Tim Berners-Lee, the British MIT engineer who first proposed and later implemented the World Wide Web as we know it, has joined Twitter. And he is not impressed. "Oops confusing user interfxce [sic]" he wrote in his first tweet.
Berners-Lee was the first engineer to create a successful connection between an HTTP client and a server over the Internet. Until his work at CERN, the "Internet" was limited to command-line interaction between computers at networks like that of ARPA (now DARPA), which first made its ARPANET network live in October of 1969.
Al Gore, who (jokes aside) is also famously credited with midwifing the Web, has been on Twitter for some time as @algore. Better yet, check out his turbo-nerdy three-screen home computing setup, image courtesy of his blog:
Few other seminal figures in the birth of the Internet are on Twitter. Leonard Kleinrick, a CS professor at UCLA who played an integral role in ARPANET, has an account but no tweets. Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist and another titular "father of the Internet," is a big believer in Twitter but doesn't publicly use the service, deferring instead to use of the official Google blog. Neither do Robert Kahn, ARPANET's hardware guru, or David Mills, inventor of computers called "fuzzballs" that were used as the backbone routers of the National Science Foundation's 56k network, which tested some of the Internet's first protocols in the 1980s.
Microsoft announced at its Windows 7 launch that Amazon is releasing a Kindle reader for Windows. An Amazon spokesperson told me late Thursday: "Yes, we are working on a Kindle app for Mac." With so many conduits for Kindle reading, the ebook leader is becoming a real platform--except that it's closed to developers who want to build services that can talk to Kindle readers.
It doesn't have to be this way. Look inside the code-guts of the Kindle, and you'll find a nifty little Linux system running nifty little Java apps, some of which aren't even visible to the user (a "PictureViewer" is one example). It's not too dissimilar from a smartphone with a big e-paper screen, and it's always-on 3G radio could make it a real boon for software gurus who want their services to talk to Kindle. What if you could view your Evernote notes on your Kindle, for example?
Java gurus have figured out that the Kindle is ready for this kind of development, but according to several coders I've spoken to, Amazon isn't too receptive to third parties who want to make their apps interact with Kindles. In fact, most of their queries have been met with discouragement and little enthusiasm for technical support.
Charlie Tritschler, director of Amazon's Kindle program, has hinted that an API is in the Kindle's future. "That's an important future direction for us," he told the Seattle Times in 2007. But if Jeff Bezos wants the Kindle to be the "iPod of reading," as he said in 2007, then he must realize that popularity will bring the same "closed" criticisms that have been directed at Apple.
Amazon declined to comment about future plans for an API.
Last month I lambasted Nokia's mixed reality concept video for showing a future-woman using a pair of ludicrous augmented reality glasses. As it turns out, Nokia's researchers aren't sold on them either. "If the assumption is that everyone will need data glasses for this to work, then it's not going to work," says Kari Pulli, a mixed reality research lead at Nokia's lab in Palo Alto.
The glasses in the video below (and bracelet, and earphones) are interesting to Nokia researchers, he says, because they are one way to give users a layer of information over their world without destroying their social skills. "Using the camera as a 'magic lens' is awkward--you're holding your hand up all the time," he says. "If you want to be more discrete about it, you'd need... something like an outward-looking lens on glasses." But the glasses of this decade will be too big, too heavy and too annoying to charge, he says--to say nothing of the dork factor (speaking of destroying social skills).
The important part of the concept, Pulli explains, is the whole "magic lens" idea. The company has developed a few proof-of-concept apps to demonstrate the technology, two of which are Image Space (seen above), a track-your-trip breadcrumb app, and Point and Find, which allows users to get more info on real-life things like cars or movies by using their phone's camera.
But the video isn't being fatuous when it shows off those glasses; Nokia is indeed investigating gaze-tracking, or "near-to-eye" displays that they say will augment the mixed reality experience. Pulli says this outward-facing camera technology might ultimately be more practical built into a neck pendant, or embedded in a user's clothing.
