Voice over IP, is what it stands for.
In short, simplifying the systems that enable you to talk to someone else, with out having to use the old fashioned PBX system of dialing in a 10 digit number on a device that is bound and controlled by a larger carrier.

All you need, is some sort of indexing service so you can easily “click” on a name to establish a connection.

Historically, thats what the phone company did. They set it up so that (once you paid your bill), you could plug a device in to a hole in your wall, and it “just worked”. Dial tone… push some buttons, and you’re talking to mom.

In the world since the advent of major VOIP carriers like Vonage, Skype, and even Voice over IM systems, like having video chat/audio chat with AOL IM, Gtalk, etc… You either had to use a separate system of addresses, like someones buddy name, skype name… etc. *OR* carriers like Vonage, or Skype tied in to the old fashioned PBX based system to dial out to a conventional phone number.

And that all worked, well enough..
Savvy people were probably going to try Vonage or Skype anyway, and could deal with the extra setup of having to pay something and then login to a website, and then use your computer to be a voice recording/broadcasting device to talk to someone on a phone.

Today, Apple just announced how their video chat system is going to work… and they’re claiming “zero setup”…

Scratching my head, I had to think about it for a second, until I realized that … apple is going to figure out how to tell if the names in your phone book, are behind an iphone4… and use that to usurp the use of the phone carrier to work over wifi->broadband->internet as a hole ->broadband->wifi between your iphone, and your friends iphone.

Apple made it so you don’t have to use AT&T to make a phone call.
Next step, they start matching your “phone number” against a “serial number” on the phone, and you’ll never have to use a carrier for iphone communications at all. (assuming your on a network)

They stepped in and did what Vongage / Skype couldn’t do, give you a very well designed device to use.
Skype and Vonage had a buddy list type thing, or at least Skype did, I never bothered with Vonage… so you could talk to other skype people, or you could dial a regular phone number. But that still relied on you transferring data out of another device in to skype.

Now for $299 on June 25th, I can buy a device, that once I sync it, will have all of my numbers, so it can act like a boring old AT&T powered phone (ick)… but somehow, if by apple-magic, it will require zero set up to do video chat over wifi.

If you are a major carrier.
Apple just one upped you, by using the network, and smarts to beat you to the punch.

To me its an exciting advent of the chance that carriers stop being monolithic entities, and free market forces have a better say of how things work. I’ll gladly pay a monthly fee just for BANDWIDTH, if it does everything I want. No need to have a separate bill for TV/Phone/Data… when they’re already just 1’s and 0’s flying over a network to begin with.

Change is good, glad to see it being driven forward.

Technology as a feature in our lives.
What are the lines between us, and them, and what do we do when a object asks for help?

Some of us spend a lot of time working with computers, and when something goes wrong, we fix it. Not because we should, but because we need it to work.
But what happens when an object, or in this case a mobile robot, who has a purpose that has nothing to do with you, asks for help?

This is a really interesting project, coming out of the ITP program from the Tisch school of the arts at NYU.

In New York City, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

The Tweenbot’s unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me, was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it’s destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot.

And you remember how this unnamed large corproate entity was part of the resistance to Philadelphia having their own public wireless network…

To think, if your network went down in your office, you could just walk a few blocks to the park, or… a coffee shop… or anywhere if your city has a well build wireless network not tied up in interference from corporations who are trying to monopolize internet access.

This evening I’m headed up to NYC to visit my brother for a few days. I decided to take Bolt Bus. They say it has wifi, and the price is very good.
So what the hell. It can’t be worse then the China Town bus, can it?

Right now, as I type this, I’m sitting about midway back on the bus, plugged in and on the internet at 75mph headed north on I95. The fall evening has turned dark, and I’m listening to friskyradio typing in to the glow of my monitor as the highway blurs by me in the windows. I’m in a sort of future pause right now, as I see what tomorrow will bring us, and how its already here if you’re looking in the right spot.

In 83 Gibson wrote about a ubiquitous data network. At the time it was raw fantasy with the “internet” as we know it only a sketch on a drawing board, and barely connecting only the most major Universities in the world. His vision was of a matrix of computers, connecting everyone together, making communication and the exchange of data effortless and integrated fully with our daily lives. We’re not quite there yet with the level of Virtual Reality he predicted, but its almost impossible to not find somewhere where I can get on line… and the power to share, collaborate, and integrate that it brings us is amazing.

Case in point.
Obama Iphone App.

