There are lots of uses for an iPhone and it’s good to have one in your car, especially in the case of Trapster, an iPhone app that aims to alert you about speed cameras and other gear out there in the streets that can get you fined. It’s a brilliant idea, but let’s see if this app does what’s promised and whether it performs that task well enough.
How does it work?
First of all, even though the app’s description doesn’t clearly mention it, the app alerts drivers based on a user-populated database; the iPhone does not have the necessary equipment to detect speed cams! What that means is that you get alerts only for those traps that other people have reported, and that data may be inaccurate or even completely false. There is though a means of rating each trap and the app calculates a confidence level for each one, but still this is all based on people’s good will.
One case in which the user-centric database can be of no use is that of systematically submitted false alarms. Some anti-trap-alerting group, for example, could massively submit numerous traps that are not real, thus making the app useless for a driver that would constantly get alarms for cameras that are not there. But assuming that there are no such groups (yet) and the authorities would never come up with this, false alarms shouldn’t be a big issue, although some of them surely exist.
Jeez, where’s that camera?
The main problem with Trapster is not the data, but the way it reports traps to the user, who in this case is, the car’s driver. This is where Trapster fails to deliver in a practical way, for many reasons. First of all, the reports are using a synthesized voice that not only sounds rather ridiculous, but is hard to notice at times over the noise in the car. Also, don’t hope that you can scroll the map as in the Maps app -no, no! The map stays fixed and you have to hit a “center” button to re-position your car in the map.
But most importantly, the problem is that the algorithm for trap detection is based purely on proximity and doesn’t account for the car’s direction, thus alerting drivers for traps that are monitoring the cars that are going to the opposite direction! This can be rather frustrating if you’re driving in quarters that you’re not familiar with (but that’s the point of this app, if you already know by heart where the traps are, it’s of no use, right?) since you’ll be alerted for traps that aren’t meant for you, but you’ll still be slowing down and wondering where in Earth that trap is supposed to be.
Another problematic area that can be improved is when a user submits a trap, since the map problem mentioned above doesn’t make this too easy for a driving person. I think it would be a good idea to let users log in to the site when they get to their computers and fine-tune the data they entered in a hurry while driving, or even add some more details about the trap.
Bottom line
Trapster is a nice idea that is poorly implemented, at the moment. However, it can still be quite handy and save your from a speed ticket or two, so it’s good to have the app running in your iPhone while driving in a highway. Knowing it’s problems and limitations will reduce your frustration, and keep in mind that this app uses data generated by people like YOU - so don’t forget to submit the traps you see, or rate the existing ones!
Wishlist
Here’s a list of a few ideas that would make this app much better:
Detection algorithm should account for the vehicle’s course (e.g. create a vector simulating the vehicle’s track and associate that with a user-submitted trap, then check against this before alerting users).
Use a clear and loud human-recorded voice for reporting traps.
Calculate the vehicle’s speed and use audio cues to report how close the vehicle is to the trap (i.e. a driver’s that’s moving too fast should be notified earlier than one who’s barely above the speed limit).
When such audio cues cease, drivers would also be informed that they have passed by the trap and are no longer in it’s range.
Fix the interface, please (draggable map, zooming with gestures, auto-following the vehicle - you know, like the Maps app!).
Allow users to refine trap data through the website.
Have you ever had an imaginary friend? Well maybe not (I haven’t), but for once let’s imagine that you do have one. Picture a cloudy-like, fuzzy-shaped form with unlimited knowledge and memory, always willing to answer any question your soul could possibly want to ask (expect maybe for the Ultimate Question which has already been already been answered anyway).
Specifically, your imaginary friend’s characteristics could include (but not be limited to) the following:
It’s your best friend.
It’s always available to you, wherever you are.
It has instant access to all the facts of the world.
It has a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know.
It can tailor answers to you based on your preferences, your existing knowledge and the best available information.
When a question is vague, it could ask for clarification.
It would present the answers in whatever setting or media worked best.
Now, that sounds nice! Our imaginary friend (which we’ll lovingly call “Cloudie” for the sake of our paradigm) would be the perfect companion. Omnipresent and omnipotent, it would have a (pretty much) thorough knowledge of everything regarding you, as well as the whole world, thus being able to answer any of your questions. The perfect friend, companion and tool.
Before you start imagining how privileged you would be with such a best friend, I am sorry to spoil this by informing you that Cloudie would not be exclusive to you - it would have other friends of its own as well. And it would be best friend to every one of them, not only you. Oh, and picture that there would be millions of them (thus explaining how Cloudie could possibly have access to all the facts of the world).
