209 years from now, what will be in the history books about today?

Today is the anniversary of the opening of the 1st US auto manufacturer Duryea Motor Wagon Company back in 1895.

I wonder what someone is doing today that will be in the history books in 209 years.Of course there won’t be ‘books’ as we know them other than perhaps in museums.Just like kids today ask what those black vinyl things are in the sleeves on shelves or in boxes.

Sometimes we just take things for granted all our lives and suddenly they seem to be meaningless. I took a pile of books over to a family member yesterday, one of her favorite authors and whilst she likes the author “I only read on my Kindle now. I can lie back on the bed, even in the dark and it’s just so convenient.”

I can’t imagine we’ll have cell phones in 200 years. Of course we’ll communicate, but how will it take place? I struggle to imagine. It could be a watch, or glasses, but I doubt it. Perhaps an ear-ring or something fashionable. It probably won’t be an implant for security and other reasons, but I doubt if we saw what they use, they we would recognize what it was. Imagine showing an iPhone to a family a hundred years ago.

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What could go wrong if you leave your mobile on during an air flight?

The engineer sitting next to me dropped his head in disbelief and then shook it from side to side with an air of disappointment and dismay. I followed his gaze back to  the flight attendant who was leaning into the window taking photos with her mobile of the stunning sunset from the empty front row seat on the port side of our Air NZ ATR 72 flight in the final minutes of our descent into Auckland yesterday evening. I looked back at him and said “I was thinking the same thing.” Having had a conversation with him about our reliance on computers in transport these days.

This is not the flight I was on last night, nor the same type of plane.

As she was clicking with the volume turned up making a loud camera shutter emulation sound, I thought back to earlier in the flight when one of the flight attendants did her first PA not long into our 1 hour domestic flight. The PA came complete with the GSM bleep a phone makes when it is too close to a speaker; you know, the noise your mobile phone computer makes when you have your it too close to the speaker as it connects to the telecommunications network.

This got me to thinking about the number of people I see on flights who put their phones into flight mode before take off, but don’t actually switch them off, despite being instructed. It seems that a very large percentage of people don’t actually switch them off before they go into their pockets. Most of us have probably done that at some time, not thinking further, even though the instructions are very clear, flight mode, then switch off.

Farther into the flight, we had broken the clouds as I asked a flight attendant, serving mineral water into the plastic glass I was holding out for her, if I could now use my Kindle, which was dutifully in flight mode. I had to say Kindle several times, which she didn’t seem to understand, so I asked if we were at cruise altitude so we could use safe electronic devices. “No.” she replied after a little thought.

On her next PA, there was that GSM ping-ping again, as the flight attendant began another PA, telling us that the coffee service would be delayed due to unexpected turbulence. It was briefly interrupted and the pinging stopped, perhaps as she moved her mobile farther away from the microphone.

I was looking forward to the PA to tell me that electronic devices in flight mode could be used, so I could enjoy one of the books I recently purchased for my Kindle. It never came. The next PA, again with the GSM pings came on to say we were heading into our final descent again, was to tell us to stop using and switch off all electronic devices.

I was most disappointed because there had been some stunning cloud formations on the flight home that I would have loved to have captured. This is why my attached pic is from a different trip, I took with Air NZ last week.

So back to watching the flight crew attendant taking photos just before she strapped her self in for landing. I discussed the situation of fly by wire and the fact that there were rumors that the American Federal Aviation Authority were going to relax their rules on using mobiles during take off and landing, that they suspected it wasn’t in fact dangerous. With both of us having a degree of engineering training, we understood the concept of signal induction, which was of course the cause of the tell tale bleeps on the PA, which suggested that he phone might not have been switched into flight mode at any stage during the flight.

As we landed, we were pleased to be on the tarmac safe and sound,  but we thought back to the missing Malaysian Airlines plane and I remarked “Whether it is safe to use your mobile or not, imagine if the plane had crashed and it was your mobile they found that was still switched on?”

It amazes me that passengers flout the rules as if they know better than the Aviation Authorities with “I’ve flown a thousand times and I’m still here.” When it is the professional flight crew who flout their position in front of passengers in order to get that great sunset shot, several minutes after having told everyone to turn their devices off, that might be taking it too far.

