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:
Some weeks it is very hard to pull out one story from the Technology Podcast to feature front and center on the blog. After all, this week we run a wide tech gamut, featuring everything from writer Evgeny Morozov talking about the so-called "Twitter Revolution" in Moldova to Urban Pac-Man on the streets of Lyon, France. But for my money, the worthiest little story this week is about a solar oven, or "cooker" as the Brits would call it. It's called the Kyoto Box, and it recently took first prize for "green ideas" in a competition run by an organization called Forum for the Future. Solar ovens, which use sunlight to cook food or boil water, are not a new idea. But the Kyoto Box may be a game-changer because...well, they've kept the cost down by making it of cardboard. Yep, cardboard. We have an interview with the Kenya-based inventor of the Kyoto Box, Jon Bohmer. He tells us that he feels widespead use of the Kyoto Box would cut down on the burning of wood and other fossil fuels in resource-deprived parts of the world. Advantages: no carcinogenic wood smoke to be inhaled, or to contribute to global warming. Disadvantage: can cardboard really work as a cooker without catching on fire? Ah....listen in to find out.
There are also a couple of interesting, and potentially scary, security-related items in this week's podcast. We hear about the growing cyber-threats to America's electricity grid, and also about how extremist groups are using US servers to host their websites.
At the end, we lighten things up a bit. Jerome Burg is a retired teacher living in northern California. For more than 35 years, he taught high school English and tried to avoid chaperoning dances by also teaching technology to the school's journalism students. Then, a few years back, he was at Google headquarters learning about Google Earth, and it hit him: why not use Google Earth's different tools to help "three-dimensionalize" great works of literature? You know, add pictures, notes, geographical details, etc. Yeah, not bad, is it? And that's how Burg came to create GoogleLitTrips was born. The site recently won the 2008 Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education.
Oh, and just because you know you secretly just HAVE to see this...video from Urban Pac-Man in Lyon, France:
It was just a little more than four years ago when a major undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a massive tsunami. The scale of the devastation was truly terrifying. More than 225,000 people from almost a dozen different countries lost their lives. And as the picture at right shows, many simply were not prepared, and did not know the risk that they faced. GEM, which stands for The Global Earthquake Model, is a public-private initiative that wants to increase everyone's awareness of earthquake risk. Initiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and funded by some big private companies, the idea is to create "the first global, open source model for seismic risk assessment at the national and regional scale." The group hopes to develop "an independent standard to calculate and communicate earthquake risk, raise awareness, promote mitigation and insurance use, and stimulate risk transfer." GEM is to be an online tool a map-based graphical interface. It will be written with open source code, and contain open data "wherever possible." It is hoped that GEM will be useful to everyone involved in trying to lessen the effects of major earthquakes, be they government ministers, scientists and engineers, or the public.
It sounds like a bold and ambitious plan, especially considering they'd like to have a first iteration of the model up and running by, well, soon -- early 2009.
But GEM got a nice boost this month in journal Nature Geoscience. In an editorial, the journal called GEM "a potentially important step in towards providing risk information on a worldwide basis, using a unified standard." The editorial went on: "The project is still in its infancy, and it is difficult to gauge its likely impact, let alone evaluate it critically. But it seems based on solid foundations...the success of the Global Earthquake Model is in everyone's interest; the whole-hearted support of scientists, governments and the private sector should help live up to its promise."
Telegeography Research pumps out information on Internet traffic that's guaranteed to make the global tech geek (in other words, me) quiver with delight. I've interviewed them in the past (as part of Tech Podcast 182) about the network of undersea cables that form the backbone for Internet traffic, and what happens when one or more of those cables gets cut. Now, Telegeography has released some really interesting data as part of its annual Global Internet Geography research. As you may know, American researchers and the US government played a central role in the creation of the Internet. So, it's not surprising that for years now, U.S. carriers and exchanges have served as the primary hub for routing Internet traffic. But that central role is waning, and has been now for a decade, according to Telegeography, "as more service providers have opted to connect their networks to other countries and regions." Alan Mauldin, Telegeography's Research Director, doesn't see this as necessarily a bad thing, by the way. He says that "the declining share of traffic routed via the U.S. actually reflects a healthy trend in the development of the global Internet...as regional Internet markets and service providers mature, it makes ever more sense for them to exchange traffic locally or regionally, rather than halfway around the world."
Some salient research points: 1) Back in 1999, 91 percent of the international Internet capacity from Asia came through the United States. By mid-2008, that had dropped to 54 percent. 2) In that same time period, the amount of African Internet traffic coming through the United States dropped from 70 percent to six percent. Most of that African traffic now goes through Europe.
Telegeography's got a great map that shows you graphically what's going on with Internet traffic. Follow the link to see a big version of it. It's not even worth it to give you a small version here on the blog.
