The Low Tech Low Cost Solution To Digital TV

According to this NY Times article, rabbit ears are making a come back! If you are too young to know what rabbit ears are then this might not make a lot of sense to you. Think about an antenna with two adjustable prongs protruding from the top of a base that, "back in the day" would sit on top of your television set and bring in two or three channels. Incredible as it might sound, this is how we consumed our Saturday morning cartoons and Hockey Night in Canada when I was growing up.

Of course today your television won't provide a stable resting place for the old rabbit ears but the primitive antennas are apparently still able to haul in digital TV signals and if you are willing to put up with the flakiness of the device you can save yourself a cable bill. While I've not tried it, I understand that subscribing to Internet service only via a cable provider will also provide a number of "free" channels if you connect the coaxial cable to your HDTV. Oddly enough the channels appear to be different than those offered via subscription, my guess is that they are otherwise filtered out by the provider with your normal subscription though this is only an assumption.

In these tough economic times, the cable providers might wish to take notice and price their services reasonably for the average consumer. Just a thought.

Is The Effort To Hide The Truth More Damaging Than The Truth Itself?

Until now I've not had much to say about the recent round of WikiLeaks vs. the U.S. gov't. This time around the documents being shared are causing a bit of a diplomatic uproar as damning information regarding U.S. diplomat's impressions of foreign leaders have surfaced. It seems as though the American government is feeling the heat over this leak a great deal more than the mostly military leaks that previously hit the site. In the last round WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was publicly criticized and then a character assassination attempted with allegations of a sexual assault linked to him.

In this round the site has been hit by a DDOS attack, then it's temporary host Amazon pulled the plug, and it's domain name service has just given it the boot. All of this and a world wide warrant being placed on Assange by Interpol. It seems as though the powers that be are more willing to silence the detractors than to fess up. No one should be fooled into thinking that due diligence is not conducted by all nations, in the form of intelligence gathering, and that assessments of personal characters is not routine. Perhaps however the U.S. might wish to secure it's documents, instruct and or teach it's diplomats to be, well, diplomatic in their assessments on paper.  While I do not wish to downplay those contents, the act of attempting to silence WikiLeaks and the lengths at which it is going to do so is more damning, at least in my eyes, than the documents themselves. I am sure that there are skeletons in everyone's closet but the U.S. government is going about this the wrong way. Then again perhaps there is more than one government worried about who's closet will be searched next...

Just my 2 cents worth.

p.s. WikiLeaks is still available online, at least for now, at http://213.251.145.96/ 

Naughty Or Nice?

If you've been naughty this year it's time to kick the nice into high gear and make a real push to the big day as the Jolly Ole Elf is a mere few weeks away. This year as has been a recent tradition, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, will track Santa's progress via it's web site. December 1st marked the kick-off of this year’s countdown at www.noradsanta.org. Kids of all ages can play holiday-themed games and get updates from the North Pole as Santa prepares for his big sleigh ride.

Here is a review of his journey last year, courtesy of YouTube.

Tweets Hit The Big Screen At Piccadilly Circus

Coca-Cola is spreading Christmas cheer via twitter users and a huge screen located at the busy London thorough fare at Piccadilly Circus. Twitter users who follow @cokezone can direct  their tweet to @cokezone and have it displayed on the screen for commuters to enjoy. We'll assume that because of the open nature of the tweets that there will be some form of moderation.

If you don't happen to drive through Piccadilly Circus the tweets can be viewed live on the brand’s engagement site, www.cokezone.co.uk/Piccadilly, via a webcam set up to film the sign.  

Zoe Howorth, market activation director, Coca-Cola GB, said: "The Piccadilly sign provides Coca-Cola with a unique interactive platform and we're delighted that consumers can use it to spread their Christmas messages this year.

This activation puts our fans at the heart of the activity, allowing them to engage and communicate with people everywhere." 

Source: Campaignlive.co.uk

p.s. If you'd like to run your own twitter to screen campaign check out http://screenscape.net (my employer). http://screenscape.net/blog/adding-your-favorite-tweets-to-your-ScreenScape-display

Forget Location... Now There Is Persistent Location!

