10 broken technology ideas — and how to fix them

Sometimes a technology idea is too good to be true. A flexible keyboard, Internet voting and watching feature films on your smart phone are examples. Today, these concepts are still evolving, but they’re broken right now. I’ll tell you why and what could be done to fix them once and for all.
1. Ultracompact PCs

Call them whatever you want: ultramobile PCs (UMPC), mobile information devices (MID) or subnotebooks. I call them small PCs, and they are almost indistinguishable from a good smart phone.

For example, the BlackBerry 8820, with its built-in GPS capability and excellent e-mail client, is a better device than the Samsung Q1 Ultra, described by the company as an “ultramobile personal computer.” The only real difference is that you squint less with the Q1. But most people don’t use a Q1 for gaming or writing long business documents.
As Jon Stewart pointed out at the Oscars, small-screen video is not fun on a device such as the iPhone.

The Apple iPhone is a smarter, sexier, more useable computer than just about any MID, such as the new Toshiba prototype. Meanwhile, there’s more power in the OQO, than a regular UMPC, but the screen is just as tiny.

I figure that in less than three years, Apple will release a successor to the iPhone that works more like a Mac and will become the first company to make a true pocket computer — one that runs any Mac OS X application natively, with a mini-DVI port.
2. Satellite Internet

My main problem with satellite Internet providers is their fair use policies, which penalize users who download too much by throttling their speed back to almost nothing, and then slowly adding more speed over a 24 hour period. Both WildBlue and HughesNet do this, and they claim it helps all users.

However, the Internet is not just for e-mail and simple browsing anymore, it’s a pipeline for television, network back-ups, remote access and a myriad of other activities — not to mention Web apps and streaming media.

Other ISPs — such as Charter Communications and Qwest– don’t throttle your speed at all. Others, such as Comcast, may use “network management” techniques such as throttling BitTorrent traffic, but they aren’t as aggressive as the satellite providers.

Another issue is that the stationary modem that you need for satellite Internet is a bulky device and uses coaxial cable that most people need a technician to install. Also, the required antenna is bigger than a wheel rim, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be reduced to a size that works with your laptop.

Yet I like the satellite concept because it could make the Internet much more ubiquitous across large swathes of the U.S. Satellite Internet has slowly increased in speed, starting out at only 512Kbit/sec. and currently at about 1.5Mbit/sec. If the technology and speed improve, it could be a solid option.
3. Contact managers

I’d like to retrieve the lost hours spent building up a contacts database. Not long ago, I stopped meticulously entering names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mails and now rely on other methods.

For example, I search Gmail.com for names and addresses. When I want to send a new e-mail, I just type a portion of a name to get the full address, type the message, and send.

For names not in my Gmail archive, I use an online address book such as YellowPages.com or LinkedIn.com.

However, a good contact manager could work like the iPhone: It would see phone number in an e-mail and allow me to right-click and add the name and phone number to a database automatically within Gmail. The database would be smart enough to know if a phone number already matches an existing name, and it would weed out duplicates automatically. I’d never have to type in contacts, because this “auto-database” would work as easily as a mobile phone, support any e-mail client and work in the background. Some contact managers come close — such as Now Up-to-Date & Contact — but it still involves a manual process.
4. Digital streaming adapters

They have names like Apple TV, Netgear Digital Entertainer and Sonos, but they all do the same thing: move music, video and photos from your PC in the office to the HDTV in your family room.

They are supposed to solve a persistent dilemma: a PC just doesn’t work with a television. A keyboard and mouse are meant for a desk, not a sofa. These adapters add another appliance to an overcrowded entertainment center bulging with DVRs and game consoles.
Putting the digital media adapter in the TV, like this MediaSmart TV, makes sense — less clutter in your entertainment room.

The fix? Put them right into the television itself. Hewlett-Packard Co. started this with the MediaSmart TV, but I’d like to see it as a standard feature that is more open — not just based on Windows Media Extender, but supporting any media format over Wi-Fi.
5. Video on a phone

A phone screen is too small for video, and even the iPod Touch can cause eye strain when you watch a two-hour feature film. I’m convinced that anything you only do once or twice in dealing with new technology and find it hard to do — like load a smart phone with video clips or swap contacts with your laptop over Bluetooth — is just a novelty and often not worth the effort. I will likely never do it again; it’s not worth the time.