But glasses or no glasses, Pulli believes there are bigger obstacles to achieving "mixed reality," which Nokia says is a superset of "augmented reality." Specifically, the servers and infrastructure that make it all possible. "There is a lot of additional work needed for recognition and tracking," Pulli says, "because we need more robust algorithms. We need to create the backend that can do all this matching. Only then can we make the killer application." The features that the video above demonstrates (which I called "useless" in my post last month) are what he calls "nice to have" features that would only arrive after the system can do the "truly useful" stuff like recognize people, landmarks and objects.
To read more about Nokia's MR/AR strategy, see a paper Nokia drafted in June 2009 on just this topic, embedded below.
As is my custom with all parties, I arrived to the Win7 hoopla promptly at 10 a.m., ready to sample the wares: coffee, biscuits, and a whole lot of hardware. In fact, there were so many dozens of netbooks, TVs, gaming beasts, and weird in-between devices on display that you'd hardly know this was a Windows launch.
Also on display: the adorable five-year-old from the commercials, who Steve presented with a gift on-stage: not a copy of Windows 7, but a pink netbook. More hardware?
The presentation skimmed over some truly neat stuff: streamlined home networking for sharing media and printers; faster movie-making and multi-touch; and streaming video to other Windows-based devices, as demonstrated by Microsoft's head of Windows marketing below.
Then came Ballmer's version of "one more thing": a curtain opened up opposite the stage behind the crowd, to reveal what looked like an entire Ikea showroom packed with computers and TVs. Steve walked through the crowd and joined another voluble Microsoftian, who walked him through about ten new pieces of hardware--everything from Dell's new Adamo to Lenovo's new netbooks to an Asus all-in-one. As Ballmer feigned surprise at all the futureworks, the audience, who had been seated to face the stage, not this surprise techno-Narnia, watched on big screens. Then it was announced that Windows 7 was on sale, and just like that, a new Windows era was christened. (Steve, ready to head behind the crowd for the hardware demo.)
But wait: where's the software? Where's the discussion of new applications, new development, or even a new UI? Microsoft showed off new Apple-reaction slogans on monitors all over the event: "I'm a PC" has become "I'm a Windows 7 PC." But Windows isn't like Apple, and shouldn't try to be; they shouldn't be spending my valuable party time on dozens of computers made by some other company. Microsoft's job is making development easier so that new Windows 7 owners can buy fabulous applications that rival killer Mac apps like Delicious Library or Billings or Tweetie. Microsoft has proven with Windows Media Center that they can do fabulous development themselves, but in an app-crazed world, they're going to need help from third parties, many of whom have diverted to more lucrative gigs like writing games for Xbox or apps for smartphones. For Windows to get back its mojo, it's going to need a lot more that just fancy pink netbooks.
Microsoft has a new video on the YouTubes that mocks Apple's App Store. Or means to. Inadvertently, it seems, it attempts to mock any number of companies--Google, Apple, Palm, Blackberry--for making good smartphones that run good software. Is Microsoft bullying the real smartphone innovators for being too smart? Are we in 6th grade? What the hell?
Here's the video:
The milieu: a Bill Nye-looking laboratory, presumably like the one that Apple uses to vet its apps. The conceit is that third-party developers are building silly apps and submitting them for approval, wasting the company's time. Except that in every app store out there, users find literally tens of thousands of useful, fun and sometimes vital apps for their phones. And they pay for them. It's as if Microsoft is accusing those developers of being a waste of time or a hassle, when in fact those same coders could be sending Microsoft 30 cents on the dollar. That is, if Microsoft had an app store.
Bizarrely, the ad ends with a quick plug for Windows Marketplace, which is Microsoft's online store, where you can buy crap like mice and Windows. On what planet does this comparison work--or this ad--do anything to make Microsoft look less than oblivious?
Update: Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, has just announced that the search giant has "reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results."
