A Quiet Robot Invasion?
I'm slightly obsessed with the video pictured to the left, which is a promotion for Honda's Asimo, the world's most sophisticated humanoid robot. I've watched it at least 8 or 9 times. Sure, it's a machine, but the way this piece is made, I can't help but find it beautiful. Even the way Asimo moves around the museum makes you feel as if he is actually curious and full of wonder. Of course, Asimo isn't the only robot diplomat out there (check out some of the related videos to see some of the other "humanoid" robots being created)...
Cloud Computing and Privacy
Brad Templeton, the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, presented on the Evils of Cloud Computing at the 2009 BIL Conference. He made a few interesting points. The first was about the Bill of Rights protection we often assume we have, but which is actually being eroded by our choice to put so much of our data in the "cloud." The second was more of a future prediction of what might be possible when our data gets falls in to the wrong hands...
Creative Questionnaire: Luke Wroblewski
Luke Wroblewski is an internationally recognized Web thought leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 600 million people. He is currently Senior Director of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc.
The Effect of Print on Demand Services on Web Content
In a recent post, Paul Raven of Futurismic discussed how services like MagCloud will affect the print magazine industry, and in turn, how that will affect online publications. I think he makes a good point. I used Lulu.com to create a simple and quick book version of articles that I had bookmarked...
Google Hysteria, or a Conversation We Need to Have?
In his much-quoted Guardian op-ed piece, Henry Porter slammed Google this weekend in a pretty serious way. In response to the column, John Lanchester, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, offered more measured evaluation of Google, specifically looking at their Street View, Book Search, and Voice services. Personally, I think there are two primary issues at play here...
Visualizing Email
I created two graphs this week, one showing the amount of email I received per day over one week, the other showing the amount of email I received per hour over one day...
Small is in the Zeitgeist
I saw a great article this week on the Harvard Business publishing website called Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy. Here's a good quote, but check out the full article...
Digital Conservation: How Much More Can We Expect?
Here are a few more questions I've thought about in light of this digital conservation idea. What are all the freely stored pieces of data I have online? Here's what I've come up with so far...
Digital Conservation: Where Does My Facebook Data Go?
I was talking with some friends the other night about this idea of digital conservation, and wondering aloud if I might be ready to stop using Facebook (probably not just yet). However, I had heard rumors that if you delete your Facebook account, all of your information- wall posts, photos, messages, videos, etc. - will remain on Facebook's servers, and possibly even visible on your former friends' profiles and any groups you belonged to. Is this true? I decided to do a little digging.
It’s Time to Start a Digital Conservation Movement
Since the Amazon Kindle 2 was announced, I've continually been wondering whether a device like it is a good idea. At a price of $359.99 (no monthly fees, 60 second book delivery), it would take a long time of buying digital books at a substantially lower cost than the printed versions for it to "pay for itself." So, my first question was whether buying Kindle version books was even a good deal at all. I decided to look at some of the books I've read in the past year, comparing the prices for a Kindle version, a printed version, and a used version.