Credit card usage is slowing. Revolving credit largely made up of credit card debt fell by nearly 20% in November, the largest drop on record, according to the Federal Reserve, reflecting less borrowing by consumers and banks' tighter lending standards. Through October, the number of new credit card accounts was down 46% from the same period in 2008, according to Equifax.

But abandoning credit cards is a much more radical step than using them less. Consumers who don't own a credit card often have a hard time renting a car. Some hotels won't book rooms to travelers who want to pay with a debit card or cash. Those that accept debit cards may place a hold on several hundred dollars in the customer's bank account, which could cause checks to bounce. And many consumer experts say that responsible use of credit cards is one of the most effective ways to build a good credit record.

It will be interesting to see what the long term implications of this will be, because I sense a lot of people now run with the baseline perception that banks and credit card companies exist only to screw their customers.

The web is becoming more dynamic, context-aware and personalized by the day, and the amount of information consumed by each person is increasing exponentially. But while hardware performance is improving, except when it comes to the simplest of parallel programming tasks, software infrastructure is not keeping pace. We need to develop new data processing architectures ones that go beyond technologies like memcached, MapReduce, NoSQL, etc.

Think of this as a search problem. Traditionally, there was an index of every document in which every word occurred. When a query was received the search engine could just look up the precomputed answer to which documents had which word. For a personalized search, an exponentially larger index is needed that includes not only factual data (words in a document, brand of cameras, etc.) but also taste and preference data (people who like this camera tend to live in cities, be under 40, love Napoleon Dynamite, etc.).

Unfortunately, personalizing along 100 taste dimensions leads to nearly as many permutations of recommendation rankings as there are atoms in the universe! Obviously there isn't enough space to precompute what recommendations to show every possible type of person that queries a site. Additionally, precomputing the answer to queries is too slow. People expect real-time results, not hours- or days-old precomputed answers. If I tell Amazon I don't like a book, I want to immediately see that reflected in my recommendations.

We're at a turning point in how we need to build web sites to handle these sorts of personalization problems. While first-generation distributed systems split the application into three tiers web servers, application servers and databases second-generation systems build large non-real-time back-end clusters to analyze huge amounts of sales data, index billions of web documents etc.

A third generation of systems is now emerging, with the computation shifting from those back-end clusters into front-end real-time clusters. After all, you just can't build a back end that precomputes personalized results for millions of Internet users. You have to compute it in real time.

Adding complexity, many personalization problems are more difficult to parallelize than a lot of traditional back-end applications. Indexing the words in web pages is actually a lot easier to parallelize than are the long sequence of matrix calculations required to optimize a user's recommendations.

Matrix calculations tend to involve complicated data access patterns that mean it's hard to partition calculations and their data across a cluster of computers. Instead there tends to be a lot of sharing among many different computers, each of which holds a piece of the problem and updates the others as data changes. This back-and-forth data sharing is both incredibly hard to keep track of for the programmer, and can significantly degrade application performance.

The systems we've built at Hunch to solve this started off using distributed caching with memcached but very quickly veered into something more akin to distributed shared memory (DSM) systems, complete with multiple levels of caching, coherency protocols with application-specific consistency guarantees and data replication for performance. With an abundance of processing cores at our disposal, the real challenges tended to revolve around getting the right data to the right core.

I think that in a few years we'll look back at this time as an era in which a slew of new large-scale programming challenges and their solutions were born. Hopefully we'll also see more open-source solutions along the lines of memcached and Hadoop, so that building personalized and real-time web applications is easy for everyone.

Tom Pinckney is the co-founder & VP of engineering of Hunch.com.

Related GigaOM Pro content:

• What's Next for the Cloud? Distributed Architectures
• Infrastructure Winners and Losers of 2009

If you don't like the prices in Apple's iBook Store, just use Amazon's Kindle app on the iPad.

No 3G? No contracts? (Might be saving this for last/later.)

I'm looking on the photos of this thing and there doesn't seem to be a camera, video or otherwise.

The iPad appears to be a device that you use sitting down. Can you type on it while holding it standing up?

Ok, there's 3G. $15/mo for 250 MB of data. $30/mo for "unlimited".

iPad is unlocked. International SIM cards "will just work".

Price: $500. Boom. That's for the low-end model with no 3G.

Ooh, keyboard dock. If they could outfit that with a hinge and some sort of latching device, I wonder what that kind of thing would look like? (Will the keyboard work with the iPhone -- er, iPad nano -- as well?)

Will there be an iBook Reader/Store app for the iPhone?

Oh, from earlier: Jobs repositioned Apple as a "mobile devices company".

Right at the end, Jobs showed a street sign marking the intersection of "Technology" and "Liberal Arts". I guess that means that kottke.org is now in direct competition with Apple, Inc. YOU'RE GOING DOWN, STEVE!

Kurt Anderson:

Watching AAPL's share price live: the moment Jobs announced the iPad's base price ($499), Apple's market cap increased by $5 billion.

The iPad page is up on Apple's web site. Nothing on the store yet.

• Aldiko: outstanding e-book reader (better than Kindle on the iPhone in terms of feature set; obviously the book store is not quite as good, but the integration with free eBook download sites is a plus). Currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow.
• Amazon: search the full Amazon catalog (can use barcodes or photos in addition to typing or speaking your query), track orders in my account.
• APNDroid: useful if you want to disable your phone's cellular data connection (useful if you're often on WiFi and want to turn off your EDGE or 3G data connection)
• AppReferer: builds a QR code (a 2D barcode) that makes recommending an app to another Android user in person a one-click affair.
• Battery Graph: shows a nice chart (exportable, even) of battery usage, which is helpful if you're trying to isolate when the battery started to drain.
• Coin Flip: silly app that lets me flip a coin. Use it mostly to settle disputes between the kids. :)
• Congress: built by Sunlight Labs, a phenomenal "pocket Congressional directory" that includes contact info, committee memberships, news, and YouTube vids of every Senator and Representative.
• DroidLive Lite: Streaming radio (via Shoutcast) from 1300 radio stations around the world.
• Facebook: news feed, photos and profile info for friends
• Fandango: Order movie tickets from movie theaters so I can bypass lines at the ticket counter.
• Finance: Google Finance app
• Flashlight: turns screen bright white to use in dark rooms
• Foursquare: app for playing Foursquare, also has a nice widget for my home screen
• Gmote: turns my Nexus One into a touchpad remote (when paired with a computer running the Gmote server software). Handy for giving presentations, or just doing something nerdy and cool.
• Google Goggles: search Google by taking pictures.
• Google Sky Map: the one app that consistently blows people away. Load it up, turn your camera toward the night sky and you'll get a real-time view of which stars, constellations and planets are above you. An awesome accompaniment to a telescope.
• Jewels: Bejeweled-like game.
• Layar: Augmented reality app that displays info on screen in realtime through your phone's camera.
• Locale: very sophisticated app for scripting events to happen based on certain triggers. (When I'm at home, disable the data connection and connect to my home wifi access point. At 11pm, turn off the sound and put the phone to sleep; at 6am turn the sound back up; when I'm at work, put the phone in vibrate mode; etc.)
• Metal detector: actually works.
• Movies (aka Flixster): Lots of info/trailers/reviews about new and upcoming movies, also integrates with Netflix for DVDs
• My Tracks: built by some Googlers, great app for keeping track of runs/bikes/ski runs you've done; captures altitude, distance, etc., then uploads to Google Maps My Maps.
• OpenTable: make restaurant reservations from the phone.
• Owner: adds my contact info to the unlock screen ("If found, please contact Rick Klau...")
• Pandora: streaming music channels.
• PapiJump: great little game using the phone's accelerometer.
• Pintail: monitors your phone's SMS messages for a message that says "locate" (plus a PIN); once received, activates the GPS and replies with the phone's location. Helpful if you've got a lost phone.
• Robo Defense: addicitve game.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores of your favorite teams, with realtime updates and notifications as score changes.
• Seesmic: Great Twitter app.
• Shop Savvy: grab a barcode, find out who sells it and for how much.
• TiVo Remote: works with any TiVo HD unit over WiFi.
• TripIt: phenomenal itinerary manager for all travel info.
• Voice Recorder: does exactly what it says it does.
• Yelp: Local reviews.

While I'm riding this photo wave I thought I would throw out a post for the coders in the house. I am an unabashed supporter tow things RSS and Flickr. When they are both put together they make a magnificent pair.

To demonstrate why they are such a great pair together I put together a bit of code that can make working with Flickr photos a breeze. It is the same code that I wrote that made its way into the self-hosted life streaming software SweetCron.

It is written in PHP but those that do real coding for a living can take a look at it and get the concept pretty quick. With that being said, I will make even easier by pointing out that due to a good naming convention that Flickr uses to organize photos by size it is possible to access all of them quickly without using the full tokenized API. Which, btw, requires more pings to get the same data the feeds offer.

We'll use the PHP function simplexml_load_file to get access to the photo goodness that is resting in the feed. The RSS feeds from Flickr are in a standard format so the code below will work with any of them. However, it won't work for the Atom feeds. I'm sure you could get crazy and figure out an Atom hack if you wanted. Good luck.

Here's how it can be done with PHP and a Flickr user feed:

$feed = simplexml_load_file("URL_to_Flickr_Feed");

// Check to see if the response was loaded, else print an error
if ($feed) {
$results = '';

// If the response was loaded, parse it and build links
foreach($feed->channel->item as $item) {
$media = $item->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/');

// Photo Thumbnail
$sPhoto = $media->thumbnail->attributes();
$url = (string) $sPhoto['url'];
$width = (string) $sPhoto['width'];
$height = (string) $sPhoto['height'];
//

// Photo Medium (500 px wide standard)
$mphoto = substr($sPhoto, 0, -5);
$mphoto = $mphoto . "m.jpg";

// Photo Large (original size)
$lPhoto = $media->content->attributes();
$lurl = (string) $lPhoto['url'];
$lwidth = (string) $lPhoto['width'];
$lheight = (string) $lPhoto['height'];
$lphoto = substr($lPhoto, 0, -5);
$lphoto = $lphoto . "o.jpg";
//

echo $sPhoto; // thumbnail url
echo $mphoto; // medium size url
echo $lphoto; // large size url

}
} else {
echo "Broken Feed";
}

Hopefully this will give someone a jump start in how to transfer large images quickly, say between a photo journalist and an editor half a world away without having to make any other tools than a special XML feed from the Flickr feed. Literally for the $24.95 yearly fee to use Flickr Pro it could be used as a global syndication system.

