Blog: Articles filed under technology

Some big news in the Canadian tech industry this week was the advent of the Amazon Kindle in Canada. I’ve mentioned my mad love for the Kindle previously as well as my discomfort with Amazon’s approach to tethered appliances. So, now that the Kindle is finally available here, will I be getting one?

The short answer is no, not right now. Technologically, I think the Kindle is an amazing device that uses some pretty interesting physics to make reading easy and comfortable. It boggles my mind that we have the ability to store so many books in such a small, slim shell and take it anywhere with us! However, I still have reservations about whether an e-reader is necessary, and I’m still set against tethered appliances. So here’s the long answer.

One More Piece of Luggage

When you leave the house, what do you check to make sure you’ve got with you? Keys, mobile phone, ID, maybe money? What about your Kindle?

I’ve got this bizarre notion that, if I one day get a smartphone, I could use that device as my e-reader as well. It makes sense to combine them; we‘ve already rolled music players and cameras into our phones. It’s one less device to worry about forgetting at home—or worse, elsewhere.

Of course, the Kindle (and other e-readers) are superior technologically for reading books. Their screens are designed to make it easier to read, and their battery life will probably last longer if you‘re just flipping pages. I can see how an e-reader would be a sensible investment for someone who doesn’t want or have a smartphone. And I don’t deny that some part of me wants an Amazon Kindle.¹ I‘m just not convinced that it makes the most sense.

The Ol’ Ball and Chain

No matter how attractive or sensible the Kindle may be, it’s still tethered to the home office. Like the sleek and shiny iPhone, the Kindle is loyal to its manufacturer, not to you, the consumer. When you buy the Kindle, you’re just buying a device that’s a gateway to all the other content Amazon wants you to view but not own. The Kindle is a gateway drug.

Amazon demonstrated the draconian way it can manage Kindle content in July, when it deleted illegal copies of 1984 from people’s Kindles. To Amazon’s credit, apologies were made, and an Amazon spokesman assured us that it would never happen again—that, in fact, changes would be made so Amazon could no longer delete books remotely. It’s still a sobering reminder that, despite your physical possession of the Kindle, it isn’t really yours.

I‘m aware that the Kindle can read multiple formats, including yummy plain text files from Project Gutenberg. Yet the Kindle’s main goal is to persuade you to buy “Kindle editions” of books you want to read. These are proprietary files that only authorized devices can read, whereas a plain text file is readable by any number of devices. There are two problems with this. Firstly, it allows Amazon to control when and where you have access to the book you purchased. Secondly, it raises the spectre of data loss—since only Amazon-authorized devices can read the Kindle format, what happens if Amazon disappears? Unlikely, but still possible. Realistically, there are ways to cirumvent the DRM protection on the Kindle format and retrieve one’s data, but they aren’t legal, which leaves you in the interesting position of having to break the law to get at content you bought. An open format is safer when it comes to preserving and backing up.

I‘m using the Kindle as an example because of its release in Canada, but Amazon is not the only company doing this to its e-readers. Sony, whose Reader line has long been available in Canada, also has a DRM format. And when Barnes and Noble’s e-reader comes out, I‘m sure they’ll have a proprietary format as well. This isn’t the exception but the rule. And it’s up to us to change that.

Why? Well, Amazon, Sony, and B&N are doing what they think is best for their bottom line. They don’t want freely available, easily re-distributable books that will cut into the profit margins for themselves, for their publishers, and for their authors. I understand the desire to cut down on privacy, but we’ve been down this road before. There’s a reason that recording labels have finally agreed to drop DRM from iTunes. These bookstores, like the recording industry and the newspaper industry, are clinging to an outmoded idea of copyright and redistribution. Amazon, as a solely online venture, should know better. Clearly it doesn’t.

In Which I Return the Soapbox to Its Rightful Owners

So that’s why we, the consumers, need to show that this isn’t the model we want.² Or at least, that’s what I think. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel old and codgery. I‘m a technophile who refuses to get a smartphone because I’m holding out for something that runs Google Android, and I refuse to change to a carrier that does offer an Android device because the competing carriers in Thunder Bay have ludicrous service and pricing compared to TBayTel.

Maybe I should just get off my high horse and admit that yeah, the Kindle is pretty darn awesome and I‘d love to have one. But I can’t do it. I just can’t. I could probably surrender on the smartphone front, one day, if I so desired. This is different.

This is about knowledge. Books are one of the most precious resources of knowledge we have, and I will not be party to locking them away under the guise of “copyright protection” and “digital rights management.” I will not be complicit in the gradual erosion of the public domain, nor in the partitioning of content by format and fiat.³

If you‘re new to this debate and want to learn more, I’ll point you to the (somewhat biased) work of Cory Doctorow, Michael Geist, Lawrence Lessig, and Jonathan Zittrain, great advocates for a more open Internet.

I’m going to go read a non-DRMed book.

• [ 1 ] The three-year-old, “I want it! I want it! I want it!” part.
• [ 2 ] Yes, I‘m advocating that we let the free market decide. I’m not totally socialist!
• [ 3 ] Twenty years from now, assuming this blog hasn’t been locked away behind some proprietary wall, the cynical Future Ben will look back at Present-Day Ben and shake his head at Present-Day Ben’s naive idealism. But until that day comes, I’m allowed to be as naive and idealistic as I like!

My copy of Windows 7 Home Premium arrived on Friday. On Sunday night, I began doing some housekeeping on my computer to prepare for the upgrade: I uninstalled programs I was no longer using, cleaned up unnecessary files, defragmented, etc. To finish it all off, I decided to finally delete that 10 GB recovery partition Dell put on my computer when I bought it. I‘ve never used it and probably will never need it, so I got rid of it.

That was a mistake. Or rather, I didn’t anticipate the problems it would cause, which was my mistake. When I rebooted the computer, rather than faced with the choice of booting Windows Vista or Kubuntu 9.04, I saw “Grub Error 22,” and my heart skipped a beat. I had killed my boot record!

The good news in this situation, of course, was that my filesystem was intact. I cast about for the Kubuntu 9.04 Live CD from which I had installed Jaunty back in April … and couldn’t find it. Fortunately, I did find the CD for Kubuntu 7.10—old, but perfectly usable. I booted into Gutsy Gibbon and verified that yes, my Windows installation was intact. I just couldn’t boot it, and that was the problem I tried to resolve. Alas, I couldn’t get to Grub’s configuration file—I couldn’t access any of my Kubuntu installation. Nor were attempts to reinstall Grub successful. In fact, everything I did seemed to make the situation worse.

So I did what we all do when we hurt our computers: lowered my standards. No longer was “reinstall Grub” on the list; now I would be content to just restore the default Windows boot record. I planned to do a clean install of Kubuntu 9.10 anyway, so I decided that this was no large setback. The instructions for repairing the Windows boot record with my Kubuntu Live CD did not work. I tried the recovery CD I had received from Dell, but it only offered the option to re-install Vista from the factory defaults.

At this point, I remembered that I had a Windows 7 installation DVD sitting on top of my printer. If I had to do a clean install to fix the problem, I might as well install Windows 7. I had backed up all my important Windows data via Kubuntu already, so perhaps this would actually give me a “fresh start.” I booted from the Windows 7 DVD …

… and below the option to install was the option to “repair.” I was elated. Upon selecting this option, I sat back and watched as the DVD searched for a Windows installation, found Vista, detected that the boot record was bad, and asked if I wanted to fix it. After a frantic click of the “Yes!” button, I watched as Windows 7 saved me before I had even installed it.

