Ideas & Rants

You are currently browsing the archive for the Ideas & Rants category.

Polanski’s Arrest is Disappointing.

September 27, 2009 in Art, Ideas & Rants | 3 comments

Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski

The news this morning that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office had presented an arrest warrant to Swiss Authorities four days ago, in advance of the director’s appearance at the Zurich Film Festival is most disappointing. Does the D.A. in Los Angeles really think that this case is worth extradition?

Considering the long history of embarrassments and failures this office has in its past, it seems this is a case that has taken on a prideful significance long since abandoned of any claim for justice. Mr. Polanski has lived since his flight in 1978 in exile from the United States, and has long-since settled with the victim. Indeed, the victim has taken a position in Mr. Polanski’s defense and publicly asked that the charges be dropped.

I’ll make no claims to total impartiality. I’m a huge fan of Mr. Polanski’s work. In my opinion he is one of the most important film directors of the post-WWII era still living. But I will say, I don’t believe Roman Polanski’s stature as a director is what makes this case such a joke. The efforts of Los Angeles County to save face would be just as ridiculous if the target of their warrant were a person of little notoriety. Perhaps the taxpayers of California would like to know the cost of extradition, trial and incarceration before they let the face-seeking District Attorney proceed.

And while they are at it, they could try to convince the rest of us that L.A.’s streets are safe and they have no more pressing matters to address than a 30+ year old case against a high profile eccentric.

I ask you to consider sending the District Attorney in Los Angeles your thoughts. They can be reached by email at webmail@da.lacounty.gov.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags: ,

How Jeff Bezos took on Orwell and Lost

July 21, 2009 in Books, Current Events, Ideas & Rants, Technology, Writing | 1 comment

The recent news that Amazon had deleted digital copies of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles got me thinking today. It really goes to show that when a company like Amazon put so much into a device (which is really a pretty cool device) and think they can get away with redefining the landscape of reading, writing, publishing and ultimately, all the forms of business surrounding these activities, that they will ultimately meet Orwell. Bezos made such a ruckus about the Kindle being so much more than just a gadget. The Whispernet delivery and the access to Amazon make it a service as much as a gizmo, Bezos argued.

So, when purchased content suddenly becomes “unavailable” what we have is a Digital Age / DRM case of “Out-of-Print”. Which is kind of funny that Amazon would, for all their effort to make print digital, find that they too are subject to the rule of copyrights, and instead of people being angry at the Orwell folks, we’re all pissed at Amazon.

So, I’m just going to suggest that those Kindle owners who are feeling angry about this, remember that no matter what Jeff Bezos says in the sales pitch, you bought a gadget. Now, put it away and go to indiebound, locate a nice independent bookstore in your area or online and buy yourself a nice paperback. I assure you it will make you feel better.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags: , ,

Thoughts on Sherman Alexie’s criticism of eBooks

June 10, 2009 in Books, Current Events, Ideas & Rants, Technology, Writing, blind/visually impaired | 1 comment

While I was reading up on the news from this year’s BookExpo America, I was struck by the comments Sherman Alexie made about Amazon’s Kindle.

As I’ve written at some length about the Kindle, I thought I’d continue my exploration into the eBook controversy and consider some of these criticisms.

At one of the panels, Sherman Alexie was asked about the Kindle and he stated that he thought they were elitist, priced far beyond the means of poor kids, and went further to state that he saw a woman on his plane while flying to New York who was reading a Kindle, and he wanted to hit her.

I really hate this kind of stuff. It reminds me of a time in the 1980’s when I went to see Hunter S. Thompson speak at the Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado. I had, in my teens, been quite a fan of Thompson and his insanity, so I was very excited to go and see him speak. I tell you that I lost all respect and interest in the man there and then. He showed up over an hour late, ranted and raved incoherently for a few minutes, then took some questions which resulted in him throwing a glass and taking some verbal shots at a “lesbian” in the audience and leaving. It was, in a word, disappointing.

For some reason, I get a similar feeling when I read Sherman Alexie say stupid things about people reading Kindles. Not only does it miss the point entirely, it causes us to question him more than the point he was making, namely, technology.

