follow up on earlier article on justice or punishment system when it comes to sex-offenders

just wanted to update my earlier post if there is no trust in the justice system, why don’t we get rid of it and replace it withe a punish system instead? with an article from today’s salon: Tracking sex offenders with GPS.

the article is quite interesting and makes several of the points from my earlier post. it is written, addressing the new law in california requiring sex offender to wear a gps device — even after probation.

the article points out some of the negative impacts of investments and policies like these:

The incessant emphasis on the boogeyman, the sexual predator in the schoolyard or on the Internet, can be counterproductive, as resources to fight sexual crimes, and public perception of them, are misplaced.

and then provides this quote by a supporter of the gps solution:

He suggested that wearing an electronic monitoring device for life is not only good for public society, it’s good for the reformed offender, who will be able to prove his alibi every time a new sex crime is committed.

which in a way shows that no matter if a offender server their time in prison they are always suspect. going back to the idea that they are guilty until proven innocent i guess.

understanding the history of the bible

my november 21st post what if religion is wrong about homosexuality? led to some discussion about how to interpret the bible, and foremost, if the bible should be taken literal, rather than interpreted. i guess at the heart of this discussion is the question if the bible is the word of god? which in a way leads to the question who wrote the bible? i guess one could argue that no matter who wrote the bible it is still the word of god, but if the bible was written not by eye witnesses, or not by those that we were taught it was, and if it was edited, translated … over time then the bible might still contain the word of god, but requires a scholarly understanding and interpretation of its underlying meaning, which then means it can not be taken at face value.

channel 4 in the uk did a fascinating documentary about who wrote the bible. looking at historical accuracy of who wrote the different books of both the old and new testament, and the many editorial choices that were made along the way. while a long video it is worth watching in full, since it raises and also answers a lot of questions. i think that blind faith is not what god wants us to have, but instead an informed and thought through believe and faith, one that uses the brain god gave us.

ipod vs. zune on c-net tv

the guys over at c-net tv are comparing the ipod with the zune that they call a Prizefight: Apple iPod vs Microsoft Zune. the ipod won by a point, and if you have read past posts from me you probably know what i think of such a close comparison of these two players. so let’s take a look at the results category by category.

design: they call it a draw
are you joking? i don’t care if the screen is a bit bigger which “makes movie watching easier” (has anyone told them that you can’t even buy movies for the zune on the zune store? or that people really won’t watch movies on either screen?). design comes down to how does it look? and the zune looks butt ugly. it is clunky, and looks like one of those big, fat sony sports walkman from the late ’80s.

interface: they actually have the zune win this one
so the interface wins because you can customize the background, doesn’t matter that you have to use a scroll wheel which is not a scroll wheel and click through everything? after-all navigation is part of the interface category and probably one of the key feature a user will actually interact with the device. but who cares how long it takes to find something as long as you can customize the background and look at a nice pictures.

compatibility: ipod wins this one
well what should i say, that the ipod is scored only a point more than the zune is ridiculous, but well it is important for the windows people to have WMV support.

features: the ipod wins
well i don’t know why there again is only a point difference here. afterall the ipod has games, calendar, podcasts, alarm, contacts, harddisk mode … and the zune has this crappy wifi thing that allows you to do nill. yes, nice idea, but crappy execution, so it shouldn’t get a point at all.

the last category performance is a tie
well i don’t know how they judge this, the ipod has five years under its belly and it is still going strong, the zune? out for a month, so this shouldn’t even be a category.

yahoo research’s buzz game lacks buzz

recently i found the buzz game set up by yahoo research and o’reilly. it looked like an interesting tool to look at technology developments and their future potential. in a way a small scale version of what darpa a couple of years had planned to identify new terrorism threats by creating a threat market on which experts could “bet” on potential threats.

the buzz game allows users to bet on on technologies, starting with a starting capital of $10,000. and then you make money by betting on technologies, like the ipod or the xbox, operating systems like vista or os x, browsers … the only problem with the buzz game is that it lacks buzz. if you look at most market segments you will find price graphs like this one that shows the different mp3 players:

the top red line is the ipod, grey is lyra, blue is archos, orange zen, green iriver, and purple rio. and this is were the problems of this game start. where is the zune? in mid december to not be able to buy zune shares is a travesty.

which leads me to the problem of the game and while i think it is a complete waste of time. if i want to know about how technologies will be adopted in the future then i need to have the market tell me if the market will accept a future gadget, technology. but if all that is available on the market are proven, tested, old technologies then this doesn’t tell me anything. this is why there is so little change in prices. i know the ipod is on top, but why can’t i add a new technology and is not yet available and see if the market will buy it? after all the stock market is about investing in future potential and not past performance. and the buzz game is all about past performance.

this could have been an interesting experiment, but failed to create any meaningful output.

an update on my earlier mobile 2.0 entry — how to make this mobile web work

looking around the web at stories about the mobile internet and the mobile web, mobile 1.0, wap, mobile 2.0 one thing that strikes me is how people are getting excited with every change in technology, every increase in bandwidth will clearly lead to a new mobile web, to increased adoption. but let’s be honest here, it hasn’t. take a look at this the wireless report story titled High prices for mobile content hurting consumer adoption. the story quotes an IDC report:

