Open Duck

My wish list for the next iPhone

2012-01-28T15:50:00.000+02:00

There's some rumors on the net about what the iPhone 5 would be like.

- bigger screen (5")
- quad-core A6 processor
- 4G and LTE network support

Now, let me give a single 3GS model user's point of view of what I'd like to have.

The bigger screen sounds good. Since buying the iPhone my phone usage has transformed. It's mainly my Twitter machine, then email, then SMS, then phone. Really - using it as a phone is ... well ... getting less important all the time. But of course the phone functionality must be there, and be there flawless. But I'm not keen on the network specifics, as long as they work.

One *definite* killer version would be this:

- free Twitter roaming around the world

The way I realize I'm "back home" again after a travel is that I can tweet naturally. Whenever. Using 3G. This I cannot do on trips and... it's weird. This and the inability to use Google maps (unless I've been smart to preload the particular maps before the trip) is what bugs me the most. Don't bother with 4G/LTE unless there would be a decent global data roaming (hey - I'm fine with 64k speeds abroad!) that would not cost incredibly.

Doing this would make it feel like a world phone (ehem - I mean tweet unit).

Quad core. Nah. Details. Three would be fine but if four is easier to do, whatever. :)

One more thing.

Hopefully, the enclosure changes. Either to full aluminum (no you wouldn't do that, it's already passé and it scratches easily and feels cold in freezing temperatures). Go with carbon fibre, or any composite!

Be it "thermal plastics" or "nanocellulose", figure out the light and sturdy construction that will make us go "ooooooh" in awe. Do it One More Time.

Carbon covers simply look brilliant, they feel sturdy and nice, and they have somehow a "natural" feel to them. Go Green, Apple!

http://puremetalcards.com/blog/tag/carbon-fiber/

FastCoExist: Apple patent foresees sexy, bullet-proof iPhone

3T-lehden analyysi

2012-01-17T19:18:00.004+02:00

(This is a Finnish piece, discussing the demise of an esteemed Prosessori magazine and the 'properties' of the 3T weekly technical newspaper supposed to be taking on its readership.)

Vuoden vaihteessa saimme jättää hyvästit Prosessori-lehdelle ja tilalle alkaa tulla 3T (teknologia, talous, työelämä).

Sinänsä vaihto voi olla ihan perusteltu, ja painotus pelkän tekniikan rinnalla myös talouteen ja työelämään on ihan jes. Mutta saatuani ensimmäisen 3T-lehden luukusta tunnelmat olivat ristiriitaiset. Paksu nivaska, Prosessoria tuplasti isompi (A3) koko, mutta... oliko pelkkää höttöä sisältä.

Tein analyysin lehden 40 sivusta päästäkseni selville, mistä epäselvyys ja sekava tunne johtui. Sillä "sekava" lienee juuri paras sana kuvaamaan tätä ensimmäistä lehteä. Osin se on kuin Prosessori (itse artikkeli oli hyvä - siis se yksi!). Isolta osin se koettaa olla jotain Tiede-lehden (sen huonomman) kaltaista. Laitoin nuo jutut analyysisarakkeeseen "sälä". Kansikuvia on ainakin kaksi, mutta itse lehden etukansi on uhrattu mainokselle. Niin myös iso osa sen sisemmästä pinta-alasta, ripottaen sinne tänne niin että itse asiaa joutuu etsimään.

Mielestäni nuo kaikki osattiin Prosessorissa paremmin. Mainoksia saa olla - ne ovat osin hyödyllisiä - mutta ne kannattaa pitää erillään tekstiaineistosta. Prosessoria ei tehnyt mieli laittaa paperinkeräykseen, mutta tämän lehden kohdalla sitä ongelmaa ei ole. Ei jää ikävä, eikä etsi "sitä juttua" jälkikäteen.

Koettaako 3T olla juuri tuota? Ohimenevää surffausta tämän hetken "tekniikan, talouden ja työelämän" aallon harjalla. Senkin voisi tehdä Tyylillä, vertailukohtana esim. joku The Economist, joka on sekä ajankohtainen, hyvin taitettu että täyttä asiaa. Toivottavasti 3T ottaa opiksi, tai perun tilauksen ja alan kirjoittaa lehden nimen pienellä t:llä, jos joskus on tarvis.

Tässä se analyysi:

Mainoksia on eniten, 38,1% ja yhdessä työpaikkamainosten kanssa miltei puolet lehden pinta-alasta (46,1%).

Sälää on 8,8%. Tämä on pieniä "tietoiskumaisia" irtotietoja, joita luullakseni Prosessorin lukijakunta kohtelee lähinnä kohinana. Eli signaali/kohinasuhde laskee näiden takia - POIS!

Kansikuviin ja otsikoihin menee yhteensä 7,4%. Ihan hyvä, mutta laittaisin lehden KANTEEN kansikuvan, eikä mainoksen. Vain Turun Sanomissa on kannessa mainos, ja se ei ole hyvä referenssi!

Takakannen voisi käyttää säläkokoelmaan, jos sellainen nyt oikeasti pitää jossain olla.

Itse artikkelien - otin tähän kaiken sellaisen, mikä liittyy lehden TTT-asiaan ja joka oli yhtä palstaa pitempi juttu - määrää saisi ainakin tuplata, ehkä triplata. Nyt artikkeleita on vaivaiset 16,5% lehden paperialasta, ja pienempien "muu aineisto" -juttujen kanssakin (sellaisia yhden, kahden palstan pätkiä) 21,2%. Signaali/kohina suhde jää kaikkineensa huonoksi, 45:55 jos kansikuvat ja otsikotkin lasketaan "signaaliksi".

Aion seurata 3T:n signaali/kohinasuhteen kehittymistä parin numeron ajan, ennen kuin teen lopullisen päätökseni. Sille yhden artikkelin tekijälle (Anna Ruohonen, "Palvelukseen halutaan superinssi") kiitos - ilman tuota juttua lehdestä ei olisi jäänyt käteen mitään ja olisin tilauksen jo peruuttanut. Toivottavasti seuraavasta 3T:stä löytyy jo pari vastaavan tasoista asia-artikkelia!

3T netissä

Lehti pyrkii selvästi olemaan sekä paperi- että online-julkaisu. Jälleen... peräänkuuluttaisin sitä Tyyliä neljänneksi T:ksi noiden kolmen rinnalle:

Jopa enemmän sekava kuin paperilehti.

Neljä saraketta. Enemmän ei todellakaan ole parempi, mitä tulee nettijulkaisuihin.

Saanko tilaajana poistettua mainokset näkyvistä kokonaan? Ainakin tuon oikean sarakkeen?

Vasemman sarakkeen striimin näen kuitenkin myös Twitterissä. POIS.

Jälleen sama kuin paperilehdessä: enemmän tilaa itse jutuille, ennen tuota "Lue lisää"-linkkiä.

...ja sivun pohjalta löytyy näytön verran ja yli lopputekstejä, tarpeettomia linkkejä ja mainoksia Sanoman omiin muihin julkaisuihin (sisäsiittoisuus ei ole cool; laittaisin nuo linkit pienemmälle!)

Tällä kaikella pyrittäneen mainostulojen maksimointiin. En usko, että se siihen johtaa.

3T-lehden veppisivun "alaviitteet". :)

Palaan asiaan parin numeron päästä, n. 27.1.

Making interim commits in git

2012-01-14T11:33:00.002+02:00

I'm reading the Git Book and wondering about a habit that I have in using version control (so far, subversion).

I like to make commits only for working, at least compiling, stuff. But I also want to make them as "fallbacks" in the middle of bigger changes, in case things start going in a bad direction. In svn, I mark these commits as "interim" by their comment.

That works well with subversion. The commits end up in the repository, but there's no real harm in that. Svn stores deltas, so there will be the changes from A to interim (to 2nd interim, ...) to B. Not much different from having changes directly from A to B. No downside.

Git, however, stores the whole binary "blob" of a file in a commit. Anything that's changed. Moreover, I wouldn't really even want to get the interim commits all the way to the repo. I would simply want to have a temporary "level of undo" where I can fall back.

I will now keep an eye open for a solution using git that would allow this. Something like:

- start working on new change
- make "interim" commits
- once ready (things compile, and run, and the undos won't be required): purge the interim commits
- make one real commit that contains all the changes (A to B)
- git push

If anyone already knows how to do this, I'd be interested. If not, I will try to figure it out.

If it *cannot* be done with git, I think the system would benefit of such an addition (ability to merge commits that haven't been pushed into a single one, removing the blobs that aren't being referred to any more after the merge).

-asko

When companies are ssssshhhhh quiet.

2011-12-06T13:38:00.001+02:00

I've got a Logitech DiNovo Mac keyboard, and I'm actually very pleased with it.

Except that while there's Logitech software for this keyboard on Mac OS X, and Logitech software for their other keyboards on Windows, there's absolutely nothing for using this - the Mac edition - on Windows.

Now, people are mixed users these days. We have Macs with BootCamp and we do occasionally run Windows on these machines. What does Logitech do about this?

(...listening...)

They don't seem to even recognize the issue. This describes half of the issue, on Logitech's own user forum:
http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Keyboard-and-Keyboard-Mice/Use-of-F1-F12-with-DiNovo-Mac-Edition-under-bootcamp/m-p/389994

Can companies still do this, at the Age of Twitter? Seems they can. :(

What I would appreciate of Logitech is to acknowledge the situation and say whether they think they'll be doing anything about it. They *certainly* have the software knowledge to get the bells-and-whistles (volume keys would be nice, and the Fx-key issue described above) to fix this. They do Windows software. The functionality could be part of their normal (next version) Windows tools, simply supporting also the Mac variant of the keyboards.

But do they say anything? Nope.

Sorry, Logitech. I like your mice and your keyboards, but... your customer (lack of) support sucks.
Please prove me wrong! :)
I've got Setpoint 6.32 installed on the Windows system. All it seems to provide is this dialog (no settings for controlling the Function and sound keys):

Also Apple Support Communities has a similar, fruitless call for help.

Note: Users of the Logitech Dinovo Edge Mac edition (which is a separate product, with embedded touchpad) are running to similar issues. They also have keyboard setup issues, which I don't recall ever having had. Anyways, Logitech naturally should extend SetPoint to deal with their keyboards as well, in BootCamp.

For comparison with my SetPoint dialog (that only has the 'Tools' tab), here is how SetPoint looks if there is a supported keyboard (and mouse) connected:

Making narrative videos based on Keynote could be easier

2011-10-22T13:07:00.004+03:00

( This is a copy of a feedback I sent to Apple's Keynote team. )

<<
I love Keynote - you've gradually developed it into a very versatile and nice tool, for making in-person presentations.

However, where I feel it can be improved is making narrative "taped" presentations. I have done such recently using a combination of Keynote, Garageband and iMovie, and the experience left me feeling like swimming upstream. The workflow was clumsy and making changes to a certain slide's audio was elaborate. Doing the same completely within Keynote would be ideal.

Keynote has basic narration recording and slide synchronization already (see here). However, the approach seems to suffer from some UI confusion and lack of suitability to at least my usage case.

The UI terminology is not very clear.

Here is the current menu structure:

This kludges together both the narrative part and rehearsal, which are actually two unrelated things. Top three entries are for making narrative presentations. The two lowermost are for exercising live presentations.

My suggestion for the same menu:

Play

> Play with narrative

> Record narrative

> Clear narrative

---

> Rehearse slideshow

> Customize presenter display...

This way, one would use the word "narrative" for a recorded slideshow, with audio, and the word "slideshow" for any kind of general reference (s.a. rehearsing your live presentation).

The use of "Play" as the main menu name can be argued, since it also covers recording and rehearsal. "Studio" might actually be equally good? :)

The workflow seems wrong.

"Record slideshow" has following options:

The "Record from beginning" moves to the first slide of narrative and begins a whole new sound track for all the slides. The "Record & Replace" (or "Record & Append" in some cases) stays on current slide and replaces the soundtrack for this (and subsequent) slides.

This works for ad-hoc narratives where the person casually goes through all the slides in order. It fails on narratives with planned text to read, where getting one slide right at a time is already a good bite.

My suggestion:

Get completely rid of the options dialog. Take people directly to recording stage, but in paused mode so they can start when ready. If they remain within the particular slide and end the recording by pressing ESC, replace only that slide's recording. If they proceed to following slide, replace the recording of that slide as well.

I believe this change is great since it cuts away a whole (unnecessary) dialog, and suits both the old and the new usage case. If one wants to narrate the whole slideshow at once, simply go to first page, start recording and proceed through all the pages. But it also allows to go back to certain page later, and re-record only that one. Without scrapping the audio of the slides behind it.

Going further

You could make a little (loudspeaker icon) icon by the slides in the Slides pane to show which ones have a narration attached to them and which not. Pressing that icon could play the narration without necessarily moving to that slide. Currently, such features are in the Document level in the Inspector - again highlighting the idea that narration would be an undivided, document centric thing. It actually is a the opposite - a page-specific thing that gets bound together just as slides get bound together when running them as a slideshow.

I believe this misconception is underlying all the problems I'm facing with the current narrative Keynote features. Fix that, and all will drop in place.

I believe these issues are easy to fix and look forward to that happening.

Here is my current narrated presentation I did using the painful Keynote + Garageband -> iMovie workflow:

http://bmdesign.smugmug.com/Investors/Vision-public/18497382_sPHbtM#1529667808_sSFPcwz

Going slightly more further (addendum)

Apple could actually scrap the narration features altogether from the Menu. "Play with narration" becomes unneeded if playing with narration would be available at the usual slideshow starting. "Record narration" may still be required - somewhere, to get things going. "Clear narration" can be done by usual slide handling, instead. Less UI is a good thing.

I would like to have external editing of the narrations (s.a. the effects you get in Garageband and clipping) but this is troublesome because of the need to synchronize a narrative with on-screen presentation effects (i.e. showing text or animations). Therefore, it's probably best to leave within Keynote.

Currently (iWork '09) exporting narrations to iCloud is not supported, but obviously it should be. However, these can be pushed as videos instead of interactive slideshows. I would like to have automatically generated markers for the beginning of each slide, though, so viewers would be easily able to skim back and forth to a particular slide.

Narrative slideshows are used extensively in i.e. pitching for projects or raising funds. I hope Apple makes producing them way easier than it now is. :)

p.s. I exported the slides to iCloud. Notice how much crisper the graphics look, because of no conversion to MPEG4 video. Also, the upload was 46MB compared to 230MB for video.
https://www.iwork.com/document/?d=Public_thing.key&a=p1303025490

One more thing...

The slide comments should be viewable (at least as an option) when recording the narration. Currently, they are not. I've placed the text to read in those comments and it makes sense to have it there, i.e. for making printouts.

Microsoft not-so pearls

2011-10-17T22:19:00.003+03:00

Microsoft has always sucked in translations.

They localize things they should not (s.a. the Windows\Desktop folder name - *in* the file system) and they have a track record of making translations so awkward one can actually use the English version easier than the 'native'.

Generally, I'm fine with Windows 7 (in Finnish). It's actually cool.

Unless you come to these dialog boxes, with authentication:

"Valinnainan" in the title is a typo (correct form is "Valinnainen"). This is sadly hilarious, because it makes the whole dialog look like a poor-mans trojan software, with bad Finnish. But this is authentic. Sigh.

Maybe there comes a time when pirated software has better localization than Redmond-based. Wouldn't be hard. :!

Nothing wrong with this.

Afghanistan?

We're running *Finnish* localized Windows, and this is the best guess for where I might be? *sigh^2*

This dialog is what one sees when *calling* an automated robot lady at Microsoft, to get magic numbers that make the Windows behave like it's genuine (which it is). I hope I never need to do that again.

Finally, hey we're there! Activated Genuine Windows 7. Cool. :)

The reason for all this was that I use Windows 7 Home Premium via Bootcamp, but also under VMWare (from the Bootcamp partition). A usage case that works, but confuses every authenticity scheme I know of (well, Windows and Autodesk, but that's enough).

Somehow I have the feeling that using a pirated Windows 7 might let me through with *less* typos, *less* phone calls and ... never mind.

How to Tweet (always in progress)

2011-09-24T11:52:00.000+03:00

Disclaimer: I will keep editing this blog entry when I find good (or: bad) samples that highlight a particular point. You can participate by tipping me on such at bmdesignhki. Thanks.
---

Twitter is gorgeous, and I plan to use it in business extensively (already do). But many people use it 'wrong', mostly unknowingly. So here are some guidelines I personally will try to follow.

First of all, Twitter is like swimming. It's easy and natural once you're there. It may be hard to explain. You should not use Twitter (to make your own tweets) half-heartedly, as most organisations nowadays do. Do it all, or keep out. Like with swimming.

When starting, I found The Simple Twitter Book by BrentO very useful. It describes the basics (s.a. what is a re-tweet, hashtag etc.) and how to use Twitter from a business angle. Read it.

#1 Don't use hashtags within a message (only at the end)

Hashtags are cool, but I find them disturbing when being injected within the message body. Twitter messages are supposed to be glanced at once, and those hashes simply ... don't do no good.

Use hashtags at the end of messages only.

Bad example:

Here @rmchase (whom I deeply admire - sorry for needing to use you as a bad example) uses #bikesharing instead of just writing "Largest bike sharing in the world". Also, note that the #buzzcarFR is actually completely unrelated to this tweet (so I removed it when making my own retweet):

Good example:

(to be added, please suggest one. Something that has relevant hashtags in the end - and a readable, catchy message body.)

#2 Don't use integrated tools (they suck)

These days, many sites suggest they could do your tweeting for you. Don't trust that. They will simply clutter your timeline with automated-looking unworthy tweets that cause people to lose interest in you.

Also, use of "Twitter integration" may cause situations where the same message ends up through multiple channels on your Twitter feed (see below).

Bad example:

Here, the tweets look different and I actually clicked both links. But they are the same! What I figure has happened is that the user has created a hand-made tweet in twitter ("17 minutes ago") and also entered a note on LinkedIn, but with completely different title ("15 minutes ago"). LinkedIn uses their interim URL scheme to know who pressed what and when (thus the "lnkd.in/...") but leads one to the same page.

The user might not even realize that this happens. He's simply thought making LinkedIn updates automatically show up also elsewhere is a good thing. It is not (unless you are aware of it - and rely on it completely).

Good example:

Actually, the exact same (original) tweet serves as a good example. This looks like something carefully crafted for Twitter viewers only. It is easy for the reader and contains all relevant information. It is easy to decide whether I want to click the link or not, and 'via @growvc' gives appropriate credit to the tweet flow.

#3 Don't use multiple links in one tweet

Tweets are supposed to be simple. Putting two URL's is technically possible, but troubling for the reader. If interested in the tweet, which one to push. Both? One of the main benefits of twitter is the shortness of messages; the author is supposed to take care in making the message clear and easily congestible. Do it. Take time. You decide which URL is the best.

Often, this happens because of "integrated tools". Facebook places the original (good) link on the tweet but insists on placing its own (to track, I don't know what) as well. Actually, these both may actually lead to the same final page, which is even more annoying for the reader.

Bad example:

Note the two links, both leading to the same page. Also note "via Facebook"

#4 Don't use interim pages

Twitter is supposed to be simple. Straightforward. Fast. Don't annoy your readers by making a tweet that does not take people to the particular page, but some interim page where they must again look for the right link. This is misusing Twitter, and comparable to email spamming.

My friend prtguru does this all the time. I haven't had the guts to tell him (but - please do).

Bad example:

All his tweets lead to the same page, http://www.prtconsulting.com/news.html. From there, I will need to re-search the particular news entry that I was actually going for.

Even worse, since the news page is often updated, older tweets (that may get new publicity by re-tweets months after their original exposure) will lead to the general link page, covered by more recent entries. This really sucks, from a Tweet reader's point of view.

Correct action is to always use links taking directly to the particular page, links that will remain valid as long as possible (at least some 4-6 months).

#5 Mark videos, especially if needing flash

If you're linking to stuff other than a usual web article, say so.

Add "(pdf)", "(pdf 6MB)", "(video)", "(flash)" or similar to the tweet, just prior to the URL. Many people (s.a. myself) read tweets over mobile connection and for such tweets, we'd rather collect them and see at home.

Bad example:

(some tweet that links to a Flash-only site or video, without saying. Completely unusable on an iPhone / iPad)

#6 Mark interests other than what your subscribers expect, with hashtags

My followers are probably interested in urban design, cleantech, ecological issues. Anything else may be considered as noise by them, and causing too much noise is a sure way to get unfollows.

Still, occasionally I want to tweet on other things, but I try to mark them as such.

Example:

With this one I was cautious anyways. It's a link to an online petition to call action against shark fin usage - and fishery that casts whole shark bodies back to water after the fin has been cut off. They cannot swim that way, and slowly die. I find this shameful for humans, and though a petition does little, it's something. To highlight it's not the usual stuff I tweet, I added '#wildlife'. Could have added '#petition' as well, though it's mentioned in the body.

#7 Be consistent with the language

Many people (s.a. myself) tweet in multiple languages. Since tweets are anyways short, it is unnecessary to burden them with a further remark on which language is being used. Just be consistent. If the link you're referring to is in Finnish, tweet in Finnish. Giving the head line in English won't help your English readers get anything much out of the article behind the link.

btw, it wouldn't be a bad idea for Twitter to somehow (automatically?) find out the language used in tweets, so English readers could i.e. opt out of my non-English tweets. @feedback

Bad example:

Ville's tweet starts with English, says "This looks interesting...", but links to a Finnish page and finally apologises of the language (but at that point, it's too late!).

#8 Have a rhythm

Like in poetry (because it's short) also in tweets rhythm matters. It makes an extra caking on the subject. How you present it is important.

Bad example:

This is obviously from an automated delivery "tube" (see point 2, "integrated tools") which destroys much of Sitra's often otherwise relevant tweets.

Also, look at it.

"Sitra.fi renewal:"

This is completely unnecessary - what added value does it bring? (I only later realized the tweet was actually about revamping their website. Good - it says so in the front but "renewal" lead me to think of internal organisational renewal instead.)

"Kill your design-darlings:"

Hmm - okay, we are getting to the essence?

"Art Director (definition):"

Third prelude ending in a colon. Nothing, yet.

"Person with superior vision of design..."

Now, it seems they ran out of 140 characters, so the integrated "tube" cut the message short. What's the point? This tweet is unnecessary, and it's making the brand of Sitra look bad online. Like most of their other integrated tweets.

Let's see how to say the same with rhythm.

"Revelations re-designing sitra.fi: early feedback and content are king(s). <link>"

That's probably not the best, but it does tell what the story is about. I would still say it lacks rhythm (it's too long). The "(s)" at the end tries to be funny.

(a good example on rhythm here, some day)

#9 Remove extra parameters from Youtube URL's

Be careful when copy-pasting URLs to Youtube videos. Depending on how you came to the clip, they may have unwanted parameters.

&at=...

This parameter starts viewing the video from a certain place. Usually, you want to remove it so people will get to see the entire clip.

&feature=player_embedded

You can remove this one as well.

#10 Always check your URL's after the tweet. Always.

It's very easy to post tweets that have a completely wrong URL (copy-pasting error) or have a dysfunctional, partial URL. One that I came across recently (now deleted so no snapshot of that) pointed to http://china. Obviously, no such thing - it was supposed to point to http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/chinas-green-economist-stirring-a-shift-away-from-gdp .

Tools automatically shorten URL's so spotting these things while you are forming the tweet is no longer obvious. Remember you can always delete a tweet and repost it (there should actually be a 'modify' function in Twitter that would take the existing tweet contents as a template, while deleting the old one).

(example of a tweet with broken URL)

#11 Use hashtags when sidelining off your usual track

Hashtags (words #likethis within your tweet) are originally meant for helping the search of content within all tweets in the world. However, you can also help the reader categorize a tweet using them, especially if you are tweeting of something outside your normal focus.

I use i.e. #entertainment, #movies, #ads etc. to tag my tweets that would be outside my normal contents (which would be transport, computers, technology - those I do not tag since people following me are probably expecting such content anyways, and unnecessary tags are a chore).

Like this, today:

What this hopefully does for the reader is to make it faster clear for him/her whether they are interested in the subject. Speeds up filtering (which is *vital* for tweets).

What this does for oneself is it avoids the danger of dropping followers because of sidelining to something that they would normally not be expecting. You don't want unfollows, right.

#12 No commas between hashtags, please.

Hastags don't need commas as separator.

They should have simply said: #startup #entrepreneur #vc #networking

Another issue altogether is that the "Going the SaaS Route" is a very vague, and bad tweet to begin with. It is not self-consistent. It does not carry enough information to make me know whether I want to click the link or not. It makes me confused, and wastes my time.

Something better could have been:

"Things to consider about going SaaS (software-as-a-service)."

However, the blog entry itself is rather vague, and a good punch-line is hard to fine. Maybe it is only appropriate that a tweet leading to it would be vague as well. (Sorry, GrowVC - I do like you otherwise)

#13 Do NOT use automatic notifications

Twitter is NOT 4square. Your followers don't want automated announcements on where you are. We want your original ideas, clever tweets and good thought our retweets. That's why we follow.

This is a problem if an otherwise worthy-to-follow tweeter enables some system to do things like this:

Don't.

Twitter clients (or Twitter itself) should also start having filters so we can filter these things out of our timeline. I would never ever want to see *any* tweet starting with "@someone is now departing". Ever.

#14 When 140 characters simply isn't enough - multipart tweets

This multi-part tweet from @Battlefield is actually pretty good. "(1 of more)" etc. ties them together. The problem naturally is that one must read them from bottom-up, but...

Generally I would advice not to go multi-part, but if you absolutely must, this is the way. Well done, @Battlefield.

...more entries will be added...

GPU makers are still not getting it! - way to 'retina' displays

2011-09-20T10:29:00.001+03:00

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/20/intels_ivy_bridge_support_for_4k_resolution_could_pave_way_for_retina_macs.html

There is a real need for 'retina' desktop monitors. Resolutions where we don't see individual pixels any more. I.e. the 27" Apple Cinema Display is otherwise brilliant, but reading text or even web pages on it is less than optimal. The pixels on such big screen become too big. Apple's laptops are way better in this regard.

But - it seems Intel would be going there with the traditional approach. Why?

We now have Thunderbolt. It's essentially a PCI bus over thin serial wire. So why not make the GPU *inside the display*. The distinction is not big for the consumer - they might not even be aware. The same cable. But instead of streaming each and every pixel across in such a GPU-within-display device the OS X display elements and commands would be sent. Like for text, the characters instead of the rendered bitmaps.

This also makes sense in other ways, especially when thinking of a small laptop + large stationary "office" display. Excess heat dissipation is easier in the display. One would get better graphics processing speed when working with the big screen. Why carry that GPU chip along in the laptop everywhere. Actually, latest Macbook Airs don't have a dedicated GPU. See - maybe Apple indeed is thinking this.

It is *so* obvious to me as a computer engineer that this is the way to go forward. Intel - please say this is what you have in mind. We don't need retina display support the old way.

What makes a hotel green / hotels of the future?

2011-08-20T09:42:00.004+03:00

http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/07/index.cfm

Coming to that article made me remember my last trip, to Cologne, and the decision to start using AirBNB instead of hotels.

What could hotels do to keep up in the competition?

Lend out jogging equipment

I wanted to go running in the morning (the hotel had awesome neighbourhood, including some Roman time water channels), but had left my running shorts back home (won't do that again).

Why cannot hotels lend out jogging shoes, shorts and t-shirts and then launder them after the job. No smelly clothes hanging in the hotel room. They wash bedclothes anyways, this wouldn't be so much different. I'd be happy for 7-8 eur, maybe even 10 added for this service. But I need to be able to count on it, ahead of trip (i.e. having the right shoe size available).

Why not do this? Because no-one seems to want it?

Go further. Lend out bicycles (some hotels undoubtably would already do so). Team up with a close by tennis court (which was there). Meet other hotel guests for a play of tennis. Neat.

Hotel chains must pump up their "activism" and "eco-friendliness" in such way.

In the US, one can add healthy breakfasts to the list. At least way back, it used to be sugar only. Naturally, someone should first instruct the Americans what healthy actually means. :)

Better booking, preferably a mobile app

Hotels must make finding the right stay as easy as AirBNB has done it. One of my favourites is the "I need the room THIS NIGHT" button topmost on the AirBNB user interface. Though I'd never actually use that button, simply having it there gives me confidence that I'm in good hands. Ever tried to find a hotel room for the next night? Might be a failing endeavour.

Get a face

Instead of call-in numbers and queueing, have a real person contactable over mobile chat, SMS or otherwise. Again, like AirBNB beautifully does.

So - in short I would argue future of hotels is already here. It's got a name and a business model. It's AirBNB.

Note: I wrote this before having taken a single trip with AirBNB, yet. I may change my mind.

The Blog that did not Let me in.

2011-08-09T10:52:00.003+03:00

http://www.smartplanet.com/

It's a nice looking site. Great stuff, gorgeous layout.

Hey, I want to add a comment. Sign-in...? okay.

No Twitter integration. Dammit. Must use a lowsy pw. :/

And then this eternal loop, never ever getting me into actually giving the comments!

I tried with Safari 5, Firefox 5. Cleared cookies. Waited overnight. Sent a message to their support (no reply). I should have simply given up. :(

Anyways, here's what my comment would have been:

Not quite true..

Tesla is only one sample. A lot has changed in the auto industry since they started their development. Electricity has become the trend and everyone is planning for e-mobility. This brings part cost down and offers pieces "off-the-shelf" that earlier needed to be manufactured by particular car companies. In other words, car making has become modular in a way that happened to PC's in the 1980's and 90's.

Two sample cases. ERA, the Electric Race About X-prize contender, a project built by a team of Finnish students. Magnificient car. Budget? 1 million euros (half of that goes to the special battery). Wheel engines. Gorgeous drivability. If you them 1 million, they have promised to build you one. That's. not. really. much.

http://www.arcticstartup.com/2010/04/09/era-the-finnish-x-prize-contender

Gordon Murray Design (UK), and their T.27. Gordon Murray does not make cars. They make car factories. But to show the point, they also made this car. Very safe. Gorgeous design (at least me thinks). You can fit two of these, next to each other on a regular lane (= bypassing doesn't need lane change). Three fits in one parking box. Time it took them? Around 1 year.

http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/press.php

And then there's this thing. PRT transportation that is like electric car, only grade-separated and automated. Really, these things are technically as easy to do as golf carts.

http://www.ultraprt.com/

So with these cases (and some others not listed) I dare to say Tesla looks rather oldish, and there indeed is innovation in the air when it comes to transport. Wether we get new stuff actually on the road fast enough is another matter. Investments will help. They don't have to be in the billions. 10M is great for any of the projects above!

- asko

Suggestion to Safari (and other browsers) - viewing pages from cache

2011-08-06T12:41:00.002+03:00

If Internet connection is down, but Safari has the requested HTML in its cache, instead of showing "Network diagnostics" button it could also show "Show from cache". This would allow returning to a page one recently viewed.

I'm visiting India, and we just had an electric blackout. I would have wanted to carry on reading the economist page I had open earlier. History still has it, but there's no way in Safari to read the cache copy instead of the online.

The same issue also happens if you are travelling, and don't have wlan connection. Ability to browse the sites kept in cache would sometimes make the difference in finding crucial information or not.

We have a problem - fitting PRT to India

2011-08-05T17:19:00.006+03:00

We have a problem.

I have a startup for making light weight PRT transportation, and India is supposed to be a main market. Today, when walking the streets in Mangalore, I realized the solution won't fit for two reasons.

( A little disclaimer first: Mangalore is not really suffering from too much urban growth or traffic congestion. Currently, it is not in a need of PRT. But some parts of India (i.e. Bangalore) desperately are and these issues might abound there as well. )

#1 - Electric wires *everywhere* in the air

We cannot think of putting traffic at 3,5m if there are electric wires at 5. This sometimes occurs is western cities as well, but much, much less since there cables are more underground. I.e. city lighting is done with underground cables.

#2 - Movement patterns are different

We have been riding around the center with rickshaw. The problem is that at least in Mangalore, there are no suburbs or other "natural areas of movement", as I like to call them. No "city within city" but in order to get stuff and go places, people travel here and there, seemingly randomly. I guess the lack of city planning has caused this. Anyways, it's a fact. No suburbs.

That means two things: gradual introduction of PRT is a doomed idea. In order for a system to be usable, it must reach places. A track covering some particular part of a homogenous city is useless.

Second, an introduction to a whole city (which I think is utopian anyways) would cause major havoc among rickshaw drivers and others losing their livelyhood. Not so with gradual introduction (if that were possible) since the drivers could continue business nearby.

Solution?

I cannot see a solution to these issues, which is okay in itself. PRT should not be pushed into places where it does not fit, or brings little additional value. We must be careful with that once the hype stage of these tracks comes - it is a disgrace if they end up destroying local life instead of enforcing it.

The air wires probably will be put into cables eventually - at least that is what happened in the west. Maybe in a monsoon climate it's actually better to have wires in the air?

At least in bigger cities, rich people are getting their own "suburbs", but they are not large enough for an internal transport network. And for such rich people walking wouldn't normally hurt. The idea of a PRT track connecting such apartment islands with selected malls and selected workplace feels like a disgrace as well.

If you have a solution to this, please comment or send a tweet to @bmdesignhki.

Thanks.

What does 3D printing and exploration of Moon have in common?

2011-07-10T23:32:00.003+03:00

A lot.

There's a second Moon race going on, among (at least) China, Russia, India, and EU. But the whole concept of getting "man" back to the Moon has kept me thinking. Isn't it an era already where robots can be doing much more, and much cheaper. I think so.

Now, the work robots should be doing on the Moon is for example Helium-3 extraction (see for example this documentary for "why?"). So how to do that?

Machines that build machines

That is precisely what 3D printers are, and based on this video plain desert sand will do as a raw material.

Now, instead of sending dedicated Helium-3 harvesting machines from here to the Moon, figure out a way to harness the solar power to build those machines in-situ - and download the blueprints.

Heck - once "factories" (ehem - regolith-printers) are up and running, one can even download new build instructions to them. Have all the necessary parts waiting for you, on Lunar surface, when the people arrive. And only the printer needed to be sent.

Beautiful, isn't it? :)

With this approach, multiple factory sites can be established in different maturity levels. Some would enter production while others would be only "seeded". Exploration of the Moon becomes akin to gardening.

...and the year is? That depends on us. Progress is not something that happens by stating a year. It needs a lot of hard work to proceed. All I'm saying is that hard work would better be used on 3D lunar printing experiments. With or without human involvement in the picture.

-asko

What happened to the West (too much security blocking our spirit)?

2011-07-02T20:59:00.000+03:00

I noticed this advertisement in Bloomberg Businessweek today:

Reminds us of this iconic picture of construction of the Empire State Building:

Now - what happened. Work security happened. Less workers needed happened. But... did also stagnation happen?

Is it because of the safety equipment, both seen and unseen that the current western societies have lost their agility and - partly - their innovation.

Then there's a third picture playing with this theme on the internet:

Since human life is so precious (it costs companies to lose lives, otherwise they might not bother more than before) should test dummies build the skyscrapers?

I'll leave it here. Don't have answers but I think the one-man-in-harness is a lousy picture for an add. To me, it underlines inefficiencies and structural limitations. How on Earth is the guy supposed to move up there! The harness will kill him!

Maybe that is exactly what is happening for us in the West (Greece, USA, UK, Finland). Harness limiting and killing us. Slowly but steadily.

Twitter: give "RT" references "for free" (suggestion)

2011-06-29T10:37:00.003+03:00

There's been pleeeenty of discussion on the internet about the way Twitter is subtly changing its mechanisms (regarding retweets) but with not-so-subtle consequences. In short, I feel the current situation is a bit crooked, and at fault.

Short summary of current situation:

- you can either do "official" retweet which means the original tweet is unmodified and shows with the original tweeter's icon, but also to your followers. Essentially, you're giving the tweet more publicity.

This is good, but it lacks making even trivial corrections (s.a. fixing typos or formatting, or making the tweet slightly easier for the readers). Often, such changes are desirable.

So you have the "unofficial" RT characters. Mark "RT @someone" anywhere in a tweet and it's taken that this is a retweet (maybe edited) from that user. The new tweet will show under your "colors" at your followers only, like it came from you (which it did). The "RT" is just a social convention, though some (non-official) tools happily support it.

I like both. They serve different uses.

Now, let's take this tweet today from @TheEconomist.

#Audio: A Greek entrepreneur discusses the difficulties of doing business in the country due to bureaucracyhttp://econ.st/k5Dk7A

I like a different way of highlighting there's audio involved. Not at the very front, but subtly just before the link. Also, I like to inform readers if flash is required (which it is for the link above). So:

A Greek entrepreneur discusses the difficulties of doing business in the country due to bureaucracy. (flash audio) http://econ.st/k5Dk7A RT @TheEconomist

That's it - and send. No - you cannot. Too many characters.

I could send it without the "RT" part but that's kind of stupid. I want to give @TheEconomist the glory. Worse still, if someone re-retweets this (the "RT way") she'd be adding my twitter id at the end, "@bmdesignhki". Now we're truly out of the 140 character bounds. This is very known problem.

The cure

What if any "RT @someone @another" mentions in tweets would be handled not as part of the 140 characters but "free", as metadata of the tweet. Twitter could do this. The implications would be:

- Allowing any tweet to be RT'ed any number of times, without bothering people with the 140 char limit
- Settling the official/unofficial retweet discussion. Hopefully.

The user experience would not really change at all (at least, not for worse). Any "RT" tweet would be shown in *my* colors, so that I cannot mess with the reputation of someone else, by malign modifications or fakes of their tweets. I guess this is behind the official policy of unmodified-retweets-only.

Better still, Twitter could actually link metadata to the earlier tweets this one was based upon (as a chain), not only the twitter id's. This way, I could "wind back" to earlier tweets if needed (s.a. the @TheEconomist original).

In short, I see this pretty easy to do. It's more of a political issue than technical, most likely. Please - do it.

If Apple was Twitter, they'd do this. :) Give us modifiable retweets Done Right.

Addendum

Actually, give also '#tags' free of char-charge. In other words both retweeted id's and tags of a tweet (especially if at the end of a tweet) should be freely addable. If someone tweets a full 140-char masterpiece, I can then "RT" it but also add tags of my liking - i.e. "#masterpiece" - to it. The only place where the 140 char limit really stands on my way is these two issues.

Should be easy to fix, right? :)

What is my future tablet (as in 2012-13) like?

2011-06-25T17:45:00.004+03:00

I've bought two electronic books (Making Things Happen and Beautiful Visualizations) that simply won't get read without a tablet. (the woooorst excuse for new gadget, ever?)

Anyways, while I've been keeping a curious eye on the HP Touchpad, I'm beginning to doubt I'll actually buy one. The resolution is still the same as in iPad and the #1 sales argument for me would be 'paper crisp' readability. I do want color, also, so Kindle is out.

SO, here are the specs for making a tablet - just for my taste and need.

- paper crisp, FUN readability of electronic books and/or magazines
- ability to 3G-roam via my iPhone (I don't want another SIM card in the tablet)
- Great presentation skills ~ ability to run Keynote presentations on the tablet, to an HDMI (or similar) adapter (-> video screen)
- price around 399..499 eur

This should serve mainly as a reminder, in case I feel tempted to still get the HP touchpad. I shouldn't. Come 2012, there'll be an iPad matching these specs. Until then, back to my paperback. :)

Addendum:
Some links to what other people expect:
http://www.huliq.com/10177/analysis-designing-tablet-future

To me, storage is not an issue. Anything goes, and the OS should use cloud integration to essentially provide you with "unlimited" storage. Treat the local (flash) storage as a cache of sorts. (seems the article actually agrees with this)

Addendum II:
Viewing the Windows 8 video on Youtube made me think of adding "16:9 aspect ratio" to the list. It would not hurt, but I doubt iPads will be changing their aspect ratio anytime (soon/ever). And maybe for reading books that would actually be sub-optimal as well.

Btw, the usability of Win8 on tablets seems to be Right There. I'd be fine without the whole traditional desktop layer. Windows without Windows, eh? :)

New 3DConnexion "10 beta 10" drivers - still not usable under VMWare > Win7 32-bit > Inventor 11

2011-06-21T21:13:00.001+03:00

I tried the 3DConnexion (Logitech 3D mouse subsidiary) "10 beta 10" drivers today. Great improvement on both Windows 7 (32-bit) and OS X side. At least it feels way swifter, now.

However, one homework remains for 3DConnexion and one for Autodesk.

The backdrop (shortly)
I'm running things on a Mac Mini, and Inventor 11 is almost the only reason (Solitaire being the second) for having Boot Camp and Windows 7 (32-bit) on this machine. I can use the Boot Camp partition either via dual boot or via VMWare (as a virtual machine running under OS X).

While this sounds like a complicated setup, it really isn't. I presume it to be rather common for OS X users, really.

The problem (3DConnexion's homework)

The SpaceExplorer USB 3D mouse works splendidly under VMWare, but the Inventor driver for it is useless under the VMWare Fusion > Inventor 11 setup. Response times are in seconds. If it weren't for this, I'd be using Inventor as a virtual machine.

Since all the "little demos" are as fast on VMWare as they are on native boot, I'm very inclined to thinking this is actually some kind of bug somewhere in the Inventor / 3DConnexion code. Something is done wrong and can be fixed.

Homework: try this setup. Analyze it. Getting it "right" will be a relief to us Mac + Inventor users.

The problem (Autodesk's homework - or maybe VMWare's)

Inventor license handling doesn't work with VMWare launching from a Boot Camp partition. The same license should be valid, regardless of running the partition natively or as a virtual machine. It's a one copy, not two.

This has been reported to Autodesk in the forum or bug system, but I don't expect much to be happening on it. I believe, VMWare could fix this on their part independently by reporting the magic thingies Autodesk asks (probably hard disk serial number or something) in a uniform fashion.

This means one must make a decision, either to run Inventor 11 always native or always virtualized. That kind of sucks, don't you think.

With these companies doing the above mentioned homework, life with VMWare, Inventor 11 and Mac would be pretty much perfect! :)

Picture of VMWare Fusion running Inventor 11. The "jet" demo runs as smooth as ever, controlled by the SpaceExplorer USB 3D mouse. The handle in Inventor - well - does not. Notice the "UNREGISTERED VERSION" in the caption. This copy really is registered (but on the native boot side).

The efficiency triangle

2011-05-16T00:48:00.002+03:00

Moth's Efficiency is Truly Virtuous: Planning Prosperity blog post made me think about efficiencies. While some of that thinking got to a comment on his post, there was more to it.

If we draw "monetary efficiency" and "resource efficiency" on the same picture, we get the above quad-field figure. Now, it seems this visualization will help understand efficiencies in general and maybe cast them into "good" and "bad" baskets.

The problem is - and this is usually presented by the Degrowth movement - that making something efficient tends to also raise the consumption of the now more efficient (= more cheap) product, thus maybe making the end result worse than the beginning.

But something in me has objected that thinking. And the above figure lets us study the different cases of efficiency change.

The axes

On the horizontal axis we have monetary efficiency. Whatever your starting product or average of technology price point is, defines the "You're here" center (1.0 on the scale). Making things cheaper takes you left; making them more expensive takes you right.

The vertical axis works the same, but in relation to some resource. This can be emissions, energy usage, water usage, practically whatever. The thing is that it is independent from the monetary value of things.

Upper left quadrant

In the upper left quadrant are products (or changes to your existing product) that lead to cheaper costs (left) and less resource usage (up). But it matters which one of these dominates.

If your product is made cheaper more than it's made resource efficient, the likely rise in sales will more than eat up the resource efficiency. The white area of the upper left quadrant is what the degrowth people are worried about. Rise is unit-wise resource efficiency but fall in total.

Note that in real life the price elasticity of products (how much more will be consumed for a drop in unit price) is not linear 1:1 as we expect here. That simply means the white and green areas are not clean triangles. To keep things simple and to propose the overall idea of the figure, we're doing it like this.

The green triangle of the upper left quadrant tilts things from bad (increased total resource usage) to good (decreased total resource usage). This is because here the increase in resource efficiency is greater than the added consumption due to price lowering. Simple.

Products that would be placed in the upper left quadrant are such where prices tend to fall. Computers, monitors and (at least it used to be) mobile phones. The latest low price on PC's is $25 (but that product is extremely resource efficient as well).

Upper right quadrant

This is where prices go up but resource efficiency is made better. LED bulbs. Wind and solar power generation. Electrical or hybrid cars.

I've drawn a yellow triangle here but it works a bit different from the earlier quadrant. Here, the question is more on what the ratio of raised price to better resource utilization is. In other words, is the added price actually getting us anything.

If you're within the yellow triangle, increase in resource efficiency is higher than the increase in price. Seems like a good deal. However, if you're within the white area, you might question if you're making the right thing. I.e. you would be making something twice as expensive as the current status quo technology, but only 1.3 times more resource efficient. It might - or might not - be worth doing.

Naturally, the position within the quadrants changes over time as technologies mature. Hydrogen fuel cell cars have been within the upper right white area for decades. If you know a product or technology will be able to "break loose" from the white, it might be worth developing it within there. Price only matters when the product is out on the market. But consider being on the white at least a warning sign (and study which alternatives there are that would be within the green / yellow triangles).

So where to aim?

One revelation (at least to me) from this quad-field figure is that one should aim at the vertical axis. Trying to keep the product pretty much within the current price range (of existing alternatives) while heavily making it more resource efficient seems like the best approach (from the total resource utilization point of view).

Of course, market conditions may state that you should go for lower price (if you can) to grab market space from existing, not so resource efficient solutions. But beware of going too focused on the price alone. Hopefully, the triangle will give you a compass bearing to keep things in perspective.

That's it!

I'm more than happy to hear how you see this figure and/or start using it. Enhancements are naturally welcome. If you reference it somewhere please credit me (Asko Kauppi) unless I've unknowingly stumbled onto something already out there. Things do get invented multiple times, you know.

And if you're in the resource efficiency business, one way or the other, please drop by at LinkedIn De-Growth Companies forum that I founded some time ago.

Liikennerevoluutio osa 2

2011-04-27T21:51:00.001+03:00

( About a follow-up meeting of Sitra lead Transport Revolution program starting in Finland. )

Kirjoitin joulukuussa tämän blogiin Sitran Liikennerevoluution aloitustapahtumasta.

Tänään pidettiin samassa tilassa hankkeen toinen julkinen tapahtuma, jossa kerrottiin mitä tässä välillä oli erinäisissä palavereissa saatu aikaan.

Minulla on yritys, joka mitä suurimmassa määrin pyrkii liikennevallankumouksen toteuttamiseen. Sitä taustaa vasten on ristiriitaista katsoa Suomen vakiintuneiden instituutioiden (ministeriöt, Tekes, Sitra, Trafi..) pyristelyä vallankumouksen alulle saattamiseksi. Komeat puitteet, hienot banderollit ja tilaisuutta varten vuokrattu yksityisratikka eivät vain sovi kuvaani siitä, mitä liikennevallankumous (tai mikään vallankumous) olisi. Mutta ehkä tuossa on kyse finesseistä ja sanojen vähän väärästä käytöstä. Ehkä se, mitä Suomi nimenomaan tarvitsee on kabinettivallankumous, mitä sanaa alkuperäisessä blogissakin käytin. Ehkä se on oikea vallankumous tai sitten edellytys sen suuremman tapahtumiselle.

Oli miten oli, esityksessä puhutut asiat olivat pääosin hyviä ja aplodit ansaittuja. Ainoastaan WSP:n edustaja, toimitusjohtaja Matti Mannonen mainitsi liikennepalvelujen ennakoitavuuden merkityksestä. Että jos junat eivät ole ajallaan, on ihan sama, miten nopeasti ne kulkevat. Olen samaa mieltä, myös HSL:n bussien osalta. Itse lisäisin hänen antiinsa palvelujen ylläpidettävyyden ja vikasietoisuuden (resilience), jotka ovat ennakoitavuuden edellytyksiä.

Tavallaan on olo, että edelleen puhuttiin heinänseipäistä. Hanke tarvitsee konkretiaa. Ainoastaan HSL:n Ville Lehmuskoski piti innokkaan, jalat maassa -tasoisen esityksen HSL:n Metropol-hankkeesta (mutta se olikin virallisen ohjelman ulkopuolelta). Kyseessä näyttää olevan tilaustyyppinen, vaihtuvataksainen ja skaalautuva liikennepalvelu, joka toimii jossain taksien ja palvelubussien välimaastossa (ehkä korvaten ne molemmat tai toimien yhteisenä portaalina niiden tilaamiseen). Vaikuttaa hyvältä, on mielestäni menestys jos taksiautoilijat saadaan mukaan tuohon toimintaan.

En oikein tiedä, ketä vastaan tämä vallankumous on. Sanat, joita ei haluta ovat sellaisia kuin "siilo" ja "siltarumpu". Justjoo. Vaikuttaa enemmän politiikan sisäiseltä organisaatiouudistukselta kuin varsinaiselta päivittäiseen elämäämme vaikuttavalta vallankumoukselta.

Aika näyttää. Jos olisin pörssianalyytikko laittaisin statukseksi "seuraa".

Ohessa joitain ohjelmaan tekemiäni merkintöjä mielestäni arvokkaista sutkauksista:

- WSP, Matti Mannonen: ".. olemme saapuneet maailmaan, jossa saavutetuista eduista voidaan ja tulee luopua."
- RYM, Ari Ahonen: ".. että saadaan liikenne positiiviseksi keskustelun kohteeksi."
- Tivit, Reijo Paananen: "Tärkeintä on lähteä liikkeelle."
- Logica, Sami Sahala: "Liikkumisen 2.0" (huom: ei liikenne 2.0)
- Hannele Pokka: "Pilotteja tarvittaisiin aika noppeesti."

Suomessa käytetään kuulemma vuodessa 20 miljardia euroa "matkoihin ja kuljetuksiin" (tuo tekee kymmenisen euroa *päivässä* jokaista kansalaista kohti). Voitaisiinko ottaa tavoitteeksi esim. puolittaa tuo rahasumma, eli hoitaa koko kansakunnan liikenne puolta halvemmalla (tai vastaavasti liikuttaa puolta vähemmän, tai jotain siltä väliltä).

Tilaisuudessa pyöriteltiin 10% vähennystä budjettipuolen numeroihin. Omasta mielestäni se ei riitä vallankumouksen käyttöön sanastossa, mutta kertonee tämän hetken uskottavuustasosta Suomessa. Jos sanottaisiin, että pyritään puolittamaan, ei hanketta otettaisi ehkä tosissaan. Tällaisia me olemme - ihmiset. Sinä ja minä.

Conditional formatting bug in Numbers

2011-04-01T11:03:00.000+03:00

I love Numbers and use it daily.

However, there is one annoying bug that I've put up with for too long. I use conditional formatting in my accounting sheet to show alarting colors "if not equal to cell (reference)". What happens is that copy/pasting such cell does NOT correspondingly update the conditional format reference. All the pasted cells will compare to the original reference.

This is *absolute* behaviour usually marked as "$A$1" (the dollars) in spreadsheets. However, the conditional formatting UI does not show $'s and therefore indicates the reference is relative. Actually, it does not *allow* changing the type of reference (which imho it should).

Usage case for relative reference in conditional formatting (this is how I use it):

- You have sums from the spreadsheet and below them "known right" sums i.e. from bank slips. If the two sums are not the same, mark with red bold color. Condition: "if not equal to (cell above)".

Usage case for absolute reference in conditional formatting (I don't use this):

- You have a spreadsheet-wide setting for some threshold value, i.e. to mark expenses higher than it. Expense cells have "if higher than (absolute cell)" to highlight the ones you should focus on.

I do hope Apple fixes this. I've reported it to them today.

Retina display - also to the desktop. Please!

2011-03-02T07:23:00.005+02:00

iPhone 4 has spoiled us (though I still have the 3GS version).

One part of Apple's launch advertising was saying how the retina display has pixels so small you cannot see them by naked eye.

NOW, that only made me realize I don't get that on desktop. Thanks a lot. :( I'm now acutely aware of how fuzzy the on-screen fonts are even on a state of the art monitor (typing this on a 27" Cinema Display that's anyways way too big for my needs).

I might return this monitor - don't envy just yet...

What I really would like is a 24-25 inch non-cinema (not 16:9 ratio) monitor that shows PDFs, program code and any stuff with "retina quality" crispness.

There is none, it seems. Advice on the web seems to point at viewing from a longer distance. But I'm used to being rather close to the display. Why, oh why. Apple please make a "retina display" experience. Make it soon. :)

Addendum:

Seems Apple may be doing exactly this.

"The developer build of Lion released this week came with fresh HiDPI mode references,

suggesting that Apple may expect 200ppi+ laptop and desktop displays to become available during Lion’s lifetime."

http://www.macnews.com/2011/02/25/mac-os-x-lion-lead-retina-displays-macs

Now, a 4:1 resolution enhancement of Cinema display would make it 5120 x 2880 resolution. I think that's way beyond what DisplayPort can handle. My guess is these new displays (if/when they arrive) will use the just released Thunderbolt connection directly.

Addendum 2

I continued wondering how the Thunderbolt technology can affect display markets, and how a 5000x2000 pixel display could be implemented. Here's one way.

Thunderbolt is essentially PCI Express, and such could be used as the bus interface between the CPU and the GPU. The *display* could have the GPU.

This makes tremendous sense since with rising pixel count the data bandwidth between the CPU and the GPU will likely (I haven't calculated specifics) be way smaller than the bandwidth of pushing pixels to the screen. Make the display smart, essentially make it a display adapter card (with a display). And voilá - no PPI limitations to the forecoming future!

Things s.a. font blitting will then happen in the display. And the solution will be compatible with everything - not just OS X - since the concept of a PCI Express display adapter is OS independent. So... when can I get one? :)

Backing up Boot camp partition with help of iPartition 3 (no WinClone)

2011-02-20T20:22:00.003+02:00

Winclone has been the de facto tool for backing up a Boot camp partition. Its website says it's discontinued.

So... I went looking for an alternative way. Setting up Windows 7 (+ Security Essentials + Inventor 2011) is not such a pleasure I would voluntarily look for it (again). So I want to "image" the bootcamp partition somehow.

Ideally, the image would only carry the bytes actually used in the NTFS volume and not be a 1:1 copy of the raw device. So Linux-like bitwise device copy is ruled out.

I was surprised not to find a ready-made solution for this in the otherwise splendid Coriolis iPartition 3 software. But their customer support gave the following advice:

Hi Asko, Thank you for you comments :)

Actually, there is a simple way to do what I believe you wish to do using iPartition and Disk Utility. You can use Disk Utility to create a "sparse disk image" large enough to accommodate your windows partition.

Then, in iPartition, delete any partitions which may have been created in your new disk image then navigate to the windows partition that you wish to back up. Select this partition and chose "Clone..." from the Partition drop-down menu. Set the target disk to your new disk image and hit Go.

You can now unmount this disk image and you will see that the image (.sparseimage) file size is only the size of the files that Windows was using. This is because iPartition recognizes the free space in your partition when performing the clone operation.

We hope that you find this solution useful. If you need any further assistance or have any other issues then please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards, (person's name removed)

I'm doing that right now, and it seems to work (*knock knock*). I do wish they would build this procedure (or similar) and restoration of Boot camp partition from the backup such created, right into iPartition.

Autodesk Inventor would actually fit on 5 (almost 4) DVDs

2011-02-15T09:52:00.007+02:00

Autodesk Inventor 2011 Pro comes in a nice, smallish package. Within the package there are 7 (!) installation DVDs and separate Vault Server and "Fusioin technology Preview" discs. This blog entry is about the 7 DVDs.

What is the cost of making a DVD?

- manufacturing
- managing (it's a part in Autodesk's storehouse, somewhere)
- packaging (actually placing those DVDs inside the enclosure + one extra "page" per each 2/3 DVDs)
- shipping
- landfill

This site says the carbon footprint of a DVD is 1.06 pounds (453gCO2). Maybe that includes the enclosure but that is irrelevant, here.

Why am I writing this?

I was *blown* by having a software install from *7* DVDs. Windows takes only 1 (well, two if you count both 32- and 64-bit versions). So I went to see what's inside the DVDs - or how densely they have been packed. Well, they aren't.

If Autodesk reorganized the way they store file on the DVDs, they would be able to fit everything on 5 DVDs (a 28.5% savings). Why not do that?

Here's the numbers (single-sided DVD capacity is 4.7GB):

Disk 1/7: 3.74 GB used
Disk 2/7: 2.38 GB used
Disk 3/7: 3.05 GB used
Disk 4/7: 1.92 GB used
Disk 5/7: 2.19 GB used
Disk 6/7: 3.44 GB used
Disk 7/7: 2.53 GB used

Total: 19.25 GB used (which makes 4.09 fully filled DVDs)

To Autodesk, this might not be much. Peanuts. And they're probably proud to have such a gigantic installation experience (though in practice it's enough to give 4 of the 7 disks - both 32- and 64-bit versions are included). But where this counts is example. If you can slim something down, it should. So I'm saying they give a baddish example.

What's the footprint of a bit - electrical delivery

What they would be keen to point out is that "subscription" customers get an electrical delivery (download service). Right. Where this is good is that the customers can download only the required pieces (those ca. 4 DVDs worth). That's around 12GB with their filling ratio. But also that has a carbon footprint. Let's see.

For this, we need to consider i.e. delivery from California to Finland (my case). There may be 3-4 (or more) network hops on the way. Some calculations I found only include the server electricity usage but that's wrong. The bits need power to move, even if they'd be sent over fiber optics. So the question becomes: "what is the carbon footprint of sending one bit half-way around the world"?

TBD. If you can find a measurable answer to the above question, pls. make a comment. I did not find it.

But I found this article about energy use of data transmissions, saying:

He notes that some large carriers have energy bills approaching $1 billion.

Clearly, there's a roof to how much bits it's "free of charge" to move around. Someone pays the electricity bills. Internet is not free (for the environement).

Use the cloud

What would be interesting if Autodesk wants to further develop the "subscription" model is to employ peer-to-peer technologies. What this helps with is:
- less burden on their own servers
- faster download speed for customers
- lesser carbon footprint (because data is found closer to where it's needed - i.e. a Finnish customer would get the data from others in Finland)

Maybe they already do something like this, buying cloud services from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other providers. Good, if they do.

What to do?

In summary, I like the AI2011 offering. I do. And it doesn't feel bloated in use, at all. Which makes it even more essential to make also the installation less bloated. Because it can be. I.e. like this:

- One "joined" (both 32- and 64-bit disk) that is used for starting.
- 2 disks for 32-bit Windows version.
- 2 disks for 64-bit Windows version.

The customer would need to give three disks for any AI2011 install. Looking forward to a slim install in AI 2013. Or maybe a torrent. :)

- Asko Kauppi

Autodesk Inventor 2010 under VMWare Fusion 3.1.2

2011-02-10T11:55:00.006+02:00

I'm going to do some work with Autodesk Inventor 2010 during this spring, and thought of documenting the installation experience here, for others to know of.

The full text will need to wait, but I thought to make a few notes of the important pieces, especially since I'm running it under an officially non-supported VMWare Fusion virtualisation. Here goes.

7 DVDs. Whoa. They must have an army building this stuff.

Those disks contain both 32- and 64-bit versions, which partly explains the size. But actually, installation apart, the software doesn't feel too heavy. It's snappy even under virtual machine (running on Mac Mini 2GHz, 4GB, with Windows 7 32-bit and 2GB memory allocated for the virtual machine).

One but. After install AI2011 has the "software graphics" option set. VMWare 3.1.2 can do DirectX9, which is enough for AI2011, so simply tick that option away. Faster. Looks better. Cool. :)

I've noticed sometimes AI2011 opts that switch back, by itself. Maybe it measures performance and as we know, virtual machines can have quirks in that, especially if the software is being running when suspended. So if things work slow, check that corner and untick the box.

Second but (not big, though).

I ordered a 3DConnexion SpaceExplorer "3D mouse" to help orientate within the drawings. The hardware's good and the demos and tutorials work swiftly under VMWare 3.1.2. However, using it under AI2011 is an absolute no-go. It takes a second or so for movements to be registered on screen. Maybe it's the SpaceExplorer AI "drivers" (rather adapters). Maybe it's something else. Clearly the "drivers" have been designed and only tested on rather fast 3D workstations. Makes sense.

Unfortunately the "driver" architecture of this thingy is such that I cannot run them native on OS X and have the device virtualized somehow (like a mouse) onto Windows. It all needs to run there. Maybe it has to do with USB performance. Go figure.

IF VMWare is looking into supporting Autodesk tools as I think they are, they should probably look at the speed issues with this hardware as well.

( One more thing. Untick "enable Mac OS mouse shortcut" boxes in VMWare Fusion Preferences - and use a two-button mouse. Makes Ctrl-clicking work in Windows. )

Addendum:

If you intend to use Inventor from both BootCamp (booting to Windows) and via VMWare Fusion, you will need a "network license" (and a license server somewhere on your network). The local license scheme gets confused by "hardware change". Discussion of this at Autodesk forum.

Nokia Qt licensing (getting started on Windows 7 using Visual C++ 2008 Express edition)

2011-01-17T08:39:00.010+02:00

( Addendum: Thanks to Gordon, New Zealand for pointing out that the recipe below won't work for 64-bit Windows 7 host - I had a 32-bit system. There, it seems, one must compile Qt from source. Check this out for assistance: Troubleshooting Visual Studio 2010 and Qt 4.7 integration )

Software should be simple. Software licensing should be simple. Software development should be simple.

Yeah, right.

Qt is a wonderful development tool from Trolltech and nowadays Nokia. But it seems to me they are doing their best to make starting using it difficult (I call this Symbian syndrome, it seems to be contagious).

About the Qt licensing

On their licensing page Nokia/Qt tries their best to make you feel like the commercial license really is what you need. Nope.

LGPL is what you need - also for development and sales of commercial software. Only if you must change the internals of Qt itself (who would?) and do not want to share those changes (why?) you should grab the commercial. At least I don't see any other reason. So - ignore the FUD and grab the LGPL.

Which download?

This is what turned me down on Symbian, years back. Fragmentation. So many packages that one cannot really know, which one to download.

Arguably, Qt is difficult for the packager. Some ten platforms. Different compilers. Cross compiling. But they indeed could be making it simpler.

This is the one you want (qt-win-opensource-4.7.1-vs2008.exe), for Windows 7 native development using the free Visual C++ 2008 Express edition (also the newer 2010 Express might work but I haven't tried).

Inconsistency warning

Nokia is saying that only gcc compiler is officially supported by the opensource installation package. This may be so but the free Visual C++ 2008 Express compiler works just splendidly. You really want to rather use the Microsoft compiler, since this means no need to install MingW and that stuff. In my opinion, Nokia/Qt could simply state the fact and "support" the Express compilers. Why not?

The opensource installer seems to be meant for both LGPL and GPL 3.0 licensing. So it implies when you start it. However, the click-through license being shown is only LGPL. This is a beauty spot - if I were Nokia/Qt, I'd call the package LGPL (instead of opensource) and simply keep the GPL 3.0 for the "generic all sources" package. Don't complicate things. No-one developing for Windows and with Visual C++ 2008 will use GPL, anyways. Give less blurry options. Be consistent.

Installation

These instructions are based on this, but updated.

1. Install Visual C++ 2008 Express (or 2010 Express)

Note: Though it is free, the Express version requires registration within the first 30 days. You must have a "Windows Live ID" for doing this.

2. Install the 'opensource' Qt 4.7.1 package

Installation is a breeze and now it seems problems are behind us. Run the demos at the end of the installation - they give a good picture of what Qt can do.

3. Creating your own project

( Now, I'm not sure if all this works right after installation. If not, do the next step - configure and compile Qt - first. )

Add the Qt binaries folder to the PATH unless it's already there (wasn't for me - why wouldn't the installer have done this?)

    Start > Control panel > search: environment > Edit account's environment variables (or something like that)

    PATH  C:\Qt\4.7.1\bin

Open a "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt" ( Start > Programs > ... > Visual Studio Tools > ... ). This is normal Windows command prompt with some environment variables set so one can compile stuff (see with 'set' command).

Create an empty folder (MyDemo) and a source file (main.cpp) in it:

   mkdir MyDemo
   cd MyDemo
   ( create main.cpp with a text editor, see contents i.e. from here )
   qmake -project
   qmake

Compile

   nmake

Run

   cd debug
   MyDemo.exe

Success? If not, give a comment on this blog.

4. Configuring and recompiling Qt itself

Open the "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt"

   C:
   cd \Qt\4.7.1
   configure --help

That shows all the different configuration options.

Try something like this (all in one line):

   configure 
   -no-accessibility
   -no-qt3support 
   -no-opengl 
   -no-openvg
   -platform win32-msvc2008  
   -no-gif
   -no-libtiff 
   -no-dbus 
   -no-phonon 
   -no-phonon-backend 
   -no-webkit
   -no-script
   -no-scripttools
   -no-declarative
   -no-style-motif -no-style-cde
   -sse2

configure will ask you for the license. Confirm open source by 'y'.

Running configure took around 20 minutes. Make some coffee...

   nmake

Running nmake took around 2 hours. Watch some tv...

To clear an earlier configuration:

   nmake confclean

What about Qt Creator?

The above installation brings the command line tools and the Qt Designer (the UI editing tool) to your usage.

It does not, however, bring an IDE.

Qt Creator is an IDE for Qt. The current name of the Windows installer is qt-creator-win-opensource-2.0.1.exe. Download.

Another IDE option is to integrate Qt development with Visual C++, using that as the IDE. This is done using the Qt Visual Studio Add-in (qt-vs-addin-1.1.7.exe). Visual C++ 2008 Express does not support add-ins, however, which leaves us either to work on the command prompt (quite fine) or use Qt Creator.

Note: You can uncheck the "MinGW runtime development tools" option when installing Qt Creator (since we're not using MinGW).

Note: If using Qt Creator with projects on network drives (or i.e. shared host disk of VMWare as I do), use drive letter mappings (s.a. G:) instead of the long path names (s.a. \\vmware-host\Shared Folders\...). It may be the space in the path name or it may be the \\ style but I didn't get projects to run that way. Drive mapping helps (create those in main level of 'Computer' view of the Windows file manager).

Debugging with Qt Creator

Qt Creator needs a CDB console debugger in order to allow you to single step and debug your code. This is a separate download from Microsoft, under the name Debugging Tools for Windows. The actual installer is named winsdk_web.exe (Windows 7 SDK etc.).

You only need to have the "Debugging Tools for Window" option checked in the above installer. It may give some warnings about only having the "client" parts of .NET something 4 installed. This is okay, proceed.

Once the stuff is installed, restart Qt Creator and it should now be able to debug (add a breakpoint, try single step, look for variable values). Voila!

( It does say about "Debug helper" not being rightly set up or needing a new compile. Maybe, if we had started with CDB being there Qt would have gotten all the stuff right. Or maybe it's something else. Anyways, it seems Debug helper is not so valuable. We can still see the contents of all regular C++ constructs just fine. )

Finally there

It shouldn't be this hard.

But now that Qt and all the pieces are in place, Qt Creator is actually feeling like a very nice IDE. And Qt itself is awsome, that I know anyways (otherwise I might have lost hope in the midst of this). The official response of Qt people would surely be "either use MinGW or get the real Visual C++ software (and use the plugin)." Well, I don't want to. I have good experience of using VC++ Express versions and see no reason they shouldn't/couldn't be supported by Qt.

What Nokia/Qt could do, in my opinion, is to make a dynamic webpage (using JavaScript and CSS) that takes one through the whole installation routine, on a one single page. The page would have road junctions along it, asking you for something (s.a. which environment you want to build on and what to target, what compiler to use, license etc.) But all this would happen on the one single page. Then at the end you would get a list of *all* required downloads in the order they should be installed. That would be dead easy (both for them and for the page visitors). Now they seem to be going for "one package installs all" (most likely because managers prefer that way). This is not necessarily best for developers, since we want to have each thing only once, and understand how the parts fit together.

To get a feel of what the current situation is, look here:

At footer of all the tabs:
- 4 Qt Creator binaries links
- 1 Qt Creator source link
- 1 Visual Studio Add-in link
- 1 Nokia SDK link

LGPL tab:
- 5 "Complete development environment" links
- 7 "Qt libraries" links

Commercial tab:
- no links (just forms)

That page is the main cause of the headache. Don't use tabs on it - make the flow from up to down. Way less information-like links, or make them visually separate from the download links. USABILITY, PLEASE!

None of this is clearly expressed on the Nokia/Qt website, leading to unnecessary downloads and time lost trying to figure out what works and what does not. This is why this blog entry was created.

Olinpa tänään vallankumouksessa

2010-12-15T08:30:00.005+02:00

( This is about a Transportrevolution kick-off event arranged by Sitra. )

Sitra järjesti eilen Liikennerevoluutio-hankkeen käynnistystapahtuman, johon sain onnekkaasti kutsuttua itseni mukaan. Tässä pieni kooste siitä, mistä tuolla puhuttiin ja millainen "fiilis" hommasta jäi mieleen.

Pääkohdat

Hankkeen taustana on Sitran huoli siitä, miten "siiloutuneita" suomalaisen yhteiskunnan päättäjä- ja infrastruktuurin suunnittelutahot ovat. Tiet. Radat. Väylät. Käyttäjä eli matkustaja on kakkosluokassa ja ottaa vastaan, mitä poliitikot ja toimittajat onnistuvat tekemään. Ja koko homma maksaa.

Liikennerevoluutio pyrkii muuttamaan tämän. Se haluaa asioita katsottavan kokonaisuutena, tehtävän edullisemmin ja käyttäjän ehdoilla. Toimivaa, vähemmällä rahalla. Ja tietenkin myös niin, että samalla vähennetään ilmastokuormitusta.

Tuossa nuo pääkohdat lienevätkin (jos olet kiireinen poliitikko tai ministeri, voit lopettaa lukemisen tähän). Yhteistyö. Matkustaja. Edullisuus. Ilmasto. Siinä se.

Kabinettivallankumous

Kabinettivallankumous tämä on siksi, että se lähtee aika lailla piirien itsensä sisältä, tosin Sitran näyttävästä ulkopuolisesta aloitteesta.

Homman alustamiseen on Sitra valinnut 25 viisasta miestä (ja naista), jotka huhtikuuhun mennessä työpajoissaan tarkentavat, miten tämä ajattelutavan muutos Suomen liikennepolitiikassa ja käytännössä saadaan aikaan. Kuulemma porukka on tosi osaavaa, mutta miten hyvin ala itse osaa muokata itsensä uudelleen? Saamme nähdä.

Radoista palveluun

Yksi tilaisuuden sanomasta oli fokuksen siirtäminen radoista palveluun. Vanha virsi.. mutta tosi. Ratojen ongelmana on se, että nykyisin tarpeet muuttuvat nopeasti. Itse en oikein koskaan ymmärtänyt Turku-Helsinki -moottoritien tarvetta (vai pitäisikö sanoa Salo-Helsinki). Ehkä se jää oman aikakautensa viimeisiksi lippulaivatuotteeksi. On vaikea nähdä, että vastaaviin hankkeisiin löytyisi jatkossa rahaa tai päättäjiltä halua. (no, tämä on omaa mietintääni, tilaisuudessa yksittäisiin hankkeisiin ei viisaasti viitattu)

Puheenvuoroja

Porukka Korjaamolla oli aika vaikutusvaltaista. Ministeriä ja toimitusjohtajaa. Tässä kooste kommenteista, jotka kirjasin ylös.

Ministeri Vehviläinen oli juuri saapunut Pietarista ja koetti vääntää vitsiä vallankumouksesta. Aika jäykältä puhekoneelta vaikutti.. Mainitsi, että uusia Allegro-junia on suunniteltu 16 vuotta. Mikäli projektien aikajänne on jatkossakin tällainen, ei vallankumous taida ennättää ajoissa (oma mietelmäni). Oikeasti, me tarvitsemme infrastruktuurin muokkaamiseen työkaluja, joilla hankkeet saadaan käyttöön ehkä 4 vuodessa. Kiina taitaa jo nykyisellään toimia noin. Muuta Vehviläisen kommenteista ei jäänyt mieleen.

Pursiainen: "Hyvä liikennepolitiikka on hyvää ilmastopolitiikkaa - ja päinvastoin."

Pokka: "...selviytymään tulevaisuudessa paremmilla ratkaisuilla ja vähemmillä varoilla."

Sitra: "...ei ole oikein olemassa hankintakäytäntöjä [olosuhteiden muuttamiseen ja palvelutason hankintaan]"

Kosonen: "kyseessä on systeeminen muutos, ainakin seuraavan parin hallituskauden mittainen"

Lisättävää?

Hienoa olla mukana vallankumouksessa, etenkin kun tarjoilu pelasi oikein hyvin. :)

Se, mitä jäi ikävä on "crowdsourcing" ja kansalaisaloitteiden mukaan ottaminen. 25 viisaan joukossa pitäisi olla enemmänkin kuin yksi alle 30-vuotias opiskelija.

Lisäksi järjestelmien sietokyky (resilience) sää- ja muille ääri-ilmiöille tulee olla nykyistä parempi. Etenkin kun/jos aletaan käyttää enemmän tietotekniikkaa kuin nyt.

Muuten - ei kun täyttä vauhtia eteen. Ei aikailla. Ilmasto lämpenee ja pian kiinalaiset tekee meidänkin infran, ellemme ala itse tehdä parempaa, nopeammin ja halvemmalla. Voitettiin me 1995 jääkiekon maailmanmestaruuskin - kaikki on edelleen mahdollista.

Tietoa hankkeesta muualla netissä:

- Sitran sivuilla
- ...

The difficulty of Web design

2010-08-30T15:04:00.002+03:00

We've been crafting the www.bmdesign.fi website for around two months, now. Wow!

It's now in the third (and final) iteration and will be released in a week.

While I'm personally to be blamed for most of the delay, there's something deeper in the process to learn from. And something that applies to wider field than mere web design. Let's see...

To get the design "right" one has at least three areas to consider.

1. Layout
2. Contents
3. Visual look

Now, the challenge is these really do tie together. What if you don't know any of them at first? Where to begin?

Writing the "stuff" (contents) is a valid start, but it easily becomes a book, not a website. Starting with layout without much of a clue on the contents is equally a bad idea. The end result will be one of the many websites looking *exactly* alike. Side bar. Pulldown menus. Boooooring.

Visual look. We kind of did start with this. Still, it only gives colors and maybe fonts. It needs layout and contents to make sense.

So essentially we have a mutual dependency between all of these and therefore must develop them together, iteratively.

In the first (and second) iterations we were trying to make a simply layout. I didn't want menu levels. I wanted something where one does not get lost; a site that you know you've fully covered. That's cool with videos, btw. They have a start and an end. Unless you're into the "extras" you know that you've seen a movie. Not so with websites (usually).

We had a banner header. Everyone has, right. Iteration 3 doesn't. It looks more like the Chrome browser. But see for yourself.

What I intended to write on the blog is that the same dilemma is there also in city/transport/building design. City is the layout. Transport is the contents (what fills the streets). Buildings are the visual. It's difficult or impossible to plan only one of these, without hindsight to the other two.

Light Peak in embedded systems

2010-07-28T19:27:00.003+03:00

Light Peak is Intel's new optical interconnect system, using on-chip laser/receivers (up to 30x cheaper than existing laser technology, they say, and smaller). It's coming out at the end of the year (2010). It works.

Now, what is surprising is that there seems to be _absolutely_ no buzz about this in the embedded world. Why? Isn't this a perfect technology.

- optical so no ground loops and/or electromagnetic disturbance
- good latency (I believe, did not find figures)
- multiple protocols running simultaneously (and quality-of-service handling)
- up to 100m cabling distance without repeaters

We'll be using this for a PRT system's internal communications.

Here's a collection of the best links I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfGevFIVKw4&feature=PlayList&p=AB0C057729CF58E0&playnext=1&index=45

http://www.osnews.com/story/23247/Intel_Shows_off_First_Light_Peak_Laptop

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/06/30/light-peaks-dazzling-potential/

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/20100727comp_sm.htm

http://techresearch.intel.com/UserFiles/en-us/File/OpticalIO/LightPeakInterestingFacts-v010710.pdf

OS X 10.7 UI idea: stacks on the desktop

2010-07-11T14:05:00.003+03:00

I've sent some suggestions to Apple earlier, and they actually replied with "please don't send us suggestions" email. They are afraid of getting sued later, I guess.

Anyways, people should be able to give feedback and ideas of UI design. Hey, Microsoft proudly says they did this in making Windows 7 so good (which it is). SO, here goes Apple.

STACKS ON THE DESKTOP

The desktop is a perfect place to clutter your life. Position keeps different kinds of things apart - upper left corner for handy links etc. - left edge for to-be-done business things. Right edge for personals. Center for ASAP stuff.

Only, there's often more stuff than necessary when living this way. What is the way in OS X to hide such stuff, yet keep it "there". Stacks. :)

But stacks only exist in the Dock. So I'm supposed to place all my categories of stuff in different stacks in the same positional place. I'm losing something of the desktop arrangement, here.

So, make it possible to have stacks everywhere. Actually, make it possible to show a directory as a stack and that's it. This way, also command line usage would work fine.

Why not simply place folders on the desktop? It simply feels more elaborate. It opens new windows when the stuff is accessed. Don't like that.

If you know of an existing OS X tool that already provides "stack everywhere", pls. let me know.

Keeping a mouse alive...

2010-07-06T10:05:00.004+03:00

Are you one of those people - like me - who just finds it irritating when things seize to work. This writing is about my Microsoft "Intellimouse Optical" (nothing much intelligent about it, though).

It's a good old wired mouse that I originally bought to my first Mac. Somewhere like 2002. It's still working, but the roll of it started getting stuck a year back or so. It's irritating; the symptoms are that the roll rolls.... then not... then again. Like there was some place alongside it that's sticky. This of course is quite an annoyance for using it on websites or anywhere.

Now. What's interesting about this is that *nothing's wrong*. I've analyzed the glitch and I suspect all Intellimice of this age would be affected. Here's what.

The roll is too close to the right edge. If one moves it slightly left (it has a gap of around 0.5mm) all is fine. So - I opened the mouse and made the case opening bigger. About 20 times. What's funky about this is that in order to feel if the cure is enough one has to put back the screws and all. :) Before that, it was always okay. After tightening the screws, not so. :)

So, here's the advice if your mouse has the same glitch:

- case opens by detaching the lower glued pads only. Below them are two screws.
- try scraping some off the right side of the mouse wheel first. Doing this would have no visual effect on the mouse, if this is enough, be happy.
- scrape the mouse opening from "outside in" to keep visual effects minimized. I had to remove rather much until it finally worked. But I wasn't having this guide. ;P
- once the cover is back on (but not the pads) try to "free wheel" the wheel. It should give a high pitch and roll a few rounds. It should feel light.
- don't tighten the screws too much. You can even leave them loose. Tightening makes the problem worse.

Naturally, instead of doing all this one could just go and get the latest Apple Magic Mouse. But it feels good to have old stuff working, and it feels good to be able to fix things.

p.s. If you know how to make the right extra button (mouse button 5) do "Exposé - show desktop" I'd be pleased. Running OS X 10.6, Microsoft Intellipoint 7.1.0. It just does not work (tried both assigning at Intellipoint and 'Handled by Mac OS'); used to about a year ago. Maybe an OS X update has killed that?

Blogging from Transtec 2010 Delhi

2010-04-03T19:53:00.004+03:00

The upcoming week I'll be in Delhi, exposing the BM Design PRT project at a speech.

I'll be blogging from the event, which is about sustainable transport in developing countries.

http://www.ewebevolution.com/transtec/

Cont'd: I wrote some remarks on the individual presentations but haven't typed them in, yet.

Some of the pictures I took are available in Flickr.

My own presentation slides are also online.

Now, need to pack & fly. :)

WLAN interference from a USB stick :)

2009-12-19T21:02:00.004+02:00

Recently, we bought the Acer Revo to my Mom and Dad for a browsing machine. It's otherwise okay, but the internal WLAN antenna lets you wish for more.

Mom had reported Internet to be stucky, so I had a look. With the help of the InSSIDer program I found out reception to be around -70dB. But what was amazing was that plugging in her favorite USB stick (old, transparent, probably USB 1.1 era) made reception fall at least 5dB. Essentially, it makes the difference between 4 bars and 2 bars in the Windows internal gauge.

Telling now these old sticks must go. I bet many users around the globe never come to think their USB sticks might interfere with their WLAN. I checked them all, now. Out of our collection, 2 kinds drop the reception and one actually seems to raise(!) it somewhat. The USB port in question is not even close the WLAN antenna.

So, if you're considering an external antenna to your Revo, check your USB sticks first!

Wow, What a Globe Screen!!

2009-11-19T19:59:00.004+02:00

I visited the Heureka science museum today and they had this amazing, animated globe hanging in the air.

I was told it's technology prepared by the American NOAA organization. Four projectors carefully aligned to make the globe act as one screen. The resolution was sharp and the experience is flawless. One can walk around the globe and study it from any angle.

They presented multiple data sets, some having to do with weather (in the picture). Others showing flight patterns and even individual airplanes depicted as little beams of light. The globe can be span around using a Wii remote.

Even better, this Finnish invention could be used to roll the globe, and even squeeze it! :)

Zune-alvelu XBox 360:llä

2009-11-17T15:59:00.005+02:00

Microsoft avasi tänään videovuokraamon nettiin myös Suomessa, ja katsomani pätkien perusteella (Welho 5M yhteydellä) kaikki näyttää hyvältä. Paitsi lisenssisopimus, joka on vähintäänkin "kuvaava".

Jos yrityksellä ei ole halua, aikaa tai osaamista lukea omat lisenssitekstinsä kuntoon ennen palvelun (sorry: alvelun ;) aloittamista, niin sietää mennä itseensä.

Lisenssissä on muuten 28 kohtaa (muistaakseni) ja sen läpi skrollaamiseen menee arviolta 4-5 minuuttia (lukemiseen ehkä tunti).

Parasta tietenkin olisi, jos MS ystävällisesti (ja vähintäänkin auttaakseen itseään) tarkistaisi lakitekstinsä ja pudottaisi sen järkevän kokoiseksi. Säästäisivät käännöskuluissa kenties miljoonia. Mutta he ovat lakiosastonsa vankeja. "Kun ei vain sattuis mitään", kuten kolleegani tapasi sanoa.

Tällaiset lakitekstit eivät istu nykymaailmaan.

Itse palvelu on silti hyvä ja sopuhintainen. 240 MS-pojoa HD-filmistä saa ainakin itseni katsomaan "V for Vendettan" tänä iltana. DVD:t taisivat muuten juuri kuolla. :)

Hot in India!

2009-10-19T11:00:00.008+03:00

I'm writing this at a terrace in Mangalore, India. This is my third visit to the country, but I had either forgotten how hot it is, or this time it's simply a bit hotter. Maybe both. Anyways, some of the clothes I have with me will probably not be needed at all. A shirt a day; yesterday I used 3. Lot of laundry for someone.

This made me think - US has similar climate which is coped with huge amount of air conditioning. It's either hot (outside) or way too cool (inside). And of course it uses up huge amounts of energy.

Part of India is like that, too. Hotels would have AC. Normally, they tune it way too cool, maybe because they think that would be "elegant" or "western" or whatever. If all the big private houses (like this one) would do AC, the country's electical grid would collapse (ehem, collapse more often than now :).

The solution is two-fold. Be smart about how to live in the climate. I will surely learn that in a week - i.e. sitting on the terrace now is comfortable. Indoors, it's not. Shopping is done in the evenings, not at bright daylight. Any Indian would know this! Instead of using the technology (AC) to its maximum, use just as much as is needed. This is something *Indians* should teach the US people, not the other way round!!!

As to those newly built colossal houses with absolute need of AC, they should be self-sufficient with electricity. Put sun panels on the roof and living can go on despite shortages in the city electrical grid. I *really* doubt they do this. They just have big batteries somewhere in the basement and that's it. Indians aren't very ecological as far as I can think, but in this climate, they could be. It's just a matter of opinion, learning and appreciating!

A better solution for this climate would be appartment houses with smallish terraces covered with plants. US has had some prototype houses like this; the amount of cooling the plants on the outer walls cause is huge (something like 30-50% less AC need). And they give shade and they are according to the local building tradition.

Currently I have not seen any such compound in India. I was googling for "ecocity India" and it gives some faded hits. There should be a Masdar for India, soonish. Otherwise this will simply become a copy of the US apartment + enough AC + integrated garage model that eats up too much common resources.

Currently, India still produces about 1/5th as much CO2 as US or China (which are pretty even)*. In order to keep it like that, *smarts* is needed, not greedy copycatting of the west. India is known for being smart, so we still have hope. On the other side of the coin, energy here is abundant if we just start collecting it. My sweat confirms that!

*) http://rainforests.mongabay.com/09-carbon_emissions.htm

ps.
Nanosolar is the manufacturer of roof top sun panels that I would actually consider using. They have started manufacturing but are not selling to individual houses, yet. But they will. Anyone in India reading this, being their installer / distributer will be a big business in 2-10 years. Sign in.

About Ecocity India, the closest I've found is Falcon GEC (Global Eco City). They seem to compare it to Masdar and similar Chinese projects, but it kind of has a wanna-be feeling to it. I wouldn't trust that project, yet.

pps.
A document on Pune from 2006 looks more interesting. Pune is a university city in Maharashtra and by the reputation of it would make a splendid big-scale sample on how a complete city can be remade to be more sustainable. Let's wish them luck and hope the project proceeds.

More: ecocities-india.org lists some cities which are going to do general "clean up" for making them more enjoyable, healthier and ecological. This is an incremental approach and should really be part of any city planning, anyways.

Tech fix: keyboard mapping with VMWare Fusion 2.0.5 and Logitech diNovo Mac edition

2009-07-16T15:26:00.004+03:00

Placing this into the blog, since normal googling gave no solution on this one.

Problem: VMWare Fusion autodetects Logitech diNovo Mac edition (at least with European keyboard layout) as Macbook keyboard. Which makes it use the numeric pad Enter as AltGr.

This is how to make it use the right Cmd key as AltGr.

1. VMWare > Fusion > Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse
2. Remove the current 'cmd' shortcut (pointed to Windows key on mine) or reuse it
3. Don't try pressing the key, just leave the cmd emblem enabled and the key field empty
4. Map to Right Alt (AltGr)

That's it.

Actually, this should have been obvious, and I dare not think how much googling I tried in vain. What mislead me was the mapping of CMD without saying whether left or right should be mapped. Seems the "enable OS X CMD" setting overrides the left key (only) so I get what I want: left for OS X, right as Alt-Gr. Maybe VMWare should do the UI better, but I don't exactly know, how. For people with Apple keyboards I guess the thing "just works".

What cars should already be (core77 design site)

2009-07-07T23:15:00.002+03:00

A friend of mine (a great designer, by the way!) showed me to this web site.

They have a nice studying article about what should happen to the cars in the next 40 years. Or -actually- what should have happened to them in the *last* 40 years.

I'll be a lazy jerk and just copy-paste some of the good parts (which are many):

It dawned on us: today's car industry is brainwashed by its own car culture, with its obsession for speed, styling and fantasy. The car business has become one of repackaging, steering people's focus towards style and a narrow definition of performance, not on our true needs.

the desire not to drive. Sure, everyone wanted to get from A to B, but they'd just rather be doing something else while en route: talking to friends, sleeping, or, as our French intern Laure suggested: "I want to enjoy the view with a nice wine, some cheese and a baguette."

Driving is like putting your life on hold.

we have subscribed to a false sense of freedom, the freedom to waste countless hours strapped behind the wheel.

Our conclusion? Humans are not meant to drive, nor should they have to.

...and so on...

Personally, I would love to have a car of their design. But I am realistic it will really take the 40 years - maybe 50 - to get there. Like the Moon is seen as a middle stop to getting us to Mars, I am seeing PRT as a middle stop to getting us to full automated traffic.

When peace came to my browser (no Flash!)

2009-07-05T22:02:00.002+03:00

More and more sites have started to "take advantage" of flash ads nowadays. Most of this is just a nuisance, and the carbon footprint of such ads globally must be tremendous! They take CPU cycles even if on background browser windows, or unseen tabs.

I've been increasingly fed up with them, lately. Luckily there is a very nice solution for Safari: ClickToFlash . I took the version 1.5b4 and it seems to be working fine. My good old laptop (PowerBook G4) is now snappier and way cooler on the laps. I hope.

A side notion is that modern SVG + JavaScript can already do most of what Flash is used for, at least on some browsers. Maybe that will turn out to be a headache in the future. But for now the browsers is again at peace. :)

When tides will change...

2009-06-30T20:16:00.004+03:00

I've been thinking of writing this down some time now, so that when it actually happens I'll remember I did think about it.

- Canadian dollar will be worth more than the U.S.
- Apple will start building their product in the U.S.

Please feel free to add your own "predictions" as comments. No date stamps are required - dating is waaaay more difficult than saying something will eventually happen.

(such a bad prediction the dollar rate one - seems Canadian momentarily outvalued USD already in late 2007)

Cont'd...

Brad Templeton seems to think fondly of robocars in our (near) future:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/roadmap.html

I just don't have the confidence they'll make it any time soon, if joined human/automated roads are the target. Let's change this into a prediction:

- Fully automated F1-like races, where the cars drive themselves.

I don't know what would be the fun of it, though. But it would certainly be a real test for the AI of the cars. Are they ready to take risks? Are they ready to not take unnecessary risks? Will they be overwhelmed by the amount of information they'll get from the sensors or are they able to focus on the necessary information?

Once this is done, the next phase would be:

- Joined human / automated F1-like races.

This happened in chess. Kasparov lost to the IBM Deep Blue, when enough reruns were made. It was not a fair game - the way a computer plays a game is so different from the way a human plays it. Same here.

Around _that_ time we might be considering putting completely automated vehicles into public traffic. They would need to pass the regular driver's education tests (s.a. in Finland) first, of course. If they do, I guess they would be as qualified as the average human out there.

But are they allowed to surf the Net while driving...?

Masdar on CNN

2009-06-28T16:12:00.004+03:00

First time I come to see Masdar being mentioned in regular news. CNN has this story on the city's progress:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/06/26/zero.carbon.city.cnn

To many, this might mean the first touch they have to this project. We should expect much more news about it, later in the year.

The video uses some old concept footage, i.e. showing PRT lines up in the air. They will be below the pedestrian level, and following building arrangement (= there are "roads" and "blocks" below the surface).

Masdar vehicles are called "space age time", which gives me a smile. I thought space age started in the 1960's... :) It's curious to know, which terms reporters find describing this technology. They also used the term "people movers", which I've been told is an inadequate term for PRT's. I still think it describes what they do best.

Did they say "15 billion into the venture"? Really? That is 300000 per inhabitant.

Addendum: An interview with Luca Guala has more detailed info.

Reading patents

2009-05-06T20:24:00.002+03:00

I never had realized how many patents there are about PRT's, with that particular keyword or the names of some specific authors.

http://www.espacenet.com/access/index.en.htm

Grab a bottle of wine, some snacks, day or two and do a patent picnic.

Have fun!

Is AtraWiki alive?

2009-05-06T10:57:00.002+03:00

I came about ATRA Wiki and wanted to get an account to be able to participate. The site seems clean and maintained, which is good for a Wiki.

However, this may be exactly because people cannot participate. The 'log in / register' link used to give an invalid email id to contact (for an account). Now it just leads here.

Does anyone know the story behind this? I think they should rather close a wiki if people are not able to also edit it.

Prediction: Bond driving a PRT

2009-04-26T22:08:00.002+03:00

I would say that within the next 10 years we are seeing a Bond movie, where a chase or other action event happens with PRTs. The overlapping bridges of current Heathrow track give a certain potential to this, but so would the under-street level maze of Masdar's.

I know it is stupid to make such predictions, but this is more of a statement, really. They filmed gorgeously at the Malaysia's twin towers when those were new. And before most of the world realized Malaysia had leaped up to par with West.

The problem remains: how to make the 40km/h vehicles seem fast on the big screen. :> And since Martin said ULTra has solved the podlurking problem, are we restricting the movie directors' options too much.

:P

Pictures are out

2009-04-24T18:42:00.002+03:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/akauppi/ULTraTestDrive

I hope none of the people in the pictures would object. I did ask some but not all.

Heading on...

2009-04-23T18:08:00.002+03:00

Waiting for the plane at Heathrow terminal 5 (actually my flight is from T3, but I came here just to see the building from inside :P). It's spacious.

Bought a pen from WHSmith's to write a card to my wife. Only to realize the Parker packaging is completely impossible to open without a knife. Isn't it funny that an airport sells such packages... Hmm. :) I asked the juice/coffee counter for scissors and they "opened" (demolished) the packaging with a 30cm kitchen knife! Wau. Maybe even they are not allowed to have scissors in here?

Actually, this is prior to security checks, but still.

The last day of PRT@LHR was about CityMobil project of the European Union. Fine so far, seems they've got a more wide spread view on the field (cybercars, semiautomated buses etc.) but it makes me wonder, whether any EU project will ever really lead to anything. Maybe that is not even the intention. Maybe the intention is to "support" already ongoing projects.

As a potential entrepreneur I wouldn't hold my breath on EU funding. My understanding is any incoming money flow is more than offset by the amount of burocracy involved. Sadly, some of todays presentations did enforce that. Boooooooring... I guess EU must be?

On the positive side, the concensus across the board (of companies) seems to be very positive to standardization. Everyone seems to realize that while there's definately competition, there's also vast amounts of playfield where co-operation and common methods is the easiest solution for everyone. Such standardization was called for in the comments, and I never heard anyone stand against. As was obvious by now, the PRT movement is not only about technology but also vastly about social acceptance and community planning. If it's added as a topping on an already existing cake (as Heathrow case actually is) it has suboptimal chances. It should be part of a wider change of planning models, including architects, city planners etc.

Nathan Koren of ATS sees a parallel to how container ships pretty much revolutionized cargo traffic some 50 years back (only!). He recommends the book Box to anyone wanting to understand the mechanisms that may be very similar to PRT acceptance as well.

I think I better catch my flight now. LOTS OF THANKS to everyone attending and especially those in charge of arrangements. I'm sure next time a conference takes place, the world will again look rather different to us. Call it progress.

Saying 'hi' to the vehicles

2009-04-22T20:33:00.003+03:00

I attended the 11am group today to pay visit to the ULTra station. My camera's the good-old Canon EOS film model, so no pics online from me. Yet.

They are beautiful, the vehicles. Absolutely gorgeous, and they seem instantly to have a character to themselves. Sneaked the first sight through a door opening to their 'stables' and it made me feel to say something. To them. The feeling is gracious, and even more so when seeing them in action. They are whisper-silent (unlike the WRROOOOMING planes above us).

In my opinion, ATS has gone a good job on the vehicles. They are iconic, and I imagine driving them will be pure pleasure. Most likely people would like the journey to go on longer than the short trip from parking to T5.

We took some pictures, sat inside the vehicle for a while. Saw a video and moved on.

The only negative thing that I noticed is entering them. You enter from the side doors (there are doors on both sides, but I doubt that would be needed; 2GetThere vehciles are only having doors on one side) and while entering, it is difficult to see inside the vehicle, to make sure it's actually empty.

I bet most city-people have grown to doing that kind of check-my-back, at least in public transport. At least I instinctively check the people within a subway carriage for potential hazards (though they've never happened to me). I want to enter the vehicle seeing it all, and select my seating so that I can observe others. I don't want to have someone messy right behind my back.

Surely ULTra has cleared this (the phenomen even got a name in Dr. Paul Firmin's presentation later today; 'podlurking') but still it's important to feel confident about such new vehicles. If the doors opened more, or maybe with better lighting one can give a better view of the empty cabin for passangers about to enter.

As to Dr.Firmin, the presentation was a Thrill and would have deserved to be taped for Youtube. It was a nice mix of mad scientist, objective evaluation and nail-on criticism of the PRT concept, or implementations, or both. Nothing new, really, but rather stating the known hazards to be considered in implementations that are to-be. Social things, s.a. visual intrusion, possible criminal use of the pod network, etc. etc. (sorry Paul E. I don't remember them all).

Dr.Firmin had made a Google search on "PRT" and "social study" (or something) and said he'd only found the paper he'd prepared for this meeting! (Not sure if this is true; anyways he'd probably be delighted to get such studies for comparison so mention here if you know of any?).

The rest of the people are cruising river Thames. I'm at the hotel and intend to start making a JavaScript-based PRT simulator.

One more thing.

I saw through the Vectus presentation again just now, and truly, what's wrong with us PRT people? The concepts we're drawing are not believable. They don't convey a truthful and working image.

Please see through the video once now.

- Why only one vehicle? the tracks are clearly underutilized
- Too clean. Add dirt. Makes the video more believable (video games suffered from this a while back, but No More)
- Why does the camera dive into the vehicle over and over? I feel like crushing into it.
- Dark mask like Darth Vader's. Use some dummies inside.
- Narration: "..that turns a train into reality." I thought trains _were_ a reality?
- "Brave new world". Gosh. I'm sure the people hadn't read the book, since it's not really a world one would like to be in. At the least this gives mixed signals to people who've read it.

- 1. Vectus style. Don't start with design. That just needs to be there, but it's NOT a selling criteria. Like quality either. Both are expected, so keep shut. People will either realize your design is good, but saying it is is irrelevant.

I could go on and one and on. In my understanding, this kind of concept art only keeps PRTs further away from being reality in people's minds. One more thing I want to say about the video, though:

- At one point, there's a lot of cars in traffic jam and two lone Vectus pods supposedly providing a better service? Really? :) Don't they realize the mixed signal of this: if 6 lanes of cars can't take the people through, how could 2 pods. An easy fix would be simply to FILL THE TRACK with more pods. Make Things Realistic.

- "Aerodynamic Designed Vehicle". Really. That's not your selling argument, and actually you're not even aerodynamic (have a look at Porche and compare). So keep quiet about it.

- Use better background music. And remember: you're not selling to car shoppers, you're selling to architects and city planners. What convinces them of the benefits? Use numbers. Use sample cases. Be real. Please stop marketing Utopia.

If you're from Vectus, have a look at this:

13 Killer Differentiators: Strategies to Grow your Brand

Getting out of the airports

2009-04-22T10:14:00.003+03:00

Today's conference focus will be on the role of PRT as a general trafficing alternative.

Will grab some breakfast now, and head for the sessions.

By the way. One thing which has surprised me positively is the overall analytical approach to traffic and PRTs. In many presentations (at least Frost & Sullivan and 2GetThere), it has been emphasized that PRT's are promising in certain areas but they are no one-does-it-all solution that will transform all traffic on Earth.

I absolute agree. It is about a (rather simple, actually) complementary service to existing modes of traffic. It will change the world, but so have the modes that came before it.

Pioneer Martin Lowson (the man behind the ULTra) had a very enlightening slide on this, showing the following traffic modes on a timeline (as to when their construction in UK had occurred):

- water channels (ca. 1700)
- railroads (1800's)
- regular car-ready roads (early 1900's to 1960's, most of them)
- motorways (peaks in 1960-1980 I think)

The timeline shows a clear pattern, and he had even placed the inventions leading to the next wave on the timeline. They seemed to be at the peaks of the earlier modes. Like steam engine was invented at the peak of the channel building.

His point was that we _already_ have the next mode of traffic invented (whatever that is). And that the usage of that mode won't go well together with the earlier mode (motorways). It will get a wave of its own, and transform the society just like the earlier waves have done.

I will ask Martin for that slide. It really tells it far better than I tried here. :)

Intensive care

2009-04-22T00:40:00.002+03:00

Now, that was an intensive day!

10am to 10pm, with a short break after the official sessions.

It feels daunting to make a fair summary of all the day's speeches and presentations. Let me phrase out what stayed topmost in my mind.

ULTra was presented in fair detail, and it seems like a wonderful system, indeed (special cleaning vehicles are used for shoveling snow if needed; an issue that always made me wonder on their design). However, the track still looks heavy and the "safety fences" are told to remain there even after construction is done. Not a delight.

Frost & Sullivan had a commercial look into the PRT business. That was interesting. They're estimating it to start booming around 2016-2020, with essential growth already in 2012 (estimated at 30 000 M$ year if I remember right). They split potential customers to various categories, biggest of which were airports, eco cities and tourist destinations (I may be a bit vague on the details here).

Vectus was presented as a "step down from regular rail". At least that was the feeling I received, and the presenter himself had worked in regular rail construction before coming to PRTs. I'm sure there's a market area for it, too, like feeding real train or subway lines. However, I fail to see why I would ride such a 4 person vehicle all by myself. For some reason it feels much bigger than the other two.

Dutch 2GetThere (Robbert Lohmann) presented their Masdar case, which seems far further than I guess most of us expected. It will be (should be) ready by the end of this year! (only one part of the track, but still)

This was the day's last presentation, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one weary at its start. But it was the most energizing one. One could notice the silence and concentration of the audience. Before that, there had been ample presentations of Heathrow, ULTra and one on Vectus. But now, it felt different. These people are all over the work itself, not doing prestudies or safety surveys.

Some details:

- By its look and measures 2GetThere's Masdar vehicle resembles ULTra
- Designed by Italian car designer (because the customer wanted so)
- Traffic in original ground level; the whole city will be elevated one story up leaving original ground level as "basement". Pedestrian level is above it and no unauthorized access to the basement level is allowed.
- 3-4 lanes wide system, with sniffer modules in the road and "leaking cable" communication from above the vehicles
- 3rd and 4th lane are used for speeding up/slowing down traffic
- rubber tires on concrete (or similar) floor
- li-ion batteries worth 60-70km (recharge in 1h)
- speed 40km/h

The use of a full "level" of transportation allowing for the wide lanes makes this a completely different kind of case as a PRT that would be confined to poles or tunnels. The authorities will use special "emergency mode" to clear the road of pods if needed and the system would be seen to carry as well freight (about 20% of vehicles) as passangers. A curiosity is having two levels of pods; regular and "vip", which would be having more expensive finishing and equipment.

The track layout has no crossings, only loops, and will eventually cover 40-50km and have 50-100 vehicles.

Freight vehicles are based on the same parts as the passanger ones; only tougher. They can carry 2 containers each 800kg in weight.

Arrived in London

2009-04-20T23:51:00.003+03:00

Descending to the airport, I got the first glimpse of this PRT track that we're about to be shown during the conference. Is THAT it? After looking at the rather beautiful city (no smog this time of the year, or maybe pollution has been decreased) from the air, and trying to grasp the magnitude of it, here's a teeny tiny fenced bridge of concrete. Curves to the left, curves to the right. Looks actually rather hidious, due to the security fences on both sides. I just wish this is not going to be the future of Heathrow!

The first impression was that of a dog farm. The second that of a concentration camp. It's actually not the track, but those fences on both sides of it. Not good.

Outside of the hotel, the signs of climate change are clearly being visible. McDonalds' has palm-like plants on its front lawn, like in California. Cute. But.. this should be rainy England. Maybe it's actually better this way? :)

Edit: here is a video showing the track.

Going to the PRT conference in Heathrow, UK

2009-04-19T18:09:00.002+03:00

I got interested in the emerging world of PRT's (public rapid transport) in October. What follows is a three-day trip to London, to the PRT@LHR conference.

http://www.prtatheathrow.com

My intention is to report the proceedings and findings during the days on this blog. The conference has an entry fee and most likely attendants are mainly from 'big' companies. In the spirit of citizen engineering, it would be welcome for everyone to know what is being planned to save our common future.

The PRT@LHR site claims:
"CONFERENCE TO MARK THE WORLD'S
FIRST PERSONAL RAPID TRANSIT
(PRT) SYSTEM"

This, of course, is not quite true. What Heathrow currently has is a (being built; ready later in 2009) point-to-point track between Terminal 5 and VIP parking lot. That hardy qualifies as a PRT track, more like automated golf carts I would say.

This is not to say Heathrow couldn't _grow_ to be a true PRT; only this time it won't be it, yet. It also shows how eager these companies are to declare something to be the first. Meaning: the following projects won't be first. Virgin problem here, eh?

My estimate is that Abu Dhabi will be the real first. Hopefully, I will learn more of that during the conference as well.

Thoughts on Next Windows

2007-02-04T03:34:00.000+02:00

Sent the following feedback to Mary Jo Foley's article on "Windows 7" at http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=1623

Thanks for the column,

I especially liked the realization that "Microsoft is currently facing some of the same problems with Vista it has been experiencing with Office for a couple of years now."

This is in my opinion very true, and gives hope that the Redmond Co can actually pull itself back into fondness and innovation camp, if it truly wants.

What I'd already have done, if I were their head of OS development:

- Handle Win32 compatibility via sanboxes and emulation (each app getting its own image of Windows, unable to mess up the underlying OS at all)

I _thought_ they were into this, when they purchased Connectix (Virtual PC) a few years back. Basically, they should have made Virtual PC an essential part of Windows itself.

What this allows, is re-making the actual OS on _any_ architecture they like. All C# or something like that. Transition from C/C++ to higher languages was promised by them ("managed code") but has it happened...?

- Split the company. For their Own Good.

They could make old-style Windows support into a separate, limited resources company. One of their problems (and I've seen this in other big, succesful sw houses) is that they're plain too big. Software development does not have an economy of masses. Car production has. For sw, innovation and effeciency works in small groups, tied together by a flexible integration framework. This is what Windows lacks, and maybe cannot ever really be given. Virtualization/sandboxing would place technical limits to the "weight of compatibility" they carry along, splitting the company in parts would do the same at an organizational level.

- Learn from the XBox 360

Rather, make the New Windows around it. Allow XBox 360 to run the SAME os as next-gen Windows PC's (maybe even the games, being DirectX based always was the promise they had on the XBox line).

Granted, the CPU differences (x86 vs. PowerPC x3) are huge, but that's where the virtualization helps. XBox 360 can surely run Virtual PC, they've just not released such a product.

APIs and "binaries" of the new OS would anyways be non-native (think Python/Ruby/C#/Lua bytecode) so having different hw backgrounds no longer is an issue like it used to be.

--
Asko Kauppi, Finland

Out of This Age!

2007-02-01T12:39:00.000+02:00

National Games Village, Bangalore

Coming back from a 2-day Safari to the Kabini Resort at Rajiv Gandhi National Park.

This time, the culture shock of riksha's, left/right/center-sided traffic and overall boiling-potness of India is more than when first arriving here. This time, I was not prepared.

The 2 days at Kabini Jungle Lodges were plain fabulous. Early wakeups, jeeping, paddling or boating among wildlife. Clear, 360 degree starry skies with a full moon. Moonshine ahead of the boat, sunset behind it. Just Too Good.

Nearby the Resort are villages, which is just okay. But the conflict between these two is seemingly there. We observed a bunch of wild dogs ("rare sighting" the driver said) approaching a field where cows pastured. Anyone's guess, what would happen...

Apart from the pure amaze about the animals, and a magnitude of pictures taking a day to uncover :), there remains a question about what the next 20 years will bring. Trip back from Kabini to Mysore takes about an hour or so, on more or less bumpy roads. If they make the roads better, more people will come, and more villagers, too. The big question is how to integrate the Park and the Villagers together, into mutual benefit. I don't know, how.

Another concern would be tourism. Currently, Kabini is clearly a hidden treasure (which this Blog entry helps to erode!) but will it remain so. It has 6 tents (cheaper huts(, 6 cabins (very good quality) and has a Maharajan feeling to it. All is genuine, the guides are clearly having a heart for the park and nature, and the food is plain excellent! But this place is incapable of serving several busloads of either Indian or foreign tourists.

Perhaps Green Tourism is exactly this; hidden treasures worth hunting, with practically no advertisement but for the mouth-to-mouth rumours. Perhaps Green Tourism can not be branded, duplicated and utilized to maximum benefit. If future 20 years from now is such, and Kabini still is what it is today, I'll be willing to join the Future!

Open Duck is Opened!

2007-01-23T07:00:00.000+02:00

Writing this off Bangalore, India.

Open Duck comes from a twist into Finnish and back to English: open source -> avoin sorsa -> open duck. It is intended to observe the World and it's happenings, from an open -maybe a bit humoristic- way. Kind of my column, and worthy to myself as a Log of Things if not to anyone else.

Something about my trip to India - first time to Asia in fact.

Messy, smelly, very tidy at the same time. A combo of everything under the sun, and the sun is there each day. Relaxed, in a way. Busy-ness is such an integral part of people's lives, it seams, that they actually are rather cool among it all. Economy is booming, and inflation is around 6.2% right now (read it in The Hindu).

The Hindu is a nice (English) magazine, by the way. The use of English is sophisticated, to say the least, the kind of language that would easily be connected with Boston, Cambridge and the like. A joy to read, and the articles try to be analyzing, not only reporting.

As a Finn, what else? Surprisingly little, actually. I've felt at "home" and at peace since day 1. In fact, this kind of an environment might suit me better than the Nordic. Maybe... I must move. But not yet.

One thing I've noticed is that postcards are out of sync with at least the Bangalore city life.

- haven't seen a single elephant yet
- postcards have empty streets (reality does not, regardless of day or night)
- no postcards of the city (many of countryside)

In fact, a great postcard idea would be to take some of the local Kannada tv shows, and print out a ZOOOOming scene out of them. That tells a lot. First I thought that was a casual soap opera visual effect (overused, and regarded as HIGHLY amateur in the western world), but it actually is the rule. I was valuing Indian directors highly before coming here (say, M Night Shyamalan of "Village") but now I'm having doubts.

What next? Laundry, maybe. :)