Have you seen this service? It’s pretty neat; a dynamic, graphically rich presentation tool. However, this isn’t your average PowerPoint emulator. It doesn’t use slides at all; instead, the entire presentation is always displayed, and the user determines where the audience’s focus is through zooming and panning.

It’s some pretty interesting stuff. Check out the demo video.

The biggest drawback is that it’s a pay service. Well, it’s a pay service if you want all of the features… if you don’t mind the Prezi logo, size limitations, and not having the desktop version of the program, you can use their free version.

However, if you want a totally free version of essentially the same service, take a look at the infinite canvas. This was originally designed by Scott McCloud to be the next big thing in comics (which can be seen from the first few examples). In addition to comics, the infinite canvas has also been used as a presentation tool, which, like Prezi, doesn’t use slides and lets the user control the audience’s attention through zooming and panning.

Plus, with infinite canvas, your presentation becomes available for the whole world to see. And isn’t that the point of the Internet in the first place?

I recently moved to a new house… same town, same zip code… only about 7 blocks from my old house, really. But the house is much larger than my old one, and I’ve now got two roommates, one of which is quite knowledgeable about web programming, networks, and computers, in general.

So why is this worth writing about? Because I now get to bask in the glory of the home network my roommate set up in the house.

It’s fantastic: we have 3 desktop computers (with probably a combined 2 or 3 TB of storage) connected to the wireless router. I can now access anything on anyone’s computer (usually video content) via my laptop downstairs.

I know this isn’t really new technology or anything. And I think it was fairly easy to set up. I think all my roommate did was hook the computers to the router (which was going to happen anyway), played around with a few sharing/privacy settings, and started connecting wirelessly from his laptop.

It’s become a huge convenience for me, in addition to remotely accessing content. I can download large files on my laptop, and quickly and easily dump them on my desktop without having to use an external drive as an intermediary.

And oh yeah, my tech-savvy roommate (let’s call him “Micah”) also took an old FireWire external drive of mine that had burned up ports and installed it in my desktop, giving me an extra 200 GB that was, for a while, inaccessible. So in turn, I’ve been able to free up a lot of space on my laptop and my other two external drives.

So in summation… tech-savvy roommates = good. Go get one.

Oh and by the way, he’s also a cool dude to hang out with, as well.

There’s an internal debate raging inside me: Google’s efforts to digitize the whole of world’s printed texts.

At face value, it seems like it could be a good idea: all of the world’s texts available to anyone, anywhere. And as I originally wrote this post, it consisted largely of praise for e-documents, especially the portability and searchability of e-documents.

On portability: For my thesis, I’m currently reading two volumes of a three volume set of books that discuss nearly every aspect of virtual worlds. They probably weigh 10-12 pounds a piece. Wouldn’t it be great to have these books on my hard drive, or in the cloud somewhere, easily accessible by all?

On searchability: Google has made me virtually addicted to search… first it was just web pages… then I could search images… then I didn’t even have to search my inbox; I could just perform a Google search and find the message I want. And now, as graduate school progresses, and I write, read, and research more and more, I find myself yearning for the ability to simply perform a Google search of a book (mostly when I’m looking for a fact I know to be true and only need a citation).

But when you look beyond the superficial benefits of electronic books and start to think about a for-profit company having that much of the world’s knowledge, it’s a little disconcerting.

It’s not so much the copyright issue that I’m too worried about. Since all of the writing that I’ve done (and am likely to do in the future), is academic in nature and, therefore, not quite geared toward profits, I think my opinion on the digitizing of all texts and putting them out there for all is biased.

If it weren’t for Google being the one in charge of it all, I’d be completely on board. But as much as I love Google’s web services, that’s just too much knowledge (and therefore, power) to be concentrated in the hands of any one person or group, be they for profit or not.

However, I do think it would be neat if publishing companies gave you a free e-copy of the book you buy (kind of like they do with DVDs and digital downloads). It might be a hassle to implement since there are so many different formats (pdf, lit format, Kindle compatible, etc.), but it would be cool to have both the hard copy of a book and a digital version, as well.