In addition, almost 75% of the study’s respondents didn’t use any non-messaging data services during the third quarter of this year.

so way more than half of this mobile user group (and if i understand it correctly the respondents were 18- to 24-year-olds) use their mobile phone for calls and sms. this is pretty much exactly what they used 10 years ago. i don’t have data to back this up, but i am fairly certain that even the attractive business user market that uses so probably much more data traffic than the 18 to 24 year-olds uses data traffic for their blackberry devices and there probably dominantly for emails (sending and receiving) and calendaring. that doesn’t leave a lot for mobile internet browsing. but is this really this surprising? and here is why:

1. content is still considered to be carrier driven (just look at the recent announcement that youtube will be available exclusively via verizon.
2. content is still not created exclusively for the mobile phone. just saying that you can now see the same content on your mobile phone that you could see on a pc web browser does not work. and the at&t ad with people watching a football game on a tv, computer and mobile phone is just ridiculous because it shows how little the company understands on packaging content, all three screens in that ad offer exactly the same tv pictures (this is by the way the reason carriers should not be the portal for content — they just don’t get content). content needs to be channel focused.
3. mobile phones have developed over the years, but let’s be clear about one thing, a mobile phone will always have a smaller screen than a laptop, than a pc, and than a tv. plus, the input of text and any kind of information will always be more difficult on a mobile phone than compared with a laptop or pc.

so with this in mind, let’s move forward and just forget the last six years, which were pretty much wasted by the mobile phone industry.

the chances that mobile phone users will just browse around like they do on pcs is less likely because of the situation they are in (on the go) and because of the interface they are using (small and not that easy to navigate). plus, the screen offers only little bits of information at a time. this can actually have two results
1. less graphics and more text … so no big pictures that require scrolling
2. more graphics and less text … increased use of icons that do not take up a lot of space, but replace words.

a focus has to be on in the moment gratification for the user. this means that apps and services should be triggered by location, by interaction, by action (i take a picture of a barcode should provide me with a list of services that i can access via the net for example). ok, this might not sound easy, but we didn’t just plaster newspaper content on the internet to make it work, no we actually had to think and invent the web medium.

well, these are some of my thoughts on where the industry has to go before we can even think of mobile 2.0

france 24 provides refreshing news site design

with news channel sites dominated by moving pictures and as many text links as can possibly be fit on a page, i have to say that the web site of the new french 24 hour news channel france 24 is a refreshing alternative.

the front page is not cluttered, there isn’t much else on the home page to scroll to. it is easy to read thanks to the large bold font. navigation is easy and simple. ok not everything is working yet, there are still some bugs on the site, but from a pure layout and design perspective i can see myself making this my new news home. let’s see how usable it is going to be on a day to day basis.

mobile 2.0? where was mobile 1.0?

among all of the hype surrounding web 2.0 and now even web 3.0 readwriteweb is posting an article on mobile 2.0: understanding mobile 2.0. the articles initial proof that there is something like mobile 2.0 is that:

The fact that carriers/operators are now linking their brand name to web 2.0/mobile 2.0 related content and conferences, shows that progress is being made.

to take this as a sign that things are changing in a space which has disappointed investors and users alike is a bit far fetched. for carriers to link their brand name to web 2.0 and mobile 2.0 is nothing more than marketing and a ploy to be seen as cool and hip. but recent announcements from cingular and verizon actually show that they are still locked into their closed garden concept of a mobile web, which can not even be described as mobile 1.0 but more as a mobile 0.1 beta.

now, what exactly is mobile 2.0? according to the article it is:

What we mean by ‘mobile 2.0′ is another (r)evolution, already started, that will dramatically change the web and the mobility landscape that we currently know. The idea is that the mobile web will become the dominant access method in many countries of the world, with devices that become more hybrid and networks that become more powerful - everywhere in the next decade to come.

did i just enter a time machine? take out mobile 2.0 and replace it with wap and you could think you are back in 2000 or 2001 at some mobile conference with carriers looking jealously at the internet and trying to replicate it for the mobile space. and replicate they did.

the typical argument is made that technological advancements will change everything

The rapid penetration of Wireless Broadband Access (WBA) technologies such as 3G/UMTS, the migration of traditional telecom networks to internet technology, the availability of affordable and functional Wi-Fi and dual mode Wi-Fi/mobile phones… will all boost VoIP over broadband internet and ultimately blur the distinction between fixed and mobile services, since both become wireless and IP based.

despite the fact that most users still use a technology that i used in the mid ’90s and which is called SMS. the arguments is made that new handsets and the pressure of companies like apple will push mobile 2.0

If you have had the opportunity to experience the latest Nokia NSeries phones, you have gotten close to understanding what mobile 2.0 is all about. It’s about connecting your phone through Wi-Fi networks to browse the latest innovative, mobile accessible web 2.0 services. For example downloading your favourite podcasts, reading your RSS feeds, doing a one-click image upload to Flickr (nicely tagged with ShoZu), consulting the location map while on the road, tagging your streamed video’s, etc.