So I might be a little biased when I agree with those who think Windows 7 is a great operating system.

I performed the actual upgrade on Tuesday night, and as soon as I had persuaded the DVD that my laptop was compatible (it kept on giving me silly error messages) the actual install was a snap. It took about four hours, and when it rebooted, all my data was intact (a plus) and everything worked like it should. So I delved into Windows 7 to discover what I liked and what I didn’t like.

I love the new Libraries feature. It’s a sensible way to collect disparate folders with similar roles. You can completely customize your libraries, and when you combine them with the “jump list” feature from the taskbar, you‘ve got near-instantaneous contextualized access to your files.

Speaking of which, I have mixed feelings about the taskbar. I’m not sure if I like the compacted icons for each active application (I am aware I can disable this layout and use the default, Vista-style one, but I haven’t done this yet). I do like that the Quick Launch bar is gone; you can just “pin” applications to the taskbar like you can do to the Start Menu. Windows 7 has done a lot to reduce redundancy.

I did end up disabling User Account Control. I know, I know, it’s not safe! But it annoyed me to no end only ten minutes into exploring Windows 7. I even tried turning it to the lowest notification setting, but all my attempts at diplomacy failed: UAC was out to get me. So I killed it. I confess. Take me away!

Some of the new icons are a bit ugly, but there’s probably a way to customize that if it’s a dealbreaker for you.

Recall that I actually liked Vista. If you didn’t like Vista, you might need to overcome that hurdle before you warm up to Windows 7, which is essentially Vista on steroids. Still, Windows 7 does address the major problems of Vista—it’s Vista without Vista’s annoying idiosyncrasies. It’s Vista after rehab.

I’m not even going to try to compare Windows 7 with other brands of operating systems. If you’re a steadfast Mac or Linux user, Windows 7 won’t make you change your tune, and I don’t mind. I still hold to the hope that one day I can use Kubuntu more than I use Windows, but until that day comes, it’s good to have a Windows installation that works with me more than it works against me.

Now if you excuse me, I need to go compulsively organize my documents into Libraries… .

As much as I am in love with the technological achievement that is the Amazon Kindle, I have to chastise Amazon and the producers of other eBook readers for what I see as a step backward.

You may have heard last week about Amazon deleting books off Kindles. This is worrisome because—as Jonathan Zittrain explains—it emphasizes how much you don’t own what you “buy” from Amazon or any other company that digs its claws into you by selling you tethered goods. We sacrifice our freedom to keep what we purchase in return for a little convenience in the purchasing.

That’s not all though. Barnes and Noble, bookstore rival to Amazon, plans on launching its own eReader from Plastic Logic. Now, I’m all for competing eReader devices and competing eBook stores. Competition breeds innovation. But what I don’t like is this:

At this point, B&N’s plan becomes clear—the books will be tied to the B&N e-reader, and not downloadable by Kindle or Sony Reader owners. Essentially B&N is trying to set up a closed ecosystem that’s a direct rival to Amazon’s, and that’s based from its bricks and mortar stores and a website, versus Amazon’s 100% cloud-based solution.

A synonym for “closed ecosystem” would be “proprietary network.” This harkens back to the early days of the World Wide Web, when the Web consisted of disparate service providers like CompuServe and Prodigy. Rather than buying the eReader right for me and then buying books from various online sources, I’m going to be locked into a single provider for my content—and apparently they have the right to veto my access to that content, even if I‘ve paid for it.

(To the credit of Barnes and Noble, their eBooks will not be restricted just to their Plastic Logic eReader. According to the Fast Company article to which I linked above, they will also have software available for the BlackBerry, PC, and of course, the notoriously proprietary iPhone. This is one step up from Amazon’s strategy with Kindle eBooks, I suppose.)

I understand why stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble are doing this. They’re just trying to make a profit. And part of me wants to say, “OK, try it your way, and see if this works.” Yet I worry that such an attitude will do more harm than good, especially for authors and publishers. I sincerely doubt publishers will ever make much money on eBooks. The role of eBooks is in publicity, in attracting new fans and moving physical versions of the book—because rest assured, physical books aren’t going to disappear as eBooks gain popularity. Give the digital copy away for free, then charge for the hard copy.

Critics contend that this model is unrealistic: after all, then everyone with an Internet connection will just download the free copy and the publishers and authors would lose money! I somehow doubt that. Firstly, I much prefer reading books in hard copy, and most readers share this sentiment. Even improvements to eReaders to make reading more comfortable (such as the e-ink screen on this generation of eReaders) will never equal the feel of a bound paper volume in my hands. Secondly—and I‘m sure you’ve noticed this yourself—having easy access doesn’t automatically mean I’ll take advantage of it. I currently have easy access to 30,000 free books from Project Gutenberg. Guess what I‘m doing right now? That’s right, I‘m not reading a single one. Because I’m lazy. On the other hand, if I‘ve got a physical copy of a book on my shelf, I have an impetus to read it.

But hey, maybe I’m just a dreamer. It’s not my job to come up with new revenue models, just to shoot down existing ones!

Incidentally, if you’re looking for more information on this subject, check out Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It, available for free download under a Creative Commons license. And if you like the book, buy the hard copy version.

I quite enjoyed on Easter weekend watching the instantaneous outrage across the Internet, particularly #amazonfail on Twitter, as it became apparent that Amazon had removed sales rankings from books with “adult” content. The outrage stems more from the fact that the application of the “adult” label seems skewed toward books with homosexual content; the heterosexual books are safe. In the ensuing light-speed confusion: Mark R. Probst shared his limited interaction with an Amazon rep, in which the rep revealed the “adult content” policy; the LA Times book blog covers it, then covers it again when sources claim that Amazon has blamed a “glitch”; and some posited it was the result of gaming the system.

Take the time to read the above articles before reading on.

What Definitely Happened

In lieu of any definitive statement from Amazon regarding this debacle, it would be irresponsible to say, “This is what happened.” At best, we have theories. But all theories start with facts. Here are the facts, what we know did happen, even if we don’t know why it happened.

Amazon Has a Safe-Search Policy

As evidenced by Mark Probst’s post, a representative for Amazon has confirmed that there are policies in place to differentiate between “adult” and “non-adult” content and restrict the former content from appearing in some search listing. Apparently, this policy necessarily requires that adult materials have their sales ranks removed, since search listings depend, to some extent, on the sales ranking system.

Now, a search for “gay sex” quickly reveals many books, coincidentally about gay sex. So apparently that search listing isn’t affected. Visiting a listing for one of the books in that result reveals the conspicuous absence of a sales rank. Thus, while I can’t quite see how this is affecting search results, the removal of a sales rank from a book is definitely a penalty when it comes to Amazon listings.

Not All Books are Equally Adult

Craig Seymour points out that this policy isn’t new, and in fact, some adult materials have a sales rank. So at first glance, Amazon’s policy appears to be quite unfair. But having a policy isn’t the same as implementing it, and maybe Amazon’s laziness is to blame instead of its morality.

Nigerian Princes Have Taken Over Amazon

At first, the assumption across the Internet, fuelled by the likes of Probst and Seymour, was that this was all an intentional move by Amazon. Now, this is a natural reaction. Probst and Seymour’s responses from Amazon are pretty damning testimony. But it inevitably isn’t the whole story, and soon cooler heads suggested that this is the result of an exploit by spammers.

