LiTechSci

friendfeed

2008-05-09T11:04:00.000-04:00

I know, just what you need is another invite to some social application. You're thinking: "I'm on MySpace/Facebook, why do I need anything else?"

First off, those social networks are so 2006, secondly, they're tied down to your computer and logging in to the network.

Forget social networks, it's time for social applications. With the freedom I discovered by getting a mobile device that connects to the "interwebs" from anywhere (okay, there seems to be a dead spot in the middle of the Hussey Sound), I have gotten wrapped up in social applications. I know, it's a lot for all of you non-geeks out there to handle. But, trust me when I say that you'll be just as enthralled if you give it a shot. There are only two problems with these applications. One, there are a lot of different things to handle, I can find myself staying up until 1am checking all of my different services (like last night). Two, none of my friends are geek-ish enough to take part yet, so the whole social part of it is pretty one-sided for me right now.

That's why I introduce to you friendfeed.com

This is a message posting/conversation site that is similar in a way to pownce or twitter. The difference is that it integrates all of the other social application that you use into one feed. So I, for example, have my blog, my digg, my flickr, my gmail status, my pandora, my picasa, my pownce, my linkedin and my twitter accounts all connected to friendfeed. When I update any one of those it will be posted on my friendfeed. Basically, if you join friendfeed and subscribe to me, you can eavesdrop on me all day long. On top of that, many of you already use a couple of these applications, so even if you never return to friendfeed, everyone else will still benefit from you making an account and connecting to your other services. (Other services include: Google reader, StumbleUpon, Jaiku, YouTube, iLike, Amazon Wishlists, Netflix queue, and others...35 total).

Once you are all set up, you will see a list of all updates to these applications in chronological order. Your friends not only catch up and keep up with what's new with you, but they can comment on anything and start conversations on each feed.

So, check it out. It's a much more up close and personalized way to stay connected than those networks that are infested with Fwd: surveys and single-flavored, re-skinned applications.

My friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/cadebro

TechMaine Fund

2008-04-11T15:32:00.000-04:00

I received this email today and thought I would pass it along to anyone who thinks having technology entrepreneurs in Maine is important:

Hi Cade,

Maine needs additional financing vehicles to attract new companies and ideas and to fund and retain our current entrepreneurs. We are entering the last days of Maine's current legislative session and one of the remaining bills is the TechMaine initiative for the creation of a private equity Venture Capital Fund of Funds to support Maine's technology entrepreneurs and grow Maine's economy. Maine can secure a competitive advantage in New England by implementing a Fund of Fund investment vehicle.

The legislation is titled:
LR 3568: An Act To Attract New Capital for Innovative Businesses through Equity Investment in Maine

WE NEED YOUR HELP ensuring this important legislation becomes enacted! We need you to take action and contact your legislators to let them know your support for this initiative. We've created a Website at www.MaineFundOfFunds.com to supply you additional information and help through the process of reaching out to your elected officials.

Contacting your legislator is vital! On most issues, legislators and other elected officials receive very little input from their constituents. This seems to be especially true of technological issues.

Being contacted by even just a few voters is often enough to mold or shift a legislator's stance on an issue, especially if they have not had much voter contact on that issue before. Every e-mail and call is important.

Please visit www.MaineFundOfFunds.com today, spread the word, and help create a new vehicle to grow Maine's economy!

Thanks!
Joe Kumiszcza

How OneHut Burned Me

2008-04-08T12:39:00.000-04:00

Two years ago I began working as a freelance Web designer. My intentions were not to make big bucks, but to help people and organizations out who could not afford to hire their own designer while gaining experience. Having little experience with Web hosts, I referred to the results of several Web host ranking Web sites. I thought I made a good choice when my research turned up OneHut, a very affordable host with average customer service and a non-WYSIWYG interface.

I was a fairly happy customer for several years. Customer service was not entirely responsive and when they did fix an issues, they were not very good at communicating that to me. But, I figured I got what I paid for.

Well, did I ever get it.

