technology – Page 23 – frans goes blog

Slow Computing

This is concept I have been playing around lately, becoming gradually more and more serious about its potentials. Hopefully it would be caught up by discussion.

Slow computing: conceptualise it as an oppositional and revolutionary concept, like ‘slow food’ is in opposition to ‘fast food’.
Slow computing is not necessary about slow processors or weak technology. It is about computing that is used emphatically to pay attention to the quality and content, rather than to the quantity (be it mega- or gigahertz, mega-, giga-, tera-, or pentabyte, or what ever billions of polygons the technology pundits usually point our attention towards).
Slow computing is information and communication technology (ICT) that is put to the service of people, paying attention to the sustainability of lifestyle and preservation of our planet.
Slow computing may e.g. be a choice to use a slow, cheap laptop, running long on batteries, rather than investing into over-efficient hulking monster, unnecessary for everything else except the most graphically intensive games.
Slow computing may take the form of passive displays, slow on screen refresh times, but able to serve text and images while sitting outside, reading while thinking, paying attention. e-paper that is able to display and keep its contents without any further use of energy is slow computing technology. Energy efficient, small devices that take all their power from solar energy are slow computing.
Slow computing is all about how ‘less is more’.
Slow computing may take the form of applications that reduce and filter junk, so that the really important things are only ones that are there left, for your time and thought.
Slow computing may be a service that helps you to join forces with other people in organising your efforts collectively, reducing waste of human energy and effort.
Slow computing may be attitude, or cultural shift, rather than any single technology in itself. It is part of movement that says: ‘Wait, stop – did you say we need that to do this?’ It is about thinking alternatives.
Slow computing is not luddite ideology. For example, if it is possible to use rich media and teleconferencing rather than jet planes across the ocean to organise a meeting, then ICT has fulfilled the requirement of slow computing: allowing people to stay put, save time and energy, and concentrate on the actual matter at hand.
What is your view on slow computing?

One of the big turn-offs for us Europeans in Apple’s iPhone has been its lack of 3G support. Rumors have been strong for some time now, and now Apple WWDC keynote has made 3G iPhone official. GPS positioning is also included, good battery life. Comparison to other smart phones promises better browsing experiences. It should arrive to stores in July 11. (Thanks Gizmodo for a nice live coverage and the pics.)

Maximum T-8000 CX-CI

A new digital set-top box: Maximum T-8000 CX-CI (the old Topfield started to be a bit unreliable and out-of-date). This new one has more powerful processor (=faster in certain areas), more HDD, HDMI output and an ethernet connector to the LAN. Minuses so far: no automatic search programming from EPG (this was a TAP add-on in Topfield, hopefully something similar will be developed for Maximum, too) — and an irritating bug: if recording starts when the box is in stand-by, the recording will work ok, but the box will remain unresponsive until you exit the recording. Thus, it is best to keep it turned on all the time and not use stand-by (great, no power save benefits). Otherwise a decent box. More: http://www.5wwwww5.com/maximum/index.php?mforum=maximum

(Summer starts in flu; sneezing and updating gamestudiesbook.net.)

Beauties of Translation, pt.2: Lempiä lainausmerkit hänen

As I wrote earlier in my post about Dr Okell’s Wondrous Beer Translation, I am great fan of machine translations — they sort of underline our close and affectionate relationship with information technology, and the current (rather cute) state of artificial infan… I mean intelligence. This time I dedicate my love to a sidebar widget provided by Google, titled “Lempiä lainausmerkit hänen”. I suppose the original title has something to do with memorable quotes about love, but the machine translates ‘quotes’ with the Finnish word for ‘quotation marks’, and also the actual content of these “quotation marks” follows the same, delightful logic:

This is so cute — just think about it: the machine even has translated ‘Honoré’ as ‘kunnioittaa’ (meaning ‘respects’). *smileysmiley* Link to widget’s page:
http://www.google.fi/ig/directory?url=charles447.googlepages.com/love.xml

Edit: the original de Balzac quote is probably this: “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.”

Vista Movie Maker Black Screen Bug

This appears to be a somewhat common problem among the users of Vista/Windows Movie Maker, and I did not find any help, so here is our solution.

Issue: the movie previews work fine when you watch it within the Windows Movie Maker. However, when you publish it, the video is just black screen, but you can still hear the audio. Changing publishing settings does not help, and the video files themselves are ok, no codec problems etc. there.
Solution: the affected clips in our case had “mute” setting applied to them (in order to have a separate soundtrack; click under Timeline to expand > Video > Audio [rightclick] Mute). When mute was removed, also video was published fine. This must be a bug, and a weird one. Well, setting the sound level for each clip to zero worked fine for us as a workaround, but MS should fix the software, of course.

