You’ve probably guessed that I am an iPod Owner. It’s true. Although I don’t currently have a Mac (“Hi, I’m a Mac”) I do my part for Cupertino by owning and enjoying my old iPod.
Well guess what? No, you first; guess what? OK, I’ll tell you. Those lads down in California invented a whole new phone called the iPhone. They followed it with a new iPod called the “iPod Touch” following the Übercool interface as the iPhone.
The concept of a touch screen was developed a number of years ago and pretty much mimicked a pointing device. In a portable “Pocket PC” one could use a stylus and point at what you wanted by actually touching the screen. You can do that with the mouse on a PC screen.
But that’s all it did. Mimic a mouse click.
The iPhone presents a whole new array of pointing using one’s fingers to make things happen. Look it up on hundreds of web sites. Just watch an ad. The biggest problem with the demos and ads is that you can’t feel the action. A lot of people say “So what?”
Well it’s more like reality is “What so.” In about 20 seconds with an iPhone or iPod Touch you get very good at understanding that touching the screen and having the expected action is really cool. And it seems so natural.
But why? Why would a perfectly sane but really old bald guy want a kids’ toy like an iPod Touch??? Answer: Apps.
Apple has a thing called the App Store. You can connect your iPod to the PC or Mac and buy music. But if you have the iPod Touch or iPhone you can get applications for it. Hundreds.
One particular application helps you identify birds. OK, maybe I’m the only one who cares, but that’s the really cool thing about the App Store – I can get stuff I think is neat and maybe only a few others. There are also applications that millions of people want, like the Stanley level.
Anyway this bird identification program allows you to use your fingers to select attributes of a bird you see or hear. It includes where you saw it (state or region) what colors it has, how big, what month you saw it, what it’s doing, body type (gull, crane, dodo) and several other things you might notice. Then it comes back with a list of what it might be.
Sometimes the list contains 100 birds, so you go back and choose some other feature and that may narrow the list to 6. Or it may come back with only one. Cool, that may be the bird you’re looking at. Then there are some actual photos of that bird and that may prove it’s not the bird you’re looking at. So you go back and review the things you thought you saw and change them.
One issue I already found is that it’s territorial. For example if I see a particular bird in Washington state that the books all agree does not occur here the program won’t find it. Unless I leave the “location” field blank. So the user has to work with the logic some and not let it run you.
But I’m getting off the point. This kind of interactive parameter search construction is pretty much magic. It’s enormously enjoyable and the thing I can’t stress enough is that it only takes a few minutes to become completely comfortable with the iPod Touch. Try that with a Palm.
So at this point I guess I’d have to say I’m shilling. One of my major frustrations as a human being in the 21st Century is the failure of technology to actually perform as advertised. A lot of it requires huge amounts of tweaking to get marginally improved results and some others never get there. Some of it just plain doesn’t work, so you have to return it a store that’s no longer in business. But the iPod Touch goes so far above the “expected” that it deserves a little shilling.
But not now, I have to get back to my iPod Touch. There’s an app about transit systems, I hope. I just have to search the App Store. There are apps about New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Sydney transit systems. I bet in a week Seattle will be there.
Al
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Electronic Newspapers
In an earlier discussion we mentioned the closure of the Seattle Post Intelligencer. It’s the Hearst paper around here. It is no more, except on the web. Many other papers across the land are closing.
Several people are moaning loudly about the closures and they have plenty of moans to share. One point of view is that the business model requires ad sales to support the news function. I think that’s kind of awkward.
The “product” of a newspaper is the news. The goal is to provide an easy way for busy executives, plumbers, and various regular humans to spend some quality time paging through the paper and reading the stories that interest them. It’s a scanning function. You glance at a hundred headlines and read more if it catches your interest.
In order to scan around the paper and see all those headlines you also get to wade through a ton of ads. That’s what pays the bills. If you want to see what Hillary did today, or what Joe Biden said, or how many more kids the octomom, Sarah Palin, has you need to pass over the ads. And they are also trying to catch your eye.
For example after spending Saturday cleaning out gutters you might be reading the Sunday PI and run across an ad for “Gutter Beanies” which are guaranteed to keep everything, including old newspapers out of your gutters. “Say, that’s just what I need,” you blindly say and you write down the 800 number. That’s how it works. That ad helps pay salaries in the newsroom.
Other people are saying the real reason newspapers are folding (hee hee, get it?) is that they took on too much debt in ill advised expansions. For example the New York Times bought the Boston Globe. Now Boston Globe is folding and the Times still has to pay off the purchase which means it may be in trouble as well. Isn’t big business fun?
Either way the income is from ads. You have to sell a lot of ads to pay off debts or pay newsroom salaries.
