I'm heading to Tampa, Florida for a couple of days to take care of some business. I have my second thesis defense at the University of South Florida, and tomorrow I'm scheduled to give a teleseminar with the Poynter Institute about producing news with with smartphones.

My mobile media journey started a couple of years ago when I used Twitter to share news from the field as I covered the 2008 Gulf Coast storm season for the now defunct HDNews. I don't know how many journalists were doing it at the time, but I found Twitter and hashtags (like #Ike and #gustav) to be a great way to share first hand accounts of what I was witnessing from the field during Tropical Storm Fay, Hurricane Gustav, Ike and Tropical Storm Hanna.

I also used my blog to post the stories that we produced from the field and I shared footage that wasn't included in my stories. Oh if only the iPhone 3GS was out back then. The iPhone and other smartphones like the Android and Nokia models make it extremely easy to share video from anywhere. Other applications and sites like TwitPic allow easy photo sharing.

We all know that media can't be every. But people with these devices are everywhere, and it's changing the face of news and information. As an example, check out these pics from the Chile earthquake that were posted via Twitter.

Of course I can't share all of my secrets, but if you check out this Webinar, you should have a greater understanding of now TV news stations, and vloggers like myself are using technology to innovate the gathering of content.

WTTG Fox 5 in Washington DC, and KOB in New Mexico are doing a great job of experimenting with technology to enhance coverage.

I'll probably be posting mostly mobile videos, so keep it tuned to either my Twitter account, or check back here for the latest video updates.

Forgive the typos, I gotta board my flight!

To support electric vehicles like the Leaf, which will be available in Houston toward year's end, the city and Reliant are working to create an infrastructure that places charging stations in convenient locations. Reliant will also be developing a system of support, including home assessments, for people installing home charging stations. The stations will be compatible with other plug-in vehicles as well.

• 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.

Sponsor

The application aggregates live streaming and recorded radio broadcasts from across the US, displays their current and planned content schedules and now offers a search function that stretches across all those different types of content: live streams, podcasts and text show descriptions. It's a free app and the the organization that makes it hosts almost nothing on its own servers. The end result is a remarkable user experience that ought to be an inspiration for old media of every kind. It isn't perfect, but it's getting better fast.

The app was made by a non-profit organization called Public Radio Exchange (PRX). PRX was founded and is run by Jake Shapiro, a man who used to be an associate director at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Shapiro used to produce an NPR radio show with Christopher Lyndon and before that he was one of the first tinkerers with web distribution of music for his band Two Ton Shoe.

Two Ton Shoe didn't find a lot of success in the United States, but thanks to the long tail of the web Shapiro says they somehow found a big fan base in Korea. The band toured there and Korean bands have covered some of their songs. "I'm a Korean rock star," Shapiro says, "and I believe there's a 'Korea' out there for everybody."

About a year ago Shapiro says he called around all the major players in public radio and argued that they had a unique opportunity in the iPhone platform if they could collaborate and create a really strong offering. An organization called American Public Media decided to contribute the work they had done so far on their own iPhone app to Shapiro's project and NPR and Public Radio International agreed to lend their support to what would become the Public Radio Tuner, today renamed the Public Radio Player.

Funding Local Radio on the iPhone

Public Radio Player could facilitate that long tail experience for obscure local public radio content by making it far more available on the iPhone. But PaidContent's Rafat Ali worries that by freeing radio listeners all the more from their local radio station, the Player could sever the loyalty and fund raising connections that keep public radio alive.

To that concern Shapiro has two interesting responses. First, he says that survey data shows most users prefer listening to their local stations on the app, along with a variety of favorites from elsewhere.

Even more interesting is the project's collaboration with Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Doc Searls. Searls is at Harvard's Berkman Center now, developing a framework for what's being called Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) - a customer-based response to the business paradigm of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The VRM project and Shapiro's PRX are developing ways for Public Radio Player users to track what they listen to on the player and make financial contributions to the radio stations they've consumed from the most.

Shapiro says that part of the project faces a major roadblock from Apple. Though Apple introduced in-application payments last month, the feature is only available to paid apps (Public Radio Player is free) and charitable contributions through the iPhone are strictly prohibited. They can't even be talked about, Shapiro says, because Apple doesn't want to deal with the possibility of charity scams, there's tax complications, the platform's standard 30% fee for payments isn't tenable in a non-profit context and Apple has no financial incentive to solve this sticky complex of problems.

For now the app is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That funding is up for renewal this summer. Shapiro says that a second round of funding would be used to create "showcase apps that would break new ground and create new technology." He says the company is particularly interested in technologies that represent a hybrid of digital and broadcast. "With radio," he says, "there is still a tremendous amount of reach that you don't want to give up on when you move into the digital space."

Fixing the App

That hybrid paradigm is very well represented by the new version of the Public Radio Player. The previous version, called Public Radio Tuner, was one of the most popular free apps in the iPhone store but it didn't really work that well. Radio streams got dropped a lot. That's no longer a big problem with version 2.0.

The new version of the app tackles the problem of dropped streams by making the buffering settings much more sophisticated. Remember, the App doesn't host any of the audio, it just points to the live streams or podcasts stored on public radio stations' own servers. Project manager Matt MacDonald says the app now determines what kind of bandwidth the receiving phone has, then buffers the inbound stream accordingly before serving it up to listeners. The end result is a radically more usable radio app on wifi, 3G or Edge connections.