Bing has won what could prove to be a major coup in the race to integrate real-time information into Web search. But chances are, Google will edge them out in the long-game.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft has signed deals with Facebook and Twitter to stream their status updates in real-time into their search engine, so users can search feeds as they stream in from all over the world. That means Web search can finally be relevant when searching for trending topics and breaking news.
Right now it takes search engines' Web crawlers several weeks to index new publicly viewable data on the Web. The Bing arrangement would presumably assign indexing priority to streams from Twitter and Facebook. Google, for its part, has recently introduced a new "Search Options" feature to make its searches more relevant--but up-to-the-minute status updates are still nearly impossible for its general-purpose Web crawler to index immediately. Even so, the Bing-Facebook-Twitter deal isn't exclusive, which means Google could copycat the concept as soon as it wants.
Still, it would be rather un-Goolge-esque to make special provisions for platforms like Facebook and Twitter; the idea obviously presents little opportunity for horizontal expansion, since other providers would have to be added manually. Any entry-level computer science student would know that's bad engineering; you don't do manually what you should automate, especially when you know you need to scale. If we don't see Google imitating Bing's deal, it's because the search giant is figuring out a way to parse status updates and express-index them automatically from any and all platforms. Bing might have gained an immediate edge, but Google's likely strategy will garner true real-time search--and that's the holy grail.
Even if you hate the jackass who stole Taylor Swift's spotlight, it pays to know that Kanye lives. Why? Because the rabble have turned it into a Google-beating malware scheme that could punk you into downloading some bad stuff--before coercing you out of money for a fix.
According to ArsTechnica, the perps have taken advantage of an SEO hack to get their malware page to rise to the top of Google's results. That has led many unsuspecting searchers to exploitative sites as they try to verify the rumor.
What's bizarrely artful about the whole scheme is that the progenitors of the rumor--those 4Chan miscreants who vandalized West's Wikipedia page--are thought to be different from the opportunistic punks that saw the meme and then built the malware sites before pushing them up in Google's ranks to take advantage of the trend. That suggests that the age of innocence may be over for wildfire humor- and news-memes; if malware can exploit tomorrow's keyboard cat, the collective sense of web humor might lose its virality too, as users become more careful about where they click.
Smartphones have taught us to get excited over software--apps and OSes--but Samsung's new Android phone, the Moment, is all about hardware.
The device is quite possibly the fastest smartphone on the market, with a screaming 800 MHz chip. The difference shows. Everything from multi-tasking to landscape view happens uber quick on the Moment. My test device feels at least comparable, if not superior to, my iPhone 3G S in snappiness. The iPhone and most other Android devices muddle along at just over 500 MHz.
The disappointing side of all that speed? It's being wasted on a slider phone with a keyboard. Samsung has setup their otherwise-unadorned version of the Google OS to spurn the on-screen keyboard, so you're expected to use the slider for textual input. After weeks spent using HTC's Hero, the slickest of the Android devices thus far, I was waiting for all that 800 MHz horsepower to make Android's on-screen keyboard fly. Alas, it never makes an appearance. At least the landscape mode is jerk-free, something that can't even be said for the iPhone 3G S.
Samsung has done the Moment justice, otherwise, with 32GB of available storage on an SD card, a gorgeous 3.2-inch AMOLED display, and Sprint's capable 3G network. Still, the Moment isn't as svelte as its keyboard-less competitors, which makes it beg for a larger (perhaps iPhone-sized) screen.
It will be available November 1 for $180 on a two-year contract after the obligatory rebate hassle.
Apple's new Mac Mini now ships with server software, but Apple's suggested uses are vanilla. With 1TB of storage and plenty of power, let's put it to good use and stream some music and movies over the Intertubes.
Snow Leopard Server can do a lot of useful stuff right out of the box: You can file share, sync contacts, host a Web site. Snore. Personal servers are cool because they let you access your stuff from anywhere. But too many of Apple's sharing apps (like Home Sharing on iTunes) require that you be on the same local network. What if you want to roam the earth with constant access to Madonna's Immaculate Collection?