In the right hands this way of working with Flickr feeds could yield great hacks for devices like the Chumby. Take it one step further for use in digital picture frames as playlists that can be embedded or run from memory cards. I'm just saying these are possibilities.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

PHP simplexml_load_file for Photos is a post from: TechStartups.com

Scott and I got married to one another on Saturday, September 26th. It was an amazing day and while the weather wasn't quite as warm as I would have liked, the rain held off until just after we finished cleaning up. The food our friends and family brought to share was delicious, the cakes that I made were perfect and people had a really good time.

One of our goals with this wedding was to keep the ceremony portion short, as we were asking people to stand for it. So we kept our vows brief, funny and to the point. Here's what we said to each other.

Marisa, to Scott

For the years that we were nothing more than friends, I swore up and down to anyone who would listen that you were not the man for me. It wasn't until you started dating someone else that I realized how deeply I adored you (despite the fact that you didn't have a driver's license and that you are undeniably a picky eater). Now, I can't imagine my life without you.

Scott, I am delighted to be marrying you today, and I vow to you to love you for the rest of my life, even when you're painfully stubborn, when you turn up your nose at my sauted string beans or when you fling your dirty socks across the room. I promise to support your dreams and will never stop encouraging you to write those novels we all know are in you. I promise to respect your Star Trek cards, weekly D & D dates and general geekery, and appreciate your similar courtesy for my jars, cookbooks and sundry kitchen implements.

Scott, I vow to give you the quiet time you need and to be the one in our relationship who deals with the minutia of daily living. I solemnly swear that I'll never stop laughing, even if things get momentarily grim. And most of all, I vow to always embrace your whimsy, your humor and all your wacky charms.

You are my person, my favorite boy and I love you with all I've got.

Scott, to Marisa

If you asked me 10 years ago, or even 3 years ago, if I would be getting married to a hippie, at a potluck wedding officiated by a lesbian I would have laughed at you. And yet, here we are and words can't express how happy I am. Funny how life works, isn't it?

Marisa, you and I are complete opposites in many ways. I'm tall, you're short. I hardly know what day of the week it is, you're always on top of the details. I'm funny and you're well maybe we can move on.

Marisa, I vow to do as I am told most of the time. I promise to not make your life any more difficult than I normally do. I promise to talk you through moments of panic and anxiety with a smile and love in my heart. I vow to at least try and express my feelings more than fortnightly, and above all else I promise to be your partner in all of life's adventures and misfortunes.

You are the love of my life, the reason I wake up in the morning, the spring in my step, and I can't imagine life without you.

Getting started with the site is quite easy, because Outright has recently partnered with a number of financial services: you can import invoices from Freshbooks, receipts from Shoeboxed, your PayPal transaction history, as well as your credit card transactions through a deal with Expensify, which supports 94% of US credit cards. You only have to do this once once you've linked your account, they'll keep automatically updating until you unlink them.

Once you're done with the initial setup, everything on Outright is fairly self-explanatory (which is sort of the idea). The home screen presents you with a chart pitting your costs against your income to give you an at-a-glance look at your business's health. At the top of the screen you'll see tabs for Income, Expenses, Taxes, and Reports, where you can hone in on the transactions you're looking for. Transactions are automatically sorted into different categories (for example, the site knows that your airline's tickets belong under the Travel' category), and you can also generate reports on a per-customer basis, which would be helpful for eBay sellers. Beyond that the application helps with taxes by offering reminders when a deadline is coming up and an estimated amount that you'll have to pay.

Outright isn't as robust as some other financial services out there, but if you're looking to keep things simple it's certainly worth a look. The company was formerly called GoBoostrap.com, but changed its name in conjunction with news of its $2 million funding in February.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Neale S. Godfrey, author of the book Money Doesn't Grow On Trees, writes: "Kids don't get it if you don't talk about." Mr. Godfrey is talking to people like me, and if I don't start listening, I'm going to have a big problem on my hands. My four year old daughter is a born shopper. And, as the Co-Founder of a company fighting everyday to bring sensible saving back into the public consciousness after decades of absence, I often worry that I enable her in the very habits I'm encouraging SmartyPig customers to break.

Like most couples these days, my wife, Sara, and I have been engaging in serious discussions regarding money. How we spend money. How we save money. How we use credit. We are pretty normal in that these conversations, while productive, aren't all that much fun. That said, we force ourselves to sit down and talk about money and we are pretty diligent about maintaining healthy attitudes about spending and saving. But when it comes to how we use money with regard to our daughter, all common sense flies out the window.

Our daughter has a piggy bank. And while it's our pocket change that goes into it, she understands the value of what we put in it and that she is rewarded when it fills up. We also require that she perform simple tasks around the house for which, when a series of days are filled in as "complete," she gets a reward. If she plays her cards right, does as she's told, and is patient, she usually ends up with a "treat" every few weeks or so. Problem is she never stops wanting or asking for the most trivial things, and we end up like this episode of Dr. Phil - indulging her whims, rather than being responsible parents who model fiscal fitness.

I tell my wife, "It has to stop." Then I tell her again the next time and the next. But I'm just as guilty as she is. From my perspective, these little treats are almost immediately disregarded and considered "junk." If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. Our unplanned spending on small gifts for our daughter has gotten totally out of control. But it's easier to just go with it than to say no. Who doesn't want a smile and the baby blues? But what are we doing to her as a result? What kind of habits are we teaching her? Every other aspect of her life is meticulously dissected. We are completely focused on turning this healthy, intelligent, productive kid into a healthy, intelligent, productive adult. Why can't we be the same when it comes to teaching her about money?

A recent issue of Better Homes & Gardens offered us three easy tips to begin the process of taking control:

1. Don't Forget Who's In Charge - Marketing machine or not - and good God if there isn't a Disney princess on everything! - You can say "no."
2. Talk About Spending Decisions - Don't lie and say, "I can't afford it." Explain priorities - even to four-year-olds.
3. Hand Some Over - Give your kids the power. Let them make the transaction. Let them see the difference between need and want.

So, can Sara and I do this? Do we need a chart that we make an "X" on every day we don't wimp out and take the easy road? From time to time, I'm going to let you know how it's going. And, of course, time will tell. We at SmartyPig are spending a lot of time these days discussing money and children and families. And while I pride myself on being a good listener, this is one conversation I'd really like to begin truly contributing to.

And I'd like you all to contribute as well. I'd love any tips you might have or anecdotes about your successes or failures in teaching your kids smart savings habits, just send them here jgaskell(at)smartypig(dot)com. We may even feature your ideas or stories on our blog. Thanks!

From the "Social Marker" blog post:

When I visit San Francisco I am always surprised how often the name of my friend, Robert Scoble comes up in random conversation, unprompted by myself. Why is that? Why is he so well known? Is his blog REALLY that good? Is he REALLY that smart and interesting?

Well, I could give a whole stack of reasons to explain why I think Robert's success is well-deserved. But one major reason that his blog's traffic is so high, and his name so well-known, is that his personal brand has somehow managed to become a Social Marker inside the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The same could also be said for Mike Arrington, Loic Le Meur or Mark Zuckerberg. Dropping their names into random conversations allows people to quickly and efficiently contextualize themselves.[Thanks to @scobleizer and @arrington etc.]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

Disney to offer films on microSD cards, consumers to pass on by originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Inspired by the look of the personal web page of interface designer Tim Van Damme, the team over at Harkness Labs set out to build a service where people can easily add their online profiles, pick a theme and create a good-looking online mini business card of their own in just a couple of minutes. Having lots of experience with quickly setting up and launching light-weight Web services (check out the CrunchBase profile for the company's founder Daniel Blake for a list of other projects), it didn't take them too long to come up with a good enough concept.

After a month or so of coding, Card.ly is now live. I love it (here's mine), and I'm going to send the link to a bunch of my friends. It's a bit more limited in scope than Chi.mp (our coverage) and a different approach from Unhub (our coverage), but I doubt there's an easier way to create custom social hubs that look so damn good than Card.ly.

Once you add personal details and your various online profiles (nearly 50 are currently supported, from LinkedIn to Yelp and our own CrunchBase), you can pick a custom theme out of nearly 30 proposed designs - most of which are free, others are only available with premium accounts - and automatically have your online business card published. It's hCard compliant and people can download a vCard from your personal Card.ly profile by clicking the recognizable icon under the title.

You can also embed widgets for your profile, which I have done at the top of this post. Finally, some themes support a Stream' tab, which basically doubles as a lifestreaming web application by pulling together all the activity from the profiles you added to your Card.ly account.

Card.ly is free when you're content with a limited choice of skins and RSS feeds, as well as couple of other restrictions, but there's a premium version that will set you back $24.99 a year. The paid account comes with more themes to choose from, unlimited RSS streams, and more goodies like advertisement-free cards. Not as cheap as I'd like it to be, but I paid for it just for the fact that I can link to my Google Analytics account and get advanced statistics on my personal card.

Your opinion?

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

(From my Marketing News column.)

There are two kinds of brands in the world. If you are a marketer, you know what I mean. There are brands people like to talk about, and brands they don't.

Brands of the first kind the brands that marketing thinker Rohit Bhargava calls talkable are uncommon. Apple's iPhone is a talkable brand. So is Harley-Davidson. If you market a talkable brand, you have the luxury of tapping into customers who love you, but you'll have to be careful those customers have already decided what the brand stands for, and woe unto you if you go against their wishes.

Brands that people don't like to talk about I'll call them boring brands are everywhere. If, like most marketers, you market a boring brand, then you're really earning your living as a marketer. That's because you are trying to get people interested in something they don't really care about.

I've been analyzing social strategies for both kinds of brands, and they form an interesting contrast.

Let's start with the talkable brands. In a recent survey [Forrester report "The Social Tools Consumers Want From Their Favorite Brands"], we asked online consumers whether they'd like to interact with various forms of social application with their favorite brands. Forty-two percent said they would, but the types of interactions they preferred were varied. About one in four consumers would interact with these brands in a discussion forum, one in five would watch videos, and one in six would be interested in connecting with them through a social network profile, like a Facebook page. Only 12% want to read a blog about the brand, which reinforced the earlier research we'd done, showing that blogs are the least trusted form of communication between companies and customers.

What does this mean for the marketer? It means connecting with those enthusiasts is going to be more than a full-time job. First, examine the applications they've already set up on their own their discussion forums, their blogs, their own videos and social network groups. Figure out what you want to join up with, and what you want to create. And you'll have to create multiple applications, because as this research shows, your customers don't agree with each other about where they'd prefer to connect with you.

