January 27, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Apple’s new tablet computer has finally been unveiled, after years of speculation. The iPad will function as a genuine cross-over between the realm of the iPhone and the laptop computer, in a format smaller than a laptop screen, similar to a netbook, and designed to optimize the experience of reading online or working with files and e-publications. It will be able to run over 140,000 of the apps already made for iPhone and iPod Touch, with a whole new class of iPad-optimized apps to come. Perhaps most important of all, it will retail for a starting price of only $499.
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January 26, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Apple tablet should be an intensely user-friendly device that achieves a paradigm shift in the way we deal with information. That sounds big, but Apple is well-equipped to do this, even by just making a few key upgrades to what it has already made possible with its laptops and touch-sensitive handhelds.
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January 9, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
It is a serious question whether distance learning holds virtues that are ignored due to a prejudice that holds that physical presence of the instructor is necessary for learning. Clearly, in some cases, this is entirely untrue, and there may be an over-emphasis in some circles on the idea of physical presence as the metaphysical prerequisite to consider that learning is occurring. However, it is not clear that physical presence and phonocentrism —emphasis on the spoken word as the more effective mode of instruction— amount to the same “fixation”, when it comes to the question of how best to communicate knowledge.
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January 3, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Continuing our series on the evolutions that can be expected over the coming decade, we look at new directions in particle physics, media technologies that are enabling not only greater freedom, but a new communicative paradigm which will, in part, help steer us to the great discoveries of this moment in history, and a vital new understanding of global economic patterns, which will revolutionize the way governments around the world plan for domestic spending and trade policy.
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December 27, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Apple is reportedly poised to introduce a brand-new device that has the potential to revolutionize not only mobile computing and communication, but also design, workflow and publishing. We’ve written before about the prospective Apple tablet and its capabilities, but as rumor and reporting converge to give us a better picture, we can be a little more certain of the landmark moment in the evolution of computing and communications the device will achieve.
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October 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Amazon Kindle 2 is ideally sized for one-handed reading. In this category, it beats the traditional book, because it’s single pane is more ergonomic for the purpose of reading with one hand and seeing the text clearly at a consistent angle, than struggling to balance a side-bound traditional book.
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October 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Google Voice, an ingenious use of web-based voice communications service, allows users to combine a range of phone numbers under one standard, permanent Google phone number. Any linked phone number can be removed or replaced, and the service is free. All domestic calls inside the US are free, and sms is free. The service even converts voicemail to readable transcripts in an online inbox.
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October 13, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
An attractive woman, 34-ish, drives a compact station-wagon, late model, over a still-cobblestone side street in the center of Madrid. She advances slowly, toward a red light, and talks on her cell phone. She seems equally concentrated on both activities. Driving an automobile is a potentially dangerous activity, in which one’s own life or the lives of others may be at risk, while a casual conversation is not so much that. Yet she seemed to give equal weight, her body, her manner, seemed to give equal weight to both activities.
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October 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The phenomenon of “re-tweeting”, reposting and linking back to items already posted on the real-time updated short-message feed site Twitter, has allowed for the emergence of what sometimes turns into a global roundtable discussion, made up of short, sometimes superfluous, sometimes provocative ideas, and in many cases links to surprising but potentially effective online sources that spread a message or expand and deepen awareness of an issue.
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September 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Apple’s long-awaited tablet computer, likely to run a version of Mac OS X and to merge the touchscreen stylings of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the full functionality of the MacBook line, is expected to be aimed at revolutionizing the way print media deliver text to readers. If true, the device would again put Apple at the cutting edge of a field where Amazon, Microsoft, Sony and others, are trying to set the standards for e-book distribution and licensing.
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September 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
DVR is an increasingly popular consumer-oriented technology which simultaneously liberates viewers from strict TV viewing schedules and also imposes new constraints on recording freedoms (including sharing). DVR is a concession by content providers, advertisers and infrastructure (connectivity) providers, to the advantages of digital technology, and to the common individual demand for more freedom to control when information (content) is accessed. And the technology is framing a new logistics of consumer access and corporate control.
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September 11, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Apple’s product-announcement conference on Wednesday had long fueled speculation they would be announcing a new 10-inch touchscreen tablet computer and possibly announcing a deal to bring the Beatles catalog to iTunes. Neither of those two big splashes happened, but they did announce new iPods with photo and video camera functions.