My view is that they should figure out how to market the news function directly without depending on the ad revenue stream. Like I actually know what I’m talking about. Please see the rules for this blog.
Anyway, one interesting way to move to direct news marketing is electronic. I was saying before that Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and their fellow travelers should take a hard look at a very portable reader that can provide the look of a newspaper to the reader (customer).
One cost of newspaper production is the physical delivery to millions of homes and newsstands. An environmental cost is included but that’s not part of the newspaper business cost.
If you eliminate the paper version and deliver it electronically the whole printing and home delivery stream would be saved. They could charge a small subscription fee and your news would be delivered throughout the day as it happens, or once a day, whichever you want.
Well, guess what? Amazon has introduced the Kindle DX which is a large format version of their electronic book reader. It’s supposed to provide a much better rendition of the printed page for publications larger than books. Newspapers and magazines are the target. Amazon already delivers those to the current Kindles but they don’t look like a regular paper page.
Another prime target is text books. College students pay upwards of $900 for their books these days. A Kindle book could substantially reduce that cost. A major problem in colleges is that text books have regular edition updates so last years’ texts are suddenly worthless which means much of that $900 is lost. The book store won’t take them back if a new edition is out there.
Enter electronic versions. The student (parent) pays a small fee, much smaller than the physical book price, and gets the latest edition. The new Kindle holds 3500 books. A person could use it for an entire ten year education (that’s how long it took me).
This powerhouse retailer has already proven the electronic reader is a winner. What that does is spur others into the market. Maybe General Motors can market a version and help get back on its feet.
I know! How about the Fiat Chrysler Reader?? Just mount them on the dashboard and include a quick release so people can take them to class or coffee. Boy am I smart.
My point is the newspaper soaking up rain on your front steps is losing ground. What you need is a way to get that “news perusing” feel in a 21st century device. Just wait, it’ll catch on. How will we start our fireplaces in the future?
OK, I’m not shilling for Amazon. I’m just saying someone is on the right track. Some of the attributes of these reader devices really are better than a paper book or magazine. You can append notes and save them along with the snippet of text. It’s really very well designed and that’s the key to success of any consumer product. Look at the ShamWow. Then read Consumer Reports. “Sham” is the keyword. But Amazon has a winner in the Kindle line.
Glen, the Lake Boren Carp, has the new one and he loves it. Mine is the clunky prehistoric version from a couple years ago, but it works fantastic and I read a lot more now than I used to. Plus I don’t have piles of books to get rid of.
Al
Several people are moaning loudly about the closures and they have plenty of moans to share. One point of view is that the business model requires ad sales to support the news function. I think that’s kind of awkward.
The “product” of a newspaper is the news. The goal is to provide an easy way for busy executives, plumbers, and various regular humans to spend some quality time paging through the paper and reading the stories that interest them. It’s a scanning function. You glance at a hundred headlines and read more if it catches your interest.
In order to scan around the paper and see all those headlines you also get to wade through a ton of ads. That’s what pays the bills. If you want to see what Hillary did today, or what Joe Biden said, or how many more kids the octomom, Sarah Palin, has you need to pass over the ads. And they are also trying to catch your eye.
For example after spending Saturday cleaning out gutters you might be reading the Sunday PI and run across an ad for “Gutter Beanies” which are guaranteed to keep everything, including old newspapers out of your gutters. “Say, that’s just what I need,” you blindly say and you write down the 800 number. That’s how it works. That ad helps pay salaries in the newsroom.
Other people are saying the real reason newspapers are folding (hee hee, get it?) is that they took on too much debt in ill advised expansions. For example the New York Times bought the Boston Globe. Now Boston Globe is folding and the Times still has to pay off the purchase which means it may be in trouble as well. Isn’t big business fun?
Either way the income is from ads. You have to sell a lot of ads to pay off debts or pay newsroom salaries.
My view is that they should figure out how to market the news function directly without depending on the ad revenue stream. Like I actually know what I’m talking about. Please see the rules for this blog.
Anyway, one interesting way to move to direct news marketing is electronic. I was saying before that Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and their fellow travelers should take a hard look at a very portable reader that can provide the look of a newspaper to the reader (customer).
One cost of newspaper production is the physical delivery to millions of homes and newsstands. An environmental cost is included but that’s not part of the newspaper business cost.
If you eliminate the paper version and deliver it electronically the whole printing and home delivery stream would be saved. They could charge a small subscription fee and your news would be delivered throughout the day as it happens, or once a day, whichever you want.
Well, guess what? Amazon has introduced the Kindle DX which is a large format version of their electronic book reader. It’s supposed to provide a much better rendition of the printed page for publications larger than books. Newspapers and magazines are the target. Amazon already delivers those to the current Kindles but they don’t look like a regular paper page.