As a technologist, I firmly believe that technology has to be tested. Part of the test is of course done by the people who develop the technology, but the real test comes later, after a market for the technology has been established. Alexie makes a very good point about the difficulty poor kids face in a world of expensive electronic reading devices. I’ve been researching the role of Libraries in the so-called “conversion to digital“ books, and it is very clear that if devices replace printed books, the role of libraries will change dramatically, and possibly in many less-then-favorable ways. I for one have no interest in seeing libraries unable to provide a full range of titles because they are in some way limited by restrictive Intellectual Property laws from distributing digital copies. I also believe strongly that writers must have the ability to benefit financially from their work. These positions are not at all balanced in the current structure of copyright law primarily because digital books, like MP3 files are uncontrollable in the same way that printed books and CD’s are controllable. Similarly, I see no value in any process which seeks to divide rich from poor, especially when it comes to access to books. One of the greatest achievements in modern society is the concept of the public library. I visit my own local library on a near daily basis, and I believe they are one of the most valuable and vital institutions mankind has devised. It is also arguable though, that the library of the future will take a more important role in distributing materials evenly and expanding the access of the general public, rich and poor, to books as well as to computers and technologies.

Do eBooks challenge the Library? Perhaps.

Mr. Alexie: Do Kindles make poor kids less likely to get at good books? Do they really add such a weight to the current social imbalance? Do you seriously think that expressing anger towards people who own them is a productive way to counter the technology?

One of the primary reasons why I took an interest in the Kindle stemmed from my work with blind/visually impaired students. I strongly believe that eBooks are key to making content more accessible. The answer is in the formats and the availability of texts in the mainstream (meaning that a blind person need not have a separate means for getting a book than a sighted person). Now, whether reading for school or pleasure, a blind student needs to add 5-6 weeks of advance time to get books. Many of these books have to be manually scanned, and then are delivered to the reader in some far from suitable proprietary digital format. Consider if a student could simply buy the book in a digital format and have a device which performed text-to-speech or was readable on a refreshable braille display? For these people, the ability to rely on the same mainstream formats as the rest of the world is huge.

I wish I could present Mr. Alexie with a similarly compelling argument in regards to socioeconomic inequalities. I cannot. A middle class person (when there was such a creature) who digests 25-50 titles a year would find that owning a Kindle was in fact economically beneficial. Consider that most hardcover, front-list titles retail for $24.99 or more and retail on the Kindle for $9.99, this presents a $15 dollar savings to the consumer. Save that on 25 titles and you’ve just reduced the cost of your investment by $375. As the 6-inch Kindle sells for $359, it’s a pretty economically sound purchase. (A new company from the UK called Interead has just gotten into the market with a device called Cool-er which is around $250 and more are sure to follow.)

Funny how two writers whose work I have been amazed by, Sherman Alexie and Mark Helprin would sacrifice themselves so on the altar of negative press. These are two of America’s finest living writers, and their opinions should matter. Alexie posted a response on his website which reads: ”Even as I’m being insulted by hundreds of strangers, I am grateful that the Internet literary world is a bit abuzz with discussions about the negative and positive aspects of eBooks.“ Again, I state that I support Alexie and will continue to do so regardless of the bad press surrounding this incident. He is a writer who brings insight and important questions to our world from a valuable perspective and a valuable place. I’m not quite so willing to say nice things about Mark Helprin because I happen to think his ideas go too far, but I will state that he is a remarkable writer, and his insights too matter very much.

My conclusion: eBook readers are in my opinion not the ultimate answer. Many of my reasons for saying this mirror Mr. Alexie’s criticisms. They cost too much. One interest is in control: Amazon. And I’d add: The device is limited by its exclusive link to Amazon content. It is far too much an interface to Amazon’s service. The real shift is going to come when Intellectual Property Laws (US and International) have matured to deal with digital content, and the devices are built commercially agnostic. No one business interest can represent the reading public, and any device which limits us that much is doomed to fail. And printed books, while they may become more expensive, will never disappear. They are too cherished, too much a part of us to be cast aside completely.

In the meantime, I continue to research and get opinions about the impact of digital content on libraries, and hope to post something worthy in the coming weeks. Comments are most welcome here.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags: , , , ,

“I really loved your book! Would you sign my Kindle?”

