People not supposed to use a PC

Recently I had to introduce the PC to a complete newbie; since the person is a 60 yo person with little digital education I looked for the easiest and fastest way to get her browsing, mailing and chatting.

I found Eldy, a basic sw interface intended just for these purposes. In 5 minutes I had my mother (the “student”) looking on the web for recipes or for weather forecasts. The program is free, available in Italian and English, and includes the following functions:

• Browsing
• Mail
• Chat (also Skype)
• Text editing
• …

All function are provided through a very simple, big-scaled interface, requiring only left-mouse button to navigate.

I haven’t had the chance to test it thoroughly but so far I’m very satisfied, it seems to go really in the right direction of what older (and younger?) people may need to approach the web.

As a final note I may add it would be nice to have Eldy as a standalone OS working on a basic and cheap PC (the Nettop?)

Moving in (a new pc)

Last week I switched to my new notebook, a Samsung NC20 (running fine so far, amazing battery capacity e portability!); of all the stuff to do when changing pc, migrating iTunes is by far the one I was most concerned about. I looked around for some solutions, I didn’t want to lose my playlists, podcasts and playback history, but I found only pages-long solutions involving 1/2 tools.

I solved my problem with a pragmatic, mechanic approach:

1. Set up iTunes in the new pc
2. Move iTunes directory (the one with the podcasts, videos, and config files) from the old pc to the new one, overwriting the one created by the installation
3. Edit, in the new iTunes directory, the file “iTunes Music Library.xml” and, with the find&replace command, replace the old (wrong) path of the old system with the new correct ones, pointing to your actual libraries.
   

   Upgrade of iTunes library path

4. Start iTunes, music library with playback history and podcasts should all be there; the only thing I had to do was to subscribe again to the podcasts (which were listed and contained already all audio files)

Forgive me for the very brief and undetailed explanation, if you have any comment or need further explanations let me know!

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Tired of the mouse

I recently watched a demos in TED about Siftables, small computing blocks manipulated in a really intuitive way. I’m very hopeful regarding future electronic interfaces.

Image by simonsmith001 via Flickr

I believe computer interfaces will change dramatically in the next years. We are already using devices with new kind of sensors (the most famous example, the iPhone, is sensible to touch and acceleration) but these innovations haven’t really gained a share of notebook and desktop pc.

Image via Wikipedia

Rather than being confined in videogames consoles and mobile phones these new input devices should replace the old and (let’s face it) unnatural mouse-pointer metaphor. I personally would consider a thin tablet pc, with wireless capability and a multitouch screen the perfect companion for everyday task and I hope we will see more and more of those in the future. I also imagine future desktop PCs as multitouch screens controlled by real, everyday objects (e.g. pens, rulers, post-its, …), becoming “simply” an extension of the desk.

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Unconscious collaboration

We are all well aware of the amazing results that masses of people could produce by collaboration. Wikipedia is the most evident proof of how many not-specialized people can contribute to a bit of a huge project and together compete (and sometimes surpass) with field professionals (about this you can take a look at this TED talk and this book).

Google Flu screen

More than that, it fascinates me thinking what value the “unconscious collaboration” could produce. If we take the recent Google Flu we have an insight of what potential has the information produced by millions of people (in this case web researches). I believe the elaboration of this huge amount of data opens new scenarios and applications. Some time ago I came across to a proposal of using the localization data of mobile phone users to derive information about traffic (anyone aware of a follow-up?). One problem about these applications is the privacy, but this should be dismissed by the fact that millions of data point are merged together with no chance of backtracking.

In my view we will see more and more application of this concept, far from the traditional marketing applications, with completely new objectives (as tracking flu’s pandemic in Google Flu, got any new idea?). Furthermore I believe that the spread of internet-connected, electronic devices will definitely boost this data production by making it even more pervasive.

Who can point me a good overview about spimes?

TED: Ideas worth spreading

I’d like to post this link to TED conference website, signalled to me by all-knowing Marco, a conference which hosts short (but very inspiring) presentations of “thinker and doers” regarding a large spectrum of topics, from technology to arts, from enterteinment to science.

 Just start with this one.

The Long Tail (How endless choice is creating unlimited demand)

Keeping on reading border-line economic books, I’ve tried this one from Chris Anderson, the editor in of Wired Magazine.

The Long Tail is about market niches and how they can be profitable in a scenario with low distribution costs (as iTunes, Netflix and so on…).

