Networked GPS units. So cool. And good for the planet?

Real time traffic data is pretty neat. I call my wife sometimes and have her check Google Traffic before deciding which way to drive. That system relies on a very expensive system of embedded sensors, and as such, only has data for a limited amount of area. I also use a GPS frequently, an inexpensive Garmin I bought for my wife 2 years ago but now rely heavily upon. As I navigate the San Francisco bay area, I've often wondered about having real time data available on the GPS, and it looks like that is becoming a reality. Very cool.

TomTom is releasing next month a new unit that will record average speed from other TomTom units, and use that to calculate average speeds on roads at various times of the day or week. That is, it will learn that the 405 on a monday at 8 am is a parking lot, but at 4 am on Sunday, it's smooth sailing. And it will use real data, from real drivers and real cars, to learn this. With that knowledge, it can better calculate your best options.

The Dash Express appears to take this one step further. It not only uses the information collected to better determine averages, it operates in near real time. So if the Dash connected drivers ahead of you are are stuck in traffic, and the data gets sent to the server, that server will send the data to your Dash, and it will reroute you accordingly. If it works, you can imagine this having huge impacts. If everyone had this, it could make our entire highway system more efficient. That could have positive environmental benefits.

As a side note, I could imagine this becoming a business school example of the success or failure of a product dependent on the "Network Effect". Imagine being the first person to buy a fax machine. It doesn't become useful until several or many others have it. I wonder how many Dash users are needed before it becomes truly effective?

Climos - Using Technology to fight climate change

Climos is a recently funded startup, (one of their investors is Elon Musk), that aims to combat climate change through a controversial "geo-engineering" technique that seems remarkably simple at it's core. They plan to take iron, dump it into the ocean. Plankton grows well is iron rich environments, so it blossoms, dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Since plankton consumes carbon and the carbon would be stored in the body of the plankton, you are sequestering carbon.

Seems simple. Almost rings of some kind of movie plot. If it works, and can be done safely, then I think it's really cool. I'll admit to having reservations though. How many times have we been told something is safe and foolproof? It's times like this I always remember the pictures of scientists and dignitaries watching the nuclear bomb tests, wearing dark sunglasses. I'm sure they were told it was safe, but human knowledge is not infallible. And when humans begin projects that are designed to tweak the delicate balance of the planet we live on, even well intentioned and seemingly reasonable, I get nervous.

Earth2Tech's article on 10 controversial geo-engineering projects.

Printers - Annoying and Wasteful.

I've got an idea. If you work from home, unplug your printer and hide it. Put it away. I've got a printer sitting under my desk, and I haven't used it in years. I bought it, but used it so infrequently the ink dried out, and I'm too frugal to replace the ink, only to have it dry out.

And it's rarely an issue. I save important stuff to PDF, and backup online. On the rare occasion I need something printed, I stop by a Kinkos or have my wife do it at work. Neither is an option I like using, so I only print when there is no good option. And that turns out to be remarkably rare.

This cuts down on paper use, and ink. Ink itself isn't so bad, but the method used to sell it is. The cartridges are tough to refill, and each takes plastics and energy to manufacture and ship.

If you do use a printer, then consider recycling and refilling.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/2078?src=rss

Fotoflexer - Better than Photoshop Online

Since we're on the topic, I just discovered another nice online photo editor. It has all the normal editing tools, a fast and intuitive interface, and lots of neat effects, some of which I've not seen elsewhere.
http://fotoflexer.com/

Photoshop online - eh. Not so much.

I use Photoshop all the time, actually own a legal copy of Adobe Creative Suite. It's one of only three pieces of pay software I use regularly. (XP, Office being the others.) It's a great program, and has enough of a market that "Photoshop" has become the generic term for any computer modified photo, from simple adjustments and fixes to creative and artistic modifications.

When I saw that Adobe had released an online version of Photoshop, I rushed to test it and have spent quite a bit of time playing with it this morning. I can't say I'm impressed. It lacks the serious tools that have made Photoshop the standard for professionals, and for casual users, the interface is not nearly as nice as some of the other online editors. It also lacks any really interesting or fun tools. Comparing it to Picnik or others, I can see no reason to recommend it over those.
(See my post about online editors here)

All that said, it will probably do well. When people go online for a photo editor, many will Google "Photoshop" rather than "online photo editor" and will perhaps never discover what I consider to be a better product.

Vector Magic - Convert images to Vector images

There are generally two types of images for computers. Jpgs, BMPs and the like are made up of thousands or millions of pixels. If you take a small picture and blow it up big, you lose resolution, and it generally won't look good at all.

The second type of image is a Vector image. These are commonly used for logos and drawings. They are actually defined as lines and figures, not dots. This means you can scale them infinitely, without loss of resolution. It also makes certain types of edits easier. Vector based graphics are typically needed for signs, stickers, t-shirts and other types of media.

There have been several times in my life when I've had one, but needed the other. Creating a pixel based picture form a vector based one is easy, but the reverse is not true. But Stanford has released VectorMagic. It's not free, but it's pretty cheap, and considering how long and difficult tracing is normally, would be very useful when you need it.

As an example, check out what it did with my header: Significant loss of detail, but it would infinitely scalable.

