Effects of Technology

As I was sitting at my desk trying to figure out the answer to this latest word problem one thought ran through my mind, I wish my teacher would let me use a calculator. In eighth grade, my teacher wouldn’t let us use a calculator to figure out the math problems because she had a firm grasp on a very important principle: when we no longer NEED to do a task ourselves, we typically don’t. At the very beginning I want to point out that I understand this is not a hard and fast rule and that I realize there will be eager souls that don’t fall for this laziness, and that there will be some who keep doing a task even after they could pawn it of on someone or something else purely because they enjoy it. The point is, those people are absolutely in the minority, they are the exception.

Calculators, the internet, and cell phones, have had dramatic impact to the progress of knowledge, the advancement of business, and the altering of the fundamentals of human interaction. Think about it, when was the last time you did long division or solved a quadratic equation by hand, went to the library to research the history of some topic of debate among friends, or dialed a number from memory? Maybe you’ve done one or two of these things, but most likely, thinking about it made you realize how much different it is now than when you were younger. The times they are a changing, and now even faster than ever before.

When technology comes along that makes our life easier, it is a simple thing to embrace that and thank the R&D firms for the wonderful gifts they’ve given us: we can listen to any song we own, instantly, wherever we are, find pictures and videos for free at home or on the go, talk to almost anyone we want to whether we are in a park, a car, or the bathroom, and the only time I’ve solved a complex equation by hand in the last 4 years was because I wanted to see if I still could.

It’s great that I no longer have to remember the phone numbers of every relative, friend, and random person I meet. However, it’s a bit frightening that the only 3 numbers I can think of right now are my personal cell number, my work number, and my parent’s home number. Two of those three are because they haven’t changed in 8 years and one because I have to give it out on a daily basis. Other than those three numbers I couldn’t tell you a single cell phone number, not even my wife’s and, personally, that scares me.

The future of “technology” reads more like a fantasy novel than a science fiction novel every day. In Hogwarts the pictures in the newspaper and in peoples frames move about – and advances in thin displays and flexible displays mean this type of technology is less than 10 years away; early adopter technology can be purchased today. Magic bought with money is called technology, and the bounds between science and science fiction is wearing thinner every day.

The question is, what consequences are we willing to live with, even embrace as the outcome of progress? Hopefully, we all enter into the new world only after having thought very carefully about what kind of life we want to have, and where our priorities are.

Contact Lenses for super human vision/real time information updates?

Flexible displays “printed” into the rest of the newspaper?

Emerging Technology

Being a good little cog in the machine, most of us have probably heard talk about "HDTV", "Digital TV", Blu-ray, HDMI, DVI, and all sorts of other terms fly around that seem to amount to "Buy more TVs and black boxes".

Thought I'd put together the following summary for anyone curious. Of course Wikipedia is a great place to go for these sorts of questions, regardles of how you feel about using it for higher brow subjects like literary criticism.

The "Idiot's Guide to Emerging AV technology" might read something like this (un-edited):

Difference between Digital and HD
HDTV is short for High Definition TV and can be either a digital or analog signal. You can send a "HD" signal over the same 15 pin cable that has been used to hook up computer monitors for the last umpteen years. This is analog HD. You can also send an "HD" signal over a digital cable, such as a DVI-d cable or an HDMI cable.

DIGITAL TV or a DIGITAL broadcast is simply a signal that is binary, 1/0, like computer information. This is different from standard, analog, TV simply by being digital. Standard TV was sent with waves of energy, lots of different frequencies. As the radio wave changed shape (taller, longer, etc.) the image on your TV changed shape. With Digital TV the information for each pixel is sent using binary information, data, and then your TV or monitor creates the image by setting each pixel to the desired color and brightness. It updates this image so many times per second that the image moves.

Digital TV doesn't NECESSARILY equal better image or higher resolution. Digital TV can be either standard definition (what you see on DVDs or cable TV right now) or high definition (see below).

Digital TV Switchover - In February 2009 the federal government has mandated that all broadcasters switch over to purely digital signals. Don't worry. This means absolutely nothing for you unless you get your TV "off the air", which is fancy language for "I use an antenna". If you use an antenna, then you WILL be affected. People who only have an antenna will have to use a digital tuner to get the signal. If you purchased a TV in the last 2 years, chances are you have this tuner. If not, you can get a coupon from the government for $40.00 off the price of a digital tuner. If you have a TV capable of displaying HD content, the good news is that the switch to digital broadcasts means you can now pick up HD content for free off the air, when the broadcaster chooses to send it.

The old "off the air" system was refered to by the acronym NTSC and the new system is called ATSC. That is what you're looking for on your TV to know whether or not you'll need a separate tuner after Feb. 2009 to view TV with an antenna. Keep in mind that if you get cable or satellite, then the provider and their set top box will take care of this switch over for you.

