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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Twittergate – The Biggest Scoop That No-One Cares About
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 18, 2009 by admin in Technology
Saturday, July 18th, 2009The same public that doesn’t care about Twittergate probably doesn’t care about the ethics involved.
 TechCrunch’s Twitter Documents? A Little Bluerbird Told Them |
To me, the most interesting thing about the recent leak and subsequent publishing of secret internal documents from Twitter was not the information revealed about Twitter – we all know they fancy themselves to be in a deathmatch with Google and Facebook – but how TechCrunch’s decision to publish them raises once again a slew of questions about journalistic practices. The death of Walter Cronkite on Friday was a timely sort of metaphor for the kind of questions to which I’m referring; Cronkite’s famous We Are Mired In A Stalemate broadcast during the Vietnam war was a symbol of everything I admire about great journalists, and why, in decades past, I might have actually wanted to be one. TechCrunch’s decision to publish is an excellent 21st century example of 19th century British newspaper and publishing magnate Lord Northcliffe’s statement that “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising“. After pointing out that Twitter is their largest source of outside traffic after Google in June, TechCrunch has turned around and bitten the hand that feeds them. Which raises a couple of interesting questions: Are they somehow upholding some value of journalism by informing the public, or are they merely capitalizing on a tremendous traffic generator? And will it backfire? While this is in fact one of the biggest stories no-one cares about (it was barely even a hot topic on Twitter, ironically), it still highlights one of the key problems faced by journalism which is outlined in one of my favorite books of the past few years, The Elements of Journalism
Google Maps: Turn Left At The Light And Kayak 3,879 Miles
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 14, 2009 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009We knew we’d have to get in a kayak at least ONCE if we drove from Detroit to Sydney, but this is RIDICULOUS.
Google has some serious quirks. We’ve written about the bizarre results of Google’s autocomplete function, and we were surprised to find that there really is a WTF, California. But when we decided to drive from Detroit, Michigan to Sydney, Australia, we were rather surprised to find some serious flaws in Google’s driving direction data. It wasn’t so much that Google was telling us to drive across the northern United States (see image at left), which – when factoring for the curvature of the Earth – probably added at least a thousand miles to the drive. And it wasn’t even when they said we’d have to kayak through the Strait of Juan de Fuca into the Pacific Ocean. What really took the cake was when Google suggested we had to kayak first 2,756 miles to Hawaii: Read the rest of this entry »
Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Solves Peak Oil Problem
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 7, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009It’s nice to know that while Detroit automakers go bankrupt, there’s still a market for $2.1 million cars
Let’s see. Buy a house? Or buy a car? If you happen to have $2.1 million laying around, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 might actually make this a difficult decision. I generally think of combustion engine vehicles as rather Luddite, but the inevitability of peak oil makes me feel like just funneling all the remaining petrol in the world into the 1001HP, 16-cylinder engine of this thing and burning it all up. With a 7-speed transmission and 4 turbochargers to get enough fuel and air into its monstrous 8.0 liter power-plant to keep it happy, the Veyron 16.4 has a top end of 253mph. But don’t get too excited about the idea that you can travel 253 miles away in an hour, because at its rate of fuel consumption at top speed, you’d theoretically have to refuel every 12 minutes. At least you’d look cool doing it though, partly because the car lowers to just 3.5 inches above the ground and automatically extends a rear spoiler, and partly because, well, c’mon. This thing is simply amazing to look at. In fact, I’d say more, but I keep drooling all over my keyboard. Check out this Wired.com piece for more photos and a description of what it’s like to drive the new Veyron; Bugatti didn’t offer us a test drive or a press tour for some reason. You can also configure your own with Bugatti’s configurator page. I was kind of partial to violet; the green option just didn’t look right somehow.
The Future Already Looks Retro
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 30, 2009 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009When you’re from the 23rd century like me, the 20th and 21st centuries look a lot alike. And we’re sorry to say that Mama’s taking your Kodachrome away.
 The 1974 JVC Video Capsule and the 2002 iMac |
This little review of the Sony Walkman by a 13-year-old iPod owner reminded me that for most of my life, I’ve felt like I’m living in some sort of time warp, or am genuinely displaced in time. As a kid in the sixties, I would watch Star Trek, and the technology and philosophy of the show seemed perfectly natural to me: no war, money was obsolete, computers had flawless voice recognition, and if you were captain of a starship, you could be white and kiss hot black (or even green) chicks and no-one would bat a lash. Then I’d go out to play, and my reality would be crushed; the first thing I’d see in the driveway was my brother’s rusted out ’62 Ford Galaxie, which, in spite of the space-age name, certainly didn’t have warp drive, and definitely ran on filthy petrol-matter, not anti-matter. Ironically, in spite of the fact that I lived through the era of 8-Track tapes, then cassettes, then the still-cumbersome CD, I am at this point genuinely disappointed, for instance, at the crappy sound quality of mp3 files and the utter lack of compact, single-source holographic audio and video. As a result of feeling like the present is antiquated, I have a perverse fascination with the even more antiquated technology of decades past, which is why I just lost about two hours of my life over at RetroThing.com, where I not only spent hours reminiscing about once-incredible technologies like the Magnavox Astro-Sonic Stereo Console and this incredible pocket-sized computer, but I also learned about tragedies like the impending demise of Kodachrome. Damn. And I was just shopping for a Pentax Spotmatic the other day. Know of any other cool retro sites?
Top Ten Disappointing Technologies, Part II
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 24, 2009 by admin in Technology
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009In part two of our list of Top 10 Disappointing Technologies, we find out why it’s cheaper to communicate with the Hubble Space Telescope than to text your mom.
See part one of this list here
| American Cell Phones |
 Can you hear me now? |
I have a friend in Chicago that can only use his iPhone in a four square foot area at the edge of his dining room that I call his “iZone”. Just today, my Verizon service repeatedly dropped calls and failed to send text messages in a major urban area. On the other hand, I’ve been in the middle of the bush in Kenya and had crystal clear, uninterrupted conversations with Europe. What is it that makes cell phone service in the states such a joke? Apparently it’s the plethora of protocols that are supposed to encourage competition, which is supposed to benefit the consumer. Which, as an occasional victim of the binding and punitive agreements providers feel compelled to enact because even they know their services suck, is definitely not what ends up happening. In fact, texting is four times more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble space telescope, which apparently amounts to a 4900% markup. Does anybody have the number for NASA’s sales department? I think I’m switching providers.
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