So how would you feel about that? I imagine I would be terrified , knowing that someone had that much information about me and about every person in the world as well. First of all, what if Cloudie, my best friend, disclosed some of my private information to a third party? Sure, it says it would never do that, but how do I know? Sometimes even your best friend can’t be trusted; and also , what could such a powerful all-knowing being evolve to, if it decided to be malevolent? It’s terrifying, really.
Back to reality
Frightening as it may sound, our fictional friend already exists and its name is Google. It’s not yet capable of doing all the nice things I’ve mentioned, but it’s what it yearns to become - and this is not my point of view, but rather the definition of the ideal search engine according to Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, as seen in this TechCrunch article. So before you begin to question my conspiracy/totalitarian/big-brotherish fears, you can check out for yourself that it’s all true.
But that’s not why I decided to write this article, really. It’s another thing that made me write about Google - their newest project, coded Project 10100.
We don’t have the answers, but we believe that you do. And we want them.
Basically, project 10100 aims to make the world a better place, by doing something that would help 10100 people all around the globe (that’s orders of magnitude greater than the population of the Earth). But it turns out that the all-knowing search engine giant doesn’t have the answer to every question; quoting their blog:
But what would help, and what would be most helpful? We don’t believe we have the answers, but we do believe the answers are out there.
So since they don’t have the answers, they ask us, ordinary people, to provide them . For this reason they’ve made a submission form which you can use to submit your idea for helping a lot of people and making the world a better place. Google experts will review the submitted ideas and the best 100 of them will be announced for the public to pick the semi-finalists, then “an advisory board will choose up to five final ideas for funding and implementation”, according to the project’s webpage.
That’s right, the company has committed $10 million to fund the top-5 ideas. They will own your idea, implement it and make the world a better place. Oh, and they’ll probably make tons of money by integrating their ads in the final product (not to mention the information gathering by the product itself).
So what do you get for giving Google your best idea on how to make this world a better place? Nothing, except for “fame”. If you’re the kind of person who would fancy your name being announced in the top 5 ideas that will change the world and that will make you live happily ever after, go ahead and submit your idea before the deadline expires on October the 20th, 2008.
If you’re not that kind of person, and would imagine that Google was searching for the brightest minds to incorporate with them, to fund them and help them create a product that will change the world for the best, you’re out of luck. Sorry, you still need to seek funding.
This morning I stumbled upon yet another expense tracker start-up, named ExpenseTracker (!), that tries to differentiate by letting users enter expenses through voice, by calling a number and entering the expense’s details. Other features are advertised as well, such as spending plans tailored by economy experts etc, but the main theme is entering data through voice.
Visiting their site, the first impression you get is that you hit a telemarketing channel. A well-suited man (whose blonde hair looks far from natural) starts to tell you that usually all the budget trackers “rely on you going home [...] and spending hours entering receipts into the right categories [...]. Come on, let’s be real; this is not gonna happen”. The ad goes on even showing a woman calling through her mobile and entering an expense.
First of all, the aesthetics of the website and the telemarketing attitude (check out their moto “You’ll Find Money, Guaranteed!“) won’t convince me that I should trust these people with my financial details. Second, there’s yet another point that makes this whole calling-my-wallet theme pointless: I would rather enter that data into an app running on my mobile phone. There are a few (quite feature-limited) expense tracker apps for the iPhone which can come in handy, and I think it’s far easier to tap a couple of buttons to quickly record your expense, than calling a speech recognition system, not to mention a lot faster.
I am not aware of any such apps for other mobile platforms but I bet we’ll see plenty of them since more and more mobile platforms are about to introduce their own version of Apple’s App Store. Backed up with a powerful web app to sync data with, the stack would be quite useful. But I haven’t seen yet one expense tracking web app that actually displays any insightful realization of my expenses other than plain graphs. If you know any, let me know in the comments.
Meanwhile, other start-ups are trying to assist users in other ways, like shoeboxed, for example that wants you to mail them (snail mail, not e-mail) all your receipts so they scan them and categorize them for you. Thanks, but I’d rather keep my receipts in my office. Unless there’s an app on my phone that snaps a photo of my receipts, auto-magically recognizes the data as well as the kind of expense and records it for me, computes trends and estimates and displays valuable information about my spending and saving habits - until then I’ll stick to the old model of hand-entering the details.
