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Wearables in 2005 

An article I wrote for the Wearable Computing column of IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine just came out, and highlights some of the projects at last year's ISWC conference. Here's the intro:

Wearables in 2005
Bradley Rhodes and Kenji Mase

In July 1996, one year before the first International Symposium on Wearable Computers, DARPA sponsored a workshop entitled "Wearables in 2005" (www.darpa.mil/MTO/Displays/Wear2005). Attendees predicted how wearable computers might be used in 2005 and identified key technology gaps that needed to be filled to make their vision a reality. In October 2005, the 9th Annual International Symposium on Wearable Computing was held in Osaka, Japan, the first to be held in Asia. Participants presented a wide range of research from both industry and academia, spanning 13 countries and weaving together such diverse fields as interface design, hardware and systems, gesture and pattern recognition, textiles, augmented reality, and clothing design.1 Many of the themes would have sounded familiar in 1996, with continuing improvements in ergonomics and power management as well as gesture recognition and augmented reality.

As you would hope, the field has also developed in new directions in the past decade, with a much greater emphasis on large-scale recording and annotation of everyday activities, on the science and engineering of clothing design, and on performing thorough quantitative evaluations of potential input devices. We have also seen a large increase in the use of accelerometers, smart phones, and RFID readers as researchers leverage continuing drops in cost and size in the consumer electronics world.

As the largest primary conference for wearables researchers, ISWC provides a good snapshot of the state of the field. So, with the benefit of hindsight, here are some highlights of how wearables research actually looked in 2005.

The IEEE copy is here, and I've also got an HTML copy on my publications page.

Multi-touchscreen application demo 

Image credit: Jeff Han

Jeff Han at NYU has a very nice demo video of what you can do with a multitouch-sensitive screen (video is also cached at youtube). This is using Frustrated total Internal Reflection to sense both pressure and location of multiple simultaneous touches.

(Thanks to /amq for the link!)

and a cow 

I turned on BBC radio yesterday just in time to hear the newscaster say "and a purebred Guernsey cow. Now on to sports..." I caught the reference, but at the time had no idea what he was talking about...

Keeping the djinni out of the bottle 

In many ways I see the problems with Google's centralization as just another facet of a tension that has existed since the Internet started: the tension between the decentralized "every end-user is his own service provider" model and the centralized fiefdom model where you sign up for one of a handful of service providers. I think it was the coming of the Web in the early '90s that finally tipped the scale in favor of the decentralized model, and as a result we saw an explosion of URLs and email addresses that weren't only from AOL, CompuServe or Prodigy. This, I think, was all for the better. But now the proliferation of GMail addresses and Google Base scare me precisely because they smack a little too much of the fiefdom model we so wisely avoided 15 years ago.

Google Desktop widens the privacy hole 

EFF is sounding a warning about Google Desktop's latest Search Remote Computers function. The function itself sounds nice: one search command to search all your documents and viewed webpages regardless of what computer they're on. Trouble is, Google does it by uploading all those sensitive documents to their own servers in case your laptop or other computers are off-line.

I think Google has a pretty good moral compasses, but (as I mentioned when GMail came out) there are fundamental risks with this sort of centralized system regardless of the trustworthiness of the company running them. As EFF's alert points out, many legal protections enjoyed by information stored on your own home computer are lost when stored with an online service provider:

The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers—much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.

I can imagine other legal and practical questions as well. For example, if Google Desktop wound up uploading a researcher's company-confidential tech reports, would that count as "disclosure" and thus prevent him from filing for a patent on his work? And if a laptop running the software is opened in a foreign airport (e.g. China), can the local Google office be subjected to subpoena under that country's own laws?

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me as podcast 

I'm a week late on this news, but I see that NPR has finally started releasing Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me as a podcast, so I don't have to stream it anymore like I've been doing the past year. (They've also started podcasting This I Believe and The Unger Report, among others, and of course On The Media has been podcast for ages.)

Iconoclasts in glass houses 

The statements from the Vatican I linked to last post include a comment from Cardinal Achille Silvestrini that's worth highlighting:

The cardinal said secular societies should not assume a right to offend religious sentiments. He noted that many countries consider it illegal to offend their national flag and asked, "Shouldn't we consider religious symbols on an equal level with the symbols of secular institutions?"

This is a good point; it is far to easy to defend the right to satire or denigrate the other people's images while holding that our own images and ideals should be off-limits. However, I take away a different lesson than he intended, namely that we all must be wary of the power our own symbols have over us.