Another prime target is text books. College students pay upwards of $900 for their books these days. A Kindle book could substantially reduce that cost. A major problem in colleges is that text books have regular edition updates so last years’ texts are suddenly worthless which means much of that $900 is lost. The book store won’t take them back if a new edition is out there.
Enter electronic versions. The student (parent) pays a small fee, much smaller than the physical book price, and gets the latest edition. The new Kindle holds 3500 books. A person could use it for an entire ten year education (that’s how long it took me).
This powerhouse retailer has already proven the electronic reader is a winner. What that does is spur others into the market. Maybe General Motors can market a version and help get back on its feet.
I know! How about the Fiat Chrysler Reader?? Just mount them on the dashboard and include a quick release so people can take them to class or coffee. Boy am I smart.
My point is the newspaper soaking up rain on your front steps is losing ground. What you need is a way to get that “news perusing” feel in a 21st century device. Just wait, it’ll catch on. How will we start our fireplaces in the future?
OK, I’m not shilling for Amazon. I’m just saying someone is on the right track. Some of the attributes of these reader devices really are better than a paper book or magazine. You can append notes and save them along with the snippet of text. It’s really very well designed and that’s the key to success of any consumer product. Look at the ShamWow. Then read Consumer Reports. “Sham” is the keyword. But Amazon has a winner in the Kindle line.
Glen, the Lake Boren Carp, has the new one and he loves it. Mine is the clunky prehistoric version from a couple years ago, but it works fantastic and I read a lot more now than I used to. Plus I don’t have piles of books to get rid of.
Al
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Light Rail Across the Floating Bridge
The Washington State Department of Transportation (Prevent Trans, for short) has decided to close the express lanes of I-90 to replace the expansion joints.
Based on the news generated by the expansion joints for the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge this can’t be good. And it’s not. The express lanes will be closed most of May.
This will send all the busses and car pools into the “general Purpose” lanes. Oh the humanity! Predictions are that commuters will be backed up to Snoqualmie Pass waiting for their turn to cross the bridge. My advice: retire. No way to get to work, so why try?
There are cracks in the expansion joints. They can see daylight from underneath. OK, an expansion joint is just a controlled way of managing various dimensional fluctuations of the road due to temperature, load, wind and wave stresses.
So why is it a surprise that these expansion joints expand? That’s part of the purpose, right? The other part is to make that BZZZ sound when you run over one at 60 mph. And if it expands then we should expect to see daylight. After 20 years the people that built it have probably retired or been absorbed into the Obama administration. So the new people see a “crack” and panic.
“How in the world can we put light rail on a structure with so many cracks?” is probably what they’re asking themselves.
Well, “lighten up” is my response. Sure, a little daylight seeps in from above when an expansion joint expands. It’s not a crack. That’s how it works. I spose these same people go crying to their mechanic when the little gas pump lights up on their dashboards.
Meanwhile Bellevue has been over at the Galactic Headquarters of Sound Transit begging for a tunnel. Their point is that if the light rail project goes through downtown Bellevue on the surface it will disrupt traffic. They want the line to enter a vast serpentine tunnel and emerge again on the east side of I-405.
We probably pointed this out before but I think the Tunnel Boring Machine is going to be busy digging the Alaska Way Viaduct replacement. That’s an emergency that has to be completed by 2003 in case of another earthquake. We wish them luck.
The I-90 express lane closure is a dress rehearsal for a future time when they’ll close forever due to being taken over by Sound Transit. It’s interesting that DOT is all panicked over the May closure when others are so calmly suggesting permanent closure.
Is it really the only way or do we have an alternative plan that will make everything all right? Let’s explore.
One alternative would be to build yet another floating bridge over Lake Washington. This is a real gamble since we’ve had two sink and the WSDOT is pretty sure another one is ready to sink (SR 520). We only have four in this state (Hood Canal, Evergreen Point, Mercer Island/Seattle, Seattle/Mercer Island) and a sink rate of 50%. So how are we to be confident that any new ones have better odds of survival?
Another alternative is a Lake Washington Tunnel. That’s right, dig under the lake and send the trains down there. OK, this is kind of why we decided to use floating bridges on the lake 100 years ago: it’s damn deep. This is a serious lake that goes way down and also has a deep bed of mud, silt, and dead salmon. It’s almost impossible to tunnel under because the road would have a steep down and up slope. Too steep for hybrid cars. A suspension bridge would have to span the whole lake. If we had even a wimpy earthquake the amount of offset from shore to shore would be many feet.
Nobody around Lake Washington will accept a suspension bridge that interferes with the views. They’d rather swim.
A suspension bridge could end up in the drink. Kind of the same fate as a marginal floating bridge. So why go to the trouble of building a suspension bridge if it will also sink? But doing a floating bridge on the idea that it won’t have very far to sink is also kind of goofy.