Recently, I’ve been arguing with a trio of ambitious entrepreneurs whether a touch interface is coming to Apple products and how this could possibly affect iPhone app development. My point was that, since Apple has already filed a patent for a touch-screen mac and had shown strong interest on multi-touch user interfaces (see iPhone), it won’t be long until we see new touch-screen Macs.
Today, circulating the news is a video demonstrating Mac OS X Leopard running on a Gigabyte M912X (video follows), a small PC laptop with a touch-screen. The video is hosted on YouTube and has already been viewed more than 12k times since it was uploaded two days ago. Reading the comments, one can see that many people would like to do the same thing with their tablet PCs, which strengthens the idea that a touch-screen Mac (or a tablet Mac) would be quite popular.
If Apple officially produces touch-screen Macs, then I can safely bet that the UI (User Interface) would be enhanced to support multi-touch gestures etc, as well as other features that were missing in the OS since it was hard to implement without a touch interface. Combining this with the recent incidents of Apple rejecting iPhone apps for duplicating built-in functionality, my point was that building an iPhone app with features resembling those of a future Mac OS release supporting touch, could possibly be rejected - if Apple has already implemented such features in the OS. And since Apple is a company that knows well how to keep secrets (see the move to Intel processors) it wouldn’t be a surprise if we suddenly see Jobs demonstrating a tablet Mac on stage, anytime soon.
Ah, the Internet! A huge network of interconnected computers allowing users to exchange information of all kinds. It started with chunks of text, e-mail and simple web pages, but as connection lines improved and end-users got more bandwidth (speed) available, file-sharing became a reality: a haven of all the world’s digital riches, be it music, movies or software. That obscure indie band only a dozen of people know of? You can find it’s latest album online, for free. And the latest movies too, even before they hit the screens, for free as well. And if you ever need some kind of software, you don’t have to spend a penny; it’s available on the Internet at no cost.
Everything for free. Of course it’s illegal, but it’s free. File-sharing and peer-to-peer technologies have made this true: Napster, Kazaa, AudioGalaxy, Gnutella, Limewire, Soulseek are only a few of the apps and technologies that enabled users to exchange copyrighted information for free throughout the years. Online piracy increases exponentially, and the big guys (e.g. MPAA, IFPI etc) can do little to stop it. The latest and greatest in file-sharing technology, BitTorrent, has been characterized as a “hydra”, since whenever a file-sharing community is shut down, two or more new ones come into existence.
Let’s face it, people will always share copyrighted material with each other because it saves them money. And it does save a lot of money! For example, if a proud iPod owner would ever want to fill her 160GB iPod Classic with music she had bought online, it would cost her tens of thousands of dollars. But online piracy makes it easier for teens and everyday people who are not millionaires to enjoy thousands of songs in their music devices at no cost. Getting it illegally off the Internet is free, easy and makes the user’s life easier, but the artists and the record companies don’t see it this way. And in the end, they will find a way to win this battle, at least momentarily.
The only way to defeat online piracy
But how can the copyright holders win this battle? it’s easy: by charging the users. That’s right, charge the users for downloading illegal copies of copyrighted work, and if it’s possible, charge them more than the actual cost of buying a legitimate copy of the latest album, or a new movie, or some kind of software. That would put an end to online piracy, and it will. But how can you charge a computer user for downloading something from another user? How could the record companies achieve this?
The record companies cannot do this, but your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can. The Internet has given birth to online piracy because information exchange is “free”; you only pay a small fee to your ISP to gain unlimited access to the Internet and then you are able to download enormous amounts of data, be it legal or illegal — your ISP doesn’t care. But this is about to change since it will benefit both ISP’s and copyright holders, and the moment they realize that a deal is underway that will make them more profitable, the “free” era of the Internet will be over. And we’ll be the lucky ones to have witnessed this free era.
Today, as more greedy users around the world use peer-to-peer technologies to share files, the amount of traffic generated by file-sharing is huge, often utilizing all of a network’s available bandwidth and resources. Since when will ISP’s let their users save tens of thousands of dollars by not buying the stuff they want, but in the same time forcing the ISP’s themselves to spend tens of thousand of dollars to upgrade and improve their networks since there’s high demand for more bandwidth? Not for long, I predict. Especially when the copyright holders will make a deal with them to share profit.
