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Vlado Handziski › Comments
Why isn't there a wifi chip in every [high end]] appliance? Refrigerators, stoves, cooktops, microwaves, dishwashers, coffee makers, washers, and dryers should all have wifi or bluetooth chips along with simple APIs for controlling them and getting status.
Kol Tregaskes, "Serhat Ozan", Mathew A. Koeneker and 37 other people liked this
I had a similar thought many years ago about why all appliances don't have built-in atomic clocks. Of course, if they had internet now, they wouldn't necessarily need the clock receiver.
- LogEx
Because they are like $25 a pop. There's also the configuration issue of how to configure a small cheap device with connection info like passwords, etc. For devices without wall socket power there's also serious power issues. I'm encountering this issue with something I'm working on.
- Todd Hoff
Todd, I'm assuming AC powered appliances. I'm also thinking about appliances that cost thousands of dollars, so putting an extra $25 part in shouldn't be an issue. The configuration problem is interesting, but I'm sure it could be solved with some kind of discovery mode. Either that or just use bluetooth.
- Cristo
Bluetooth is unfortunately expensive also. With wifi I'm assuming it goes through a wireless router out to the internet, not sure how bluetooth would work. And I'm not aware of a discovery mode because you would want security which requires selecting a security type, protocol, and password. But if it's in an expensive appliance then they'll have a display so it's more doable. We could...
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- Todd Hoff
Although going out to the Internet is cool, I think most of the usage would be on the LAN. I don't actually care if it's wifi, bluetooth, zigbee, or z-wave. I just want to control and monitor these expensive home appliances through web interfaces and apps on the computer, as well as remote controls and touch screens. I repeat, I don't think cost is the issue here, I think it's the mindset of the manufacturers and consumers that needs to change. I believe it will change, I just don't know when.
- Cristo
I view the control plane being more in the cloud than local, so internet connectivity is important.
- Todd Hoff
Todd, why is having your home control in the cloud critical? I want control to be primarily in my local server closet, with the option of reaching it from outside in a secure way. I don't want everything to stop working because the cable company pulls the plug on my Internet access for 3 days.
- Cristo
Once they're cheap enough to embed without significantly altering the price they will be in everything.
- Tad
I don't want a local server closet that I have to maintain and upgrade and fix. I've been working hard to get rid of servers. As a producer I also don't want to make a native app or deal with software upgrades and every customer's hardware problems. That kills profitability. It could be accessible over the cell network so you always have two connection paths (more expensive).
- Todd Hoff
Todd, that might work for some people, but it's definitely not what I'm trying to do personally. I want all the control in my hands, and I want to go out to Best Buy or order something online and install it into my media closet. Having to rely on a cloud-based 3rd party would be hellish to me.
- Cristo
The cell network would be great data and command path for devices, but they are like $10 a month so it's not generally practicable. I would imagine a tethered phone could be used as a router in emergencies, but I'm not sure how that work yet.
- Todd Hoff
Dealing with incompatible device after incompatible device is hellish for me. So each to their own I guess.
- Todd Hoff
Well, I've got a blu ray player, 2 TiVos, 2 Apple TVs, a Mac Mini, an Xbox 360 and a Wii hooked up in my media closet as source devices. I think it will be a while before we see all that functionality in the cloud.
- Cristo
My refrigerator is automatic. I don't control it. Cooking requires precision control. I'm not in another room, I'm right there right now. Dishwashers are more or less automatic, as are washers and dryers. I'm having a really hard time imagining what you're remote controlling in any of these devices.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason, ah use cases. I love it. 1) I want to push a button from upstairs to make a cup of espresso downstairs in the kitchen. It only saves a minute, but it makes me happy. 2) I also want the underfloor heating to turn on and be warm when I walk down to get my coffee. 3) I want all the clocks on appliances synced so I don't have to set them. They need to change properly for daylight saving, and when the power is cycled.
- Cristo
4) The dishwasher, washer and dryer should all be able to notify me on my computer screen that they are done. Ideally there is a countdown display of when they will be done.