I didn’t get to read my Kindle eBook, because she had never told us we could turn our devices on. I looked around several times to check if anyone else was using a tablet or other device and they weren’t. What was interesting to me is that not a soul said a word to her about having her mobile on and using it, despite having told passengers that the rules were that we couldn’t. What if her mobile had cause interference during a wing over or other maneuvering of the plane? You might not be reading this blog.

Do you switch off all your devices during flight when instructed. Did you realize they have to be not only in flight mode but be switched off?

 

 

 

 

Blogfade and Android Mobile

First of all I must apologise for the Blogfade. Over the last few weeks I’ve bought a new house and sold my own one which has caused a lot of stress and taken a lot of my time. Assuming that my sale goes through tomorrow, I wil be moving this weekend and life will get back to normal.

I’ve been busy on a lot of projects lately, one of which has been working on developing channels for GeoVector’s World Surfer product.

Worldsurfer is a location based application that runs on iPhone 3GS and Android mobiles which incorporate both GPS and Compass, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities.I have to say that even though the G1 I’m using currently is 1st generation Android, the combination of GPS and Compass is remarkably accurate. I suspect it is also using cell tower triangulation. It has my street address exactly correct even though I am inside my lounge, whereas my old phone using just Vodafone cell towers had my kitchen in one suburb and my lounge in another and I assure you my house is not that big.

The concept for this solution is that it provides for Location Based ‘Channels’ which allow you to search for Points of Interest based on your present location. A Channel is typically a category of POI (Points of Interest).

On the G1 that I am using at the moment I have the New Zealand channels that are currently available here. The first is GeoSmart, for whom I am the Sales & Marketing Manager.

GeoSmart is the company providing API’s, web services and web maps behind many leading web sites in NZ and services in many other countries. The best known site is AA Maps, which also now features real time traffic covering all of New Zealand. The GeoSmart Channel on Worldsurfer for NZ includes a nationwide set of categories and subcategories currently covering Accomodation,  Banks and ATM’s, Entertainment, Parks and Gardens, Pubs Taverns and Bars, Restaurants, Takeaway Food and Public Toilets.

You can set it to only look in a band in the direction you are pointing your phone or in a 360 degree radius from your current location and it will locate POI up to 5 miles / 8km away. So in effect you can look for a Japanese Restaurant in the direction you are currently travelling. When you select one, the compass will point you in the direction of that venue and show a running distance calculation as you travel towards it.

You then have the option to call them for a reservation with one touch of the screen, get turn by turn directions and a map to guide you, mark the location for future reference, check Flickr, YouTube or Google for more information about the location.

World Surfer is as it sounds an international product and will automatically open the options available for the country you are in. Some are subscription channels whilst others are available free of charge.

Other channels available in New Zealand currently are Google, Zenbu, Wikipedia (which looks for information by location, based on pointing your mobile), Starbucks, and Vodafone Stores. I am currently working on developing many more channels for NZ. There are other exciting projects on the way, but if I tell you what they are, I’d be in big trouble, so watch this space.

As a footnote, I’ve said before that I would like to create an application called Where’s My Car, because everyone has a story of not being able to remember where they parked their car. I often see people in shopping mall car parks, at rugby matches and other spots wandering up and down trying to figure out where their cars are. When I got this Android phone (on loan) I found an application called CarDar Light.

This application lets you ‘mark’ the location of your car as you park it and will then guide you, even inside a car park, to your car. You can enter the level number or colour of the floor as an assist, but after that you will never lose your car again.

For a demonstration of WorldSurfer check out the YouTube video below:

Another step of the future which pretty much dates back to the original Star Trek TV programmes has become not only reality, but is becoming mainstream. Now to get the company to buy me that iPhone 3GS!

Talk about, Slot Music, Talk About

New York, Paris, London, Munich

Everyone’s talking about, Slot Music.

At least, it finally hit the NZ Herald today . Beaten by downloads affecting retail store sales, major record companies inlcuindg  Sony BMG, Warner and EMI have decided to make their music more accessible by putting it on 1GB Micro SD Cards.

They plan to still put them into CD cases and say that with the extra space, they can include the liner, liner notes and other information. They will be DRM free and you can even play your music on your computer by using the Micro SD Card with a dongle. The music will be in MP3 format at 320kbps they say on the info site, which they say is very high quality music. Really?

The say that hundreds of millions of phones, Personal Computers and in the future lots of car entertainment sytsms will be able to listen to this music.

Well hello! Do you think we consumers are thick? Let’s go back to the future and do a different thing in the same way and charge a premieum for convenience.