This past weekend all of the sites I manage went down, and did not come back. With the help from a friend and a little research I soon realized that OneHut went out of business without warning any of their customers. Not only have I lost all of the pages and assets to several sites (including over two years of work on my brother-in-law's Web site), but it appears that good ole OneHut registered my domains in what I am guess is their parent company's name. As a result I might not be able to transfer my clients' domain names.

Research uncovered this blog by another unhappy customer, this forum string on the Web site of the user interface OneHut used (the only feature with which I was content), these reviews from unhappy customers, and the Better Business Bureau's report on the company.

With little else to do, I decided to try to contact the company with which my domains were registered, names4ever.com. That URL directed me to aplus.net (with a little more research I discovered that these urls do as well: abac.com, server4me.com, websolo.com). I spoke with customer service and they directed me to contact support@names4ever.com and said they will set me up with access to manage my domains (which is strange because names4ever directed me to aplus.net). After not hearing from them for four days, today I emailed customer support at aplus.net retelling my tragic story and hoping for a little serious direction.

Now, I am no expert on the clientèle of Web hosts, but upon googling "ABACUS America scam" (ABACUS America being the company that owns names4ever, and apparently the names sake of abac.com and aplus.net), I was returned a long list of escrow scam sites, all hosted by said ABACUS company. For some reason I don't think I will be getting any help from this company, and in the end its my clients and my reputation that will suffer.

Let this be a warning to all out there thinking of finding a cheap Web host. Go with a trusted name, it's worth the extra cost.

Neuro-Branding

2008-03-14T11:35:00.000-04:00

On the Sword and Laser forum for the current cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, a question was brought up about the reason for using product brand names in the novel. Many found this to detract from the story, and here was my response:

There is the possibility that Gibson was saying something about branding and our culture by purposely mentioning them. Needless to say, it's a pretty bleak (if not interesting) portrayal of the world. People spending more time out of reality than in it, and when they're in reality, they are busy killing each other or taking enough drugs to forget about it (sounds pretty close to the truth to me). People are unhappy with themselves to the point of grafting machinery into their bodies in order to overcome their inadequacies. To me, in a future like this...I mean, like that...branding holds a lot of weight.

This is not distracting to me, I think it strengthens the setting. More distracting (and not Gibson's fault) are the lopsided technologies. Like using a magnetic strip to open doors, and having a hard-lined phone. Again, Gibson has done the best he could at foreseeing technology trends, but in this day and age a lot of it feels awkward.

To wrap up, the decision of using true to life names (beyond just brand names, such as celebrity names, city names, etc) comes down to whether or not you want the plot to be timeless. By creating artifacts in a story, you have the chance of making it more relevant, but run the risk of the story becoming inconsequential. To this point, science fiction typically is not timeless since technology often progresses beyond what authors can dream up. This can make brand names more helpful than hurtful as it creates a mental connection to plot and atmosphere of the story.

Google Calendar

2008-03-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

Google Calendar has a new-to-me feature of being able to sync with Microsoft Outlook.

You can choose to sync both ways, Outlook appointments to Google Calendar, or Google events to Outlook Calendar. You can also choose how many minutes should pass between syncs. I tried it out (syncing Google Calendar with Outlook appointments), and was disappointed to find that it only synced with appointments that I had created, not ones that I have been invited to and accepted. So, I quickly uninstalled it. Though I wouldn't suggest using the sync application, a good feature that I did discover (not in any way connected with the sync application) is that if you invite your Gmail account to an appointment while setting it up, it will automatically add the event to your Google Calendar.

Find out more about Google Calendar Sync

There and Back Again...or Not

2008-02-12T12:45:00.000-05:00

The AP announced today that the Tolkien Trust and HarperCollins are suing New Line over the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies that were released in 2001, 2002, 2003. The Tolkien Trust was only paid $62,500 instead of the contracted 7.5% of gross revenue. If my trusty calculator works properly, 7.5% of $6 billion (worldwide gross revenue) is roughly $450 million. The Tolkein Trust's suit is for $150 million, an unlisted amount in punitive damages and the termination of any rights that New Line may have over Tolkien works.