- Cristo
5) The oven should also be able to tell me when the correct temperature has been researched, should have a camera inside it, control/monitor timer info, and change modes (e.g. convection vs conventional oven)
- Cristo
6) The wine fridge should have inventory control.
- Cristo
7) The cooktop should allow me to monitor whether water has reached boiling and other long-term events. In addition, I should be able to see if it's on when I'm not home (and turn it off in case we left it on accidentally).
- Cristo
I think you're going to need some robotic control to put the food in and out of the oven, the laundry in and out of the washer & dryer, etc. You could just put cameras in these rooms and see when things are done.
- LogEx
LogEx, our washer & dryer is in our downstairs bathroom. I don't think a camera in there would be appealing to most people. :) I'm definitely interested in robots though.
- Cristo
Of course, one of the dangers of doing something cool and trying to automate everything is you'll always have people who are assuming you are just lazy and should get off your fat ass and do it manually. Of course, the same could be said for using written mail instead of email, or a sliderule instead of a computer.
- Cristo
1) I'm a little more old school with my espresso. I actually want a less automatic machine so that I can get more crema. 2) that's interesting. I would have assumed a thermostat would be sufficient, but I guess this is more related to actual usage than constant temperature. I like it. 3) The clock thing is good, I agree 4) notification, nice. good idea. 5) more notification, cool. 6)...
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- Jason Wehmhoener
Also, I think Bluetooth is probably a better idea than WIFI. If you need to go to the cloud, that should be handled by your home server, not each device. My firewall has enough problems without adding 72 more internal ip addresses.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason, you may be right about wifi not being the best solution. Have you heard of Zigbee or Z-wave?
- Cristo
This reminds me of Will Smiths rant in I,Robot.....
- Roberto Bonini
Yeah, zigbee is seriously cool. when you mentioned it before i commented with a couple zigbee hacking links. I haven't heard of z-wave.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Roberto, can you refresh our memories. I don't want to subject myself to watching that again.
- Cristo
The problem with zigbee is it is a seperate expensive network
- Todd Hoff
from iPhone
Because people don't want to pay $10 more for a web enabled coffee maker.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, yeah because then my espresso machine would cost $5010.
- Cristo
Todd, Crestron sells systems that cost more than $50,000. Price is relative, and in the home automation market just being able to do something at any price is often difficult.
- Cristo
The bit where he's talking about his toaster having feelings.....
- Roberto Bonini
Chris, you need to start thinking like a marketing guy who has to get the most sales for the lowest cost and not like Chris "I want to do cool things with my house" White. Companies don't make stuff for you. They don't make stuff for you, because you aren't the lowest common denominator and are not low maintenance. Any company that marketed directly to you would most likely go out of business in less than a year.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, I'm not posting on friendfeed to share my marketing ideas.
- Cristo
You asked a marketing question, it's not a design one.
- Alex Scoble
My mistake was asking a question that Alex Scoble would respond to. Apparently his being on his honeymoon doesn't keep him off friendfeed. :)
- Cristo
#scobleapprovedconversation
- Jeremy (cropmarks)
Your mistake was thinking like an engineer when asking a marketing question.
- Alex Scoble
Instead of asking why not, you should have wrote "I wish that every appliance had a wifi chip"
- Alex Scoble
And being on holiday doesn't mellow Alex one bit :)
- Roberto Bonini
Hehe, Roberto...this is true. :)
- Alex Scoble
I guarantee that if there is a market for Crestron and Control4 control systems, as well as Miele and Subzero class appliances, than there is a market for putting network and control capability into those same high-end appliances.
- Cristo
Yes sure, you can pay Crestron big money to do it.
- Alex Scoble
It isn't however, in the business interest of most small appliance makers to add cost to their wares that consumers won't currently pay for.
- Alex Scoble
I don't care about most appliance makers, I only care about the high-end ones that I want to use. It's minimal cost for them compared to the overall price.
- Cristo
Again, that's not the question you asked. Which is why you got the answer you got that you didn't like.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, so are you an expert on high-end appliances now? You've fully researched that market?