The Obama campaign continues to blow the lid off of what you can do with the internet in coordinating grassroots campaign movements. Wired has a great article on how it is connecting people all over the country in a way that has never been done before, for the purpose of grassroots organizing.

And now the Obama campaign has an iPhone app thats leveraging the digital device we have in our pockets to track and manage that same campaign at the level of what you, as a single person can

The ability to share information quickly and effortlessly is the biggest problem with running any organization. Your team can not execute the plan if they don’t have the knowledge to do what you want them to do. The advent of the internet as a way of distributing that information easily was the first step. The devices that most of us carry in our pockets are just waiting for the connectivity to take the next step.

The iPhone, I’ve always said, is the first generation of a new paradigm in connected devices. its easier to use, slicker, better interface, and developed in mind for applications as a small computer, not as a phone. Its screaming for applications that leverage our own personal data, such as your phone book, and GPS sharing, with a larger organizaation that needs you to participate in the mission at hand. Leverage this for any grassroots or low capital oganization that needs to maintain connectivity and organization and you no longer have to have offices, phone trees, or even email if the system communicates the data you need to share exactly how it needs to be consumed at the other end. If that data integrates with you personal knowledge, such as the phone book, or GPS system, you then have the ability of coordinating that data with real action in real time. The Campaign software tracks calls made, and your position when you make the call (its not tracking who, just that a call was made from its interface). This data can be shared with the head quarters, and you’ve instantly got a knowledge network based on not only abstract contact info, but also geospecial relationships. You know know exactly where the holes are in your coverage, and can see whos near by to fill it.

I think its brilliant, and for the purpose of a volunteer force organizing to elect a man president its perfect for their needs.

this *IS* what we’ll see in 4 years, and in 8 years, and I cna’t even imagine in 12 years….

The military has been working on the smart warrior technology that does this for the use of soldiers on the ground for decades, I think a simple iPhone app made it look old, and useless all of a sudden.

I don’t want a day when you can’t unplug.
But the day when everything I need to do my job, and connect with who and what I want to connect with is right around the corner, and I can taste it. The future is in beta, and we’re all testing it.

Arstechnica reports …

Google’s Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, now tells Ars Technica that the company tries to reuse these licenses as much as possible, “in order to keep things simple for our users.” Ward admits that sometimes “this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product” and says that Google is “working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.”

So, one more battle for the little guy wins.
I’m glad google realized that this was a mistake, and that (of course pending what the next version of the EULA reads) we’ll all be able to use Chrome with out thinking that our sundry details will be shared with the rest of the world if google wants to…

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=952157&cid=24858835

“Do no evil” means… what? blindly force people to install your quasi-spy ware with out warning them?

*sigh*

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”

Bold for emphasis.

So, if *I* read that right.
Anything I post to a website, via Chrome, might be copied by google to their databases, and used for what ever purpose they want, when ever they want.

Right?

yeah… Sorry, thats a little absurd.

It will just be a toy until thats straightened out.

The house is called “Casa 11 Mujeres” (Eleven Women House), a cliff-top house near Santiago in Chile by architect Mathias Klotz.

(there are more photos on the site I got these from …)

This week, Senators Dodd and Feingold won a battle in the fight to stop the FISA capitulation. In an attempt to stop retroactive telecom immunity, they delayed a vote on the bill until after the July 4th recess. This buys us more time to shore up the votes needed to defeat the bill. However, it’s unlikely we’ll succeed without real support from leaders in Congress, most of whom have already abandoned us.

Senator Reid caved in long ago, and Speaker Pelosi folded just last week. There is one leader left who could make a difference and support our cause: Senator Barack Obama.

Back in December, Senator Obama’s office released a statement that he “unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies.”1 On Wednesday, however, Obama said in a press conference that “My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.”2

Senator Obama still has time to make this right, but it won’t happen unless we all work together to hold him accountable.

The delay in the FISA vote gives senators a new chance to stand up for the Constitution — will Senator Obama stand with them? Sign this petition and urge Senator Obama to vote his conscience and stand by his previous statement: No retroactive immunity for telecoms. No caving on the constitution.

Sources:

¹ Senator Obama’s statement on retroactive immunity from December 17, 2007.

² Video and selected text of Senator Obama’s press conference from June 25, 2008.

I love it when profit is more important then practicality.

Some of the choice details…

- At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing in them.

- Processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas in a day to heat 3 million homes in Canada.

But hey, gotta keep those Cadillac Escalades running…. no matter what the cost.