Not to sound like a total corporate shill but Photoshop CS4 is the utter shizz. Isn’t this neat? I dropped a few photos in, Photoshop did all the stitching. Took almost no time.
Tahoe Panorama
Category: Technology
Living History
I was struck by something when looking at some website analytics today.
This is the image I was looking at:
Notice that line of dots across the middle of the state? That’s no accident. Here’s why:
The Erie Canal was a major engineering feat of the early 1800s and was a key transport path for over 100 years, although after around 1950 or so it stopped being a significant part of the commercial transportation network.
It’s kind of neat that the canal is visible from cyberspace.
On Google Latitude and Why I'm Not Going There
Despite my relative blogging paucity of late, I’m hardly shy about putting personal information online. Between Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and the various other odds and ends of my online life, I’ve shared quite a lot over the years. And given my relatively unique name, it’s quite easy to enter a few search strings and pull up an awful lot of detail about me. But Google Latitude is a bridge too far, even for me.
Here’s a quick rundown on Latitude, if it hasn’t gotten onto your radar screen yet:
This Wednesday, Google launched its much-anticipated location-tracking service, Latitude, which uses the GPS hardware found in smart phones (such as Google Android phones and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handsets) to pinpoint your position on a map and share that information with your friends.
I’ve always been very clear about the line between personal and private information, and Latitude falls smack into the camp of private, as far as I’m concerned. It’s too much sharing. I’ll happily tell the world what I just ordered at Starbucks, but that doesn’t mean I want to world along for the ride as I walk down the street carrying my coffee.
Perhaps it’s a gender thing, but I find the concept that someone can know exactly where I am at all times to be more than a little scary. My work address is easy to find, but being able to see exactly when or what direction I’m walking in when I leave at night? Sorry, but that’s just not something I want the world to get access to.
And yes, I know that by default Latitude wouldn’t share anything unless I actively made the choice to share it, and yes, I know that simply by having a GPS-enabled phone, the phone company already can track me if they want to. If some government agency forces AT&T to give up my personal data, there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it. But if a person I’ve shared my location with gets their phone stolen, their account hacked, or even decides to sell access to their account, that’s a different story.
I know not everyone feels this way, and they’re perfectly happy checking in on Brightkite or adding everyone in their address book to Latitude. I wish them well. But that’s a party I’m just not joining.
Dear World
We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4.
Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20, 2009. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage.
We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.
Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Only 17 Years Ago
It boggles the mind a little when you think about how young the Web truly is and how much the world has changed due to one innovation:
Almost precisely 17 years ago, a young British researcher from Cern, the European organisation for nuclear research, gave a presentation in Texas on a technology that was to change society dramatically. That same month, the Cern newsletter announced it to the world: it was called the World Wide Web.
It’s hard to imagine life today without it.
Click through to read the rest of the article, which is an interesting look at the “open web” versus command and control structures. Here’s a sample:
The web succeeded too quickly to be controlled. It conquered skepticism by existing. But imagine that we had had a chance squarely to consider its likely benefits and dangers. In place of what we have today I think we would have invented a tamer, more controlled web and a different underlying network on which it operates. We would restrict openness of access, decrease anonymity and limit the number of actions that a network participant could perform.
The benefits would be undeniable: it would cut down on spam, viruses and illicit peer-to-peer file sharing. But at the same time, it would undercut the iconoclastic technological, cultural and political potential that the web offers, the ability of a new technology, a new service to build on open networks and open protocols, without needing approval from regulators or entrenched market players, or even the owners of the web pages to which you link.
Pandora Users, Any Advice?
So… I’ve been messing around trying to get Pandora working well for me. I set up a channel and added several song / artist seeds. Then I started thumbing up or down the songs that Pandora suggested for me.
The problem is that now it seems that the only music Pandora plays for me is the stuff I thumbed up, with very little in the way of new music.
What am I doing wrong? Should I un-thumb some of the stuff I previously thumbed up? Add more artist or song seeds? Clear everything out and start over?
Or is Pandora just confused by my admittedly picky listening preferences?
If anyone has suggestions, let me know. And here’s a link to the channel in question, if you’re curious.