June 8, 2009 in Amusement, Books, Current Events, Ideas & Rants, Kids & Parents, Music, Technology, Thought for the Day, Writing, administrativa | 3 comments

OK. I’m a self-professed digital enthusiast. I’m a technology teacher and consultant. You’d think I would place myself firmly in the camp of digital over analog. MP3 over vinyl. Photoshop over the darkroom. Kindle over books.

Preposterous.

And yet… in a practical sense, I do listen to digital music, not records (in fact, I haven’t owned a turntable for years, and my old records have been gathering copious amounts of dust). I use a digital camera almost exclusively now. And I own a Kindle.

Back in the mid-1990’s I was happily working at one of the larger independent bookstores in the country and reading voraciously. There were no digital book readers. The half-millennial continuum of writing and printing remained intact. We in the book trade (even those of us with a strong interest in technology) were happily oblivious to the coming shift in the industry that would come from online retail and digital readers.

Now, that continuum is showing signs of stress. It is not broken, but it is suddenly becoming clear that the path has taken a new direction. Publishing is not the same. Book-selling is not the same. Books themselves are not the same.

What is a book?

If you had asked me this question in 1995 I would have had no trouble answering the question with confidence. A book is a physical object which serves as a container for written or graphical works. It is a collection of pages (arranged in signatures), bound along one edge between two protective covers. As physical objects, not all books are equal. Some are hard bound with nice thick pages. Others are cheap paperbacks with a very uniform, standardized feel. There are as many varieties of book in a physical sense as there are written books in a textual sense.

While I was working at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, I got great pleasure from attending book signings. Nothing thrilled me more than spending $25 (a considerable sum from my meager bookstore earnings) on a brand new hardcover and standing in line to have the author sign the book for me. In fact, as I worked there, I often got to meet some of these writers in the employee break-room or smoking area. And so I have a nice collection of signed firsts from such luminous characters as William Gibson, Kurt Vonnegut and Peter Matthiessen.

In these days of Amazon Kindles and Sony Readers, I’ve been trying very hard to keep up with the flood of thought on publishing, but lets face it, the Internet is far too vast to allow anyone to “keep up”. Some interesting posts include:

Follow the Reader: The Outer Limits of Publishing
A Newbie’s Guide to Book Publishing: More on the Amazon Kindle (author JA Konrath’s fascinating discussion of the economics of self-publishing on Kindle)
Kindle Notes And Highlights Now Accessible On the Web
Michael Hart, the inventor of eBooks, says the Kindle won’t go
Screenwriter of Complex Ideas Experiments With Kindle
and this favorite Got a Kindle, but miss that booky smell? This spray is for you

(These are just a couple of the more interesting posts I’ve stumbled upon in the last couple days)

Suddenly is seems that technology has propelled us forward into a highly convenient but awkward period in the history of books. Considering all the buzz surrounding these devices as technical accomplishments, and our relative inability to make any sense out of the legal foundations for the publishing industry, we should reasonably expect a very chaotic and fun period ahead. Already we have factions forming: The EFF, Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, Cory Doctorow, and others against a faction of reactionaries and nostalgics exemplified by Mark Helprin (see his May 2007 NYT Op-Ed), businesses (publishers, mostly, who cannot rightfully be called reactionary or nostalgic because they represent the commercial traditions of publishing as it has progressed for 500 years.) I don’t want to go over the ancient battles between RIAA and Napster, but all this is now part of the on-going discussion about publishing, Intellectual Property rights, and, ultimately, the ability for creative people to make a living off the IP they create as well as the ability for that creative work to sustain the consuming public and the publishing & retail industries which funnel these items into us.

Honestly, I’m not much of an oracle, but I do feel that the business model is faced with a vast army of tech-wise adversaries who have more and more tools at their disposal for rendering content, and that there is no way for the publishers to win. It just isn’t possible. They’d have to spend too much money fighting against a waterfall of free technologies designed to undo DRM and copy-protection. At least, this has been my way of seeing things for the last decade.

But now I’m coming to a new way of seeing things. Not only is it technically and financially unreasonable for the established business model (the publishers, and their advocacy groups like RIAA and MPAA) to control the digital content as they wish, it is suddenly becoming possible for creative producers and artists do more without publishers. It’s small, and it does rely on a delivery platform like Amazon.com (and believe me, they are a big business when it comes to working with little individuals) but still, they are there and a person can easily offer a title for publication there and expect to generate some income. The better and smarter the writer, the more they can generate.

