"GPS Finds the Mainstream" - PC Magazine

"New York-based Mexens Technology LLC announced this week the official launch of its peer-to-peer GPS network Navizon, which the company has been testing since August.

Navizon enables drivers and pedestrians to navigate cities wirelessly. It works by synchronizing Wi-Fi and cellular signals to a central repository, offering public access to GPS data for major cities in the United States.

The software-based positioning service doesn't require a dedicated GPS device. It is compatible with Windows Mobile devices—including Pocket PCs and PDAs—or on cell phones that use Symbian Ltd.'s operating system.

Once installed, the application automatically maps the local landscape by calculating specific locations for all wireless access points and cell phone towers in the area.

At the same time, the software syncs to Navizon's Network Server to retrieve data from other users.

"Instead of satellite signals typically used by GPS devices, Navizon uses signals from nearby Wi-Fi and cellular towers," said Cyril Houri, founder and CEO of Mexens Technology. "By looking at the surrounding wireless landscape, the device knows where users are located and can thereby offer location-based services."

Navizon utilizes a P2P system to make available a communal database that houses positioning information for most major metropolitan areas in the United States. Each time a user synchronizes with the system, any new data is instantly saved."

Link to PC Magazine / Yahoo!

Reasons for Re-Ripping

This issue is not going to go away until consumers educate themselves on what's involved in the "conversion" of the CD's they own to a file format they can play on their iPods or other MP3 players.

That music kids have downloaded off Napster and Kaaza? Pure crap, audio files of quality so poor you can hardly listen to them on a stereo. Most of the audio on file share networks is rarely ever encoded above 128K kilobits per second (kbps), to keep the files size small and manageable for easy dowloading via P2P networks.

Apple claims their AAC format delivers "superior" quality -- which may or may not be true. Much depends on the bit rate you encode the CD in. In my view Apple's AAC file format simply delivers more efficient file compression (of around 25-30% over MP3) definitely NOT superior audio quality.

The reality is that MP3 is an excellent and OPEN audio file format/standard for encoding music. Period. Apple is pumping the AAC format like there's no tomorrow because this technology has a built in encryption scheme that makes AAC music difficult to freely play on various other digital devices -- this is a trade off Apple had to make to keep the music industry happy while they sell music via the iTunes store.

My unsolicited recommendation for anyone encoding their own CD's for playing on an iPod or any other MP3 player device is:
ABSOLUTLY DO NOT USE THE DEFAULTS ENCODE SETTING IN ITUNES!

I strongly suggest going into iTunes preferences and setting your encode rates as:
* MP3 format
* 256K (kbps)
* VBR (variable bit rate)
* Best Quality

This recommendation comes after extensive testing I did with a group of friends in Silicon Valley a few years ago. We each took 2 of our favorite songs, encoded them at various bit rates and then compared notes of the audio quality (on highs, lows, dynamic range, etc.) It was literally impossible for us to distinguish between an actual CD and a high quality MP3 encoded at a bit rate of 256K VBR (varialble bit rate).

With the price of hard drives plummeting it's easy to keep your main iTunes library on a cheap external USB 2.0 or Firewire drive in the event you have hunders or thousands of CD's and the main library doesn't fit on your existing internal hard drive. This strategy is a minimum hassle approach and provides "primo" quality for the music you already own.

Link to Digital Media Thoughts.

Now don't even try and get me started on ripping DVD's to the MPEG4 h.264 video file standard... that's a rant for another day.

and this just in via Dave Winer, a link that points out why it's still a good idea to purchase CD's and encode them yourelf, rather than "purchase?" poor quality, encrypted music off the iTunes store.

UPDATE: Mike Arrington of Crunchnotes chimes in with this sage comment.

"Yup, them cans blowed up real good!"

"Watch a Bullet Blow through Seven Soda Cans at 2000 Frames Per Second. Oranges, Melons, and Balloons explode in slow motion and High Detail right before your eyes."

Link via digg.

"Warm in all the ruuums..."

Somebody was asking me today what I do to keep warm during the winter in Canada. After thinking of the usual suspects when it comes to keeping cozy, I was reminded of this strategy -- from some friends across the pond:

More Google Map Mashups for TO

Links to "360 Degree Panoramic Views of Toronto", "Find a Sweet Shop in Toronto" and "Mississauga Real Estate Map" are but a few new offerings that Mike of Google Maps Mashups (Waterloo) offers up.

Check 'em out via this link to Google Maps Mania.

Shai's shots

My friend Shai Berger just returned from 6 weeks in Costa Rica, Belize and Mexico and here are some pretty amazing photos he took with his Canon 10D.

Here's the full resolution shot of the Sea turtle above. Amazing.

"You don't know, you don't know..."

