Month: September 2005

Piracy in China

Post ImageThere always seems to be something in the news about China (and to a lesser extent, India) these days, and it’s usually about how China is changing in one way or another. Even articles that seem to talk about a lack of change really talk about change:

But one thing never seems to change, and it’s as obvious on street corners today as it was six years ago. In 1999, when “Star Wars Episode 1–The Phantom Menace” debuted, it was quickly pirated on DVDs that sold throughout China for next to nothing.

Fast forward to May 2005–four years after China joined the World Trade Organization and embraced its stringent rules on intellectual property rights. When “Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith” opened in U.S. theaters, copies again hit the streets of Beijing within days. Sold out of bicycle baskets by roving vendors, available in mom-and-pop retail stores everywhere, the counterfeit DVDs retailed for about 75 cents each.

Yes, piracy is a big problem in the world, and not just in China though the problem is particularly evident there. Why is it bad though? Change!

What’s standing in the way of better intellectual property rights enforcement? “It’s not a plot,” says Bruce Lehman, former commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the chairman of the International Intellectual Property Institute. “It’s the result of a system in transition.”

It’s a pretty safe bet actually, when you hear China, just guess change!

Read: CNET News.com

Inukshuk Wireless Internet

Post ImageSay it with me now – wireless everywhere! Looks like it’ll be happening in Canada sooner than expected too, according to Om Malik:

The Canadians are taking a lead on the US, and are putting together a nationwide fixed wireless broadband network, according to Digital Home Canada. Two Canadian incumbents – Rogers Communications and Bell Canada have decided to pool all their licensed wireless broadband sepctrum into a new company – Inukshuk Internet – that will be equally owned and controlled by the cable guys and the phone company. They will also equally share transmission capacity and will work with other wireless broadband providers such as Clearwire to make sure that wireless broadband users can roam on other networks. Inukshuk will build and operate the network, that within three years should bring wireless broadband to two-thirds of Canadians. It is going to cost $200 million and will cover 40 cities and approximately 50 rural and remote communities across Canada.

This is a glimpse into the future my friends, mark my words. It won’t be long until we can walk anywhere and be connected to the Internet. And when a cable and a phone company team up, well you know it’s got to be important.

The Globe and Mail has more on the story:

“The promise of wireless broadband is here and Bell and Rogers have the expertise, resources and commitment to make it happen,” said Bob Berner, chief technology officer of Rogers. “This is a powerful tool for Canadian businesses and consumers — both of whom will benefit from the substantially increased and accelerated competition the network will bring.”

I think the name is particularly interesting, Inukshuk. An inukshuk, similar to the logo chosen for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, was historically important for navigating across the arctic tundra. As there were no natural landmarks (just endless seas of white) native peoples would build inukshuks to help them mark where they had been and to find their way to various locations. In that sense, inukshuks kind of connected the north. Wireless everywhere is going to connect the north again.

Read: Om Malik

Great Idea: NAIT's OokSTICK

Post ImageUSB Memory Sticks are incredibly inexpensive now, and as a result, it seems that everyone has them. The great thing about a memory stick though, is that you can never have too many! That’s why I think NAIT’s OokSTICK is an amazing idea:

Full-time students who are registering for courses this fall at NAIT [Northern Alberta Institute of Technology] are getting off to a great start with a memory stick and virtual magazine.

The 256MB USB stick not only contains plenty of storage space for student assignments, it also features OokMAG – the NAIT Student Virtual Magazine, a 40-page electronic publication loaded with information about life at NAIT.

Wonderful! This is something all post secondary institutions should be doing. It’s a great way to share information with students, and an even better way to show students that you’re willing to do something for them once in a while. I think tuition would be easier to swallow if I got a USB memory stick as part of the deal (not easy to swallow, just easier).

Read: NAIT OokSTICK

Northern Voice 2006

Post ImageJust saw on Darren’s blog that Northern Voice is happening again in 2006. Here are all the details so far (from Darren’s post):

  • It’s a two-day conference now, with Friday being a self-organizing thingy in the tradition of Foo Camp and Bar Camp. Saturday will be similar to last year’s conference. You can register for either or both days.
  • It’s going to be Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11.
  • It’s slightly more expensive than last year, but still absurdly cheap at CAN $30 for either day or $50 for both.
  • It’s back at UBC Robson Square.
  • We’re seriously considering holding a potluck dinner on the Friday night.

I really enjoyed Northern Voice 2005, so I am definitely looking forward to the second one. I really like the idea of Moose Camp too, that’s a good idea. Here’s the new website (I think the old green is nicer than the blue).

Read: Nothern Voice 2006

Fuel cell powered MP3 player

Post ImageI like to think that my Zen Touch has a pretty damn good battery life, at least when compared to other audio players like the iPod. Not as good as the new fuel cell powered MP3 player that Toshiba has developed though:

Toshiba, who wears the belt for world’s smallest methanol fuel cell, has now developed two fuel-cell powered MP3 player prototypes. A flash-based player measuring 1.4 x 4.3 x 0.8-inches is said to run for 35 hours on a single 3.5ml charge of highly concentrated methanol while a hard drive based player swells to 2.6 x 4.9 x 1.1-inches and runs for about 60 hours on a single 10ml charge. Those dimensions are pretty sweet (the 60GB ipod is 2.4 x 4.1 x .75 inches by comparison) and will certainly get smaller once optimized for production.