But here’s the rub: Amazon. I can’t say I want to see all the established publishing houses go the way of the Dodo to see Amazon.com become the new face of publishing. As altruistic as JA Konrath’s blog on self-publishing sounds to us little people, to Jeff Bezos and Amazon, it sounds like a resounding advertisement for their business model. Sony have a far less capable device in my opinion, but their content model (especially the connection to Google Books) is advantageous.

What do we do now? Bezos declared “This isn’t a device, it’s a service.” when he was hyping the first Kindle. The device (that sleek white thing you paid $400 for) is basically nothing more than a very cool Welcome mat that beckons you into the cool stream of Amazon-only content. (I know, this is not entirely fair, because there are ways to have Amazon convert content to Kindle format for you at no cost.) But try self-publishing your novel for Kindle and not making it available via Amazon. Hmmm. Now I need an eCommerce system, a way to convert my novel from text to .azw Kindle format, and a way to make such a book relevant to a market where it doesn’t exist (no downloads via Whispernet, no “Folks who bought this also bought”, no Amazon at all. In the world of online marketing, Amazon are in the Pantheon, and it is not because of the things they say about themselves and the products they sell, it’s all a part of the mechanics of how they sell.

So here’s how I get the most out of my Kindle. First, I don’t use it all the time. Rather than purchasing some aerosol canister of book scent to spray and give me that whiff of physical authenticity, I still get books from my local library (I get lots, in fact). I have several interesting newer titles that I’ve purchased from Amazon which are always available and loaded on my Kindle. These I also access from the Kindle App in my iPhone (because nothing kills me more than having to wait an hour at a Doctor or Dentist office or waiting while I get my car serviced and not having anything interesting to read. I can tap right into my Kindle books from the device or my iPhone. I really like that.

Then, I load my Kindle up with tons of stuff from Project Gutenberg. I like to read to my kids, and so I have tons of classic Children’s books loaded on the device. Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Grimm’s, Lewis Carroll, Edith Nesbitt (who is a real find), L. Frank Baum and J.M. Barrie. I have loads of books — everything from Thucydides to Poul Anderson. In all honesty, nothing says “Happy Geek” like reading Frederich Schiller’s (complete) History of the Thirty Years War as a free eText on your eBook reader. In fact, all these titles are available from Gutenberg as mobi formatted downloads (mobi is a DRM free format that is a precursor to Amazon’s .azw format and fully supported on the Kindle. The only mild inconvenience is that I have to download the content to my computer and then plug the Kindle in via USB to copy the new content. But, with a nice SD card, the Kindle can accomadate a ton of books, and I load a GB of free mobi books on mine just to ensure I never run out of good reading. I still have ample room for Amazon purchases.

I have no regrets about buying a Kindle: I am still a proud card-carrying Library patron, and I’m pleased to now say that I think Project Gutenberg is not just a good idea (which it has always been), but a great place to get reading material. I hate reading off computer screens any more than I have to, and the Kindle is a great electronic approximation of the printed page.

Now all we need to figure out is how we can get authors to autograph our electronic books.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags: , , , ,

Is the faltering economy making it hard for you to stalk your favorite celebrity? Try Twitter!

March 27, 2009 in Amusement, Ideas & Rants | No comments

Let’s face it, who can afford it anymore to stalk top celebrities? You think it costs nothing to get into Brad and Angelina’s kitchen? To follow Paris and Miley to each and every port of call? Most of us can hardly afford our monthly star map budgets these days. So what is a celebutard-craving wanna-be stalker to do?

The answer: Twitter.

From Shaq, to Ashton and Demi, P Diddy, Ellen Degeneres, even Lance Armstrong; they’re all there. And the cool thing is, with Twitter, you can follow them all at the same time, for free.

I joined Twitter a year or so ago, and found it was mainly a useful tool to communicate the occasional short, odd thought to a select group of fellow knuckleheads who happened to take an interest in such things (namely, little old me). I amassed a modest following of 18-20, and committed myself to keeping up with about the same number. There was always something reciprocal about it; you follow me, and I’ll follow you.