So I haven’t really posted here a whole lot this summer. It’s been a fairly busy summer, what with working, starting research on my thesis, and traveling, to name a few of the things I’ve been to up to lately (not that I’m making excuses or anything). A few months back, I wrote a post here about my general disappointment with the state of broadband in this country and how I’ve heard great things about broadband in other countries, South Korea and the Netherlands in particular.

Well, I had the pleasure and great fortune of going to the Netherlands last month to study Dutch comics for my graduate program. And as I promised in my post from a couple months ago, I did some informal investigation into the state of broadband in the Netherlands.

Long story short: it’s cheap, fast, and EVERYWHERE!!

Every time I searched the area for local Wi-Fi networks, there were always about ten to fifteen that showed up (compare that to the three to six networks that show up when I perform a network search at home). While there were many networks to choose from, tragically, they were all secure. I don’t know why I was expecting free, open Wi-Fi networks everywhere… doesn’t really make sense if you think about it.

Although there are plenty of secure networks, many are free to join at cafes and restaurants. Plus, the Amsterdam Public Library offers free Internet to any and all travelers that register.

And on my statement that the broadband in the Netherlands is cheap: I saw many advertisements for broadband for 15 Euros per month (which is around $20). Yowza, that’s cheap… at least compared to the $35 to 45 per month in my area.

Probably the most surprising place that I found free Wi-Fi during my travels wasn’t even in the Netherlands; it was in the Dayton International Airport. I’ve never been to an airport that offers free Wi-Fi to all its patrons (you usually have to pay about $8 per day or something equally outrageous).

So if you’ve never been to the Netherlands, you can now add “plentiful Internet” to the list of reasons why you should go, right next to beautiful architecture, friendly people, delicious food, wooden shoes, etc., etc.

A couple weeks ago, Microsoft’s new search, Bing, went live, replacing Live Search. Now, I’m an ardent Googler (who isn’t in this day and age?). I especially love my Gmail, Google Trends, and of course Search. But I’m always down to try out someone’s attempt at a semantic search, so I’ve been playing around with Bing since it went live, and I figured I’d share my thoughts with you here.

When compared against Google, I think Bing actually brings some things to the table from which Google could learn. At the same time, though, there are still some things that Google is doing better than Bing.

Probably the best thing about Bing is that they always have their related searches right there for you at the top to click on. With Google, they’re at the very bottom. Now I know, it’s still all on the same page, but it’s something like 1% of Google searches extend beyond the first page, so it serves to reason that not many people even scroll to the bottom of the page. +1 for Bing.

The exact opposite is also true. There are some very basic questions that you can ask Google, and it will give you a straightforward answer at the very top of the page. If Bing is able to answer the question, it puts the answer at the bottom. +1 for Google.

It’s all tied up.

Bing also allows you to preview everything, including images, websites, and videos. Not so for Google. +1 for Bing.

Google automatically remembers me. Bing forces me to sign in each visit. +1 for Google.
I really like how Bing will divide up results into different categories. Instead of just presenting them as different media, like Google does (as does Bing), if I search for “Beastie Boys,” for example, it will automatically divide up everything into lyrics, biography, ringtones, downloads, etc. Google just has those generic options: videos, forums, reviews (that don’t display automatically and don’t change with each search). +1 for Bing.

Finally, I like Bing because it’s not Google. As much as I love Google, sometimes the paranoid, Big-Brother-is-watching-you side of me thinks, “Wow! Google sure knows a lot about me and preferences.” That can be a good thing: the more they know about me, the better search results I can get; plus Google can compare my searches against my Inbox and deliver even better results. But sometimes, I want to scatter my electronic footprints, and spread out my i-activity between different services and accounts. So +1 for Bing for simply not being Google.

So the final score is 4-2 Bing. Sadly, though, I will likely continue to do the bulk of my searching with Google. Why? Because Safari won’t let me change my search engine from Google to anything else. Oh, well. But give Bing a try while your browser is still open. You might like it.

Well, summer’s finally here. You know what that means: beautiful sunny days; crippling allergies, and decreased media usage. Throughout the school year (or at least for this most recent semester), I was probably on my computer for 10 hours out of the day (keep in mind that I was doing a research immersion last semester, so it was more like an office environment than a class environment). But now that summer’s here, I can give the laptop and my inboxes a rest, and go enjoy the outside world.