Is Free really the future of business?

Wired Magazine had a recent article titled: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

It's a good article, but misses the mark on several points.
My first quibble is with the headline. When you read the article, it's clear it's really referring to businesses like the web, software, and music. It's businesses where there is very little or no physical product being sold. Without a physical element to the product, marginal costs can be very low, and you can afford to give away much of the product. The author mentions a web model, "freemium" where a small percentage of users pay for a premium version of the product, and in doing so, support the majority who do not. Makes sense when you are talking about email, but I can not imagine a scenario where one person buying a premium car pays for 99 other people to get a car free.

Most of the points the author makes are very valid, but apply to a very limited scope of businesses. The reality of the world is that it is very complex, and there are many, many complexities. As energy costs rise, the majority items will become considerably more expensive, not free. More expensive to produce, more expensive to ship, and more expensive to buy. This hardly points to a future where "Free" rules.

Advertising makes sense, but at some point, the model begins to fall apart. As more and more businesses move to a free, advertising supported model, eventually the number of outlets selling advertising will outstrip the number of businesses willing to pay. When supply exceeds demand, prices will drop. As the revenue drops, the cost of providing the service may no longer be covered by advertising, and companies will be forced to look for other revenue streams.

These are just a few of the issues I have with article. Most of it stems not from any blatant falsehoods or logical mistakes, but merely the failure to address the serious limitations to the "free" model.

(And yes, I do realize I'm posting on a free blog service, with Google Ads on it.)

Facebook | Picasa - Upload pictures in just one step. Brilliant.

For several years, I've been a user and a big fan of Picasa, a free
photo organizational tool from Google. I take thousands of pictures a
month, so keeping track of them, editing them, and sharing them is
tricky. Picasa works very well at helping with all of them. I just
discovered that there is a Picasa plug-in available for uploading
pictures to Facebook, another service I use frequently.

* Add the following plug-in:

http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/?auth_token=e2fc0644d1627f48c332ae504c96ac5f&installed=1

* Select the photos you want to upload.
* Click the Facebook button
* Log in.
* Done!

Very nice.

Seek - Thunderbird Email Plug-In for faceted search.

I'm a big fan of Thunderbird as an alternative to Outlook. It's not
perfect, but it works very well on both my Windows laptop and Linux
PC. It also has the advantage of (like Firefox) being open to plug-in
and add ons. That means, if there is a functionality you need, there
is a pretty good chance someone else has needed the same.
I get a lot of emails, and sometimes need to find old emails. The Seek
plug-in adds a level of functionality to Thunderbird that is a hybrid
between filtering and search, they call faceted browsing. I installed it
a few days ago, and have been using it daily. There is an excellent
video and download instructions on this site:
My only complaints - It takes up a lot of screen space. Not a big deal since you can toggle it on and off, but if you do, it re-indexes the folder each time, which is slow. It'd be nice if it indexed in the background, but the interface toggled on and off.

http://simile.mit.edu/seek/

Google Calendar Sync options - Getting better.

Google has finally released support for syncing to your desktop calendar. This could be a very cool tool for keeping multiple calendars on multiple computers synced. Unfortunately, they don't yet support syncing multiple calendars on multiple computers, which for me greatly limits the usefulness of this. But if you're stuck using Outlook, it could be a start, and if they add support for multiple calendars, it could be killer.

The Google Blog post on it.

I have a Google calendar for personal stuff, and several for work. I like to share those with teammates, without them seeing what I'm doing on the weekend. I even keep a few personal ones to keep organized.

It is possible to sync multiple calendars using Thunderbird/Lighting/extensions.
I used this tutorial to set up my Laptop (Windows XP), my desktop (Ubuntu Linux) and they stay sync'd perfectly. Using a different system to sync my smartphone means all three platforms stay perfectly sync'd. I love adding an event on my laptop, and having it appear on my phone.

Free online photo editors

I'm pretty much a Photoshop and Picassa user. I work mostly on large files, so working online is a hassle with photos, though I use it for many other doc types.

That said, there are times when I'm on a machine without editing software, and there are some pretty good online editors. They can prove useful, and are great for folks not prepared to invest in software, they work well.

• Picnik - Probably my favorite of the bunch. Seems to work pretty fast. Has all the expected basic editing tools. Also has a bunch of really cool effects that you can apply. I want to find some of these for Photoshop. Integrates very easily with Flickr, Picassa, and other online photo services.
  
• Splashup - Splashup will look immediately familiar to users of Photoshop. The interface is very similar, and it provides tools like layers. Useful if you are attempting to follow instructions intended for Photoshop. Pretty slick, and also interfaces well with most of the online photo sites.
  
• There are others. Check out this Techcrunch page. But having looked at them all, I can't see any reason I wouldn't use one of the two listed.
  

Very, very cool optical illusion I made.

• Stare at the Dot in the center of the picture for 30 seconds
  
• WITHOUT looking away, put your mouse over the picture
  
• Looks like you are looking at a normal color photo, right?
  
• Nope...Look Away without moving your mouse.
  

Believe it or not, there are only two pictures. The weird color one, and a b/w one. Pretty neat huh?

This is the tutorial I used. Let me know what you think.