- Cristo
You are succeeding in arguing for the sake of arguing, but failing to provide useful insight.
- Cristo
You didn't ask a question about high end appliances. Which is why your conversation has failed. Please re-ask your question in a new thread and try again. You won't get the desired result in this thread.
- Alex Scoble
Read my previous comment.
- Cristo
I added [high end] to the original question so that Alex can now provide an answer. He had a literal block and was unable to process any further. Damn low-powered out-of-date language processors.
- Cristo
Answer is still basically the same. Because not enough people want the additional complexity of a wifi enabled device. If I buy a high end stove, I just want it to work. I don't want to have to worry that some engineer put in a bug in the wifi software that will shut down my stove at an inappropriate time. Not everything needs to be so complex that you can monitor it from a central location.
- Alex Scoble
And Todd Hoff already gave you many other answers like security concerns. Not to mention the impact of that many wireless devices in the home would have on your main computer's connection or the humans living in the house. Oh and some devices like microwaves would be nigh impossible with current frequencies to do wifi since they significantly degrade signal strength when in use.
- Alex Scoble
I see. So it's okay that our military uses network technology for mission critical operations, but we're afraid of bugs in our stove software? Also, I use my laptop right next to my microwave while it's on with no disturbance at all. And the network load for these appliances would be ridiculously low, so I'm not sure what you're talking about in terms of affecting other computers.
- Cristo
You mean the military that used unencrypted links for control of UAVs? Very poor example.
- Alex Scoble
It's not about network load, it's about the amount of channels and frequencies available. If you get that many devices on a current wifi network at the same time, the network will fail.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, no it won't. Have you been to a coffee shop lately? How many appliances do you think I'm talking about? I'm guessing less than ten for me. I have that many wireless devices already in the house.
- Cristo
And no, I wasn't talking about the UAVs. I was speaking in general of technology and communication. I trust there are engineers that can build embedded software that won't meltdown. There are already computer chips in these high-end appliances, so your scenario could happen already.
- Cristo
My scenario is greatly exacerbated by devices that can be controlled remotely. I wouldn't trust consumer electronics companies to build proper security in to their devices. So yeah, have fun with any teenager with half a brain getting control of your house and making stuff unusable. I'll stick with regular appliances that just work.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, you might want to stop using a cell phone too then.
- Cristo
Sorry, but the security for cell phones is pretty good, particularly when you are using a Blackberry and their servers where email and stuff is sent encrypted.
- Alex Scoble
What kind of companies build cell phones, Alex? Would you describe them as "consumer electronics companies"?
- Cristo
Cell phone companies.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, ever been to CES? You should go one year and argue with a bunch of people. :)
- Cristo
Definitely a case of "hey, let's argue for argument's sake"
- Chieze Okoye
No, I don't bother with trade shows for the most part. Although it would be nice to go one year just to listen to a bunch of loudspeakers.
- Alex Scoble
Chieze, it certainly wasn't my original intent.
- Cristo
I know, I read through the whole thing (and actually I agree with the thrust of what you're saying). More wireless standards options for home automation is a Good Thing (TM).
- Chieze Okoye
Alex I'm not really concerned about security and bandwidth, the former can be addressed and the latter is sufficient for request/response communication, if there's a lot of streaming going on that's a different story. A large component of modern cars is software and embedded systems, the same will be true for appliances as well. Cristo's 50K home automation system isn't realistic though. I just want systems I can talk to using http like any other device without exploding the BOM cost. We aren't there yet.
- Todd Hoff
Todd, where did the 50K number come from? If there are 10 appliances with $25 wireless radios in them, even with a 4x markup, it's still only $1000. What's the other $49K for? I'm not suggesting flushing money down the Crestron toilet.
- Cristo
"Crestron sells systems that cost more than $50,000"
- Todd Hoff
Todd, yes I know I wrote that. It doesn't mean I was advocating it, but just providing perspective on how much home automation costs these days. $25 isn't much in that world or even 5x less.
- Cristo
You are describing a near-future state of affairs.
