Taxi, Please

If you have ever been to New York City or seen a movie with a taxi scene in New York City then you know what it can be like to get a taxi. This past week I learned about a totally different process. After a day of meetings at Opera Software in Oslo, Norway, it was time to head back to the hotel. I asked the receptionist if she would be kind enough to call a taxi for me. "No problem", she said. She then pushed a button on the counter. It was similar to a point of sale device used for credit card transactions — out came a "receipt" with a confirmation number on it. "Just wait downstairs and the taxi will be there in a few minutes". Taxi on demand! The taxi was there in a few minutes and off I went to the Radisson SAS. Since this was my eighth trip to Oslo this year I was already quite familiar with the payment system. All taxis accept all credit cards. Ever use a credit card in a cab in New York or most other cities in the U.S.? Coupled with ubiquitous WiFi access at hotels and the airport, the travel time to and from Norway is not as hard to take.

Power to the People

There has been a lot of discussion here in the blog and in Net Attitude about "Power to the People". The "power" discussed had to do with empowerment made possible by the Internet. To get connected to the Internet requires another kind of power — electricity. Although some improvements have been made there are still hotel’s that provide only one outlet on the desk and must not realize that travelers need to charge up both their laptop and their mobile phone — and maybe an iPod and a few other things.

The USB ports on all laptops do conveniently provide five volts of power but at a fairly low current and hence a longer charging time than with the 120/240 volt charger. Airports have an even bigger problem. Many of them were constructed before people had laptops and it would have been unimaginable for architects to include outlets around the wall of an airline gate or even in the clubs and lounges. I have gotten strange looks as I walked around a gate or lounge staring at the floor looking for an outlet. Airport managers are no doubt planning for new outlets but the cost to retrofit them is very high and it is going to take a long time before we have enough to satisfy the demand.

How about wireless electricity? I have often heard people joke about wireless electricity. It is not as far fetched as it may seem. In fact, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say it is possible. They have developed a system, which in theory can power gadgets in the same manner as wireless broadband signals are received. The MIT system is very early in the development stage but uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy from a source of power to a device ten feet away. At some point there may be electric rooms where anything you have with you — laptops, cameras, mobile phones — will receive a fresh charge while you are there.

There is also great progress being made in the efficiency of the electrical use. For example, IBM has been working on an Adaptive Battery Life Extender to reduce the hard drive power consumption based on what the user is doing. For example, if you are working on a word processing document, most of the time you are typing and editing or maybe thinking. During that time, the hard drive senses what your level of activity and turns off the hard drive until you actually need it to save your document.

IBM Happenings: November 2006

The month of November at IBM was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and corporate initiatives. I was particularly pleased to see IBM put it’s money where it’s mouth is with respect to innovation. The company announced it’s intention to invest $100 million in innovation ideas that were generated by InnovationJam, an unprecedented experiment in online collaborative innovation held earlier this year. The result could lead to new growth areas. Here are all the announcements made by the company during the month. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.

Spam Arrest – part 2

Hormel Foods Corporation loves Spam. They say their SPAM Luncheon Meat is "the one in good taste". For the rest of us spam is something quite different and anything but in good taste. There have been quite a few stories about spam here on patrickWeb. Early in the debate — years ago — I took the position that the elimination of spam could be handled by technology and that laws would not work. Even though the spammers have gotten more creative and we are currently seeing a rise in spam, I continue to believe technology is the best answer.

Around August 1 I started using spamarrest. All email addressed to john@patrickweb.com gets automatically picked up from my mail server by spamarrest. For everyone in my contact list (2,800+ people), their email comes through to my inbox with no problem. However, if an email arrives for me from someone not in my contact list, an automatic reply is sent to them that says something like "Your email to John is pending delivery. Please click here to validate that you are a real person". When you click, you are presented with a web page where a word appears in a graphic image. Something simple like "cat" or "water". After you type in the word that appears you become validated as a real person — not a robot sending millions of spam emails — and you are added to the "ok" list just like everyone in my address book. Likewise, anyone that I send an email to for the first time is automatically added to the ok list. For anyone in the ok list their emails are never challenged — and I answer all my email.