The Tolkien Trust is a registered charity organization in the United Kingdom established by the Tolkien estate. They have given nearly $8 million to charitable causes in the past five years. Up to this point they have tried to settle the conflict out of court to no avail. A successful court battle will certainly put a lot of food on hobbitses' plates around the UK.

A side effect of the lawsuit is that it might put an end to the production of The Hobbit, which was slated to be filmed in 2010. It's a pity that fans of the book and Peter Jackson's silver screen adaptations will lose out as well. I wonder if New Line will be pulling the Hobbit announcement off their home page?

Read the AP article >

American Gods

2008-02-06T10:48:00.000-05:00

Neil Gaiman's American Gods is a unique fantasy presented in modern times. The concept is that all of the gods that throughout history people have brought brought to America exist physically as well as metaphysically. These old gods have slowly been displaced by people worshiping the modern gods of TV, Internet, et al. Things are coming to a head and the unlikely ex-convict character Shadow takes the readers along for the ride.

I was very much looking forward to American Gods after reading all of the hype on it but felt let down. It's not an issue with the writing, which I enjoyed, but the plot and characters. Gaiman certainly shows diversity and creativity, but to what point?

I have put thought into Shadow as a character and come to believe that he was written flatly in order to believably accept all of the hurdles that were thrown at him. But, in the end this left me not very invested in the main character of the story, and feeling like he was a gimmick. All the the supporting characters seemed to share personalities as well: Mr. World/Town/Stone/Wood/etc. were but many instances of one character; the modern gods seemed to have the same haughty and vehement attitude; the old gods the same resistive, ostrich-head-in-the-sand mentality. With the differences in the origination of each god, I expected more diversity in their character as well.

The plot was all over the place which made me feel overwhelmed and wondering what the point was. Every conflict seemed to, ironically, be resolved with a deus ex machina. I guess one could accept this since most of the characters were gods, but I prescribe to the idea that if a gun is fired in act three, it should be on the mantle-piece in act one.

I have yet to complete the book, so my impressions may change (not likely considering how others came away from the book), but I currently feel like I do upon finishing a half-hour sitcom: mildly entertained and regretting the time I wasted. For those who enjoy Gaiman's writing, I would suggest Christopher Moore. I had the same impression from his writing: entertaining, witty and very unique in plot.

Adapted from one of my posts on The Sword and Laser.

The Next Generation of Solar Cell

2008-02-05T13:25:00.000-05:00

Conventional solar cells are expensive to produce and inefficient. They are produced with silicon and exotic materials which attempt to boost their effectiveness. In truth, the typical solar cell captures only about 20% of the potential solar energy and, obviously, are completely ineffective after the sun has set.

A group from the National Idaho Laboratory is attempting to change that. Their new solar cell design is made up of tiny spiraling antennas printed on a thin film. Each "nanoantenna" is about 1/25 the thickness of a human hair, and made up of common materials. The result is a thin, flexible and cheap solar cell that is 80% effective and can collect energy for hours after sunset.

The solar cells collect energy through resonance, the same way a television antenna picks up a signal. The difference is that the nanoantennae is designed on a scale to capture infrared waves. The key is that as the Earth heats up, it gives off infrared waves which can be collected by the antennae for several hours after sundown. Collecting energy from both the sun and the Earth is the key to its effectiveness.

The only hurdles that the group has left is perfecting the design of the cells and developing a way to convert the energy into a form that is usable. The energy produced by the solar cells is AC and fluctuates 10,000 billion times a second. This is much too often for typical appliances which run off of AC that fluctuates 60 times per second. The only perceivable way of collecting the energy is to develop a rectifier that can handle the fluctuations and turn it into DC which could be used to charge batteries.

Read more on the Idaho National Laboratory Web site.

