LISTEN To This Issue.
            Give your eyes a rest, and listen at your own speed.

Quote of the Week.
            A new excuse...

Escalating "The Game."
            Advertiser vs. Web surfer -- a nasty battle.

Visualizing The Net...
            Ride shotgun with your data packets.

...And Web-Enabling The Things Around Us!
            Moderately small can be beautiful, and could change
            the things around us.

Tidbits...
            CD as laboratory -- a follow-up; and
            CPU Update.

DVDs - From Yesterday Through Tomorrow.
            What makes DVDs tick, and where they're going...

Question of the Week.
            Let's pander to our casual technological interests.

A Sign Of The Times...
            Out of the mouths of babes...

About "The Harrow Technology Report"

LISTEN To This Issue.

Do you prefer to let your ears do the work of keeping you in-touch with, and thinking about where technology is taking us?  If so, "The Harrow Technology Report" is also available in an audio-on-demand, Web-based, MP3 version. 

If you have an MP3 player on your system (and most do, such as Window's Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.), clicking on the link below will either stream the file to you, or, depending on how your system is configured, it might download the file before playing it.  Alternatively, if you specifically want to download the file, simply right-click on the link, and choose "Save Target As..."

Also, to learn how you can listen at whatever speed is most comfortable to you, check out the FAQ at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/help.htm .

So, if you wish, just click on the following link to listen to this issue!  http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020429/20020429.mp3 .

 

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Quote of the Week.

 

"I recently experienced my next milestone in the next age of technology: 

I was in a restaurant waiting for a client, who came in late and all flustered.  His first words?

 'Sorry I was late; I got lost -- I should NOT have listened to my car!' 

(He had an apparently-confused GPS navigation system that was speaking incorrect directions to him.)

First time for everything..."

Hey -- that's at least as good as 'the dog ate my homework!'

 

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Escalating "The Game."

 

It's no secret that there are many programs available from mainstream download sites that block ads from your Web browser.

I call this an example of "technological escalatio," where one company or industry comes up with something (say AOL's "closed garden" Instant Messaging), and another company comes up with a way around it, if only fleetingly (such as Microsoft a couple of years ago, and more recently PalTalk - http://news.com.com/2100-1023-843760.html).  In fact if such "games" weren't so serious, they would be comical -- in the case of AOL's IM, a challenger finds a way to allow its customers to interact with AOL IMers; AOL plugs the "hole" they used; the challenger finds a way around the "fix," often issuing a patch that re-enables access to AOL's IM the same day, and the process continues ad infinitum until someone gets tired or the courts are enlisted to intervene. 

Well, that same "game" is now coming to Web-based advertising in a big way -- programs that counter the increasingly (and in some cases amazingly) intrusive new ad formats, such as playing audio or video messages without your consent (and disturbing others around you).  Or ads that constantly flash and animate in ways that make it difficult to concentrate.  Or most offensive to me of all (once I got over my appreciation for the expertise and creativity needed to create them), are the full-page "overlay" or "out of banner" advertisements from United Virtualities (http://www.unitedvirtualities.com/) that move across the entire page, obscuring the content of the page itself.  (Even more troubling, we may soon, according to the April 2 USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/2002/04/02/browser-ads.htm), be accosted by ads that actually modify the look, feel, and operation of our browsers!)

The thing is, that when ads were restricted to fairly staid banners, few people felt a need to quash them.  But as their offensiveness grew, an entire cottage industry sprang up to squelch the ads, and to preserve limited bandwidth by not allowing the ads to download at all.  And this idea has now moved "mainstream," with, for example, the "Pro" version of the popular personal firewall, ZoneAlarm.  It's V3.0 has added the ability to remove most ads from your Web browser, as well as the ability to prevent cookies from being scattered around your hard drive! (http://www.zonelabs.com/)

When I first upgraded to ZoneAlarm Pro 3.0, I admit to being skeptical that these blockers would work well, but after several weeks of using it in real-world testing, I'm pretty impressed.  It's not perfect, in that some ads continue to get through, but almost all of the really annoying ones have been banished back into the ether from whence they came.  Another problem is that some Web sites get seriously bent out of shape if I don't allow them to leave their cookie crumbs behind.  But I suspect that both functions will improve over time. 