Even the iPhone is a poor movie viewer unless you are desperate for a Jason Bourne flick on the bus. But solid-state memory is finally getting cheaper, and it makes sense to load up a mobile device with movies.

What I’d like to see is Bluetooth built into HDTVs so that I can beam a high-resolution movie from my phone or projector in the phone (like the Pico technology being developed by Texas Instruments Inc.) or a mini-DVI port.
6. Web 2.0

For the past two years, the promise of the Semantic Web — a concept where the Web is smarter and lets you tag information for better searchability — has reached a crescendo that is finally coming down to earth.

I believe there is no clear definition of Web 2.0 or any sites that fit easily into that box. Instead, Web 1.0 is in a constant state of evolution. Imagine Amazon.com in its infancy — over the past 10 years, it has been updated with hundreds of new features as Web technology has steadily advanced.
Web aggregators like Pageflakes point to a day when HTML may be replaced by something much more powerful.

What I’m hoping for is a whole new framework for the Web: a wholesale HTML replacement, something like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that’s faster and more reliable. Or, I’d like to see sites like Pageflakes expand even more so that Web 2.0 dies altogether and gives way to Internet widgets running on a true Internet operating system.
7. Electronic books

A promising technology, or a snake-oil sales pitch? E-books like the Amazon Kindle and Sony eReader could eventually reduce our reliance on paper books. I must admit the crisp 120DPI screens look remarkably like printed material.

In some ways, the Web is a gigantic e-book with an endless amount of information — even if some of it is unreliable (see Wikipedia.org). Yet, nothing beats a printed book: you can find your place instantly with a dog-ear, it’s practically disposable, you can loan it to anyone, and it causes very little eye strain.

Yes, you can load one of 90,000 books on the Kindle and check your e-mail in between chapters of the latest Stephen King novel. But before an e-book reader becomes a major hit with consumers, it must cost about the same as a real book. I’d like a throwaway e-book that’s a plastic sheet with electronic ink (like the newspapers in Minority Report) and costs about $30.
8. Internet voting

I like the idea of Internet voting because the easier you make the process, the more people who will vote. Right now, the concept is in a preliminary stage because fingerprint readers or some other form of biometrics hasn’t become ubiquitous or foolproof.

I have noticed that just about every enterprise laptop has a fingerprint reader. In the same way that Hollywood studios don’t trust the Internet for delivering movies unless they are crippled with digital rights management, voting also needs some extra precautions to ward off fraud.

The idea will finally work once all displays are multitouch (which might be sooner than we think), facial recognition is common and secure, and there is some way of encrypting the connection to assuage any doubts.
9. Video blogs

My main issue with video blogs is that they don’t seem well suited for the Web. I’d watch “Rocketboom”, “Mahalo Daily” and “WebbAlert” every day if I had the time.

Often, with WebbAlert, I scan through the links — it usually has a really good summary of the previous day and posts in my RSS reader before just about anyone else — instead of watching the video blog. The Web is made for instant information (see Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.), and I have a hard time discerning how a video blog is really that different from a 2-minute update on G4 or CNN.

Yes, there’s the idea that a video blog has a “long tail” — there can be a video blog for just about any taste, how to do underwater yoga, stuff that would never make it on a mainstream channel — suited for any taste, but the farther you go out on the tail, the lower its quality seems to be.

Where is this all going? I’d like to see satellite television providers like Dish Network and DirecTV offer more-flexible plans. I’d watch a video blog station for 10 minutes if it could hold my attention over breakfast and The Wall Street Journal.
10. Flexible keyboards

Flexible, foldable keyboards like the Brando or the Eleksen ElekTex sound like a good replacement for a standard keyboard and could help mobile users type faster when traveling with smart phones.
Sure, they are mobile and new, but typing on a fabric keyboard like this Eleksen model is a real pain.

In practice, it’s almost impossible to type fast on these roll-away models. Is there a way to improve on a standard keyboard? Microsoft and Logitech International keep trying, adding extra buttons and features. (I have settled on the Microsoft Wireless Laser Keyboard 6000 V2 with its slight key curvature.)