Only 37,000 Years Will Tell

2008-01-25T15:27:00.000-05:00

AP reported today that an asteroid, "2007 TU24" which is between 500 feet and 2,000 feet long, will pass by Earth at around 300,000 miles away. Though this sounds like a large distance to us puny humans, if you look at it on a galactic scale, that is a near miss—1.4 times the distance of the moon from the Earth. As a matter of fact, an asteroid of that size passes near Earth every 5 years, and strikes Earth once in about every 37,000 years. Luckily, no known asteroid of 2007 TU24's size or larger is expected to pass this close to Earth again until 2027.

Supposedly the asteroid will be viewable in dark and clear skies with amateur telescopes of 3 inch apertures or larger, so keep your eyes to the sky on January 29th at 08:33 UT.

For more information, read this Discovery News article.
See an interactive illustration.

Another asteroid is projected to pass Mercury the following (Earth) day. This one is to pass within 16,000 miles of the inner-most planet. Early models showed a 1 in 25 chance of Mercury being struck by the asteroid but now the odds are 1 in 10,000.

Greener Gadgets

2008-01-24T08:56:00.000-05:00

Friday, February 1st, 2008, CEA, inhabitat and other partners are sponsoring the first Greener Gadgets Conference at McGraw-Hill Conference Center in New York City. The intent of the conference is to bring visibility to designing for sustainability, product life cycle management, take-back and recycling programs, energy efficiency, greener materials, and green lifestyle and product marketing. The conference will also showcase a prototype green office and exhibits from leading green technology companies.

Engadget is giving away 5 tickets to the sold out conference. You can register here, but Engadget claims that they are going to verify that you can actually attend before giving away the tickets. So, make sure the date and place is doable before signing up. The deadline is this Sunday, the 27th.

Join me in signing up, we could all use a little more knowledge when it comes to going green.

WiFi Everywhere?

2008-01-23T13:01:00.000-05:00

According to an Ars Technica article today, American Airlines is adding WiFi Internet access to their transcontinental flights. This will be achieved by three antennas attached to the plane that receive the signal from nearly 100 cellular towers across the United States. The signal will then be evenly dispersed through the plane's cabin by access points installed on the cabin's ceiling. The service is expected to cost ticker holders $10.

This kind of news makes me feel warm all over. There is nothing more depressing than being unable to access the Internet when you're sitting around doing nothing. Although it has been years since I have regularly flown, I am very familiar with WiFi withdrawal. Now, if only Casco Bay Lines would get on the ball an install a similar service for commuters.

WTT Epic Loot for Cold Cash

2008-01-16T13:37:00.000-05:00

As the popularity and demand for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) continues to skyrocket, interesting niches have come about along with some interesting issues. One of the largest of these new niches is the abundance of auction houses and stores for purchasing virtual gear, gold, or leveled players. With this virtual economy come issues that spread beyond the game. Mainly cheats, exploits and phishing. But, as the new book Exploiting Online Games points out, players are going out of their way to covertly make money off of the game software itself. This is certainly nothing new, but it is getting to point of becoming serious as developers don't have he infrastructure in places to pick gamers that are using exploits or bots out of the crowd of millions. It appears that the infrastructure that allows gamers' PCs to connect to a persistent world hosted on a server is also the source of this conundrum.

For more information, read this Security Focus article.

Lit to Split

2008-01-15T05:44:00.000-05:00

When I began this blog, I never considered addressing the audience with an aside. My intentions were to be as formal as possible while hopefully invoking some thoughts in the readers and providing interesting links to more information. Yet, lately I have been silent in my blogging and wanted to let the readers know I haven't given up.

Christmas was closely followed by finals for me which took away my free time. In my career as an amateur writer I have stuck closely to the idea of writing everyday for ten minutes. Even if it is the same word over and over again (what a great blog that would make), it is important to keep on writing. That was part of the point of LiTechSci; to write a little everyday and keeping it within my greatest interests to make that easier.

So, going forward I am going to try to stick to that mentality. But, in order to do that my posts are going to be briefer to help make the frequency more possible. My focus will be to bring up an interesting subject, give my take, and post links that give further information. Enjoy.