I also find it particularly interesting that, in talking about ZoneAlarm Pro here, I didn't feel the need to discuss its base functionality -- protecting the PC from the denizens of the Internet.  That part of it "just works," and so fades into the background.

I do feel conflicted about all of this, because I believe that advertiser-supported Web sites help keep information freely available to all.  But in the advertisers' attempts to try to increase their revenue through ever-more intrusive ads, I believe they are getting just the opposite response as technology allows a growing number of people "just say no."  And if the advertisers choose to continue the game of "technological escalatio" by altering their ads' signatures so that they aren't recognized, I'm sure that the many ad blockers will quickly raise the blocking bar.

I don't have the magic answer to this, but it does seem to me that annoying your potential customers to the point that they no longer see your message at all can hardly be a good thing.

May this whole "game" be reconsidered, so that customer-centric rationality prevails...

 

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Visualizing The Net...

 

Most of us have a reasonable idea of what The Internet is -- a collection of data pipes and routers and other mysterious things that somehow, magically, get the fragmented packets of our messages to just about anyplace on the globe in typically less than a quarter-second, while rearranging all those packets into coherent Emails or IMs or movies or voice streams or multiplayer games.  The more technical among us appreciate the complexity of what takes place "under the covers" to make this magic possible, but there's rarely a middle ground to help those of us who are not network engineers, yet who still would like a better conceptual overview of just how the Internet does its thing.

In that regard, reader Burch Seymour brings our attention to a wonderfully animated, rendered, and narrated 12 minute movie called "Warriors of the Net" created by Gunilla Elam, Tomas Stephansson, and Niklas Hanberger, all formerly of Ericsson's MediaLab.  It turns out that these warriors are quite victorious in bringing us some insight into how the Internet works.

In a highly engaging manner, this movie illustrates and explains what happens from the time when you click on a link in your Web browser, to when the result is displayed: 

It begins as your data packets are filled,           

 and addressed,                                                

and then cast onto the LAN.                             

Next up is the omnipotent router,                     

and then the ports of the dreaded firewall,        

finally leading to the wide world of the Internet.

Of course, this is really just the BEGINNING of the journey...

It's worth taking the time to download and view this Internet-presented movie both because it's so well done, and because, in the manner of a snake eating its own tail, it comes to you over the very medium that it's describing!

The main site is at http://www.warriorsofthe.net/ , which contains quite a bit of interesting information.  Links to several different size/quality combinations of the movie are at http://www.warriorsofthe.net/clips.html .  Also, in case you have trouble downloading from that location, I've stored a copy of the low-resolution, 78-megabyte version that you can download from http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020429/enwarriors.mpg .  (Right-click, choose Save Target As...)

Enjoy!

 

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Your Feedback is Important!

 

I'd like to understand your interest in The Harrow Technology Report, how you make use of it, and the value you feel it provides to you, your career, and to your company.

Please send your comments to me at  Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com .

I look forward to hearing from you!

 

And, if you know of other folks who might find value in "The Harrow Technology Report," I'd appreciate your letting them know that they can subscribe at http://www.theharrowgroup.com/signup.asp .

Jeff Harrow

 

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...And Web-Enabling The Things Around Us!

 

Everything is relative when talking about what's big and what's small.  As we've been increasingly exploring, "tiny" has taken on a new meaning as scientists are now building things molecule by molecule, and sometimes atom by atom -- even convincing these things to build themselves! (For example, see http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/20020401/20020401.htm#_Toc5165663 .)  On the other hand, chips such as our Pentiums and Athlons seem to be growing in size to accommodate the ever-increasing, extraordinary number of ever-tinier transistors that do our bidding. 

Sometimes though, we need a middle ground to perform a particular task without being burdened by the size and cost of a generalized CPU -- for example, when we want to build complete Web servers into the many things around our homes and offices, such as thermostats, light switches, lamps and more.  In these cases, a traditional CPU and all of its support hardware certainly would not fit, and in any event would be overkill for the task of "simply" Web-enabling droves of small things. 