"The Larry Seigel Show", A Rick Moranis classic and one of my most absolutely favorite skits :-)



and in an odd twist, after posting this, I found out that Rick is featured on this weeks installment of "The Treatment" a great KCRW (NPR LA) radio show hosted by Elvis Mitchell. RealPlayer required.

"Weapons of Mass Bulgar Wheat"?

The Washington Post / CNN media critic Howard Kurtz says:

"I bring all this up, of course, because of the furious debate over the warrantless NSA eavesdropping. Just as White House officials insist the program is tightly focused on potential terrorists, Pentagon and FBI spokesmen maintain that they are not investigating or interfering with legitimate political dissent.

But PETA? Vegans? Catholic Workers? No wonder there's considerable skepticism."

Link to Howard's Washington Post column.

and this related Salon post by Peter Daou (via BoingBoing) is sad -- because it's probably true.

"Attenmm Passengmms"

Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the NYC Transport Workers Union, announced the strike at a 3 a.m. news conference.

I wonder if it sounded anything like this.

More about Navizon!

My friend, my Captain and my Fearless Leader, Cyril Houri -- is quoted extensively in this Wi-Fi Planet article and in this post from DailyWireless both talking about Navizon -- the BEST Wireless Positioning System on the planet!

If I do say so myself :-)

"The Mighty Hercules"

"I could lift this rock in six months, after I put an end to your despotic rule Laertes"

Probably my favorite skit with Bill Murray, hosting SNL well after he left the cast...

Link to YouTube.

90 Mins with Woz

Woz serves up Apple Computer history in his own unique way. Steve explains the early Apple development, and why he wants to be an engineer for life, but never a CEO.

Link to Google video, via digg.

Jumbo Limes

"each lime is very big with the biggest (5 1/2" diameter) weighs in at 1.5kg or 3.3 pounds..."

Imagine the size of the Margherita!

Link via BoingBoing.

"Who gave what now?"

"Do you want to be surrounded by neighbors who think just like you? Or do you prefer people with the opposite political views so you always have someone to argue with?

"Following the Dollar" is a Google map mashup that I found thanks to Mike Pegg’s amazing compendium of mashups, Google Maps Mania. It takes Federal Election Commission data on political donations and superimposes it on a Google map. It’s the work of Matthew Kane, a doctoral student at the Indiana University School of Informatics."

Link via the NY Times RSS feed.

"Drop and give me 20 Soldier!"

Check out this amazing video the first man in space, Joe Kittenger, who rose in a balloon to a height of 30 kilometers and then jumped out. He max'd out a 990Km/hour and was the first person to break the sound barrier -- without an aircraft.

via Nabeel's Cosmos blog.

Punk Photos

The photo above? The Clash playing to 50 people at a Christmas party in 1979.

Andy Rosen: "I was a rock photographer working in London 1976-1984. This is my private collection. These pics have been stored since the Punk Days. This is the first time they can be seen in 25 years."

Links to his Clash and London Punk sets.

For you geeks out there -- try cranking some Clash in iTunes while running the flickr slide show.

Awesome.

Senate Rejects Patriot Act

This news reminds me of a post I made back in May 2005.

UPDATE: Well, OK, they extended it for another six months.
June will be interesting.


"Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security."
-- Ben Franklin

Merry Christmas America!

A Deepka Chopra / Barry White mashup?

According to Publishers weekly, Deepka just got a six figure advance to update the Kama Sutra. Ohhhhh yaaaaaa...

Link to BoingBoing.

"We're so sorry, Uncle Albert"

For anyone running iTunes on the Mac, pearlyrics is an absolute must have application. It's a simple, small and easy to use companion app that automatically looks up and retrieves the lyrics of the song that's playing in iTunes. I used it a few months ago to grab text for the all songs contained in my favorite playlists (since then I've stopped singing: "I believe in Bilko's, you sexy thang" everytime Hot Chocolate plays :-)

A few weeks ago pearlyrics faced serious legal threats by Warner/Chappell Music that would have shut them down. This apology for bullying a small Austrian software developer comes as very welcome news for music fans everywhere...

Link via BoingBoing

Also, take a minute to check out: " 'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy "

Toronto Star / Google Map Mashup

The Toronto Star has just released their latest Google Maps mashup featuring traffic cams and GTA traffic info. A very useful resource!

Link via Google Map Mania (Waterloo)

Google Music

It was just a matter of time before Google entered the music market. Rumors (via Dave Winer) are that it's an "iTunes-clone, based on RSS 2.0, and fully podcast-capable".

Google is positioning this as a search partnership with the Big Music services but in my view this is just Step One: on their plan to Pump Up The Jam & Drop the Funk Bomb on the entire music business.

Link to C/Net News (via Om Malik)

Every Esquire Cover

Link via BoingBoing.

Let's play: "Spot The Hot Tub"!