For its part, someone else at Amazon reported that this is a “glitch” they are in the process of fixing. This would seem to support those who theorize that one or more spammers have abused Amazon’s reporting system. Thus, Amazon’s adult content policy itself isn’t to blame, but rather the way they’ve implemented it: poorly.

In a previous tweet of mine, I joked that the glitch explanation implies Amazon has a “homophobe mode”, but when presented as an exploit by spammers instead of an internal problem, it makes more sense. I am more than willing to eat my words (mmm, yummy words!).

Still, the existence of this glitch raises several questions about Amazon’s responsibility to its consumers. Firstly, is the existence of an adult content policy in any way fair? If such a policy should exist, is a user-reporting mechanism really the best way to mark books as “adult”? Why doesn’t Amazon have someone manually reviewing user reports? And even if they get too many reports and have to automatically process them, shouldn’t the system be protected from common exploits?

Apparently I Need a Big Brother to Buy Books

I was very surprised to learn about Amazon’s “adult content policy,” of which I was ignorant until #amazonfail occurred. It’s not a new policy, apparently. In our haste to discuss the fallout of #amazonfail itself, it’s imperative we don’t ignore the very existence of this adult content policy and its implications for both authors and consumers.

Google has long had a “safe search” option that screens out adult content. There are two important distinctions between Google’s safe search and Amazon’s safe search. Firstly, I don’t buy stuff (directly) from Google. Secondly, I can turn off Google’s safe search.

The fact that Google’s safe search is opt-out instead of opt-in is debatable on its own, but this article is not a place for that debate. For now, since I’m using Google to find information and not to sell or buy a product, I’m of the opinion that an opt-out safe search is acceptable. If I want to expose myself to both “safe” and “unsafe” content, I can turn it off—which, for the record, I have. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t seem offer me the same flexibility. Not only do I fail to see an option in my account settings to disable this “safe search” of theirs, I see no mention of it. In other words, Amazon’s adult content policy isn’t a secret, but they aren’t practising full disclosure either.

This is unfair to authors who sell on Amazon, people like Craig Seymour who only find out after they contact Amazon looking for an explanation. If one wants to sell through a distributor, one expects the distributor to be up front about anything that may hinder sales, such as a restrictive adult content policy. Regardless of the cause of #amazonfail, Amazon’s adult content policy is just a bad business practice. It would be great if they would be more open about disclosing the policy’s existence and provided a feature to turn it off. It would be ideal if they scrapped the policy altogether.

We are the Patients; Amazon is Our Asylum

The speculation regarding Amazon’s “glitch” revolves around the fact that users can mark a book as featuring adult content. I can’t actually find that functionality on a listing page, but I may be incompetent or Amazon may have removed that feature as a reaction to #amazonfail. An alternative is that the system is transparent and only invoked when someone actually sends Amazon a complaint instead of clicking a button. Nevertheless, it appears that Amazon doesn’t actually base its content rating on an objective standard. Rather, it trusts its users.

Insert laughter here.

User reporting works well for small communities, or for large communities that double check the math. It is irresponsible of Amazon to rely solely on user-reported mechanisms for rating content. Even if Amazon does use such mechanisms, they should at least periodically verify that these reports are valid. It’s all too easy for a human to instruct other humans or robots to game the system. Remember how Colbert won the vote for NASA’s new module on the International Space Station? He gamed the system by getting his audience to write-in his name as a suggestion. But don’t forget that some of the other write-in suggestions were “XENU” (Scientology has its robot adherents as well) and “MYYEARBOOK” (obviously a spammer). Any automated system that allows user feedback is vulnerable to exploitation. Shame on Amazon for letting this happen, if this was in fact a glitch.

When the dust clears and Amazon releases a statement about #amazonfail, we need to walk away from this with one thing clearly in mind: while it’s unfortunate that #amazonfail happened, it’s a stark reminder of any company’s vulnerability to the masses who populate the Internet. I’m not just talking about Twitter—Twitter made #amazonfail a faster, and probably a larger, discussion, but that discussion would have happened nonetheless. And whether #amazonfail was caused by a glitch or a policy run wild or the alignment of Venus with Mars and Sedna, the fact remains that Amazon should rethink its sales ranking system. Censorship is a problem no matter what the source, and we can’t expect the spammers to spontaneously drop their weapons and surrender any time soon. So it remains Amazon’s responsibility to defend against external exploits and to craft internal policy that makes sense. As the heated reactions this Easter weekend demonstrate, that means being vigilant.

Update: Amazon has provided what is likely as good an explanation as we’ll get. I agree with Cheryl Morgan’s analysis of the entire episode.

Last updated Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 10:33 PM

It’s a Wednesday. (That doesn’t mean anything particular. I just wanted to point it out for those of you who hadn’t noticed.) I haven’t posted a new blog post in a while, so here’s something I wrote a little while ago and never got around to posting.

I first read about this in an issue of TIME magazine covering the best inventions of 2007. Recently it was featured in an episode of Daily Planet, so I thought I would share its existence with those of you who haven’t heard of the Digital Water Pavilion.

The Digital Water Pavilion is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a pavilion, built in an outdoor space, with a floor and a roof supported by a couple of columns that double as an information point and office. Water running off the roof forms “walls” along the pavilion. But that’s not the cool part. By controlling the flow of the water, the pavilion operators can actually use these water walls as a display device:

The entire surface becomes a one-bit-deep digital display continuously scrolling downwards. Something like an inkjet printer on a huge scale…. The water itself is dynamic: it can display graphics, patterns and text. But, most importantly, it can almost become alive with patterns that are generated in real time, replicated from one point to another and which respond to the nearby environment. The presence of people can be sensed by the DWP and this plays an important role in the dynamic process, allowing waves and other distortions to be generated.

Admittedly, you probably wouldn’t want to live in a house with walls made of water. But it’s certainly an example of science and architecture creating something unique and awesome.

Two months ago I read The Numerati, in which Stephen Baker discusses how technology—particularly the Internet—is affecting marketing techniques and how businesses and individuals manage their data. Now that we have the tools and understanding to mathematically model more behaviour than ever before, there’s a new group of people—the eponymous Numerati—at the forefront of this information revolution.

One of the concerns Baker briefly addresses is privacy. On the Internet, this has always been an issue, but the surge in popularity of social networking this year makes it even more relevant. MySpace and Facebook have made headlines with the Lori Drew case and the launch of identity management Facebook Connect.¹ What was once a matter of “privacy” is now a question of the most appropriate mechanism for managing the convergence of one’s offline and online personae.

And I can’t help but feel that some people are missing the point.

What is Privacy?

Like “Web 2.0”, we tend to throw the term “privacy” around quite a bit without much thought to what we actually want when we demand it. Does this merely mean we want our bank account details safe? Or do we actually want a guarantee of anonymity (if we choose it)? Is our personal data only private if we keep it secret, or is it still private if we share it with other people (such as friends or corporations) as long as it isn’t available to the general public?

Let’s face it though: in the evanescent medium of the Internet, any strict definitions regularly become obsolete. So instead, let’s define privacy as a mode of operation rather than a state of being. Online, privacy is more an ability of a user to control how his or her personal data is distributed. Privacy settings on web sites are an excellent example of this mode of operation: the web site gives the user the choice of what to reveal.