So how small can a dedicated Web server be?  Consider this picture from the March 18 Washington Post, brought to our attention by reader Mark Goldstein:

That tiny, $5 (expected to fall to below $1), aspirin-sized chip is perched on the outstretched palm of one of its inventors at Ipsil (http://www.ipsil.com/) -- and it can indeed Web-enable whatever it's built into!

According to inventor Velu Sinha, (http://washtech.com/news/emerging/15700-1.html):

"We came up to a single chip design that would work to make all types of devices Internet enabled ... there are so many possibilities. Think about how laborious the mail was before the e-mail and Internet. Now we're talking about adding Internet capabilities to hundreds of thousands and millions of devices."

And according to its other inventor, Shri Shrikumar,

"What I stumbled upon is a way by which you can shrink network computers by a factor of a thousand... There are between 20 and 100 things in every house that could benefit from being connected to the Net. This can make that possible."

It may not be "nano," but this chip or others like it hold the potential to dramatically change the capabilities of many of the things around us.  Now, if only I could get light bulbs and thermostats and other things that I can access and program directly from my Web browser...  (And yes, I do know about X-10, but it doesn't quite do that, and in any event has proved unreliable in my environment.)

                                                                                                               

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Tidbits...

 

·        It's Already Here -- In last issue's Tidbits' "Repurposing" article, we explored BTI's efforts to use micro-etched CDs and specialized "players" to produce a blood test "LabTop" (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20020415/20020415.htm#_Toc6321553).  This week, in an all too typical example of just how innovative some companies are (and of how knowledgeable "Harrow Technology Report" readers are), Maxime Flament brings Swedish company Gyros AB to our attention -- they ALREADY use similar CD-based technology for different types of medical tests (determining the bindings of proteins, cell-based assays, etc!)

Gyros offers a number of on-screen tutorials demonstrating how this process works (http://www.gyros.com/technology/tech_introduction.html), as well as some interesting "posters" that provide even more information, such as this picture of the microstructures created on the "GyroLab CD" that turn it into a pancake-shaped laboratory (http://www.gyros.com/media/ProteinstoProfits_March02_final.pdf).

     

All I can say is, "Ain't technology wonderful?" 

Of course, I do hope that these companies continue their quest for Dr. McCoy's still-elusive tricorder

 

 because of its one sterling attribute -- no needles.

·        CPU Update -- It used to be exciting when CPU clock speeds incremented by a few tens of megahertz.  In today's world of 2.4 gigahertz high-end PCs though, what were once startling gains in speed now fall somewhere beneath the 'yawn factor.' 

But it's no "yawn" when we understand that 2.5 gigahertz chips will be available from Intel prior to June, and by year's end we'll see another 500 megahertz jump in CPU speed -- to the 3 gigahertz PC! (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,95044,tk,dn041802X,00.asp)

So let's see -- a half-gigahertz increase in speed in somewhat less than six months.  Now imagine what a few more YEARS will bring. 

If you can't do something today because of a lack of computing power, just wait.  A relatively short while...

Don't Blink!

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DVDs - From Yesterday Through Tomorrow.

 

The now-common DVD is an impressive achievement.  In essentially the same package as the 650 megabyte CD-ROM, a DVD can pack 8.5 gigabytes into the two layers on EACH side of the disk, or up to 17 gigabytes on the less common 2-sided, 2-layer DVDs.  More than enough for a movie.  More than we'd ever need -- right?  (Of course that was said shortly after the first CD-ROMs hit the market...)

The trip that data takes, from the pits and lands on a DVD's surface to your TV or monitor, is fascinating yet torturous.  But now the Jan. 31 New York Times lays it out in a very readable manner in at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/technology/circuits/
31HOWW.html?rd=hcmcp?p=0428y30428xV46qiC012000mswrvsweH .  (Be sure to click on and through the "Inside a DVD" graphic on the right side of the page.)

