that is fluid until struck or impacted … then it turns to a hardened material.  Afterwards … it returns to a gel.  Bullet-proof vests that morph … very cool!

Prison Guards Saved by Syrup. A new viscous gel that hardens on impact could make bulky, conspicuous body armor a thing of the past. By Vince Beiser from Wired magazine. [Wired News: Top Stories]