When less is more

WHY is it so many manufacturers cannot leave well alone? They go to great pains to produce exquisite pieces of technology. Then too often, instead of merely honing the rough edges away to perfection, they spoil everything by adding unnecessary bells and whistles and unwarranted girth. In the pursuit of sales, they seem to feel they must continually add further features to keep jaded customers coming back for more. It is as if consumers can’t be trusted to respect the product for what the designers originally intended.

Occasionally, they get it right. When the little Flip Mino camcorder came out a couple of years ago, your correspondent (not an instinctive early adopter) just knew it was something he had to have. What impressed him about the design was not simply the gadget’s diminutive proportions and low price, but the way the developers had so ruthlessly resisted all the marketing pressure to add further features—and had single-mindedly maintained the design’s clarity of purpose. The Flip had one function, and one only—to fit in a shirt-pocket ready to be flipped out in a trice for those fleeting video moments. This it did brilliantly. Though the Flip’s performance has kept pace with technical improvements, subsequent versions have steadfastly maintained the designer’s original concept.

The Economist

For evolving robots, deception is in the genes

Researchers in Switzerland have developed an experimental system that allows them to track the evolution of social cues. The experiments do not, however, involve the Swiss population. Instead, the individuals involved are small-wheeled robots that compete for food and emit light to signal to their neighbors. Evolution occurs because their behavior is controlled by a set of 33 digital "genes." In a paper that will be released later this week by PNAS, the authors describe how these robots evolve to avoid tipping their competitors off to the site of a food source.

These robots and the ecosystem they "live" in is described in a paper they have published previously in Current Biology. The robots themselves have a floor sensor, wheels, a camera, and light that can display different colors. They're set loose in an arena that contains two hubs, one with food that improves their health, and a second with poison that damages it. The hubs look identical from a distance, and can only be distinguished at close range using the floor sensor.

ars technica

Amish newspaper succeeds the old-fashioned way

SUGARCREEK, Ohio -

The writers' grievances came in the form of angry letters, carried over bumpy rural roads to the newspaper office serving the Amish community.

In a world where news still travels at a mail carrier's pace, the farmers, preachers and mechanics responsible for filling The Budget threatened to go on strike if the 119-year-old Amish weekly went ahead with its plan to go online.

The writers, known as scribes, feared their plainspoken dispatches would become fodder for entertainment in the "English," or non-Amish, world. The editors hastily rescinded the plan shortly after proposing it in 2006, and today, only local news briefs appear on The Budget's bare-bones Web site.

"My gosh, they spoke in volume," said Keith Rathbun, publisher of The Budget, a newspaper mailed to nearly 20,000 subscribers across the U.S. and Canada. "I'd be a fool to not pay attention to it."

Far from impeding the newspaper's success, shunning the Internet actually solidified its steadfast fan base.

Yahoo Tech

The Law of Accelerating Returns

"An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."

The Law of Accelerating Returns, Ray Kurzweil

Quitting cigarettes oldschool

Is your Palm Pre spying on you?

Is your Palm Pre spying on you and sending your GPS coordinates and more back to the Palm mothership on a daily basis? According to mobile application developer Joey Hess, that's exactly what is happening. He asserts on his personal blog that data on the location and app used on the Palm's Pre smartphone is being sent to Palm.

The report of Palm snooping on its customers is growing in volume within the blogosphere with many taking the allegations seriously. To be clear, the allegation can not be confirmed.

MSNBC

Les Paul, 1915-2009

Les Paul, 94, a Grammy Award-winning guitar virtuoso and inventor who helped bring his instrument, typically assigned to chug along rhythmically and compliantly, to the forefront of jazz and rock-and-roll performance, died today at a hospital in White Plains, N.Y. He had pneumonia.

The Washington Post

American Music Masters

Ground Control with Major Tom: Your Life in Your Hand

I have never been much of a gadget guy. I have outdated TVs( seriously- one of them has a VCR in it), a used iPod( 50 bucks), a cheap laptop, and the N64( Turok/Mario Cart rules!) is still my game console of choice. Dont get me wrong- I love technology. I love playing XBox, I love iPods, I love my computer. But I never seek out gadgets- they have to bite me in the ass.

Here is where I admit that my ass hath been bitten by a slick little serpent tempting me to partake of the Apple. That slick little serpent is none other than the iPhone. I have never had a smartphone, or a cool phone at all-the phone I just replaced was a flip nokia with its front screen broken and no real internet access. I am an admitted latecomer to this arena, so any observation I may make is coming from a neophyte. I make this disclaimer because there are many murmurings of discontent against Apple and AT&T lately, coming from disillusioned users. I respect their opinion, and will have to experience my own troubles before i can comment on this. I would simply like to comment on this wonderful lil gadget on a general level, just as we love to do here at The Modular Man.