As a result, you'll probably have make sure they all to those social network profiles, communities, and videos connect with one another, and with the sites your fans already have. We recently worked with a B2B company that faces this exact problem its customers use its products, love them, and have already set up user groups online. The good news: whatever the company does, it will have active participation. The challenge is not messing up the relationships already percolating in the existing user group.

The boring brands have different problem, but social applications can help them, too. [Forrester Report: "Social Technology Strategies for 'Boring' Consumer Brands".] The key with boring brands is to get people talking about their problems, since they won't talk about your brand. In advertising, you can force messages on people watching other things. In a social context, this fails miserably.

Applications that talk about customers problems create borrowed relevance, since you generate talk they care about, then make yourself a part of it. American Express (credit cards are boring, face it) created the Members' Project, a contest to choose deserving charities, since it realized that charity would generate more passion than credit cards. And in perhaps the most dramatic example, Procter & Gamble knew girls wouldn't talk about tampons, but would talk about music, cliques, and school, so it created beinggirl.com as a vehicle to deliver (very quietly) the occasional feminine care products message.

Borrowed relevance is a versatile strategy. Liberty Mutual (in another boring category, insurance) wrapped itself in relevance by creating The Responsibility Project, a community about moral decisions. Johnson & Johnson built a Facebook page for mothers of ADHD kids because, as with all medications, its ADHD drug is boring but its sufferers generate interesting problems. Doritos invited its customers to make ads in the 2007 Superbowl, since an ad contest is more exciting and more social than a corn chip.

Regardless of whether your brand is talkable or boring, as you launch these social applications, you'll generate something very valuable people who care about your brand, or at least the problems it solves. I've begun to ask brand marketers a question: who are your most engaged customers? I don't want an answer like women 25 to 34 with at least one child. I want an answer like Emily DiBernardo, she lives in Kansas and she just can't stop talking about us. With social applications, you'll find Emily.

If your brand is talkable, your social efforts will surface the brand enthusiasts who have the most influence. If it's boring, your social applications will help you find your rare but valuable brand enthusiasts, or even generate a few. Pay attention to these people. Because as advertising clutter rises and word of mouth becomes more important, they're about to become some of your most important corporate assets.

Sony was supposed to win this. The company made magnetic tape out of like paper and mud back in the 1940s, turned out a "pocketable" transistor radio in the 1950s, and invented the "portable" television by 1960. They had their first video tape recorder by 1963. They weren't the only ones, but they were among the first and best.

The so-called VTR business had a rocky start. The things were hulking bastards, with huge price tags and poor recording capability.

A company called Ampex put out the first "home entertainment" VTR in 1963, only it cost $30,000 in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, and was nicknamed Grant's Tomb because the product manager who thought it up was going to be shoved inside by the company's accountants. (He would have fit, too, the thing was so big.) Sony comes along in the middle of that decade and puts out a $1,200 "portable" VTR that came with a leatherette case and its own TV. It still weighed 65 pounds.

The worst part about these 1960s VTRs was that they were basically reel-to-reelyou had to thread your own 1-inch videotape through spools and stuff, and by the end of the decade, a one-hour spool of tape was like 8 inches in diameter. Can you imagine your TiVo needing 180 spools of videotape to get the job done?

As Sony toiled on the videotape problem, Matsushitawho we now call Panasonicand its independent subsidiary JVC weren't really standing out in the VTR business. Let's say this: Nobody would have guessed they'd be able to overthrow Sony and kick mecha ass within the decade.

However, these guys were among the biggest manufacturers, dwarfing Sony many times over. Matsushita, known for efficiency, not innovation, tended to focus on big boring appliancesTVs, refrigerators, air conditionerswith a smaller team, branded Technics, devoted to dominating the hi-fi realm. JVC was all about TVs and audio gear, and had decent video know-how.

It was Sony who solved the reel-to-reel problem withta daaa!a video cassette. It was called U-Matic, and at 3/4" thick, it was smaller than the earlier formats, but still a bit of a chunkster. Since video was a bit of a Wild West, Sony felt like it needed partners to firmly establish a format, and to avoid a format war. It asked Matsushita and JVC, who said "yes" as long as Sony adopted some changes. They key here: The partnership included a deal where everybody shared all the patents. Turns out, probably not the smartest move by Sony.

Sony was right to form a posse, though. Every single electronics maker in Japan, Europe and America was trying to build a video recorder. Some American firms were obsessed with lasers (though ironically it would later be the Dutch and Japanese firms who actually put lasers to good use); other American firms were jazzed about microfilm...for video. None of them had success. Before we get on with the story, here's a list of totally failed video players and recorders:

Matsushita VX-100 and VX-2000
Matsushita AutoVision
Toshiba/Sanyo V-Cord
Ampex InstaVision
MCA DiscoVision/Magnavox Magnavision
CBS Electronic Video Recording
RCA HoloTape
Sears/Cartridge Television Cartrivision

See what I mean? A friggin' mess it was.

Part of the problem was the message. Nobody knew what the hell this was all about. Sony wasn't just a pioneer in the technology, they thought hard about how to explain why you totally desperately want something bad. At one point, Sony hired Bela Lugosi to dress up one last time as Dracula, and explain that, since he worked nights, he needed to catch up on primetime shows when he got home. Get it? Vampiresthey're out killing people when Barney Miller is playing! It was a good bit, and there were a lot more like it. Little by little, the public caught on to what VCRs were for.

Anyway, U-Matic, launched in 1971, wasn't a runaway success, either, but it was the bestselling video recorder to date, and the first successful VCR. In the realm of pro video, it was hot. Sony cashed in by steering from the home market to the businesses but JVC, who kept trying to pitch it for home use, got hosed. Like villains in some Shakespearean play, Matsushita and JVC kinda lurked in the background, planning for the next round when they might one-up that little charmer, Sony. The name of their plot? Video Home System, which you and I call VHS.

Sony was naive. Like, crazy naive. In 1974, it asked Matsushita and JVC to partner up again, this time on a fully baked format called Betamax. They weren't asking for intellectual collaboration, just a deal to make and sell the things. It was a nice system, with really small tapes, but the problem was, the tapes only recorded for an hour. Sony was like, "That's not a problem," but everyone else was like, "Yes, it is." The would-be partners dragged their heels suspiciously, not signing any deals. Sony kinda thought that was weird, but went ahead and launched the one-hour Betamax box in 1975.

Big mistake.

Not long after Sony went into wide release with the one-hour Betamax, JVC pulled a two-hour VHS out of its butt. And in time for Christmas 1976 no less. Sony had another flash of naivete when it pressed on with the one-hour system for a while, even though it had a two-hour system in the works. In that gap, JVC and its big poppa Matsushita scored sales and recognition.

Some people say Betamax was "better" but that depends on many factors, and could very well be an urban myth. The technologies were so close Sony's own chairman called VHS a copy of Betamax. What may have looked good in one system with certain settings might not look as good on another with different settings. And by some accounts, Betamax's more moving parts meant they were more expensive to manufacture and more costly to maintain and repair. It's not an open-and-shut case of quantity vs. quality. Either way you look at it, there are compromises.

By this point, it wasn't just some anything-goes contest with a million formats. By 1976, all those above had died or were dying. In Japan, there were just two choices. The Japanese government told everyone to sort it out. Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Sharp joined Team VHS, but didn't really move forward.

In February 1977, Sony grabbed Toshiba and Sanyo, and then signed the American powerhouse brand Zenith up for an order of Sony-made Betamaxes with the Zenith name on them. Was it going to happen for Betamax after all? Seemed like they'd finally drawn at least a few good cards from the deck.

Sony might not have been totally screwed at that moment, but there were two American powerhouses, and the other one, RCA, was undecided. Ironically, the fate of the Japanese VCR industry relied on how well it could handle the most American of sports: Football. In other words, now that both players could manage two hours of recording time, what RCA wanted was enough recording time to capture a gamethree hours would do.

What transpired next is unclear. Even though, at the time, both technologies were limited to two-hour capacity, Matsushita pledged to make RCA tape machines that could record for four hours.

Was this a lie? Was it vaporware? Whatever the deal, JVC engineers pulled off a four-hour capacity six weeks later, and RCA agreed to buy 55,000 machines that year, and up to a million more in the next three years. Better yet, RCA's SelectaVision VHS decks would cost $300 less than the two-hour Betamaxes, at $1000 a pop.

Although Betamax hung on for a bit longer, that, boys and girls, was the end of the competition. In 1979, Sony market share tilted downward, and by 1980, the jig was up for those poor bastards.

Note: I recognize that there are other issues that might have come into play here, including Universal's lawsuit of Sony, which lead to today's Supreme Court definition of fair-use copyright law, and the fact that some studios, including Warner, began squeezing movies onto videotape early, with varying degrees of success. However, I contend that none of that changed the outcomethe war above was fought between Sony and Matsushita, and Matsushita won.

SOURCES:
Fast Forward: Hollywood, The Japanese, and the VCR Wars - James Lardner (Special thanks to you, Jim, for chatting me through some of this)
Sony - John Nathan
The History of Television - Albert Abramson
Sony History - Sony Global Website
Made in Japan - Akio Morita
Quest for Prosperity - Konosuke Matsushita
[PDF] Case Report on Betamax - Verardi et al
"Why VHS was better than Betamax" - Guardian UK - Jack Schofield

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Extended care warranties, car rental insurance, trip cancellation protectionyou know they're just margin boosters for companies, but you can't shake that vulnerable feeling. Personal finance author Ramit Sethi says you need only look in your wallet.

Photo by TheTruthAbout.

Sethi, author of the I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog, and book of the same name, notes that most credit cards extend purchase warranties to one year automatically, on top of the 30- or 90-day standards included in the box. Car rental insurance is also included in most card policies, and even if the airline tries to stiff you for a "late cancellation," many credit issuers grant their users $1,000-$2,000 per year in trip cancellation paybacks.

Sethi details these perks and others in a recent CNBC appearance, along with a free book chapter and related posts linked below.

[YouTube Video]

What "secret" credit card perks have you discovered, accidentally or through fine print research? Share the hidden wealth in the comments.

Max Ray Butler, 36, faces up to 60 years in prison for the two felonies under law, but his actual sentence will be influenced by a number of factors, not least a plea agreement with federal prosecutors that was filed under seal Monday.

Wearing an ill-fitting orange jail uniform and round glasses, his hair cut short and neat, the six-foot-plus Butler towered over the burly deputy marshals that brought him into the court room. Once he settled into his seat, he spoke softly and evenly as he answered questions from the judge, frequently drawing admonishments to speak up for the benefit of the court reporter.