Bicycling, walks, mowing the lawn… I can’t wait. And since I don’t have a portable media player, these will be largely media free activities (which is good, because whenever I think about being constantly engaged with media, I think of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Lullaby”).

This year, my summer job will allow me to largely preserve my media habits. Until I found a 40 hr/wk job, I was thinking that I might have to cancel my cable subscription (the Internet would not be going anywhere). Now that I have a decent job, no need. However, the job I have will keep me outside and away from my computer and other media, so the time I spend on my media habits will greatly decrease.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m going to the Netherlands in July. I’m very excited to see how the Internet is perceived there since the Netherlands is one of the most connected countries in the world. It’s interesting that I’ll be charged $1.29/min to use my cell phone, but if I can find free Wi-Fi (which I’ve heard isn’t too difficult), I’ll be able to talk to my girlfriend via Skype for absolutely nothing.

Oh, how I love the communication options given to us by technology.

How is Facebook able to keep up with itself? As more and more news stories come out about Facebook’s user statistics, this is a question that is really beginning to perplex me.

In February, Facebook released their numbers saying they had 175 million users. Not too shabby, I thought. Read the article a little more and you find out that Facebook is ADDING 5 million new users each week.

Wow, I thought. That’s borderline amazing. Reading even more of the article, you learn there are 850 million photos and 8 million videos uploaded EVERYDAY. Now, that’s just downright obscene.

And then, less than two months later, Facebook announced that its 200 millionth user signed up. If Facebook were a country, they’d be between Brazil (#5) and Indonesia (#4) on the list of the world’s most populous countries.

So I started thinking, with all of these users, photos, and videos, how? How is Facebook able to do all of this?

Just to get some perspective on all of this, let’s do some quick math: Facebook has a size limit of 4 megabytes for the photos uploaded to the site. Let’s assume that all 850 million photos loaded each day are right in the middle at 2 MB. So… 850 million photos of 2 MB each is roughly 1.7 billion MB, which equals about 1600 terabytes or 1.6 petabytes.
1.6 petabytes?!? Per day!!?!

I read an article from about a year that said Facebook used about 10,000 servers – some in California, some in Virginia. Now, I’m not a computer-whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but does that seem low?

I know the figure is a year old, so let’s assume Facebook has doubled the amount of servers they have… are 20,000 servers or even 30,000 servers capable of handling 1.6 petabytes of new info a day? And keep in mind this is only photos.

If we use the same math with the photos and assume that every video uploaded is half of the allowed capacity, the videos uploaded every day would be another 3.7 petabytes. For a total of 5.3 petabytes per day.

That’s 5.3 petabytes today. Up to 10.6 petabytes tomorrow. 15.9 petabytes the day after that. Then 21.2 PB… 26.5… 31.8… and on and on to the nth day. Oh yeah, and there’s the 5.3 PB yesterday. And the 5.3 PB the day before that…

And remember these were conservative estimates of half the allowed file size.

Not to mention the strain put on the servers by the 100 million users that log on each and every day (but I won’t mention them).

So now you can see why I’m perplexed. Can anyone out there shed some light on this mystery?

I don’t listen to a whole lot of radio. If I’m at home, I’ll generally listen to music on my computer or on vinyl (kind of polar opposites, I guess…). The only time I ever listen to the radio regularly is in my car, and 90% of the time, it’s NPR.

I’ve never been a huge Podcaster, either. Since I pretty much only listen to NPR, and since they’re always playing SO MUCH interesting content, I’ve never had the need to dive into the digital archives; I can just turn on the radio now and here something worth listening to.
But for some reason, over the weekend, I really had a hankering to listen to “Car Talk.” I’m not even a very mechanically inclined person, I just listening to the hosts (Click and Clack, the Tappit Bros.) bicker back and forth, and they’re good at making anyone understand what they’re talking about (I highly recommend this show). Anyway, like I said, I had a hankering to listen to “Car Talk,” but the Sunday re-broadcast wasn’t going to be on until later when I was at a family dinner.

So I thought, why not listen to a Podcast? And I did. And it was great!

I’m not about to start subscribing to Podcasts, but it was insanely convenient (and probably even more so, if I were to just have them automatically download to my computer). I can definitely understand why people subscribe to them religiously, and I probably would subscribe, too, if I had an iPod.

And you know what? All of this talking about different Podcasts is making me curious about what’s available through iTunes…

I think I’m going to cut this off now, and start browsing the libraries. Maybe I’ll revisit Podcasts in another post in the not too distant future, and let you know what I’ve found.

As the economic crisis looms over us, Americans are looking for cheap methods of entertainment. America’s greatest past-time, consumer spending, just isn’t cutting it anymore – how can you engage in America’s most popular activity if you’ve been laid off or all of your money is going to pay off a mortgage that is too expensive to begin with?

Prices at the mall have gone up (assuming there isn’t a going-out-of-business sale).

Forget about going to an amusement park.

Even the price of movie tickets is on the rise.

So where can the masses go for entertainment now that the economic world is crumbling around us? (How do you like the melodrama, by the way?)

Answer: the Internet!!

The Internet is a [fairly] cheap and easy form of entertainment. There are tons of free videos (courtesy of YouTube, Hulu, and the likes). All your friends are there already (thanks to MySpace and Facebook). Plus, there’s the not-so-new, but recently glamorized Twitter, that has taken America by storm – from “Good Morning America” to “Ellen,” everybody is talking about twitting and tweeting. Even Stephen Colbert has admitted to twa… Nevermind, I won’t go there.

But cliché references to pseudo-current events aside, the point I’m trying to make here is that I think with people cutting back on entertainment spending (since that’s generally one of the first things to go), usage of the Internet (especially streaming video and social networking) will rise significantly because of the economic downturn.

I read a few months ago that people are increasingly viewing a high-speed Internet connection as more of a necessary utility (like water or electric) and less as a frivolous expenditure. So it serves to reason that use will increase over the coming months.

But this will, admittedly, be hard to measure since usage of the Internet has pretty much been increasing unabated since the mid-1990s.

I also wouldn’t be surprised to see an increase in usage of Second Life, World of Warcraft, or any other of the massively multiplayer online games (although having to pay $15/month probably won’t help WoW in the near future).

But who knows? I just read that online ad spending is going to decrease by nearly 10% in 2009, which would suggest otherwise to what I just wrote. So I probably won’t be getting a job at an ad agency any time soon. We’ll just have to sit back and see what happens…

I recently purchased Spore for my computer. I’m normally not much of a gamer, especially computer games, but I had heard so many great things about it that I thought why not?

When I got it fully installed, though, I started running into a few problems, namely, EA’s and SecuROM’s extensive digital rights management software. If you’ve tried playing Spore (or other titles by EA), you’ve maybe run into SecuROM’s overarching DRM. In fact, I believe SecuROM goes beyond simple DRM and enters the realm of DRF: Digital Rights Fascism.

Why do I use such hyperbole?

Well, I’m not so sure it’s hyperbole really. When I first installed Spore, it started giving me hell even before I was able to enter a registration code.

Did you get that? The game had already told me I used up all of my registrations with my current code BEFORE I had the chance to enter in a registration code. Apparently, Spore (along with other EA titles) installs SecuROM’s uber-DRM on your computer without really telling you (although it’s probably buried in the T&C somewhere). The real problem comes when you try to re-install: it doesn’t re-install SecuROM; it remains hidden on your computer for you to find on your own.

So, to find out how to rectify this, I turned to the world’s repository of all knowledge: Google. My many Google searches turned up something that probably shouldn’t have surprised me: tons of people all of the world were having problems of some sort with SecuROM and Spore’s DRM. And the problems were prevalent regardless of Windows or Mac.

EA’s official website was no help either – their final solution to all of this was to turn off programs running in the background to free up some CPU power. How was freeing up a few megs of RAM going to fix SecuROM’s registration problems? Your guess is as good as mine.

SecuROM’s official website was a little more promising. They have a special program for Windows that automatically finds and removes the offending SecuROM files. So at least they acknowledge that their DRM is shoddy. But again, another problem: there isn’t an equivalent program for Mac.

So, back to Google. I eventually found out how to manually remove the SecuROM DRM from my computer from YouTube of all places. Once I did that, I was able to register my game and get down to playing!!

And by the way, Spore is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of any of the Sim titles.