- Christopher A Carr
It would seem so but I'm not so sure. As Alex mentioned it will take a while for vendors to jump on the bandwagon because as an industry they aren't innovators. Then there's expense, power, configuration. Ideally a system doesn't need expensive gateways and adapters like zigbee, yet you should be able to just drop a device into a network and have it work. I don't see this in the near future.
- Todd Hoff
There's nothing inherently expensive about Zigbee, other than it doesn't currently have economy of scale. I think we're talking about different classes of appliances. The average appliance I'm talking about is about $1500. I would easily pay $250 more for a network-enabled device if it had the right API.
- Cristo
Zigbee chipsets are not that expensive, the infrastructure to distribute zigbee throughout your house is expensive and it takes installation and configuration. The new low power bluetooth standard should help here, but I don't think these can bond to an IP router.
- Todd Hoff
Nothing a network bridge can't fix. Just use a Mac Mini as a home automation server. You can hook RS-232 boxes up to it via USB. Almost all of this stuff supports RS-232
- Cristo
Home automation servers are so last decade :-)
- Todd Hoff
Todd, I disagree. They haven't even been explored yet.
- Cristo
Personally, I can't wait for my fridge to start spamming me on twitter. Or for my vacuum cleaner to follow me on Facebook. Technology!
- Chris Baskind
Luckily nothing about home automation requires social networking to operate. :)
- Cristo
In the not-too-distant-future, I see people going out and buying whole-home media & automation servers for their home just like they buy water heaters and furnaces. Builders will plan for these, and there will be rack mounted modular solutions. They'll work without Internet & be battery backed. I plan on getting one installed in my bunker in Montana for when all the shit hits the fan. ;)
- Cristo
When the shit hits I hope you can make hand puppets because that's all the media you'll be consuming :-)
- Todd Hoff
"hey haven't even been explored yet" - we've had them for a while and the next step after them is pretty obvious so we should just skip that step.
- Todd Hoff
Maybe you've had them. Most people haven't and I'm enjoying the beginnings of mine. I've also had service outages in the last couple of months and have no desire to turn over all control to evil/incompetent companies in the cloud.
- Cristo
Most of the crap I've seen is kludged. The advantages of a well designed system are fun to imagine, but I haven't seen a lot of evidence of actual implementations of such a system. Which, from my perspective, is all the more reason to think about it and pursue it. I think a big leap would be figuring out how to make it EASY for people/builders/contractors to set up.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I can imagine something that would be a combination media server, HDMI matrix switch, and controller for many devices. Support would include Z-wave, Zigbee, Lutron,RS-232, and powerline control. Maybe WiFi and Bluetooth if it makes sense. Total solution should be around 10K not including sources, displays, receivers and appliances. All the software would be open source, maybe leveraging Android. Small systems for apartments could cost much less.
- Cristo
And Todd, as long as generators can work, you can still watch plenty of stored media and control your appliances with a home server even if the shit hits the fan. If it's nuclear holocaust, then it doesn't much matter anyway. The cloud-based solution could easily be dead-in-the-water though. Trusting the cloud is like trusting Comcast or AT&T, which is how most people get cloud-based services. Let's see how well that stuff works when the next big earthquake hits the bay area.
- Cristo
Pretty interesting Zigbee article: http://www.cepro.com/article... and some Zigbee Appliances http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffbl... http://www.zigbee.org/Product...
- Jason Wehmhoener
There are zero config methods for wifi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Todd Hoff
Todd, Sonos uses a modified 802.11 protocol. The limitation is in the standard, not the technology. Any Sonos device can be added to the system by a pressing a button on the Sonos player. You can win the argument technically, but you can't argue that what I'm proposing isn't viable. Certainly it doesn't suggest a cloud-only solution.
- Cristo
Look for many easy cheap WiFi internet appliance announcements at #CES Jan 7-10 in Las Vegas
- Reese Jones
Reese, just like every year?
- Cristo
Yes Cristo #WiFi to internet modules cheaper, easier, lower power and better than before; including (of course) monitoring and control via phones
- Reese Jones
Reese, so all Miele, Viking, Subzero, and Bosche appliances will roll out next year with home automation wireless control built in? I'm looking forward to that.