I actually did the actions that are relevant in the indictment, and I am guilty, Butler said, at one point.

Butler identified himself in court as Max Vision, the name he gave himself in the 1990s when he became a superstar in the computer security community. At that time Butler was billing himself out as a $100-an-hour computer security consultant, and he earned the respect of his peers for creating and curating an open source library of attack signatures used to detect computer intrusions.

But it turned out Butler was staging recreational hacks on the side, and in 2001 he was sent to federal prison for 18 months for launching a scripted attack that closed security holes on thousands on Pentagon systems, and left backdoors behind for his own use.

While in prison, Butler met more serious criminals, and he was befriended by a professional swindler named Jeffrey Norminton. After his release, Norminton introduced him to an Orange County, California entrepreneur and former bank robber named Chris Aragon.

Butler admitted Monday that he began hacking banks, merchants and other hackers to steal credit card numbers, then sold them to Aragon. Aragon, who's pending trial on related state charges in southern California, turned that stolen data into near-perfect counterfeit cards, complete with holograms, and recruited a crew of shoppers who used the cards to snap up designer merchandise for resale on eBay. Aragon earned at least $1 million in the business, police say.

Butler became a priority to federal law enforcement officials in 2006, when, under the handle Iceman, he staged a brazen takeover of the online carder forums where hackers and fraudsters buy and sell stolen data, fake IDs and specialized underground services.

He hacked into the forums, wiped out their databases, and absorbed their content and membership into his own site, called CardersMarket.

On one of the sites he hacked, called DarkMarket, Butler later discovered that an administrator named Master Splyntr was logging in from an FBI office in Pittsburgh. Butler partnered with a Canadian hacker to try and expose Master Splyntr as a fed, but his claim was largely dismissed in the underground as inter-forum rivalry. DarkMarket went on to become a full-blown undercover FBI operation, and the FBI and Secret Service began an investigation into Iceman.

(I wrote about Butler in the January issue of Wired. I'm now working on a book about him and the carder forums for Crown publishing).

Using informants and some genuine electronic gumshoe work, the feds identified Iceman as Butler about a year later, and arrested him in September 2007 at a corporate apartment he used as a hacking safe house.

When the feds seized Butler's hard drive, they found five terabytes of encrypted data on his harddrive, the government said Monday. They later cracked Butler's crypto, and discovered 1.8 million stolen credit card numbers belonging to 1,000 different banks. The banks tallied the fraudulent charges on the cards at $86.4 million.

But Butler's defense attorney told U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill Jr. Monday that Butler and his associates weren't' responsible for all of the fraudulent charges.

Butler, noted federal public defender, Michael Novara, frequently cracked the computers of other members of the underground, and stole their stuff. Some of the credit card numbers found on Butler's hard drive had been in the hands of cyber thieves before Butler began his hacking spree.

Max is kind of a hacker's hacker, said Novara. There was a lot of stuff on his computer that he was not responsible for, and did not intend to use.

I don't think I ever heard the expression, a hacker's hacker' before, said Judge Cohill, with a smile.

Sources say Butler's plea deal will also wrap up a separate federal case in Virginia, in which Butler is charged with staging the first documented spear phishing attack against employees of a financial institution, gaining access to the corporate network of Capitol One bank.

Butler was calm and attentive at Monday's proceeding, which opened with federal prosecutor Luke Dembosky crossing to the defense table to shake hands with the hacker, who smiled and nodded.

Through his attorney, Butler released a two-paragraph statement following his plea.

Max Vision, known in this case as Max Butler, pled guilty today as a first step toward getting this sad chapter of his life behind him. It is unfortunate that his life circumstances in 2005 led him to participate in this criminal conduct, and he very much regrets doing so, he wrote.

Max has always preferred using his extraordinary computer skills his computer vision for the good of society and the cyber world, and he hopes that he will be given the opportunity in the future to once again don the white hat.

Asked afterward what kind of sentence the government expects for Butler, Dembosky was vague with reporters. Suffice to say, it won't be probation.

See Also:

• Notorious Crime Forum DarkMarket Goes Dark
• Cybercrime Supersite DarkMarket' Was FBI Sting, Documents Confirm
• 56 Arrested in DarkMarket Sting, Says FBI
• One Hacker's Audacious Plan to Rule the Black Market in Stolen Credit Cards
• A White Hat' Goes to Jail

• Built-in cameras. The kids have had a ton of fun snapping pictures with the built-in cameras (there's both a user-facing camera as well as a camera that faces away from the user) and using the DSi's image editor to distort the pictures. (Nothing quite like a 7 year-old's face stretched to three times its normal width.)
  
• Wireless gameplay. There's actually three different ways for the DS to play wirelessly. Having seen it in operation with two kids, it's great.
• Certain games - like Brain Age, Mario Kart DS, both of which we have - give multiple players with a DS the ability to wirelessly download a companion version of the game and play together. (On the game boxes, this is called wireless multi-player download, details here.) This requires you to only own one game card, but multiple players can play.
• Other games support multi-card wireless play mean that if every player owns a copy of the game, they can connect to each other to play head-to-head. We haven't bought them the same game yet, so we haven't played with this version yet... now it's up to the boys to decide if they want to spend their gift cards and chore money on copies of the same game. :)
• Nintendo WiFi Connection. Yet other games can play head-to-head over the Internet. My nieces both have DS Lites; with copies of the same game (say, Mario Kart) the cousins can all play together over the net from 3,000 miles away. That's pretty darned cool.
• DSi Shop. If you connect the DSi to a broadband connection before October 5, you get free points to spend on free games from the DSi shop. The boys picked different games, and the quality isn't bad for free games. There's not much to pick from right now, but I'm sure there's more coming.

And no wonder. They're both the same sort of beastie: pockatable 720p HD cameras in an iPod-ish form factor, selling for about the same money.

(Yes, the Zi6 is about fifty bucks cheaper, but remember: that's without any memory. Toss in a 4 gig card and you're more or less square.)

With the holidays coming up, and the chance that Todd from Process Control will make as big an ass of himself at the breakroom holiday party as he did last year, lots of people want to know which of these Discreet Little Cameras to buy. Well, my uniform is proud to serve.

I took both cameras out for a jaunt or two and shot a bunch of clips in a variety of environments. Watch. Draw your own conclusions. And then read on and see if you're so absolutely brilliant that your conclusions are identical to mine.

Click on the fullscreen button to watch it at 1280720 resolutionjust keep in mind that this is nowhere near as good as the original video files.

Flip Mino HD vs. Kodak Zi6 from Andy Ihnatko on Vimeo.

Okay. Based solely on this footageit's a clear win for the Mino. I think it's obvious even in the Vimeo (which has been processed twice already). But here in iMovie, where I can see the original footage straight from the camerat's absolutely no contest. The Mino video is more agile, the colors are more accurate, and the lighting is more balanced. The Zi6 routinely produces over-saturated colors and doesn't appear to have enough bandwidth to record a full range of colors and tones. And low-light shooting is a bit of a mess.

Three full-sized frame grabs illustrate my point. These were taken straight from the original MP4 files. Click the thumbnail for the full 720p frame.

Pulling Out Into Traffic

Mino HD: Note the gray tones in the sky and the cream color of the sign. There's plenty of shadow detail inside the car, too.

Kodak Zi6. The sky and the sign are white, all of a sudden. And inside the car, shadows have turned to mud.

Outdoors, On A Tripod

Mino HD. Nice shot. Maybe it should be a tad brighter. But the lighting is natural and the colors are spot-on.

My shirt is purple, my skin is a little weird (even for me). I think the Zi6's designers told it "Humans like punchy contrast and saturated colors. Err accordingly."

Inside Panera Bread

Mino HD. Nice, bright image with (again) natural colors...not an easy trick, as we're inside a Panera Bread with its muted soup-oriented lighting.

Zi6. Boy, what a crummy at-bat. The wall should be avocado, not lime green. Any shadows have turned into grey mud. My sunglasses are no longer transparent, nor did the Zi6 capture any reflections off the lenses. And it shows that dim lighting is the Zi6's Waterloo. Its only solution in a situation like this is to extend the shutter speed and cut the frame rate in half. This clip was recorded at 15 frames per second instead of the Mino's 30, creating choppy, blurry footage.

Rainy Street Corner

Mino HD. Hmm. The sky is a bit purple. But otherwise...a nice shot. Check out the brick building on the corner. You can see the bricks on the outside and the details of the warm shop inside.

Zi6. This individual frame doesn't look too bad. The Zi6 certainly captured the sky more naturally than the Mino did. But as usual, shadow details have turned to mud...and the dim light has forced the Zi6 to shoot this at 15 frames per second. Quite noticeable when cars drive past.

Okay, so this is a total slam-dunk for the Mino HD, right? It's time for the Zi6 to slink off to the corner bar to drink itself into a state of apoplexy alongside the Zune and the Sony eBook Reader and every other bit of technology that's been roundly spanked and made irrelevant by a superior competitor?

Naw, not at all.

Based on two days' worth of side-by-side shooting, I'm convinced that the Mino HD's videos are far more natural and pleasant. But I wish that Mino HD videos sounded as good as the Kodak's. I don't know if the Zi6's designers did something as simple as choosing a high gain level for the microphone. Whatever the reason, the outside Panera clip handily demonstrates the Kodak's superiority in this category.

The Zi6 also has the intriguing advantage of being able to go on forever. Which is something that the Mino emphatically cannot do.

The Mino is sealed up as tightly as an iPhone. Its memory and battery are locked inside and can't be swapped. You record one hour's worth of video and then the Mino HD becomes nothing more than a conversation piece.

But the Zi6 takes standard SDHC memory cards. To hell with the Mino's built-in 4 gigs! Buy yourself a 16 gig card and record hours and hours of footage. And because it runs on 2 AA's, it'll can run forever. The Zi6 comes with a pair of rechargeables and natcherly, if you ever get caught short, you can just run to the store for some Energizers.

That's not an inconsiderable advantage.

The Zi6 and the Mino are both lifestyle cameras. So I suppose the choice comes down to the sort of lifestyle that you intend to lead.

If image quality is a big item on your wish list, it's the Mino. If your style of shooting is casual and unplanned you want to have something handy to shoot baby's first steps, keep something in your back pocket or your desk drawer in case the opportunity to direct and produce the next Don't Taze Me, Bro! should unexpectedly present itself it's the Mino. If you'll be shooting lots of stuff in low-light situationsthe Mino. Already own a real camcorder, and want a second one for more casual shooting and the ability to shoot an event from two angles? Mino.