It's still not perfect; this like every app is at the mercy of AT&T's wireless network, but dropped streams appear to be much, much less frequent than they used to be. The interface sometimes hangs when loading menus, but Shapiro says that with the new release today bug fixes are a top priority and though crash reports are appearing infrequently, they are being closely watched. "Just shake the phone," he jokes. "Then it will work better."

More Than One Kind of Content

The new app brings a whole lot more radio to your iPhone. In addition to pointing to hundreds of radio streams, PRX has co-ordinated a number of different sources to pull show schedules down to be stored locally on your phone. "Scheduling data has been a big effort," Shapiro says. "It never existed in one place and is still a moving target."

A company called Public Interactive (recently acquired by NPR from Public Radio International) has a metadata tool that originally captured music playlists but now publishes radio show schedules as well. NPR and many radio stations also display schedules on their own websites. PRX aggregates all that data, stores it on your phone, syncs it with the radio stream links and then checks for changes each time you launch the Public Radio Player app.

Having the particular show that's playing displayed along with a station name makes a very big difference in the user experience.

The 2.0 version of the app also includes support for "on demand" or podcast listening. Hundreds of podcasts are navigable by featured shows, category or alphabetically. Podcasts are integrated into some of the show schedules as well. When listening to a streaming station, you can view the rest of the day's schedule and see what other shows will be broadcast later. Then you can choose to listen to previous recorded editions of those shows. It's a pretty seamless experience.

Search is No Small Matter

The new search functionality integrates all of the above, letting you search for keywords or topics and finding both recorded and currently live shows that match your search. MacDonald says the company used an open source program called ThinkingSphynx on the back end, worked closely with the NPR API team and is still working on teaching local radio stations about the importance of standards-based content titling. Listening to streams and podcasts on iTunes or an iPod may not have been so difficult with incomplete file names, but show a radio station how broken its content looks in a dynamic iPhone directory and the message comes through loud and clear.

There have been other efforts to index all the public radio streams online; Public Radio Fan is the most notable and is more international, but is less sophisticated and is based on the desktop and browser. (After listening to some international broadcasts via Public Radio Fan it's hard not to be a little disappointed with even Public Radio Player's extensive but exclusively US menu.)

As a media technology, Public Radio Player offers a unique blend of content aggregation, focus on both real time and recorded content and extensive data integration on the back end. All on the iPhone. Its design and performance continue to improve. It's a very impressive offering in terms of content delivery; if it can find a way to use the new platform it's on to transcend the public radio paradigm of on-air pledge drives, that would really be remarkable, wouldn't it?

Jake Shapiro says that offering Public Radio Player on other platforms, including a web interface, is a logical next step. You can follow the project's progress on the Public Radio Player blog and download the application here.

Despite their much-admired situational awareness, even NYC subway veterans sometimes get confused about where to find the nearest station -- and if you're a first time visitor, fuggedaboudit. For iPhone 3GS-enabled residents and tourists, it's about to get a lot easier: acrossair is offering an NYC version of the Nearest Tube augmented reality app, New York Nearest Subway.

Hold your iPhone flat and see a 2D map of the entire system... then lift it perpendicular to the ground, and the heads-up display mode shows you floating icons representing nearby stations, complete with line legends and walking distances. For anyone who's ever walked to a faraway subway stop only to realize that there was a much closer option, this is incredibly compelling. No word on price yet, and the app is awaiting approval; as noted, this app will only work on the 3GS, as the magnetometer is used to determine the direction the phone is facing.

If you've got preferred apps for navigating public transit in your city, pipe up in the comments.

[via Gadget Lab]

Continue reading Reality doesn't get more real: 2 iPhone views of the NYC subway

TUAWReality doesn't get more real: 2 iPhone views of the NYC subway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The target is radio stations that tend not to play new songs by old bands. Manager Dave Frey said in the Globe and Mail, The 8-track is something that'll sit on their desk for a while, attract some attention.

This is a great example of a word of mouth trigger.

A one-time promotion or ad gets attention for a moment. You need something that will sit around and start conversations again and again. When someone sees it they will ask "What's that?"

More from the Globe story.

Thanks to Rick Muirhead for the tip.

That being said, the long-term viability of big budget television is the cause of much angst. If audiences continue to atomize, can any given show make enough money to justify producing it? If consumers continue to transcode things they want to watch, edit out the commercials and make them available for free over the public Internet, will sponsors be willing to pay? If the most popular productions are the most pirated productions, is there any real future in production? Can free, advertiser-supported, Internet television continue with a fraction of the advertising avails and audiences of its broadcast counterpart?

One of the underlying issues is scarcity vs. ubiquity. On a closed network, any moment of time is a scarce resource. On an open network, no moment of time is a scarce resource. The immutable law of supply and demand tells us that we will never be able to charge for anything that is ubiquitously available. At least, that's what the rulebook says.

However, I think the solution to almost all the problems related to consumer control of personal media consumption has been staring back at us from our television sets - we just didn't see it.

Most people schooled-in-the-art will tell you that live programming such as news, weather, sports and events are, for all practical purposes, TiVo-proof. This isn't strictly true, but if something is emergent, and the results are important, people tend to consume the media in real time. This almost always includes the associated commercial messaging. You can, of course, leave the room, talk to someone, play with your computer or do anything else you might think of during the commercial breaks but this has been true since the '50s. So, like I said, for all practical purposes, the commercials will play out.

Until consumers started to record television, TV was a real time device. No matter when the programming was created, it is always broadcast at specific times in a linear fashion. DVRs have changed that. When Jeff Zucker says, The number one show at 10pm is TiVo, he's not kidding. This is the current state of the art but it doesn't have to be.

