Photo sharing – a vast generation gap

My son’s 5/6th grade camping outing was about done, so I offered to do a class picture. They lined up well, and I zipped off about 15 shots with my fancy Canon lens and dSLR.

Then all the kids ran forward, asking for pictures to be put on their camera. I know the teacher wanted to get going, so I declined. After all, it would be easy to share my fancy picture.

I knew as I said it that I was wrong, but I didn’t know I was twice wrong.

Firstly, I was wrong because I’ve had lots of personal experience that photo sharing doesn’t work – with the one exception of Facebook. I’ve put thousands of photos on Picasa, SmugMug and my own servers, but I think the vast majority have been neglected. Very few, if any, have ever been downloaded for personal storage.

There are too many hurdles for traditional image sharing to work. Only geeks like me can manage downloading images and storing them in photo libraries. Beyond the software issues, a surprising number of families have barely functional computers (XP virus infested typically) and either no net service or one that’s effectively out of order. Lastly, there’s a personal element to acquiring an image – a sense of ownership and obligation that a shared image lacks.

Facebook is different – images I share there are viewed – but only by Facebook users. Very few of the parents or teachers of our 5th and 6th graders do Facebook.

I knew that much, but it wasn’t until the bus ride home that I learned there was another dimension of incomprehension.

I watched a 5th/6th grade girl share her pictures. She held up her camera for all to view. Not surprising, except these weren’t pictures from the camping trip. She had what seemed like years of pictures on her camera. She flipped through her camera album as though she was playing the piano, effortlessly zooming, panning, and navigating a large image collection.

For her, her camera was the photo library and the camera back was her display. She can’t do anything with a shared digital image – except perhaps take a picture of the screen displaying it.

I wonder what she does when she finally hits image 2,000 or so, and fills her 4GB SD card? Probably deletes those she’s less interested in, gradually evolving a set of 2,000 very high value images.

No backups of course, but this generation seems comfortable with ephemera.

Next time, I won’t pretend anyone else will be able to use my picture.

* They seem nothing like 5th grade boys. “Mainstreaming” special needs children is relatively straightforward compared to educating boys and girls together.

The Cloud is slow (so's my phone)

I've a habit of counting seconds whenever my machine doesn't respond instantly.

Quite often, when I do anything with the Cloud, even Gmail, I get to 10 before I can work. On my 3G I get to 5-10 for internal apps, 10-40 seconds for web apps (Emily's 3GS is at least twice as fast).

On corporate SharePoint I don't bother counting, I go for coffee.

I sometimes mourn for those few bright moments when I used a 386 with single tasking DOS 3.1. I've never had any environment so instantly responsive. Sure, you couldn't do much, but you could do a little so quickly.

We know from Google's research on their Search screens that, even if users don't perceive something as slow, even small delays decrease their use. I suspect most users don't realize how slow our modern computing environments are, but it must take a psychic toll all the same.

A billion dollar infographic - terrific

The Billion Dollar Gram (via Gruber) is a sensational infographic from a visualization site (Information is Beautiful).

There are some stretches. The 'worst case' cost of the US financial crisis to US Government only makes sense if you include sub-employment GDP Gap as a cost (which it is, but most don't include it and that's a hit for the US as a whole rather than the Feds). Also the New Deal vs. 2009 bailout doesn't account for the US of 1930 versus a vastly larger and richer nation. Between population and economic growth the US economy is probably at least 20-50 times bigger than in 1930.

I did like $465 to "Feed and educate every child on earth for 5 years" vs. $316 - Bribes received by Russian officials.

Are you getting enough out of iPhone Map.app?

It may have more features than you realize:

iPhone and Google Maps: Go to here -- just drop the freakin' pin ...

.... Today, when I was switching from Map to List view, the "Drop Pin" button caught my eye. I'd ignored it for a while. What the heck did it do, anyway?

Riiiggght. It drops a pin on the map. It seems to leave it there, after the first time I did this the button changed to "Replace Pin". I didn't see a way to "Undrop Pin" -- maybe once you put it on any map it's bound to a map forever.

You can move the Pin around, bookmark it, get directions to it, etc...

We need product documentation like "Power User tips and things longtime users tend to miss".

A world without AIDS?

I was in medical school when we learned of Haitian men and San Francisco gay men with strange skin lesions and odd pneumonias.

We learned a lot very quickly, but none of it was very good. By the late 1980s to early 1990s many people, myself included, expected vast numbers of deaths in Africa.

Over the past decade though, the tide has slowly turned, until today I read ...

BBC NEWS | Many more receiving HIV therapy

... Testing is the gateway to treatment, and in many areas facilities providing this service increased by about 35%, noted the Towards Universal Access report which looked at 158 countries.

'An Aids free generation is no longer an impossibility - the elimination of vertical transmission is in sight,' said Jimmy Kolker, head of the HIV/Aids division at UNICEF....