(Oh, I didn't mention that the Mino is exactly the same size as the original Mino. The Zi6 is small enough to fit inside any pocket, but the Mino is so small that you'll have to pat yourself down to figure out what pocket it's even in.)

But if you're going to shoot events, then you'll want the Zi6. Although you'll yearn for the higher quality of the Mino, the fact remains that (God help us all) most family weddings go on for more than an hour. And you have better things to do on vacation than keep running back to your hotel room or cabin to free up space on your camcorder. You can shoot a whole week's worth of travelly hijinx on the Zi6.

As for the ease of editing your footageit's a draw. Both of these cameras record plain MP4 movie files. They imported into iMovie as easily as any other MP4 file.

Weird thing about the Flip, though: iMovie recognizes it as a camera and it immediately loads up thumbnails of all of your clips, ready for importbut the import will fail. Huh. But if you import the clips via the File menu treat the Mino as though it were just a USB storage device iMovie will copy the files into your library without a hitch. No transcoding necessaryit's just a straight file copy.

Of course, neither of these are real camcorders. Spending a couple of days shooting with them made me miss the zoom lens, image-stabilization, and manual features of even a cheap standard-def camera. I guess the lifestyle implied by the Zi6 and the Mino involves walking straight up to people instead of recording them from a safe distance, and maintaining a steady posture as you do so.

If this is the case, then clearly I lead an alternative lifestyle.

Of course, it is a compromise for those who expect it to replace a desktop PC or a high-end notebook. Performance-intensive applications like Photoshop will be painful; recent video games will be pathetic, should they even run at all.

Day-to-day work, however, ran smoothly. Multiple browser tabs with a handful of idle apps and iTunes chugging away didn't become a trudge. Its combination of a 1.6 GHz Atom CPU and a gig of RAM built up enough steam to handle the basics.

Other features include up to 16GB of flash storage, 3 USB ports, 100Mbit Ethernet, 802.11g and an 8.9" display set to 1024x600 pixels. It's about 10 inches long and 7 wide.

I've yet to use the MSI Wind, which I'm quite certain is the equal of this machine. But it's also a little larger, at least in the U.S., and it, like Asus' mainstays, lack something else the Dell has: style. It's come a long way from the dull design that used to characterize its output. While the Mini 9 is no better (or prettier) than the Mini-Note, HP's extras, like an ExpressCard slot and 802.11n, make it much more expensive. The Dell can be had for under $350, though you shouldn't get any computer with less than 1GB of RAM.

Moreover, the Mini-Note comes with Suse or Vista, both less appetizing than Dell's choice of Ubuntu or XP.

Hacking possibilities also abound with the Inspiron Mini 9. Getting OSX on it is reportedly not difficult, and it has an empty slot for a 3G Wireless adapter. Though it is disabled, it's easy to snap in a generic Novatel WWAN card and get your show on the road. Vodafone plans to offer Mini nines with cards (and 2-year service contracts) pre-installed.

Personally, I'd like it to be even smaller. Next to an EeePC900, which has the same-size screen and a dinkier keyboard, its swooping curves seem rather bulbous.On the other hand, it feels sturdier and somewhat better-made as a result.

One caveat is the keyboard layout: it doesn't have dedicated function keys, and the apostrophe/quote key is in an odd spot.

Later today, this machine gets mailed off, and I'm sad to see it go. Bought as a gift for my nephew and reviewed en passant, it almost stayed right where I wanted it: in my possession.

$429 as reviewed Mini Inspiron 9 [Dell]

So, last week, I had the pleasure of being stabbed, scanned, physically simulated, and synthetically defocused. Clearly, I must have been at SIGGRAPH 2008, the world's biggest computer graphics conference. While it usually conflicts with Black Hat, this year I actually got to stop by, though a bit of a cold kept me from enjoying as much of it as I'd have liked. Still, I did get to walk the exhibition floor, and the papers (and videos) are all online, so I do get to write this (blissfully DNS and security unrelated) report.

SIGGRAPH brings in tech demos from around the world every year, and this year was no exception. Various forms of haptic simulation (remember force feedback?) were on display. Thus far, the best haptic simulation I'd experienced was a robot arm that could "feel" like it was actually 3 pounds or 30 pounds. This year had a couple of really awesome entrants. By far the best was Butterfly Haptics' Maglev system, which somehow managed to create a small vertical "puck" inside a bowl that would react, instantaneously, to arbitrary magnetic forces and barriers. They actually had two of these puck-bowls side by side, hooked up to an OpenGL physics simulation. The two pucks, in your hand, became rigid platforms in something of a polygon playground. Anything you bumped into, you could feel, anything you lifted, would have weight. Believe it or not, it actually worked, far better than it had any right to. Most impressively, if you pushed your in-world platforms against eachother, you directly felt the force from each hand on the other, as if there was a real-world rod connecting the two. Lighten up a bit on the right hand, and the left wouldn't get pushed quite so hard. Everything else was impressive but this was the first haptic simulation I've ever seen that tricked my senses into perceiving a physical relationship in the real world. Cool!

Also fun: This hack with ultrasonic transmitters by Takayuki Iwamoto et al, which was actually able to create free-standing regions of turbulence in air via ultrasonic interference. It really just feels like a bit of vibrating wind (just?), but it's one step closer to that holy grail of display technology, Princess Leia.

Best cheap trick award goes to the Superimposing Dynamic Range guys. There's just an absurd amount of work going into High Dynamic Range image capture and display, which can handle the full range of light intensities the human eye is able to process. People have also been having lots of fun projecting images, using a camera to see what was projected, and then altering the projection based on that. These guys went ahead and, instead of mixing a projector with a camera, they mixed it with a printer. Paper is very reflective, but printer toner is very much not, so they created a shared display out of a laser printout and its actively displayed image. I saw the effects on an X-Ray - pretty convincing, I have to say. Don't expect animation anytime soon though (Side note: I did ask them about e-paper. They tried it - said it was OK, but not that much contrast.)

Always cool: Seeing your favorite talks productized. One of my favorite talks in previous years was out of Stanford - Synthetic Aperture Confocal Imaging. Unifying the output of dozens of cheap little Quickcams, these guys actually pulled together everything from Matrix-style bullet time to the ability to refocus images - to the point of being able to see "around" occluding objects. So of course Point Grey Research, makers of all sorts of awesome camera equipment, had to put together a 55 array of cameras and hook 'em up over PCI express. Oh, and implement the Synthetic Aperture refocusing code, in realtime, demo'd at their booth, controlled with a Wii controller. Completely awesome.

Of course, some of the coolest stuff at SIGGRAPH is reserved for full conference attendees, in the papers section. One nice thing they do at SIGGRAPH however is ask everyone to create five minute videos of their research. This makes a lot of sense when what everyone's researching is, almost by definition, visually compelling. So, every year, I make my way to Ke-Sen Huang's collection of SIGGRAPH papers and take a look at the latest coming out of SIGGRAPH. Now, I have my own biases: I've never been much of a 3D modeler, but I started out doing a decent amount of work in Photoshop. So I've got a real thing for image based rendering, or graphics technologies that process pixels rather than triangles. Luckily, SIGGRAPH had a lot for me this year.

First off, the approach from Photosynth continues to yield Awesome. Dubbed "Photo Tourism" by Noah Snavely et al, this is the concept that we can take individual images from many, many different cameras, unify them into a single three dimensional space, and allow seamless exploration. After having far too much fun with a simple search for "Notre Dame" in Flickr last year, this year they add full support for panning and rotating around an object of interest. Beautiful work - I can't wait to see this UI applied to the various street-level photo datasets captured via spherical cameras.

Speaking of cameras, now that the high end of photography is almost universally digital, people are starting to do some really strange things to camera equipment. Chia-Kai Liang et al's Programmable Aperture Photography allows for complex apertures to be synthesized above and beyond just an open and shut circle, and Ramesh Raskar et al's Glare Aware Photography evaded the megapixel race by filtering light by incident angle - a useful thing to do if you're looking to filter glare that's coming from inside your lens.

Another approach is also doing well: Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir's work on Seam Carving. Most people probably don't remember, but when movies first started getting converted for home use, there was a fairly huge debate over what to do about the fact that movies are much wider (85% wider) than they are tall. None of the three solutions - Letterboxing (black bars on the top and bottom, to make everything fit), Pan and Scan (picking the "most interesting" square of video from the rectangular frame), or "Anamorphic" (just stretch everything) - made everyone happy, but Letterboxing eventually won. I wonder what would have happened if this approach was around. Basically, Avidan and Shamir find the "least energetic" line of pixels to either add or remove. Last year, they did this to photos. This year, they come out with Improved Seam Carving for Video Retargeting. The results are spookily awesome.

Speaking of spooky: Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness. Sure, everything you see is photoshopped, but it's pretty astonishing to see this automated. I wonder if this is going to follow the same path as Seam Carving, i.e. photo today, video tomorrow.

Indeed, there's something of a theme going on here, with video becoming inexorably easier and easier to manipulate in a photorealistic manner. One of my favorite new tricks out of SIGGRAPH this year goes by the name of Unwrap Mosaics. The work of Microsoft's Pushmeet Kohli, this is nothing less than the beginning of Photoshop's applicability to video - and not just simple scenes, but real, dynamic, even three dimensional motion. Stunning work here.

It's not all about pixels though. A really fun paper called Automated Generation of Interactive 3D Exploded View Diagrams showed up this year, and it's all about allowing complex models of real world objects to be comprehended in their full context. It's almost more UI than graphics - but whatever it is, it's quite cool. I especially liked the moment they're like - heh, lets see if this works on a medical model! Yup, works there too.

As mentioned earlier, the SIGGRAPH floor was full of various devices that could assemble a 3D model (or at least a point cloud) of any small object they might get pointed at. (For the record, my left hand looks great in silver triangles.) Invariably, these devices work like a sort of hyperactive barcode scanner, monitoring how long it takes for the red beam to return to a photodiode. But here's an interesting question: How do you scan something that's semi-transparent? Suddenly you can't really trust all those reflections, can you? Clearly, the answer is to submerge your object in fluorescent liquid and scan it with a laser tuned to a frequency that'll make its surroundings glow. Clearly. Flurorescent Immersion Range Scanning, by Matthias Hullin and crew from UBC, is quite a stunt.