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September 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Is the very thing we demand of our computers the thing that will make them intolerant of our humanity, if and when they awaken to an artificial intelligence? One of the fundamental problems in achieving a state of computational agility and independence that would allow us to say a synthetic entity has acquired ‘artificial intelligence’ is the problem of autonomy. If we give real autonomy to artificially intelligent machines, can we trust them to cooperate with us, in the ways we, as human beings prefer?
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September 6, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Amazon’s Kindle family of e-book readers has changed the game on e-books and e-book distribution, by making an intuitive, easy to use e-paper reader into a mass-market publishing platform. Books are now sold on many websites as “Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle”, referencing the format of the book’s publication in varying editions. Now, a hacker has put a variation of Linux on a Kindle 2, raising the question as to what Amazon might do to enhance the device’s range of operative capabilities.
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September 5, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
On Wednesday, 9 September, Apple will be hosting an iTunes-centered event, to announce new features, including possibly upgraded or more dynamic iPod models. Rumors that the event could also include the much-anticipated Apple tablet computer may be premature. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the tablet may be more likely to debut at the beginning of 2010.
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August 31, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Apple’s iPhone App Store is reported to be bringing in $200 million per month, roughly $2.4 billion per year. Such soaring earnings reflect that high value users place on the App Store system and its ability to deliver targeted-use software “widgets” that do one thing well. But doing just one thing is far from the goal of the App Store.
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August 30, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Like the Amazon Kindle family of e-readers, the Sony Reader Touch Edition uses an e-Ink e-paper display. But it’s interface works like a touchscreen. The advance is a major improvement for the standards of design in e-paper e-book readers. The touchscreen standard may be the most significant challenge Sony has put forth for the Amazon Kindle readers, none of which uses a touchscreen interface.
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August 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Internet Archive is joining with major internet-related firms, such as Yahoo and Amazon, to fight Google’s settlement with the Authors’ Guild, allowing Google Books to publish copyright-protected materials online, if they are out of print, and to compensate authors according to the sales generated by the display of the copyrighted text (possibly 70% going to publishers or copyright holders, including a cut of ad revenues). The Coalition plans to fight the legal settlement on anti-trust grounds.
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August 16, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Software giant Microsoft has been ordered to stop selling one of its flagship computer programs, Microsoft Word, in the US, within 60 days, after a federal judge found that a component within the application violates an XML patent held by another firm. The software engineering firm i4i, based in Toronto and boasting only 30 employees, secured a patent for a kind of customized XML in 1998, which it alleges Microsoft has included in Word since 2003, in violation of its patent protection.
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August 15, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Jude Ndambuki is a native Kenyan chemistry teacher in New York, who has been collecting, refurbishing and shipping used, discarded and donated computers, to Kenyan schools in order to help protect the environment, reduce the chemical contamination of landfill sites and spur technological educational resource availability for young Kenyans. He is celebrated by CNN as one of its do-gooder “heroes”, an example of someone helping to improve the lot of others.
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August 5, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Now, we face unprecedented challenges to the right of people everywhere to access information intended for public consumption. Repressive governments are building state-of-the-art censorship , tracking and filtering mechanisms (the ‘Great Firewall of China’, for example), and internet service providers (ISP) are seeking to establish profit-dr… that limit users’ access to certain websites or content-producers.
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July 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Amazon Kindle DX is a beautiful device. Its design is user-friendly, intuitive and cohesive. It is clean-edged, minimal and thinner than many major magazines. Its format size is comfortable and makes tactile sense; it feels like something you hold in order to read, giving it a useful aesthetic kinship to books or magazines, a vast improvement on smaller e-reading devices. It is, in point of fact, far more comfortable than planting yourself in front of a computer monitor to read large amounts of text.
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July 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Financial Times is the latest publication to weigh in on mounting expectations that Apple will release a touchscreen tablet computer this fall. There are rumors the computer maker is hoping to counter the rise of cheap netbooks with something lower-cost than their standard Macs and with a larger screen based on the model of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. The news could mean a breakthrough in personal computing standards and even portability of the workplace.
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July 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.