If I may stereotype the argument as religion vs. secular culture, both sides of have blind spots when it comes to our symbols. We secularists are so invested in the myth that we are rational beings that we are blind to the very real power our icons and our media have over us, and that blindness makes us vulnerable. The result is Madison Avenue, Hollywood and politicians who can play us like a musical instrument. Religion, on the other hand, is so aware of the power of icons that they have become hostage to the defense of their own. The result is hair-trigger sensitivity, where a simple cartoon or perceived slight in the wording on a greeting card can spark boycotts and even violence.

Back to their roots... 

The Vatican weighs in on the cartoons of Muhammad:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican, commenting on a series of satirical newspaper cartoons that have outraged Muslims, said freedom of expression does not include the right to offend religious sentiments.

...The Vatican suggested, however, that where free speech crosses the line and becomes offensive to a religion, national authorities "can and should" intervene.

Pretty strong words for a religion that only a few centuries ago was being oppressed by various national authorities because their very existence was considered offensive.

(Link by way of The Volokh Conspiracy...)

Fon 

From CNN Money:

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Aiming to increase access to the Internet, particularly for people away from home, Google, Skype and other leading Internet investors Sunday announced a $21.5 million investment in an innovative new Internet access network called Fon.

The company, founded by Spanish entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, aims to build a network of WiFi hotspots far larger than those from companies like T-Mobile and Swisscom, none of which have more than 30,000 hotspots worldwide.

Fon aims to exceed that in its first year, and to have one million hotspots in four years. It hopes to achieve this by getting individuals and businesses to contribute their own hotspots to the network in exchange for getting access wherever they go. Those who contribute access get to use the access of others.

If Fon comes through with a simple-to-install and manage setup I can see this idea really gaining traction — it sounds like he's got the right level of incentive to end-users who donate their bandwidth, and the technology for charging non-members for hotspots is already tried & tested. (Heck, if it works well I'd pay $25 just to get his "use only 50% of your bandwidth on outsiders" software; I keep thinking something like that must exist, but I've yet to find one.)

Long as he can jump-start the process and can convince ISPs to let him in on a racket they'd love to control themselves I'd say he's got a good chance. (I see he's already signed on Speakeasy in the US, though they also have one of the most liberal wireless sharing policies around so others may be a harder sell.)

Secret (software) Agent Man 

Saturday's Washington Post article on the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program has a short aside I find rather chilling (emphasis mine):

Even with 38,000 employees, the NSA is incapable of translating, transcribing and analyzing more than a fraction of the conversations it intercepts. For years, including in public testimony by Hayden, the agency has acknowledged use of automated equipment to analyze the contents and guide analysts to the most important ones.

According to one knowledgeable source, the warrantless program also uses those methods. That is significant to the public debate because this kind of filtering intrudes into content, and machines "listen" to more Americans than humans do. NSA rules since the late 1970s, when machine filtering was far less capable, have said "acquisition" of content does not take place until a conversation is intercepted and processed "into an intelligible form intended for human inspection."

When I was in the Software Agents Group at MIT in the late '90s, we had lots of discussion about whether people would be legally responsible for the actions of automated software programs (agents) they use. If I tell eBay's software to bid up to a given price, can I be held to that agreement even though the "agent" did the bidding and not me? If I knowingly write and unleash an intelligent virus, am I responsible for the damage it causes? The answer to these questions has to be yes if responsibility means anything in our increasingly automated society, and the question would be completely ludicrous were it not for the complexity of what software can now do without our direct intervention. Imagine the murder defense "I didn't kill those people, my gun did!" And yet, this is the logic being used by the NSA when they claim eavesdropping only counts if the interception is shown to a human. "I didn't spy on innocent Americans, my software did it!"

There are times where being watched by electronic eyes is preferable to being watched by humans. For example, I trust that Google's automated system will only use my email to generate relevant advertisements (and nothing else) more than I would if they had humans reading and tagging every email by hand. However, in the NSA's case their software is doing exactly what they themselves are prohibited from doing both by statute and the Fourth Amendment, namely looking for illegal activity by trolling through mountains of private domestic communications without probable cause. Even if the software only produced a human-readable summary or a ranked list of suspicious people, that output would be tainted just as surely as if an NSA analyst had produced it.

(Thanks to Nelson both for the link and the reminder to donate to the ACLU.)

