A Glimpse of Paris

My daughter has settled in Paris for the spring semester, arriving two weeks ago. She is staying in a lovely private home arranged by the American University there as a part of an exchange program with U.C. Berkeley. What an experience for her - I’m envious!

So what does this have to do with a blog on technology? Read on.

In preparation for her trip there, we tried to find out if she would have some kind of broadband access from her apartment, hoping that we could sign her up for a VOIP phone number and hook in the adapter there so she could call home for free and vice versa. But of course we soon found out that broadband was not available, in fact, it is apparently not nearly as common a thing in private homes there. So, we told her to start looking for cheap calling cards.

She also started wondering about how she was going to get her assignments. At Berkeley, everyone is online - everyone. They sign up for classes online, get their assignments, turn in their assignments, they collaborate in groups online for projects and they communicate with their professors online. They even take tests and quizzes online in some cases. The internet is totally integrated into the school experience and every student is expected to have access to a computer and the internet.

No so at the American University in Paris. Here they don’t even have a system for the students to sign up for classes online. It’s all done on paper, so you don’t know what classes are open or not until you submit your requests in person. Seems pretty archaic to me. So at this university, the students get their assignments in lecture, turn in their assignments on paper the same way, and make appointments to see the professor via phone. It’s all quite traditional and civilized and I suppose there is nothing wrong with it from an educational perspective. But it is fascinating to me that Berkeley is so far ahead technologically. After all, one expects the major capitals of the world to be at the forefront of technology, or at least close, and the large universities in those cities to be examples for all to follow.

So, on her third day there, my daughter noticed an internet cafe a block from her apartment, and resigned herself to going there to check her e-mail and tell us when she would call. Apparently this is how a great many people in Paris use the internet. We still have them in the U.S. but they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

But then something extraordinary happened. For some reason my daughter decided to move her computer closer to the window in her room and voila’ a window popped up on her screen saying that her laptop had found a wireless network. Apparently the college, which is about a half block away has a wireless network broadcasting with a strong signal. She clicked “ok” and she was online! No authentication whatsoever.

How I found out about all this is I got an e-mail from her all excited that she is online. She was experiencing definite signs of internet withdrawal, but now everything is right with the world again. Now we can chat online and exchange pictures daily using Picasa and Hello (both excellent and free thanks to Google) and the phone bills look they may now be manageable.

As the title of this post says, this is only a glimpse of Paris, and I suspect that the city is really much more technologically advanced than these comments would suggest. It will be interesting to follow my daughter’s education in French culture and to see how such a fiercely nationalistic country steeped in tradition deals with the pressures of ever-changing technology. I will post an update in a few months as more data flows across the Atlantic.

Narrow Minded Geeks

I confess - I’m guilty of it just like many other people. What I’m talking about is the state of mind that people fall into when they start to think that the rest of the country is just like them, with the same problems and the same choices.

The actual truth is a lot different, and for me it takes a regular Whack on the Side the Head (to borrow a phrase from Roger von Oech) to keep me from regressing into the stereotyping trap.

So while I was talking to Virgil the other day (he’s a friend who lives in the eastern part of L.A. about 30 miles away from me), I got my Whack administered when he told me he can’t get broadband in his neighborhood. Their cable company doesn’t offer broadband and he was told that his house was two blocks outside of the boundary where he could get DSL. He even checked into a satellite uplink setup and they still want over $500 for the equipment and about $75/month.

Now this just didn’t make sense to me because we both live in the metropolitan area of LA. It’s not like he lives out in some rural valley where you schedule your trips into town. We’re talking one of the largest urbanized areas of the world – the proverbial concrete jungle that goes on for a hundred miles. Furthermore, Virgil lives in a pretty nice neighborhood of middle to upper class suburban homes where you would expect the demand to be pretty high for broadband.

I guess what struck me the most was that I’ve had DSL for over three years and I guess I just assumed that everyone in the LA area had a choice of either DSL or cable broadband if they wanted it.