If Xtify has it's way check-ins will be a thing of the past, before they even became mainstream... Xtify is ushering in the era of “persistent location,” one in which the user’s location is passively used to deliver relevant information. According to GigaOm's Ryan Kim "Xtify is on the cutting edge along with Placecast and others using geo-fences, a digitally drawn radius around a place, to create a landscape in which our movements trigger offers, coupons and messages from companies we have relationships with."

Xtify CEO Josh Rochlin says “There is going to be growing comfort with passively-derived location that will be an asset to consumers, but brands will need to figure out how to take advantage of location without becoming a nuisance,” he said. “Brands will have to decide what is the proper cadence to message users.”

It all sounds a bit like Minority Report-ish to me, and that's not necessarily a bad thing (at least from this geek's perspective). The promise of these  technologies are that they are opt-in and provide fully anonymized user data with no emails or cell phone numbers stored, and that is much more comforting to the average non technical user who's big concern to date with location based services is privacy.

British Police Seek Powers To Close .uk Web Domains

The BBC is reporting that The Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has tabled a plan asking for the right to shut down .uk domains if law enforcement agencies deem them to be engaged in criminal activities. The troubling part of the plan is that the officials seem to be seeking the power to shut down sites prior to any convictions.  "If you are going to do this, then fine, but it needs judicial oversight," said barrister and IT lawyer David Harris.

"In a world of online retailing, the ability for a police officer to seize any business, whether that is blocking a domain or seizing the servers - pre-conviction or certainly pre-warrant - would be a dramatic change in the relationship between the police and the internet community," said Nick Lockett, a lawyer at DLL specialising in computer law.

My worry is that such a law be used to silence political movements or opposing views in an effort to control the flow of information. Opening this door could have very serious and lasting consequences.

Darth Vader The Face Of Android In Japan

In a move that only the Japanese would dare, NTT the countries largest teleco has chosen to make Darth Vader the face for their flagship Samsung Galaxy S Android powered smart phone. This sort of goes against the whole Google "Do no evil" motto... though some might find turning to the dark side cool I suppose, and let's face it we all kinda dig Darth Vader anyway. Perhaps they are trying to work the "galaxy far, far, away..." angle? Whatever it is I'm a bit drawn to the ad, so perhaps it's working!

Edible QR Codes

I have been singing the praises of QR codes since I purchased my Android phone a couple of years back. Those who know me well will attest to the fact that I have business cards that I carry with simply a QR code printed on them along side my blog logo. You need not look far to find one emblazoned on this page...

It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone that I am totally jealous of the folks who thought up and attended the following:

This is one of the best examples of geeky fun that I've viewed in a very long time. 

Don't Trust An Angry Bird (May be considered NSFW by some)

I am hooked on Angry Birds. There, I said it... but so too are millions of others so I am not alone. Apparently some people are so hooked that they feel it necessary to make videos and mashups. Here is my favorite. (Warning language may be offensive to some.)

Face Masks For Soldiers?

When I think of soldiers with full face masks I think Stormtroopers and countless other faceless fighters from movie lore. A recent study however suggests that adding a face guard to modern soldiers standard helmets could substantially reduce the shock wave affect of nearby blasts and thus reduce the number of traumatic brain injuries.

A study by MIT researches suggest that face protection is critical. “The face shield contributes a lot to deflecting energy from the blast wave and not letting it directly touch the soft tissue,” says lead researcher Raúl Radovitzky. “We’re not saying this is the best design for a face shield, but we’re saying we need to cover the face.”

Speaking about today's technology “These helmets weren’t designed to stop a pressure wave; they were designed to stop bullets,” says Albert King, director of the Bioengineering Center at Wayne State University in Detroit. “Just like a football helmet wasn’t designed to stop a concussion, but to stop skull fracture.”

Seems like natural progression, however I can see concerns being raised over cooling and peripheral vision, as advanced as we are becoming with our weaponry I don't know that we are necessarily keeping pace with the protection of our boots on the ground, though I'm not well informed enough to really weigh in here. In any case the more of this type of research that we conduct the better our troops are apt to be moving forward, though it would be nice if we lived in a world where none of this were necessary.


Source: Wired