In the near future, your Internet subscription will come with a different policy. You’ll still pay a fee to access the Internet and have unlimited data access to normal or featured content for fair use. But when you use the network for file-sharing, distribution of copyright content, illegal material or other uses, you will be charged for it, by the volume of traffic you create. The key phrases in the last sentence are “fair use”, “featured content” and “other uses”. Essentially, the policy that your ISP will enforce you will read “as long as you use our network to access the Internet for web browsing, e-mail and other things we consider to be fair use, we will not charge you; but if you download copyrighted stuff or do anything else we don’t approve, you will have to pay for every byte of that traffic”.
This is already happening for Internet access over your mobile phone. Do you think you can use your mobile phone’s GPRS access with an unlimited data plan to download the latest and greatest TV shows to your computer for free? Think again! Ian, a poor guy, had that idea, but ended up owing Vodafone 27,000 pounds. This is a true story. Now imagine the same thing applied to all Internet access, be it DSL or cable and you’re getting the idea.
ISP’s are already getting into the game of assisting the battle against online piracy. But filtering data will not offer much, users will utilize cryptography and other means to still cloak their illegal activities. ISP’s and copyright holders will realize that people are going to stop sharing content only at the moment it stops being free. This will stop people from stealing away copyrighted content, force them to buy the stuff they want, and still make ISP’s more profitable by charging those foolish enough to insist on file-sharing in hope that they won’t get caught.
Featured content will still cost nothing to download. This means that, for example, you’ll be able to pay iTunes Music Store the amount of 9,99 euros and download a music album without paying anything to your ISP, since it’s featured content, traffic from a known, legal source. But if you choose to download an illegal copy of the album from, say, BitTorrent, and are charged at a rate of 0.001 euros / kB you’ll end up paying the same amount of money, if not more, and still face the possibility of getting caught and go to jail for your crime. So which option would you choose?
Now think of this: iTunes Music Store drops it’s prices so you get an album for 8 euros. In the same time, ISP’s charge more than 0.001 euro / kB for traffic that is not “fair use”, so downloading the album will cost you 12 euros. It will be cheaper to buy a legitimate copy than download it illegally. The moment this happens, online piracy will die. And the organizations with the fancy acronyms will grin and celebrate their victory, but it will not last long.
The future of the Internet
It is obvious that this will be the end of the Internet as we know it. The Network that started as a military project and soon became the ultimate medium for telecommunications around the globe, will not be as free as it is today. Downloading stuff will cost you bucks. In the years to come, our times will be remembered as those days of the “free” Internet, those times that people were able to download anything for free and we’ll be nostalgically write about it in our future blogs, or whatever blogs will evolve to.
But people will not give up. As soon as the new policies will apply, people will find other means of communicating to each other for free by not using the Internet. Ad-hoc, peer-to-peer wireless networks spanning entire cities already exist and you can join such a network just by placing your wireless access point outside in order to have a good signal. Computer users will start connecting to each other using WiFi, forming a new network that belongs to the users, not ISP’s, since the air is (still) free. This is already happening, but in the future it will be the only way to exchange information for free, so more and more users will join these networks.
More and more of these wireless “darknets” will form, closed communities run by the users, for the users, screening new entries in order to keep the record companies, ISP’s, spies and law enforcement officers away from witnessing the distribution of illegally copied data, thus creating a new haven of free file-sharing. There will still be a need for these networks to become interconnected to each other, and they will do so, by utilizing ground networks that allow them to do so. University networks, for example, or ISPs of “questionable ethics” that will allow the free flow of data for very low monthly fees. A new Network, more chaotic and decentralized than the current Internet that will form a new community for users and a new market for businesses.
And when the “Airnet” of the future will become a reality, copyright holders and organizations will have to defeat online piracy again. Will they be able to regulate wireless communications, or charge for using the air as a medium to transmit signals? Who knows what will happen when the air will become so congested by all the information travelling through it. That is, if there’s still air to breathe and we hadn’t destroyed Earth’s atmosphere by continuing to severely pollute our planet…
We are, indeed, living in interesting times.
Updates
[Jan 16, 2008] Ars Technica recently published an article discussing that filtering is about to become a reality in College networks as well as ISPs, while today it discusses about a debate that takes place on the New York Times, about whether ISPs should be forced to play a vital part in fighting piracy by filtering content, and how this idea is probably going to fail.
[Jan 17, 2008] Ars Technica today writes about a leaked memo indicating that Time Warner Cable is about to apply bandwidth caps to it’s users, initially on a trial basis. I believe that this is a first step towards the scheme I predict in this article, if it finally becomes true. When users will become frustrated about reaching the specified bandwidth caps, they may be given the option to pay extra for more bandwidth, or engage a different policy that will bill them according to the “kind” of traffic they create.