So you might have heard that video cards can do more than just push pretty pictures. Now that Moore's Law is dead (how long have we been stuck with 2Ghz processors?), improvements in computational performance have had to come from fundamentally redesigning how we process data. GPU's have been one of a couple of players (along with massive multicore x86 and FPGA's) in this redesign. Achieving greater than 50x speed improvements over traditional CPU's on non-graphics tasks like, say, cracking MD5 passwords, they're doing OK in this particular race. Right now, the great limiter remains the difficulty programming the GPU's - and, every month, something new comes to make this easier. This year, we get Qiming Hiu et al's BSGP: Bulk-Synchronous GPU Programming. Note the pride they have with their X3D parser - it's not just about trivial algorithms anymore. (Of course, now I wonder when hacking GPU parsers will be a Black Hat talk. Short answer: Probably not very long.)

Finally, for sheer brainmelt, Towards Passive 6D Reflectance Field Displays by Martin Fuchs et al is just weird. They've made a display that's view dependent - OK, well, lenticular displays will show you different things from different angles. Yeah, but this display is also illumination dependent - meaning, it shows you different things based on lighting. There's no electronics in this material, but it'll always show you the right image with the right lighting to match the environment. Weird.

All in all, a wonderfully inspiring SIGGRAPH. After being so immersed in breaking things, it's always fun to play with awesome things being built.

Many web workers have gone the non-traditional route with their business cards, and opted for the cute, colorful Moo cards instead. Well, very soon you can have your Web 2.0 goodness and your traditional business cards, as Moo has announced those as their next product.

According to our parent GigaOM, this is a good sign that a Web 2.0 company can grow up, listen to its customers, and still not be boring. As an added bonus, you can opt to buy your new Moo business cards on 100% recycled stock. And they still come with the option to have up to 50 different images in a pack of 50 cards, so you can play with the cool kids and still look OK to those boring business adult types.

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If this is your first visit to my site, welcome. I hope you will take a few minutes to read a bit more about me and about how and why I live without credit cards. Now, today's post -

According to this article - some gas stations have stopped accepting credit cards! Why? From the article:

The National Retail Federation says gas prices point to the unfairness of the system: Gas stations are paying more in interchange fees because the price of gas has gone up, while the cost of processing credit or debit cards remains the same.

Credit card companies charge gas station owners (and all other merchants who accept credit cards) an interchange fee - usually about 2% - each and every time someone uses a credit card to purchase gas. Apparently, gas station owners have grown tired of sending credit card companies a cut of each sale - and some have gone to a cash only' policy.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with these changes, it might be time to start carrying a little more cash around, just in case you find yourself in an area where there aren't any gas stations that accept credit cards. (There are also interchange fees associated with the use of debit cards. I'll assume that a station that has stopped accepting credit cards has also stopped accepting debit cards, as well.)

For those, like me, who live in rural areas, this could be a very big deal. In our small town, there are only four or five places to buy gasoline. Personally, I use my debit card for most gasoline purchases, but I'm going to start adding a bit more cash to my Gasoline' envelope. (For those of you unfamiliar with the envelope system - a great system for managing your cash - I have created a video detailing what it is and how to use it.)

I'm sure that most stations will continue to accept credit cards. But, those who are traveling with children - or going out of town to unfamiliar places - you might consider keeping a few more greenbacks on hand, just in case.

Side Note: While I found this article very interesting, in my own experience, I've found that several gas stations appear to be encouraging the use of credit cards and discouraging the use of cash. Many now require that users pay at the pump' or prepay inside' when using cash. So, while the article is interesting, I'd really love to hear from my readers. Have you experienced this in your area? Are gas stations where you live going to a cash only' policy. And, if so, how has (or will) this affect you?

This is the last video in my Getting Started in Video series that I've been doing at Etsy.

The easiest way to edit video is to shoot it in one take. Here on the Etsy Video Awesomeness Team, we call those videos "One-Take-Wonders."

But you can't always get it in one take, or maybe your take is too long. That's when you need to learn how to edit.

MP4 | Blip.tv | Youtube | Subscribe in iTunes

In this video you'll learn five things.

1. Cut Get rid of that awkward moment when you spaced out on camera.
2. Titles Add text to your videos.
3. Music Add Creative Commons music to your video.
4. Exporting The setting you should use before uploading to the internet.

I'm showing you how to edit in iMovie. It's an editing platform that I love. They changed iMovie a lot in version 8 and they made it a lot less awesome. Luckily, if you've got iMovie8, you can actually download iMovie7 for free. I recommend doing this if you're on a Mac.

If you're on a PC, Windows Media Maker is already on your computer and it's a completely functional platform. Combine that with Quicktime Pro for compressing the avi formatted videos that it outputs and you've got a decent system for editing videos. All the stuff I show in iMovie will work in a similar fashion in Windows Media Maker too.

When adding music to your videos, don't use music without permission. It's copyrighted, and having copyrighted music in your video means that you won't be able to screen it at a film festival (and in a worst case scenario, the music industry could sue you).

A strategy for adding music to your videos is to have musician friends hook you up. We use music from our friends Barry London, Jukeboxer, Alice Cohen, and Lineland with their permission and we also have Matt and Eric, as in-house musicians. No matter what music you use, make sure to credit it in your video credits and link to them in your blog posts.

Another way to get music for your videos is make it yourself. I've made a lot of music with Garageband and it's fun! I put out my own album of music that you are welcome to use in your videos. I released it under a Creative Commons license so all you have to do is credit me in your video and you're good to go.

You can also add music to your videos with Creative Commons music. I've used music from this album that Wired put out, and if you search for Creative Commons music, there is a lot out there. Even if it's Creative Commons, it's always a good idea to ask permission for music, if for no other reason than to let your favorite musicians know how awesome they are.

I've also had good luck with the internet archive's open source audio collection. I particularly like old 78 recordings.

Once your video is all done, you're going to want to compress it so that the file is small enough to upload to video sharing sites. Here are the settings I use in Quicktime Pro for export.

I'm always experimenting and trying new settings, so if you've got a different way of doing this, take a screenshot of your settings and post them to the handmade video flickr pool.

If you're making videos and you make things, join the handmade video google group (which we wrote about here) where creative media-makers chit chat about how we do things. You can always shoot me an email with a question, but the handmade video google group is a great place to tap into a community of video folks to ask questions if you get stuck or need help.

Looking for more video tips? Check out the rest of the Getting Started in Video series! And let us know if you're making videos!

You may think, 'How dare you use some sexist language?' Agreed, however, I share the term that is colloquially used across blogs and conference goers. Since my first Doubleclick conference to CES in Las Vegas to my most recent trek to ad:tech San Francisco, I come across endless variations of these ladies. Here is an older article I wrote regarding Booth Babes, coupled with another point of view on how Booth Babes diminish the brand/product of the company being represented.

I also managed to snap a few short videos of women in San Francisco whose outfits were so extreme, that I couldn't help but to capture it on film - no one believed me until I showed them the clips. Another interesting point? I didn't see these women on days 2 and 3 of the show. Were they removed? Was the company that hired them fined? I don't know. What I do know is I hope future conferences stop using women in this way to hand out sweepstakes cards, PR folders and/or trinkets to attendees.

I lose complete respect for the company/brand/service and have NO interest in learning more.

After all, digital media and technology isn't just dominated by male executives anymore, but than again, did anyone ever notice? Recent studies show that women are shopping online and using web tools just as much, if not more than men...so why continue to display such sexist displays at a conference?

To the ad:tech team planning the upcoming event in Chicago, you may want to take this into consideration and I hope to not see buttocks during my show room floor stroll.

Taking part in Nintendo DS homebrew isn't nearly as maddening as the PSP homebrew scene, which still requires Job-like patience and the ability to compile and translate a thousand fragments of Internet-scattered instructions from a vast armada of nigh-illiterate Russian teenagers into a hacked PSP. Unlike a PSP, which requires custom firmware, all a Nintendo DS requires is a flash card. But with a hundred different no-name Chinese manufacturers vying for your money when they're not changing their names or going out of business, it can be hard to get a strong recommendation on exactly which flash card to buy and what you're getting yourself into.

Over at DS Fanboy, they've tried to take some confusion out of the equation with a homebrew guide that gives a summary and run-down of the perks and cons of the various flash cards on the market. The days of running DS homebrew off of a GBA flash cart are long over, thankfully: all of the current flash cards fit into the DS' Slot 1 and most of them seem to allow you to upgrade the storage by plugging in microSD cards.

As for me, I have a DS-X. Two months ago, I wouldn't have recommended it, since a year had passed since the last firmware update, despite customer's constant complaints and the fact that modern commercial DS games could no longer be played on the card due to some Nintendo changing the standard ARM7 code. They finally fixed it, though, so I'll cautiously endorse it: it's a neat card in that you can simply plug a standard USB cable into the card and mount it as a portable hard drive on your computer (most other cards require you to have a flash card reader / writer). Installing a program to it is as simple as copying it to the file. It even continues to work after I dropped it first in a cup of tea and then my toilet (don't ask). But keep in mind before you drop your money that their support is terrible, bordering on nonexistent.

DS Fanboy's (semi) ultimate homebrew guide [DS Fanboy]

On Sunday, Fred Wilson wrote on his blog "A VC":

"The other day I saw my oldest daughter get an invite to a party on Facebook, she accepted it, and then went to look at her accepted invite page. It was her social calendar, every party she plans to attend in the next two months is there. She noticed she had another event that night and then switched her acceptance to tentative. She uses Facebook the way I use Outlook."

Although the comment was in the context of a data portability discussion, there was something about this particular excerpt that was striking. Facebook as Outlook. You've heard older corporate execs describing how they "live in Outlook." Well, it's the same with the young digital natives - they just live in Facebook instead. And whether it's a walled garden or not, it doesn't matter to them - all the data they care about is flowing into Facebook. Who cares if it flows back out?

So what makes Facebook so invaluable to them? On a mission to find out, we turned to Twitter of course. But since Twitter's crowd is early adopters, we needed to find what the college kids thought, too. The combined answers gave us our big list (below).

How to Make Facebook Useful: Part I - Use Facebook's Features

Use Facebook Email: Here's an answer that speaks profoundly to the generation gap. For some, Facebook email isn't useful at all, while for others, it's one of the most important features. For even some of the hip early adopters, Facebook messaging (Facebook email) is thought to be this almost inconvenient feature: why should I go to Facebook to read that email? Why can't you just EMAIL me or send me a tweet? The issue is that it's all about what network you live in. For some it's an email inbox, for some it's Twitter, and for others it's Facebook.