So here’s the thing. Back in the day we had audio casettes and vinyl. Audio casettes were cheap because they weren’t going to last long, especially on cheap walkman units that stretched the tape if they got dropped, got hot or for lots of other reasons. Vinyl was great, you got big liner art and photos, quite often big inserts with lyrics, interviews and more photos.

Then came the CD, which they said had far greater sound and extra space to put more information on. In the future, they said, they could include music videos, interviews, games, photos and much more. Of course we had to pay more for this amazing technology but it was going to be worth it. In many cases the quality was superior, even the nice ambience of the needle was no longer there.

But the extras? Well they are the exception rather than the rule. In most cases we got less liner information, because of the size. Inserts happened sometimes but not very often and the additional material? Sometimes there was a hidden track, that was fun. Occassionally someone would add a music video and a few like BB King, put out a CD ROM with interviews, games and lots more. I still have mine, it was cool. Of course I don’t play it any more, but I felt I got my money’s worth and was chuffed that an old timer like The King could do something so modern.

So here’s my take on this. I have large quantities of CD’s and DVD’s pressed, not of my music unfortunately, but for car navigation. I also have large quantities of SD Cards duplicated, also for car navigation. Firstly, even at volume pricing SD Cards are much more expensive than CD’s or DVD’s.

Universal Music is going to release about 30 ‘Slots’ to start with, from their eLabs Digital Music Unit. Sounds more like a test to me, but anyway, I do applaud them for trying new technology. I think it’s a good idea to try new technology, given that CD’s are losing ground rapidly to downloads.

Will they add extra information to the SD Cards? Maybe for some of those first 30, but then it wil be the same old story, new media for a premium price (for the convenience) and nothing more. If they had listened to people like me 10 years ago (Netguide wouldn’t publish my opinion), they could have reinvented a format giving loads of extra value, far more than people could afford to download and created a whole new generation of fans and collectors. But no, they just wanted to increase cash flow and profit. After all, they knew far better than we consumers, what was good for us.

In my humble opinion, they created the monster we have today where people download and share music for free. And it is a monster friends, because what is happening is people are downloading music for free and the poor songwriters and performers are getting ripped off.  Sure there are big bands making truckloads of money for themselves and their promotors, but they are the minority. Most of the people in your favorite bands have to work a day job in order to be able to write and perform music at night. This might not be the case if they got fair remuneration for their work.

I ask you this. Do you work for free? Do you expect to go to work and build widgets or whatever you do and expect other people to reproduce them for peanuts and give them to your mates? Will you accept a 90% reduction in your income because people have found a way to clone your products? I didn’t think so.

Anyway, after that minor digression, this is a storm in a slot. Sure they will make some of these. Then they will cry foul when people copy them (if they can be bothered). They will weep when these cards don’t get sold, except on eBay, Craig’s List or Trade Me after people have copied the music onto their computers and shared them with their mates.

I love new technology, but when I can go to iTunes and for a couple of dollars, buy the only song as a track that I like (because I am happy for the band to make some money from it), why would I buy a little SD Card that I will probably lose.

In my humble opinion, the music industry got this one wrong. Can they redeem it? Only if they figure a way to genuinely add value. They want to offer the music on iGB SD Cards. (Interesting that I struggle to even buy 1GB SD Cards anymore.) Why not do something smart and offer us real value. Do what you should have done years ago and you might find a couple of years of legs in this yet. Use 4GB cards. Load it with the music, the live performance video, the interviews, the music video, lyric sheets (the mechanical rights people can still get a share) and a personal spoken message from the band or artist. You could sell that for a premium and create collectors items that people will want to keep.

Of course when real broadband arrives, people are no longer going to buy music in hard copy. I’m sorry but they won’t. Why would you. The other day I sat down in front of YouTube an had a great afternoon watching videos and listening to music of my favourite bands of the past and the present. All it cost me was a bit of internet access (and I do have ADSL 2 from Orcon so speed wasn’t an issue.

I think the future will be:

New York, Paris, London, Munich, Nobody’s talking about Slot Music.

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course https://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)

Zimbabwe Elections

I started off, over the weekend, writing about the use of SMS as a tool and the many uses and of course I barely scratched the surface, but the whole Zimbabwe election issue is a concern, even from a technological perspective. ITC (information technology and communication) has provided new media including the mobile phone and Internet as a means of sharing information despite the efforts of political rulers. I.e. it is getting harder and harder for people in power to censor information anywhere in the world. Many countries have tried and failed to stop information travelling out of their geography.