Recent glimmers of hope on immunization, and confirmation of the protective effects of circumcision must also be contributing to this new optimism. Perversely, the impending extinction of our fellow primates will also reduce exposure to HIV reservoirs.

Great credit must go to all of those, African and otherwise, who fought for the widespread dissemination of treatment to impoverished nations against great skepticism about its efficacy and the fears of drug manufacturers.

This is not, of course, the same as curing AIDS. This is about preventing transmission of the virus within the human population, until transmission is so rare that the disease is effectively eliminated.

I expect I'll live to see it happen.

iPhone 2014 – what will it be like?

Brinna’s brother has an mobile, so she wants her iPhone now. If we stick with the Junior High rule, that means 2014.

So what will the iPhone of 2014 be like? Will it vote?

I bet it will be a lot like the iPhone of 2009. Mostly better, in some ways worse. That’s the way things usually go after the first mad sprint of a real breakthrough.

MacOS Classic had some serious issues (esp post-multifinder with stability and TCP/IP support), but eighteen years later OS X is not an immensely better OS. It’s mostly better, but there have been significant regressions too. The real shocker was the transition from the command line to the very first Mac.

Equally dramatically, digital cameras went from near worthless to 5 megapixel SLRs in just a few years. Since then, however, progress has been gradual.

So it’s reasonable to expect the iPhone-equivalents of 2014 to follow the same incremental path.

We will see more speech UI development and some workable speech-to-text input. We will probably see better support of external displays, and we may even see a 1992-PalmOS-style external keyboard. Laptops will be squeezed between netbooks and iPhone-equivalents. Augmented reality apps will be mainstream, and we’ll have more bandwidth.

Otherwise, pretty much what we have now.

Which is really an amazing statement about what Apple has done to the mobile industry.

When OS X truly sucks: screen sharing

I tried OS X screen sharing again today.

I do this every few months, to remind myself how badly OS X screen sharing sucks.

Yeah, I'm on Leopard, but from all I read Snow Leopard takes OS X remote control from extremely lousy to really lousy.

It's painful for a Mac user to remember that Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (similar to Citrix remote desktop) is about ten years old.

Microsoft (Citrix?) used to have some serious skills.

Update: Speaking of Apple senescence, I remember when the OS could 'remember' the location of files stored on a server and mount the server on demand. Now if I click a shortcut to a network folder I get "A volume failed to mount". Once upon a time I'd get a login.

That capability was lost in the last few years of OS X development, one of several dumbing-down changes to the OS.

Google Apps - vote for your favorite feature

Apple's problem is that Steve Jobs decides what we need. Microsoft's problem is that it should have been split into several competing companies ten years ago. Google's problem is that they combine Attention Deficit Disorder with a mystical belief in the power of the metamind.

The best we poor geeks can do is mix and match and try to keep our data liberated.

With Apple bitching on Discussion Groups can sometimes help -- the secret is to get a long thread going.

With Google you can look for one of their periodic attempts to survey their customer base, such as this suggest a feature for Google Apps poll. Give it a try! Note, however, you can't vote to "Burn Google Sites to the Ground and Start Over".

And Microsoft? Despair is recommended.

Update: Some related posts

• I, Cringely - The People’s Republic of Google
• Blodget on GmailLand: The Threading model alone condemns Google
• Stross on Microsoft and Apple

In Our Time - The Weak Shall Inherit the Earth

In the 2003 In Our Time explored the cultural history of war: BBC - Radio 4 - The Art of War.

During the programme, one of the guests mentions Karl Pearson an early 20th century social Darwinist and "Professor of Eugenics" [1]. Pearson praised war as the engine of racial fitness and national progress. If not for war, it was said in Pearson's time, "the weak shall inherit the earth" [2].

These memes are with us still, though in the west they are rarely explicit.

[1] Those of us who did med school stats may remember the "Pearson distribution". Same guy.

[2] It's not clear from the discussion if the phrase came from Pearson, but I suspect it was a common usage of the time. Not for the first time I wish there were more IOT transcripts. The "After Our Time" wiki has @50 IOT transcripts, but the blog and wiki was only active for a few months in 2007. Among those few transcripts, incidentally, are early programmes that have been lost, including one featuring Stephen Jay Gould.

Update Feb 17, 2010: The Lost Episodes are now online.

The problem with software (an ongoing series)

How’s this …

We know how to make quite good applications with small teams and 3-7 year lifespans.

We don’t know how to cost-effectively make equally good applications with large teams and 10-30 year lifespans. The costs rise as some power function of lifespan and team size.

We may need different corporate structures to create these applications.

Mysteries of modern capitalism: The missing iPhone 2.5 mm headset adapter

The B000YE54F8 2.5mm to 3.5mm Stereo Audio Headset Adapter for Apple iPhone is a piece of .99 cent junk. I know it’s junk, because the identical pair I bought a year ago have both broken (APLIPHONEHFA2) and there’s no reputable reseller of any variant of these devices.

I also know that before they came apart, my adapters worked.

