Kalidor's blog

Just downloaded VOX for my mobile. Testing it out!

I find myself most amused with the circus and fan fare. My technical thoughts on the whole iphone will be left to Unwired, and will be a bit sparse until I either see one in the States, or see one up here in Canada. Most frankness is that I am glad I am still with T-mobile because even in the densest wood in Ohio I was consistently getting 134 kbps for my laptop cum bluetooth-phone-modem.

Weekend was spend bemused by stories of wet-soap-bar iphones, and not-quite-sane radio callers; all the while rebuilding unwired with a Dev version of Drupal. Dev? ... Yep ... whoops. Hopefully it won't be difficult to upgrade to frozen. Migration of old articles from the Movable Type framework for unwired is ongoing. I had a lot on there for giving up so quickly on it.  Drupal is already showing itself to be much faster then MT was relatively easier to configure. Only major issue I've faced so far is every time I make a major change to the menu system, I loose my child menus. I am hoping and fairly certain this is a dev issue.

I have high hopes for the revamp. Beyond the speed, I am hoping to get a few of my fellow tech pundits to turn their efforts to writing an opinion or editorial piece against some news item they found interesting each week. My sincere hope is that this not only paves the way for intelligent debate; but attracts readers to a less wired point of view.

In a slight departure from the Tech.  I wish to mark the passing of Don Herbert, or as you may recall him Mr. Wizard, who passed away of cancer early this morning. Don was truly and inspiration to an entire generation of geeks. He will be missed, but hopefully his legacy will live on in a host of inquisitive minds.

Sometime two weeks ago I was driving to work on Lakeshore when I noticed a large set of double T's. It took me a day or two realize what was going on; I finally realized where I had seen this logo before. Audi had vandalized our public space, the beaches that line Lakeshore Drive. My first concern was that Toronto would let a corporate sponsor pollute our public spaces with their propaganda. I was quickly reminded that perhaps the City didn't know about it, but that really doesn't put me in a better frame of mind. Doesn't being "The Good" include being proactive about cleaning up our city spaces?

Reading up on some of the blog services, it turns out that the City did know what was going on, at least to some degree. Audi applied for filming permits and is parking their statues in the locations even tho no filming is going in. It's a sleazy move and Audi definitely gets a growl of disapproval for that, but where is the city's responsibility in this. When assigning filming permits, especially long term ones, shouldn't a city inspector come by and actually make sure they are within the confines of the agreement? Advertisers manage to skirt around Toronto laws, and reaction from the City was painfully slow.

Upon the heels of this stumbling, today I noticed parking ticket printers on what used to be the free parking lots along the beaches lining Lakeshore. Toronto, in past years, has had enough issues with making it's public beaches available due to pollution issues in the lake; by removing free parking they are making it even harder for many people to enjoy the area. Having biked out to the area in question, I can say for those of us living downtown, this is not the most pleasant news. Even TTC is quite a bit aways from, and a long ride.

In short I wonder about how the City's doing. The home of innovators like ATi and Redhat. A city that obviously feels a strong sense of community, both online with half a million Facebook users and offline with city wide events that take place throughout the year. In this city of people supporting and caring for people, where does the government stand? Apparently, behind money and corporations, not the residents. While I feel saddened to say, I think "The Good" needs to be temporarily removed from Toronto until city councilors can get their acts together and think about the people.

Technorati Tags:
Toronto, Audi, Do no evil

Referance:
http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2007/05/audi_vandalizes.php
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/19/audi_defrauds_toront.html
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/05/19/audi-tees-off-toronto-residents-with-botched-tt-ads/
http://www.nowpublic.com/audi_tricks_toronto

WorldNetDaily has a story about a man who was held in custody by police, after trying to pay a fee with $2 bills. The story does a good job of pointing out the comedic and outrages nature of the story from the victims perspective; however, in my mind it exemplifies a major problem that still exists in Baltimore 5 years after I left. The police had no intention of doing their job. When I first started to attend Johns Hopkins University we were warned that Baltimore is #1 in crime, murders, STD's; and absolute last in social life. Based on FBI 2005 Statistics numbers haven't improved much if any. From a university students perspective my observations of the police were, what some could call, rather biased. While not a bar-goer, or much of a drinker, myself; it would have been difficult not to notice that sometimes as many as five police officers would camp out at each bar in midtown looking for fake ID's. It made me truly wonder about the safety of downtown and the Inner Harbour at night.

My feelings grew even more restless when the five o'clock news reported the alleged rape of a JHU freshman by the then captian of the campus Lacrosse team. I say alleged, because by the next day the police and news knew nothing of the incident they had reported on. With a little bit of money from a White Plains home, and the clout of the University, suddenly a freshman girl's trauma wasn't news anymore. A quick search finds that city attornies declined to prosecute based on "insufficient evidence." One wonders what evidence would have been uncovered by an investigation the police denied making the very next day.

I fear that this is just another example of how Baltimore cops would much rather deal with "safe" crime in the suburbs of Baltimore, then risk getting hurt trying to clean up the often blood-soaked streets of downtown. While we still haven't heard such quotes as "I had a feeling a law was being broken, but I didn't know exactly what" coming out of Baltimore, with incidents such as these one wonders just how far the police are from making up calls just to avoid the Inner Harbour.

Technorati Tags:
Baltimore,

 <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Credibility" rel="tag" class="techtag">Credibility

In an effort to let people know where exactly I am I have compiled the following quick blurb and the Pips after that:

Microblogging - I am sitting at both Jaiku and Twitter.
        I like the commenting in Jaiku, but feature seem a bit too Nokia driven right now for me to be able to use them easily. That said, the Jaiku is getting my twitter stream so any mobile Tweets will show up, along with the rest of my web presence. I am using TwitKu to update from the web, and the twitter short code available form twitter for mobile

Tumblog-  Kalidor's Tumblog
     Tumblr is more of a test for random images and links and stuff I think is kewl.