Believe it or not, what you're looking at there is essential to your cell phone, your Playstation, and a host of other electronic products. In Africa, it's called coltan. From it, we get a blue-grey powder called tantalum...and tantalum, because it's durable and can withstand high temperatures, is great for making capacitors, which can store tiny electrical charges. That, as you can imagine, makes them handy in electronics. Unfortunately, one source for the increasingly valuable coltan is...the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. And that's the story that leads this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 220). We speak with Jack Ewing, BusinessWeek's European Correspondent. He's been following the coltan trail to see just how much so-called "conflict coltan" actually makes it into the electronics we carry around with us all day. The answer might surprise you, so be sure to give a listen.
We move to West Africa for our second story. You have doubtless received an email which starts "I am a manager at the Bank of Nigeria," and then goes on to entice you with promises of millions. It's lovingly referred to as a 419 scam. It's named after the Nigerian law governing this kind of fraud. Despite all the warnings against answering such emails, many folks are duped into replying. West Africa has gotten a reputation for being a hotbed for Internet scams, but this week, computer experts gathered in Ivory Coast to discuss ways to the tackle the problem. We speak with the BBC's John James in Abidjan.
Then, we have an ever-so-brief item on a new Google Earth project called Virtual Rome. Too freakin' cool.
Our next story is the latest twist in the increasingly strange tale of Hossein Derakhshan, or Hoder as he's known to the blogging world. Hoder's widely regarded as the "Blogfather" of the Persian blogosphere. Back in 2000, he was one of the first to launch a blog in Persian. He even wrote a how-to guide for other would-be Iranian bloggers. His blogs, both in English and Farsi, covered a wide range of topics. His posts, however, made it clear that he was a critic of the Iranian government. Then things changed, and Hoder started siding with the Iranian government, and attacking dissidents. Not long ago, he moved back to Tehran from Canada. And now, this week, news has trickled out that he may or may not have been arrested. We get an update from Cyrus Farivar, who leads us through the twists and turns of Hoder's blogging career.
Then, we wish Happy Birthday to the International Space Station. Ten years ago this week, the first module lifted off, carrying the first module, a Russian one named "Dawn." It was soon joined by an American module called "Unity." Ten years later, it's still not finished, and it's way over-budget. Critics contend that it's not worth the money. Supporters say the ISS is proving a valuable teaching tool and training ground for future long-duration missions, possibly even to the Moon and Mars. We hear from smart people on both sides of the argument.
And speaking of the ISS...there was a spacewalk on the station that went, well, slightly awry this week. Here's the video I promised, and bear in mind...this HAS happened to you, too, just not in space.
We then switch into "science mode" for a bit, and hear about an amazing medical breakthrough in Spain. Doctors in Spain removed the windpipe of a woman with respiratory disease, and replaced it with a new airway created, in part, in the laboratory using adult stem cells. Read the write-up in The Lancet. See a video depiction of the process here. We hear from Barcelona, where the surgery took place.
And we end...with a tribute to that incredible piece of Eastern European automotive technology -- the Yugo. Didn't you know that it's production run is ending? I'll miss the jokes.
This morning, I'm sitting and watching the wires send in conflicting reports about Russian tanks and troops on the roads, moving south from the Georgian town of Gori to the capital, Tbilisi. I can only assume that the Russians are not using Google Maps. Look to your right (and click on the map for a bigger version of the pic). I don't seeany roads at all, do you?. They all seem to end at the Russian border to the north, and the Turkish border there to the south.
It seems that others have been noticing the same thing, because Google's Lat Long Blog has been fielding questions on the subject. Apparently, some conspiracy theories surrounding Google's stance on international disputes must be circulating. Dave Barth, product manager for Google Maps writes in the Lat Long blog: "some of our customers have asked if we removed map data from any of
these countries in response to the recent hostilities in that region
and I can assure you that is not the case."
The truth, it turns out, is NOT out there. Literally. The Google folks say that the data for Georgia, as well as neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijian, has never been in Google Maps. And that, they say, is because they never launched coverage in those countries. Why? "Because we
simply weren't satisfied with the map data we had available. We're
constantly searching for the best map data we can find, and sometimes
will delay launching coverage in a country if we think we can get more
comprehensive data."
Which might be the right tack for Google to take, given the, erm, troubles the company's News service had locating the correct Georgia for this particular story. See Valleywag for some great screen grabs of the Russian assault on the Peach State...
OK, in all fairness, Sky News made a similar mistake, though Wikipedia, not Google, was to blame.
Chuckle, sigh.
Apparently, other people writing to Google are urging the company to put up the map information for Georgia ASAP, complete or not. Google's response:
We're hearing from our users that they would rather see even very basic
coverage of a country than see nothing at all. That certainly makes
sense, and so we have started preparing data for the handful of
countries that are still blank on Google Maps.
Great, but given the volatility in that particular part of the world right now, I wouldn't expect to see Street View vans cruising downtown Tbilisi anytime soon.
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