Junk this is, but it’s also #14 in its Amazon sales category: Cell Phones & Service > Accessories > Data & Connectivity > Data Cables.

This is curious.

There’s clearly a lot of demand for a product that allows one to use an older high-quality headset (2.5 mm) with an iPhone (3.5 mm). Lots of people who’ve spent $50 or more on headsets are taking a flyer on buying this, and that market is not going away. (Really, Bluetooth sucks. And even if it didn’t, why spend $100 for a decent Bluetooth headset when you already own a great high end headset that doesn’t burden the iPhone’s hurtin’ battery?)

So why doesn’t a company like Griffin sell a decent adapter for, say, $20 for a pair? I suspect good ones would cost $2 to make and package, so we’re talking a pretty sweet profit margin. It’s not like Griffin has a line of Bluetooth headsets they need to protect.

That’s the mystery.

Of course I have a theory.

I suspect Apple has a patent on the layout of the iPhone’s headset connector [1]. The license fees are probably wicked, or even unavailable. Apple does sell Bluetooth headsets. The cheapo vendors are dodging the licensing fees, and Apple can’t be bothered to go after them.

Any other theories?

[1] Yes, I also used to think these layouts followed some kind of standard. That was before I experimented with various AV connectors. If there is any kind of standard manufacturers don’t follow it.

Avoid Alzheimer's - hold the Provigil?

I've a hunch that this is true - lack of sleep linked to Alzheimer's.

In the past few years there's been a lot of interest in the misuse of modafinil (Provigil). It's being used to extend waking hours rather than to treat narcolepsy.

Maybe this isn't the smartest move ...

Speaking of which, I should go to bed now.

iTunes U - the Singularity is behind us

Despite my IOT habit, I've only today rediscovered iTunes U in iTunes 9...

This still brings tears to my eyes. As I (incorrectly - Bill Gates Sr only did the foreword) wrote in 2006 about an early casualty of tech churn ...

The quiet demise of the CD

... I remember reading the book written by Bill Gate's father (yes, his father) called 'The New Papyrus'. It was all about the how the data CD would revolutionize the world. This was before the net became public. I was amazed by the CD back then, and I wrote a letter to a Canadian development organization on how it could dramatically change the delivery of knowledge to what was then called the 'third world'...

iTunes U, Aaronson’s MIT lectures on theoretical computer science, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenAccess journals and the BBC’s In Our Time are now freely available to a good portion of the world. Even in poor nations, they are likely accessible in many universities.

I beat on Apple and Google all the time, but, really, the iPhone and iTunes U would stun a geek of 1986. We entropics do not appreciate how far we have traveled.

Gawande and NEJM cost of care roundtable

I really hope my man Obama (apologies for the familiarity, but I'll never again see a President I like so much) gets his health care bill.

At best, however, it will only be the start of the journey. We haven't even begun to talk seriously about health care costs, and about getting the best possible care that we can afford to provide every American.

We'd be better off if the GOP weren't a smoldering wreck of a party; even the best government is no substitute for well managed markets. (Obviously the problem with unmanaged health care markets is the ice floe.)

Heck, even 16 years ago we had far more intelligent discussions about health care costs and systems than we're having now. Maybe we're getting senile, or maybe we're seeing the side-effects of relative media impoverishment.

Still, even among the senile, there are often moments of relatively clarity. The inimitable Gawande, mutant time traveler extraordinaire, is at it again in a NEJM roundtable discussion.

Briefly, Gawande and his fellow gurus are with me. We need to deal with costs, but Americans are completely unable to even begin an intelligent discussion -- and the Gaia-infected GOP is too devoted to ending human civilization to make any kind of contribution.

So we do coverage now, and hope we come up with a way to slow the progression of Alzheimer's Disease. That would both lower health care costs and contribute to a more intelligent discussion in 2014.

Fear the Cloud - Blogger's unfixed 5000 post limit

Today I discovered that several hundred early posts in this blog were no longer searchable or editable. I'm not the only victim of this hole in the Cloud ...

Gordon's Tech: Blogger is broken - the undocumented 5000 post limit

Blogger has an undocumented 5,000 post limit. At least one of my blogs is well past that limit. Using the blogger dashboard I am unable to search for, view, or edit about 400 posts written in 2003 and 2004.

The bug was recognized in July 22nd 2009. At that time Google was 'working on a fix'.

It's almost October, so they may not be working terribly hard...

Blogger is not a first tier Google product like Search or Maps, but it's no side-project to be casually forgotten. So what conclusion should we draw from an unfixed bug like this one?

Fear the Cloud. (See also - Gmail outages)

Update: This bug led me to review my July and August 2003 posts. In those days this was primarily a tech notes blog, but by Sept I was putting that material into a blog that later became tech.kateva.org. I scanned a mix of old tech posts and the kind of material found now in notes.kateva.org.

I'm still annoyed at Google's sullenly unfixed bug, but I did enjoy reviewing the old material. I back-linked from some newer posts to 2003 versions of the same thing ...