The Blog Less Traveled

I’ve been thinking about the whole technology thing lately. There have been enormous advancements in medical technology, computers, cell phones, automobiles and almost everything else that is touched by technology. Have we gone too far though? Those that know me know that I keep up on most of the latest tech trends. I’ve got the latest Apple computer, cell phone, TV gadget, etc. However, overall, I’m not so keen on technology advancement. Let me give you some examples of why I feel that way.

Cell phones – not a big fan. I know that for some people it can give them a certain sense of security. I understand that, especially as a parent. However, in the big scheme of things, I think we’re better off without them. Firstly, they’re annoying as heck when you’re in quiet surroundings or trying to have a conversation with someone. They’ve raised the art of annoying people to a new level. Some people are beyond obnoxious when they’re talking on their cell phone. I don’t really want to hear how well your blind date went the night before. Really, I don’t. Secondly, they’re a hazard when driving. I see so many people just yacking away on their phones in the car with little or no sense for what is going on around them. I think there are more injuries and lives lost than there are instances of cell phones saving lives. Finally, it intrudes on your personal life. Do you really need to get that call at the restaurant, at the park or at the beach?

Medical technology – Sure, that latest surgical technique may add some years to your life. But what has the overall advancement in technology done for the population in general? It seems like for the simplest of doctor visits, we now have to get a battery of tests and scans to cover every conceivable diagnosis known to man. It’s gotten out of hand. The cost of general medical visits and procedures is getting well beyond the normal person’s means. Unless you work for a fairly large company, the costs are out of control. Instead of spending our medical dollars on patient education, preventative medicine and better access to medical facilities for all people, we’re spending millions on the latest scanning equipment to help a very minor percentage of the population. I’m not against medical advances per se; I’m against those whose cost is extremely exorbitant or those that prolong a person’s life regardless of the real quality of life gained. I don’t think we were all meant to live into our 90’s. The costs to do that are just not sustainable.

Computers – Yes, computers have their place. They can certainly help with repetitive tasks and mundane work. They also have their place in certain communication scenarios. I video chat with my daughter who lives hundreds of miles from home. It beats a phone call any day. Military personnel who get the chance to see and hear their loved ones while they’re stationed overseas is a great use for computers. Access to information and news has its place, also. However, I think the whole social networking thing has gotten out of hand. It’s become an obsession with way too many young kids and adults. Some of the information and pictures posted on their Facebook/MySpace accounts is way too personal. It sets them up to possible predators or individuals who can easily take advantage of them. Twittering can be a real time waster, too. Do people really need to know that you just had your third latte at Starbucks? I don’t think so.

I could also get into the overuse of texting, Instant Messaging and the many other time wasting activities that many people do on a day-to-day basis. I’m not totally against it; it just needs to be done in more moderation. Listen, technology definitely has a role to play in our lives. I just think we’re letting it rule too much of it. We’re losing touch with the simpler way of life. Things are getting too impersonal. I probably need to take a little bit of my own advice in this regard.

My blog has a birthday! It was one year old yesterday, March 28th. Woot woot. Since I host my blog on my own domain that I control, I have access to various statistics about the site. The graphic on the left shows the top 25 countries that have visited my blog this past month. I went from about 700 visits/month during my first full month online to about 2400 visits/month for the current month. A very small fish swimming in the big Internet pond. Blogging serves as a useful diversion for me when I get the urge to write about something. However, I don’t expect the New York Times to be knocking on my door any time soon with an offer!

What some people may not realize is just how pervasive blogging has become. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, myself included, is doing it. There are millions of blogs on just about every subject imaginable, and then some. What I found most interesting was discovering that other websites and blogs had links on their sites to my various postings that I’ve written over the past year. There is a technology out there called web robots, or bots for short. Bots are sophisticated software applications that can scour the Internet at tremendous speeds and gather and catalog all the information available on a website. This is the technology that Google and other search engines use to provide you with the ability to find things on the Internet. In my case, companies or individuals are using their own bots to find sites that have certain keywords that they want to catalog and list on their sites. For example, they might be interested in articles that have the word “religion” in them. If their bot finds this keyword, their site will generate a link to that article. They might also extract the first few sentences of the article and include it in their posting. For those of you in the technology business, this is no great revelation. However, it might be interesting to the non-techy type that is reading this blog.