There’s a service called Twitalyzer where you can enter a twit’s name and get some ranking information. I just entered mine, indigitis, and find that I have an Influence score of 0.1 (what they deem, “just emerging” as if I were suddenly going to explode in some volcanic act of relevance), a Signal-to-Noise ratio of 12.5% (considered low), a Generosity rating of 0.0% (”very, very, very low” thank you very much for coming up with a euphimism for none-at-all), a Velocity score of 1.1% (again, “very very low” and decreasing, but surprisingly high for a person who sits as much as I do), and finally, a Clout rating of 0.1% (still, “very, very low” and apparently unchanged for some time).

I ought to feel very bad. Very bad indeed.

So, let me now compare myself to Ashton Kutcher. Ashton is a very famous person, married to Demi Moore, who does some not completely unwatchable commercials for Nikon Camera, and played the character Kelso on That 70’s Show. You know who he is. Ashton is known as aplusk on Twitter. Here are his Twitalyzer rankings…

Influence: 76.3 (”astonishing”)
Signal: 100% (”astonishingly high”)
Generosity: 6.3% (”very low”, but lets face it, fame isn’t about being liberal in giving or sharing.)
Velocity: 4.3% (”very, very low” but what, 4 or 5 times my own?)
Clout: 100% (you guessed it, “astonishingly high”)

So what really makes Ashton so much more influential than me on Twitter?

It’s very simple: he has 532,000+ followers. I currently have 18 (I would have 22 but I blocked a few because they looked like they were getting ready to target me in a sinister multi-level marketing scheme, or they provided no profile information except some dubious web address with the word “viagra” featured in the domain name… not the kind of riff-raff I’m looking to have read my precious tweets.

I’ll leave poor Mr. Kutcher alone.

In fact, I conducted a bit of an experiment. I decided to follow a number of so-called “Celebrities” for a while, just to see what I could learn.

Here are some of the luminaries I’ve been following (in no particular order):

Ashton Kutcher (and for a week or two I followed Demi Moore just so I could make sense of some of Ashton’s tweets)
Eddie Izzard
Al Yankovic
David Lynch
Tina Fey
John Cleese
Stephen Fry
Lance Armstrong
Al Gore

Only one of the people on this list have I met personally, in a social situation (if almost running over a person on the Hana Highway could be construed as a social situation. A story I’ll tell some other time). None of the above have reciprocated to follow me. Also, I must say to the credit of most of the people I’ve chosen to name here, they have, for the most part, not been that bad to follow. The truly offensive and pointless celebrity twits I followed are not being named here. In my opinion, Tina Fey is the ultimate Twitceleb. She posts about 5-8 times a year, and her posts are invariably scintillating.

Alright so here we are getting to the ultimate point of this post. Why on earth would a person want to be one of half a million people listening in to the frequent, mostly incoherent, at times completely stupid >140 character ramblings of a person who you don’t know except from their over-produced music, TV sitcom, or what-have-you? And why would anyone want to participate in such a circus?

Here are my thoughts on being a happy twit.

1. Limit the number of people you follow who do not follow you in return. I assure you you’ll spend more time communicating and engaging with interesting people than reading stupid unimportant crap nobody cares about. Also, most people set their account to only accept direct messages from the people they follow, so if Martha Stewart’s not following you, she’ll not get your giddy, 140 character compressed recipe for coq au vin that you frantically thumbed into your Blackberry.

2. If you do decide to follow someone because you like the character they played on Bones, make sure to remember that you can drop them at any time. Just because you are following Al Gore on Twitter doesn’t mean you have to credit him with starting the Internet or that the ozone layer over West Texas will suddenly collapse if you decide you’ve got better things to read.

3. Get as much mileage out of Twitter as you can. I have my Facebook page set to automatically update my status from my tweets. Find a good iPhone or Blackberry interface so you can pollute the twitterverse with the occasional random observation. You are far less likely to post interesting tweets while sitting at home watching Law and Order than you are when you are standing in line at the grocery store or otherwise engaged in the real world. Seriously, someone I was following recently attempted to post a synopsis to an hour long episode of Stargate in tweets. It took 6 or 7 consecutive tweets, none of which made any sense and all of which were painful like bad dentistry to read. Find a suitable description somewhere on the Net, or write your heart out on your blog, get a tinyURL, and in one elegant coup de pouce you can spare your followers the rush to remove you from their following list.

4. Stay the hell away from sites like Twitalyzer if you find it hard to accept that you are not as popular as P Diddy or Lance Armstrong. Be happy with 15-20 knuckleheads following you. Look at the bright side of things. Half a million people are not reading your tweets, and this is a good thing. If you don’t believe me, follow a celebrity for a while. You’ll see. They generally adhere to the same crap-to-interest ratio as everyone else. (I’m going to quote Britney Spears‘ profile: “Yes! This is the real Britney Spears! We’ve got updates from her team, her website and yes, even Britney herself!” Does this make you imagine a minivan-load of Britney’s personal assistant’s all struggling to update her twitter page? How many junior high graduates does this “team” consist of? Is Britney Spears real or just a character from a Firesign Theater routine run haywire?)

5. Finally, use Twitter as a supplement to RSS. A simple Twitter iPhone or Blackberry app is all it takes to keep up on breaking news, just by following the NYTimes, GuardianTech, Boing Boing, or even your local TV affiliate or newspaper. You can and should also follow individual journalists and bloggers who you find valuable. In my experience, these people follow good etiquette on Twitter and post links to new blog items or stories and generally don’t go too crazy posting personal items. This is a broad category of sources to follow. I follow several newspapers (like RSS some of the larger papers break up their Twitter accounts into logical divisions. I Follow the New York Times Books as well as their Obituaries), journals, publishers, journalists, blogs, and one or two non-profits, like the EFF. Heck, I even follow a few of my favorite writers and thinkers, less with an interest in getting a glimpse of their personal life than to keep up with their blogs. Case in point, I’ve been following Neil Gaiman, and through his tweets I learned that Public Radio International featured Jane Curtin reading one of his stories on a recent podcast, Selected Shorts.

If Twitter is not a useful, lightweight way to stay connected to the people, ideas and information you find useful, get off. You’ll be far happier and more productive. If you have heard about Twitter (every major newspaper you can think of has run a story on it at least once a week for the last 3 months), think about what you want to get out of it before you get lost following people with hundreds of thousands of followers. There’s a great deal more to Twitter than following celebrities.

NOTE: I would like very much to acknowledge that I appreciate Leo Laporte’s position on the use of the term Twit, and while I have liberally peppered this blog entry with abuses of the name, I do tip the hat to Leo, This Week in Tech and the Twit Network. None of my raving is in any way related to them. In fact, Leo himself recently contributed his two cents in a good LATimes article which is certainly worth reading.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags: ,

A better calendar for the Blind

May 3, 2008 in Ideas & Rants, Kids & Parents, Teaching, blind/visually impaired | 1 comment

For a couple of years now, I have been teaching technology to the blind. (In fact, I have been teaching technology for about ten years, at College-prep/secondary and college level). I have found working with the blind to be one of the most amazing and rewarding endeavors, not only for the opportunity it affords me to work with an often overlooked group of exceptionally bright and talented people, but because they can teach me so much about how all people utilize technology. As a technology educator, I am always amazed at how narrow many people’s vision of educational technology can be. Case in point, the prevalence of PowerPoint as a cornerstone of secondary technology integration.

So, to the story… my student Jeremy, who is blind and a great computer user came to me the other day with a seemingly easy request: help him find a good calendar program. Jeremy is a whiz with e-mail, podcasts, and his screen reader JAWS. We tried Sunbird but found it suffered the same limitations with JAWS that Firefox does. We tried calendars specifically for the blind, but those too didn’t offer the flexibility that Jeremy wanted. So, we turned to a less conventional solution. Jeremy is not yet using this, but I am, and I am extremely excited about the potential.

First, I’m using Sandy, which is a very neat web-based calendar and reminder service. I’ve been using Sandy for a few weeks and I absolutely love her. She sends me a simple e-mail digest of my calendar and to-do list each morning which helps me start the day. I can set it up to have Sandy send me SMS text message reminders, e-mail reminders or no reminders at all. It is possible to SMS appointments from my phone to Sandy, post them from the web, or send them from an e-mail. I can create groupings, just like in any calendar and add items to the group simply by appending “@group” to the end of my messages to Sandy.