Typical long-tailed graph (ex. x-> products and y->sales)

Longtail image refers to the sales trend in which high sales (on the y-axis) are concentrated into top sellers (the green-coloured part) which are the ”Hits” or the “Blockbusters” but a relevant part of sales’ volume (which corresponds to the area) is present also in the long tail going rightward (yellow coloured). Usually these niche’s products cannot be sold by classic bricks-and-mortars shop but they can be sold by online store (as niche music for iTunes or whatever products for eBay) where handling cost tend to zero and you have no shelving costs. The book relates this effect also to democratization of production’s tools (as cameras or recording equipment) and of distribution (as eBay, self-publishing tools or YouTube).Suggested, also for the chapter about Wikipedia, where Long Tail applies on the supplier side rather than on the demand side.

How to silence XBox

XBox maintenance

I’ve bought a XBox with the main purpose of watching movies, listening music, etc… (if you’re interested in it take a look at the Xbox Media Center). Considering that this console it’s a little noisy I’ve replace the original fan (Sunon PKD1207PTV-A) with a new one (Delta AFB0612H) with 23 CFM and 28 db. These parameters are not so good for a fan but they’re are better than the old ones, I’m sure noise could be ulteriorly reduced with a better fan.

The new fan it’s a little smaller than the old one (60×60mm vs 70×70mm) but it can be easily fitted in the slot and fastened with a rubber band. To reduce vibrations I’ve also added hairy strip on the fan.

I’ve noticed that fan is more effective if the air flow is directed inward, instead of outward like in the original arrangement. In addition, to improve heat dissipation, I’ve applied some thermal compound on the CPU and GPU processors (especially the first one), here below is a picture but you can find a detailed guide here.  At the end of the process the XBox was significantly less noisy (unfortunately I couldn’t measure the difference) and cooler (around 50° vs the 55°).

XBox maintenance

Machine Beauty

“Machine” and “Beauty” are two words that could sound strange together, nonetheless this is the topic of this book written by David Gelernter. Knowing some of the author previous works (like Linda and Lifestreams), I was expecting something really brilliant, but I’ve been (at least partially) disappointed. Although some ideas are interesting, I don’t like the way they’re presented; for instance the chapter regarding Apple and Microsoft is really confused and I wasn’t able to get the point (Where’s the beauty? Where’s not? Why did Microsoft win?). I also think that a professor of computer science which writes a book on beauty should, first of all, define what he means with this word (which has never been really defined).

My feeling is that “Machine Beauty” is compounded of a bunch of examples (although some of them interesting, as already said) without a well developed main theme which relates every element. In my opinion the text is (still?) rough, a missed chance.

On Intelligence

After the break for my (crazy) 4th of july in New York (have you seen the pics?) I’ve started again reading and I’ve completed “On intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins. This book tries to explain how the brain works and what’s the intelligence; unlike many other texts regarding the same topic, this one is more concerned with neuroscience than computer science. I’ve really liked this approach because, like author himself says, we first need to understand how does the brain works before starting building smart machine (if it’s possible).

The theory proposed is very fascinating, intelligence takes place in the neocortex (the most recent part of the brain) and it’s not based on massive computations (like the classical AI supporters believe) but on a memory framework which store all the patterns it receives from the outer world and simply “retrieve” them when it senses an input that match (at least partially) with them. This idea is called memory-prediction framework because it sustains that the mind always does predictions about the future based on previous experiences and all informations are hierarchically organized from the very specific detail, on the lower levels, to the general concepts, on the higher ones (did you know? You have at least a Bill Clinton cell!).

The arguments shown to support this view are very reasonable (see the “one-hundred step” constraint) and in my opinion this is, among all proposed ideas, the theory which is closest to the way the brain effectively works.

Looking for defects, I can say that the chapter which explains in detail the way the brain works could have been clearer, maybe more schemes and graphs would have helped the reader understanding where and how every function happens (I didn’t understand how invariant representations are stored, for example).
In conclusion the book is a pleasant read, it’s never too technical and (finally!) not very concerned with computer science matters; suggested to everyone who has ever wondered about intelligence.

Prey

Under suggestion of my friend Marco, I’ve read Prey, a Michael Crichton book. This book tells (very shortly) about an unemployed AI expert, Jack Forman, called to solve a problem with a program developed by him and applied to a population of nano-agents (the swarm) developed by a company in which works also is wife, Julia. The story is a warning about possible risks related to most active research fields of this years: nanotechnology, distributed artificial intelligence and genetic.
Altough it’s never too technical, the book is interesting also for people with computer science knowledge; I believe that the author has pretty well understood topics narrated, considering also book bibliography.

Definitively a story for both computer science expert and not, written in a very pleasant way.