In the Parlance of Our Times

Back to work today after a break that started Dec 22nd. It's always hard getting back into the swing of things after a break, but a line from a NYTimes article gave me a chuckle this morning.

The article is about Autonet, a new service which gives you internet access in the car. Basically you plug in a router that uses 3G cell service to connect to the internet. This allows you to use your laptop with an ordinary wireless card to connect to the internet while driving around in your car. I can only think of a few reasons why you might want to do this, rather than buy a cellular card and service, which would allow you to connect not only in your car but most anywhere else, too. Maybe you have a laptop like my 12" Powerbook, that doesn't have a slot for a cellular card. Or maybe you have a van full of kids each with their own laptop.

The article is mostly about a report that Avis is about to announce a deal with Autonet to provide the router in their cars. That makes more sense to me than a family using the service.

But where's the funny part? It's the last paragraph, in response to a comment questioning both the legality and the safety of such a service:

Autonet said the service was for passengers and that Avis would require renters to agree not to hold it liable for accidents resulting from irresponsible use.

Sometimes the right thing just appears at the right time.

I've been working with people who recently adopted so-called "smartphones" like the Treo and the Blackberry. These are very cool and can do a lot. I've been playing with them a bit and can see how they would be useful, but I've been less than overwhelmed by the user experience. My sense is that if I got one it would end up with my Palm. That is, at the bottom of my bag and rarely used.

At the same time I've been traveling with my laptop, and finding myself frustrated by lack of internet access in hotels whose wireless wasn't working as promised and airports that either don't have wireless or charge for it. Whether or not I should be so bothered - dare I say despondent - when I'm forcibly off-line is perhaps fodder for a future post or a session with a shrink, but let's just accept it as a fact for now.

Yesterday, while I was off-line, Apple announced the iPhone. Wow. If it works as promised it addresses all of the shortcomings of the smartphones I've seen. The fact that it's also a video ipod - which I've been threatening to buy for a year - is a huge bonus. The internet access looks fantastic and works through the cell phone network as well as wi-fi. I can see traveling with just the iPhone and leaving the laptop at home. That would make packing a lot easier and lighter! And being a quad-band phone is a plus for trips to Ireland.

Michael, take this as official notice. I see an iPhone in our future. It's not going to be available until June, so use the next few months to get used to the idea.

I must sound like a broken record at work sometimes. Over the past few months I've had a number of conversations where I've given my views about privacy and the big free web services (Gmail, Flickr, De.licio.us, YouTube, Facebook, etc) that so many of us are drawn to. James, in particular, has been part of so many of these that he must start planning his exit strategy at the first hint that a conversation is heading towards the p-word.

For those who haven't yet had the pleasure of my opinions on this, here are my thoughts in a nutshell (James, feel free to skip ahead):

There is no free lunch. There's a price to be paid for these services, we just don't know what it is yet. At best it could be loss of our data, perhaps because the service starts charging a fee, goes belly-up or just plain burns out. At worst - and this is what I both fear the most and think is the most likely scenario - it will be the sharing of our data with third parties (companies wanting to sell to us, the government, etc) without our knowledge or permission. I'm concerned that so many people, mainly young people, are playing right into the hands of these large companies without so much as a thought as to what they may have to lose.

Last week I was at a meeting with three co-workers, all young men in their late twenties and early thirties. This topic came up and I gave them my views. I got the usual reaction from them. That is, they looked at me with the same polite, amused look you'd give your grandfather as he told of walking three miles to school. In the snow. Barefoot.

But then something surprising happened on Monday. One of these young men stopped by my office to say that over the weekend he'd seen a piece on TV that touched on some of these same issues, and it had got him thinking. Maybe there was something to what I'd been saying. He didn't sound like he planned to stop using these services, but he'll now be using them with his eyes open.

A small victory, to be sure. One that gives me hope, and renewed energy to continue making the effort to get people to think about what they are doing. James, it looks like I'm not going to be giving up this topic of conversation any time soon. You can thank Jason for that, next time you see him.