We have entered the super-digital age and now all television is digital. So why are we still broadcasting combined, fully finished, masters in real time? We don't have to. It would be much, much better to serve individual streams of data that could be combined by the receiving technology to create custom formatted, device-specific pieces of content.

What?

Let's walk it backwards for a second:

Problem 1: There are far too many devices that can play back video for anyone to deal with. I produce MediaBytes, my daily news feed, in 46 different formats and I don't cover even a tiny fraction of the consumer electronics devices that are out there.

Problem 2: There are far too many places to obtain copies of any piece of video.

Problem 3: It is very difficult to measure who is watching, where they are and what else they may be doing.

Problem 4: Location and time of day are critical data points for the proper contextualization of message management.

The Real Time Data-based Digital Television Solution:

Break the data down to its component parts and broadcast them separately. So, text, graphics, music, script, metadata, voice-over, picture elements would all be packaged as individual data streams and made available in real time.

Next, the industry adopts the Tom Sawyer Paint The Fence Paradigm. This calls for the creation of a database (for the content), APIs (application programming interface) so third party developers can get at the data, an SDK (software development kit) so third party developers can license (and pay for) their use of the content, and some modifications to the current commercial trafficking networks and measurement tools.

The immediate result would be thousands of passionate, interested parties jumping on the opportunity to create thousands of virtual DMAs with virtual networks that could all be advertiser supported at scale.

Of course, anyone could still record a finished piece and have their way with it. But, imagine a broadcast world where television stations were broadcasting digital data feeds and economically motivated third party developers were crafting consumer interfaces that our industry simply will never be able to afford to create. Consumers who can obtain an emotionally satisfying media experience are far less likely to spend their valuable time looking for workarounds.

The concepts of relevance, engagement and conversations all become meaningless when developers with enlightened self-interest are your partners. The business rules surrounding this kind of data-based, content distribution would require developers to build measurable messaging into the platforms they support. Partners who make money when you make money and lose money when you lose money make great partners! Stations and Networks would transmogrify into their true digital counterparts platforms.

You can think of it as a real time Apple App store. Throw in a little real time web (like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and you've got a serious media offering.

Studios have been wholesalers for years. They sell their programs to Networks who, in turn, package the shows for consumer consumption. It is abundantly obvious that Networks cannot afford to create all of the packaging that consumers now require (or are willing to pay for). We need a better, more cost-effective way to serve audiences that are growing in diversity and getting harder and harder to aggregate.

Problem 1: Too Many Devices get third-party partners to pay you to modify your content to work with them.

Problem 2: There are far too many places to get video turn the weakness into strength by getting third parties to pay you from all of the nooks and crannies of the media consumption world.

Problem 3: It is very difficult to measure who is watching, where they are and what else they may be doing computers love data, build this functionality into the platform and the SDK.

Problem 4: Context is king yes it is, and what could be more contextual than having a passionate partner create an application that is specific to a consumption form factor?

Real Time Data-based Digital Television is a viable solution. Broadcasting real time data in component parts can be achieved today with just a little bit of political will. Steve Jobs and a zillion other Silicon Valley companies have demonstrated how easy it is to create a passionate, motivated army of third party developers. To me, the answer to the television industry's marginal cost, marginal gain problem has been staring us in the face since the transition to digital was announced. I just didn't see it until now.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit www.shellypalmer.com

Yesterday at the Mobile Web Wars event (here's video of that), held right before the TechCrunch party, David Hornik, partner at August Capital (he's the host of the TechCrunch party) told the audience that he would not invest in pure iPhone apps because the iPhone had too small a market share and that anyone who wanted to get big in the mobile space should go after all phones, not just the iPhone, which, while it's hot with early-adopter types and is seeing people waiting in lines to buy around the world, hasn't yet made a dent in, say, Nokia's market share of cell phones overall.

Let's call this the Silicon Valley VC Disease. This disease has been going on for a long time. Seagate's CEO Bill Watkins told me a few months ago that Seagate almost didn't get started because they couldn't get funding from VCs who didn't see a potential market for hard drives.

It's a corrosive disease, too, and is why we get tons of stupid Facebook apps and tons of easy-to-make and likely-to-go-viral iPhone apps. Quick: explain why we don't yet have a really brilliant travel app or even a single political app for the iPhone, despite lots of interest in those topics (especially in this political year). Not to mention many brilliant apps like Evernote (my favorite app so far)?

What is the disease? That you must make bucketloads of money (or at least have a shot at doing that) in the first two years of business.

If you have a plan to make just a reasonable amount of money, or if it will take decades to make a big amount of money, don't come to Silicon Valley.

Walmart would NEVER have gotten funded by Sand Hill Road. It took decades to make bucketloads of money. That kind of business plan would never fit in here.

Why? We have the Silicon Valley VC disease.

I imagine that if we went back in time to 1977. Imagine a small group of geeks wanted to get funding to build apps for the Apple II. It didn't have much market share yet. But imagine those developers wanted to build just Apple II apps. Would they have gotten funded? Probably not. And types like David Hornick would have told them you gotta build apps for mainframes and DEC's, because that's where the market is, not in that Apple II toy.

So, is Hornik wrong? No, he's exactly right. The much bigger market is with regular-old-single-chip-cell phones. You know the type. They are the kinds of phones that make phone calls and maybe do SMS texting. If they have a Web browser it's a small tiny black and white one that can only look at WAP-style text-centric sites, not the full-blown Web that the iPhone has.

