Brad Ideas

Robocars & More

Here's a business idea for both mobile phone companies and people who operate those giant digital signs in public places (such as malls and the Times Square jumbotron.)

For the past couple of years, I've been mulling over an idea for a different kind of DVD "rental" company, similar in ways to the popular NetFlix. Now I have encountered a new company called Peerflix which is doing something similar. Is it annoying or vindicating to see somebody else run with something? :-)

So instead I will comment on Peerflix, which I am going to try out, and what I planned to do differently.

Here John Dunn suggests sending an AI to negotiate with any aliens we discover via SETI.

This raises an interesting question. If SETI worked, and we got a signal from an alien intelligence, and the signal was understood to be a description of a computer architecture and then a big long, and undecipherably complex computer program -- possibly an AI -- could we dare run it?

I have looked at a lot of image management programs, though not all of them, and been surprised that none match what I think should be a very common workflow. Sure, they all let you browse your photos and thumbnails of them, move them around, and rename them. And some let you do the functions I describe but usually doing them to a lot of photos is cumbersome because they only have a slow mouse interface or a poor keyboard interface.

Here's what I want to do, and right now use a combination of programs to make happen.

On a recent roadtrip, I did some "wardriving" where you scan for 802.11 (wifi) access points. Today they are everywhere. The scanning program lists the network name (SSID) as well as other information like the model of access point and whether it has encryption on. Often the SSIDs are informative, with the names of families and companies. Mine is an web address that would let a neighbour contact me.

All this happens because most access points transmit a regular "beacon" packet which lists their SSID and other information needed to connect to them. Seeing that the SSIDs were sometimes interesting, I wondered if we might do much more with a special beacon.

This beacon would deliberately tell you a bit about the access or location. It would contain a mixed XML/HTML packet with a variety of useful fields and general text. These could range from simple descriptions ("This access point belongs to Joe Smith, I'm a programmer") to information ("On this site, Paul Revere stopped on his ride to consult with local minutemen") to street directions ("Turn right to get to highway 101, left for downtown") to, of course, advertising ("We sell fresh fruit and have a special on plums today.")

In other words, a replacement for signs and billboards and markers. And perhaps much more. Access points would also talk about themselves, declaring, for example, if the owner is offering open internet access for free or for fee, or has a local database of information, and what classes of information are in the main text. The local lattitude and longitude for those without a GPS could be useful, along with local map data in a compact form.

Users could quickly get a program for their laptop (such as Netstumbler) to read and display such virtual annotations to the world as they drive. Primarily for passengers to use, of course. Eventually dedicated boxes would become available, and onboard car computers and GPS units could understand the protocol. Mass market access points would include a set-up screen in their web interface to let the owner enter the information beacon text and enable it. (Today some APs have open source firmware and an energetic programmer could do this right away.)

All of this might be both useful and entertaining. Children might enjoy reading all the random bits of information that flow by and stop asking "are we there yet?" The journey can become the reward. (Of course remember to look out the window sometimes.)

I can imagine vendors making a cheap solar powered access point that, during the day at least, sends out information beacons as soon as enough power is stored in the capacitors to send one. These could operate on a small, cheap solar cell (the more power, the more frequent the beacon) and be placed anywhere. "I'm an oak tree!"

Below, I will get into some technical issues and discuss the unanswered question, which is how to avoid abuse by excessive advertisement, spam and falsehoods.

Update: Well, clearly this was already being done when I asked for it, just not at the airports I flew from. It's now close to universal.

Airport pickup is becoming another nightmare in some cities, with police barring cars from waiting for passengers, causing people to circle.

Ok, I don't publish too many of my telecom ideas here since I am working on revolutionizing the phone call for my next business, but here's a simple one.

If you have a large carrier voice mail, such as the voice mail for a wireless company, you should notice if I call somebody and they are not simply busy, but in the act of leaving a voice mail for me. If so, you should break into their voice mail dialog and connect us.

Ok, it's strange because I think one of the whole points of the hard disk video recorder / PVR is that you are not supposed to watch live TV any more, not supposed to channel surf -- but I keep coming up with ideas relating to it. Maybe I have a secret desire to surf again.

