Remember that old adage that humans use only a tiny percentage of their brains? No? Well, there you go. Anyway, it turns out that the same might be said for personal computers. A California outfit called NComputing reckons that your standard $300 to $400 computer has about 95% unused capacity. So, NComputing has developed software and hardware that partitions a single computer out into, well, 10 or 12. You can see a video here, and it might help to have a visual:
Now, some of you might point out that there's nothing incredibly revolutionary about partitioning out a computer hard drive. It's just that NComputing has done for a fairly good price, and in many parts of the world, this could make the difference between one classroom sharing a PC, and all the students getting to have a workstation. Not surprisingly, NComputing is finding that its products are popular in the developing world, and so that's why I got Stephen Dukker, the company's CEO, on the line for a podcast. He started by giving the listener a description of how the NComputing set-up works:
Electronic health records don't have to be just flickering screens with boring data entry boxes. In fact, IBM has partnered with Thy-Mors Hospital in Denmark to trial something called VPR, visual patient records. I could waffle on with a description of what this three dimensional record system looks like, but it would be much better, and easier, if you see it in action:
So, in contrast to last week's look at e-health records for the developing world, this week, we're bringing you more about this "avatar"-based record system in Denmark. I spoke with Kurt Nielsen, an executive at the Thy-Mors Hospital in Denmark. Nielsen told me that the hospital has been using some form of electronic records at the hospital for a decade now, making it "a bit of a leader" in this regard in Denmark. He also mentioned that the Danish government has made the roll-out of electronic records a priority, and is working to combine all the different e-record systems together into a national system.
But, to start, Nielsen told me more about VPR and the partnership with IBM:
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.
OK, so it's true that mobile telecom giant Vodafone knows a thing or two about making money. The company currently operates in more than 25 countries, and has more than 250 million customers. Many of these millions are in developing countries, where things like infectious diseases and sudden natural disasters take heavy tolls. Well, the Vodafone Americas Foundation, a non-profit arm of the company, is looking for ways to help. It just ran what it calls the Wireless Innovation Project. One hundred applicants submitted ideas that harnessed new and existing wireless technologies in pursuit of social good. The idea was to show not only great use of technology, but also a clear sense of how these products could, and would, make it to market. The three winners were recently announced at the Global Philanthropy Forum in Washington, DC.
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:
As Europe's population ages, more and more research, and money, is going toward finding ways to help the elderly feel better, and take care of themselves, for longer. It turns out that light and lighting can play a huge role in the health of older people. It can affect sleep quality, changes of mood and cognitive performance. And so the European Union has given more than two and half million dollars to a project called Ambient Lighting Assistance for an Ageing Population, also known as ALADIN. A group of research universities and companies across Europe are trying to find ways to help older folks' circadian rhythms stay intact. And it revolves around the bio-sensor glove you see here. For this Wide Angle podcast, I speak with Walter Ritter, a research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg in Austria. He began by explaining how and why light is so important to our health:
It might also help to see a graphic representation of how it works, so here it is.
(Photo courtesy of Edith Maier. Graphic from ALADIN website)
It's an admittedly eclectic line-up for episode 237 of The World's Technology Podcast. But hey, we like eclectic. It gives you interesting things to talk about at boring cocktail parties. Take the humble Sony Walkman, for example. One listener wrote in and told me that his dream was to be the first person to listen to the technology podcast on an old-school cassette player. Now, I was heavy into Walkmans, and I have an attic full of cassettes, most of them featuring hair metal bands from the 80s, like RATT and Twisted Sister. I can't believe I've just admitted that publicly. Anyway, this listener only had 60 minute cassettes, so 30 minutes a side. In respect to the Walkman, I not only provide you an audio montage to start the show, but also keep the length just under 30 minutes, so it will fit on a 60 minute tape. Again, the show is ultimately yours, not mine, and this is just the kind of fan interaction I like.
Moving on to more serious matters, though. WTP 237 also features part one of a podcast exclusive interview with Andrew Lih. He's the author of The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. In part one, Lih, a new media researcher now living in Beijing, talks about what drew him to Wikipedia (he's also an administrator), and gives a nice litle summation of how Wikipedia is edited. I also shot a little video of some of the interview:
And we end this week with an update on a story that mixes technology and politics. We're sorry if that bothers you, but it's an important story, and one that I've been following for more than a year now. In 2005, officials from the Human Rights Prosecutor's office in Guatemala stumbled across a building on a police barracks in the heart of Guatemala City. The building was full of rats, bats, and an estimated 80 million moldering documents. It was the archive of the old Guatemalan National Police. Since its discovery, Guatemalan officials have been working in conjunction with professional archivists and a non-profit from California called Benetech, to clean, sort, digitize and analyze these documents. I did a television piece on the efforts for Frontline/WORLD a while back.