- Cristo
We can await many companies making their own announcements, in their own way, just like every year...
- Reese Jones
Reese, aren't you worried that you're going out on a scary limb? :)
- Cristo
Kind of old, but there was supposed to be stuff already by now. That was the whole idea behind UPnP, which Microsoft started adding to their OS's starting with WinME, in anticipation of all the smart appliances that were supposed to soon become popular. http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n...
- April Russo (app103)
If the goal is better integration with existing IP networks, running IPv6 over IEEE 802.15.4, i.e. 6LoWPAN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) is much better approach than ZigBee. Both TinyOS and Contiki (two popular open source operating systems for these kind of networks) already provide TCP/UDP stacks that operate on top of 6lowpan.
- Vlado Handziski
April, you can run UPnP on top of a lot of these transports. I don't think it specifies a wireless protocol, but is instead an XML discovery and communication system. I've done a fair amount of UPnP programming for Sonos, and it seems overly verbose and cumbersome, but I'd gladly use it if it were widely adopted for appliances.
- Cristo
Vlado, I actually don't care that much what they agree on for a wireless technology as long as they agree on something and implement it soon. It's not a requirement for my needs for these devices to talk directly to the Internet without a bridge. I'm really looking just to make things work at all.
- Cristo
As someone who has built some wifi gadgets for the consumer marketplace, I can tell you security and connectivity is a fricking nightmare when you get down to your average WalMart user. I have actually had to field the calls from some of the buyers asking about how to connect things to networks they don't have and security protocols they haven't a clue about. It's really so frustrating...
more...
- Andrew Leyden
Skype opens up SIP business service to everyone - http://www.networkworld.com/news...
I wonder if this will work with Sipdroid
- Vlado Handziski
DARPA Network Challenge - https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/default...
"To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems. The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads."
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
New data plan: Two mirrored 1TB (or 1.5TB) drives attached to my Mac Mini Server. Any advice on external TB drives that are fast/low power/RELIABLE?
Kol Tregaskes, Taras Brizitsky, mjc and 2 other people liked this
This makes archiving handy as well. Just pull one of the drives off every 6 months or so and store it offsite, replacing it with a new one.
- Kevin Fox
How do you handle the mirroring? Your own script? I think the best right now is the WD green drives. They aren't terribly fast but they are low power and reliable.
- Benjamin Golub
I'm planning on using OS X Server's native RAID functionality. I do like the WD green drives, though they're a bit cagey about their *actual* RPMs. Somewhere between 5400 and 7200. As a network share either is fast enough though.
- Kevin Fox
My experience confirms what Benjamin said. Since a month ago I am using two WD15EADS in a DLINK DNS-323 as RAID-1 and I am very satisfied with the setup. I disabled the spin-down with WDIDLE.exe to address the load count issue, but was not able to successfully use WDTLER to enable TLER on my revision of the disk firmware.
- Vlado Handziski
Another vote for the WD Green drives...though I thought they were all 5400 RPM? Either way, unless you are concerned with super fast access times, for long reads/writes they work just fine for me (mostly to/from a 10,000 RPM drive via eSATA). Also, they are very, very quiet.
- Ryan Kaisoglus
Sadly, I've had a Newer Tech 1TB drive (from OtherWorldComputing, who I love) fail twice in the last year. Sized to fit under a Mini, I really like the form factor, but having to deal with warranty replacements twice in a year sucks. They do have a 3 year warranty at least, but....
- Ken Gidley
Why not use that 4-bay Mac Pro server you've got? If you have 1 drive for the boot/accounts drive then you can make a 3-way RAID with the remaining slots. You've already paid for the enclosure that way and you just need bare drives and a few minutes in Disk Utility.
- Brian Johns
Now @twitter just needs to acquire @brizzly and @bendarnell will have collected the whole set. (Congrats @shellen, @cw and team!)