I started thinking: If Virgil can’t get broadband in Los Angeles, then how can broadband be spreading so fast through out the country? It makes me suspicious of industry statistics that claim 50% of home internet users now have broadband. Seems sort of unlikely now doesn’t it? If you go to the website DSL reports, you can do a test to see if your house is within 18,000 feet of the central office, which is apparently the limit for reliable DSL service. For those of you who forgot your high school math, that’s about 3 ½ miles.

Now I know that there are a heck of a lot of homes in this country that are more than 3 ½ miles from a central phone office, and who also don’t have broadband cable running all the way out to their houses. These rural folks have electricity, and phone service and they get their TV from a little satellite dish mounted on the side of the barn. Maybe these numbers are extrapolations from polls taken in urban areas, or maybe they have users mixed up with households. For instance, I have one DSL account, 4 people who share it, and 7 different e-mail addresses. The statistics could vary quite a lot depending on which one of those numbers you are counting.

Sometimes I think that the enormous tech industry in the U.S. is so totally insular and hyped up on themselves that they have completely forgotten about the guy who works all day at some regular non-technical job and is struggling to protect his own version of “the simple life.” He doesn’t have 3 computers networked to a DSL modem with internet connections to a media server and wireless connections to his internet enabled refrigerator. He doesn’t even own a laptop and can’t imagine why someone would lug one to Starbucks to surf the net. The only thing that really connects this guy to the high tech industry on a personal level is his cellphone, which he bought so his wife can contact him when he is out on a job to ask him to buy milk on his way home.

After braving the crowds at CES in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago, I’m pretty sure that the majority of technical enthusiasts (i.e. geeks) that I saw there have very little contact with the folks who are labeled “late adopters.” Maybe it would be a good idea to set up a revolving program to send all these account executives of high tech firms out to roam the country in a mobile home for a month each. They would certainly get a whole new perspective on the broad profile of the American consumer. I’ll drive.

Free WiFi

A few weeks ago my wife and I drove up to northern California to visit my daughter at Berkeley. Since # 2 daughter likes to think she is descended from royalty (must be several generations back), she insisted that the next morning we go to a little French restaurant called Le Bateau Ivre for breakfast. Although the service was pretty slow, the food was excellent and reasonable so they got two out of three right. But what impressed me most (note: this will reveal a lot about my priorities) was the fact that they had a sign up that announced free WiFi access.

When we were finished eating and I knew we probably had about 10 minutes to kill before our waiter returned with the credit card, I decided to walk over and talk to the owner about the WiFi. What I learned is that the free access had not been up for too long, but they were already quite pleased with the business it brought in. They have two transmitters which serve about 50 tables inside and outside and the owner claims that they don’t get many people who abuse the free service.

No doubt the reason this caught my attention was the fact that I had just, a few weeks before, mentally added up all the money I pay each month for stuff like internet, satellite, cellphones, land lines, etc. Yes, I know that there are a growing number of large hotel chains who cater to businessmen that now offer free internet hookup in the rooms, but here was a small restaurant that was offering the same thing. It was a ray of hope - a sign of good things to come. I’m sure we will always pay for high speed access at home because it will carry an increasingly larger and larger amount of data, but public access for undemanding tasks? - that should be free.

Patience....

Master of you own Domain

Our family has had Earthlink DSL service for several years now and for the most part it works fine. However, occasionally it seems to get really flaky and goes down for several hours, or even the better part of a day. Furthermore, I’m still paying the same $50/month that I paid a couple years ago which I think is too much. So the other day I asked myself, “what would happen if I finally got fed up with Earthlink and decided to go with another online service instead?”

The answer to my question is something I'd rather avoid, which my internet service is counting on. My whole family and I would have to get new e-mail addresses and notify hundreds and hundreds of people and accounts of the change. Big problem, and getting worse as each day goes by!! Naturally I started to wonder if there is any way to fix this problem now before it gets even more painful?