But while Hornik is right, he also has the Silicon Valley Disease. He forgets that the small, seemingly unimportant platform today that gets early adopters excited will become the large, dominant platform of tomorrow. It might take 10 years, though, which is too long for VCs to care about. How long did it take Visicalc to happen on the Apple II? Or Aldus Pagemaker to happen on the Mac? A few years at minimum. iPhone is only one year old.

But already we're seeing the writing on the wall. If you can get past your Silicon Valley VC Disease.

First, our society's most valuable audiences are getting iPhones. Last week when I was in Los Angeles, both of the famous architects I interviewed already had 3G iPhones.

Those two guys are HUGELY valuable for advertisers. They are representative. They aren't the only ones.

But even better than the demographics that the iPhone is getting is the usage patterns.

See, I have two Nokia phones and a Microsoft Windows Mobile phone too. They all suck for using the Web. Fine for email and for texting, but really suck for using the Web.

Go see Google's Vic Gundotra (he's Vice President and runs a bunch of the teams that build things for mobile phones). He told me that usage on the iPhone is off the scale when compared to other phones.

Simply translated: people who have non-iPhone phones simply aren't using them for anything other than email. This is easily verified. Sit next to a Blackberry user and watch what they do. I do that all the time. All you see them doing is email and light Web use. Now sit next to an iPhone user and watch what they do. Much more heavily used on photos, maps, Web, and video.

An iPhone user is easier to reach and is easier to get to try new things. Plus, the iPhone app store makes it very easy for an app to be tried out and loaded.

But back to the Silicon Valley VC disease. It's the same disease that Microsoft execs have. Or, really, most big company execs, or worse yet, our government workers, have truth be told.

They won't adopt anything until it's safe and until there's a HUGE business reason to do it. It's why huge parts of our government are still run on paper. Why there isn't a database anywhere of all of our elected officials in the United States. Why Microsoft didn't compete with Google until too late. Why General Motors won't build great all-electric cars until after Tesla or Toyota beats them to the punch. Etc. Etc.

Luckily the Silicon Valley VC Disease is having less and less effect lately.

You can startup a company with very little cash, because you can build it on cloud-based services like Amazon's S3, which let you get started and show the world you're getting adoption even before you go for VC money.

And, luckily, not every VC has the Silicon Valley VC Disease. Lots invest in stupid, small, weird, ideas for platforms that only have a percent or two of market share. Go see Jeff Clavier, for instance. He's been doing that a lot lately. I met him in the office of Tapulous last week, which makes iPhone apps.

Why shouldn't you listen to Hornik and others who have Silicon Valley VC disease?

1. It's easier to start a company on new platforms. Why? Because the big money probably hasn't moved in yet, or at least they haven't become established.
2. People who buy new things are FAR EASIER to convince to buy other new things than people who have had the same stuff for years.
3. It's easier to build a brand on a new technology than it is to do that on an older, more established one (hey, everyone has a radio in their cars, but you don't see VC's funding new radio stations, do you? Why is that?)
4. The best, most transactional and monetizeable audiences are those that pick up new things. Think about it, would you rather have a customer like Dan Reis, one of the world's best architects or someone like my dad who still uses the same TV that he bought from me in the mid-1980s? My dad is a nice guy and very smart, but he's a horrible customer to have and is going to be very expensive to get to adopt something new.
5. It's a lot cheaper to get adoption when influencers (read bloggers and journalists and Twitterers and FriendFeeders) are talking about you. What are they talking about right now? iPhone apps. Look at Summize, the search engine Twitter just bought. What's one of the trending topics on the home page? iPhone. Get over it. They ain't talking about Nokia or Microsoft.

Anyway, I just find it interesting when VCs start telling people not to support a platform when there's lines around the world waiting to buy that platform. If everyone listened to that sentiment we'd never see any innovation in the world.

So, who is working to prove Hornik wrong? Drop me a line.

Oh, and David's a nice guy and throws great parties. Thanks David for letting me in last night and for giving me something interesting to blog about today. :-)

UPDATE: As usual lately a much more interesting conversation about this post is happening over on FriendFeed.

Compared with my previous visit to Japan 12 years ago, the most noticeable change I find today is in the bathroom. The "Incredible Squirting Toilet" has achieved almost total market penetration, and not just in middle-income homes. It even appears in fast-food restaurants and in public facilities in railroad stations.

As you lower yourself to the thermostatically warmed seat, a concealed motor whirs briefly, providing your first clue that you are about to encounter a piece of highly sophisticated technology. The toilet then remains silent and passive until you reach the point where you would normally apply paper. Instead, you hit the spray button. A hidden tube extends itself beneath you, and with the precision of a heat-seeking missile, it directs a spray of warm water that simultaneously tickles, stimulates, and cleans the place that needs it most. While its aim is meticulous, you can adjust its penetration by gently flexing your sphincter muscle. The experience is so unexpectedly and uniquely pleasurable, I found myself tempted to visit the toilet repeatedly just for recreational purposes.

Paper is needed only to mop up the water when the spray jet has done its work, but such is the effectiveness of the washing action, you will find no visible trace of fecal matter on the sheets of tissue, and can don your underwear in the happy knowledge that you have been cleaned by the same impeccable Japanese engineering that brought the world Honda motorcycles, 170-mile-an-hour trains, and robotic talking dogs.