Louis Gray, Hein Roehrig, imabonehead and 8 other people liked this
Brizzly needs to acquire FriendFeed! ;)
- Amit Patel
Amit: Yes, a small "ff" icon next to the " f" one would be really nice :)
- Vlado Handziski
RT @cwalker123 Google acquires Gizmo5 http://bit.ly/?m=404 aboard guys!
Daniel Rowley, Daniel Dulitz, Atul Arora and Matt Cutts liked this
Now they only need to open Google Voice to users in Germany and my VOIP world would be perfect :)
- Vlado Handziski
Novell Pulse - http://bitworking.org/news...
Wow, the Pulse demo looks nice. First SAP demoed Gravity, now Novell introduces Pulse. The ball is really rolling for Wave in the enterprise.
- Vlado Handziski
Reminder: turn off DST on your cameras
Micah Wittman, Kol Tregaskes, Jan Ole Peek and 11 other people liked this
Why don't they just do this? Computers, digital watches and other electronic devices have been doing this for years!
- Tony Ruscoe
from fftogo
Thanks, Benjamin. I always forget the cameras. :)
- ha3rvey (big appetite)
thanks for the reminder! going to adjust right now.
- Nathalie, Dreamer of FF
Tony: DST is different depending on location and current laws, both of which most cameras know nothing about. Computers and other internet-enabled devices can do it because they query a server that tells them the right time.
- Mark Trapp
Some devices have this built in. That works until the law changes -- the firmware in those devices will never be updated.
- Stephan Planken
Is there a client-side time protocol for embedded devices? Simpler than ntp?
- Daniel Dulitz
from iPhone
I gave up on this years ago. My cameras are on GMT. It turns out I'd rather know when the photo was taken than know what time people thought it was when I took it.
- Seth
Mark: My Canon camera asks for location / timezone and yet I still have to manually switch to/from British Summer Time. But I appreciate how the rules can be changed at any time (like they did in Sydney for the Olympic games?) so can understand why they've done this. It's just a minor annoyance.
- Tony Ruscoe
from fftogo
@Daniel: there is a simplified NTP protocol called SNTP, designed for clients which will never need to serve the time to other devices. It can interrogate a full NTP server, or a simpler server which only handles SNTP. Beyond that, there are older TCP date and ICMP protocols which let you ask a server for the current time of day, and can get you within a few seconds of the correct time.
- DGentry
DGentry, cool, I'd forgotten about the older ones. I'll look up sntp (bastard child of smtp and snmp? :-) to see whether it's really usable in an embedded environment without adding user complexity.
- Daniel Dulitz
from iPhone
PTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...) is another candidate in the embedded space, but on the other end of the complexity scale, for very demanding applications (GPS kind of accuracy without GPS on every node).
- Vlado Handziski
Sensor Access in Your Web App - http://software.intel.com/en-us...
"In other words, You can either have a concrete API that has specific JavaScript syntax for each sensor's properties and events, or you can have a generic, dispatch-like API that is tied to a very specific ontology, vocabulary or list of acceptable values that can be used as parameters. Considering the vast range of sensors that might be included in the foreseeable future, the size of the API could be quite large and complex; alternatively, the API could be simple and the ontology could be complex."
- Vlado Handziski
Smart Meters and Stupid Governments - Time for Dedicated Spectrum - http://www.nickhunn.com/index...
"I’d like to offer a little history lesson to the Wireless M-Bus folk. Wireless is different from wired. It involves adding security, connection methodologies, and both topology and power management. It took the 802.11 standards group around 13 years to go from their starting point of translating a wired 802.3 connection to the first reliable and interoperable wireless one in the 802.11b specification. Wireless is not a small step. If you think that it is and decide to ignore the evidence of history, you run the risk of making a catastrophic mistake that has major ramifications for the future costs of your country’s energy usage."
- Vlado Handziski
jeresig: The most important part of Google Wave uses jQuery: http://j.mp/2xBtuF - http://twitter.com/jeresig...
Joel Webber, Louis Gray, Ruchira S. Datta and 7 other people liked this
Surf's out, dude. Google Wave is down for maintenance. Time to chillax. :)))))
- Vlado Handziski
Seems like a good place to use jQuery to me.