I doubt we will be typing on multitouch screens any faster, judging by my speed on the iPhone. Speech recognition, even if it understood every word perfectly, still makes it hard to edit your mistakes. The Laser Keyboard is hinting at a true evolution: Eventually, all keyboards will become more tactile, with more responsive keys, a more ergonomic feel — and someone may figure out how to make them fold up.

Have I missed any technologies, or do you disagree with any of my choices? Let me know in the comments section at the end of this article.

MIX: Users tout Silverlight’s link to .Net developer skills

Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-browser plug-in technology for rich multimedia experiences, is making the rounds as an alternative to Adobe Systems’s rival Flash platform. Observers and early users of Silverlight at the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas last week emphasized, among other things, its accommodations for .Net development skills.

“The thing that makes Silverlight interesting, especially [for] .Net developers is that you can use C#,” said Carl Kenne, a developer at .Net consultants Dotway in Sweden.

This is unlike the rival Adobe Systems Flash platform, which requires hiring external people familiar with Adobe’s technology, Kenne said.

Still, in examining Silverlight’s visual capabilities, as opposed to what Flash offers, Kenne could not really see a difference. Microsoft might say Silverlight offers sharper video capabilities, but Adobe would probably say the same thing about its own technology, said Kenne. “It’s very similar. It’s hard to just by looking at it see that this is Flash and this is Silverlight,” Kenne said.

Another attendee also lauded Silverlight. “For us, it’s a home run,” said Andy Norris, director of technology at Handel Information Technologies, which develops criminal justice and human services applications.

Silverlight enables development of the same application for the desktop and the Web, he said, noting that XAML can be used on both the desktop and browser, he said. “We can get everything done with less than half the work,” said Norris.

Flash, he said, has been focused on designers as opposed to developers. “It’s a really big deal for designers, and every designer out there knows Flash, but developers really haven’t been a big part of the Flash story,” Norris said.

But Norris expressed concern about follow-ups on pledges pertaining to the Silverlight platform. Silverlight is set to run on Linux and mobile clients but does not yet, Norris said. (A beta version of Silverlight for Linux, Novell’s Moonlight software, is available.)

NBC’s Perkins Miller, company vice president of digital media, talked at MIX about his company’s plans to stream 2,200 hours of live Olympics coverage using Silverlight. Microsoft’s technology will enable, for example, a user to access a biography of basketball player LeBron James while watching USA Olympics basketball.

“The ability to sort of touch the screen and get information is something you can really only get with the Silverlight-enhanced product,” Miller said in an interview after the conference.

In choosing Silverlight, Miller cited NBC’s existing relationship with Microsoft via the MSNBC broadcast channel. “It was a broader partnership with Microsoft overall that really made this make sense, and, of course, the technology of Silverlight is really impressive,” Miller said.

Asked about the benefits of Silverlight over Flash, Miller emphasized that he was not a developer, but that in his experience in working with Silverlight, Microsoft has been able to take new steps in terms of integrating data and creating new navigation.

NBC plans to show 25 sports streamed live via NBCOlympics.com and Silverlight. All 34 sports will be available via video on-demand.

While Silverlight 2 currently is only a beta product, NBC is not worried. “We’re very confident in Microsoft’s ability to deliver this product,” said Miller.

Software developer iBloks, which works with advertisers, provides a 3D platform that leverages Silverlight.

“Really, Microsoft’s technology with Windows Presentation Foundation and now with Silverlight is allowing us to really leverage not just the connectivity of broadband but the power of the graphics chip to create incredibly beautiful ads and interactive experiences,” said Julia Miller, founder, CEO and president of iBloks. iBloks also outputs to other technologies, such as Google Gadgets and Flash, but considers Silverlight the best scenario, she said.

An Adobe official questioned the notion that Silverlight offers an advantage by leveraging .Net development skills.

“Well, that’s kind of like saying that the nice thing about Flex and Flash is that it lets you build great rich Internet experiences without having to learn .Net,” said Ben Forta, Adobe director of platform evangelism. “Obviously, whether you are trying to learn Flash/Flex or Silverlight, you are going to have to learn the platform.”