Usually when you click on the red “X” button on the top left of a window, it closes. Or, when you press Command-W on the keyboard, which is my preferred choice. But since I updated my Powerbook to 10.4.11, which upgraded Safari to 3.0.4., Safari windows won’t close. No matter what.
My first reaction was “thanks Apple”, but then it turned out the culprit was not our beloved Mac maker company. After checking the ~/Library/InputManagers directory, I found only one folder in there named SIMBL. What was this, I didn’t know, but after deleting it and restarting Safari, I am now able to close it’s windows again!
It turns out that SIMBL is a Smart InputManager Bundle Loader used by some plugins for Safari. It must have gotten there when I installed Taboo, ages ago, which I also deleted now since I don’t need it anymore.
In case you also have the same problem, check out whether any of your Safari plugins is outdated or incompatible with Safari version 3. Take a look at ~/Library/InputManagers for any defective input managers. Also look in ~/Library/ApplicationSupport for the plugins. There are lots of stuff in there, so examine the names and see if you find something strange. Or, open Spotlight and search for “SIMBL”.
I got my digital camera in 2004 and started making a library with all the photos I took in my vacations, journeys and other occasions with more than 2.5k photographs at this moment. These photos resided only in my Powerbook, which means a single point of failure: if something was to happen to the laptop’s hard drive (or even if I dropped it or it got stolen) all those pictures of memories of last years would be lost.
So I got my new iMac last week and decided to move the entire iPhoto library to the new computer, only to find out that there’s something wrong with the disk that won’t let the copy complete. All I got was the spinning beachball. It wouldn’t stop spinning. I tried to disconnect the network drive, turn airport off, press command-alt-escape to relaunch Finder. Nothing.
Disk problems
So I fired up Disk Utility and verified the Machintosh HD disk to get the following error message:
Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
Apparently there’s something wrong with the filesystem, probably due to hard drive error, since I heard some “weird” sounds coming from the hard drive. How many of my files were affected by this? I don’t know. I tried to copy each one of the subfolders to the new drive, but whenever it encountered a file that was damaged, all I was getting was the beachball, and then I would have to restart the computer, identify the damaged file and copy the rest of them.
The trick
Well, doing this for my entire library could take forever, so I had to find another way to copy the files to the new computer. Apparently, there is damage in the catalog structure of the FS at some point and Finder doesn’t seem to handle this damage nicely - the whole OS is rendered unusable. But how can one copy files bypassing the Finder, when it’s the only app that does such stuff? Think deeper: Darwin.
So I opened a terminal, and used the cp command to copy all of my files to the new computer, i.e.:
The -r flag tells cp to do a recursive copy (all files and subfolders inside) and I also wanted to witness the process of copying the files, hence the -v flag (for verbose).
Luckily, the copying of the files was smooth. No delays, no freezes. Well it took sime time to transfer about 7GB of data wirelessly to the new computer, and of course the damaged files did not recover, but at least I managed to copy them to a new disk before this one completely fails some day and doom my entire photo library. After scanning quickly through my library from the iMac (thanks Frontrow + remote!) I concluded that very few pictures were damaged - most of my precious memories are still intact.
So, when the Finder fails, summon Terminal to the rescue.
[Edit: It looks like Apple may have resolved this issue with the 10.4.9 update to the Mac OS X operating system. I am guessing this because after upgrading, the phone icon in iSync looks like a K610 (a red one actually). And maybe that explains my blog's visit from the apple.com domain. If there's someone that hasn't used my patch and made the phone sync with 10.4.9, please let us know by leaving a comment.]
For all of us Mac users that have bought the Sony Ericsson K610im (i-mode) phone, there was a disappointment when we got back home and tried to sync the new phone with the contacts. Luckily, the solution is quite simple, and here’s how you can make your phone sync with your mac:
Download the aforementioned file to your desktop and extract it’s contents. You will see a new folder named SonyEricsson-K610.phoneplugin
Open a finder window and point locate the iSync app in your /Applications folder
Right click iSync and choose “Show package contents”
A new finder window appears that has only one folder in it, named “Contents”. Open that folder and inside it go to PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns
Move the folder SonyEricsson-K610.phoneplugin from your desktop into this folder
That’s it, you’re done! Open up iSync again and this time your K610im will be able to sync.
If you’re having problems or would like to discuss this topic, please leave a comment.