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July 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The New Scientist magazine is reporting on an intriguing and brazen new Pentagon program that would create living “OrthopterNets”, communication networks made of insects implanted with special technologies to modulate their wingbeats. Crickets, cicadas and katydids, all use their wings to generate sounds, the patterns of which communicate information to others of their kind. The Pentagon wants to use this natural communications network to prompt the insects to emit specific sounds in the presence of specific chemicals.
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June 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 8 Comments
As Iran’s presidential election has morphed into a massive international spectacle, with opposition protesters demanding justice and a full accounting of how votes were tallied, the regime has used every technological advantage at its disposal to obstruct online communications and mobile phone traffic. The government now has a wealth of powerful technologies, from western firms, it can use to spy, block communications, and even alter messages before they are delivered.
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June 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
As concerned people inside and outside Iran try to get a grip on what is taking place in the anti-government demonstrations, pro-democracy rallies and security crackdown, following the presidential vote of 12 June 2009, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been useful to those trying to get word out about abuses and harsh security measures; the use of proxy servers has allowed journalists, activists and concerned citizens, to circumvent controls on media freedom.
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June 19, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Hot Spring Network has launched a video-embed service, and allows you to upload video to our video library. We also embed video in your blog posts, discussion threads and profiles. Search for video across the Hot Spring Network, or add your own.
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June 12, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The first broadcast electronic television signal was established in the UK in 1936. The first experimental black-and-white “mechanical” television service was established in the UK in 1926. Several countries, including Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands, had adopted sustained mechanical television services as early as 1932. The United States began selling television receivers in 1938. Today, 12 June 2009, all analog television signals across the US “go dark”.
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June 10, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
How can we reach the state of affairs in which online activity is entirely secure against identity theft? Hyper-convergence means media and services of all kinds will be increasingly integrated across a broad-spectrum multi-media fabric, where one’s actions and interests, private information and financial data, will be increasingly widespread.
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June 9, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
What mechanisms would do best for ensuring that an open network of institutional transparency could provide stability and sustainability in high-end financial risk-taking? — Join the discussion at TheHotSpring.net…
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Publishing models determine which texts are made available to a wide audience, and by what means. New media, like this social network, are providing new opportunities, but the crossover between print and digital media will provide bold new opportunities for making the best new ideas available to the people who can do the most with them.
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May 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
What can we do to impede the erosion of some of our most prized social-intellectual habits of mind, rooted in organic brain structure and in social networking (from campfire to empire, parliament to newsprint, to Twitter and The Hot Spring Network), while taking advantage of the power of the web?
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May 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
The tiny surface of the first effective ‘invisibility cloak’ allows light to bend around it in such a way that the optical density of an object underneath it is altered, generating the illusion of invisibility. There are ongoing efforts to build computerized overlays or built-in cladding that would allow even large vehicles like military tanks to appear invisible at a distance.
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May 6, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Amazon.com’s Kindle and Kindle 2 devices have revolutionized the market for electronic books. Wireless devices allowing download of new books in just minutes, for reading on a high-resolution e-paper screen, which reads much like real paper, they have made the experience of hosting and paging through e-books much more user-friendly. Now, Amazon has introduced the Amazon Kindle DX, which will ship this summer, with a screen 2.5 times larger, to make it possible to read magazines or PDF documents as designed.
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April 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The election of 2008 is historic for a variety of reasons: it saw the election of the first African American president, a second consecutive “wave election” —not seen since 1930 and ‘32—, saw two women come very close to the most powerful job in the world, mobilized millions of voters and saw record amounts of fundraising from “small donors”. It was, however, also a watershed moment in the fundamental decentralization of the American political process.
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April 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Electronic medical records (EMR), like health insurance, benefit from being spread over the widest pool possible. A system that aggregates and cross-references data from hundreds of millions of patients can find statistical evidence far more efficiently than today’s statistical modeling for health problems and solution improvement.
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March 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Investigators in several countries say they have uncovered a global “ghost net” of cyber-espionage, with major centers in three Chinese provinces and a foothold in California. Just one of the group’s alleged cyber-spies is said to have created a system that hacked into 30,000 computers per day. The investigation began with a probe into alleged hacking of computers used by the Dalai Lama in exile in India.
