I love this stuff. Physicist Richard Feynman explains how trains stay on the tracks. The answer is amazingly simple.
You can watch the video here.
Category: Technology
The Movement Outward
It’s 6pm, you are just getting home from work. You immediately freshen up and head to a nearby restaurant. You arrive at the restaurant, take out your cell phone and “check in” to Foursquare or Gowalla. You are seated, you order your dinner, take out your phone and tweet something you heard or saw go by. You finish your dinner, tweet how amazing it was, pay the bill, and then tweet again about what bar or establishment you are going to next for after dinner entertainment.
This seems to be the evening of a lot of people, as evidenced by browsing Twitter and the location based services I noted. I’ll be the first to admit it has been one of my habits. But, after a great deal of thinking about it, I wonder what these services really add to anything we do in our day to day lives, particularly the location based services.
What’s the Matter With Us?
Twitter has its place, it is a communication tool. Different people use it in different ways that make sense to them. Foursquare and Gowalla do not share the same kind of necessity as Twitter, just a niche novelty that, honestly, is kind of cool. Do we need such tools? My guess is that we don’t; They are just a new form of entertainment. Maybe it is just me, but I feel as though I am pulled in a bunch of directions by these different things. Add on top of them Google Reader for keeping up with news and other blogs, e-mail, Facebook, and whatever else you can think of, and it seems to become more work than it is worth.
The few times I have been incommunicado, the more obvious it has become that I need these tools less and less. Sure, their novelty is nice, but at what cost? What else could I be devoting my time to rather than letting people on Foursquare (some whom I don’t even know) see where I am at?
Is there a bigger trend here? Have we created the beginning of a time when verbal communication is no longer completely necessary? A lot of people think that children who are homeschooled are socially inept, to which I disagree and point out that more kids text today than talk on the phone. Not only do they text, but they have created a subset, shorthand language to do so. Maybe they are not inept but they have certainly begun a move away from “normal” communication, making further moves even easier.
Sure, there are other time wasters out there, there always have been. The difference now is that the time eating opportunities are constantly with us, no matter where we go. For me, this seems to speed daily life up, like fast forwarding an old VCR Cassette. We’re having the information thrown in front of us so fast that we do not have the time to really consume it. In a way, this pushes us apart. We are listening to people, but not really hearing them because we are distracted.
Can We Fix This?
We already have started to try. There are a number of people who have abandoned Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare, MySpace, and Facebook out of a need to slow down and get back to normal. I am not suggesting the tools are causing the problems, they are simply making it easier for us to go through the motions of less communication and less interaction.
For me, fixing this means moving away from the tools as my entertainment and instead using them when necessary and filtering them often. A mass delete of the applications is not going to help you and it certainly is not the answer. Understanding what kind of time you spend on the services and how it affects your day to day activities is the way to start. From there, it’s up to you on whether it’s too much and how to correct it.
This definitely is not a call to abandon ship, it is me looking at what I have noticed over the past couple of years and asking others to do the same. What are your thoughts? Is this a bad path we are following or am I completely crazy and paranoid?
Why To Avoid Fry’s Opened Box Sale Products
We all enjoy finding bargains or deals when shopping, especially on more expensive electronics gear. What I experienced last night at Fry’s may change your mind what’s really a bargain and what will cause more headache than money savings.
I bought a router from Fry’s about a month ago and finally had some time to play with it this past weekend. The router in question is a Netgear WNR3500L, a gigabit router with a USB port for an external harddrive. I specifically bought this router because it had the ability to network a USB drive.
After playing with the router, I found that it was not able to actually mount the drive and make it viewable on our home network. I troubleshot it and was still not able to get it to work. The internet worked great on it but the different harddrives I plugged-in just would not show up. I decided to take it back last night, so I packed it up and drove to Fry’s.
The girl who processed my return seemed nice at the beginning of our conversation, but I soon realized that it was too good to be true. She took everything out of the box to make sure it was all there, then compared serial numbers, that’s fine with me. Then it took a turn for the weird. I explained that the networking features worked fine on it but it was unable to mount a harddrive. She proceeded to pick up the router and look at each port on the back. What she was looking for, I’ll never know. Maybe she thought it was an NES and I had tried to blow in the back of it like a game cartridge.
Apparently my explanation for why I was returning it was acceptable and she printed a sticker, an open box/restocked sticker with a new price, $95.99, and stuck it on the box. This confused me, so I inquired as to whether or not Fry’s would flash the operating system of the router to reset it and then test it. The employee looked up at me and with a straight face said, “They will plug it in and make sure it lights up”. Wow. I replied, “But the USB port either doesn’t work or something is wrong with the firmware”. She continued doing her work and did not reply. My receipt was handed to me and I watched as she took the router, halfway in its box into a restocking room, where she dropped the router, then stuffed it back in the box.
The moral of the story is, do not buy restocked items at Fry’s unless there is a well documented return policy for the item. I should also mention that I purchased the router for $99, so the restocking “savings” is really only $3.01. Is it worth $3 to possibly get a non-functioning, dropped, piece of electronics?
Apple Event Tomorrow, January 27
Tomorrow, January 27, will see a big announcement come out of the Apple compound. A lot of people are predicting a tablet computer while others are saying the announcement will be a new handheld media device, the one thing everyone agrees on is that whatever it is could be a game changer.
This draws the skeptic out of me. I tend to think that it will be a tablet but is that enough of a “new” device to be a game changer? The Kindle was a game changer because it was so focused on books, magazines, and newspapers and has an ease of use that has not been matched. Carrying all of your books on a single device everywhere you go is huge.