But We Just Wanna Have Fun

Then apparently you haven’t heard the news: the Internets are serious businesses. This is hard for many people to accept—it’s so easy to go online, create a fake identity, and begin fooling around. Yet at its core, the Internet is not a fictitious world or some sort of MMORPG. While you can often assume the cloak of anonymity,² increasingly services expect you to dole out personal details and geographical information.

I can understand why this has privacy advocates concerned. It won’t be long, they argue, before everyone is chipped with evil, insecure RFID devices that allow the Google Overlords to track our every movement and even read our minds, right? After all, as soon as we tell a service on the Internet not only who we are, but where we live, it’s only a matter of time before an axe murderer shows up at our door, right?

It’s good to be wary and vigilant of flagrant violations of one’s privacy. However, these sort of overreactions are indicative, in my opinion, of a misunderstanding of the Internet as a communication medium. In that sense, the Internet really is something new. We’ve never had a communication medium quite like it. The Internet’s effect on society is tantamount to that of the printing press on fifteenth century European society—but it is also so much more. The Internet is both a library and a conference centre. When people pull out their mobile phones and say, “This is my office,” they aren’t necessarily joking.

The true potential of the Internet will never be realized unless we accept that geostamping is as much of a necessity as timestamping. Since the inception of the Internet, content creators regularly date the work they publish online—yet only recently have we begun tagging that work with geographical information. Now websites like Flickr can automatically geostamp your photos using the information embedded into the uploaded photograph. While watchdogs call that a privacy violation, I call that awesome. (And you can turn it off if you don’t like it.)

Knowledge Is Slavery

The counterargument to handing all our data over to the Google Overlords is to trot out George Orwell’s 1984 and staple the adjective “Orwellian” to everything. Now, I admit I often worry about that. Giving Google my personal information is one of my favourite pastimes, but is it a dangerous pastime? Is Google going to start editing the Internet to retcon reality?

The short answer is: no. The explanation to the short answer is: you won’t let them—at least, I hope.

See, the thing about 1984 is that Orwell wasn’t cautioning us against “Big Brother” type dystopian societies—most of us were already against those at the time. He was cautioning us that those sort of societies spring up because we don’t do anything about it. That message is kind of hitting home after recent events in Canada … but anyway, I digress.

My point is that there’s still plenty of room on the Internet for individuals and countercultures to survive. That’s the beauty of the Internet: as long as you have the technology, you can rebuild it, recreate it, and make it better than it was before. You only run into problems when you have a government, like China, that begins dictating what you can or can’t do when you browse the Internet and enforce it technologically. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, however, but that was not an isolated incident in China—that sort of government restriction was present in every part of the lives of Chinese citizens. Similarly, if we see the inception of an “Orwellian Internet”, it will happpen because we the people have sold out.

In short, Orwellian society begets Orwellian Internet, not the other way around. Orwellian. Orwellian. Orwellian.

Great adjective.

Wait, You‘re Still Reading This?

I would recommend The Numerati to everyone, not just people with an interest in this field. The book is very short and doesn’t go into the mathematical specifics behind this statistical analysis—Baker’s a business writer, not a math geek like me—so it’s quite understandable to laypeople. In his conclusion, Baker says:

So we’re going to have to reevaluate our ideas about privacy and secrets … until recently, our secrets were scattered…. Most of them, if we played it right, didn’t mingle much. Unless a detective was on the case, the bits of information didn’t find each other. Now they can and they will.

This can be scary. No doubt it will tempt a few of us to turn away from the data-spewing world altogether. Some will tiptoe around the Internet, if they venture there at all….

But with a bit of knowledge, we can turn these tools to our advantage. You may not have noticed, but as we make our way in these pages from the snooping workplace to the laboratories of love, we gradually evolve from data serfs into data masters…. We’re appealing to the science of the Numerati to protect us from falls and alert us before strokes and heart attacks…. The point is, these statistical tools are going to be quietly assuming more and more power in our lives. We might as well learn how to grab the controls and use them for [our] own interests. (204-5)

Before that, Baker makes another statement that pretty much sums up my entire view toward privacy: “The personal data can be shared but not the identity” (204). How many of you have done anonymous surveys, or checked off a box that says, “Yes, you can share my data as long as you don’t associate with my identity”? For those of you that haven’t—are you sure? How many of you honestly read through those tiresome EULAs that accompany any of the software you install—many of those include clauses that permit the software to anonymously report data about how you use the software.

As Baker explains, this sort of data is neither good nor bad. What matters is who uses it and how they use it. Unless you become a hermit³, achieving total privacy is impractical. So rather than run from the Google overlords, these Numerati, learn about them. Learn what they do with your data, and be vigilant in how you manage your online identity.

There are risks associated with any venture, and the Internet is no different in this case. Every time you connect your computer to it, you take the risk that you’ll inadvertently download a virus or be deluged with spam. But like many risky ventures, I think the Internet is worth that risk.

The debate over privacy should not be about how to keep your secrets—well, secret. That is a lost cause. Instead, the debate should be over how best to manage those secrets, and how to make sure our personal data is used to benefit us rather than exploit us.

• [ 1 ] Google Friend Connect gets no respect. Poor OpenSocial!
• [ 2 ] First seen in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Proxies
• [ 3 ] Which I’m still considering, by the way.

Lately Merlin Mann has been helping Spark listeners build their “Digital You.” Implicit in this new series is the fact that technology is now an ingrained part of us—how we appear online is as important as how we dress in public. Your online presence, like your personality, can be diverse: open and inviting, cold and formal—whatever works for you and gets you the audience you want.

The era of ubiquitous technology is upon us. Smartphones are getting smarter, the Internet is (at least in places other than Canada!) getting faster. And thanks to this ubiquity, we can always be connected.

Often people claim, however, that disconnecting is the best way to improve productivity. Close all those email programs; close the chat program; don’t go on Facebook; don’t update Twitter. Multitasking, after all, makes us lose focus and be less productive, right?

Those people are right. When it’s possible for anyone to reach you, anywhere, at any time, you’ve become too connected. I love technology, and I love the Internet, but there is a point at which immersion makes it harder to sit down and focus—or even just relax.

But I said that this was an argument for immersion, so here it is: immersion eliminates temptation by the simplest mechanism possible—giving in.

If you disconnect, unless you physically remove your ability to use the Internet (which probably isn’t practical if you’re working at the computer anyway), you will be tempted to reconnect before your work is over. Perhaps exhausted and frustrated, you’ll rationalize that a little break is in order—what harm comes from checking Facebook? Before you know it, two hours have gone by, and your essay still isn’t done.

On the other hand, if you are constantly online while you’re working, you can turn the immersion into background noise. That’s the key. I agree that immersion is no good if you are one of those people who has to read the email the moment you know it’s there. Perhaps disconnection is your only option. But for those who can acknowledge (or even just ignore until you want to acknowledge) the alerts without jumping to read the emails … immersion works. At least it does for me.

I don’t drop what I’m doing to read my email. I just want to know it’s there. That way, while I’m doing homework, I won’t be tempted to check if I have email. I’ll know I have email. But it can wait until I‘m done. Remove the temptation to distract yourself by collapsing the universe’s wavefunction¹ and confirming one of two possibilities: either you have email, or you don‘t.

Now for heaven’s sake, go open the box already! Poor cat.

• [ 1 ] Alternatively, you can create a universe.

The polls are closed, and the votes are mostly tallied. Last month, Stephen Harper called an election; this month, he was re-elected with yet anohter minority government—a stronger minority, but still a minority. In the ensuing chaotic coverage, some interesting trends have emerged. The new hot issues are Liberal leadership, government functionality, voting reform, and voter turnout.

