These glasses have been, of course, standard issue for any theater-goer wanting the full stereoscopic visual experience. In many ways, they're iconic, especially the cheap cardboard frame versions. But that's the beauty of the 3D cinema experience! Everyone's wearing silly-looking glasses, so you don't feel like a complete tool.
The question we're out to ask in this podcast, though, is this: can the 3D experience work on a mobile device?
OK, so MIT's Pranav Mistry doesn't exactly inspire the same kind of fear that Arnie's Terminator (or, for that matter, actor Christian Bale on the set of the new Terminator movie) does. Then again, Mistry's not trying to. Mistry works in something called the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab. The group as a whole is working on a set of amazing projects that are trying to bridge the current gaps that they feel exist between the real and virtual worlds. Now, if you're one of those people who has watched one too many Terminator films and doesn't want to see the real and virtual worlds melded any further, then by all means do not go the Fluid Interfaces Group website. If, however, you like the idea of a wearable interface system that allows you to check your email against an airport wall, then Pranav and crew have just the thing. It's called SixthSense, an "always-on" wearable interface that is designed to determine who and what you're interacting with, and then proactively go out, scour the web, and find relevant information for you.
We're positively e-bookish in this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 241). First, we discuss the merits, and demerits, of Google's Book Search project, which wants nothing more of less than to digitize every book on the planet (Google's not good at thinking small, we've noticed). Needless to say, Google's little scheme has its critics, and also its competitors. UNESCO has recently launched a little digitization project of its own, called The World Digital Library. We'll give you a little peek, and a listen, to some of what the United Nations is offering up, and not just in English. All of this talk about digitization got us to thinking: do traditional paper books have a future? Or, will more and more of us migrate to e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, Sony's e-reader, or...Apple's iPhone? It's a question worthy of discussion, and so we've got an in-depth report on what lies ahead for e-publishing. You'll be shocked to learn that some people think paper will vanish as a medium for publishing in the next 50 years, which others scoff and say that our attachment to the printed page is too strong for that to happen. One question sent in by podcast listener John Kapitzky struck me as pertinent here: "Will the e-book reader I have in 30 years be capable of reading the e-book I buy today, or will I have to keep buying new e-editions of books that I like?" It's a good question for a future podcast, methinks.
Moving on, we also take a look at some very cool software designed to help folks get around Internet filtering technologies. It's called Psiphon, and its brought to you by the same people who track online censorship around the world, the OpenNet Initiative, which WTP has covered before, most recently here and here. We have an interview with one of Psiphon's engineers, Nart Villeneuve.
And we end with Yahoo's Purple Pedals project. Take a look at what happens when you outfit some purple bikes with a webcam and geo-location software, and then let them loose in the world:
"Speak now." It's just that easy right? So says Google, who has just released a much-anticipated application for the iPhone that incorporates voice search. "Search with your voice so you don't have to type," it says on the Google site announcing the free app. Ah, but there are some caveats. The application does warn users on start-up: "Voice Search only works in English, and works best for North American English accents." There is an accompanying Google video showing users with all different kinds of English accents (some of which would probably be considered "heavy" by Mountain View, CA standards) apparently having unqualified success using Voice Search.
But the word on some British streets is that Voice Search is having trouble with versions of the Queen's own English. The Daily Telegraph reported that one Scot (this would be a "not for work" link, if only your boss had a chance in Hades of understanding what Ewan McGregor and his pals are saying) who spoke "iPhone" into Voice Search was rewarded with a porn site. Apparently the app thought he said, "sex." Hmmm...a Welsh person got "gorrilas" and "kitchen sink" when asking for "iPhone." And a user from Surrey (south of London) was rewarded with "Einstein" when he queried for iPhone.
One user from Kent in southeastern England told the AFP that "I asked it to find my nearest pizza take-away and it came back with something about volcanoes." All this to say that if you're walking down the street in the UK, and you see and hear Brits yelling at their iPhones in poorly executed American accents, you'll know why. And bearing film history in mind, maybe...just maybe...we had it coming, right Dick Van Dyke? Chitty, no?
"Och, aye," as my Glaswegian flatmate used to say. I think.
OK, so the gentleman at right has resorted to, shall we say, extreme measures to keep his laptop on his person. Or, maybe he just loves checking email that much, it's hard to tell. There are, of course, plenty of commercially available options for laptop protection to choose from. My favorite (based on name alone, not from experience, being LoJack for Laptops...classy). But now, for those of us who don't want to shell out the Benjamins for such services, there's a free, open source product called Adeona.
Named after the Roman goddess of safe returns, Adeona is the brainchild of combined research efforts at the University of Washington an the University of California, San Diego. Adeona uses the Internet, the researchers say, like a homing beacon. You install the software, and then the laptop occasionally sends its IP address and related information to a free, online storage network called OpenDHT. This information can be used to determine the computer's location.
The main difference here is that you're not turning over your laptop's location information to a company. The researchers say that the Adeona system scrambles the information, and that it can then only be deciphered using a password known only to the person who set up the account. Hence, only the only can access the information, and can take that information to the police to help trace it. That way, even if OpenDHT got hacked, your information is still encrypted.
One of Adeona's creators puts it this way: "Typically when you create a forensics trail, you leave breadcrumbs that you can see, but also everyone else. We've created a private forensics trail where only you can see those breadcrumbs."