For coders, Adobe’s Flex requires no more than learning XML tags and ActionScript to deliver applications that run on more than 98% of desktops, taking advantage of Flash Player, Forta said. “The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is now starting down this road with Silverlight, and the Flash platform is already tried and tested and proven and has been so for over a decade,” he said

At Schematic, which has provided Silverlight development services for NBC, a company official hailed the technology’s benefits but also gave a nod to the Flash platform as well.

“Silverlight is a really important enabling technology for very high-quality video experiences,” said Matthew Rechs, CTO at Schematic. Silverlight and Flash provide “different ways of achieving the same thing,” Rechs said. But Flash is more widely used by designers, while Microsoft tools are better utilized by developers, he said.

Silverlight gives users “a way of making these rich media experiences that traditionally were only available using Flash,” said Rechs.

Flash, he said, has had a big advantage in its market share and its success in enabling video to be watched on the Internet. Flash has been widely adopted by advertisers for bringing ad messages to Web content, said Rechs. Schematic has worked with Flash clients as well, he said.

New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations

When the PlayStation3 was released in November 2006, Gaurav Khanna’s wife braved long queues so he could be one of the first people in the US to get his hands on the gaming console.

But the astrophysicist was not itching to burn some rubber in Gran Turismo or shoot hoops in NBA 07. Instead he wanted to build his own supercomputer.

Mr Khanna now owns 16 PS3s, which spend their days simulating the activities of very large black holes in the universe for the physics department at the University of Massachusetts.

Hooked together in a single cluster, the PS3 consoles provide his department with the same amount of computing power as a 400-node supercomputer.

“The challenge these days with supercomputing facilities is that there is a lot of demand for them. So even if I submitted a job that would be expected to take about an hour, it could actually take two days to get started because the queues are so long.

“The PS3 cluster is all mine and was very low cost to set up, which makes it really attractive,” he says.

What makes the gaming console vastly superior to high-end computers for complex research algorithms, Mr Khanna says, is the Cell chip built by IBM to facilitate high-end gaming functions on the latest generation of consoles.

In addition the PS3 was built with an open hardware architecture, which can run the Linux operating system.

Based on Einstein’s theory of relativity, Mr Khanna’s research on black holes is purely theoretical. In order to run his simulation data on the console he has to reprogram it so the algorithms will work on the new architecture.

“Linux can turn any system into a general purpose computer but for it to do work for me I have to run my own code on it for astrophysics applications. The hard part of the job was to make sure my own calculations could run fast on the platform, which meant I had to optimise the written code so it could utilise the new features of the system.

“I am not a Linux person – I am a Mac person – but I was able to follow instructions online,” he says.

His next challenge will be to turn his data into graphical simulations using the high end graphics engine included in the PS3.

“We haven’t done that yet but it would be very neat to actually see the simulation while it is going on,” he says.

Although Mr Khanna was one of the first scientists to optimise the PS3 for his own research work, Tod Martinez, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois has been tinkering with games consoles ever since his son’s original PlayStation malfunctioned.

He says that while researching whether or not to buy a new PS2 for his son he also began to explore the possibilities of using gaming consoles for scientific research.

“The two main things we do are rotations and translations of objects. We also need to get a lot of pixels onto the screen, which means we need big channels to move lots of data. It was pretty clear that modern games consoles mapped really well onto theoretical chemical calculations,” he says.

Once the PS2 was released he bought one unit for his son and a few units for himself and made some rudimentary attempts to program it. “But back then the architecture was proprietary and trying to convince the machine to run non-Sony programmed games was difficult.”

That situation improved rapidly when Sony released a DVD that would allow users to run Linux on the console. “Only 1000 DVDs were released but they really opened up the architecture considerably,” he says.

Since that time Mr Martinez has refined his computing resources considerably and he now runs a cluster of eight cut-down consoles from IBM based on the same Cell chip technology used in the PS3.

He has also expanded his use of gaming technology into graphics cards with the help of a new programming framework developed by graphics hardware specialist Nvidia.

Mr Martinez’s field of research is examining how molecules behave when you shine light on them – which has wide ramifications for the fields of agriculture, solar energy and the study of human vision.

“We have done tests of algorithms and Nvidia cards are four to five times faster than the Cell chip, which is 20 times faster than an ordinary high end computer,” he says.

Because both technologies can be classified as “stream processers” they are highly suited to moving massive volumes of data – unlike the general purpose processing for ordinary computing.