The Liberals lost eighteen seats (at the time of this writing), which is a blow for them. Still the official opposition, yet weakened. Additionally, Dion declared in his concession speech that he would be willing to work with the Conservatives on the economic “crisis” that we’re facing. While I commend Dion for extending the olive branch, two questions come to mind: does this mean the Conservatives will have a de facto majority? And will this matter at all in a week or two when the Liberals get a new leader? For indeed, if there was anything the majority of pundits agreed that Dion is done. My opinion of Dion improved during this campaign; however, that still doesn’t mean he’s a strong leader.

The next question is: will this government be functional? Harper’s cited reason for calling the last election was that government no longer worked properly. The Conservatives have made some gains and the Liberals some losses. With a potential new Liberal leadership, will the government work together better? I’m going to be optimistic here. I predict that the government will indeed work well for at least a year, hopefully two (as the CBC panel’s predicting). There’s several reasons for this: firstly, none of the party leaders are eager for another election. I‘m ready for another one, but I don’t think it’s in Canada’s best interest right now. Secondly, although Harper has made gains, his experience with the last government will hopefully temper his attitude when it comes to cooperating. I‘m hoping he’ll play nicer with the Liberals when it comes to the economic issues on which he needs their support.

A lot of the talk on Twitter concerned reforming the electoral system. People were disgruntled with the low voter turnout. Complaints abounded regarding the new ID rules, which some people thought were the primary reason so many didn’t vote. While I don’t know about that, I can understand why the ID rules are a concern. Many are advocating reforms to the system, things like proportional representation, to mitigate the influence of parties like the Bloc Québecois, who have forty-eight seats (at the time of this writing) but only ten per cent of the vote.

As I mentioned above, I spent most of the night glued to Twitter’s search engine following some Canadian election hashtags, and I tweeted quite a bit myself. The Twitter coverage was actually much better than the coverage on television! Real reactions from real people across the entire spectrum. CBC’s TV coverage was unhelpful. Their graphics lacked relevant statistics and were uninformative. Their opinions weren’t very insightful. The CBC website was much more helpful, with an interactive map showing the current disposition of the ridings, plus very detailed statistics for each riding—I commend the CBC’s web team.

I was very disappointed with Susan Ormiston’s Ormiston online coverage of the online reaction. Ormiston displayed a remarkable lack of competence using the technology she had in the nerve centre tonight. In her defence, some of that incompetence may be due to the technology itself. From the looks of things, she wasn’t very well equipped to cull and display particular tweets or emails very nicely. It looked like some sort of hastily-created mashup in a notebook program with a couple special effects.

In addition to the poor presentation, whatever happened to actually covering the Internet reactions? At the beginning of the special coverage, they went to Ormiston, who explained how throughout the night they would refer to her for the reaction of people on Twitter, on blogs, through emails, etc. I think they referred to her a total of about three times. So much for listening to public reaction. Although the Internet is helping people have their voice heard, I don’t think that we‘re quite at the point where social media is becoming the new paradigm for politics. Not yet. Maybe in the next decade, but first we need a generation of newscasters adept at manipulating and participating in the paradigm.

Well, I have class in seven hours, so I should go to bed. To all of those who voted, no matter for whom you voted, I thank you for participating in our democratic system. To those of you who didn’t vote, I’m disappointed.

I shall close by quoting Kevin McCann tweet, which may be the best comment of the night:

U.S. friends, Canadian election is over after just 6 weeks. 60% voted left-of-centre; right-of-centre government gets in.

I‘m addicted to a new game called Superstruct. It’s a “massively multiplayer” forecasting game. Sort of like a role-playing game, Superstruct is set in 2019 and concerns five “superthreats” that together weaken humanity enough to make our survival outside of the century unlikely. But you aren’t playing as a superhero or a zombie: you’re playing as you—or as you will be, in 2019.

Created by The Institute for the Future, Superstruct is more than a game. It’s a collaborative problem-solving exercise. And it’s an experiment. I learned about it from this week’s episode of Spark, where Nora Young interviews Jane McGonigal, the game designer. I was immediately intrigued. The goal of the game is to create possible solutions for the likely threats of our near future. It’s designed to be realistic. While making accurate predictions isn’t always possible, the game gives us scenarios extrapolated from humanity’s current global situation. Watch the videos for each superthreat; they sound very plausible.

As McGonigal explains, the game’s serious. It’s designed to get people to think about issues we might not otherwise consider in our daily lives. By focusing on the environment as a game, one in which people are rewarded for their efforts and participation, the IFTF is drawing upon a whole pool of people who might not otherwise provide input.

I think about the future and possible solutions to problems all the time. But I‘m not always in a position to effect change or even necessarily make my voice heard. And I love hearing the ideas of other people, not only on what the future will be like, but what we can do about it. Superstruct was made for me!

The website itself suffers from several design flaws and technical issues that make me less inclined to participate. However, I’ve joined the game, even created my own superstruct. The game only runs until November 17, at which point it will be frozen and archived for future reference. So if you‘re interested, don’t wait. Join now and start inventing a better future.

Oh, almost forgot: following the lead of other SEHIs, I also have created a Twitter account for my 2019 self.

Last updated Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 12:36 AM

CBC radio show Spark wants to know what Canada needs to do today to become a major innovator tomorrow. This is an important issue with the election looming. In addition to interviewing technology experts, the Spark blog has asked listeners to submit their own “Digital Wish Lists”. Here’s mine:

1. Establishment of a Minister of Technology. I agree with Mitch Kapoor. We have a Minister of Health, a Minister of Industry—why not someone in charge of the country’s technological infrastructure?
2. Better copyright reform. Bill C-61 has demonstrated that many Canadians care about copyright reform. Even if one is in favour of the copyright protection measures outlined in Bill C-61 (I am not), critics have pointed out numerous flaws that make Bill C-61 a poor piece of legislation. I want our government to have open consultation with the public to craft viable, enforceable copyright legislation that balances intellectual property ownership with the need for access to information.
3. More competition in the telecommunications sector. I am not a capitalist, but a lack of competition does mean that consumers have less choice. Here in Thunder Bay, we have one choice for cable TV service: Shaw. Until recently, only local TBayTel provided home phone service; now Shaw does too. Only TBayTel and Rogers provide cell phone service. That doesn’t leave the consumer much choice when it comes to negotiating contracts. On a national level, a lack of competition stifles innovation and growth.
4. Nation-wide improvement to technological infrastructure. Broadband penetration. We need it. Not just fibre-optics right to homes (which would be nice), but also coverage in rural areas. Bring Canada into the 21st century.
5. Access to government databases. Putting publicly-available data online should be a priority. People need to be informed; an online presence is virtually a requirement for any organization. The government has already made good progress, but it can still go further and think bigger.
6. Government adoption of open alternatives to proprietary formats. The Quebec government was recently sued for buying proprietary software. While I don’t know if I’d go that far, the government should explore alternatives to proprietary software. Otherwise, businesses like Microsoft and Apple have unnecessary leverage.

Technology advances too quickly for a mechanism like government to legislate in real time. Like any social fad, once a technology becomes mainstream, it pretty much stays until rendered obsolete by newer technology. Rather than trying to create legislation about specific technology, the government needs to establish a framework that encourages the development of technology along certain trajectories.