Desk-Potatoes Are More Engaged

2007-12-26T23:26:00.000-05:00

MediaPost reported the other day that viewers are 47% more engaged in ads streamed online than on traditional television. The article was a result of a year's worth of research by Simmons, a company with over 50 years of experience studying television ads. The research also showed that WebTV viewers are more involved with the shows they watch and enjoy ads from Web sites they visit more often.

My scientific mind wonders what this data actually correlates. Is the effectiveness of the ads dependent on the medium? That is the conclusion that the MediaPost article implies. To me, there are more variables at play. Some examples:

People are more accustomed to lounging on their couch and sitting up and aware at their computers
Most online software marks the location of advertisements on the video's scrubber and has a timer on the length of the ad, making ads more bearable
It's much easier to surf channels on television; location would be lost online if one browsed to another site
Television is more casual, those who watch online are actively seeking content
Watching online is trendier and has a fresher feel as the video is customizable and surrounded by Web 2.0 smoothness and gradients

It seems to me that the viewer's attentiveness is due to who the viewer is and why they are viewing, rather than the effectiveness of one medium over another. But, the outcome is the same; online delivery of television shows is a viable and successful means of advertising to viewers. Hopefully two things will come about due to broadcast companies' painfully-slow discovery of online video.

The writer's strike will conclude as both parties realize how much money is being lost
Broadcast companies start posting more full episodes and larger back-catalogs

For now, I will be happy with what I have: Hulu Beta.

An Embuggerance

2007-12-14T08:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, fantasy author Terry Pratchett came out with news that he is suffering from form of Alzheimer's disease that attacks at a comparatively young age. The author of the Discworld series refers to the disease as an embuggerance and that he'd like things to stay cheerful. He thinks that he can come out with several more books before the disease makes writing too difficult.

This is at least the second blow that Fantasy literature has suffered this year. In September we lost author Robert Jordan to amyloidosis. Jordan was unable to complete his extensive series The Wheel of Time, though the final book, A Memory of Light, will be completed by author Brandon Sanderson.

We all hope that the 56-year-young Pratchett will be able to continue writing for many years to come and gets to a place he feels happy with in the Discworld series. Pratchett is known for his contemporary satirists and for being named Officer of the British Empire for services to literature in 1998. He has sold over 55 million books which have been translated into 30 or more languages.

Destination Mars

2007-11-29T08:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, NASA released information about a manned trip to Mars in 2031. Although much of the information will surely change before the mission actually begins, this BBC News article contains interesting information about the planned mission.

Some of the key points are:

The mission will last 30 months, including 16 on Mars

Cargo and living quarters will be sent separately, and a few years ahead of time

The shuttle will be powered by 3 or 4 Ares V rockets fueled by cryogenic fuel

The astronauts will be supported by a closed-loop habitat system which will recycle their air and water and allow fruits and vegetables to be grown on-board

The mission will cost anywhere between 20 and 450 billion dollars

Overall, this is very exciting news. Few will deny that space exploration is important to our future, though many doubt anything useful will come of it. To me, the chance of being able to habitat elsewhere in the solar system is worth the extreme cost. Even if such a mission is a complete failure, there will be many useful technological advancements that will spawn from the investment.

MagLev

2007-11-26T19:12:00.000-05:00

Growing up, I was always enthralled by the perpetual motion machine paradox. It's one of those things that just nags at you, convincing you that there must be a way. In my mind I always envisioned a perpetual motion machine that was designed similar to a Christmas Carousel, except instead of powered by the heat from candles, powered by magnets below and on the turbine blades angled to repel. In actuality, this would not be considered a true perpetual motion machine, as the magnets create an electromagnetic field, which would be an external energy force powering the perpetual machine. Eventually, I figured this out and my dreams of winning the Nobel Prize in Physics was shattered. Yet, an article on Inhabitat reminded me of my childhood scheme.