Can you find the Hot Tub at Bill Gates' house?
(using Microsoft's new technology).

Check it out here (via digg).

King Kong

A review by John Shirley, via BoingBoing:

"Symbolism enwraps interlocked themes; male sexuality, female desire, hidden agendas, friendly faces hiding monsters, human indifference to suffering, the mindless savagery that is civilization—crueler than any giant ape could be, calling us to a need to redefine our relationship with wildness, with the animal world itself. At one point Jackson rather heavy handedly quotes Heart of Darkness to explain his subtext, telling us we all have to explore our own Skull Islands, come face to face with inner beast, see it as it is, and if not tame it, come to terms with it."

I'm going to need extra "Milk Duds" for this one...

Link.

Imagine -- the size of the file.

"UC Irvine historian Jon Wiener has been suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act since 1983 for complete access to the voluminous John Lennon FBI files. J. Edgar Hoover began surveillance of the ex-Beatle in 1971 when Lennon's protests of the Vietnam War made him a deportation target of President Nixon."

Link to LAObserved.

iPod does"hubba hubba" and "va-va-va-voom"?

Maybe Cardinal Keene of Baltimore was right after all because Playboy is now offering Bodcasts for the iPod (Link via Gizmodo).

Yeah Baby! ;-)

Learning the iPod

Apple has create a site here for first time buyers of the iPod and for those who are thinking about it. It's a pretty good primer for those who are interested.

I have many friends who've bought iPod's and subsequently asked me for advice (being the early adopter that I am :-) this is where I'm sending them now :-)

Bad Karma - over free WiFi

"Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force."

Link via Xeni and Clay.

Now, if Bell South is having a hissy fit over a New Orleans Muni WiFi deal wait till the get a load of this. (via Om Malik)

TV becoming video

No shit Sherlock... Have you watched TV lately? I haven't. For the past year I've been using a PVR to record my desired programs (mostly CBC and PBS) and then watch them when I have time.

As Max Von Sydow's character says in Woody Allen's classic film "Hanah and Her Sisters":

"If Jesus ever came back, and saw what was on the TV, he'd never stop throwing up".

Link via Lost Remote.

Tim Horton's S-1 Breakaway!

Fun facts from the S-1 filing to take the company public
(quick calculation by PaulK):

"the company serves up around 563,396,800 doughnuts per year in Canada, which is roughly 35,000 tons, or around one 1970s vintage supertanker worth of glazed Timbits."

"Toujour Frais" indeed!

Link to Paul Kerodsky.

Killer Squirrels

"A pack of squirrels at a park in the Lazo village of Russia's Maritime Territory reportedly ganged up on a stray dog that was barking up at them in the trees. Witnesses say the squirrels jumped down, attacked the dog, and killed it."

I wonder if Rocky finally defected to the dark side and created an army of his own. Scary!

"Slurp, slurp, slurp.... nothin'"

Find out why Yukon Cornelius licks his axe! Via BoingBoing... and on a totally unrelated note, is Hermy gay? plus 15 other questions, Via MeFi.

Where Jesus shops?

"This is the day that the Lord has made! We shall rejoice and be glad in the new Wal-Mart that the Lord has made."
-Lester Packingham
Wal-Mart General Manager


Walmart is fighting back hard on all the truth and bad vibes being generated by Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices. The tactic of promoting a spiritual tie to shopping at Walmart has Michael Deaver's name written all over it. He was Ronald Regan's press advisor and is now working for Walmart, as noted in a NY Times article about Walmart's "war room" -- reprinted here.

Hallelujah for Low Prices!

UPDATE: Link to a PBS Newshour piece.

Rubber-necking

Slowing traffic by setting up living rooms in the street...

Link via BoingBoing.

"Tonights First Star -- Le Premier Etoile"

Ladies and Gentlemen -- the Zamboni Hot Tub.
(available for rental from a London, Ontario firm)

Link via Engadget.

Mike Wallace on Tom Cruise's ass...

Go Mike! :-)

Link to Lost Remote.

SONY knew about DRM rootkit infections

A quick follow-up on this earlier post about SONY-BMG CD rootkits infecting users PC's:

Turns out SONY knew well in advance of the realease of their DRM enabled audio CD's (from 52 artists) that they would infect their customers personal computers. Via CoryD at BoingBoing and SlashDot.

I'm telling my friends to boycot SONY music -- not becasue what SONY did was stupid -- but becasue they've demonstrated that buying SONY Music products can be DANGEROUS TO THE HEALTH OF YOUR COMPUTER.

Now, if you bought one of these CD's and are in the mood to sue SONY you'd better hurry, the line is getting pretty long (so far; the Electronic Frontier Foundation, State of California, State of Texas have all launched class action suits... and State AG Elliot Spitzer of NY is taking a hard look right now).