- Joel Webber
The ghost in the field – Blog – BERG - http://berglondon.com/blog...
"This image is a photographic mapping of the readable volume of a radio field from an RFID reader."
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
We're on Safari: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780596...
EricaJoy, Nick Lothian and Cenk Çivici liked this
Congrats!
- Vlado Handziski
Thanks
- Adewale Oshineye
Whats your googlewave address? I'm ericajoybaker@googlewave.com
Kol Tregaskes, Wins Fern and Ryan - @magicofpi liked this
http://bit.ly/somewavers will find people sharing their wave address on twitter but who do I know on twitter? All my friends are on friendfeed. :)
- EricaJoy
Wow none of the people on my Friends list have wave yet?
- EricaJoy
Mine is vlado.handziski at googlewave.com Just sent a hi over there
- Vlado Handziski
just got mine today. chrisofspades at googlewave. Kol has a thread going for people to list their address: http://ff.im/91NZC
- chrisofspades
Google Sidewiki - http://www.google.com/sidewik...
Jean-Claude Bradley and Ilin Tatabitovski liked this
This has the potential to replace a lot of the functionality that I liked on Friend Feed. They only need to start filtering the entries based on the Google Friend Connect and add a feed from the collected entries on the Google Profile page. Here is mine: http://www.google.com/profile...
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
Well, the feed thing is already available via the API: http://www.google.com/sidewik...
- Vlado Handziski
It is interesting to see parallels between the FriendFeed API 2 and the Sidewiki API. For example the inclusion of profile snippet in the feed using "sidewiki:desc" and "description?" in FF API2.
- Vlado Handziski
Pydev 1.5.0 (Pydev Extensions Open Sourced) - http://pydev.blogspot.com/2009...
"Today, Aptana is proud to announce that Pydev and Pydev Extensions have become a single plugin, with all the available contents open source (and freely available for anyone) in the 1.5.0 release (it's the same as 1.4.8 but with all the code open source)."
- Vlado Handziski
How to Quickly View Online Excel Files in Google Spreadsheets - IR Web Report in Brief - http://irwebreport.posterous.com/how-to-...
John μller liked this
"It hit me after posting that there's a much larger potential consequence for this. What if all Microsoft Excel files on the Web opened in Google Spreadsheets due to a configuration at the client or server level? Obviously, IE probably wouldn't do this, but it makes sense for Firefox, Chrome and Safari to do it? Of course, Google will have to remove the requirement for you to have an account with them to view their spreadsheets because people will balk otherwise." Or if this were a bookmarklet?
- Adewale Oshineye
I am not sure about the Google account requirement, but opening .xls (among others) files from the web in Google Docs by default is possible using Google Toolbar, one just needs to enable it in Options/Tools/Google Docs
- Vlado Handziski
Hobbyist Launches Camera Into Space and Takes Amazing Pictures [DiY Satellite] - http://io9.com/5346363...
dju, Ivan Zuzak, Neil Saunders and Andrew Terry liked this
Very cool!
- Brett Slatkin
Take a look also at Francesco Bonomi's blog (http://www.francescobonomi.it/photo-b...). He shows some impressive CHDK hacking to ensure that photos are taken only when the earth fills the frame, and cool 360 degree panoramas taken in the stratosphere.
- Vlado Handziski
Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers: He Made Paper Jump to Life - http://www.theiff.org/press...
" The construction is one of an astonishing collection of paper objects folded by Dr. David Huffman, a former professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a pioneer in computational origami, an emerging field with an improbable name but surprisingly practical applications."
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
Curved Folding - http://graphics.stanford.edu/%7Enilo...
"Fascinating and elegant shapes may be folded from a single planar sheet of material without stretching, tearing or cutting, if one incorporates curved folds into the design. We present an optimizationbased computational framework for design and digital reconstruction of surfaces which can be produced by curved folding. "
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
New Languages in Google Translate - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009...
"Google's machine translation service added 10 new languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh, Yiddish"
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
inkscape2tikz - Project Hosting on Google Code - http://code.google.com/p...
