CourseCast of the Week

Episode 0006, 06/02/2007

Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the Month, Episode 6, for June, 2007.

This is Ken Baldauf with more technology news and information targeted at college students.

This CourseCast is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.course.com for innovative textbooks and creative electronic learning solutions for higher education.

Story 1 - Cameras Everywhere

Google maps has a new feature called Street View. By sending high tech cars equipped with expensive camera equipment down the streets of U.S. cities, Google Maps is able to provide you with a 360-degree street view of a location. Just click and drag the little man icon to any blue highlighted street in San Francisco, Miami beach, New York, Las Vegas, or Denver and a window pops open showing you a photograph taken from that location. Using navigation buttons you can rotate the view 360 degrees, zoom in and out, and even stroll down the street. Some privacy concerns have been raised over the technology, since the photographs capture pedestrians, cars, license plate numbers, and other objects and activities that people may wish to keep private. For example, in some street view images you can see through windows into homes, in one image you see a man apparently breaking into an apartment, in another you see college students sunbathing. These people were obviously unaware that they were being photographed.

Spy drones added to Britain's surveillance society (Reuters)

In reality, pedestrians are photographed by various security cameras in most urban public places. The UK has developed a reputation for being the most intensely monitored country in the world. British cities use 4.2 million cameras as a cost-effective way to catch criminals. That's one camera for every 14 citizens. It is estimated that the average resident of London is photographed 300 times per day just walking around town. Recently British law enforcement has been testing a small remote-controlled, camera-equipped helicopter that can hover above inner city streets to monitor suspected criminals.

In his book "The Transparent Society", David Brin describes the pervasive use of surveillance technologies in all cities. He believes that there is little chance of escaping the trend towards increasing amounts of video and audio surveillance in public places. He also believes that our concern should be about who is doing the monitoring, and who is monitoring the monitors. In a transparent society, all citizens would have access to surveillance data and in essence be able to watch those watching them --- kind of like the photos in Google Maps Street View. In a non-transparent society, only law enforcement and government has access to surveillance data, as is the case in many of our cities today. That type of surveillance, some fear, could lead to an abuse of civil liberties. It's important that all of us consider the impact of technologies on our lives and become involved with helping our political leaders to establish policies and laws regarding the responsible use of technology.

Story 2 - Power to the People

Most Web search engines apply the power of huge databases, processors, and algorithms - their secret formula for generating useful search results. Some companies are finding that people power can outsmart the artificial intelligence systems used by the big search engines when it comes to generating quality results.

Internet startup Mahalo, which is Hawaiian for "you're welcome", has a team of 40 full time human experts who have created high-quality search results for the top 4,000 search terms. The team plans to add 500 additional terms per week in hopes of having 10,000 terms by the end of their beta testing in 2008. Running a search on the name Steve Jobs at www.mahalo.com (m-a-h-a-l-o) generates impressive results. Fast facts about Mr. Jobs are listed in a box on the right including his current position, his birthday, his net worth and annual salary, while the search results provide the top 7 links to the top Web sites about Mr. Jobs, along with a video of a recent speech. The results go on to categorize other links having to do with Steve Jobs including News and Articles, Photos, Videos, and Biographies. All of this is provided on one page - there's no need to filter through the 118,000,000 results provided by Google.

Chacha at www.chacha.com is another search engine powered by people. Search results are provided through a combination of computer and human intelligence. If you can't find what you are looking for, just click "Chat with a Guide" to enlist the assistance of a human search expert. Chacha has recruited 30,000 live "guides" who are mostly retirees, college students, and work-at-home moms looking to make a little extra cash.

Another people-powered online tool is Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The service at www.mturk.com allows you to earn money doing activities that are difficult for computers. The service provides you with human intelligence tasks, or HITs, that companies are willing to pay you to do. For example, one HIT has people finding the most interesting people on Facebook - this is something that is easy for a human but difficult to automate in artificial intelligence. Mechanical Turk and other similar services are taking advantage of the fact that big jobs can be accomplished by breaking them into thousands of small ones and distributing them to willing workers interested in making a couple bucks.

Story 3 - Tabletop Computing

Ubiquitous computing is defined at Wikipedia as the post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. Microsoft took us one giant step closer to ubiquitous computing with a recent demo of their latest technology. At a Wall Street Journal conference in Carlsbad, California, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demonstrated a tabletop computer system called Surface. Surface computing turns an ordinary table into an interactive interface to access digital content and networked computing services through natural gestures and touch.

Microsoft’s surface computing does not use a mouse or keyboard. Small groups can sit around the table and interact with software with their fingers and hands. For example, groups can use the table for digital finger painting, passing around photos, ordering a drink in a lounge, or selecting music tracks for listening. The table can also recognize objects placed on the surface.

Steve Ballmer has high hopes for the technology. "We see this as a multibillion-dollar category," he said in a statement, "and we envision a time when surface-computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror."

Caesars Palace and other Las Vegas properties plan to provide the technology to guests for reserving concert tickets, going on virtual nightclub tours, reviewing restaurant menus, or booking spa sessions, all while at the dinner table.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide plan to use the technology to create a "new lobby experience" where guests can listen to music and order food or drinks, paying for them by simply placing a credit card on the table surface.

Story 4 - New Briefs

1. As anticipated, iTunes is now offering music downloads with digital rights management (DRM) technology removed. Download the latest version of iTunes to access "iTunes Plus" where the songs you download are slightly more expensive but can be transferred to any device that plays MP3.

2. Amazon plans to get in the music download business later this year with a new online music store that will carry only DRM-free music. The store is expected to give iTunes a run for its money.

3. Google has altered its search engine to include all kinds of files in its search results. The new evolution of Google called Universal Search provides Web page links, videos, images, maps, and other content in search results in the order that a Google formula deems to be most relevant.

Cool Tools of the Month

The Democracy Player (soon to be called Miro) streams video programming with 1,000 free channels and a built-in channel guide. It features integration with YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and BitTorrent, and plays virtually any video format, in full-screen, high-definition quality. Download it from www.getdemocracy.com

BlueOrganizer is useful add-on for your Web browser that ties together the most popular Web tools and makes them accessible from a button on your browser's toolbar. The tool identifies the Web page content that you are viewing and provides links to related content from popular Web services like photos from Flickr, articles from Wikipedia, videos on YouTube, and blogs, BlueOrganizer is also a very powerful and intuitive book marking tool that automatically assigns tags to your favorites and allows you to view them by categories with screenshots. Download it from www.adaptiveblue.com

Well that's it for this month’s CourseCast. Links to this month's stories and many more news and information resources are provided at the CourseCast Web site accessible from www.course.com. Until next time have a great month and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!