Technology
Peer-to-Peer Online Jukebox with Songs from each User
Today we have Pandora, Spotify, GrooveShark, and a dozen other sites to listen to music online. Each has its own caveats, does not really let you hear the music you want, has ADs or a subscription model, …
I often wonder why nobody created an online peer-to-peer Jukebox where each user contributes with some songs. The songs will be played/streamed directly from the each other’s computers, so if only one user has a particular song, who wants to listen to it will have to wait its turn in a queue.
Assuming that all the songs in the system are regularly purchased, the software/system could be designed in such a way that the songs are directly played from the owner’s computer to the speaker of the listener. In this way, there would be no copyright infringement.
Song recommendations, suggestions, and personalized stations will be easy to implement on top of this, as well as creating hardware radios which directly play music from the service. The system could even connect to the various cloud storage system (e.g., iMusic, Amazon, …) and pick up your songs from there so you don’t need your machine on all the time.
Car-Sharing Done Right
I often dream about creating a system that allows real car sharing. There will be a set of similar cars shared among all the users, and each will pay a quote of the global expenses every month. Nobody will own a car but will be allowed to (respectfully) use one from the pool.
When you need a car, you will just pull out your phone and say where you need to go. The system will indicate the closest car that you can take. You go there, the car will unlock, turn on, and you’ll be ready to go. At destination, you will turn off the car, get out, and it will be locked automatically ready for somebody else to pick it up.
You will be able to book cars in advance, of course. The system will automatically account for the fact that trips to the grocery store need a ride back, while trips to the airport may not, but users will be able to book slots of times in advance, or include return trips.
This will also help people to car-pool to work. There may not be a car available for you to take, but there may be a user close by that goes to the same place where you go. When cars will drive by itself it will be even better, they will all act as small buses which stop on demand.
The system will compute statistics on the times and locations in which cars are needed the most and facilitate to moves accordingly. Since it will know the destination of everybody, it can do a great deal of planning and optimization. In the end the number of cars in the system will not be minimal, but it will be way smaller than the number of cars that circulate today and stay idle for 95% of the time.
Since the majority of cars will be mostly used for small trips, electric cars will be able to thrive in the system. Charging station will be positioned in strategical points, starting from the most covered areas, and electric cars introduced there and used strategically until all of them can be substituted.
When cars will drive itself there will be no need for driving licenses. Kids will be able to get rides by their-selves as well (only in authorized places and not farther than a certain distance from their home) and parents will get an alert. A few mini-buses will also be in the system for trips which require just a bit more of space.
This system may also create jobs for people which will be tasked with check on the cars, perform maintenance, gas them up, move and clean them.
I really hope this is the future, and that we will get there pretty soon. There are too many cars around, too few parking spots, too many reckless drivers and too many accidents. And the Earth will thank us as well.
Password Fatigue? Touch Points in Pictures to Unlock your Device
In the last weeks I have read of a million new ways that people are thinking about to let us unlock our devices.
A few months ago somebody published a list of the most common iPhone passwords. It was funny to see 1234, 0000, 6666, GOD, LOVE and SEX on that list.
Microsoft claims that we suffer of “password fatigue” and to help out it seems they are going to let you draw some geometric figures on top of your pictures in their next version of Windows Mobile. Somebody was quick to point out that “it is easy to hack if you record people from behind”, and people said “oh, right” in admiration. I find that funny as well because it holds true for any password mechanism so I don’t know why it’s “scarier” for this method.
Of course, this is just “sparkles” thrown on top of the draw-a-pattern unlock method that was introduced by the Android devices. But Microsoft appeals “cute users” so it makes sense that they want to put pictures in the background.
Android also has an experimental “unlock with your face” feature. People quickly pointed out that they could fool it with a picture. No surprise there either for me, but apparently was a big deal. Unless there are some more biometric sensors (an infrared cam to measure heat on the image could be enough to start with) it will always be possible to use images. But apparently this was a good idea because Apple just filed a patent on this.
So, here is another idea to unlock my device: let me pick a picture and then touch in order N points on it of my choice.
If it’s a family picture, I may touch the head of my father, the foot of my sister, the leg of my mother, and the tail of my dog. In this order.
Easy to remember for me, but practically impossible for you to guess. There are probably thousands of combinations possible and everybody has its own pictures!
What do you think?
Photos in the Cloud: Geolocation, Auto-Tagging and Virtual Albums
Yesterday I was thinking to my next photocamera. I want it small but with some buttons (no clumsy touchscreen), capable of taking pictures at night, waterproof, with integrated GPS, and capable of backing up the pictures automatically when I get home. Unfortunately, I do not think that it exists yet.
Then I started thinking about how I would like the computer to help me organize my photo collection. It would be cool if tags were automatically added to the pictures, for example:
- using the GPS location it could add tags like “Europe, Italy, Tuscany, Pisa“, and maybe also things like “beach” or “hill” perhaps also using the camera settings
- using the timestamp it could add “Summer, August, 11th, 2011, evening“
- using face recognition it could add “people, kids, crowd” or “head shot“, the distance of those faces (e.g., “closeup”, “far”, etc) and perhaps the names of the people in the pictures
Once the pictures are mostly tagged and automatically uploaded online, it would be great if I could create virtual albums through searches on the tags. Right now, all the online photo services that I know obligate you to upload one copy of the picture for each album. That’s insane! I just want to type a few keywords, give a name to the album, and share it with my friends, not upload the same pictures a dozen times.
For example, if decide to create an album to show my family my great summer in Europe I could just search for “summer 2011 Europe” and it will bring up all these pictures. I can “hide” the pictures I don’t like, add a name to the album and email the link. Done. If I want to create a romantic time-line of all the beach shots with my girlfriend I could just search for our names and the keyword “beach”, sort them by timestamp, and publish the link. Done. And if I need an head shot for my new online profile, I can just search for my name and “head shot”, create an album, and ask my friends to vote on the best picture for me. Done.
How long will it take before all this happens?
Replacing household Power Outlets with Powered-Ethernet plugs
Between TV, cable box, surround stereo, game console and DVD Player I am sure I can find this mess of cables behind most of the TV sets all over the world.
At home I just had to move my satellite box from one room to the other and realized I had 4 wires (power, normal antenna, satellite antenna, and SCART) to disconnect and reconnect. Same goes for DVD player (3 cables), game console (4 cables), and so on. We can’t really do any better?
HDMI cables helped a bunch, combining video and audio of HD quality in a single small cable. That said, considering the bandwidth available on other connection types (e.g., USB, firewire, …) I am sure we can do even better.
What about a powered-HDMI cable so that I my DVD player and cable boxes can get/give all they need from the TV, including power? What about connecting the satellite/antenna/cable wire to the TV and that too passing through the powered-HDMI cable to the satellite box or the cable box?
Perhaps everything should just go through Ethernet so that every device is connected to the network and reads/writes information on there. Power should flow somewhere in there as well, so perhaps we need a new class of cables, which combines the power outlets with the network connection.
We all know that in the future every device will be connected to the Internet (including fridges, dishwashers and coffee machines), so having a solution like this will allow to easily hook them up to the network and to the power system of the house with one single cable.
With that configuration, a satellite box could be in the attic, receiving the satellite signal through the wire and communicating with the other devices (to change channel and output the MPEG stream) trough the house power/data network. Same goes for the cable box or your game console (assuming the games are downloaded). TVs will just need to be plugged into one outlet and will have access to all the boxes, computers and appliances of the house, and be able to control them through a standard protocol over the network. You will just need one remote, perhaps your just iPhone, to change channel and interact with everything through the TV.