the main defining criteria of mobile 2.0 are then articulated in the end

Openness: open standards, open-source development…Affordable pricing…More user choice…Intelligent ‘aware’ applications and devices…New business opportunities coming to market, which may or may not connect to operators networks; think RSS feeds, alerts to SMS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Entertainment download zones and access spots,…

ultimately this list is nothing more than taking o’reilly’s web 2.0 description, and adding a couple of about 5 years old mobile service descriptors and bang you have mobile 2.0.

my main problem with this is that we are talking about mobile 2.0 without actually having had a mobile 1.0. let’s be honest there is no mobile web. people are using SMS and they are using their phones to check emails. and saying that location aware apps will be the difference between mobile 1.0 and 2.0 doesn’t work because location has always been the mobile’s holly grail to differentiate the mobile web from the pc based web (as has been the fact that mobile phones are cheaper, always with a user…).

for there to be a mobile 1.0 and then a mobile 2.0 carriers will have to accept that they are just an infrastructure provider. services will have to be free and not limited to walled gardens. this is not about handsets and wifi, bluetooth, or 3G, this is about creating services that address the needs of mobile users (i think i wrote this before, oh that was in 2001). and so far the best service addressing this (beyond SMS and email) is the sms based google service.

there is certainly a lot that the mobile web can learn from web 2.0 (like the open APIs, like tagging, like the adoption of widgets), but to compare the two just doesn’t work. the web is clearly on its way to a stable 3.0 release, while the mobile web has not yet gotten out of its initial beta release.

new york times’ year in ideas issue is out

just as there is the economist’s annual “the world in” special, the new york time’s started an annual magazine focus a couple of years ago which in itself is worth the price of the sunday times. the special is the best ideas of the years.

take a look, an interesting read The 6th Annual Year in Ideas. one of my favorites i must admit is the instantly aging wine (although i don’t know if i would want to drink it).

album review of the week: love by the beatles

i don’t love this album, but i like it. i have never been a big beatles fan and have always thought that they are one of the most overrated bands in music’s history. don’t get me wrong, they are good, they have made good and sometimes great songs, but i just never really thought that they were this amazing. honestly i find the “grey album” the mash up of beatles with jay z by dj danger mouse their most interesting album. i was certainly not the first one to get love the new album not really by the beatles, but sold through the beatles label and “mixed” by george and giles martin. if i would look at love from a pure mix and mash-up view, it would suck. the two martin’s barely touch the songs (which might have been a requirement from the big four). the sound is a bit better, but there is little exciting, the songs are clearly recognizable. also the selection does not necessarily surprise, it is in a way a best of the beatles, with only few surprises — it is no surprise that it is the soundtrack for a vegas show … you wouldn’t want to make these people think.

so why is it album of the week? well, for once it is the only album i bought this week. second it is not album of the week because i think it is one of the best albums of the week, month, or year, but because i can see myself listen to it a lot, because it is as david letterman might say easy on the ear.

for the future i really hope that the beatles finally wake up and realize that having your songs re-mixed or mashed-up is not bad. the originals won’t disappear, will actually only become more interesting. but a smart and interesting re-mix can bring out new features of a song — just as the grey album did.

so over the holidays now the album will probably be a hit and find its way under many trees just because it is a fail save gift and album… no experiments.

—
after listening to the album a bit more, i think the title should have been beatles meet andrew lloyd webber, now you can make up your own opinion if the result is good or bad.

little miss sunshine accused of promoting pedophilia

i have to say this story i just read made me laugh really hard, i just wish it wasn’t so sad to see someone write it and actually believe it. on one of the evangelical sites, i found this story called Good News for Pedophiles. i started reading it:

Thanks to Delta airlines, you can now sit back and enjoy pedophilia while you fly in comfort across America.

and i thought that delta had introduced wireless internet access. but no, the story went on and explained what happened:

Recently Kirk Cameron, I, and my son-in-law Emeal Zwayne, were flying from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Halfway into the flight, Kirk suddenly looked up and said, “What’s going on!” We looked up at the more than twenty screens to see what looked like a nine-year-old child sexually gyrating and stripping in front of an adult audience. As we watched in horror, a few of the adults in her audience stood to their feet and began to clap to the music, obviously encouraging her to strip further, which she gladly did.

at this point i was wondering if this was about the movie little miss sunshine. but i just couldn’t believe that someone could come to such an absurd conclusion watching the movie. but then at the end of the story, there is a call to action, the request to sign a petition for delta to stop showing the movie. and in the petition it was made clear… it was about the movie little miss sunshine.

at that point i just had to start laughing. so there is this guy sitting in an airplane and all he sees are those couple of minutes of the movie, where the little girl does her strip. not only did he miss the whole story and what led to this exact part of the movie, but he has the audacity to request a petition without obviously watching the movie. to have a problem with this absolutely darling movie (i watched it in bethesda in a theater that was filled with people across all ages, from 5 to 90 and everybody just loved it) is just ridiculous.