Blog - Vox
   I am posting to this, using the LJ link so LJ gets the post too. Eventually gonna migrate to Unwired but I really need to play with the code over there.

Pictures - Gallery
   Pictures posted here. Gallery needs some tweaking but it's here

Bookmarks to me - Del.icio.us
    If you want to share a book mark with me, please use Del.icio.us and tag it to:Kalidor.

Pips
 
 

When most people hear the words emerging markets, they tend to think of third world countries that aren't in North America. I beg the question, is having a computer in nearly every home a true definition of an emerging market? Sure the computers are nice to have in the home, but how much value are we getting out of them. Many times, I've heard the pundits talk of technologies colliding and merging in the computer industry; but a lot of these technologies call for ever increasing speed and bandwidth. Can the content keep up with the technology?

While North America has been quibbling over which if faster, 40/10 Mbps Cable or 25/25 Mbps DSL*, Pacific Rim and some European countries have been using various technologies that can get them into potential multi-Gbps rates. Among the most covered is fiber to the curb. In a show that highlights Japan's broadband capacity, Sony Japan opened a video download site for  PSP customers. While it would be relatively useless to North America; in a country where the 1 GB file would take approximately 2 minutes to download this content delivery option is well placed.

"But wait," you might say, "isn't Verizon offering FiOS?" Sure they are; giving users 50/10 speeds in select markets. But in a market where users are willing to pay 30 or 40 dollars a month for current broadband technology I think US vendors are going to take sometime to come near Japan. Canadian vendors tend to be even further behind their US counterparts, and with no price points being offered by Rogers Communications on their Fiber site, I don't see this trend improving anytime soon. Just to put this in perspective, Japan hit a milestone of  25% broadband penetration in 2005 with 100 Mbps fiber data and voice (in the form of ip phone) to the home for approximately US$36.

* Laboratory conditions; actual usage tends to severely vary with price and regional infrastructure.

Technorati Tag : Broadband, FiOS, Rogers

As many of you may remember last week Toronto is now considered the Facebook capital with nearly half a million users within the city.  I am fairly certain that just means the network and not necessarily all people. Facebook is in the local news again, as City Hall has banned Facebook from city workers while working, following suit with the Ontario provincial government and several local schools. Surprisingly, exempt from these blocks are City councillors, workers of the mayors office and (according to some reports) various services such as the police and fire dept. 

While the surge in numbers has made quite a far reaching impact, the increased censorship of facebook only seems to have been heating up inthe local news. For months now we've been hearing of school children being banned from Facebook by their schools at home or school. Some have even been suspended, one even expelled under cyberbulling allegations.  Of particular interest is that while Facebook is joining the ranks of pornography, gambling, and other redlight sites in many Toronto area cyber-filters; MySpace is considered ok. At the same time, councillors are still treating it as a valid communication medium to reach their constituents.

One might speculate, in the end, that it is this constent attention trying to censor Facebook that is driving up the Toronto community numbers; much like trying to kill the recent AACS hex key was a PR disaster for the HD-DVD crowd. Censorship is obviously not the way to get ideas across, and as long as large bodies try this method as opposed to actually communicating I think we are going to see more backlashes like this.

For any other group who is thinking of totallitarian actions against something they don't like, I leave you with these words from an insightful princess from a long, long time ago ... "The more you tighten your grip, Tarken, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Technocrati Tags: Facebook, AACS,Toronto, HD-DVD, mafiaa, DRM

"Wireless Power"

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070423/full/070423-11.html

What is the one tether holding us back from being truly wireless? The power cord of course.

Whether you just don't want to climb under your desk to plug in your laptop or, like Leo, you would be spending 25% of your time finding your phone's power adapter, the idea of wireless power is a major want of the tech friendly crowd. Over the past few years, several stories have been posted about various sheets that can be placed on your desk that will charge your devices when you place them on it. Most of these will not work directly and require some adapter on the device; which begs issues of extra weight and bulk. This is especially true when you take into account the various different modes of electricity that devices need to accept. Some major questions remain in this industry, but this is certainly and exciting technology that would be great to see.

Earthquake proofing the Net

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8OOSREO0.htm

While Pacific Rim countries seem to be doing well with respect to connectivity on the internet, many Asian countries of the Indian Ocean aren't that lucky. With the convergence of so many tectonic plates in the area, earthquakes and other geological events are quite common place and aren't exactly the most conducive for fault free connection. The recent earthquake north of Taiwan, for instance, managed to decrease that countries overall connectivity to the global network by nearly 75%. Seventeen telecom companies are now stepping up to the plate to build a new US$500,000,000 undersea cable to provide an alternate route and more secure route to the North American region. With luck and good planning not only is this a boost for speed but should allow the region faster recovery during times of disaster.

Shrunk in the Wash

http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=7098

Data Evolution Computer, not to be confused with Digital Equipment Corporation, has entered the UMPC market with their offereing of the Cathena CX. Priced at US$799, this entry level UMPC tries to offer an affordable path for people not yet comfortable with the market but wanting to experience the utility of an Ultra Mobile. The device, which reminds me of a Lenovo tablet that has been shrunk in the wash, makes some questionable choices for save money. One maybe the choice of AMD over Intel on a Windows platform. To save power, the system is already clocked at a fairly low 500MHz, but when adding the cpu cycles wasted due to XP's optimization for Intel's pipelining, I would worry it runs with a feeling of something closer to 180MHz. While it's certainly a cute entry, I have to wonder if you are already paying this price tag, might a WM6 phone not give you the kind of mobility you are looking for with applications better suited to such a low level CPU.

Techocrati Tags : Geek, UMPC, Tech