Category: Technology

Homeless as Wi-Fi Transmitters at SXSW

Definitely a marketing stunt gone wrong during the SXSW Conference…

AUSTIN, Tex. — Which product at this year’s South by Southwest technology conference received more attention than perhaps any other?

A marketing agency touched off a wave of criticism and debate when it hired members of the local homeless population to walk around carrying mobile Wi-Fi devices, offering conferencegoers Internet access in exchange for donations… [MORE]

App Tabs & Tab Groups in Firefox

OK, I totally missed these features & they’ve been a part of Firefox for several versions.  I guess thats what I get for skipping the tutorials and not reading the manual.  After it’s just a browser, right?

Firefox Tab Groups [Video Link] allow you to group together sites into collections.  This allows you to better organize all the open windows and even keep a set of pages always available (but out of the way).

Firefox App Tabs [Video Link] allow you to “pin” often used sites to your tab bar for easy access.  They can’t be deleted/closed by accident either. The cool thing is that App Tabs will actually show up in Tab Groups.

I’m digging through the Firefox documentation tonight to see what else I’ve misd.  I’ve used the sync app for years and it’s a great way to keep several computers in sync with bookmarks and even open tabs.

What are your favorite features in Firefox?

Worldwide Communications Still Using Cable

While working my way through the several-hundred RSS feeds I subscribe to I came across an article that referenced an Epic Net Outage In Africa.  Curiosity got the best of me and I started looking for more information on the worldwide use of underwater communications lines. Once-upon-a-time these (copper) cables, used to connect the worlds continents, were made up of hundred (thousands) of copper strands.  These, for the most part, have been replaced by fiber optic cabling that can not only carry greater amounts of data but are smaller (and presumably cheaper) than copper conductors.

Communication companies are using these cables, resting on the sea floor in all of the worlds oceans, to move massive amounts of data between land masses.  Typically the majority of the information you access on the internet is stored nearby in servers that cache data that others have already referenced.  Why send the same data over long distances if it can be stored regionally? When you end up requesting a piece of data that’s actually located in another country you are most likely utilizing these underwater cables to transfer the data from its source to your computer.  Here’s a good test for you to try.  In Windows click START, RUN and type CMD [ENTER].  In the command line window that pops up type Ping 61.64.53.64 [ENTER].  You should get something like this: Make a note of the “Time=237ms” piece, you just communicated directly with a server in Taiwan. Now ping 74.125.225.78 Notice how the “time” is a lot less?  This, in geek speak, is called “Latency“.  You just communicated with one of the thousands of servers Google has on the Internet (many of them local to large metropolitan areas).  Now granted, we’re talking milliseconds but that’s an eternity in the computer world.  By pinging the actual IP address of the computer in Taiwan you bypassed any caching by your ISP and communicated with the server directly.

1000 Milliseconds equals one second so when you communicated with the server in Taiwan you sent a piece of data at the speed of light over 7700 miles (and BACK) in 0.25 seconds.  How amazing is that?  When they figure out how to digitize the human body you should be able to travel anywhere in the world in just a few seconds (or less). As someone who’s used satellite communication in the past for voice communication I can assure you that the delay can be in the 1000’s of milliseconds and it’s a real pain to communicate with someone using a satellite that’s just 4-700 miles overhead.

Since we’re becoming a more “global” society it’s important, now more than ever, that these undersea communication links are available (and functional).  Hopefully the telecommunication companies are investing in more capacity to handle the ever increasing need to transmit data around the world.

Dropbox Follow-up

I posted earlier about how you can use the power of advertising to get some additional space on Dropbox.com for FREE!  As of today here’s where I’m at with about 15 minutes of effort:

“So far you’ve earned 6.25GB of the 8 GB maximum bonus space possible from referrals.”

I’ve blown through my free $100 certificate by allocating $2o per day.  Time to see if I can score a few more bonus bucks for free advertising and run another campaign to get me at the full 8GB.

Specifications and How the World Works

While working on one of several projects today I found myself pouring through a set of specifications that was nothing short of mind boggling. These were specifications used to construct buildings and they covered everything from light fixtures to door knobs to acoustic tiles (and data distribution).

This got me thinking about where we would be without this kind of structure.  When you have several industries and trades all working together to design and build a finished product everyone must be on the same page.  You can’t connect glass to wood or steel, run electrical cable anywhere you want, or put a stairway randomly within a structure.  All of this takes coordination and guidance.  That guidance almost always comes from specifications (and experience no know what can, and should not, be done).  My job in this particular project is a lot easier than others.  Some people have to worry about Life Safety and others have to make the structure visually appealing.  I just have to get all the bits and bytes flowing throughout the building in the most efficient, and cost-effective, way possible.

I could just wing it and use the tried and true ‘path of least resistance’ but experience tells me this is not the best solution.  I have to navigate my connections around huge open spaces, stay away from electrical interference and, most of all, keep everything out of sight.  All connections must end up in a central area but still reach the farthest corners of the structure.  After all, just about, everything is “connected” these days.

In addition to the “hard-wired” cabling I need to account for wireless connectivity throughout the environment.  Radio waves have a tendency to act like they’re not supposed to.  In theory everything is line of sight and spreads out in a spherical pattern.  In reality signals will bounce off the strangest objects and end up providing less than desirable results.

This is the kind of project I can really sink my teeth into.  It has all the elements I enjoy and many challenges to go along with them.  As I pour through the paperwork that I’ll eventually need to manipulate into a document instructing others how to create my vision, I can’t help but think about how this can even be accomplished without the structure and limitations that a good set of “specs” can provide.