Our system uses Vista Home Premium, the Movie Maker was version 6.0.6000.16386. Video clips (mpg) were produced by Sony DCR-SR52 camera.

Links to similar sounding error reports:

Nokia N95 8 GB and the era of ultraportables

Along with some new research projects where we look into the service distribution models of games, my new primary work phone has changed into Nokia N95 8GB model. So far I have been mostly satisfied; and in contrast to E70, this time it is possible to connect my Sony DR-BT50 headphones to the mobile phone (N95 supports A2DP over Bluetooth). N95 is also a decent media player and it is possible to listen to mp3 music and watch videos. Internet browser has improved and social media sites like YouTube and Flickr are taken in with some special consideration – image upload from the camera application to Flickr is now just one click away.

Games are still perhaps the biggest question mark of the upgraded N-Gage brand. I am not particularly enthusiastic about rally or sports games, and those feature visible in the opening portfolio. More games should be arriving soon, including pet simulation (Dogz), more pets simulation (Sims 2 Pets), golf, yet another Worms and Snakes, plus action: Brothers in Arms, ONE. The service in itself looks interesting, with player profiles, buddy lists and other social service basics in place.

All in all, it is surprising how powerful contemporary mobile phones already are. Yet, the usability of Nokia OS is still seriously behind e.g. that of Apple iPhone. Where you just want to have one thing to happen, N95 will still ask you verifications for this and that, get stuck in dialogues or wait for input from softkeys, where iPhone would automatically just have started the default action. But I have not yet used iPhone for anything beyond most casual first impression, so a more thorough comparison needs to wait for later. (Timetable for 3G iPhone launch, anyone?)

I must admit I am so text oriented user, that the biggest drawback of N95 for me is that it does not have a QWERTY keyboard. The size is compact for that reason, of course, but this means that I still need to carry two devices with me always.

The happy note is that ultraportable laptops like Asus Eee PC, HP’s 2133 Mini-Note PC and other UMPC and upscale/next gen PDAs are blooming and a gadget freak will have happy times ahead. (Asus Eee PC 900 review here: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/asus-eee-pc-900-video-review.html)

Using Gravatars in WP2.5

Edit: this site should now support gravatar images, and I recommend going to http://gravatar.com/ and registering a character/image to your email address. This helps identifying people who comment and participate in blogosphere discussions.

I have updated the software running this blog into WordPress 2.5 which brings along some nice, behind the scenes enhancements. One thing that could also show here in the user side is Gravatar support: it adds ‘global avatar’ images next to your comments automatically. But there is still something wrong with this, or I just could not get it to work. I tried editing comments.php with these sets of instructions, but I would only get empty ‘default gravatar’ images:

DYI: home sensor networks

This is probably the most tightly budgeted version of moving towards a home sensor network. After comparing few real IP network solutions (and after testing one in our research project), I decided to stay away from them and rely on cheap consumer electronics to do those individual tasks that we need. Thus, to measure temperatures and moistures from various parts of our house, I got a weather centre from Clas Ohlson (a Nordic electronics chain) and few extra wireless sensor units. This particular model (UPM, model number 36-2384) can take four external sensors, all equipped with temperature and humidity sensors. And how to know what is the temperature in sauna? Clas Ohlson comes to help, again. Just pick up a wireless pair of oven thermometers (model number 34-6723), and there you go. And you have various alarm functions build in, too. But no centralised controls, full log files, remote controlling or other such sweet IT things, of course.

Joikuspot

Suppose you are carrying around several devices, most of them Wi-Fi enabled, and that you want to use 3G data for that online traffic while on the road? One solution that is out there is Joikuspot, free software that is designed to transform S60 mobile phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot. No more plugging in cables from your laptop, and a device like Apple iPhone, Nokia Internet Tablet (N810) or a Wi-Fi enabled camera (remember that Eye-Fi SD card?) can now go online everywhere on 3G coverage area, as long as your S60 battery runs. More: http://www.joikuspot.com/

Vista sleep and power save states

I had long wondered about the Vista power save schemes, and about sleep state — particularly that it did not exist; even when you tried to force the computer into sleep or hibernate, it would just wake up immediately, after a couple of seconds of flicker in screen. This weekend I finally got a half an hour and looked into this, and the problem was in BIOS settings. The default BIOS power save setting in most motherboards/BIOSes is S1 (POS, Power-On-Suspend), and that does not work with Vista. Vista expects the setting S3, which you need to set by pressing Del or F8 key during the power-up sequence, then use keyboard-only to navigate to the “Power” BIOS settings, and change S1 into S3; then press F10 or similar to save settings and exit/reboot. This was the way for me at least to get this damned Vista machine finally to get some sleep. For more, see e.g. these pages: