] "As the demand for voice over WLAN increases, more and
] larger vendors are expected to enter the market, bringing
] handset prices down, and pushing VoWLAN handsets out to
] the more mainstream business environments," says Gemma
] Paulo, an analyst with In-Stat/MDR.

Those 802.11 voice handsets I mentioned in a previous article are already on sale.

Americas Network - 2007 or Sooner

] But what of the future of books? The narrator argues
] that Gutenberg's invention will soon disappear. Reading
] causes lassitude and wearies us tremendously. Words through
] the speaking tube, however, give us a special vibrancy. The
] gramophone will destroy printed works. Our eyes are easily
] damaged, but our ears are strong.
]
] But, his listeners object, gramophones are heavy and the
] cylinders easily damaged. This will be taken care of; new
] models will be built which will fit in the pocket; the
] precision of watchmaking will be applied to them. Devices
] will collect electricity from the movements of the
] individual, which will power the gramophones.

This is from the *LATE 1800's.* Its in french, but there is an english abstract. WOW....

La Fin des Livres

] "In his experiment, Potter places a droplet of solution
] containing thousands of rat neuron cells onto a silicon
] chip that's embedded with 60 electrodes connected to an
] amplifier. The electrical signals that the cells fire at
] one another are picked up by the electrodes which then
] send the amplified signal into a computer. The computer,
] in turn, wirelessly relays the data to the robot.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Technology Review - Rat-Brained Robot

Will the price of international telephone calls continue to decline? And will more people choose wireless technology over land lines? The answers lie in whether new technologies continue to rival existing ones in the coming year.

This is an interesting article with some great facts in it (like how it took 100 years for the telephone to eclipse the telegraph). But the ultimate theme is that telecom will eat itself.

Web Calling Roils the Telecom World

(3) the social environment in which thoughts originate and evolve, and mindsets develop.

MemeStreams is not Yet Another Web Site.

Beyond 'Couch Potatoes' | First Monday

I've seen this around on various MAC sites and ignored it, but recently I've gotten interested in my system performance. This is awesome. I spent about 30 minutes tweeking it, and I am very happy with the results.

iPulse for OSX

] "Our goal is to provide an engaging and educational
] experience for Mac OS X Server administrators and
] afficionados."

A useful site about using OSX as a server.

Welcome to AFP548.com

] "Apple has done a marvelous job with the recognition and
] control systems, and now that you can script the Internet
] so easily in OS X, it's straightforward to build useful
] voice-driven commands that invoke external as well as
] local services. "

XML + Voice commands.... This is a fun article... There might be something interesting in here, but I need to think about it.

- This can be more efficient then using the mouse for starting programs and dealing with windows.
- Dialog box buttons/web buttons should always be speakable.
- This is interesting when combined with voice messaging. It would be nice if I could do voice chat with someone while working on something else with the keyboard.
- Addressing the computer everytime is lame. I should be able to make it start listening with something specific and then make it stop with something else.
- Speech is most useful when you are not at your desktop:
- In the car: There is stuff out on the net for running itunes with speech. This is useful when you want to run music off your mac while driving.
- Around the house: If you had an infrastructure for microphones and speakers you could get your computer to do things while you cook in the kitchen, such as play music or read email to you.
- There needs to be a way to get the thing to read stuff to you without selecting the text with a mouse...
- X10 interoperability would allow you to control your house with speech.
- It needs to automatically detect ambient noise levels and raise or lower the microphone volume in kind.

O'Reilly Network: Speakable Web Services [Nov. 08, 2002]

] "In a incident that highlights the pitfalls of online
] recommendation systems, Amazon.com on Friday removed a
] link to a sex manual that appeared next to a listing for
] a spiritual guide by well-known Christian televangelist
] Pat Robertson."

Someone hacked Amazon's recommender system...

Amazon blushes over sex link snafu - Tech News - CNET.com

] "In this paper we review the existing evidence of the
] usability of open source software and discuss how the
] characteristics of open-source development influence
] usability."

This is a detailed paper. Just read the bullet points. It makes observations that need to be made. In general, computer geeks tend to think they are better then tech writers, usability people, artists, etc... this is a common theme. It was, in fact, the point of a presentation at Phreaknic which was discussed here. It causes problems. This is one of those problems.

Usability and Open Source Software