Is Reading A Book Bad For The Environment?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on September 9, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009One of the many reasons books and I are entering couples counseling.
I have a troubled relationship with books, and when I describe it, it sounds like a should see a couples’ counselor. I’d like to spend more time with them, but I have myriad excuses, mostly relating to feeling distracted or too busy. Or I say I’d like to get together when I can spend some quality time together. Which is a cheap out, because I can speed read (I can comfortably read 950wpm according to spreeder.com, try it yourself). The fact is that as much as I love the tactile feeling of kicking back with a good book – the feel, the smell – it also started seeming intuitively wrong a number of years ago. I worked at a now-defunct book store when eBooks were first being discussed as a possibility, and they intrigued me. My bibliophilic coworkers would sneer at me, tsk-tsking me for questioning the sacred nature of a physical book, which was a little ironic: the store sold remainders and reprints. For the record, the publishing industry is not particularly green; only 5% of the paper used in books is recycled, around 35% of books printed are never read, and instead are returned to the publisher and end up in landfills, and around 70% of the world’s paper supply comes from natural forests, rather than tree farms. So what’s an eco-minded book lover to do? The fact is that although eBook readers ultimately are greener than printed books (although there’s a fair amount of debate on the topic), they still, frankly, kind of suck. Compare these reviews and prices. The most popular reader – Amazon’s Kindle
Does Artificial Intelligence Equal Genuine Stupidity?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on September 4, 2009 by admin in Technology
Friday, September 4th, 2009Dissociated Press is being run by an artificial intelligence today. Go ahead and talk to it.
More than one person has suggested that my writing could easily be replicated with a fairly small number of monkeys with typewriters, and that Dissociated Press could be replaced with automated link aggregator software. I can’t afford any monkeys, and offhand, I don’t know how to program a link aggregator, so I’ve decided an artificial intelligence would suffice. And I promise it’s not a Russian Flirtbot. Today, YOU are writing the content, and the site will talk back to you. Maybe not all that intelligently, but how smart a web site do you expect at the price you’re paying. I mean, 99.6% of you don’t even click on the ads! Have a nice chat:
Your Facebook & Twitter Activity Is Tracked More Closely Than You Think
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 25, 2009 by admin in Technology
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009Sentiment Analysis & Social Media Monitoring are compiling massive amounts of data for trend tracking, but as a side effect, compile massive amounts of data about individuals as well.
Next time you’re Twittering your thoughts, making a status post, or taking a quiz on Facebook, remember that not only are you creating part of an eternal online identity and probably sharing your information with more people than you thought (especially see question 3 in that ACLU quiz), you’re also helping shape marketing and political decisions. We’ve written jokingly about Googlewanking and Googlewashing before, but the two latest big things on the web – Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis – are making the web a different place. On the abstractly interesting side of this, sentiment analysis sort of renders the typical CNN or Time user poll (typically called a Voodoo Poll) even more absurd than they were. Online polls have always had major shortcomings, but the main one was that of limited demographic diversity, i.e.: only dorks who take CNN polls take CNN polls. A recent classic example of their susceptibility to gaming and inaccuracy was when “moot”, the 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, became the “World’s Most Influential Person” in a Time user poll. The difference with these newly evolving data mining tools is that they Read the rest of this entry »
iWish iHad a Mac Tablet
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on August 13, 2009 by admin in Technology
Thursday, August 13th, 2009Almost as much as I wish the tech news industry would stop taunting me with the idea.
This Mac Conversion Goes A Little Overboard |
I have no interest in owning an iPhone. I don’t go to meetings every day with trembling hands and utter “My name is Ian, and I’m powerless in the face of Apple“. I refuse to use iTunes, and I hate their business strategy and software. I get mildly annoyed when people tell me how I’ve made so much progress since I started using a MacBook (a machine I love, by the way). In spite of all this, I literally salivate when someone says “Mac Tablet”. I saw an Apple MessagePad back before I even used computers, and was dumbfounded when I finally started using a PC in 1999 to find that the product had been quickly abandoned. So will the world of tech industry and business news PLEASE STOP TORTURING ME? Industry sources have been saying “coming this fall” since around the time of this May 2008 rumor. Yesterday’s rumor is that they just shot an ad for the new Mac Tablet at a diner in Truckee, California. This all hot on the heels of the buzz about some mysterious “veteran analyst” actually handling the thing. To fan the flames of my lustful depravity, Mashable presented this comprehensive roundup of imagined Mac Tablets last week. My pick would have to be Tommaso Gecchelin’s flexible touchscreen notebook (pictured below), which most agree is an exceedingly unlikely Apple design. For now, alas, the only available Mac Tablet is the Axiotron ModBook, which somehow seems like one of those car kits that turns a Volkswagon into a sports car. Maybe I should’ve included the Mac Tablet in my list of Disappointing Technologies… Read the rest of this entry »
Google Voice, iPhones, And SpyPhones
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 8, 2009 by admin in Technology
Saturday, August 8th, 2009Google Voice is amazing. And creepy.
I just got an invite to try Google Voice, and after giving it a quick test run, I was left a little uneasy. I’m not really a tin-foil hat type, but I’m often reminded of William Burroughs’ remark that “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on”. The uneasiness kicked in as soon as I clicked on the “accept” link, and had to decide whether or not to use one of my existing G-Mail accounts. Should I use my business account? My personal account? I knew that to test the service, I’d be entering both my mobile and land line numbers. Which meant I’d be linking pieces of my Google search history with my e-mail content, two phone numbers, and my name. And storing it all in one place on a Google server. I opted to create a new G-Mail account. In spite of Google Voice’s amazing features, I’m going to have to ponder exactly how to put it to use, because the same things that make it cool make it creepy. You can record calls, transcribe them to text, do conference calls, and even pick up as someone leaves a voice message, just like an answering machine. All in one place. Which is exactly the issue. All in one place. On a Google server. I know we’ll all eventually have shaved heads, a number instead of a name, and be constantly under surveillance like in the George Lucas movie THX 1138