The MagLev is a giant wind turbine suspended in air by magnets. The beauty of this design (okay, so its massive size probably bashes all hope of beauty) is that very little friction slows its spinning. Really, it is only susceptible to air drag, the same friction which causes it to move. Because of its low drag, it starts spinning at low wind speeds, it can withstand high wind speeds, it is very efficient for a wind turbine, and has very low maintenance costs. As a matter of fact, the company behind it claims that it should provide power at the cost of one cent per kilowatt hour. This is incredibly cheap, considering the average cost of coal energy per kilowatt hour is 1.75 cents [Source] (so widely used for energy because of its abundance and cheapness), and the average cost per kilowatt hour of modern wind turbines is around 5 cents [Source]. Another one of the huge benefits of the MagLev is that it takes up very little real estate compared to a wind farm of conventional wind turbines large enough to produce the same amount of power.

Although their cost is huge, $53 million, such a wonderful device could change the state of green energy. I would much rather look at one of these on the horizon than smog.

The Road

2007-11-12T19:00:00.000-05:00

It's not often that I will pick up a book with Oprah Winfrey's seal of approval on it. Regardless, I hurried to the library in which I volunteer to pick up Cormac McCarthy's The Road as soon as a friend described it to me. It's always hard for me to judge something as the best, or my favorite. I would be hard pressed to deny this book of either of those titles.

The Road is a haunting tale of a father and son traveling south in a world that no longer lives. Almost all humans and every other living thing in the world is dead; the world is a desolate and ash-covered wasteland. The son's innocence and the father's anguish is almost too much to bear in contrast to their sterile surroundings. The story is told in short vignettes comprised of elegant prose. The suspense created by the duo dodging cannibalistic survivors, and their own hunt for nourishment makes the novel read almost too quickly. I will leave you with one of my favorite lines from the book.

"Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."

I am a TWIS-Minion

2007-11-09T13:16:00.000-05:00

I decided that my first Science post should promote my favorite source of sciency-goodness. This Week in Science is one of my favorite podcasts; I make sure I listen to it every week. TWIS is a show on KDVS (8:30-9:30am Tuesday, on 90.3FM for anyone in the area and interested), the radio station of the University of California, Davis. It is hosted by the brilliant Dr. Kirsten Sanford, and the master of alliteration, Justin Jackson. Together they create a formidable team; Kirsten with her deep knowledge of science, and Justin with his witty spin on topics.

Every week, Kirsten and Justin discuss the latest news in all science fields. They often have top scientists in their respective fields as guest speakers. More recently they added a segment called the Weird in Washington, where Dr. Michael Stebbins explains some of the more controversial developments in D.C. which may impact science research or the environment. The also play stories submitted by their listener-base, called TWIStributions, and generally have a good time.

Anyone who is thrilled by advances in science should tune in to this podcast. It's informative, entertaining, and at times very humorous. I look forward to every second squeezed between Justin's disclaimer and Kirsten signing off with: "It's all in your head" on my walk to work Wednesday mornings. It's certainly better than the beat of my feet.

MESDA's 15th Annual Conference

2007-11-08T14:11:00.000-05:00

MESDA’s 15^th annual conference began with an announcement that MESDA is being renamed techMaine as it now encompasses more than just software development. Another interesting note from the opening remarks was MESDA’s placement in Google searches, such as being the second result when searching “technology events” (in actuality it is the first result as the one before is a sponsored link).

The Keynote speech was given by Frederick Hayes-Roth, former Chief Technology Officer of Hewlett-Packard. The Keynote was entitled: “Getting Ahead of the Avalanche.” It discussed the rapid growth of information technology and how more intelligent techniques of filtering will be needed to parse relevant and material information out of the avalanche of incoming data. Some relevant and material information from the Keynote was:

Due to Moore’s Law, by 2040 a person will be able to purchase a computer with the processing power that exceeds the combined processing power of all human brains for a cost of $1000. But, how will that be useful to an individual?

The cost of putting information on the Web per bit is approaching $0.00; communication is becoming free despite service provider’s resistance.

It is impossible for an individual to absorb all relevant and material information.