Despite the intentions of the Mugabe regime, there is a continuous flow of information leaving Zimbabwe that is telling the rest of the world what is going on. I suspect that it will be impossible for Mugabe’s ZANU-PF to hoodwink the world again, telling everyone that he has won the election when it is clearly not true. Reuters has reported that bloggers are sharing the news with the world as it happens.

Whilst technology can be used to blur the truth, I think we are living in the most transparent environment in mankind’s short history. It is certainly possible to edit photos and video to distort the truth, but given that IT and communications technologies are available to the masses and not just to a wealthy minority and of course we are now much more IT literate, the opportunities to even stretch the truth such as Hilary Clinton’s recent ‘mistake’ about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia recently are becoming few and far between.

Back to Zimbabwe, I believe that largely due to communications and IT, Mugabe will no longer be able to get away with his version of democracy and the transparency of news and event information in real time has finally forced leaders from around the world to denounce what is going on there, even if they have turned a relatively blind eye to it until now.

It’s nice and comfortable to sit at home and watch this happening on TV and on the net, thinking it won’t happen to me. But I’ll bet the expat’s from Zimbabwe that I have met, who now live here and in other parts of the world and have lost pretty much everything they have worked for over generations, thought that once upon a time. Coups happen somewhere in the world pretty much every year and are at least in part covered up with attempts at disinformation and if it doesn’t directly hurt the major powers, it is often conveniently ignored. It’s my opinion that it’s going to be harder and harder for the powers of the world to do this. And that’s a good thing.

People used to say, “As an individual, there’s nothing I can do”. Today in Zimbabwe there are plenty of individuals doing something with their mobile phones and laptops and hopefully they will be able to bring about change, because if they don’t, there could be a civil war of proportions that make the disaster that is Zimbabwe today look like a picnic.

GPS Tracking and Navigation for Elderly People

The other day I read about a new invention, which is a GPS enabled walker for elderly patients. Apparently this is a student research product and being tested in Nursing Centres. It uses Wi-Fi communication and helps guide people around a complex such as a hospital or retirement centre. My first reaction was that this was a joke, but the more I think about this navigation for zimmer frames, the more it makes me think about solutions we will see soon.

Firstly, people do get lost in hospitals and large complexes, and the people most likely to lose their way will be elderly patients, perhaps with dementia or simply struggling with stress, pain or under influence of medication that makes them a little dopey and disoriented. If they are in a wheelchair or using some other aid, a mapping or navigation device could well be useful. Hospitals will in future have WiFi networks for their and this could be a device that is supported by it.

I often hear stories about elderly people with dementia getting lost when they go for walks and understand this is quite common. If they remember that they do live in a village or rest home and have a navigation device, it could guide them safely back home.

The other side is far more likely in the near future and that is tracking of people. I had a discussion today with someone from a New Zealand hospital about tracking of staff who visit mental health patients in their homes and the value of being able to locate them if they haven’t checked in within a pre-aranged time. Small pocket GPS tracking devices with GPRS connectivity already exist commercially and some of them also have ‘panic buttons’ that send an urgent alert together with the current GPS co-ordinates. These are typically still quite expensive, i.e. over $500 but with volume the prices will come down.

St Johns and other organisations have solutions such as LifeLink which is a great solution for in and around the home, but what happens when people go further from home. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a solution that would allow you to locate your elderly or ill relative if they don’t return from shopping or a quiet walk. What if they just want to walk a few houses down the road to visit a friend? I would have gladly paid a rental for a service like that for my late grandmother who had a fall one evening and wasn’t found until the following day with a broken hip.

Although it’s not aimed at  elderly people, you will soon find walking directions on portable navigation devices (PND’s). You will be able to download a map that tells you where to park your car and then how to find your way around shopping malls, hospitals and unversity campuses, through parks and arcades. Maps of this nature will be commerically available within the next 12 months. They will also be available on map web sites in the very near future.

Most countries will also very soon have sophisticated navigation software and maps available to run on mobile phones, which will be as impressive as the portable Navigation Devices that are so popular today. Many phones have GPS built in and Bluetooth GPS Receivers abound for much less than $50.

It’s not a big stretch to see software being added that allow your location to be sent to other people on demand (with your permission of course). This isn’t Sci-Fi I’m talking about, it’s 2008 technology.

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course https://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)