Alex Kelleher’s Blog

A couple of things came to light today, which all seem tied together by the common thread private data.

Firstly, I noticed ma.gnolia.com was down. Aside from a frustrating domain name, they had a reasonably successful social bookmarking service. Sadly, due to lack of backup (!), they’ve lost the majority of the bookmarks/favorites that they stored on behalf of their users…

Bang, useful personal data gone.

Secondly, I tuned into “More or Less” a great statistics-focussed radio show on the BBC, on a recommendation from my Dad. Aside from a really great interview with the author of “Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air” which I’ll write about another time, the presenter mentioned Daytum. Setup by the Nicholas Feltron, the guy who exposes his personal stats meticulously collated and designed up at feltron.com each year, the site enables you to have your own “Personal Dashboard”.

Thirdly, I spotted an ad which had a “YouData” logo on it. Smelling a 2.0 startup, I checked out the site - and yes, it’s a (US based) service that lets you sell your attention – the old “pay me to advertise at me” model, but brought up to date.

So how do these strands tie together? Well, they are all about people realising that their own data is:

1. Valuable and useful to them
2. Valuable and useful to others
3. Therefore, has a monetary value

Problem is, losing bookmarks at Magnolia is a greater value by some margin than what someone like YouData would pay for that data. And so that’s the opportunity – finding a way to bridge the gap between how much I value my data and time, and how much others (typically advertisers) value it. The answer may be that in most cases, that gap can’t be bridged?lady gaga poker face

admin Profiling, data mining, privacy

Why am I thinking 3D?  I just tried out BMW’s Z4 “3D” app, which uses your webcam to do some clever augmented reality.  If you haven’t tried it, and have 5 minutes and printer handy, try it now, go on, you won’t regret it.

The buzz on screen tech is as follows: it’s going 3D.  James Cameron a few years ago (not long after Titanic) stated that EVERY film he made from them on would be shot to be 3D-ready, he believed in it so heartily.  Back then we thought “yeah, right, hold the coloured plastic glasses, we can do without it”.

But now it seems like all things digital are going to jump out of the screen at you. 

So, firstly, how?  Capturing is a bit more technical, but the real question is, will viewing it work for us?  3D is still generally delivered in two ways:

• Without glasses: this involves using (expensive) lenses or technology on the screen itself.  Leads to nausea apparently…
• With glasses: this involves either separately coloured lenses, polarized lenses, or lenses that “blink” about 60 times a second so the image only gets to one eye at a time.  Leads to, you guessed it, nausea apparently…

Nausea aside, the “blinking” glasses win at the moment as screen technology is still far too expensive: in fact 3D giant Nvidia is selling the glasses right now for $199, and by all accounts it kind of works, as long as you have a decent screen.  I’ve tried something similar to Nvidia’s product, and yes,  it kind of works.  But only kind of.

So what’s missing?  The real issue is that this is not 3D.  This is 3D within a screen.  That’s not how 3D works for our brains.  The real 3D is all around us, and if we reach out, we can touch it.

And getting that sort of 3D means only one thing: plugging into our brains.  The tipping point with user interface technology is this: once we can plug into brains, we can do away with everything else.  We can chuck mice, keyboards, 3D glasses away.  We simply won’t need them – because it will all be there, on demand, in our brains.

Pretty Girls Make Graves Good Health mp3 album

Until then, this tech site alongside videophones on the “keep trying” list - although the BMW Z4 example is pretty great example of augmented reality.

admin UI

I think realtime reporting IS the future, and dashboards that show live, pushed information are going to be ever more ubiquitous.  Hardly any exist right now, but Sprint as part of its “now” marketing campaign has put together a great live dashboard over at http://now.sprint.com/widget/

In addition to more common widgets from World Population to “top words being used online”, there are a bunch more, such as “911 calls being made” to “sticky notes being produced” to “transplants today”.  Some of the more amusing ones are:

- A “push now” button, which (predictably) does nothing, but reports that 66,713 other people have clicked it
- “You, now”, which takes your webcam feed to show you, now
- A “habitable planets” counter

While you’re browsing all of that, a female voiceover provides more realtime data, such as  ”The earth will travel 18 miles between right now… and now”

Genius, and here’s hoping more useful versions come along soon to gadgets near me.

admin Web, data mining, top lists

I’ve been interviewed twice now (on local radio, nothing too mind-blowing) about Google Street Maps and Privacy.

On one level, it’s the same knee-jerk reaction that happened when the service launched States-side.  A lot of stuff about “what if I’m captured coming out of X-place, or holding hands with Y”.  Well, here’s the news:  it won’t usually be Google StreetMaps that catches us out on those moments…

On another level, stories of people stopping or barricading the Google StreetMaps car have made people think there might be something more to this – and when Google move to countries where privacy is a bigger issue, what will happen then?

My take on this: privacy IS being eroded, on a daily basis, around the world.   That’s just a fact.  Google can blur as many faces as it wants, but I’m being tracked by cameras, URL tracking software, mobile/cellphone masts – and guess what, Google: my car, my branded van (if I had one), my house are all still personally identifiable.

Two things make this loss of privacy okay:

• The technology that comes with it (including StreetMaps) outweighs the risks by a seriously large factor
• There is SO MUCH DATA, that no-one and nothing can really do anything that worrying or invasive with it.  There’s too much of it being gathered, and most of it is never looked at.  At least for now, and in countries that don’t have some sort of evil regime in power…

It may be the fact that Google is doing it to make money, but essentially they’re just putting online what we can walk to on our own two legs and see for ourselves.  So let’s calm down, enjoy the benefits, and only go out at night with a hoodie pulled over our faces.

admin Cars, data mining, privacy