Higher-end versions of the squirting toilet eliminate the need for paper entirely, by allowing the option of warm-air drying. They also provide adjustment of the water-cleaning jet, including a pulsatile flow which I found especially pleasurable. And for those in Western countries who are sufficiently uninhibited to allow themselves the pleasures of using this rectal equivalent of a water-pic, I have good news: The squirting toilet is available as an imported item and can be retrofitted to older bathroom equipment (you simply swap out the seat). Toto, the primary Japanese manufacturer, offers the most basic model under the name Washlet C100, and if you browse online you can find it for around US$500. This has only the most basic features; you can pay more for more advanced models, including one that welcomes you by raising its lid when it sees you approaching.

A note for female readers: The squirting toilet has a second tube which can be deployed by women who wish to cleanse their labial areas, but for anatomical reasons I was unable to test this personally.

-- Charles Platt

$755
(model: S300)
Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Washlet

Related items previously reviewed on Cool Tools:

Toilet Lid Sink

BB-50 Natural Water Bio-Bidet

Toto Ultramax Toilet

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?

In a first-of-its-kind deal, players of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV video game from Rockstar Games will be able to shop for MP3s as they play.

Radios have been a part of the Grand Theft Auto series that has always entertained, cause, really, who doesn't like to commit crimes to a soundtrack? According to Yahoo Games, this time, as you drive around Liberty City, if you hear a song you like, you simply will get out your cell phone and dial ZIT-555-0100 to mark the song, as well as receive a text message with the name of the song and artist. Additionally, if you're registered with the upcoming Rockstar Games Social Club, you'll receive an email with a link to purchase the song on Amazon's MP3 store.

Ronn Werre, EVP, EMI Music's Sales, Licensing and Synchronization unit. We think giving players the ability to identify and buy their favorite tracks from Grand Theft Auto IV's popular radio stations is a great new music discovery tool for fans and an innovative new revenue stream for artists. The game is going to feature over 150 tracks, with some of them being original tracks made specifically for the game by artists such as the Greenskeepers and Nas, as well as rare tracks from performers like Elton John. Since none of the songs from the game are playable outside of actual game play, this should make it far easier for you to enjoy your favorite song to kill by any time you want.

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Apparently, that started some wheels turning. I'm sure there were a lot of other factors, but soon afterwards, there was an announcement made that Intel was going to be undertaking a pilot program to update our workspaces. Feedback was solicited, other companies were studied (I think Google, Adobe, and Microsoft were among the influencers). Three sites were chosen: Santa Clara, Folsom (I think), and our very own Jones Farm 1 building here in Oregon. And people from my group, Software and Solutions Group (SSG) were chosen to move into the workplace of the future when it was finished.

Jones Farm 1 (JF1) is one of the oldest buildings among the several Intel campuses in Hillsboro. It was kind of dated, but really not much different from the rest of the JF buildings. Last October, they tore it down to the studs, and rebuilt it, with all new layout, furniture, and features like a living room area, lots of TVs, more and smaller conference rooms, and lower cube walls. Last Friday, there was an Open House for employees and press to check out the new spaces. I went with Brent Logan (we even ended up on TV - see below!), and took lots of pictures.

I'm packing up my old cube this week, and moving in to the new space shortly after I get back from my trip to SXSW in Austin. Here's what will be awaiting me!

My new cube:

I'm double-lucky - not only do I get my own assigned/dedicated cube, but it's on the end of a row facing the big windows overlooking a courtyard. Nice view, but I'm a little nervous about having the sun backlighting my monitor all the time, making it hard to see. The Daystar and I don't get along all that well.

Some shots of my old cube and neighborhood, to give you an idea of what things are like now (if you didn't watch the Conan video):

There are lots of open community spaces, and nice big LCD flatscreen TVs hanging all over the place:

Not everyone has their own assigned cube - one of the big changes in the new space is that lots of people are considered mobile or tweeners, meaning they're not expected to be in the office all the time, so lots of the cubes are first come first served, and there are lockers for these mobile folks to store their stuff (I was lucky enough to get my own dedicated/assigned cube):

The cube walls are lower, to facilitate collaboration, but there are a lot of glass-walled conference rooms, for either 4 people or 1 person when privacy and confidentiality are needed:

There are a couple of these magic computerized hand-driven whiteboards around, which are kind of cool:

I counted only three regular style large conference rooms, and only two of those that I saw had a projector. This could be a problem for people who are used to having them in every room:

There's a kitchen with free fountain soda, coffee, pastries, etc. It's right by my new cube - diabetes here I come!

The lobby has a couple of soft chairs, and big TVs with an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii - Guitar Hero and Wii Tennis for everyone!

That's most of the photos. You can view the whole set of 34 pictures in this photoset on Flickr. And expect more reporting on the new office spaces after I move in. I'm going to do some video - you've got to see the cool power height-adjusting desks to believe them!

For now, I'll leave you with this video clip from one of the local TV news stations, KOIN, who were there reporting on the new offices. You can see me and Brent Logan at the 0:20 mark. Thanks to my coworker Aaron for grabbing and posting this clip.

Read full coverage of the action here.

1. Two dice needed: one die to determine direction traveled, the second die to determine number of miles driven in that direction
2. Drive 100 miles east from Chicago, and start the first dice roll
3. Must only drive on paved roads
4. New roll = new music
5. Game to be played for at least 10 consecutive hours
6. Map can only be used in emergencies: do not backtrack or cross a path already taken
7. Three roll vetoes allowed per person
8. Must introduce yourself to at least one new person a day

My husband Robert came up with the brilliant idea after many vacation discussions with no discernible outcomes. We'd just get in the car with a few dice, he said, and see where fate would take us. This idea was perfect for us the randomness with rules would be a reassuring way to experience spontaneity. This vacation would get us out of our predictable rut of normal activities, and be the first unplanned vacation of our marriage. Five days of uncertainty, doing our favorite vacation activity the Great American road trip.