I had resisted challenge/response approaches in the past, but unfortunately today’s environment forced me to make a change. I am really pleased with the results. No more spam or junk folders and daily trash emptying duties. Since August spamarrest has processed 17,433 emails addressed to me. The 4,261 legitimate emails were forwarded to me. The remaining 75.6% of them went into an "unverified" folder. I check this folder on occasion if there is an email I am expecting. Spamarrest is very easy to manage. You can add entire domains to your ok list. For example, any email from someone at ibm.com comes through unchallenged. I have added a dozen or so other domains to the ok list. Occasionally a spammer or recruiter will respond and verify their email address but I then click to add them to the "not ok" list. The bottom line is that I spend significantly less time managing email than I did before and I can spend more time communicating with colleagues, family and friends old and new.

The week before switching to spamarrest, I received an email from a person I don’t know who had read something of interest in my blog and wanted to give me some feedback. This is really valuable to me. I asked her what she thought of the challenge/response approach I was considering. She said "I think that’s a very good idea. People who are worth talking to, either personal or professional, will understand". From my perspective, I am really enjoying a 100% spam free world and yet still able to meet new people and learn from them.

How To Become A Fonero

When my La Fonera was registered, I became member number 95,495 of the FON Community. This could be the start of something really big. Perhaps a revolution. Fon wants WiFi to be available everywhere and they are doing a lot to make it happen. The idea is that FON members (foneros) share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi access wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point.

To become a "fonero" you go to the Fon website and order La Fonera ($29.95 plus shipping) which is a wireless access point about the size of a mobile phone. You plug in the power adapter and then connect La Fonera to a spare port on the back of your cable or DSL modem. La Fonera emits two wireless network signals — a private and a public one. The private signal is encrypted and offers you complete privacy. The public signal will be accessible to Foneros only. This free signal is the one that turns your broadband connection into a FON Access Point.

There are three kinds of Fon Community members. You can be a "linus" by offering your home La Fonera to anyone who can pick up the signal. In return you get to use anyone else’s La Fonera signal when you are not at home. If you live in a metropolitan area where many people might be using your signal, you can be a "bill" which means that FON will charge a user $3 per day for the signal and give you half of it. An alien is a person who uses the signal but is not a member. You can visit FON Maps and see where all the signals are. Perhaps there is one next door to where you vacation or visit friends and family. Make your signal free and their’s becomes free to you.

I think FON is a really good idea. They have some impressive people behind them and also have some impressive investors. As of November 21, FON says there are 20,000 Foneros who are waiting to receive their Foneras. They are shipping 5,000 Foneras per week and manufacturing Foneras as fast as they can.

Other patrickWeb stories about WiFi

Oslo via Stockholm

The best way to Oslo is a direct flight from Newark on one of Continental’s new Boeing 767‘s but on this particular trip it was not available. The Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Airbus 330 followed the instrument landing system approach into Stockholm early Tuesday morning with just 500 feet visibility and only a three-hundred foot ceiling. This is when all of us appreciate the ILS the most. Something I noticed that morning for the first time was that each gate at the airport had a sign showing the exact latitude and longitude of it’s location. I have never noticed that anywhere else in the world and not sure how they use the information. Since all planes have GPS these days, perhaps it is a way to confirm to the crew that they are at the right gate.

The 9:00AM SAS Boeing 737 to Oslo took off at 9:00AM and landed in Oslo (the best airport in the world in my opinion) on time at 9:50am. The 10:06 Flytog (airport train) left the airport at 10:06. Timely trains and planes in Europe are just how they are. Seems like the U.S. should be able to do that also. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks flight performance in great detail. For example, in September at JFK in New York, 23% of all flights were late. I am sure there are studies on why things run late in the U.S. I suspect it is a combination of labor rules, over commitment of routes, and poor integration of information systems. Some flights are actually early but then the plane sits on the tarmac waiting for a gate. This is now a decades old problem where the flight arrival system does not communicate with the gate scheduling system. When a plane leaves California for a 4+ hour flight to New York, it knows within a few minutes what time it will arrive but the systems can not communicate in order to accommodate an early arrival.

The good news is that the air safety record is superlative and, even though there is a lot to complain about, it is truly amazing what airlines can do. On the one hand, fifteen hours from home to the hotel in Oslo is a very long time, on the other hand it is quite amazing. Imagine what the vikings would think about getting from Norway to the U.S. in 8 hours! A visit to the Viking ship museum helps to understand what travel must have been like for them one thousand years ago.