Another alternative is a ferry. We could run the light rail trains to the water and load them on barges to float across the lake. That might work except most of our ferries are also in bad shape and in danger of sinking. So do we think any new ones would be any better? And SLOW! Every other city in America would laugh at our light snail rail.
Which brings us to the last alternative because after that it gets silly. Move all that dirt from Maple Valley up and finish the Mercer Island Fill Project. Just dump dirt into the lake until there’s a nice causeway. No worries about sinking.
One small issue might be that it would take 30 years and 100 billion truck loads to do the job which would require repaving the Maple Valley Highway every six months. Much greater cost than building a whole new floating bridge.
Now you know why they want to go with the existing bridge: so far we think it floats. And what better way to get people riding light rail than taking away their precious express lanes? What a great idea.
Al
Based on the news generated by the expansion joints for the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge this can’t be good. And it’s not. The express lanes will be closed most of May.
This will send all the busses and car pools into the “general Purpose” lanes. Oh the humanity! Predictions are that commuters will be backed up to Snoqualmie Pass waiting for their turn to cross the bridge. My advice: retire. No way to get to work, so why try?
There are cracks in the expansion joints. They can see daylight from underneath. OK, an expansion joint is just a controlled way of managing various dimensional fluctuations of the road due to temperature, load, wind and wave stresses.
So why is it a surprise that these expansion joints expand? That’s part of the purpose, right? The other part is to make that BZZZ sound when you run over one at 60 mph. And if it expands then we should expect to see daylight. After 20 years the people that built it have probably retired or been absorbed into the Obama administration. So the new people see a “crack” and panic.
“How in the world can we put light rail on a structure with so many cracks?” is probably what they’re asking themselves.
Well, “lighten up” is my response. Sure, a little daylight seeps in from above when an expansion joint expands. It’s not a crack. That’s how it works. I spose these same people go crying to their mechanic when the little gas pump lights up on their dashboards.
Meanwhile Bellevue has been over at the Galactic Headquarters of Sound Transit begging for a tunnel. Their point is that if the light rail project goes through downtown Bellevue on the surface it will disrupt traffic. They want the line to enter a vast serpentine tunnel and emerge again on the east side of I-405.
We probably pointed this out before but I think the Tunnel Boring Machine is going to be busy digging the Alaska Way Viaduct replacement. That’s an emergency that has to be completed by 2003 in case of another earthquake. We wish them luck.
The I-90 express lane closure is a dress rehearsal for a future time when they’ll close forever due to being taken over by Sound Transit. It’s interesting that DOT is all panicked over the May closure when others are so calmly suggesting permanent closure.
Is it really the only way or do we have an alternative plan that will make everything all right? Let’s explore.
One alternative would be to build yet another floating bridge over Lake Washington. This is a real gamble since we’ve had two sink and the WSDOT is pretty sure another one is ready to sink (SR 520). We only have four in this state (Hood Canal, Evergreen Point, Mercer Island/Seattle, Seattle/Mercer Island) and a sink rate of 50%. So how are we to be confident that any new ones have better odds of survival?
Another alternative is a Lake Washington Tunnel. That’s right, dig under the lake and send the trains down there. OK, this is kind of why we decided to use floating bridges on the lake 100 years ago: it’s damn deep. This is a serious lake that goes way down and also has a deep bed of mud, silt, and dead salmon. It’s almost impossible to tunnel under because the road would have a steep down and up slope. Too steep for hybrid cars. A suspension bridge would have to span the whole lake. If we had even a wimpy earthquake the amount of offset from shore to shore would be many feet.
Nobody around Lake Washington will accept a suspension bridge that interferes with the views. They’d rather swim.
A suspension bridge could end up in the drink. Kind of the same fate as a marginal floating bridge. So why go to the trouble of building a suspension bridge if it will also sink? But doing a floating bridge on the idea that it won’t have very far to sink is also kind of goofy.
Another alternative is a ferry. We could run the light rail trains to the water and load them on barges to float across the lake. That might work except most of our ferries are also in bad shape and in danger of sinking. So do we think any new ones would be any better? And SLOW! Every other city in America would laugh at our light snail rail.
Which brings us to the last alternative because after that it gets silly. Move all that dirt from Maple Valley up and finish the Mercer Island Fill Project. Just dump dirt into the lake until there’s a nice causeway. No worries about sinking.
One small issue might be that it would take 30 years and 100 billion truck loads to do the job which would require repaving the Maple Valley Highway every six months. Much greater cost than building a whole new floating bridge.
Now you know why they want to go with the existing bridge: so far we think it floats. And what better way to get people riding light rail than taking away their precious express lanes? What a great idea.
Al
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