We started the journey by leaving Chicago after rush hour one morning. We jumped in the car with some clothes thrown in a bag, iPod loaded up, and no map. At the first tollbooth, Robert attempted to introduce himself to the tollbooth operator (Rule 8) but the operator wasn't having it, and just ignored him.

A hundred miles east of our house, we got off interstate 80 and the fun began. We decided to switch off on the dice rolling, in case one of us was just luckier than the other. I rolled first. The first roll of the red square die was a number one, which equaled straight. The second die roll (a funky, bright yellow, rounded Dungeons & Dragons die with increments of 10) yielded a 90 we'd drive 90 miles straight on Highway 421 South.

Robert was next to roll the dice (and my craps-playing addiction made me shout "YO ELEVEN!" as he did it) his first roll was a five left and an 80 from the yellow die. We drove 80 miles on the highway onto which we had turned left I-74 East.

Once off the highway, the rolls continued and fate drove us on a stair-step pattern through Indiana, mainly traveling east and south. We learned that Indiana is really a lot like Illinois farmland, and decidedly rural.

We stopped for lunch when a fortuitous roll brought us to Lafayette, Indiana, where we ate at Puccini's. We decided on another rule (Rule 9) must only order new menu items at restaurants, Not only were we stuck in a vacation rut, but also a same-menu-item-ordered rut. I always get the same things, and so does Robert. I ordered a veggie pizza called Humble Pie and Robert ordered a pizza with sausage instead of his usual pepperoni. Not huge departures from normalcy, but a step in the right direction. The restaurant was pretty good except for their distracting catchphrase: "Smiling Teeth" were we at a dentist's office, or a restaurant?

After lunch, our rolls of the dice brought us closer to nowhere away from any recognizable towns or landmarks, surrounded by farmlands, fields, and nothingness. Even the paved road went away into dirt at one point, and we had to turn around to discover a real live road (Rule 3).

Indiana is dotted with signs that say "Cuz Krazy Harry Sez So." After seeing a dozen of these signs, we're still unclear on who Harry is and what exactly he's trying to say.

We reached a T-intersection in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, and realized we didn't have a rule for that. The quick thinking couple like we are, we decided a T-intersection would yield a new dice roll, new Rule 10. Good thing, too, since the next seven consecutive rolls were done at T-intersections. They sure have a lot of T-intersections in the middle of Indiana; come prepared to make decisions.

Anxiety started to set in about 4pm (or was it 3? Which time zone we were in was a bit lost on us) would we make it to somewhere with a hotel, or would we be forced to sleep in the car? Would we run out of gas before we saw a gas station? Would lonely wild dogs attack us if we got out of the car? Would we become urban legends? We drove so long without seeing a town or village, or even another car, that it felt like we had entered an alternate universe. Without a map, and usually being so rigid on our road trips with planned routes, it was a departure from reality to have no idea where we would end up.

Finally, around 7pm and after 23 rolls of the dice, four diet cokes, two refills of the gas tank, 1 veto used, and no cell service, we arrived near civilization. The highway entrance signs indicated that Cincinnati was just around the corner. Our stair-step pattern through Indiana hadn't landed us in another reality. Instead, we were at the Ohio / Kentucky border. The dice brought us to a Big Boy Restaurant, and his beaming smile invited us in. I introduced myself to our friendly waitress, Pam, with whom I shared a name (check Rule 8 completed) and she took good care of our dinner. After dinner, purchase of a souvenir Big Boy bank and a friendly photo op with the oversized Big Boy statue outside, we found a hotel for the night.

The Ramada Limited was just fine for one night, but we believe the "limited" in the name stood for limited cleaning. The hotel was in Florence, Kentucky, and the nearby red and white water tower proclaimed our location with the text "Florence Y'all." We repeated that phrase for the rest of the trip.

The random path took us around eight hours of driving from Chicago to a city that should have only taken five, but those extra three hours took us places we'd never been, off the proverbial beaten path.

The next day, we took a break from randomness for a few hours and visited the local "Kings Island" Theme Park. Neither of us had ever been there, but as children had heard magical tales of Hanna-Barbera characters like Squiddly-Diddly, Fred Flintstone and Huckleberry Hound roaming the park with awesome rollercoasters. We were excited about this visit back to our childhoods, and ready to see a character in costume other than a giant mouse. Sadly, we were disappointed to learn that Kings Island had been bought by Paramount. Now the magic was gone. Instead, it was littered with lesser Nickelodeon characters.

We consoled ourselves with corn dogs and funnel cakes and visited attractions like the Eiffel Tower, a 1/3 scale replica of the real thing that brought my fear of heights to the extreme forefront. We came back to earth and rode the brightly colored Lazytown Copters (really meant for little kids), which was exactly like being in a cartoon.

After the somewhat disappointing theme park, we decided to gamble with some additional rolls of the dice. A few lucky spins brought us out of Ohio and into Kentucky, and suddenly off the highway and straight into horse country.

The roads were different and so was the landscape a nice change from the flatlands of Indiana. The hills and valleys were mainly full of horse pastures lined with black and white fencing, the horses running or grazing in the pastures ("Out standing in their fields," I joked to Robert). The farms were immense, the houses even bigger, the barns mainly black with red roofs, and the landscape out of a great car commercial. The two-lane road was full of switchbacks, sharp turns and hills. Since the road was also missing a shoulder, our car was only narrowly able to fit on the road. It reminded us of a racing Playstation 2 video game, and with the music up loud and the windows down, we felt free.