Now, many of the features I just mentioned are not of much interest to a blind person, as SMS text messaging is not particularly blind-accessible, and getting a million e-mail reminders can be more trouble than it’s worth. Generally, it is a nice feature to have on occasion, but if used all the time, it is a total nuisance. However, the ability to manage a complex calendar from a simple voice interface (i.e. a cell phone) and receive daily a clean text e-mail digest of your daily obligations, is truly something most blind people would find amazing.

So, now we add Jott to the formula. Jott is a very good voice to text service available on the web. Like Sandy it is completely free, but requires registration. Using Jott, I can call an 800-number from my cell phone. A pleasant automated voice asks me “Who do you want to Jott?” Depending on who I have added in my list of contacts, I can simply say: “Myself” or “Twitter” or a person’s name, and the voice will then ask me to record my message. I’ve just completed a Jott to Twitter (which can be found in my Twitter thread to the right) which went like this:

ME: Dial Jott on my cell phone. (I can’t remember the actual number, I programmed it into my phone).

JOTT: Who do you want to Jott?

ME: Twitter

JOTT: Twitter, is this correct?

ME: Yes

JOTT: (Beep — indicating it is time for me to start talking)

ME: Test Jott for a blind student.

JOTT: Got it!

Jott will now ask me to either hang up or Jott someone else.

Jott is a great way to generate text from a cell phone. In fact, much of this posting was done from my cell phone while I was walking from my office to my car this afternoon. When I got home, I merely re-fashioned the text I found in my e-mail inbox and pasted it into my blog.

So, here’s where Sandy and Jott come together. Set up and account on each. Make sure you fill out the requisite information in both so Jott knows your cell phone number, your e-mail address and the personalized e-mail address to which you send Sandy stuff (Sandy will provide you this e-mail address once you have completed your registration). Once you have both accounts set up, spend a few minutes learning Sandy. Sandy uses a specific shorthand system which is not at all difficult to use or understand, but it might require a blind person to sit down with someone and practice a few things to get the hand of it.

So. Once both accounts are activated, simply rely on the cell phone. Call Jott, when asked who you wish to Jott, say, “Sandy” then when you hear the beep say your business (Reminder meeting with Leland Thursday afternoon at 1pm) and lo-and-behold, Thursday morning, an e-mail will arrive in your inbox with a digest of your daily calendar telling you that you have a meeting at 1pm with your computer teacher Leland.

In all honesty, this is a rare kind of combination, which offers blind users (as well as technology teachers and pretty much any other busy person on the planet) the opportunity to use a simple tool (i.e. their cell phone) to manage a great deal of their text communications, calendar management and scheduling, as well as general productivity. Blind or not, the opportunity to speak a few notes into your phone to help you get a start on that paper, presentation or important blog posting all from the comfort of your bus-seat on the way home is truly remarkable. Also, Jott is very accurate. Not as accurate as a fully trained set up with Dragon Naturally Speaking, but for a phone-based system it is exceptional. When in doubt, spell it out. Jott, understandably has trouble with names and URL’s and other things like that, so say them, then spell them out. Speak as clearly as possible, and enjoy!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Shamed by Colorado House Rep. Douglas Bruce

April 22, 2008 in Current Events, Ideas & Rants | No comments

This morning I was appalled to read the story in the Colorado Springs Gazette about Colorado House Rep. Douglas Bruce. If Colorado had any political dignity, it would remove Rep. Bruce from public office and put him in a cage. No publicly elected official should be allowed to keep their job after referring to our State’s migrant workers as “illiterate peasants”. Period.

Below is an email I sent to Rep. Bruce this morning:

Dear Mr. Bruce:

Not only do you fail as a representative, you fail as a citizen. We can only hope that your days in government in this state will soon be over.

Leland Buck
Colorado Springs, CO

Mr. Bruce’s e-mail is taxcutter@email.msn.com. Just because Mr. Bruce prides himself as an über-Republican tax-cutter, doesn’t mean he’s beyond the reach of the voters and taxpayers. I beseech the public, from all corners of the globe to let this enormous, obtuse ass know how distasteful his views are and how unacceptable and unsavory his conduct is. Again, friends, please, write to the man, editorialize in the press and in blogs, pray the man steps in front of a bus… do something. Do not let stupidity like this inhabit our government.

