I'm over here!

Some things that should exist, but don't


1) A dumb-presence Mobile phone

I don't want to have to mess about with menus 4 layers deep, your mobile phone should come with a slider that has Available, Away, Family and DND positions. Then you can just flip the slider to where you are. It does 90% of Iotum's job, for 15c of hardware instead of 7 years of software development.

2) A Skype/Softphone proximity sensor

I'm always forgetting to set my Skype Away mode. My Macbook has an evil eye (err, Isight) staring at me all day, so can't it just check every minute or so if there's a head-shaped thing in its' view, and if there isn't set my Skype presence to "Away"?

There's a great deal of talk in the Blogosphere today about Voice and whether it's going to be free or not. Om got the ball rolling, Andy shot back with the trite (but entirely inaccurate) adage that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Jeff Pulver complained (quite rightly) that FWD has been offering free calling for years, and I sat there shaking my head at all of this:

Of course Voice will be free, it is already!

It's this idea that's always struck me as strange. There are constant musings about what Skype's long term business model will be, whether Ebay overpayed for the business (they did), whether Skype have a "value add" plan, how they are going to "climb the value chain" and all sorts of other nonsense.
This may all be fascinating if you're a day trader or a market analyst or an Ebay shareholder, but to the people who actually gain some benefit from Skype (i.e. The 2million people who use it), it couldn't matter less, for this simple reason:
Skype (the program) doesn't need a business model. If Skype (The Company) went out of business tomorrow, it wouldn't matter in the least to the millions of people who enjoy their free telephony every day. There might be some disruption as I believe contact information is semi-centralised, and there wouldn't be security updates, but there would be no immediate detrimental effect to Skype gonig out of business. Skype the software is there, the Genie's out of the bottle, and frankly, I don't really need or want Skype (the company) in my life any more.

So as regards the exciting world of connecting yourself to people who don't own computers and can't install software on their machine, please by all means race towards lowering the price in this exciting, growing sector of the market. For those of us who have converted all their friends, co-workers and a fair swath of local businesses to Skype or SIPPhone, as you were, your free telephony isn't going anywhere.

(A side note: I still pay a bit for telephony, all in the form of mobile-to-mobile. When the prices for this start falling, I'll start to pay attention. Free on-net calling would seem to be the way to start this process, and would have the added bonus of bringing in more customers who bring in more termination revenues)

Railfi: A code of conduct for wireless commuters


With all the talk of Wifi on Trains and the promise of cheap internet access on long-haul European trips, I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about, and encourage, a habit that some friends and I have when on suburban train trips.
There used to be, before the days of phat pipes, swapmeets for those who wanted to trade games, movies etc on CD’s. They often took place as an adjunct to LAN parties, and for me at least, they were frequently the reason I attended. We’ve got sort of the same thing going on suburban (and particularly inter-city (Central – Gosford, Central – Penrith/Blue Mountains) train trips. The steps are simple, the result is pretty amazing

1) Turn on your Wifi card. If your card can behave in AP mode, flick it in to AP mode. If it can’t flick it in to P2P mode.
2) Give your SSID a meaningful name that makes it clear to the casual browser that you’re on the train and want them to join (The preferred nomenclature is “Station 1 – Station 2 –Ichat+Bonjour+FTP)
a. In that way, you let people know how long your network will be up (until you get off the train), that it’s for them to join
3) Run some form of IM software that “just works”, that is one that doesn’t need central server. My preference is Apple’s Ichat with Bonjour (formerly Rendevous), and that seems to work well for those Apple inclined. There may be a better solution for Windowsers, I don’t know
4) Run an FTP site or create an open share with all your various movies, music, computer games etc available. Symlinks can be useful here
5) Sit back and wait for the curious to connect

I started doing this a few months ago, with some friends who often took the same trip as me. In this way, we were able to share TV shows, movies, music and other goodies on the way to where we were going, or watch something new on the trip home. This was all great, and then it got much much better – Random strangers with Wifi started joining the network, poking around and grabbing our stuff. We established some rudimentary communication via net send messages, told them to help themselves, and to put anything back that we might like (or to create an open share)
Now my trip home, instead of being a stultifying crawl in my own little bubble, is a social event, a live party line, a swapmeet and a LAN party. It’s the best thing since sliced bread, and it didn’t take more than 10 minutes to set up.
With the purchase of my new Iburst card, I’ve even been providing free Internet to commuters on their way home: The coverage can sometimes be a little patchy and the connectivity a little sporadic (especially as you penetrate further in to Suburbia… Central—Chatswood is pretty good, Chatswood-Gordon is pretty shocking, Gordon—Hornsby is reasonably good, although it usually drops out at least once)
What really makes it, of course, is critical mass: Enough commuters with notebooks and it turns in to a very fun trip indeed. Throw in some Iburst and you’ve got yourself a party.