That’s pretty crazy, no?! Though I am not sure if storing methanol would be that much better than just plugging the player into the wall every now and then,

Read: Engadget

Want to build a satellite?

Post ImageWhat would you do if you could launch your very own satellite? What would you design your satellite to do? I don’t think I know enough about the possibilities to even hazard a suggestion! Check this out:

An ambitious program called CubeSat, developed at Stanford University and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, is giving students and companies the opportunity to build and launch functional satellites into low Earth orbit, or about 240 to 360 miles above the planet.

The satellites are tiny–they weigh a kilogram and generally measure about 10 centimeters on each side–but they cost far less than conventional commercial satellites. A CubeSat unit costs roughly $40,000 to build and only $40,000 to launch. As part of the program, Cal Poly takes care of the bureaucratic and logistical hurdles.

By contrast, a conventional satellite can run between $150 million and $250 million to build and $100 million to launch.

Think of this like the start of computing. Computers were finally “inexpensive enough” for an individual to buy (though far more expensive than they are today), and so they did. And look what happened! Is the information age going to have to make way for the true space age, where it’s not governments exploring the galaxy but you and me?

Read: CNET News.com

UAlberta Podcasting?

Post ImageDoes anyone know of any podcasting projects taking place at the University of Alberta? If you do, leave me a comment or drop me an email or something. So far the only “podcast” I have found was created by the Libraries:

iPod Walking Tour – Main Floor Services
This is an audio tour. Please download the file to your iPod (or any other mp3 player), and then come and explore the Main Floor of Cameron Library.

You can get to the mp3 file (which comes in both English and Mandarin -language versions) at http://www.library.ualberta.ca/podcasting/. While this technically is not a podcast (as there is no RSS feed to subscribe to), it’s a step in the right direction, and the URL is clearly indicative of more content in the future. And it should be noted that the Libraries provide a number of other RSS feeds already.

Google launches Blog Search

Post ImageGoogle today unveiled Blog Search, which as you might expect searches blogs and is in beta:

While Google web search has allowed you to limit results to popular blog file types such as RSS and XML in web search results for some time, and its news search includes some blogs as sources, Google hasn’t had a specialized tool to surface purely blog postings. In fact, while all of the major search engines have been dabbling with blog and feed search, none has done much with blog search until now.

Google’s new service (in beta, naturally) is available both at google.com/blogsearch and search.blogger.com. Google blog search scans content posted to blogs and feeds in virtually real-time, according to Jason Goldman, Google product manager for blog search. “We look for sites that update pinging services, and then we crawl in real-time so that we can serve up search results that are as fresh as we can,” said Goldman.

Google defines blogs as sites that use RSS and other structured feeds and update content on a regular basis.

Yet another entry into the growing list of blog search engines. Unfortunately, Google’s new Blog Search doesn’t seem to do anything special. It looks and acts like Google though, which make it attractive for a quick search. Can’t help but wonder when the MSN and Yahoo versions will come out now.

Read: SearchEngineWatch

OneNote 12

Post ImageI really love OneNote. I think it’s probably one of the single most useful applications ever created. Of course, it works best on a Tablet PC because you have a pen and are thus able to handwrite notes, but there are ways to handwrite using your PC too. So what’s coming in the next version of OneNote? Chris Pratley, one of the application’s designers shares some of the new features:

One of the long term visions for OneNote is to bring together “your information” and make it findable and reusable, regardless of format. When we look at the types of info we try to help people organize, it is obvious that a lot of it lives outside the digital realm: Business cards, handouts, receipts. People always have a collection of paper that accompanies their PC because it is hard to include that stuff in their digital storage. Beyond paper, there are other analog forms of information such as speeches (audio) and “performances” (video). You hear and see things today, but all you have are your memories of that, or maybe a recording on tape or mini-recorder. As you know from the current release of OneNote, there’s a lot of value in just being able to capture various kinds of information in one place: text, HTML, ink, photos, audio/video recordings. In OneNote “12”, we’re going to go even farther.

More or less, anything you put into OneNote 12 becomes searchable.

I was instantly amazed that OneNote could search my handwriting without having to first convert it to text – definitely a major wow feature. Now it’s going to be able to search everything else too? Crazy. If you read his full post, there are more details on how the various searches work, and he mentions that OneNote 12 will in fact use the new Windows Desktop indexed search engine, which means a search should be pretty much instant.

If you haven’t yet tried OneNote, I highly suggest that you do. You can download a free trial here.

Read: Chris Pratley

Microsoft to buy AOL?

Post ImageA number of publications including the New York Post and Reuters reported this morning that Microsoft is in early talks to make a deal with the AOL unit of Time Warner:

“There have been talks on ways Microsoft and AOL assets can be better leveraged and they’ve taken place over the normal course of business …,” the source said, calling reports of a joint venture “way overblown.”

Although the talks, which have taken place over several months, could advance, nothing was imminent, the source added.

Low-ball estimates for AOL are about $10 billion with improvements possibly doubling that valuation, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners, said.

If Microsoft were to buy the assets, you can bet they’d merge it with the MSN unit. Otherwise, the deal could simply be some sort of cross-advertising agreement, which would be good for Microsoft as they’d probably acquire access to the vast content that Time Warner owns. AOL has been dying a slow death for years now, so I’m not sure what Microsoft would want with the company besides advertising and content possibilities.

Read: CNET News.com