Read a great new book by Chris Anderson titled, “Free – The Past and Future of a Radical Price” .

For those wondering, Chris did put his money where his mouth is.. I downloaded the entire audio book… yes for free, from Audible.com.

Overall the book is a good read/listen. Goes through the history of free, as well as the psychological impact of the whole concept along side capitalism. But certainly one of the more interesting chapters was the one that covered The Attention and Reputation Economy.

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”. So as information of various forms (news, music, historic reference) becomes virtually free and money no longer rules, what does? As information is free and abundant, it requires our time or “attention” to give it value. The sources of information therefore also fight to build their “reputation” as worthy of our ongoing attention.

But what gauges the economy of Attention and Reputation? Hits on a webpage certainly represent how much attention an internet data source is receiving (similar to TV ratings), and page rank is possibly the ultimate gauge of reputation since its formula takes into consideration the number of links that point to a webpage and therefore recommend it, thereby raising its reputation. It’s then up to the owner of that attention and reputation to translate them into the monetary economy through some means, for example advertising.

There are also other micro social economies of this nature throughout the internet with their own social currency. For example, in Facebook you earn reputation through the number of friends you have, Twitter via followers, etc. I’m actually exploring one of these economies, Blip.fm,  in a more detail. Immersing myself to analyze its nature and social dynamics. It’s quite fascinating. More to come in a follow up post.

With the streamlining of our lives by computers and the sacrifice of passive TV watching for the interactive, collaborative, and social internet, we work our way up Mazlow’s heirarchy of needs, and closer to the tip of the pyramid, namely Self Actualization. Thanks to the interactive social internet that allows are creativity to produce, collaborate, and share content, these attributes have never flourished as quickly and been so accessible.

What I wonder however, if the internet is making the various levels of the pyramid more easily accessible (ie. shrinking the pyramid’s height). How will this effect the lower end of the of the hierarchy, in particular employment. In the past, the achievement of self-actualization was based primarily on the person’s contributions through their jobs, and what they achieved throughout their career. With the higher levels now more readily available to all via the internet, does this create a lesser dependency on employment for self-actualization? Is this the reason why kids these days are labeled with a sense of entitlement?

Stuck in my head…

So I’ve done it… taken the plunge and bought the 3Gs.

To be honest I probably wouldn’t have forked out the money ($400) for the hardware upgrade, had it not been for my wife bugging me to so she can inherit my old iPhone 3G. Guess I can’t complain…

First (not-too-technical) Impression:

• Speed. oh yes, speed. Probably one of the main reason for the upgrade is noticing how sluggish my 3G was becoming.  Was starting to run into low memory issues and sluggish apps. The 3Gs didn’t appear snappier at first. But after revisiting my old 3G. You definitely notice the difference! (hope my wife doesn’t read this)
• Size. Yes Size does matter. I found myself running out of space on my old iPhone and having to select less and less content in iTunes for my 16GB 3G. With my 32GB 3Gs… I just sync it all! …with room to spare.
• Autofocus. One of my biggest pet peeves was the 3G camera. I can’t say the 3Gs camera is better overall, but it focuses! No more blurry out of focus crap photos from my 3G camera. Wow what a difference a little focus makes. (really hope my wife doesn’t read this)
• Compass. I honestly don’t see myself using the compass on its own. And can’t picture myself spending the $100 for the navigation apps. But the one thing I will use the compass for is augmented reality. Just downloaded and played with the Urbanspoon app updated with augmented reality… very cool!
• Video. A bonus is the ability to capture video and video editing. Not sure I’d take advantage of this often, especially editing. But I’m sure it will come in handy when a friend decides to do something stupid.
• Voice Control. Cool feature. Impress friends. But likely won’t use.  Rarely does it get my request correct. But “Play songs by the Beatles” never fails. That’s what I use to demo and wow friends. When they ask me to request another song, I quickly change the subject… “… and it also has a compass! Look!”

So overall, unless you are really irked with your 3G performance, or have money to spare,  or have a wonderful wife willing to take your hand me downs … love you honey :) … I would recommend waiting for the next generation iPhone. And don’t forget the upcoming Tablet!

trapster

Here’s a recommendation for an iPhone app: Trapster. Trapster allows you to view and identify speedtraps. The application even provides a voice warning system to warn you of oncoming known traps.

I have to admit though that I am recommending it for my own benefit. Because trapster is a perfect example of Network Effects.

The standard example to demonstrate Network Effects is the telephone. The more people have and use the telephone, the more valuable the system becomes.

Well with trapster, as people contribute their knowledge of speedtraps, all local trapster users benefit. The application allows you to rate existing traps as well as delete ones on your map.