Well, I guess I’ll go now and bake a cake and stick a little candle in it. No, not really. Those that know me know that I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of how to bake one. I’ll just sing myself the birthday song. Happy birthday to my blog, happy birthday to my blog, happy birthday…

I thought I’d do a little write-up on the Apple TV. I’ve shown the unit to several people over the last year and most never knew it existed or knew very little about it. For those not familiar with it, the Apple TV is a media entertainment center made by Apple, Inc. It’s essentially a compact computer with no screen or keyboard. You connect the unit to your widescreen TV via HDMI or Component Video connections. The unit is quite compact at about 7.5” in width/length and about 1” high. You’ll need a broadband Internet connection, a wired or wireless network connection and an iTunes account from Apple. To take full advantage of all features, you really need to install iTunes on one of your computers. The unit can work with Apple or Windows computers.

The unit provides two methods of playing media files on your TV. You can stream them directly off your computer or transfer them first to the Apple TV and then play them. Either way works fine unless you have a marginal wireless network in which case streaming some video files may get somewhat choppy at times. In addition to letting you view all the photos in your iPhoto library or music/video/podcast files in iTunes, you can rent or purchase pretty much any movie DVD. Also, you can rent most TV shows in case you miss an episode. The unit also lets you connect to YouTube and watch anything available on that site. The quality of most YouTube videos isn’t that great but it’s nice to be able to watch it on the widescreen, nonetheless.

The other day, I hacked the Apple TV and installed Boxee software on it. This is alpha software that isn’t officially supported by Apple. Boxee is a media management software application with a user-friendly interface that can run under Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc. The really cool thing about Boxee is that it lets you connect to the Internet and get access to dozens of websites that have free movies and TV shows. You can connect to CBS.com and Hulu.com (NBC and Fox) and get access to all their current and past TV shows. Instead of paying to watch a past TV show on iTunes, you can get it for free, legally. If you want to see old TV series classics like Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Have Gun Will Travel, etc., it’s all there for free. There are also thousands of free classic movies available on other media websites that Boxee is set up to access.

I highly recommend the Apple TV to anyone that has a widescreen TV. The ease of displaying all your various media from one location will make you wonder how you got along without it. At only $229 for the 40GB version, it’s definitely a worthwhile investment.

If you’re serious about exercising and you want to track your progress, there are several electronic devices out on the market to help you. I looked at several models myself before settling on the Garmin Forerunner 305.

The Forerunner 305 is a wristwatch GPS. In addition to providing all the standard GPS functions, it also includes a heart rate monitor. The device itself isn’t much bigger than a regular full-size watch. The LCD screen is surprisingly readable for its size and has a backlight you can turn on for low-light conditions. The main functions for starting/stopping the time and starting a new lap are easily done with the two buttons on the face of the unit. Switching between screens and setting up the various options is also pretty straightforward. There are built-in options for setting the device for a run or biking exercise as well as an option for “other” types of exercises you might be trying to track. You can monitor your total time, split times, pace, distance traveled, etc. You can also customize the screens to put the data on them that you want to monitor and switch between three different screens at-a-time. It takes about 1-2 minutes from the time you turn the unit on until it acquires the GPS satellites. The device is very accurate. I do a lot of running on a recreational trail that is about 8-10 feet wide. When you look at the plot on the electronic map after a run, you can clearly see the two tracks where you ran the outgoing and return portions of your run. There are many features on this device that I haven’t even used yet. For example, you can set it up to be a virtual partner so that you can try to run and maintain a predefined pace and distance.

The unit comes with software that will run on either a PC or Mac. It includes a USB cable to connect the device to the computer. The software installation was simple and required no effort at all to perform. The PC version of the program has more features and includes the ability to upload your runs/exercises to Google Earth. Both versions allow you to monitor all aspects of your exercise including time, pace, distance, heart rate, calories burned, altitude, etc. I’ve found the device to be very useful for tracking my overall health and improvements in my running/biking times. I can see over the past year that I’ve used it that my heart rate has decreased for the same level of effort in a particular exercise.