While I have made every effort not to be political in my blogging, I have decided that all platforms are necessary to express disapproval and combat the threat that this man’s imbecility presents to the State of Colorado.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Software for Word Lovers

April 21, 2008 in Ideas & Rants, Language | No comments

I’ve been listening to Charles Hodgson’s excellent podcast Podictionary for several months now and it has me wondering what software is out there for word lovers. For years, I have written down words with citations (where I came across it, and a sample of its usage) and I have thousands of bits of information, but I don’t have a tool suitable for getting at the information. I have been thinking (as I am primarily a Mac user) that I should find a way to create dictionary files for use with Apple’s Dictionary application. However, Apple seem to be rather disinterested in letting people create custom dictionaries. So, I’ve done a bit of hacking and even built a demo Cocoa application. I am not at all impressed so far with what I’ve created. As soon as I think I have the requisite fields, I realize that I’m missing something rather major.

The obsession with words predates my first reading of Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray And the Oxford English Dictionary, but I believe it was from reading that great book that I began actually keeping information about words on little scraps of paper, in journals, or in bulging digital text files.

I welcome suggestions and input. Any word-lovers out there using tools, please comment here.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags: ,

I’m such a Twit — Thanks to Twitter

April 21, 2008 in Ideas & Rants | No comments

I can’t believe I have finally succumbed to the allure of Twitter.

What exactly is the “allure of Twitter”?

Interesting question. I would say, Twitter is one of the most meaningless and useless of social networking tools. Therein lies its allure. There is nothing like feeling compelled to text message updates from your phone so other people (really, like how many are there actually keeping up with what I do? Two or three people?) can keep up with me in my mundane journey through life? Awesome!

So, I’m a Twit, thanks to Twitter.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis

Tags:

Internet Addiction

April 3, 2008 in Ideas & Rants | No comments

Here’s an interesting concept: too much time online is now a psychiatric disorder? Well, it isn’t yet listed in the DSM-V, but Oregon-based psychiatrist Jerald J. Block, M.D. writes in a recent editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry, “Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V.”

As a computer scientist, I’ll run with this one, and let it take me to the inevitable criticisms of the good head doctor. The Internet is the largest communication system mankind has ever engineered. It is the ultimate tool for the expression and transmission of ideas, feelings, information, and education. It can be extremely private, very direct; it can be asynchronous or real-time; it can be amazingly public, occasionally anonymous. It has turned most methods of conducting business, of selling music, books, of broadcasting and the arts totally outward toward the people who create ideas and those who consume the ideas. It makes middlemen who profit off others nervous. In short, it is the modern medium of culture. As one who thinks most psychiatry is a bunch of gas, I will say that I find the irony of Dr. Block’s position most amusing. Next, communication in general will be seen as a clinical illness and treated with pharmaceuticals.

I won’t attack Dr. Block for thinking about the consequences of too much time spent aimlessly wandering the nether regions of cyberspace. I won’t deny that productivity declines when e-mail and other systems are used as a distraction. Neither will I reject the reality that the Internet is indeed a largely perilous and sleezy domain. The contribution of the Internet to porn addiction is in my opinion undeniable. I wouldn’t dare say that Dr. Block may not have patients who are experiencing some issues which involve the Internet in some capacity. Still, proclamations like this one ring very loudly in my ears and make me wonder if the quantum leap forward in human communication that is the Internet could really be just the makings of a clinical psychiatric disorder? In my opinion, Dr. Block needs to expand his practice; spend more time giving kids Ritalin and spend less time pondering the ills of the Net. If the amount of time people spend at an activity is the determining factor, let’s not forget our old friends: television, books, taking walks and sleeping. I think most people spend a considerable amount of time sleeping, does that make it a disorder? As a technology educator, I will say that misguided, even aimless Internet use is more a job for education not one for pseudoscience. If people are misguided, give them guidance, don’t diagnose them with some meaningless disorder. There are many common disorders that merit inclusion in DSM-V. Ultimately, I hope, we will conclude that the practice of psychiatry is among them.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • TwitThis