My cell bill is more expensive than it has been in the past, but this is understandable in light of unlimited data access, and, as one of my coworkers so aptly pointed out, it is a small price to pay for 'your life in your hand'.
I can pay my bills, check my email, take photos and videos, access all my work data, and even post on this blog. I can chart the seas, listen to albums, call my brothers, and teach my children phonics. I can read a book or sketch with my finger. I can IM, watch movies and play games. All of this from my literal fingertips. Once again-this may be nothing new to some people, but it is mind blowing to this modular man. I cannot imagine my now passed grandparents being able to process a device like this. or even assimilate our now accepted verbiage like 'there's an app for that'( "What the hell is an 'app'?", my grandpa would say). Even a few years ago this insanely easy to use device was but a twinkle in Steve Job's eye. Not even the visionary cartoon the Jetsons imagined something so simple yet so complex.

To all the people complaining about the lack of MMS and Tethering through AT&T on the iPhone at this time(understandably so), or the Google/Apple 'divorce', I would like to remind us all that a device of this nature was a fairy tale back in the day.
This is what we call Transience: the passing of time through technological advance so quickly our minds cannot process the change, thus taking it for granted. In this aspect, I am glad that I am a late comer to this arena. I don't want transience to steal my joy. I cant wait until the iPhone's full functionality is unleashed upon the user by a carrier that can handle it all(AT&T says the missing features are coming soon), or when the troubled waters between Google and Apple settle, but until then, my 3GS is beautiful just the way it is. Seriously, its like Christmas at our house.

Now excuse me while i go to bask in the warm glow of my life in my hand.

Checking e-mail before your morning coffee? You're not alone

Before I worked for Ars, I had a pretty traditional office job. As part of my daily routine, I got up at 6:30 am, took a shower, made breakfast, and sat down in front of the computer to eat and respond to e-mail before hopping in the car to sit in traffic. It's the "sat down in front of the computer" part that used to take some of my friends by surprise (who responded to personal e-mail before 7 am five years ago?), but that behavior seems to be increasing, with more and more people checking e-mails, text messages, and news online before their first cup of coffee.

The New York Times recently highlighted the dramatic change in many families' mornings, noting that kids are hopping on Facebook while Mom and Dad are checking up on e-mail and Twitter the minute they wake up.

"Things that I thought were unacceptable a few years ago are now commonplace in my house,” one mother, Dorsey Gude, told the Times, "like all four of us starting the day on four computers in four separate rooms." One father said that he sends his son text messages to wake him up in the morning.

ars technica

Tonight at the Royal Opera House, singers belt tweets

The Royal Opera House in London typically hosts performances of classical operas such as “The Magic Flute” and “Carmen.”

But tonight, singers at the prestigious performance venue will take center stage and belt lyrical tweets from the world’s first Twitter opera.

The lines of the libretto, written using a maximum of 140 characters, are being entirely composed by Twitter users @YourOpera, and will be set to music by composer Helen Porter. (All of the lines can be viewed on the Royal Opera House’s blog.)

In September, the Royal Opera House plans to perform a full-length version of the Twitter opera in front of an audience as part of the Deloitte Ignite festival, according to a press release.

Alison Duthie, a spokeswoman for the Royal Opera House, hopes the micro-blogging experiment will encourage people to learn more about opera.

“It’s the people’s opera, and the perfect way for everyone to become involved with the inventiveness of opera as the ultimate form of storytelling,” she says.

But the unique opera isn’t catching on with everyone. In an interview with the London Evening Standard, Jeremy Pound, BBC Music Magazine’s deputy editor said, “It was an accident waiting to happen. Whenever there is a new fad, you know that someone in the art world is going to grab it by the horns.” He cautions that the Royal Opera House “should be careful that it doesn’t overtake the serious stuff they do.”

Currently, the Royal Opera House twitter feed has 774 followers. Already, hundreds of operatic tweets, written in English, have been added to the flourishing Twitter opera, which features a storyline centered around “tweeting” birds who kidnap a man as well as a biochemist seeking to make a potion that will let people talk to birds.

Here’s a few lines from the Twitter opera thus far:

William awakens, and hears the tell-tale tap-tap tap of someone outside his room twittering on their phone

And with that he climbed a nearby tree and resolved to dwell amongst the leaves for the rest of his days

Hans (sword in hand, lest you forget): “how can I reach my love in a tower so high? If I was a bird, then I could fly. We aren’t meant to be apart? Oh my breaking heart”

The ginger cat sings an aria urging people never to stop feeding the pigeons, for they are his food

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Will you contribute lines to the world’s first Twitter opera? Tell us below or share your thoughts with us on Twitter.

Christian Science Monitor