Bits only have value when they meet the user’s needs and expectations. A user-centric, value delivery system is needed; which was dubbed “Me-centric.” Some current examples are iTunes, TiVO, Yahoo! Alerts, RSS feeds, GPS, ONGMAP.

The difference between Pull and Push methods of accessing information. Pull is actively searching for information, such as using a search engine. Push is when you set your preferences and relevant information is delivered to you. Push is more effective by a factor of 5.

In Q&A, one issue that came up with the concept of an intelligent system for filtering incoming data is the potential for privacy issues. If content providers are aware of how people are filtering their incoming data, what is preventing them from taking advantage of that information?

Rick Hayes-Roth was an excellent speaker and a seemingly brilliant man. His presentation was clear, relevant, and sprinkled with humor and personal stories. It was worth attending the conference for the Keynote alone, not to mention the opportunity to network with some of top IT professionals in Maine and the other excellent presentations given throughout the day.

Is the Gphone dead, or converted into an Android?

2007-11-06T08:05:00.000-05:00

Technophiles alike gathered online yesterday at noon to receive word on the conference call put forth by Google and others about the upcoming, open source, mobile-device operating system, Android. Personally, I hung out on Engadget, refreshing their "live" feed from the conference call.

One thing that was made clear during the conference call is that there was no Gphone in development. It had been rumored for months that Google was developing a phone to compete with Apple's iPhone. The average speculation was that the hardware would be built by a third-party, the software would be developed by Google and comprise of their many online applications, and that the service would be ad-based resulting in a low cost or an all together free device.

Well, now that the Gphone rumor has been squashed, what will this Android do for you? Android is the operating system and bundle of software that Google has been developing for mobile devices. It is linux-based and open source. Most open source software is protected by the GNU General Public License (GPL). The purpose of this license is to keep any free software free. To clarify, a common phrase in open source is "free as in speech, not as in beer." Free software's code is available to anyone and allows them alter it and redistribute it in any manner they wish, which includes selling it even if the originating code was acquired for free (as in beer). The catch is that you must allow the same rights which you were given, meaning the next person has free (as in speech) access to your code and can distribute it.

I am among the camp that believes this open handset concept will bring great change to the mobile device arena. For an idea of the kind of applications and gadgets that Android will bring to handsets, take a look at: Gmail, Google Maps, Google Documents, YouTube, and iGoogle, as they will all most likely be a part of the software bundle. Then, on top of that add Open Social and it's ability to interface with most social networks, and the possibility of Google winning the 700MHz spectrum auction, and you've got a powerful combination. All of this will be available to any freelance application developer, cellphone manufacturers, and cellphone service providers.

Oh, and Google claims that Android will not be ad-based.

The Sword and Laser

2007-11-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

What better way to begin my own journey in the blogasphere then by pointing out a blog which supports an online book club started by the personalities from one of my favorite podcasts, CNET's Buzz Out Loud (how's that for mashing technologies?). As the point of this blog is to express my outlook on news and information in the literature, technology and science circles, it is only fitting that my first post is a mash of literature and technology (you might even be able to squeeze science into that mash, when considering Science Fiction books).

The Sword and Laser is an online book club dedicated to Fantasy and Sci-Fi books, with the intended audience of nerds. Being an avid reader of Fantasy, as well as a nerd, the potential for this site excites me. I'm glad that I discovered it early (thanks to this week's episode of TWiT, which included Veronica Belmont of Mahalo and formerly of Buzz Out Loud), and I am looking forward to catching up the first book being discussed: The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman.

For those who are interested in joining this interesting club as well, I thought I might list a few possible ways of purchasing The Golden Compass.

The entire trilogy His Dark Materials can be purchased from amazon.com for $13.50, which happens to be less than any of the used prices for the same.

It can be purchased in audio format through audible.com for $25.90, or it can be purchased with one of your two credits with a monthly subscription for $11.47 a month, or it can be your freebie with the TWiT free trial.

It can also be purchased cheaply from ebay.

I may go with the freebie from Audible and TWiT. However I purchase it, I look forward to catching up with the book club and discussing The Golden Compass with my fellow nerds.