“Some people think it’s just about having a faster computer. They don’t realise how big a change it is to do computing at your desk after accessing a computer in a room somewhere where you have to wait around for results.

“Of course it does cost less, but what needs to be recognised is that it also changes the way people think about problems when they are given a hundred times more computer power.”

Using the example of a black box, Mr Martinez explains that instead of asking basic questions about how it works, you can just start tinkering around with it.

“So rather than taking the thing apart you just start moving all the knobs about to see what happens when you change something – just as you might in real life.”

Emotiv’s headset gives users mind-control over digital objects

Emotiv’s headset allows users some control over objects on a computer. It is possible to move things around, with limited application, with your mind.

I’ve just made a small orange cube disappear with my mind. No hands necessary.

I’m testing out the San Francisco company’s so-called brain control interface, the latest iteration of technology it first showed off a year ago, but which, unlike last year, is now almost ready for prime time.

The idea is a blending of hardware and software: A headset that seems a little like the one from the James Cameron-written 1995 film, Strange Days, complete with a set of sensors that are built to read your brain waves.

The software then is designed to interpret those brain waves in such a way as to allow users to manipulate objects onscreen with nothing but their mind.

So that’s why I’ve come to this office in downtown San Francisco, where I’m face-to-face with this little orange cube. It’s kind of mocking me, daring me to make it disappear.

The headset is designed to fit snugly on a user’s head. The data it produces can, in theory, be plugged into a wide variety of software.

Here’s how it works: The software has several choices for actions you can take. So, taking the disappearing cube as an example, once you’re hooked up to the headset, you’re directed to run a short, six-second test, where you concentrate on doing something, anything, with your mind–relax, focus, whatever.

Then, once you’ve completed the test, it’s you against the cube. And the challenge is to see if you can reproduce what it was you were doing with your mind during the test; If so, the cube slowly disappears.

In my case, it disappeared, then came back, then disappeared again and then came back. Repeat.

They also ran me through another example, this time trying to pull the cube forward. This one was harder because the brain function I chose to do to synchronize with the challenge was more concentrated. It involved me sort of tensing up my head and imagining the act of pulling the cube forward. It didn’t work very well.

But with the disappearing act, I simply relaxed my mind, with much better results.

Of course, there’s no relationship at all between brain activity that is consciously trying to “pull” the cube forward and what happens. That is to say, it doesn’t matter in any way what you’re doing with your mind, so long as what you do during the six-second calibration matches what you do when you try to enact the action.

So really, the software is just looking for a pattern match. It’s not all that complicated a concept, though I’m sure it’s a pretty difficult engineering feat.

Emotiv has also built technology designed to read your facial expressions and emotions. So while there, I saw a demonstration where someone wearing the headset would smile, frown, smile again, and so forth. And a goofy-looking face on the monitor would repeat the expression.

For now, this is all still just in prototype phase. But Emotiv promised me that the headset would be available in time for Christmas this year, at a price of $299. It’ll come bundled with a game that is geared toward using the technology, and presumably, more games will follow. The success, I think, of this product, will be how easy it is for developers to build the technology into their games. And that, presumably, is why the product is being showcased during this week’s Game Developers Conference, here in San Francisco.

10 Emerging Technologies In 2008

Modeling Surprise
Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help humans manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.

Much of modern life depends on forecasts: where the next hurricane will make landfall, how the stock market will react to falling home prices, who will win the next primary. While existing computer models predict many things fairly accurately, surprises still crop up, and we probably can’t eliminate them. Read More

Probabilistic Chips
Krishna Palem thinks introducing a little uncertainty into computer chips could extend battery life in mobile devices–and maybe the duration of Moore’s Law, too.

NanoRadio
Alex Zettl’s tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.

Wireless Power
Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.
Atomic Magnetometers
John Kitching’s tiny magnetic-field sensors will take MRI where it’s never gone before.

Offline Web Applications
Offline Web Applications
Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of both the browser and the desktop.

Graphene Transistors
A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer could lead to speedy, compact computer processors.

Connectomics
Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the tangled web of neural circuits.

Reality Mining
Sandy Pentland is using data gathered by cell phones to learn more about human behavior and social interactions.

Cellulolytic Enzymes
Frances Arnold is designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.