Part of my comment on that entry was included in this week’s episode of Spark. It’s also got an interesting tale from Bill Parry, an intriguing new service from Nathan Eagle, and a discussion on the French-English digital divide.

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across a way to create a low-cost interactive whiteboard using a Wiimote. All that was required was a Wiimote (for its infrared camera), an infrared-emitting pen, and a flat surface. The Wiimote would track the pen across the surface and report its coordinates back to the computer program, which could then draw, trigger controls, or whatever you wantetd it to do.

I don’t own a Wii, so I bought a Wiimote alone. I couldn’t get the pen working properly, however (I tried building one myself rather than buying one). So I shelved my Wiimote, where it sat gathering dust, forgotten. Until yesterday.

Often I like to read in my comfy chair that’s on the other side of my desk. I’ll have iTunes playing music, and I don’t like having to get up and go to my computer to adjust the volume or skip a song. It’s even more inconvenient if I‘m outside and playing the music through the window. I don’t have a multimedia remote (when ordering this computer from Dell, I didn’t think I’d ever want one—foolish me).

Last week, Lifehacker published an article about using the Wiimote with your computer. This reminded me that I had a Wiimote lying around doing nothing, and using it to trigger a few commands couldn’t be too hard, could it?

After wrestling with Vista’s Bluetooth setup to get the Wiimote connected, I downloaded GlovePIE and went in search of an iTunes-controlling script. I found such a script at WiiLi.org that was tied to an AuthoHotkey script. I‘d previously heard of AutoHotkey and thought about trying it, but I hadn’t yet gotten around to it. So I installed AutoHotkey, and as a bonus I now have a way to control iTunes through keyboard shortcuts as well. I’ve also set up numerous other shortcuts since then—I‘ve fallen in love with AutoHotkey and can’t see myself going back!

The Wiimote needed a fresh pair of batteries, but otherwise the script worked excellently. I modified it slightly to add in the capability to control my computer’s volume as well as just iTunes’—once I had the script in front of me, figuring out how to adapt it wasn’t difficult.

By far the most annoying aspect is Vista’s Bluetooth connectivity. Every time I want to connect the Wiimote, I need to go through the whole finding devices, installing drivers, etc., setup. It doesn’t take too long, but it’s inconvenient to have to do that every time. I don’t have much experience using Bluetooth devices, so I’m not sure if this is normal, a problem with Vista, or just because of the way the Wiimote works. If anyone has any solutions, please let me know. Otherwise I’m quite satisfied with my accomplishment!

Yesterday, I explained why I was excited about Google getting into the browser game. Of course, no new Google venture is complete without some people taking issue with Google’s privacy policies. In this case, the controversy was around Google Chrome’s EULA, specifically section 11.1. Now, since everything on the Internet happens at the speed of light, Google has already changed the wording of that clause and applied it retroactively, claiming that it was all a mistake by the lawyers behind the curtain. However, this incident reminds us of just how much data Google collects, not to mention privacy issues online as a whole.

I should begin with the disclaimer that I am not a Google fanboy. I love some of Google’s services—I use Gmail, although I prefer to check my mail through Mozilla Thunderbird’s interface, and Google Calendar is my favourite calendar application. However, I’m perfectly willing to criticize Google. I try not to be a fanboy of anything, but if I were, I‘d be a Joss Whedon fanboy. So I’m going to hijack this post to mention that the Dr. Horrible soundtrack is available for purchase on iTunes. That is all.

The Internet is transforming us into a global village as Marshall McLuhan predicted. More and more information concerning our offline personae is being stored in a digital form and then transferred all around the world, whether we know of it or not. Companies that exist primarily to gather data (like Google, a search engine company) always want more. How much are we willing to give?

When addressing the issue of privacy on the Internet, I’ve decided to tackle four questions. Firstly, what do we want when we yell “privacy!” on forums and blogs? It’s a word, but what does it mean? Next, what criteria should we use to determine which institutions to trust with our private data? And who is to blame when that data gets leaked or shared with third parties? Lastly, let’s put on our pragmatist caps and consider the reality of the Internet today: what’s feasible, and what will require major paradigm shifts to accomplish?

I Have Everything to Hide

A typical retort to those who lament the loss of privacy in everyday life is, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you should have nothing to hide.” No one’s perfect though, and we all have things we want to hide. That’s why most browsers, including Google Chrome, have some sort of stealth mode (or “porn mode”) that doesn’t record what you’re doing. Everyone can have legitimate reasons for keeping secrets. The point of privacy is to present people with choice: an individual should have the choice of whether or not to reveal his or her private information, right?

But what’s private to us? Well, if anonymity is your goal, then probably everything except a pseudonym, maybe your gender. The Internet is increasingly critical to offline applications, however, and anonymity is no longer always an option. Sure, it’s possible to establish an ephemeral blog with no personally-identifiable information available to the public. However, the site will record your computer’s IP address, which in turn can be traced back (in most cases) to you. Even if you use a public computer, you’ll probably have to give an email address that could be traced back to you—you could use a fake address, but then you‘d have no way of receiving legitimate communications.

As the Internet evolves, it begins connecting our offline personae with our online ones. No longer is the Internet just a network on which we push emails back and forth. Now we’re uploading videos, torrenting television programs, tweeting, blogging, using Facebook—much of this relying on our own offline identities to make it relevant. When I update my Twitter status, it shows up on Facebook and on the homepage of my website. People who want to know what I am doing can look at my status.

But if one is not careful, too much information can lead to problems. Put your credit card number in the wrong form, and suddenly someone has stolen your identity. These are real problems that we as a society are going to have to solve. We have to give our private data to someone, but to whom?

Sell Your Soul For a Fiddle

How do you decide if a website is trustworthy? Friends‘ reviews? Newspaper articles? The number of people on the site? Which services deserve to store our private information, and which ones are untrustworthy for one reason or another?

If you have a bank account, then you probably have access to your finances online. Your bank stores massive amounts of personal information about you from your name to your credit history. What makes a bank more trustworthy than Google? Companies often try to sell themselves by promoting how much experience they’ve had, how long they‘ve been around. My bank, Bank of Montreal, is Canada’s oldest bank, founded in 1817. That’s much older than Google, which will be celebrating its tenth birthday in three days! If age is a factor, then my bank must be a more appropriate institution to trust with my data.

Banks don’t have the best track record for keeping private information private, however. It seems like every couple of months there’s another article in the newspaper about one bank or another misplacing or accidentally leaking the private information of thousands of people. Whoa. When was the last time Google did that? In July there was some concern when a court ordered Google-owned YouTube to hand over some information to Viacom. YouTube’s handling of the situation seems to indicate that Google has our privacy on its mind. And that makes sense. Google is a business as much as banks are, and no business wants to become notorious for disclosing private data.

ScapeGoogle?

So when our data does get disclosed, who is to blame? In the case of accidental leaks, the company often hits the age-old tome of excuses to produce classics like, “The postal service lost the package containing the data,” or “An employee forgot to clean sensitive data off his or her thumb drive before giving it away.” We are all human¹; we make mistakes.

If the court orders the company to share the information with a third party, then we blame the government. And this is an important point: even in so-called free societies, legislation exists that gives the government access to data you store with private companies. If the U.S. government demands that Google hand over some of its data, there is nothing much Google can do about it. Google’s lawyers can fight the case in court, sure, but in the end, if the government wins the case, then it’s not Google’s fault that the government has that power. That is the price Google pays for operating in such deprived countries, much like Google’s self-imposed censorship is the price it pays for operating in China.