One note for Mac users. Adeona can use the internal camera to take a photo and send it to the OpenDHT server. That, of course, might capture an image of the thief. Or more likely, of you doing a late-night nose pick while you surf Facebook. Classy.
Oh, and as you can imagine -- iPhone owners are already asking for an app of their own.
Here's a video of UC San Diego doc student Thomas Ristenpart discussing his work on Adeona:
Apple's been navigating some rougher waters these days, at least from a public relations point of view. Here at The World, we've been tracking some that have international angles to them. There was news today that the Brits have put a stop to a TV advertisement Apple was running for the iPhone 3G in the UK, claiming that the ad was "misleading" when it claimed that "all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone." Not so, said consumers, considering the iPhone doesn't come with Flash or Java, programs that, it was argued, were essential for accessing "all the parts of the Internet." The ad is not allowed to run anymore in its current form. Apple had no comment.
In China, Apple's iTunes is running into trouble over the on-again, off-again availability of an album called Songs for Tibet. Some are crying foul, saying Apple is bowing to the whims of the Chinese government when it comes to censoring material that deals with human rights issues the Chinese find, well, troublesome. Apple says -- wait for it -- "no comment."
And now, let's talk about "iPhone Girl," pictured. Her story manages to combine Apple, China and Britain -- not to mention Taiwan -- all in one strange package. See, here's how it seems to shake down. A gentleman in Kingston-Upon-Hull in Britain unboxed his new iPhone 3G, hooked it up to iTunes, and...whoops, there were already three pictures on the phone! Yep, of the girl above. The new iPhone owner was intrigued, and so he uploaded the photos to a popular Mac website and forum.
Is this normal, he asked, for iPhones to come preloaded with photos of the people who presumably assembled them?
In true Internet fashion, iPhone Girl became something of an item almost immediately. Responses and questions flooded into the site. Who is she? Where is she from? Does she still have a job?
"She is so fired," read one post on the site.
Well, we still don't know who she is. But she works (no, she hasn't been fired) for a Taiwan-based contractor called Foxconn, which has an iPhone assembly facility in Shenzen, China. An unidentified spokesman for Foxconn also told a local newspaper in China that the photos were most likely test photos, left on the phone "accidentally."
But in the wake of the Olympics controversy over the lip-synching of the Chinese national anthem during the opening ceremonies by a young girl deemed "prettier" than the girl who actually sang the song, I think the discerning journalist has to ask...is "iPhone Girl" nothing but a stand-in for the woman who really put the phone together?
Ah, by now the madness has already begun. The lines in Tokyo, full of Apple iPhone fans, are already moving. In Auckland, New Zealand too, and Hong Kong, and Sydney. Listen closely and you can almost hear the Yen, the Yuan, and the Dollars flying out of pockets. Soon, Europe will wake up and join the global Apple-gasm of 3G delight. And then Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
So much ink has been spilled on this story, so much TV and radio airtime devoted to this device, that I hardly know what to add. The 22 lucky countries in the first wave of iPhone 3G sales will soon be joined by other, perhaps more interesting markets. Estonia, where they really know how to use a mobile phone, even for banking and paying for parking. The second wave is also set to see a number of African countries get the chance to buy an official version of the phone. Kenya should be especially interesting. In the unrest of recent months, cell phones have been used to monitor unrest. Cell phone credit even became a kind of currency there, and many cell phone users in Africa are used to doing banking and transfer of funds via cell phone. No, in many ways, the second wave will be more interesting. There's an argument to be made that those markets that Apple has targeted as secondary will actually be much pickier, much savvier, and much more concerned about value for money than the legions of fanboys in Europe and North America.
Price will pay a huge role in these countries. Here in the United States, if you buy the new iPhone with the AT&T rate plan, you can get it for as little as $199. But then figure in the cost of the data plan now that it's 3G, etc. Gizmodo figures the new iPhone will end up costing you $160 more over two years. Don't go north of the border looking for bargains. And whatever you do, don't go to Belgium (at least not for the iPhone 3G). Some quirky Belgian laws put the price at about four times the cost of an iPhone in the United States, around $1,000 in fact. I'm not sure how you say "My God" in Flemish, but for the other parts of Belgium, let me offer a hearty Mon Dieu!
Still, if you're headed down to Mexico to buy your cheap gas anyway, you could always try to pick up an iPhone 3G down there for around $75. Of course, that's with a plan that will only work in Mexico.
And, in case you were wondering -- all the countries not listed in Apple's first cut, or second cut, are ready to get a healthy black-market cooking ASAP. In Bangkok, a phone dealer told Reuters: "I'm taking orders this weekend and you'll get [the iPhone 3G] by the end of July." The price? About $860.
Now, I've written before about how any mobile phone that generates this much excitement for both mobile technology, and especially 3G, is exciting to me. The iPhone 3G is a consumer's dream, and it will doubtless help to push the design and elegance and the functionality of handsets forward. It's already pushing the development of handset applications forward. I hope that all of this will, in turn, push faster roll-out of 3G networks, too.
But once those networks are built out, do you really think that the next billion or two billion mobile phone users are going to pay the Apple price for their phone? I doubt it. Many of those billions live on less than two dollars a day. If Apple can find a way to bring its elegance and functionality to that market, then it will truly have created a world-class smartphone.
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