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March 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Amazon Kindle is a nice device, and it handles its job well, but it is just a very clumsy start to what will be a technological convergence few in mainstream media (and publishing) are anticipating, though it may not be far off. The page-perfect, for lack of a better term, e-reading device will make portable electronic reading easier and more comfortable than ever, packing huge amounts of data, as well as wireless downloading and even browsing capability, into an ultrathin tablet touchscreen.
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February 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Pres. Barack Obama announced, just one week after taking office, the creation of a new website, Recovery.gov, which will detail the manner in which all the money from his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, once passed by Congress and signed into law, is being spent. The website is another in a series of steps to create a far-reaching reform of the federal government’s reporting to the public about its activities, with the aim of achieving Obama’s promise of the “most transparent” government in US history.
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January 6, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Each information transaction, sometimes as exemplary, sometimes as single element added to a sweeping aggregate of historical sway, is a precedent, which can motivate, influence or redirect the push of future happenstance. And, we must take note, every transaction involving matter or energy contains information, traces of a history of its coming into being, and generates a “footprint”, a trace of its appearance and its transition into something beyond the transactional moment.
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December 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
It may be that “a few bad apples” got the ball rolling on what has turned into a massive international financial disaster. Or, it may be that a few bad apples got their names in lights, while the entire system conspired unwittingly in a spectacular collapse. Either way, the best expression of the problem might be to say that markets have stopped working, in part, because they have been comprehensively modified to stop working like markets. An open banking transparency network would reduce the motivation for wrongdoing and privilege more reliable sources of information, creating confidence and motivating sound market dynamics.
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December 8, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
A hybrid super-computer has reached the astounding speed of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, termed a petaflop. The Roadrunner super-computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory operates on a conventional paradigm of computational mechanics — meaning it operates over semiconductors and established systems of computer circuitry, not quantum computing innovations or molecular processors.
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July 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will take regulatory action to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking or controlling users’ access to online content. The announcement came from the FCC chairman after Comcast moved to manipulate internet access —limiting their freedom to navigate— who had engaged in file-sharing online services, presumably in an effort to control access to content for which the cable provider was not being paid per-content-access.
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March 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
We are on the verge of a major communications and global economic revolution, in which major media, technological advances, cloud computing and dispersed optimization, adapt to and take over new models for living and producing in human society. The New Scientist magazine reports in its March 15-21, 2008 edition that “web 3.0 will be about making information less free”.
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January 24, 2008 :: admin :: Comments Off
The potential for broad-scope “electronic agents” —preprogrammed service aggregators and self-organizing databases with proactive marketing capability—, aiding in everyday information-related activities, will require a new security standard to prevent identity theft, which could become one of the gravest threats to economic performance and individual liberty.
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January 9, 2008 :: admin :: One Comment
AT&T is proposing the implementation of new filtering technologies “at the network level” that would essentially interrupt in a definitive way the public’s freedom to access online content. The concept known as ‘net neutrality’ refers to consumers and netizens’ ability to freely gain access to any site, paid or unpaid, without major telecommunications companies programming [...]
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August 9, 2007 :: staff :: Comments Off
Journalist Bill Moyers explains how Net Neutrality is really about stipulating for all media regulations an ‘Equality of Access provision’ like that imposed on AT&T after “Free Press and Save the Internet.com orchestrated 800 organizations, a million and a half petitions… a top-shelf communications campaign…”
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August 9, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
THE OPEN INTERNET IS A FORCE FOR DEMOCRACY & OPEN GOV’T, NOW IT IS UNDER THREAT FROM THOSE WHO WISH TO BOTTLENECK THE FREE PRESS
The concept of ‘net neutrality’ refers to the current state of affairs in the free democracies of the world, where those who control the physical infrastructure of the Internet are not [...]
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July 7, 2007 :: staff :: Comments Off
ADVISORY GROUP IS PART OF EFFORT BY GOOGLE TO ENSURE THAT USERS NOT NEED TO SORT THROUGH RANDOM OR POSSIBLY ERRONEOUS INFORMATION ON SERIOUS MATTERS
Google has launched a new special advisory group for health issues. The aim is to improve its overall search technology so that the end-user’s experience is not a confusion of [...]
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