As many people know, with digital recording, the no-surf rule is enforced because it's harder to do. The digital delay introduces a long channel change delay, intolerable when combined with another delay (satellite/cable box).

In writing an essay I'm working on about why hard disk video recorders are as novel as they are, I explored a concept I think is worthy of its own blog entry. This is the concept of Telepathic User Interface or TUI.

A TUI is a user interface that you use so much that it becomes unconscious. Perhaps the classic TUI is touch typewriter keyboard. I just think letters and they simply come out. I am no longer consious of the mechanism. In many cases I think sets of letters and even words and they just come out. From the mind to the computer -- telepathic.

You'll recall an earlier post about the Silicon Valley 100 and getting stuff for free. I promised I had something to say about toilets anyway, so I will describe my experience with the Swash I was given as well as the Daelim Cleanlet which I bought a few years ago.

Earlier, I wrote some proposals for improving ebay style feedback, including not having feedback revealed until both have left it. That has some flaws, but the main reason eBay is unlikely to do this is that eBay likes feedback to be positive, they want to convince buyers it is safe to shop there.

So here's an alternate idea to prevent revenge feedback. Revenge feedback is only vaguely in eBay's interests, in that the fear of it keeps feedback positive, but the existence of it adds to the negatives.

I notice from this chart in advertising age (which requires an annoying complex if free registration form) that there's been a giant jump in the CPM (cost per thousand viewers) of a 30 second Superbowl ad. From 1968 to 1998 it hovered close to $10 in constant dollars -- or about a penny per impression.

Then there's a big jump (thanks in part to Fox and the dot-com boom) and now it's up to $25. But they're still paying, even though the $10 figure is more common for regular TV.

I've disabled the trackback feature that allows other blogs to tell this blog they have pointed to it. It's being abused by spammers. Unlike comments, which can have a little turing test on them, trackback needs to be automatic to work, so it's a lot harder to protect against spam except through complex blacklists etc.

Many people have old, low resolution digital cameras lying around from the previous generation. Here's a good use to put them to, particularly if you have a housekeeper.

When somebody needs to put something away, and they don't know where you like it to go and have to figure out where, have them pull out the old digital camera and take a picture of the item and a picture of where it was put.

Then every so often you can pull out the images into an online folder, ideally with a thumbnail browser.

For the third year in a row, I held a "superbowl commercials" party. In this case, we used MythTV to record the game in HDTV for a while, then sat down to fast forward through the football and slow down to watch the commercials.

Here's a simple though not too exciting idea. Make bells for cat collars in different pitches. Thus you can always know which cat is coming just by sound.

One thing I've noticed when you get a TV broadcast that has 5-channel sound, it that you get the voices on the center channel. Particularly with things like voice-overs, sportscasters etc. If you can mute the center channel, you can watch a game, for example, with no commentators.

But sometimes you do want to hear what they said, if there is something on the field you don't understand. If you have a PVR, you can rewind and turn on the center channel audio (though rarely is there a good UI to do this) but here's another idea.

You may have run into the story of a fireman charged with burning down his own home. They charged him because his Safeway Club card records showed he had purchased the type of firestarter that was used in the arson on his house.

Sounds like a good case? Problem is somebody else confessed to the arson. He's now a free man.

I love hard disk video recorders because they surprised me by being much more than super-fancy VCRs. They changed the nature of the way people watched TV in ways I didn't expect.

Now I've been working with MythTV which is an open source PVR. I have a new program in development, and if any of the readers out there are using MythTV I wouldn't mind some folks to test it out before I announce it to the Myth community.

This program does many things, including two things that I think could change the nature of how TV is chosen.

In spite of all sorts of efforts, I remain amazed at how many cables still go in and out of my PC. My home theatre PC, which I recently wanted to take somewhere, had me unplugging power, ether, audio, digital audio/SPDIF, keyboard, mouse, cable in, video out and a serial cable providing PPP to the old Tivo. It could easily have had another video, USB devices like a printer and more.