Even more critical is the ability to identify live speed traps in real-time. I won’t go into the details here of all the features. Best to check the site for that. I have yet to understand how Trapster Trusted Groups work. Perhaps someone can post a comment explaining.

I will however recommend it be used with a car adapter. I have seen it suck the life out of my battery when not connected to a charger.

Does it work?…

I was out for lunch one day with a buddy from work and wanted to demonstrate the voice feature. So we went in search of the closest trap identified, which wasn’t hard to do given the number of traps in the Markham vicinity. As we went approached the voice came on and warned “Warning, approaching common speed trap” or something to that effect. And as we went over the hill I said, “It says the trap is usually over …” and before I could finish my sentence, we both were stunned in silence as we caught the glimpse of a man in uniform pointing his laser gun at us…. Needless to say my buddy was convinced. :)

The app is also available for Blackberry, Andriod phones, etc.

Michael Jackson’s death reminded me of something I recently learned.

I attended defibrillator training at work, one of 4 in case of a medical emergency.

During the course, the instructor stated a fact that shocked me.

In the movies you always see people flat-lining (essentially dying) and being resuscitated using manual CPR or a defibrillator. But the instructor mentioned this is more likely during Ventricle Fibrillation (V-Fib), which is a twitching of the heart muscles which lasts only 6-8 minutes or so, and very unlikely after flat-lining or when the heart completely stops, at which point, according to him, there is roughly only a 0.0001% chance of survival.

Flatline

Now that we know the goods about the new iPhone 3Gs and have seen the related Rogers pricing, time for me to make up my mind as to whether I will be upgrading my iPhone 3G.

Likely scenario is I’ll grab the new 3Gs for my birthday and my wife will inherit my old 3G (Thanks honey!). She is actually looking for a new plan so I’ll even get to buy it at the $299 price (yes I want my 32GBs).

So I guess my decision is made…

Back in 2007 I talked about the cyclic nature of music and how 80’s music was making a comeback.

This was reaffirmed with the recent release of a Talking Heads best of album:

Available at your local Starbucks.

Same as it every was…

Back in the 90s there was a big movement within Alternative, Folk Rock, and even mainstream Pop music that focused on songs in minor keys. Very complex and even dark minor chords brought us songs with deeper emotional characteristics, which made me appreciate them more than the standard 3 major chord songs that are fun and light, but not as “intelligent” as its counterpart.

It’s nice to see a few albums come out recently that seem to bring back this style of music, including Swoon by the Silversun Pickups:

With thousands if not hundreds of thousands of young teens addicted to the video games: Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I’m curios to see how this will influence the music scene in the next 5 -10 years.

There are many suggestions as to what Web 3.0 will be. Here is one from Google’s Eric Schmidt that describes it in terms of applications structured based on simple Web services in The Cloud:

Sure.. I’ll accept that. But what about Web 4.0? Here are my thoughts…

Web 1.0 helped connect people to information.

Web 2.0 helped connect people to other people through social networks.

Web 3.0 will help connect Web services in The Cloud to form meaningful situational applications

Web 4.0 will help further connect the physical world to the internet

The Web is often compared to the human brain in its workings. Google, the search engine of the web, was designed around cognitive scientific theory, with its creators fluent in artificial intelligence. If the internet is the world’s brain, then in order to create a Smarter Planet, we need to connect the brain to the physical world. I always thought IBM was behind when it came to Web 2.0… in reality they are simply looking ahead with Web 3.0 (SOA) and now Web 4.0 (Smarter Planet).

To accomplish this sensory devices will be required that can translate physical qualities into data, and log the data chronologically through feeds. This is nothing new. Weather stations provided this type of data for many years now. But we’ll see it more and more in our daily physical lives, here for an example is a plant tweeting its soils moisture condition:

http://twitter.com/startrkplant

…and the data will become more readily available, immediately, through the internet, The Cloud, in the form of feeds, and processed and abstracted intelligently through layers of Web services or pipes:

Yahoo! Pipes

… the same way our brain processes, translates, and abstracts our own sensory data retrieved from our eyes, nose, hands, tongue, ears, etc.

I may expand on this thought more in future posts… till then it will be stuck in my head.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – Mark Twain

Famous words by Mark Twain emphasize my recent observations…

In my previous post called re-80’s, I talked about the cycles of music. I think this cyclic nature is ubiquitous. You see it in music, fashion, politics, and the economy. Not an exact duplication, but almost a refinement. Not a repeat, but a rhyme.

Funny thing is the frequency of this cycle seems to be about 25 years or so. So if this is correct it could explain a few things.

If a parent generation has children in their teens or later in their 30s, a culture gap forms between the generations. If this happens on a large enough scale, say as part of a baby boom, then it’s recognized socially as a generation gap.

Wish I had the time and resources to prove this theory. Until then this theory will simply be stuck in my head…