DIY Mardi Gras masks 

Lately I've been experimenting with making hardened-leather face-masks. I'm making a bunch of butterfly-looking ones to adorn my wall, but with Mardi Gras just around the corner I figure people might enjoy a quick DIY guide:

	Start with vegetable-tanned (also known as saddle-skirt) leather. I picked mine up at a local Tandy Leather. Update 2/25/06: Get 5/7-weight leather (that is, between 5/64" and 7/64" thick). Thicker is OK, though you'll get more shrinkage (less soak-time may help that). Thinner won't harden as quickly, will be brittle and won't hold a shape very well.
	Cut a mask pattern, allowing for about 30% shrinkage.
	Soak leather in cool water for 10 minutes.
	Heat water to 180°F.
	Soak in hot water for around 90 seconds. The leather will shrink, curl and thicken, and then start to uncurl. The longer you soak it the stretchier it will be at the start and the smaller, harder, thicker and more brittle the end result will be.
	Once the leather comes out, you have about 5 minutes to stretch and shape it before it becomes stiff. For a good face-shape be sure to add bumps for the bridge of the nose, eyebrows and cheekbones. If you have any dangly bits they can be twisted or braided, and they will harden into whatever shape you set them. Over the next 10 minutes, give it a pinch every now and then to make sure it stays in the shape you want, then let it dry overnight. By morning, it should be hard as wood.
	If you decide now that you need to expand the eyeholes or change the outline you can use a drill or saw. Otherwise, you're ready to paint it, using a paint suitable for leather. I used several coats of "3D" fabric paint. Mardi Gras colors are green, purple and gold. Add ribbon-ties if you like. Have fun!

Update 2/25/06: More masks I've been making:

This guide can also be found on instructables.com.

Nice freeware fonts... 

Quick plug: Misprinted Type has several nice freeware fonts (plus a few commercial ones) available for download for Mac and PC.

Ceci n'est pas le prophète Muhammad. 

Infallibly copyrighted 

The news last week was that the Vatican is now enforcing their copyright on the Pope's writings, including ex-cathedra pronouncements which according to Church doctrine are written "with the assistance of the Holy Spirit".

Which to me just begs the question: who owns the copyright on these pronouncements anyway, the Pope or the Holy Spirit? Was this a work for hire?

Event: Douglas Hofstadter at Stanford 2/6/06 @7pm 

For you local folk, on Monday evening Douglas Hofstadter will be giving a special lecture at Stanford University on Analogy as the Core of Cognition. The event is free and open to the public. (Thanks to Perlick for the link.)

Update 2/7/06: Perlick and I both attended, and he posted a summary on his blog.

Optimus mini-three keyboard 

I'm not sure yet what I'd do with it, but the Optimus mini-three keyboard looks very fun: it's an auxiliary keyboard with three keys, each with its own little OLED screen displaying the current function (potentially animated). The most compelling examples are where not only is the button's function displayed but also what effect it'll have in the current context, like what image, song, or PowerPoint slide is coming up next when browsing through media.

USB 1.0, currently Windows only for the configuration software but others are coming. Pre-orderable for $100 until April 2nd, shipped to arrive on May 15th. This is coming out of the Art. Lebedev Studio in Russia — looks like they've also got a complete keyboard coming soon too.

(Thanks to Nerfduck for this link too!)

On the Internet, no one knows you're a pigeon... 

Via Reuters: UC Irvine professor Beatriz da Costa will be releasing 20 pigeons into the San Jose skies during this year's International Symmposium on Electronic Art. Each pigeon will be equipped with a camera, GPS, air-polution monitor and cellphone, and images and location-based polution data will be automatically posted to a PigeonBlog. (No word on whether PigeonBlog will comply with RFC 1149.)

Thanks to Nerfduck for the link!

Google VOIP? 

Almost exactly a year ago I made fun of the UK newspaper The Times for suggesting Google was gearing up enter the Voice Over IP space. Now it's starting to look like they were right...

iPods for the Senate 

The "balanced intellectual-property policy" advocacy group IPac has a new campaign to educate senators about media in the Internet Age by sending them iPods:

Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the "Broadcast Flag" and "Audio Flag," a set of proposals by the MPAA and RIAA that would stifle innovation by giving content holders a virtual veto over new technologies and existing user rights.

But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive.

I'd thought this same thing when I first read about Senator Stevens, but figured it'd be illegal for Senators to accept the iPods as gifts. IPac's FAQ says they're donating these to the Senator's campaign offices (for use in campaign-related activities) and so they get around the rules — whether the Senators will accept them given the current scrutiny over lobbying scandals is another question.

(Thanks to Amy for the link!)