For true Facebook'ers, though, real email is for business only. Using Facebook (and MySpace) is how you talk to your friends. (The frightening implications of what this means to an I.T. department that is charged with email archiving for compliance purposes and yet doesn't block Facebook.com is a subject for another article!)

"If I'm talking to any friends it's through a social network," said Asheem Badshah, a teenaged president of Scriptovia.com. "For me even IM died, and was replaced by text messaging. Facebook will replace e-mail for communicating with certain people." (excerpted from CNet)

Use Facebook Events: You don't need an online calendar to plan your schedule - Facebook has an Events app built-in. Here you can manage your events, see your friends' events, and even see when people's birthdays are. Your use of this feature is another telltale sign of which generation of Facebook users you fit into.

Block App Spam: Facebook finally added the "Block Application" option. Whew!

Go Mobile: With this application, you can use Facebook when you're on the go. You can upload photos and notes from your camera phone (mobile@facebook.com) straight to Facebook. You can also receive and reply to Facebook messages, pokes and Wall posts using text messages, or use your phone's mobile browser at m.facebook.com. To actually use the app, activate your phone here. Don't forget to also add Facebook Video so you can also send in your mobile videos to video@facebook.com, too.

How to Make Facebook Useful: Part II - Get Things Done

If you're really going to take advantage of all Facebook can do for you, then you have to find a way to do everything you need to do right in Facebook. Some of these tools (below) can help:

Check eBay: A great example of how the info you need flows into Facebook, the eBay app lets you check on your eBay auctions...and, in true social spirit, those of your friends as well. You can even just comment on auctions without even needing an eBay account.

Use Paypal: Just bought something on eBay? Might as well add Paypal too.

Upload Your Resume: Use an app like Professional Profile to post your resume on Facebook. It also lets you sync your LinkedIn profile and recommendations. There are also official apps from LinkedIn: LinkedIn Contacts and My Linked Profile, too.

Create a Business Card: The business cards app helps you create a custom business card that can be attached to your Facebook messages. (It's email signatures 2.0!)

Use Zoho: Access all your Zoho Office files in Facebook for free. (An unofficial app exists for Google Docs).

Share Files: Who needs Pownce when you can share files in Facebook? Add an app like Box.net or DivShare to do so.

Use Blackboard: Ugh. We know you don't want to, but you kind of have to, so you may as well add Blackboard Sync to Facebook. (Online assignment system for college students).

Make a To-Do List: Some people just love lists. Task Manager can help you GTD.

Use a Calendar: Need a more traditional calendar app? Try this one from 30Boxes, or one of these unofficial Google Calendar apps. Or you could just sync Facebook with any other calendar, both online and off, with fbCal.

How to Make Facebook Useful: Part III - Bring Web 2.0/Social Tools Into Facebook:

No need to leave the comfort of Facebook's walls to use the social web - you can just pull the social web into Facebook. Some of the most popular Web 2.0 applications are available as Facebook apps.

Use FriendFeed: No need to go without your daily fix of lifestreaming. The early adopter crowd loves this one.

Use Flickr: Take your pick from 100 applications for using flickr on Facebook...or just use the official one.

Use Twitter: Post to Twitter and make your latest tweet your Facebook status.

Use Upcoming: Plan your events via Upcoming and see events taking place in your area, too.

Get Movie Recommendations: Get movies reviews via Flixster so you know whether to rent that flick or see it in the theaters...or not.

Get Restaurant Recommendations: Use Bizzlr to get recommendations for where to eat. (our coverage)

Share Books/Book Reviews: Depending on personal preference, you may like Shelfari, Visual Bookshelf, Goodreads, or Bookshare.

Find People: Use Spock's people search app to find anyone, anywhere.

Link to Other Profiles: With As Seen On, you can link your Facebook profile to other social media profiles.

How to Make Facebook Useful: Part IV - Bonus Content!

Make Firefox Better: You can find great add-ons for Firefox with Rock Your Firefox.

Search the Web & Share: Think Microsoft should put Live Search in Facebook? They just did.

Reading the Daily News Facebook-Style: No need to go off-site to get the latest news - customize your own morning paper with Zine.

And More!: Check out our series from last July to get ideas for other Facebook apps for Work, Utilities, and Media.

(Special thanks to FriendFeed user Susan Beebe who supplied a lot of great suggestions!)

Here's how I did it. First, I found the condominium that I wanted to rent. I emailed the property management company and asked if I could pay with a check. They assured me that I could, but that I would need to reserve the room with a credit card - just in case there were any damages. So, I reserved the room with a credit card, e-signed my contract, and dropped a check in the mail.

(As a side note, I did not cancel my credit cards for situations exactly like this one. As an alternative to my credit card, I could have reserved the room with my debit card.)

BUT.

If you know what you're doing, Twitter is a REALLY POWERFUL and REALLY COOL way to connect with people. You can find basic, entry level explanations about why you should use Twitter everywhere. I even wrote such a post a couple of months ago (which includes the excellent Twitter in Plain English video, which you must watch if you haven't already). The rest of this post is going to assume you have a (very) basic understanding of what Twitter is, and how it works. If not, go read my previous post, watch the video, and come back. I'll wait.

The Twitter Fu is Strong With This One

What I want to talk about here is some advanced Twitter Fu - techniques for power users (I hate that term), and people who are ready to start taking advantage of some of the really remarkable things you can accomplish with it. This isn't comprehensive, of course, but I do speak from experience. What I'm going to write about comes from my daily use and experience with Twitter (which started in July 2006, making me an old timer in the Twitterverse. Most importantly, I want to show some ways you can use Twitter to accomplish something REALLY remarkable - connect up people in a community (or build a new community) with strong ties.

Here's the reason I think all of this is so important. My job, and Intel Software Network's mission, is to build community. Community grows from connections made between people with a common interest. One way people make connections is through conversation. Real conversation in their natural human voice, with another human. You can't have a conversation with a corporation. You just can't. This is why I'm always harping on conversations, conversations, conversations! Twitter (and blogs, and other net tools, too) makes it easy to have more conversations, and thus build more connections, with other humans. You increase your human surface area - the ways people can connect with you. If you're a software person, think of it as exposing a new API endpoint for people to hook into and use. And when you have more and more of these human connections, a really cool thing emerges - community. See how that all ties in?

Enough philosophical background. Let's get on the the real, practical things you can do to become a high level Twitter Fu Master.

Grow Your Network, Carefully

Twitter is useless without following people. But it's worse than useless if you follow people you don't know. The public timeline, while it may be an entertaining peek into what the entire world is saying, isn't going to do anything to connect you to those other people. Your network is the heart of Twitter. Guard it jealously. Follow people you know (either in real life, or through online interactions, or whatever). Don't follow people you don't know, or who you don't have any reason to follow, other than because they followed you. In other words, don't follow someone if you have no idea who they are. Reciprocating a follow on Twitter is NOT required, and no one is going to get offended if you don't follow them back just because they followed you.

I did this in the beginning, and I found that it just added noise to my Twitter stream. So I pruned my following list down to people I had either met in real life, or knew from some other interaction. Basically, it came down to do I have to think for more than half a second to know who this person is? If they don't pass that test, I don't follow. You've got to keep the signal to noise ratio of your Twitter stream as high as possible. It's hard enough only following people you DO know.

However, as commenters below have reminded me, it can be fun and useful to add new followees based on who the people in your network are talking with. You'll naturally get to know new people through Twitter, and your network will grow. This is a good thing. I just think you should be careful, and no go crazy and add everyone and their dog (or cat) without a reason. Or, as @scobleizer says, You are defined by who you follow.

Use a Desktop Client and Your Phone

There are two times you'll want to use Twitter: when you're at your computer, and when you're not. For when you're at your computer, I highly recommend using a desktop client application, which makes your Twitter stream kind of like an IM conversation. It's always there, you can pay attention to it, or hide it in the background. But having a desktop client has lots of advantages over using the Twitter.com web page to engage with your network.

There are lots of desktop clients to choose from. I personally use and love one called Twitterrific, from Craig Hockenberry and Icon Factory. It's Mac only, but I love it because a) it's beautiful, b) it uses Growl for notifications, and c) I've been using it since it came out, and I'm used to it (inertia is a powerful thing). If you're not on a Mac, or for some reason you don't want to use Twitterrific, there are some awesome clients that use the cross platform Adobe AIR runtime (Windows, Mac, and now Linux). Spaz, Twhirl, and Alert Thingy are worth a look. They all do pretty much the same thing, but some offer features like integration with FriendFeed, Jaiku, Pownce, etc. Try them all and find one you like.

A desktop client is for when you're sitting at your computer (which, for me, is most of the day). If you're anything like me, you have a whole bunch of browser windows or tabs open at any given time. It's worth it to have Twitter outside of that, in its own place. You can see the stream of conversation in your network flow by, hop in and tweet or reply to something, and get alerted when there's a reply or direct message directed at you. If you need to concentrate, and avoid distraction, just hide or close the app.

When you're away from your computer, use Twitter on your phone. Any cell phone that can do text messaging is a great Twitter client. Just enable your Twitter account to work via text messages on your phone. You have full control over what alerts/incoming messages you receive (all, direct, etc.). I follow so many people that the volume of tweets is just too much to deal with in text messages (not to mention expensive!), so I only get a text message from Twitter when I receive a Direct (private) message. But, even if you get no text message alerts at all, it's important to set this up, so you can SEND tweets from your phone. Then, get in the habit of doing it.

If you have a phone with a web browser (iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or whatever), you can use the Twitter mobile web interface at http://m.twitter.com. It's fast, light, and provides an easy way to both read your tweets and post new ones from your phone. Depending on the device you have, there are other options. iPhone owners should check out an amazing web-based Twitter interface for iPhone called Hahlo (and rumor has it there will be an iPhone version of Twitterrific as soon as Apple launches the iPhone App Store - I can't wait!). For BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, there are free applications you can install on your phone to use Twitter. I haven't used any of these, so I can't really make a specific recommendation, but do some Googling, ask around on your Twitter network, and you can probably find one that you like.

Integrate Twitter With Your Online Life

Remember how I said that the whole point of all of this is to increase your conversational surface area, to make it easier for people to connect to you by conversing with you? To aid in that, you'll want to include hooks/links to your presence on Twitter from the other places where you interact with people.

At the very least, put a link to your Twitter page on your blog and in your email signature and on your business cards.

Beyond that, there are a ton of great options for integrating your Twitter microposts (as I call them) on your blog, from a simple javascript badge to more complicated integrations (like the way I do it on my blog, which I explain how and why in this post). You can make this as simple or as complex as you want. Go nuts. But do it.