If the news that comes out of the Apple event is related to a video and reading device, it may be bigger than the Kindle. My hope is that it is a device just as beautiful as the new Macbooks and easy to use like the Kindle. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
Want to read more speculation? Here are some links for you:
Education Software is Messy
K-12 student management software is messy, there is no other way to describe it. Options are limited and none of them stand out as being well written or well maintained. It is sad really. Very important data is passed over, underutilized, and ignored because of the inability of the software or the software company to see actual needs and respond to them.
What school districts need is software that is lightweight, is easy to understand, simple to maintain, and can be expanded upon if needed. Right now the software that is out there only mixes and matches a couple of those items, not all of them.
There are a lot of resources spent on software, hardware, and yearly fees, and it’s unnecessary when we really dig down and look at the requirements. School districts are simply small cities that have to manage themselves, why can’t software be built around that effectively?
The biggest issue standing in the way of progress when it comes to student/district management software is too many hands seeing cool or new things and wanting them. A lot of school districts are split up into different areas, just like a company, and each of these areas oversees different pieces of information. The problem arises when none of the areas coordinate their software buying and end up with multiple tools that in the end, could have been consolidated with one tool, had there been communication.
We as software developers need to look at this as a real problem and try to fix it. If we can make affordable software for school districts that works, we can help that school district find a more affective way to use the money they saved.
Technology and Education – The End Game
In the web and software development world there has been a saying that the “tools don’t make the developer”, meaning the tools I use to write software do not affect the outcome as much as my abilities as a programmer. Over the years we have seen more and more technology pushed into the classroom under the camouflage of making life easier for teachers and improving student’s learning. I would submit that we’ve actually done the opposite, we have created a monster that requires technology to do the simplest of tasks. Education needs to learn from the software world and understand that the tools don’t make the student.
There are basic skills that students need to have to succeed in middle school and high school and if they choose, college. A lot of the skills have to do with fundamentals, basic math, reading, and writing. With the fundamentals in place, it is not hard to expand and continue the learning process. The issue facing schools now is wanting to expose students to technology and “easier” ways of completing tasks leading to a drop in the student’s ability to do such tasks without the technology. A basic example of this is calculators in elementary school. Why is that needed? If students are not able to do basic math without the use of a calculator, they need to retake the class. Using the excuse that a student is, “just not good at math”, is a terrible way to go forward. If that particular student does not learn how to do long division now how are they ever going to master geometry or calculus?
This is not a bashing of technology, it is simply a wakeup call. When I learned to create webpages I was using the most basic of tools, Windows Notepad. I struggled with aspects of the code, but the tool never helped me and because of that, I would argue I am a better developer.
I’m hoping this topic, Technology and Education, will become a regular one on the site.
EveryBlock Houston
EveryBlock, a site that focuses on local data, has expanded to include Houston in their database. They do not have our neighborhood, the Heights, populated yet, but over time I am sure it will show up.
It is a great site with a great team behind it and allows users to look at their local communities from a granular level. Users can see crime statistics, restaurants, businesses, food inspections, and tons of other useful information.
United Airlines Offering Fare Specials on Twitter
There may be a new reason to use Twitter, travel deals. United is now offering special fares called “Twares” on their Twitter page, @UnitedAirlines.
Following in the Footsteps of Technology
Every week there seems to be a new social network or communication tool touted in the news and popular blogs. Most of them I explore for a day, then pass them by but I have been intrigued by Twitter and Tumblr.
I am still figuring out what purpose Twitter really serves but Tumblr is a great idea for a person like me, who randomly comes across links, videos, pictures, etc. all day long and wants to post them but not write a lot about them.
I setup a Tumblr account at flightpath.tumblr.com.
E-mail Addresses – Handing Them Out Like Candy
Standing in line at a well-known store, I witnessed something that made my jaw slightly drop and my ears perk up. The clerks who were finishing the transactions asked two questions, phone number and e-mail address. To my surprise multiple people answered both questions readily without asking why such information was needed. There was no need for the e-mail addresses or the phone numbers, simply marketing and advertising opportunities, yet these customers were willing to just hand out their information like flyers on a New York City street corner.
The lack of care as to why this information was being asked for is disturbing as it shows a growing lack of care for privacy and a misunderstanding of personal information. My e-mail address is a conduit for people who I know to reach me as well as services that I knowingly ask for, simply giving my address out to everyone is not in my best interest, no matter how much I love the store (without knowing their policies on e-mail). The one instance of when I give my e-mail address to a store is to receive a copy of my receipt so that I do not have a paper version floating around.
Giving out an e-mail address is one thing since a person can filter it and limit their amount of spam, however, lackadaisically telling someone your phone number is a completely different subject. Your cell phone and home phone are direct lines to you, there is no filtering besides caller ID. If you are using your cell phone as a central contact number then caller ID does not do much because you may receive calls from numbers you do not know. This is why caution when giving out personal information is so important, especially when you are not given full disclosure on how that information will be used.
To bring this little blurb full circle, the most interesting part of witnessing this exchange was the ages of the people involved. The three young ladies who gave their information out with no question were no older than 20 and none of them had any problem spelling out their e-mail address. No thought was given to spam or to marketing, just the impulsive, immediate spelling of the address. I’m not sure we will ever go back to people being protective of what is personal and private, I do not know if the concept of either is even understood anymore.