My privacy conversation with Jason last week was temporarily sidetracked. It went something like this:

Me: I do crosswords and am careful not to search the internet for answers to certain clues, for fear of the pattern that might arise.

Jason: I do crosswords, too, and that's cheating.

Me: It's not.

Jason: It is.

Me: It's not.

Jason: It is.

Well, you get the idea.

Michael and I started doing crosswords after seeing the movie Wordplay with Louise in New York City last summer. Before this I thought of crosswords as either difficult or boring or both. After the movie we bought a NYTimes (it was a Tuesday) and found that the puzzle was not only doable, but fun. I've since got an online subscription to the NYTimes puzzle, and most days do the crossword on my computer, often with help from Michael and other resources.

And that's where the internet comes in. Sometimes the answer to a clue is some fact, maybe the name of a foreign city or an actress from an old TV show. It's just become second nature to pull up Google or Wikipedia and search for this sort of answer at other times, like when we're watching a movie and wondering what else we saw an actor in. Why shouldn't I do the same when I'm doing a crossword? After all, I'm already sitting at the computer, connected to the internet. The answer I need is just a click away.

So, is this cheating? I'm reminded of Louise when she was little. Whenever we taught her a new game, she'd announce a change in the rules, making the game her own (and tipping the scales in her favor). I guess I'm doing the same here. My rules say use any resources you have available.

You can play by your own rules, and I'll play by mine.

In anticipation of the return next week of Lost, I was going to do a Desert Island Technology post - top 5 technology items I would want with me on a desert island (ignoring realities like whether power would be available, of course). But as soon as I added GPS Device and Satellite Phone to the list, I realized I could use those to be found, and that would be the end of my desert island experience.

If such a desert island technology list ever made any sense, surely I would want to put a DVR (TiVo or the like) on it. We got one of these a bit less than a year ago, and it's made TV watching much more fun and convenient. Sure, we can skip ads, but that's the least of it. In keeping with my original idea of a top 5 list, here are the Top 5 Things I Like About DVR:

1. I can pause the TV when life around me - a telephone ring, family member needing attention, etc - disrupts viewing. This works even when watching live TV. We can usually catch up with the live broadcast during the ads.

2. I can set up a series recording. Instead of saying I want to record ABC at 9 pm every Wednesday, as you would with a VCR, I tell the DVR I want to record Lost. And only new episodes, thank you. The DVR scans the schedule for all new episodes of Lost, so if ABC decides to put one episode on at 8 pm, or move the series to a new day or time, I'll still get the episode recorded.

3. I can watch a recording while it's recording. Say I settle onto the couch at 8:55 pm, expecting to watch Lost at 9, and it turns out there's a special 2 hour episode that started at 8 that night. My trusty DVR is recording it, so I know I won't miss it, but I'm not stuck with a choice between waiting until 10 to watch the whole episode or picking up the episode in the middle. I can start to watch the recording from the beginning, even while the end of the show is still being recorded. Tres cool.

4. I can watch a TV series that airs at 10 pm. I go to bed at 10, and not just because I'm old. I started doing this when Louise was a baby and now it's habit. Lost is moving to 10 pm starting next week and a year ago I'd have been very, very bummed about that. Now I'll just watch the episode the next night. I know what you're saying: I could watch a 10 pm show the next day with a VCR. True, but I never did. Messing around with tapes, rewinding, etc was way more work than I was willing to go through on a regular basis for a TV show, plus the quality was pretty awful with our VCR. With DVR, you watch recorded shows by picking from a list. No rewinding. No swapping tapes.

5. Recording a show is EASY. We had our VCR for 19 years. Half the members of our household never figured out how to record a show - or if they figured it out once, could never remember how to do it the next time. Recording with the DVR is so easy there's nothing to figure out. Just press the big red record button. Done. Not only that, but in many cases you can record the whole show even if you just decide part way through it that you want to record it.

There's more, but I'll stop at five. And, yes, there are some things I don't like about my DVR, but they're mostly limitations of the particular implementation of the technology that we have. Maybe I'll do a post about those sometime.