If you use social networks like Facebook, chances are there's a way to integrate your Twitter conversations. Facebook lets you connect your tweets with your Status updates on Facebook, and vice versa. I haven't used them, but there are ways to integrate Twitter with your MySpace page and I'm sure there are more. Again, do some Googling, and ask your new most valuable knowledge sharing tool, your Twitter network.

Don't Miss Any Conversations

Twitter lets you direct a message at a specific person in two ways. First is the direct D message, which sends a private message that only the recipient can see. This is kind of like a short email. The second, and far more common way is the @reply. You can indicate that a tweet is for a certain person by typing @theirusername. Twitter turns that into a link to that person on Twitter, and TRIES to bring that message to their attention. But they way they do it is broken. It doesn't work if the @username part isn't at the beginning of the tweet. It doesn't work if they don't have their Twitter settings configured to show them All @ replies. If you want to be a Twitter master, you have to take a couple of extra steps to make sure that you don't miss any messages directed at you using the @ sign.

This is where third party search tools like TweetScan and Summize come in. I'm assuming you're using a feed reader/aggregator like Google Reader (you ARE using an aggregator, aren't you? If not, we need to have a serious talk). If so, you can use TweetScan or Summize to do a search for your username, then subscribe to the feed for those search results. Presto - you'll know every time someone even mentions your name on Twitter, whether you're following them or not. At the very least, you need to do this. But search is powerful, and can do some other cool things, too.

For some reason, people often misspell my username on Twitter, or just make up some @username that has parts of my name, but isn't anywhere near correct. No problem. I just set up search feeds on Summize to look for jabancroft (the correct name), bancroft, jbancroft, and joshbancroft. That way, I hear what people are saying about/to me, no matter how badly they butcher my name. If you know of common misspellings of your username, you should subscribe to search feeds for those, too.

Also, if there's a specific topic, company, or product name that you want to track on Twitter, to see what people are saying, you can simply create a search feed for that word/phrase and subscribe to it. Twitter has a track feature, but it only works if you get updates via text message or IM - it doesn't work if you use the web or a desktop client app. I have a few search feeds on Twitter - one for Intel, for example - that let me see everything people are saying, good and bad. Can you think of something that would be useful for? If you can't, you're probably not trying hard enough.

But Wait! There's More!

Wow, this post got long. But I still have more to say. Specifically, some techniques about building groups and communities of interest on top of Twitter (something it lacks the native ability to do) using some simple tricks, and mashup tools. The online shoe seller Zappos.com has been getting a lot of press lately for their use of Twitter, and I've been involved in a couple of really cool mashups in the Portland geek community, like PulseoFPDX.com. How is this useful, rather than just interesting? Besides being a peek into the stream of collective consciousness of a particular group of people on Twitter, it's a great way to find people to connect with. You know, build community by connecting with other people you know and have something in common with.

And I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve, too, so stay tuned!

The timing of the birth worked out great. My wife will be home until school lets out in May - and she'll be able to stay at home during the summer. Altogether, she'll get more than 4 months with baby, before school starts back, next fall.

As you might imagine, due to the fact that she'll miss the last few weeks of school, her paychecks over the next four months will be reduced. The actual amount of the reduction will be based on the number of sick days and personal leave days she had remaining, prior to the delivery, and the number of days she actually misses. Suffice to say, things will be a little tight' around the old NCN household, but we are prepared!

Why? Because, we have an emergency fund! With six months worth of expenses, set aside in our Orange Savings Account, we should be just fine.

Four years ago, when our son was born, we used credit cards to cover the gap between actual and expected income. But, not now. No, now we will use the funds in our savings account, to make up for the lost income. In fact, so far, we are doing just fine, living off of my income alone. But, should we need it, the money is there.

It's amazing how much better we feel about our current situation, knowing that we have our emergency fund, and that it's there if we need it. Plus, instead of worrying about paying back our creditors, we can focus on enjoying the new baby!

The present offer is quite restrictive: they're doing this for the first 4,500 customers only, and only once per customer, and you need to fly in the next two months. But if it proves popular, and if their credit card company starts making growling noises, expect to see much more along these lines in future. (I suspect one reason for the restrictions is that the airlines have promised the credit-card companies that the cost of buying a plane ticket will not be contingent on the means of payment. But that promise has gone out the window for low-cost airlines in Europe, and it might not last forever in the US, either.)

Should consumers take JetBlue up on its offer? As a rule, no. The insurance you get by paying with a credit card is valuable; PayPal, debit cards, and the like are essentially cash, and come with no insurance at all. $20 cashback is attractive, and it's hard to put a dollar value on insurance, but it's definitely worth knowing what you're giving up when you take that route.

The site is in the final week of private beta. To register, you still need an invitation code. The company asked me not to publish it, but it's OK if I distribute by request via email. Send a note to info@netbanker with "SmartyPig" in the subject line. Or simply wait until after this weekend when the site goes into public beta.

How it works:

1. Users create savings accounts at the site. Deposits are held at West Bank, a Des Moines, IA- based financial institution with $1.3 billion in assets. Funding is through ACH (electronic) transfers from outside bank accounts. SmartyPig currently pays a high, 4.3% APY on deposits.

2. After the account is established, users are encouraged to create savings goals funded through automatic monthly ACH transfers until the goal is met.

3. Now here is where SmartyPig diverges from a typical bank account. The savings goals can be made public or kept private. Public goals can be funded in part, or entirely, by outside contributors. Think of grandma and grandpa contributing birthday money to help junior buy a new bike. Contributions are funded through credit card charges with a maximum charge of $500 and a per transaction processing fee of $4.95. To make sure grandma's $50 doesn't go to a Mario game, the money cannot be withdrawn until the savings goal is met (or canceled by the primary account holder).

4. After goals have been met, the user can elect to take the funds out in the form of a MasterCard debit card or a gift card from a retail partner such as Amazon.com. Participating retailers add a up to 5% bonus to the savings goal so that $1000 saved for the plasma TV is worth $1,050 if redeemed via Amazon gift card. That's a great added incentive to use the service.

Gift Cards
SmartyPig also sells gift cards that can be redeemed towards new or existing savings goals. These cards, issued in denominations of $25 to $500, are meant to be given as gifts or employee incentives. They cannot be redeemed outside the SmartyPig system. Physical card are produced and delivered for a processing fee of $4.95 plus delivery fees of $5.95 or more. Or consumers can deliver a virtual card through email to eliminate the delivery charge (but the $4.95 processing fee remains the same).

Summary of Fees

• Public contributions: $4.95 flat processing fee for each contribution made by an outside contributor. Contributions can be from $25 to $500 and are funded via credit card.
• Gift cards: Gift cards incur a $4.95 processing fee and an optional $5.95 shipping fee. The shipping fee can be avoided if a virtual gift card is chosen which is fulfilled via email.

Analysis
Although, not everyone is going to want to go through the extra steps to save this way, we are impressed with SmartyPig and are awarding it our first OBR Best of the Web award for 2008 (see note 1). We like how it's part gift registry, part savings account, and potentially a big help in getting users in the habit of saving for larger goals. The look-and-feel is very Web 2.0 and should resonate with teens and twenty-somethings.

There are a few rough edges that need better explanation and/or minor redesign. For instance, there is no way to simply add funds to a savings account without first setting up an automatic funding plan. But the site isn't even officially launched yet, so these issues should be ironed out during the beta period.

The processing fee of $4.95 per transaction is a bit on the high side. One could argue that it's worth price of a triple mocha for the convenience and benefits of the savings account. But for smaller deposits of $50 to $100, it's a pretty high percentage of the overall deposit.

It would be nice if the company could lower the fee, perhaps by creating an ACH funding option. Another way to reduce costs is to lower the 4.3% APR. I'm not sure the savers attracted to this account really need that high of a rate. A lower interest rate combined with lower fees might make the service more palatable overall.

The company may have to tweak its business model going forward. But the real lesson here is that savings accounts can be made stickier with automation and incentives. Leave it to the Iowans to show us the way (note 3).

Screenshots

1. The main account screen: I set up a savings account for my son. Then set a savings goal of $300 for a new bike. SmartyPig requires that the savings goal be funded in equal monthly withdrawals from the linked checking. It would be helpful if you could opt out of the automated savings plan so that the savings goal could be funded manually.

2. Public goals: If you opted to make your savings goal public, anyone can find it by searching via email address under the "Friends' Goals" tab on the top (you can see this one by searching for jim@netbanker.com).

Users can publicize their goals with a widget (see inset, and link at bottom of screen above) or by sending email to friends.

After making a contribution, the following screen is displayed.

Note:

1. Online Banking Report (OBR) Best of the Web awards are given for products that "raise the bar" in online financial services, usually for pioneering a new feature. Recent winners are covered here. Five awards were been handed out in 2007: two for Wesabe, and one each for Jwaala, Buxfer and Obopay. In the past 10 years, 67 companies have won the award.

2. Full disclosure: I was born and raised in Iowa and my brother lives within a few miles of the SmartyPig world headquarters.

Now there is a bold, trademarky move. Anyone can make a scaled-down kid's version of classic Eames designs like the molded ply DCM chair and the fiberglass shell rockers; in fact, I'd argue that it's a crime no one--*cough Herman Miller cough cough*--has made any before.

So I imagine San Francisco-based gallery/publisher/design boutique Park Life will find a warm reception for their 2/3 scale chairs among Eames-craving parents. And even if Herman Miller's legal goons give them grief, I suspect it'll just be over the name. Of course, just being small and in the original materials--fiberglass--should be make it plenty easy to distinguish Park Life's chairs from the Herman Miller versions.

Still, if you want to be safe, I'd suggest you jump on these Mini Eameses while you know you can. Oh, and Park Life, one more suggestion: Mini Lounge Chair.

UPDATE: They're popping up like mushrooms, and judging by the photo below, they actually look like the renderings. The headline here is a bit inaccurate; they're AT Park Life, but not FROM Park Life. Near as I can tell, they started in Japan and only spread in the last couple of months. Starting a few days ago, Vita Interiors began selling the rockers on Amazon UK for just 95. Damn, UK delivery only.

UPDATE UPDATE: HOLY CRAP, THEY HAVE A KID-SIZED "MINI EAMES LE CHAISE [sic]" AS WELL, 245, + 25 UK Shipping. Do you think they can ship it to a FedEx office?

Mini Eames Side Chair, Arm Chair, Rocking Chair, and DCM Chair, $225-299 [parklifestore.com via minor details and