Prof Michael Geist (University of Toronto) chimes in here with a great update.

Alpha Couch Potato

Enlarged Photo

"Man beams down 5000 channels from 12 satellite dishes on front porch!"

Al Jessup from Beckley, has more than 5000 TV & radio channels from the 12 dishes on his front porch.
... and I thought I had media consumption issues.

Link to article (via DIGG).

Sin City

According to Wired a leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography. Cardinal Keeler of Baltimore says iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.

Guess he doesn't know that some folks in the Catholic Church are podcasting or that a quick search on term "Catholic" on Apple's iTunes Podcast Directory returns 88 results.

Amen to that!

Playboy Centerfolds Galore?

This makes stuffing them between the mattresses a lot easier...

"The first in a ongoing series begun in 1997, this photograph is the result of digitally averaging every Playboy centerfold foldout for the 10 years beginning Jan. 1988 through Dec. 1997. The shroud-like image is yielded by a simple, custom process: point-by-point mathematical averaging."

Link via MeFi.

Mount Aetna eruption

... from space.

Link to NASA's full resolution image page.

The Yoda of comedy

From his upcoming HBO special... text and audio available here.

Got Torture?

God bless Helen Thomas.

Link to a transcript of her exchange with White House press secretary Scott McLellan on the topic.

More on the subject via MetaFilter.

Pixar's Performance

Now that Eisner's toast there's been lots of talk of Disney buying Pixar for around 5 billion. I think the price may be going up:

"Steve Jobs is a money machine. His other company, Pixar, reported profits of $27.4 million on revenues of $45.8 million for the last three months -- double Wall Street estimates, according to Reuters."

Steve Job's: sandbagger extroirdinaire :-)

Link to Wired.

Verizon EVDO Restrictive Use Policy

So, high-speed wireless EVDO services costs $70 to $80 per month, but only for what they'll let you do with it...

Link to BoingBoing.

How the mighty have fallen...

I've been following this story for a week now. The bottom line is: SONY's DRM protected cd's install code on your machine, yeah just like a virus that's hard to detect (that reports information on usage of the content), they get caught, they issue issue a patch that removes the code, then basically say: "this was not malicious code, no worries, everything is OK".
Wow. Do they ever NOT get it.

I was thinking just a few weeks ago that SONY used to (circa 1988) almost completely encircle me in the living room
(TV, DVD, CD, A/V Receiver etc.) Now they are nowhere to be found. Apple has almost completely replaced them on both the Hardware and Software front... then I read this from Molly Wood at CNET News (via EFF):

"So, let's make this a bit more explicit. You buy a CD. You put the CD into your PC in order to enjoy your music. Sony grabs this opportunity to sneak into your house like a virus and set up camp, and it leaves the backdoor open so that Sony or any other enterprising intruder can follow and have the run of the place. If you try to kick Sony out, it trashes the place. And what does this software do once it's on your PC? ... The DRM itself is almost unbelievably restrictive, and some have suggested that the reasoning behind it is part of Sony's ongoing war over digital music supremacy with the decidedly more supreme Apple."

How the mighty have fallen.


Link to list of offending CD's (via EFF)
Link to Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Link to Wired News.

Italian police are investigating and watch for the inevitable class action lawsuits on this one. UPDATE: yup, less than 24 hours after I posted on this... California files a lawsuit.

and if you think all this is insane, check out SONY's End User Licence Agreement for playing a music CD on your computer. Unbelievable.

UPDATE: Link to great Wired News summary of the whole mess.

Google Maps mashups for Canada

Some cool Google Maps mashups for Canada.

"Google Maps mashups are providing visual context for location-based information on the Internet. A mashup is an information source "mashed-up" with Google Maps. These mashups are invaluable new web-based tools to find information in Canada. I've collected all known Google Maps mashups and tools which are specific to Canada to get you started:"

Link via GoogleMapsMania (in Waterloo).

A serious samy...

A sandwich that cost $47.00 and sports 30,000 calories.... yumm....

Link to sandwich hell... via Cory and Kottke.

Solar Generator

I'm sure this thing is safe but if I was an ant I wouldn't go near it...

Link via Gizmodo.

Yo Yoda

Watch Yoda busta move in this uber funky easter egg treat from the new Star Wars DVD.

Link to Google video.

Creature Comforts

Best. Movie. Ever.

An early ancestor of Nick Park's "Wallace & Gromit" characters (Aarman Animiation in the UK). The Jaguar in the tree is my absolute favorite character in this Academy Award winning short. His dialogue is actually the recording of a Brazilian medical student living in the UK. Hysterical.

Link to the 5:00 min short - hosted by iFilm.

Social Isolation?

A great personal essay by Alex Pang, Institute For The Future (Menlo Park, CA) on the Joy of the iPod...

Link via DaveP at BoingBoing.