You'll need a few tools, all of them free (except the Mac Mini, which will set you back $1,000. But for our purposes, any Mac will work.)
Step one: get Opera 10 with Unite. Opera's new browser is incredible: it lets you create an impromptu music server with utter simplicity. (You can also set it up to stream movies that are stored on your local machine, or share bunch of other junk like photos and documents; but I digress). Check it out the rest of the features and download here; for simplicity's sake, we'll just stick with the music portion of this endeavor. Or watch the YouTube video:
Once you have your Opera music server up and running, you'll realize you can share your entire collection, streamable, by sending your friends a simple Web URL. The problem: the URL is long, nasty and forgettable. Buy a domain name (http://your-music-site.com) for $10 from a registrar like GoDaddy, and set it up to forward to that ugly Opera domain. Now you can tell people to head to your-music-site.com, instead of belching out a long Web address. (Don't worry; your Opera server is password-protected by default, so just knowing your domain name isn't enough for some freeloader to start listening to your tunes.)
Once you've got Web access to your Opera music server all setup, you'll realize a curious problem: your Opera music server is only running when Opera is running. You could keep Opera alive on your Mac Mini at all hours, but that seems excessive for something that you might only use occasionally. If you want to really geek out, get TweetMyMac.
TweetMyMac lets you control your home computer (in this case, your Mac Mini server) from anywhere using commands over Twitter. You create a Twitter account for your Mac, and then send it direct messages from your own authorized Twitter account telling it what to do. The list of commands is unbelievable: not only can you shut down, logout or sleep your Mac from anywhere, you can also open and quit apps, get screenshots, lock it, mute it, and get its IP address. Next time you want to show your friend a song, pull out your phone, tweet your Mac Mini Server to open Opera, and then go to your new custom domain. All your music will be laid out before you, ready to stream.
Better yet, you can stream the same way on the iPhone by going to your new music URL with Mobile Safari. (Some stream-to-your-iPhone apps exist, but none of them do exactly this, or work very well.)
Just set up the other Opera Unite widgets, and you can do the same thing with all your movies and photos. If you want to see how your Mini server is running at any given time, try iStat Server for iPhone.
If you don't want to run around creating profiles on every social network on the Web, there's a shortcut to maintaining a unified online identity. It's called KnowEm, and it lets you register your name (or brand) across a litany of sites automatically.
Other services have been able to survey your name's use on the Web, but not until now can you actually actively sign up for things en masse. The service, which launched Tuesday, works with 330 social networks, but it ain't free.
For brand managers, there are corporate packages that set you up a brand presence across 150 top networks, and all the work is hand-done by staffers on the East Coast, so there aren't any automated blips. That package will run your company $350. For individuals, you pay $100 for a similar service. (For individual accounts, you'll need to fill in biographical details yourself; the corporate edition does this for you, based on pre-determined info you submit to KnowEm.)
Enterprise accounts run $649, and create an ID and company information on 300 social sites.
If you've used the service today, let us know in the comments.
Berners-Lee was the first engineer to create a successful connection between an HTTP client and a server over the Internet. Until his work at CERN, the "Internet" was limited to command-line interaction between computers at networks like that of ARPA (now DARPA), which first made its ARPANET network live in October of 1969.
Few other seminal figures in the birth of the Internet are on Twitter. Leonard Kleinrick, a CS professor at UCLA who played an integral role in ARPANET, has an account but no tweets. Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist and another titular "father of the Internet," is a big believer in Twitter but doesn't publicly use the service, deferring instead to use of the official Google blog. Neither do Robert Kahn, ARPANET's hardware guru, or David Mills, inventor of computers called "fuzzballs" that were used as the backbone routers of the National Science Foundation's 56k network, which tested some of the Internet's first protocols in the 1980s.