Now, all that effort is starting to pay off. There have been a couple of arrests in a high-profile disappearance case from the 1980s, and the Archive has just released it's initial report into significant findings from the archive.
A bit of theme runs through this week's Technology Podcast from PRI's The World. That theme is surveillance. In fact, we take a hard look at all manner of technologies and entities that are, in fact, looking at you. The most interesting of the bunch is this man, Canadian Rob Spence. Spence lost one eye to a shotgun accident when we was a kid. Now, he's a one-eyed filmmaker who is about to implant a special camera in his prosthetic eye. You can probably already see where this is going. He's going to use the camera to make a film. And yes, it raises all kinds of interesting questions about technology and privacy. And that's why for WTP 235 we get Rob on the line to answer those questions. He's calling his project EYEborg...
But along the way to Spence, we make some interesting stops. First, we head to Great Britain, where closed-circuit television cameras are, well, everywhere. It seems like you can't make a move in the UK without your image being captured. It's made for intense debate, as you might imagine. Some feel it is a clear intrusion on privacy. Others say it is necessary to deter crime and terrorism. Recently, Britain's House of Lords released a report questioning whether Britain was turning into a "surveillance state." You'll be shocked to learn the word "Orwellian" is being thrown around. Did anyone else hear the clocks strike 13? Anyway, we have a report from the streets of London, and then a discussion between Gus Hosein of Privacy International and the London School of Economics, and John Dwyer, a former constable and now Managing Director of Zeon Business Protection Services.
We also make a stop in Germany, where the government is mulling over "anti-snooping" legislation after some major German businesses, including the rail operator Deutsche Bahn, were caught spying on their employees electronically. We have a report from Berlin on the scandals, and the legislation.
And is spying potentially all that bad? Well, not if you're the parent of one of those reckless teen drivers. Actually, road accidents account for a huge percentage of teen deaths in the United States. And so, we have a report from Maryland on the trial of something called DriveCam. Yep, it's a little camera attached to one of the rearview mirrors. It allows parents to keep an eye on their teenagers driving habits. The idea, of course, is to encourage better teenage driving. If the camera detects an "infraction," the footage is reviewed, and an email is sent to the parents. Dude, that sucks.
A reminder that you can always peek in on what WTP is up to. We're on Twitter and Facebook. You can always check out any of our other 234 episodes via the archive.
OK, I love a good taco, especially one served up by a mobile taco truck in SoCal. I also love Korean BBQ. And while I have not yet consumed the Twitter Kool-Aid, I can definitely see the micro-blogging service's appeal. So, just imagine my surprise and delight when a story pitch that combines all three of these marvelous things crossed my desk a couple of weeks ago. There's no question that the Kogi Korean Taco Truck is the undisputed champion segment of this week's Technology Podcast (WTP 233). But kimchi quesadillas can't just be heard...and so here's a nifty audio slideshow for you:
Right, well you're probably too hungry now to read about the rest of the podcast, but here goes anyway. We start this week's show with a very interesting interview about how the technologies used to capture and distribute photographic images of the war dead have changed over the decades. The idea for this segment was sparked by last week's announcement that the Pentagon is reversing a ban on news media publishing pictures of the flag-draped coffins of soldiers. It will now be left to the families to decide whether the pictures can be published. We speak with documentary photographer David Perlmutter.
We also take an in-depth look at some potentially big news from Iran. The Iranian government allowed reporters inside Bushehr, the country's nuclear facility. The reporters were given a guided tour designed to showcase the beginning of some critical testing of the facility. Iran says its for energy purposes only, while many in the West aren't so sure. We hear from a reporter allowed inside the facility, and hear analysis from Ben Rhode of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
And it's been kind of a roller-coaster week and a half for the social networking site Facebook. It all started when the massively popular service announced a few "tweaks," to its terms of service. Some felt the tweaks amounted to something quite sinister, claiming that the changes meant that anything anyone posted to Facebook would be owned, well, by Facebook. In perpetuity. Even if you deleted your account. Whew. The Electronic Privacy Information Center was only one of many organizations that threw a fit. Fittingly, Facebook groups against the new terms of service formed, and quickly. Facebook then countered by revoking the new terms of service, and has opted for a more community based approach to how the site is managed and governed. We get a much-needed reality check on the Facebook about-face.
Oh, and by the way, one of the UK's leading neuroscientists, Susan Greenfield, takes a swipe at Facbook and other social networking sites, claiming that they may in fact be bad for kid's brains. Is this just the old "video games are bad for you" argument, only for the Web 2.0 set? You can decide for yourself. I offer you Greenfield's argument in the podcast, but you can get more analysis here and here.
Fittingly, you can find WTP on Facebook and Twitter. Fry your brain along with us. You can hear all of WTP 233 by just clicking below!
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