I heartily recommend this device. I’ve had it for over a year now and haven’t had any problems with it. There is also a lower cost model called the Forerunner 205 that is the same as the 305 except that there is no heart rate monitor. A new model just came out called the Forerunner 405 that has a wireless feature to download your data.

If you don’t know what OS X is, just skip this post.

I happened upon a ZDNET blog today that was discussing the next version of Windows (click here). In typical fashion, there were the sophomoric flames in the comments section. Instead of using reasoned arguments to make their case, they eventually degrade to my operating system is better than yours and yours just sucks. However, there was one comment, in the form of an analogy, that I thought was hilarious and worth repeating. The commenter’s blog name was “Nonzealot”, and here’s what he/she said:

OS X girl thinks she is hot because she’s just had her metal braces replaced with clear ones. She hangs around all the popular girls all day and wants to be just like them although if you were to ask any of the popular girls what they thought of OS X girl, they wouldn’t know who you were talking about. OS X girl knows this and when she gets home at night, writes Facebook posts about how much she hates all the popular girls and wishes they would die. The next morning, she will go into the principal’s office and make up a story about how one of the popular girls stole her purse. At lunch though, she will be sitting at the table next to the popular girls laughing at all their stupid jokes.
OS X girl gets either really high marks on her assignments if her parents did it for her, or really bad marks if her parents were busy and she had to do it herself.
OS X girl prides herself on never having gotten an STD unlike some of the popular girls although this is mostly because none of the boys want anything to do with her. She did convince one of the chess club members to make out with her after school one day and immediately got mono although she tells herself that mono doesn’t really count as a disease because it doesn’t affect your genitals.
She drives an Acura CSX and sticks her nose up at all those tacky Civic drivers, ignoring the fact that she basically paid Honda $10,000 to put an Acura logo on her Civic.
Windows girl, however, doesn’t exist because they are all so different. There are the promiscuous Windows girls who get the disease of the week from the jock of the week but most Windows girls are either waiting for marriage or practice safe sex and are always perfectly healthy.
Some Windows girls drive muscle cars because they like to go fast, some drive their daddy’s BMW, some drive a used Civic, it really depends on their circumstances although all of them make it to school on time.
When working in groups, they tend to get top marks although they are more than willing to take ideas from the girls in the debate club when it will get them even higher marks. All of this will help them get into the top universities and have really successful careers, if that is what they decide to do. They’ll probably be really polite to OS X girl as she is cleaning their house although they probably still won’t know her name.

BTW, I own and use both Windows and Apple computers. In fact, I’m using an Apple computer to type this, but I still appreciate good humor.

Tag clouds are a pretty unique and clever presentation medium. In its original form, it’s used in a way to visually present the tags (topics) applied to a site’s content so the user can see the relative frequency of specific tags and use the actual tags presented in the visual as navigation aids around the website. Lately, however, I’m seeing these used in many other Internet venues. I’ve seen them used at websites to depict the occurrence and frequency of search items and also in the frequency of occurrence of words in a text file. In the example I’ve displayed below, I took the text of the Declaration of Independence and presented the occurrence of the 50 most used words. Even without the actual word count in parentheses beside the words, you can quickly visualize their relative frequency based on their size.

I’ve seen these tag cloud displays in other documents I’ve come across on the Internet and elsewhere, but I never really gave them much thought. They’re seen a lot on blogs and other Internet websites to show the usage of tags at that site. It seems like a very intuitive method of displaying your data to the user. Instead of having to graph the data and create a legend to define your graph’s axes, the data is self-describing in displaying it’s relative importance. Where the visualization becomes problematic is when there is a large variance in the set of data being presented. Font sizes needed to display the smallest and largest values may make the smaller values unreadable or the size of the display untenable. Of course, displaying large variances on a graph have the same problems when trying to depict small values.

I think that as people get more used to this presentation medium, it will be used for more and more types of data. There’s certainly no reason why you couldn’t use it to present financial data, sports information, survey results, etc.

What do you think?