The history in the article describes how, during the early days of video disks, the various incompatible standards kept the public from buying in bulk.  Which makes it hard to understand why that same thing is happening again, now, with the new recordable DVD formats of DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and more (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20011022/20011022.htm#_Toc528139081).  (OK, it is all about money, power, market share, etc, but it sure slows down mass adoption, and so hurts everyone.) 

Today's DVD-format strife actually increases the possibility that ALL of today's recordable DVD formats might become stillborn, considering new advances such as Matsushita's 100 gigabyte DVD technology (http://www.theharrowgroup.com/articles/
20011105/20011105.htm#_Toc529341787), and the new "blue laser" rewritable DVD standard recently agreed to by a dozen electronics manufacturers that promises 27 gigabytes of data on one side of a disk -- perhaps as early as next year.  (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-839895.html and http://www.matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/
official.data/data.dir/en020219-4/en020219-4.html)

Of course, even 27 gigabytes will begin to feel like a floppy as we begin to record HDTV programs, so enter another contender from Optware.  According to the Feb. 20 PCWorld.com (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,85184,tk,dn022002X,00.asp), this technology uses disks the same size as our venerable CD-ROMs and DVDs, but Optware uses a holographic storage technique that stores one million bits IN EACH SPOT.  And, each time you vary the angle or frequency of the laser that is reading that spot, another entire "page" of data is revealed!  The result is ONE TERABYTE on a disk -- enough space to store 120 DVD movies.  Samples are due out later this year.

Yet none of these advances detract from the modern miracle that is the DVD.  Once you've read the New York Times explanation, the next time you sit down with your popcorn, try to picture the complexity of what's goes on.  And revel in the fact that soon, your entire DVD library might fit on just ONE of those small disks...

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Question of the Week.

 

This isn't a contest (although I guess it might turn into one in the future).  Instead, this section is merely an occasional attempt to satisfy my (and hopefully your) curiosity about some of the little technological mysteries all around us.

I can't imagine (and don't want to try) living without electricity, other than as an occasional day or two long campout.  But I'm no Survivor; even in a tent I want my cell phone and pocket GPS receiver available for emergencies.  The bottom line is that electricity, and the power grid that (currently, prior to affordable home fuel cells) makes it available to us, is probably the single most significant invention in changing how we live our lives.  Its tendrils stretch into almost every aspect of how we live, work, and play.

Which is why I've become somewhat intrigued about the transmission lines that crisscross our land.  (They're also very interesting to watch when riding as a passenger in my wife's convertible.) 

Oh, I'm not trying to become a power engineer, but my casual interest has been somewhat stymied by the lack of a "Power Lines for Dummies" book.  As usual, the Web does yield some interesting reading, but none of these sources have explained why some, but not all high voltage, long distance transmission lines have these small barbell-shaped devices adjacent to each insulator.

(click on the picture for a larger version)

One colleague suggested that these were static discharge points, to prevent arcing from occurring at the adjacent insulator, but thanks to an amazingly sharp picture from my Fuji S1-Pro digital camera, considering that this next picture was taken from the ground, handheld,

 

(click on the picture for a more detailed version)

it's hard to tell, since there are no sharp edges to foster early arcing.

So -- the question is, what are these thing for, and why don't they appear on every power transmission line that seems to carry similar high voltages?  Also, IS there a "dummies" book about the transmission grid, to further slake the casual curiosities that some of us may have?

Let me know via Email at Jeff@TheHarrowGroup.com , and I'll be sharing the answers with you in a future issue.

Don't -- ever -- stop 'wondering why!'

 

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A Sign Of The Times...

 

Finally, from the April 11 edition of Fred Langa's excellent LangaList (http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2002/2002-04-11.htm#10): 

"Reader WynneC sends along this sign of the times:

I took my son into a library the other day. He looked at a row of books on a shelf and asked "What is that?" I replied that it was a set of encyclopedias.

Well, here is the sign of the times, in his response:

"Gee, someone took the time to print it all out?"

The world HAS changed!"

And we've only just begun...

 

About "The Harrow Technology Report"