"An Inkscape extension for exporting SVG paths as TikZ/PGF paths"
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
PySide – Python for Qt - http://www.pyside.org/#
Nokia's replacement for PyQt
- Vlado Handziski
from Bookmarklet
Kenya cable ushers in broadband era - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2...
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Demetrios the Traveller, Phong (Paul) Vo, Iván Abrego and 7 other people liked this
"The Seacom undersea fibre-optic cable goes live on Thursday, promising changes that will be felt right across eastern and southern Africa. The switch will take place simultaneously in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Maputo in Mozambique and Mtunzini in South Africa."
- Tom Stocky
from Bookmarklet
3840Gb/s wooooooooooooow !! Does anyone as a similar picture with data for most of the world underwater fiber optic ?
- TiTi
ok found some links : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... ; http://images.google.com/images... ; ok fiber optic = illimited bandwidth capacity in theory, because equipements at each border limit the transmission speed ; but i would like to know how much data is transfered between us and europe for example.
- TiTi
we'd never know cause cern is part of it
- chaz2b
TiTi, take a look at this presentation of Alan Mauldin from TeleGeography Research at the recent Google Internet Summit 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Vlado Handziski
Recent and Emerging Topics in Wireless Industrial Communications: A Selection - http://www.tkn.tu-berlin.de/publica...
Andreas Willig IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 102-124, May 2008. -- Delivered by Feed43 service
USENET buys IRC!
Evan Fribourg and Jon Ursenbach liked this
E-Mail has purchased the USPS!
- Jon Ursenbach
:)
- Vlado Handziski
from Android
Stamps.com has purchased Pets.com!
- Jon Ursenbach
Twitter has purchased people yelling out their window.
- Evan Fribourg
Google buys The Universe.
- Evan Fribourg
Microsoft buys Porsche.
- Liviu Barbat
Dear FriendFeed Team, If Facebook one day tells you to shutter FriendFeed, please please PLEASE consider open sourcing it. Please?
Amber, Random Time Lord, Thaths and Ryan - @magicofpi liked this
It seems that the technology is part of the deal, so I would not bet on this.
- Vlado Handziski
The tech is always part of the deal. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't, I'd hope they'd share the code instead of letting it die off somewhere.
- EricaJoy
Having the source code is unhelpful without the infrastructure to host it, the data and an active team to maintain it. A comprehensive export function (such as a tarball of all every conversation you've participated in) would be more useful to more people
- Adewale Oshineye
Putting the source code out there allows others to build upon it. FF has a fairly active dev community, many of whom are very passionate about FF. They'd find a way to recapture the magic.
- EricaJoy
I'd like to believe that's true but you have to factor in the financial cost of running the servers/bandwidth/etc and the fact that the entire FF team would now be working on something else. They wouldn't be available to explain things and they'd have to be advocating that people move on to whatever they're doing at Facebook. You also have to factor in the inevitable cost of the...
more...
- Adewale Oshineye
An Elephant Leaves the Room at Yahoo - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009...
Deepak Singh liked this
Congrats! And congrats on Chad too. Now you also have an expert for the Arduino hacking :)
- Vlado Handziski
from Android
So I have never been one to give out my _real_ email address and I'm not about to start now. However, in a post FriendFeed world, you'll need to get in touch with me some way, soooo: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewfor... Alternatively, you can send me a message from my Google Profile: http://www.google.com/profile... (thanks Vlado!)
Put your email address there and I'll add you to Google Talk and Google Reader. :)
- EricaJoy
Erica, do you have a public Google Profile? People can use the "Send a message" option to contact you without you giving out the real address.
- Vlado Handziski
Good point Vlado, thanks!
- EricaJoy
...and here are my Reader Shared items: http://www.google.com/reader...
- EricaJoy
Congrats to the FriendFeed team. A more social Google Reader is now the only remaining alternative to the Facebook universe.
Ilin Tatabitovski, John μller, Isaac Hepworth and Adewale Oshineye liked this
On that note, you can find me here: http://www.google.com/reader...
- Vlado Handziski
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