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What will our IT and internet future be like?

Daniel Pataki — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:55:09 +0000

Will we continue to produce smaller and smaller gadgets? Will Google rule the World? Will the internet get faster and faster? I’ve always wanted to ask these questions, here’s my take on some of this, please do comment, I’m really interested to know what you guys think!

First of all, size. I mean the iPhone looks great (why they left 3G out of the first one is a mystery), it performs great, but personally, I have about as much use for it as my old Nokia 3310. Whatever people say, I can’t browse the web properly on a monitor the size of my palm. Sure, some apps are great, like Remember the Milk and whatnot, but I have no chance of working from an iPhone, the only thing it can be used for efficiently is some light browsing and movie playing on the go. For me the iPhone is an extremely cool phone, but just a phone.

Laptops have been getting smaller and smaller as well, with the new mini Notebooks. However, these aren’t really powerful, and the monitor is again, very small. I can’t help but look upon these notebooks as travel accessories, better they steal my $350 EEE PC, than my $1,500 Thinkpad. Don’t get me wrong, these notebooks are great as well, but they don’t serve such a general purpose as their bigger brothers.

So where is the industry going to go? People like me who work on their laptops and need at least 12″ – 14″ will be left wanting for a while. Short of wiring the thing into my brain (I’d love to type with my thoughts) I think the “easiest” way things will become smaller is they will be foldable. They’ve already made some advances, sheet thin monitors you can roll up and so on. I mean 50% or my laptop is the monitor, the other 30% is the keyboard. I’ve already seen projected keyboards, coupled with a foldable monitor you could put the thing in your coat pocket.

My other question is, how fast can the internet get? There is only such a speed at which speed actually matters. After internet bandwidth (and laptop speed) surpass human perception speeds the bandwidth won’t matter for the average user. However where will they take this next? Will we be using the internet to transport objects Start Trek style? Will we have holo-projectors instead of webcams? In the end you wouldn’t need a laptop, you can project the image of one (as small or as big as you want) and coupled with motion sensors, use it without it actually being there.

Also, where will Google be in 20 years? Will Sergey Brin and Larry Page be sitting on Mars in a throne dedicated to their wisdom? I doubt it, but how far can they expand? It seems like whatever they touch turns to gold, 90% of all their products are awesome, surpass any other commercial producer, and they give us all these things for free. Will they keep their position as the rulers of the search engine market, will someone come up with something better? With microtagging and web semantics building up, I think they just might face some opposition, although I think they’re working on their stuff all the time, and they don’t seem to be afraid of change, so they’ll be tough to crack.

What do you think about all this? In 20 years will I be typing on the head of a needle and looking at a monitor the size of my left kidney cell? Will I be teleporting out of an internet connection near you? And finally, will I be paying my bills to the all-ruling Google?

Tags: future, Google, laptops, technology

Spy Tech: I see what you write

Martin — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:49:31 +0000

Two new techniques to spy on computer users have been revealed these days by two independent scientific studies conducted at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany. The researchers in California developed an algorithm that can estimate what a computer is writing by watching the hands move. The algorithm is far from perfect and has a success rate of 40% which is enough to understand the meaning of the text that is written.

Words are chosen by probability and suggest alternatives which more often than not make more sense than the first word. This introduces a new technique to spy on users without having to actually access the computer at all, all that is needed is a good view of the hands and the measure of the keyboard.

The second spy tech could come right out of the latest James Bond movie. The researchers at Saarland University managed to write a computer algorithm that is capable of interpreting reflections of the computer screen on objects. The quality of the telescope plays an important role, a normal $500 telescope was able to read 12 point fonts of a reflection that was 5 meters away from the computer and 198 point fonts from a distance of ten meters.

A more powerful Dobson telescope for $27500 was able to yield the same results from a maximum distance of 30 meters. Other tests allowed the researchers to view the monitor from a white wall that was 2 meters away from the computer screen.

The best way to defeat the techniques ? Don’t access a computer in public, always close the curtains when working with your computer and make sure no cameras are installed in the room with a computer.

Tags: hack, Hacking, research, Science, spy, technology

Newspond is like an automated Digg 2.0

Martin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:55:34 +0000

Newspond is a web news aggregator that scans the Internet for news and publishes them automatically on their website. That’s actually a major difference to Digg where users contribute the articles. The benefit of the Newspond system is that it is less likely to be gamed as much as you are used from Digg even with their latest algorithm change.

Newspond uses a sophisticated algorithm to compute news popularity which will determine if an article will make the frontpage or not. Popularity goes up and down and this is considered in the algorithm, each article has a popularity trend that goes either up, down or stagnates.

Users can comment on stories and the comment function looks a lot nicer than that of Digg. Comments are threaded and the comment section uses Ajax to display everything without reloading the page. Nice and clean.

Talking about design. This site does look fantastic and it uses the latest technologies to increase usability. I’m not that of a design freak because I think that content is far more important but this design sticks out.

A major feature that I wanted to see implemented at Digg for a long time is the bundling of sources for a news story. If something important happens in the world you see dozens of stories at Digg that are all related to the same subject. Newspond lists all those sources under one story headline which is far cleaner and better. Some stories have more than 50 sources and users can really read some or even all of them to inform themselves.

The only thing that I would criticize at the moment is the lack of information. The about page is not really revealing lots of information about the algorithm, how articles are found, how and which websites are used as sources and the like. More information would be crucial for success. Oh, and I was not able to register. It told me that I would receive a confirmation email but I did not receive on until now.

Tags: digg, newspond, tech news, technology

Group Project: The Ultimate Tech Blog Listing

Martin — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:17:56 +0000

How many good tech blogs are out there ? What would you guess ? I’m always astonished to discover a new blog that I never heard before only to realize that I must have living behind the moon to not know it. This happens quite frequently and I add new blogs daily to my ever expanding list of feeds in Netvibes.

I’m however never satisfied until I know them all which is why I decided to make this post. I add five blogs to the list that I read on a daily basis and would like to receive hundreds of comments with tech blogs that you do read on a daily basis. This way we could create the ultimate collection of worthy tech blogs – would not that be fun..

Here we go, my top five technology blogs that I read: (in no particular order)

Tags: blogs, ghacks, tech blogs, technology