Our afternoon passed with uneventful dice rolls, taking us across Kentucky and towards West Virginia in a pretty straight path. We drove past nuclear power plants, traffic jams in the middle of nowhere, county fairs, creeks, farms, a giant bowling pin, bridges, tunnels, a UFO-type building, castles and a river that we kept crossing, over and over.

The evening light brought us to Huntington, West Virginia, a town very proud of Marshall University and full of industrial plants lining the Ohio River. Neither of us had visited West Virginia before, and as the night descended on the city, it seemed like we were in a truly different and foreign place. We stopped at a Holiday Inn for the night. The smell of the hotel brought back childhood memories of indoor pools and chlorine-scented hair.

We slept in a bit, and woke up dreaming of bacon, so it was off to Bob Evans across the street. We both ordered different breakfasts than we normally do (biscuits and gravy for me and French toast for Robert), but I couldn't stop talking about the sign outside the restaurant reading "Bob Evans Carry Home Kitchen." Would they have pre-assembled kitchens available to carry home? And how would we get the kitchen to our house? Were they mini kitchens? The sign didn't mention food.

Reflection of the past two days brought a major turning moment in the trip. We'd had enough of the randomness and rolling of dice and not knowing where we were on the map. That was it. We were done. We went to the local gas station, bought an atlas, and decided right then and there that we were driving to the ocean. It looked so close on the map! Just a few short hours and we'd be running in the waves.

Being without a map for two days had rendered us incapable of judging distance. Something that looked only three or four hours away visually on the atlas to us turned into a nine-hour journey. This portion of the trip was very unlike the previous two days, with a different kind of anxiety setting in would we make it to the ocean before dark?

Wondering about towns named Hurricane and Tornado in West Virginia, seeing giant oil refineries, witnessing tunnel and bridge marvels of modern engineering, stopping at scenic overlooks and flying along the highway all made the time go quickly. We also are fond of the road game that my dad invented (at least, I like to think he did) called "White Horse." It's pretty simple. If you see a white horse, you yell out "White Horse!" and you get one point. I am the undisputed "White Horse" champion, and the vacation just confirmed my title.

We drove into Virginia Beach, Virginia, just as the sun was setting opposite the ocean. We checked into a hotel right on the beach with a balcony overlooking the water, and made our way down the boardwalk for dinner. Tourists were plentiful, and so was the seafood. We introduced ourselves to the hostess at Casby's and the inept waiter, meeting rule 8 for the both of us. They both looked at us like we were nuts.

The next day, the alarm went off early. We woke up in time to see the sunrise over the ocean, while fighter jets patrolled the water along with Navy destroyers deep in the distance. In Chicago, we're not witnesses to an omnipresent military as in Virginia Beach. The jets were intimidating, but they roared over our hotel room like our own personal air show.

We swam together in the ocean me with a newly purchased pink floaty-ring (I'm scared of the undertow) and Robert swimming like a fish. A few sandcastles and a sun-drenched nap later, we roused ourselves and decided it was time to return home to Chicago.

Rolling the dice and getting to the ocean seemed easy. But the thought of driving all the way home seemed close to impossible.

We washed the pesky sand off, changed, and started the journey by heading to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge / Tunnel combo. The 20-mile long bridge is huge, much bigger than any regular Illinois bridge. We stopped at the restaurant on the bridge for a cheeseburger. The windows overlooked the navy ships in the bay, and we bought cheesy souvenirs in the way-too-crowded gift shop. Sunday is a popular day for souvenir shopping.

We drove up the Eastern Shore towards Delaware. The terrain was different again farmlands near the ocean growing tomatoes and sunflowers, not many trees. The road was crowded with trucks hauling millions of tomatoes away from the farms. Who doesn't love a good tomato, besides Robert?

We were surprised to learn that, much like Indiana, fireworks are completely legal in Virginia. And Virginians are proud of their ham. We saw a ton of roadside stands with enthusiastic signs, proclaiming the wonder of their hams. "I like the fireworks / ham combination" Robert remarked. You could buy fireworks alongside a juicy Virginia ham, one-stop shopping for the busy pyromaniac carnivore.

We continued our homeward-bound journey on Interstate 70 after Annapolis. We looked at each other around 4pm. "Is it crazy to drive straight through the night to Chicago?" we asked each other. Yes, it was crazy, we decided, but that's kind of how this vacation was going. Random craziness. And when was the last time we drove all night, or even stayed up all night, for that matter? Nothing seemed absurd at that point.

The sun set over Pennsylvania and we kept driving.

The heavy moon rose and we decided the night would forever be known as "Night of a Thousand Skunks," one of which may or may not have been under the hood of our car. It was that stinky.

I watched the stars turning from the car's moon roof.

Gas stations are inherently creepy at 3am, no matter where you are.

The sun rose over Indiana, and we kept driving.

We hit Chicago rush hour traffic at about 6:30am. Robert was driving, and battled his sleepiness bravely, while I fell asleep sitting up straight in the passenger seat.

It all started with the rules. The road-trip vacation was different because it was so random, unplanned and unpredictable. Who would have guessed we'd end up at the ocean? We saw many new sights, visited new states, ate new foods and met new people. When we think back, it was a dichotomy between random and rules. We started with the rules, but ended up in randomness.

Next time, we're going West.

