I completed a couple of short, amateur videos of my trip to the
Philippines and put them up on YouTube. The first was just of a
cab ride through Makati to the Manila Airport. The second is the plane flight from Manila to Baguio.
I’ll do a few more … I’m wanting to get back into creating videos.
A few weeks back I made an on-line purchase – for the first time – with Tiger Direct.
When completing the purchase – a $3000+ Plasma Display for a client – I
was really surprised when I was presented with a notification that I
was going ot have to answer some questions to verify my identity!
Ok . .. so I was thinking some steps … but never would have imagined
what I was going to see. I was presented with a page that
appeared to contain an iFrame, and it suddenly filled with a set of
three multiple-choice questions. As I read the questions … I
was shocked.
It really was a weird experience to see that type of personal detail
… being asked on a web page. Overall, I like it … it was a
cool system and I can see where it would be very tough for someone to
gather those pieces of information. At the same time, it was
strange to see personal information gathered in such a way.
What made me think about this tonight was when a friend indicated that
he requested his annual free credit reports today. He said that
the same system was used to verify his identity to request the reports
… wild.
I’m not sure that I want to say that it’s over … but as of today I
can SkypeOut again! I spent weeks on their on-line forums, and
posted 16+ support requests through their website (NONE of which were
ever answered!) and then as of today got a personal message on the
on-line forums indicating that I was unblocked.
My Skype account was blocked when I unsucessfully attempted to purchase
Skype credit with my credit card from the Philippines. That was
on the 28th of May! They blocked my account that night … and I
have been struggling to get it unblocked – on a daily basis – since
then.
Sure enough … I can use Skype again!
I like this one even better. So what we seem to be doing is
planning for the future, when technological life has taken over.
In this future, entities that have come from the technologic substrate
will be able to have biological implants!
Ok … all kidding aside … this is till pretty cool stuff.
We’re making huge advances in the merging of biological and
technological life!
Scientists Couple Nerve Tissues With Computer Chip.
[Slashdot]
I first heard about RNA Interference a few years back … caught this article today – here is the full text
– that talks more indepth about the tools and techniques. This is
amazing stuff … I have read a few papers about the possibilities and
they are endless. The first article that I saw was about a
possible gene therapy using RNA interference to possibly change your
eye color!
Now we are talking about modern body/identity modifications!
Sharpening the tools of RNA interference. Nature May 23 2006 8:13PM GMT [Moreover Technologies – Genetics news]
When I read this article I immediately began to think about all of the
science fiction movies where the various characters are always trying
to REMOVE tracking devices from themselves. I can remember the image of Arnold pulling the giant round tracking module from his nasal cavity in Total Recall.
This article, however, is about a growing number of people who are now
inserting RFID tags into themselves! Well … in some cases they
are having doctors do it … but the one web page referenced includes
the list of items to do it at home!
Of course this links me back to Pete Ashdown‘s comments last night about integrity
… we spoke about this breifly after the Utah Bloggers conference had
ended. It’s cool to see people who are ok with being tracked …
and aren’t afraid of anything that might be gathered about them.
They are ok with where they go, and what they do.
I’m going to keep thinking about this one. I have been thinking
that with the younger generations adopting lifestyles where ‘body
modification’ is becoming the norm, they will be more and more open to
technological implants. If you are willing to get tattoos, and
have piercings, then when might you go for subdermal animated LED
impants, or RFID tags?
Social Consequences and Effects of RFID Implants?.
[Slashdot]
Ok … this is my day for finding interesting articles on molecular
manufacturing. I really like this one … a MIT team using
genetically modified viruses to manufacture.
Battery electrodes self-assembled by viruses. Genetically modified viruses that assemble into electrodes could one day revolutionize battery manufacturing.
The MIT team genetically modified viruses to create the electrodes.
They introduced snippets of single-stranded DNA that caused the
virus… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
I caught this today … IBM going further and further with their
molecular-scale lithography. They are now able to write compounds
onto a substrate at sizes down to 10 nanometers. We are getting
closer and closer to molecular manufacturing at a whole new scale.
IBM uses atomic microscope for direct writing.
IBM has unveiled a new method of direct writing (like an inkjet
printer) to substrates that harnesses an atomic force microscope (AFM)
to electronically control molecular-scale lithography.For semiconductors, IBM’s new electronically controlled … [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
I always like a good visualization of Internet activity.
Especially when it relates to social and human interaction. I
like this paper … some nice ideas in here.
I’m at the first Utah Bloggers conference, and it’s fun to see the size of the community here. Ryan Money from HireVue kicked off the meeting, and quickly went into the panel discussion.
The group of panelists included Cydni Tetro, Phil Burns, Phil Windley, Tim Stay, and Pete Ashdown.
The questions varied from what blogging software is being used, to
making money with your blog. It was good to hear them all.
I really liked one thing that Pete Ashdown said about the record of
your history on the Internet … he referred to that as the “… price
of integrity.” Instead of going to edit your history – such as on
the Wikipedia – you simply live honestly with the choices that you have
made.
One of the people stood up and admitted that he doesn’t yet have a blog
… he wanted to know what to do to start. Phil Windley suggested
his essay How to Start a Blog. Nice … it’s the first result when you search Google for that sentence.
Ryan wrapped things up talking about how we really do have a good
blogging community. Utah is continuing to grow rapidly, and the
growth from people moving to Utah is fueling the tech industry
here. We are slowly gaining some real momentum. There are
going to be some future events …
That was it for now … I’m going to get some other video … another YouTube video …