Thanks to the networked nature of the Internet, this creates headaches for people who don’t even live in the United States. Any data you send to Google’s servers is going to end up at a machine located in the U.S. at some point, which makes it accessible to the U.S. government. Avoiding such an eventuality requires a great deal of effort². So the options become just accept the inevitable or boycott Google and its ilk³

Let’s All Go Amish

Boycotting Google is an acceptable, if extreme, method of protecting one’s privacy. However, it is impractical to boycott every possible source of privacy infringement. I suppose that one could cut up one’s credit cards, debit cards, government-issued IDs, etc. There are people who do this—but they are not a majority. Most people accept that some level of compromise is required to keep up with the relentless march of technology.

Ah, now the real demon comes to light: technology is evil! Mmm … not so much. We could destroy all of our advanced technology, but that doesn’t eliminate our privacy concerns. Also, it would utterly wreck civilization as we know it—you can go ahead and claim that a more pastoral existence is the paradise humanity requires, but that’s beyond the scope of this entry. The reality is, we are dependent on our technology, and that dependence comes with a price.

Be careful with your private information, of course. You’re going to have to give it out eventually. Be frugal about to whom you give it out. Tools like Facebook are not inherently dangerous; it all comes down to how you use them⁴

If you really are bothered by how society treats privacy these days, then make noise. Don’t just blog ineffectually about it like I am—write a letter to your representative of government (if you live in a “democracy”), form activist groups, make T-shirts, make pies … whatever it takes. Fight for change.

Me, I’m more worried about tethered appliances (such as the iPhone) and companies having the ability to remotely terminate products we “buy” as opposed to the data on those devices. But that’s an issue for another day.

• [ 1 ] Except for Stephen Harper, who is a robot
• [ 2 ] Time better spent drinking tea.
• [ 3 ] Yeah, I used the word “ilk.” I went there.
• [ 4 ] And how much common sense you have when accepting offers from widows of deposed Nigerian dictators.

Google made a splash on Labour Day when it announced the release of its own browser, Google Chrome.

It’s important to note that this is only a beta release, and Google’s made it clear that they are going to make major improvements to it. Check out the comic book that explains Google Chrome for techie details. A comic book—how cool is that?

Of course, Google has set a high standard for itself in the past. Reaction to this “beta” has been negative from some people (particularly those less tech-savvy who are underwhelmed by the interface), and Google has itself to blame for ruining the “beta” label with stable services like Gmail. However, it’s important to look beyond Google Chrome as just a product and examine its significance to users and the Internet as a whole.

For me, Google Chrome is significant because it is open source. Google has a history of supporting the open source community, but this is the first really big open source Google product. I love Google’s other apps, but their proprietary nature has always made me slightly uneasy. By making Google Chrome open source, Google is signalling that it isn’t entering the browser business just to make a new competitor for the other good browsers out there already. As the comic book explains, they’ve built it on a major open source rendering engine (Webkit) and the JavaScript engine they‘ve used is open source and independent of Google Chrome, so other browsers could even incorporate it too.

Google has a history of raising the bar with its inventions. Gmail’s initial 2 GB space, free POP access (and later, free IMAP access!), etc., caused other free webmail providers to step up and increase their offerings. I‘m hoping that Google Chrome does the same thing to browsers. We’re going to see cool new ideas—such as each tab being a separate process to save memory and prevent hanging—and some interesting takes on standard methods—such as the omnibox combining the address bar and search bar.

I love Firefox, and other browsers like Opera and Safari are great. However, all our browsers today are still clinging to the legacies of those that came before them. It looks like Google has stepped back and taken a look at the Big Picture of the World Wide Web, which has evolved at a frightening pace since its inception. The Web is no longer about connecting your computer to a box and slowly accessing text and images from other locations. Nowadays the Web is an interactive, ever-changing media. We have “web applications” instead of “web sites.” Some of Google’s methodology behind Chrome indicates that they’re attempting to turn the browser into something that works well with web applications instead of just a tool for viewing web pages. Because it’s open source, other browser makers can incorporate their innovations into their browsers, and they are now challenged to come up with their own.

This is exciting! Even if you aren’t a die-hard techie, you can appreciate the fact that we’re experiencing a pivotal moment in the development of technology. Interfaces started as a very basic, command-oriented idea. Then came the great era of the graphical user interface: everything is “point and click.” But we can still do better. The next step is truly making interfaces intuitive, moving beyond point and click and seeking solutions like natural-language interfaces. All of us already speak at least one language; we shouldn’t have to learn another just to operate our computers.

Google Chrome is a stepping stone, even if it doesn’t turn out to be the Next Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.

Tomorrow, I’ll have my take on the controversy surrounding Google Chrome’s Terms of Service.

It’s the 25th birthday of GNU this month, and Stephen Fry recorded a delightful little video that explains about free software in a very comprehensible manner.

Yay free software!

Lately I‘ve been listening to CBC Radio’s new show Spark.

Some of you may recall that I‘m not always fond of the CBC, but they’ve got something good going with Spark. It’s the sort of show that would appeal to demographics that might otherwise view the CBC as stodgy and uninteresting. Spark’s host, Nora Young, discusses the latest technology and technological phenomena with guests. Specifically, the show focuses on how technology integrates into and impacts our daily life. So even if you aren’t a technowizard, you could still find the show interesting (and perhaps even informative).

Take a look at the Spark blog to get an idea of what sort of topics the show’s covered in the past. Even if you don’t get CBC radio where you live, you can listen to Spark via podcast—that’s how I listen, because then I can just put it on when it’s convenient.

Last night I signed up for Twitter, an increasingly popular online service that allows users to send status messages from a variety of platforms—mobile, web, IM, etc. Big deal, you say. So what—who cares? The neat thing isn’t so much what Twitter does as how you can use Twitter elsewhere on the Internet.

For example, thanks to a Facebook application, I can update my Twitter status and have it show up on my Facebook profile page. Once I redesign my website (coming soon, I promise!) I’m going to add a status box to the front page, and it will draw the status from Twitter. So instead of updating Facebook and my site, all I have to do is update my Twitter status, and anything that draws my status from Twitter will change.

But wait, there’s more. Twitter is following the trend of moving the Web off the Web and onto phones. You can text Twitter from your phone. I’m online a lot, so of course it’s quite convenient to use the web interface. However, the real power from Twitter, in my opinion, is the fact that I can update it without access to a computer. This way if I get stuck somewhere and can’t get to the Internet, I can let other people know. Theoretically all I have to do is set up my phone with Twitter and then text. Theoretically…

Those of you who know TBayTel, my phone company and ISP, know that anything relying on TBayTel is a long shot at best. I had a terrible time trying to get Twitter to work with my cell phone. It apparently isn’t texting to short codes properly; the non-shortened number wasn’t working either. I was almost ready to give up. But wait, what’s this? TwitterMail to the rescue!

You see, my phone allows me to text message both phones and email addresses (I‘m not certain if this is standard with all SMS phones or if it’s a TBayTel thing; I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s standard). So I signed up for a TwitterMail address, which gives me a secret email address linked to my Twitter account. Any messages sent to this address get sent to Twitter as a status update. Now I send my text message to the TwitterMail address, not any sort of Twitter phone number, and voila! Status update complete.

Thank you, TBayTel, for being totally unhelpful. Thank you, Twitter and TwitterMail, for providing innovative services for free!