My new TV has a digital (ATSC) tuner and with a basic set of rabbit ears I've been able to watch glorious HD content, for free, from PBS and networks like ABC...including Lost in HD. PBS has some of the most gorgeous free HD content out there. They have an entire channel dedicated to HD that includes beautiful on-site travel programs, science, and lots of other stuff.Blu-ray - Yes, Blu-ray has won this current format war. What does that mean? If you have an HD capable TV (at least 720p) then you can purchase a Blu-ray player, re-purchase all your movies (or just start buying Blu-ray), and watch better looking movies. Yes it's a noticeable difference, mostly on larger TVs. If you have a TV less than 25", it probably won't be an earth shattering experience. Keep in mind that with the pace technology is evolving, the next "Big" shift in technology will likely be streaming or downloaded HD, and unless you are chomping at the bits to have the latest in HD home entertainment, you're probably better suited to wait a year or so. If nothing else, prices should come down from over $400.00 for a player to closer to the $150-$200 mark.

Emerging Technologies - What's coming in the next few years? Well, the early adopter technology is out now which means that, if successful, more widespread devices should be out within 2 years (right around the time Blu-ray COULD be hitting its stride). I'm talking about streaming HD. The benefits? Imagine being able to sit down on your couch and, with access to the entire Netflix or Blockbuster library, pick what movie you want to rent/buy. In less time than it takes to heat up the popcorn, the movie is at your TV and ready to watch. Yes, in HD and with all the control (play/pause/FF/RW/Chapters/Etc) that DVD has spoiled you with. Right now this takes the form of either a TiVo box or AppleTV, however with Blockbuster and Netflix both wanting in on the action, it's likely there will be significantly more options within 2 years.

Essentially, you would be downloading the movie either permenantly (buying), or temporarily (renting) to a hard drive in a box sitting under your TV. The key here is interface. Most consumers don't want to have to operate a computer while watching a movie. They want any computer involved to be as transparent as possible. They want to sit down with a remote, and watch a movie. Period. If the companies involved can grasp this, it will make Blu-ray a moot point as people won't have to go out and buy a physical disc whenever they want to watch a movie.

-edit 3/5/08-
Apply here for a DTV Tuner if you have an old TV AND use an antenna.
-end edit-

Wikipedia on Blu-ray
Wikipedia on HD-TV
Wikipedia on Digital TV

Megapixel Madness

DO NOT BUY A CAMERA JUST BECAUSE IT HAS MORE MEGAPIXELS THAN ANOTHER CAMERA!!!

I’ve been reading more and more articles lately saying that the number of Megapixels (how much information your digital camera captures when you snap a photo) is getting to the point where most people aren’t well served to simply look for the camera with more Megapixels.

Check out this link to West Coast Imaging for a fantastic (and colorful) chart illustrating how different megapixel ratings affect print quality at various sizes. (Hint: the number inside each little rectangle is the effective DPI. DPI is the dots per inch and is how you measure what quality a print is.)

200 DPI or higher is recommended for photographic quality prints.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find myself printing out two foot by 3 foot prints that often. Ok, never. The largest I’ve ever printed out is 8x10, and that was in photography class in college. That means that for most people, the biggest concern is that they want to crop their picture down and only print part of it.

Let’s say you crop your picture down so that you’re only using the bottom left corner of the image (throwing away 75% of the image…seriously, shoot more discriminately). If you did this with a 4 megapixel image (2464 x 1632 pixels), the remaining image (after cropping) would be 1232 x 816 pixels. Tiny, right? Well that image could still be printed at roughly 204 DPI as a 4x6 image (remember over 200 is considered photo-quality). 4x6 is the standard size for prints from a photolab.

Bottom line…if you are going to be lazy and shoot pictures that have to be cropped to one quarter of their size, a 4 megapixel camera will still let you print photo quality images at the most common size. If you are going to print photos as 8x10s (without cropping) you only need 4 megapixels. Everything above that only serves to allow you to crop more and still print at the same size, or to print larger than 8x10 with minimal cropping.

This tells me that the most important thing in cameras, 4 megapixels and higher, is how well they capture color, sharpness, how good the lens is, how small or easy the camera is to use, and how much it costs.

Last thought. If you are only going to post your photos to your website then keep in mind that most photos get posted at a maximum of the screen resolution. Screen resolutions right now range from 1024x768 to 1920x1200. However, much more common is for images to be used on websites inline with the text at resolutions of less than 640x480. You could do this with less than 25% of a 2 megapixel image Please, please, please, do not spend a couple hundreds dollars extra JUST to move from 6 to 7, or even 6 to 9 megapixels. If the camera has other features,GREAT, if you absolutely know that you are going to crop most of your pictures, then consider it.

Infectious Diseases

Thanks Apple. That's exactly what I needed. Really - I just spent all of last month going, "Gee there aren't enough songs in the world to get stuck in my head. Maybe Apple will use an incredibly catchy song to promote it's new Nano and then I can get THAT stuck in my head as well."

So, yeah. Thanks for that.





Woo Hoo...

Emperor's New Diet?

How much would YOU pay for "Gourmet Salt"?

I recently read an article that detailed a "salt sampler rack" (like a spice rack but with different salts) that sold for over $100.00. I just can't imagine who's buying over $100.00 in gourmet salt. I could see spending 5 bucks on some cool looking black salt, but I imagine that's probably still a pretty hard sell for most people.

Maybe I'm missing something.