Archive for the ‘Gadgets & Services’ Category

Newer Entries »

Privacy issues with nTAG @ EmTech

Friday, September 26th, 2008

The Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT featured an electronic nametag, which was slightly fancier and a whole lot chunkier than RFID-embedded nametags that I’ve seen at other conferences. Made by nTAG Interactive, the nametag was basically a PDA that you hung on your neck. On top of the PDA is a paper nametag that states your name and affiliation. (Makes you think- while they were at it, why didn’t they put a small LCD screen on the device and get rid of paper entirely?)

One of the good things about the nTAG was that you didn’t have to exchange namecards- when two people meet, the devices pick up information of the other person and lets you “store” it, adding notes regarding the person, and so forth. You can later login to nTag’s site to download those contacts or have them emailed.

While this system seems very convenient, there is the factor of having to go through nTag’s main computer to access your information. Although accounts are personalized, there is still the issue of nTag being able to see who networked with whom. The devices even know which sessions you’ve attended (or not), which is a little more information than I’d like to give them.

You can also send messages to other conference attendees and participate in discussions via your nametag, but the most disturbing thing was that the system used personal data (that you input in order to network) to analyze what kind of people were attending the conference… and who knows what else?.

I suppose this is the kind of tethered technology that Jonathan Zittrain warns about. True, this gadget is easier to carry than a thick booklet (the one you get at every conference, with a list of speakers, profiles, forums, etc.) but because all information is controlled and monitored by nTag, you have to give up more than you get.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Gadgets & Services | Comments Closed

Questions about Question Tool

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

More conferences and lectures are engaging the use of a live online question tool (or live interview tool), enabling participants to post comments/questions and reply to other posts. While this is an amazing service that lets you be more interactive, I find it difficult to use the question tool in a live mode if the speaker is extremely interesting.

On the other hand, if the speaker loses my attention for more than thirty seconds, I find myself bored, out of patience, and heading for the question tool. There, I can easily divert my attention by “pseudo- Twittering” with other people in the audience. Many times, the discussion taking place on the live question tool is far more interesting than what the speaker is talking about.

No doubt the live question tool creates an alternative parallel forum that could easily foster quality discussion. The question that I have, however, is how to use that so that it is in good balance with the main speaker. As a speaker, would it be better not to have your audience’s attention 100% of the time? In cases where I found the speaker wholly engaging, the question tool became useless as a means of simultaneous dialog, only becoming an archive of side thoughts. And as the nature of the live question tool is very much like a multiple chatting session, it has a very short shelf life, which is a shame since many of the discussions are worth fleshing out over the long term. It is also a shame that when I am immersed in the speaker, I can only minimally participate through the question tool; and yet it is the text on the question tool that lives on, with no record of my output.

Of course, one could always have a moderator, who could manually “move” good sessions in the live question tool to a more permanent online forum; it would be nice if that could be automatically done, based on some sort of gauge such as user ratings, but then users sometimes place their ratings on funny, witty comments, not on the serious discussions.

Tags:
Posted in Gadgets & Services | Comments Closed

Evolution of portable music devices

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

In the 1980s, when I was in grade school, my parents gave me my first portable cassette player. On it, I listened to Alvin and the Chipmunks and Beethoven. When I was 10, I received my first pop music cassette tape as a birthday gift from a friend. By then, the cassette player had been upgraded to a shock-resistance one with stereo sound features.

In middle school, I received a portable CD player and was one of the first among my classmates to have one. The CD player, was not very functional for me: I could only listen to my father’s CDs as my allowance was too small to buy my own CDs. The only CDs my parents bought me were musicals or classical music; I had a whole 25-CD wooden box collection of “great classical music.”

Yet for a teenager craving pop music, even cassette tapes were a luxury. Every weekend, I listened to “Top 50 Pop Songs” on the radio and recorded the songs onto a 120 minute blank tape. This compilation tape was then “dubbed” onto other blanks and passed on to my friends.

In high school, about a third of the kids in my class carried CD players and the rest still used cassette players. We spent evenings browsing record stores- which were carrying cassettes, CDs, and LPs. We began noticing that since CDs did not have two sides, musicians stopped dividing their album into two parts.

It wasn’t until the late 90s that I was able to buy a CD without starving for a week. I had an obsession for CD collecting in my college years. Mp3s were all the rage- with people sharing them over P2P programs- but only popular music was to be found through those networks. Music such as industrial, Brit pop, electronika, and global music could only be found in record stores. By this time, record stores were carrying little or no cassette tapes.

By the time I graduated college, the industry was rapidly changing. One by one, record stores closed down, including Tower Records. It was because of the Internet. Not only because people were sharing music files, but also because they were buying music online. At first people were buying CDs online, but then the physical product itself disappeared and music was downloaded in a digital format.

For 20 years, music was limited to under 70 minutes (mostly under 60). The first MP3 player I received (in 2000) could store hours of music. It was 256 mega bytes and cost 300 dollars. A year afterwards, 1G players cost 200 dollars. Now, I can get a 160G for that much money. That is more music than I have time to listen to.

Tags:
Posted in Gadgets & Services | Comments Closed

Starbucks and DRM

Friday, December 29th, 2006

It’s not yet December but at Starbucks the Christmas season hits anybody who walks through their door like a fake snow storm . All around there are customers nursing bright red paper cups of Peppermint Mocha topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with red jimmies. You can watch cars whiz by from your third-story window seat and imagine that at any moment one of them might become Santa’s sleigh.

The background music is also tuned to a jingle-merry theme that’s sweeter than a caramel latte. Some tracks are light and springy, others have a softer, jazzier groove providing the perfect lounge music for a caffeinated Christmas party. However, there is one thing that spoils the seasonal feeling. Anxious customers can scour the first floor collection of Starbucks’ paraphernalia as hard as they like but it will not possible for them to find the famed Starbucks Music CD.
The good news is that the CDs have not sold out in some parts of the world. The bad news is that they have never been available – at least not in Korea.

In the United States, Starbucks sells CDs and DVDs in its stores , made by its affiliate Hear Music, but these are not available in Korea. Just as in the United States, many people in Korea have asked for compilation CDs of the music that they hear at Starbucks, but laws in Korea ban food and beverage enterprises from selling items not related to their specific food type. This includes CDs, even though the Christmas season is upon us. “We need another business permit to sell CDs, which we have not obtained,” said Mick Lee, a Starbucks spokesman.

Meanwhile, those CDs played at Starbucks are technologically protected so that they cannot be copied onto pirate CDs. Each CD contains about 100 songs and can only be played on the Starbucks music player. The CDs also have an expiration date of 10 months to one year, due to copyright agreements with the musicians featured. After that period, the CD will no longer function. It’s as if the government has sent the Grinch Who Stole Christmas into Starbucks.

Starbucks music players are also “protective” of music in that regular music CDs will not play on them. “In a sense we control the music. We receive about two new CDs every month from headquarters, which ships the CDs out to all the Starbucks coffeehouses around the world,” Mr. Lee said.

“I usually carry around my iPod Nano, but when I’m at Starbucks, I take off my earphones because I enjoy the music,” said Kim Tae-bin, a food stylist. “Sometimes I ask the worker what song is playing because most of the songs aren’t those you hear on Korean radio.” Too bad you can’t buy any of that music for Christmas.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Copyright, Gadgets & Services | Comments Closed

Newer Entries »