Pamela Morgan works as a producer and reality facilitator in the corporate meeting world. Recently transplanted to the western suburbs after 15 years of living in Chicago, you can read about her new home adventures at yobotsnewhouse.com.

There is an option to have Time Machine show other network attached disks:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

But Apple is hesitant to enable this as the default since it places the integrity of interrupted Time Machine backups at risk. So Apple is in a difficult spot with respect to supporting 3rd party NAS devices.

I heard a similar explanation from a few people at Macworld Expo last week more or less that the AFP implementation in current AirPort base stations isn't robust enough. Backups seem to work, but fail when you attempt to restore from them.

At the tail end of 2007, President Bush signed into law the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007. Cut that down to size and what you get is an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act.

You know, that legal documentation that protects the likes of Perez Hilton when he decidedly scribbles all over images and posts them on the web.

Well, even if that legal document didn't entirely protect the likes of Perez Hilton, it does now, thanks to this long-winded amendment made to the FOIA. The Openness Promotes Effectiveness Act concludes the following:

1. establishing a definition of a representative of the news media;
2. directing that required attorney fees be paid from an agency's own appropriation rather than from the Judgment Fund;
3. prohibiting an agency from assessing certain fees if it fails to comply with FOIA deadlines; and
4. establishing an Office of Government Information Services in the National Archives and Records Administration to review agency compliance with FOIA.

Additionally, the representatives of new media has been privy to an expansion of definition, according to the following:

[T]he term a representative of the news media' means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term news' means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public.

Examples of news-media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of news') who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public.

These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.

Are you yawning yet? What all this mumbo jumbo means is that citizen journalists and journalists are now covered under the amended Act. That deserves one big, fat hooray, for the most part. While the new definition of new media representative isn't all inclusive, it's a step in the right direction. Thanks, Mr. Bush, for giving the next president a head start on the right way to handle the Internet as a distribution tool. Bloggers need protection, too.

Perhaps the presence of citizen journalism is merely too difficult to ignore any longer?

As Mark pointed out not too long ago, new media tools like blogging, Twitter and Facebook allowed him to stay more informed about the Iowa Caucus, faster than the television coverage, or even a news website's coverage.

But looking at all that the Openness amendment entails, it would also seem that the needs of traditional media have come into play as well, as the industries involved with traditional (old) media move further into the realm of Internet distribution. Additionally, those larger companies that deal with the web could see some healthy benefits from the amended FOIA as well.

[via podcasting news]

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An Advertising Recession?

Another New Ad Medium

Watching the Audience

Information Will Be Free

Since the dawn of the internet, "content wants to be free" has been the rallying cry of digital evangelists. But those who wanted to charge for content could always point to a shining example: the Wall Street Journal, with its 1 million online subscribers and $65 million in digital subscription revenue.

That will all change in 2008. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. recently completed its $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones, plans to set WSJ.com free, judging from several fairly unequivocal public pronouncements.

Despite the short-term loss of subscription revenue, "long term, it's kind of a slam dunk," says Mike Vorhaus, managing director at the consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. The money that is made from selling ads that reach a much larger audience will more than make up for losses, he adds.

The New York Times had a similar epiphany in September, when it shut down TimesSelect, its premium content service. But business news seemed to be one place where online subscriptions could still be sold successfully.

The Journal's move, however, will change the economics for competitors such as the Financial Times, which also charges a fee. "If the Wall Street Journal goes free, I suspect [FT.com] will also do it," says John Morton, an independent newspaper-industry analyst in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Companies that provide data rather than news may perhaps be more immune to the live-free-or-die fever, but then again, they might not.

ConsumerReports.org has been another success to date; just this month, it signed up its 3 millionth paid subscriber. But Jarvis predicts that free content will triumph eventually in that arena as well.

"Somebody's going to come along and pull a Craigslist on them," says Jarvis, referring to the listings site that has decimated newspapers' classified sections. "It's the kind of data you can get from your fellow customers."

Time to Part Ways?

Hello. I am a listener to the Writer's Almanac and have been for many years. Although my local station doesn't carry it, in the days before you had a podcast version available I used to record the MP3 streams of public radio stations and save them to listen later. When you began podcasting it made my life easier.

I thought I would bring a few technical issues to your attention. One is the implications of the way you use your ID3 metadata tags in the MP3 itself. Every file has the same tags, which are to have an artist of APM, an album of The Writer's Almanac for and a song title of The Writer's Almanac for . The ellipses are not my convention, those are the literal text in every one of your files. Y'all might not be aware of this, but that causes problems with a number of MP3 players. I have both a Creative Zen and a Microsoft Zune and both of them have some smart syncing capabilities. That is, they will only sync a given song once and what defines a distinctive song is that it has a unique set of artist, album and song title. Since your song title never changes, I get one and only one copy of the song on my device, regardless of how many were downloaded. It would not only make that syncing issue work but make your show more usable if the song title also included the date.

Your show appears to be assembled from several different audio files; the main program and several pre and post roll underwriting announcements. All of these files are at somewhat different levels. The announcement in the female voice for the Poetry Foundation is significantly lower than everything else, such that if I'm listening in my car setting the volume for the main program makes that portion all but inaudible. If you set your volume to be able to hear that section, the main show would deafen you. It would really help out the podcast listening experience if these were brought together. It would only need to be done a single time for all the component files and then the show would get better for everyone. There is even a free tool to do this for just this situation:

http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator

Hope you are all well. I'm trying to do good work here, and by definition I have kept in touch.

Dave Slusher