So some suggestions:
1) Take a leaf out of the warchalkers book: Print up some )( symbols along with brief instructions and sticky tape them up in different carriages (take them down before you get off, and please don’t graffiti them on the seats. This is supposed to be about making train travel more pleasurable).
2) If you’re running in AP mode, host a Squid proxy with some offline-cached sites.
3) Participate! Load up your machine with goodies that others may be interested in. Make sure you have an open share or FTP site and make sure it’s read/write so they can give back to you.
4) Iburst – If you’ve got it, share it: Show them it doesn’t take thousands of dollars to equip trains with Wifi Internet Access. If you’ve got Vodafone GPRS/Three Data and are generous enough to share that, that’d be cool too!
5) Multicast TV & Movies, set up a games server, the possibilities are endless

Things to work on:

1) Some good cross platform IM client that plays nicely with self-assembling networks. Any suggestions?
2) Advertising: I’d feel a little strange about actually approaching people with their notebooks out, and prefer just to let them discover it themselves, but if there’s a good/subtle way to let people who are interested know, then let’s hear it
3) Orkut/(that NYC social networking thing) style notification: Want to know who’s planning on assembling a network on which train/day? There should be some form of message board/forum/notification thingy that will let you announce that you’ll be running on this train.
4) A Name: I’ve suggest Railworks, which has been met mostly with groans: Someone else suggested Railfi, but I’m not sure if that’s any better.net

I have one word for you: Blue-glowing-gel-ant-farm.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/6fd6/

These look extremely cool, and I'd really like to have a go at making one in a fish tank or someting, but I can't find the magic recipe anywhere. A little digging around leads me to Fowler High School, Syracuse University and NASA, but apart from mentioning in a news article that it's derived from Seaweed, it doesn't seem to have been documented anywhere.
Does anyone know what this stuff is made out of? Anyone at Syracuse University who could find out for me?

Floating Magnetic Globe Thingies. Cool
http://tinyurl.com/bopoh

First Post: w00t!

It looks like I'll be confining myself to domestic travel this year, so updates at washingtonirving.blogspot.com may be a bit sparse this holiday time.

Failing in that, I'm decided to make my Ideas vault public.


My first publicly posted one:
Roll your own insta-community wireless


1) Get in the Omni antenna manufacturing business.
Omnis are the most poorly documented, and often most difficult to build antennae. When we're talking the difference between putting your USB adapter inside a dog food tin vs power tools, exacting measurements, etc. It's harder than it would appear to get people motivated.
So produce (HEAP style), a good set of instructions for the easiest available 14-24dBi antenna available
2) Set up a demand register
Tied in to a pledge bank. Take the names of interested parties, when there's more than X within some geographic/topographic area, start the ball rolling
3) Start the ball rolling
Each insta-community needs

• A phone line that can be DSL enabled
• An unlimited 1.5mbit (or faster) Internet connection
• A Linksys WRT54G with the appropriate firmware
• A bitchin Omni

4) Upfront and ongoing costs. (These may scale)

• DSL Line activation ($120)
  
• Linksys WRT54G ($110)
  
• Omni Antenna+Pigtail ($35+$???)
  
• A guy (a volunteer?)
  
• DSL monthly fee ($90)
  
• Power/miscellany/compensation($10+$5+$10)

Total upfront:
$305 (approx)
Ongoing: $100

So that's the rough sketch. Find 5 interested parties, and the initial investment is $60 per person. Your first month of Internet is $18 for a respectable CIR of 300Kbits.
Even better, you can chuck files around with your friends for free, and you're a building block of a community wireless network.

10x5 person nodes, a little Mobilemesh magic on your WRT54G's, and you've got yourself a suburb-wide community wireless