I have a lot of projects going on all at once. I’m coding VSNS Lemon, trying to code another site, managing a couple of other sites, trying to redesign this site, doing support at InvisionFree/ZetaBoards—and that’s just in my free time. I’ve also got school and work to balance. So time management is a big deal for me. Unfortunately, I‘m the sort of person who, instead of doing the things on his to-do list, spends his free time finding shinier ways of creating to-do lists.

Now my hunt is over. Today I came across the neatest little site for making to-do lists, and I am very satisfied. Todoist is an excellent example of how one person can turn a personal need into a useful service. I did something similar when I first made VSNS Lemon, although on a smaller scale. Since I don’t have the time to create a task management application, I‘m very glad Todoist exists.

The interface makes use of well-designed JavaScript to be both flexible and intuitive. There’s keyboard shortcuts, but most of the functionality is obvious, so you don’t have to worry about getting lost. The best part, though, is how you can organize your tasks. Not only can you group them into projects, but you can group them into multiple sub-projects, organize tasks into hierarchies within a project, add non-task type notes to your tasks—basically, you can organize everything precisely how you want it to represent your task structure. Since I have multiple unrelated projects going on, this is what made my day.

Getting it set up was really easy. I registered and was able to start immediately. I did watch the screencasts, and they were helpful, but not totally necessary to using the site.

Hopefully now that I have Todoist, I can keep track of what I need to do and use my time more efficiently. Less time spent saying, “Gaaah, I have so much to do!” at least.

I had a very good day today. Everything just seemed to go well. Sure, there were some rocky moments—I got stuck behind a tow truck trying to hoist a vehicle on two separate occasions—is that weird or what? But I won’t let that ruin the rest of the good moments.

If you come up to a group of people waiting outside a room, don’t assume they‘re waiting because the door is locked. Until you actually try the door yourself, you don’t know it’s locked—maybe the first person to show up didn’t try it, and people just followed along. That’s what happened today at my English class. I’ve learned this lesson before, however, so I tried the door—and it was unlocked. I turned on the lights, and the rest of the class followed me in. Now all we need are textbooks.

I had a pleasant lunch with my dad, then I submitted my passport application. The person at the passport office told me that everything was in order, so I’ll get my passport in a couple of weeks when they do their next mail-out. Since we’re already required to travel to the U.S. with a passport if we fly, and we’ll soon have to do the same if we drive (currently you only need a birth certificate and photo I.D. if you drive, but that will change soon), I figure it’s prudent to get my passport as soon as possible.

We got PVR! My dad and I bought a new Toshiba HDTV for the living room on Saturday, and today my brother and I set up the PVR box. We got it working literally just as JPod premiered on the CBC. For those of you not up on your Canadian content, JPod is a novel by Douglas Coupland, who is a superb author. JPod, the spiritual sequel to his earlier Microserfs, is about a core group of employees at a fictitious computer game company. They’re a work pod (the “JPod”) and spend most of their time fooling around instead of doing actual work. The main character’s mom runs a marijuana grow-op from her basement. Tim, a rather shady character, attempts to intimidate her for money, only to trip and electrocute himself in a puddle of water. So Ethan, the main character, must help his mom dispose of that body. Only it’s never quite so simple. That’s the reason I love JPod. It’s irreverent, funny, sarcastic, and it’s light-humoured sometimes, but very dark at others. I can’t wait to see how the series compares—Douglas Coupland is writing and producing, so I have high hopes. The first episode covers from the beginning until when Ethan brings one of his workers over to his apartment (the new girl, Katelyn, who just wants to get out of JPod) only to find that his brother has set up a number of illegal immigrants there… . Joy!

PVR is way awesome. The whole pausing/rewinding TV is a very attractive option. Now all we need is our new TV to arrive, and we can actually begin watching high definition television. :O Until then … well, I have a lot of work to do. Good night.

Great Bird of the Galaxy, forgive me.

It was just a matter of time, of course. My willpower is far from legendary or anything, and I knew that I was going to “cave”, as Cortney so eloquently puts it, sometime or another—I fully intended to, since once I‘m done high school I’d like to preserve my connections with my friends through whatever means available. And, as much as I hate to admit it, social networking sites help.

So I joined Facebook.

That’s right. I’m tired of those snarky little “I’ve added you as a friend on Facebook…” emails finding their way into my inbox, begging me to get an account. Fine. I surrender. Now stop sending me emails. (I have a feeling I‘m going to continue getting them anyway, since that’s the nature of the beast).

However, an interestingly paranoid Orwellian thought occurred to me. As our technology increases, the government institutes increasingly complex methods of keeping track of us. The day is not far off when some sort of “national ID” system will be implemented. We already have several numbers associated with us—driver’s licence, SIN, health card, etc. Naturally people start to get paranoid about the government having access to all our private information.

Yet most people have no problem giving out their private information to sites like Facebook. So this begs the question: what if a site, like Facebook, isn’t actually run by a private corporation? What if it’s a front for the government, a way of clandestinely gathering people’s private information? Someone in the government will eventually wake up and do this, if it isn’t already being done. It’s a great method of data-mining your citizens without their knowledge. After all, who are you going to trust? Facebook, or the government?

Facebook, obviously, because their lovely little “JOIN OUR SITE” emails means they care. So much. And they don’t charge you taxes, which I suppose contributes.

Note this well: I surrendered to Facebook. But I will never, ever join MySpace so long as there is a speck of breath left in this body. As far as I’m concerned, MySpace is still a scourge, a blight on the Internet, and its time will come. Until then, I’m just going to continue ignoring it and block all those idiots who try to hotlink my smilies.

Nearly a year ago, I first blogged about Portable Apps. Now I’m going to once again declare: Portable Apps rock!

They are an excellent way to carry your favourite programs with you on your USB key (or other portable method; I just prefer that). I love Firefox Portable, which is just want it sounds like. I‘ve also got FileZilla Portable, Portable GIMP, Portable OpenOffice.org, and Portable Gaim. Although I haven’t figured out how to use it at school yet (and might not be able to, thanks to the restrictions they put on the computers), it’s useful for anywhere else that I don’t have my computer with me.

I wub Portable Apps!

I’ve learned a life lesson today: People will give you cell phones if you take English classes.

Go back and read that sentence. Yeah. Crazy, eh? You see, my brother is in grade 8 and shall be going into grade 9, so he has his option sheets for next year. He originally intended on taking several applied-level courses (if you don’t live in Ontario, you probably don’t understand this part, but you’ll get the gist of it). We managed to talk him into everything at the academic level, save for English. My parents finally got him to take academic English (on the theory that it’s easier to drop down into applied than it is to move into academic) by promising to get him a cell phone.

Society triumphs again. I think.

So yeah. My plan is pretty simple: send me a cell phone and I shall do your English homework. Not that I actually want a cell phone (it’s not like I’d use it). But the money you lose buying me a cell phone can be considered the just punishment for even thinking about getting someone else to do your work for you. Only politicians can get away with that.

My day was a good day. I’m really only stressed about drama. Four more school days to go.

Rat dissection tomorrow in biology. If those rats arrive… . We order them from Boreal Laboratories in Toronto, and they’re late.

Anyway, so in a moment of idleness I downloaded BOINC and joined up for Climateprediction.net, Einstein@home, and Rosetta@home. I want to participate in SETI@home, but something seems to be wrong with their server at the moment… .

Muwahahaha.