Here is what I came up with, and recommend to others:

I hunted around and found a good hosting service, picked an inexpensive hosting package and registered my own domain name. Sounds complicated but it took me all of about 30 minutes to make the decision and get set up. I tried several different domain names until I found one that I liked and thought I would be able to live with for a long time. The package I chose (through www.1and1.com) includes three domain names, but they have a slightly cheaper package that includes one name for only $7/month. It also includes 200 e-mail addresses, lots of free software to help you design and publish a simple web site, and a whole bunch of other things like free virus checking, Webmail, etc. My feeling here is that before you know it, everyone will have their own personal website, so why not reserve a good name now?

If you are not interested or ready to set up your own website, then go with just the domain name registration and your own personal e-mail account. At my same hosting service the domain registration only costs $6/year and you can get your own personal e-mail account for $1/month. At this point you may be asking why would I want to do all this if I already get a free account from Yahoo?

Here is why: For the cost of one cup of regular Starbucks coffee per month ($1.50), you can have your own domain name, like decembersunshine.com and 5 e-mail addresses with more space then you will ever need. With that comes free virus and spam filtering and free Webmail when you’re traveling. You can use Outlook at home or their Webmail connection at home or while traveling.

Now you can switch internet services whenever you choose without having to change your e-mail address. Cool! What’s more, you have total control over the prefix part of the e-mail address (the part that comes before the @), since you now own the domain name (the part following the @). Call yourself bubba@decembersunshine.com or whatever you want and change it if you need to. You can even set it up so that mail addressed to any prefix before the @ goes to a special mailbox.

The point here is that your e-mail address is going to take on an increasingly important role in your life as each year passes, so why not take control over it now before all the interesting domain names are gone?

I have to admit that I have an ulterior motive in trying to get people to separate themselves from their ISP e-mail service. Who knows, maybe if this happens to a significant degree, then people may be more inclined to shop around for a cheaper internet service (as I am getting ready to do) and put the pressure on them all to lower their prices.

Craft your own personalized e-mail address and become the master of your own domain for just a few bucks a month !!!

Virtual Hunting

This one comes under the heading, “Ain’t technology great!” Since video and computer games have for a long time now, offered people the opportunity to engage in the fantasy of playing Rambo or James Bond with a full arsenal of weapons at their disposal, it comes as no surprise that someone is taking the whole shooting experience to a new level.

I just discovered that you can subscribe to a website that has a real rifle set up on a Texas shooting range that you control while sitting at the computer in your family room. In an attempt to make this experience a little more realistic, there are four cameras along with the aiming of the gun and the trigger release. One camera is on the target, one mounted on the rifle scope, and two others that pan the area. Oh, and there is an attendant sitting behind the gun (hopefully the aiming mechanism has limit stops), who is probably secretly laughing at you for paying $15/month plus $6 for every ten shots.

Ok, so this all sounds like the kind of thing that would appeal to 11 year-old boys who live in the big city and have never had the opportunity to shoot a gun, right? And it also sounds like something that would get old after you do it twice, right?
But we’re both not thinking far enough ahead.

According to the L.A. Times , these folks are planning to up the ante and introduce real live moving targets for the virtual hunter to shoot. I’m not kidding. They are considering giving the armchair hunter the option of shooting several different kinds of live animals, such as antelope, sheep and wild hogs. Now, even though I’m fine with people hunting for food when that is part of their normal lifestyle, I've never had much regard for the killing of animals for sport. This situation is made worse because the animals in question normally hang out on one side of an open field, and then when they get hungry, head over for dinner which they know will be on the opposite side of the field. The open field is of course where you are sitting, at least virtually, with your rifle. It’s more like a shooting gallery than a hunting experience.

What’s next you ask? I hesitate to speculate, but I can’t help it. Lets say that the whole idea of real-life virtual experiences (is that an oxymoron?) catches on. How much would people pay to be looking through a helmet-mounted video camera on a fireman entering a burning building? or how about an Iraqi soldier on patrol? or maybe a real African Safari?

For me this whole thing is a little too much like a bad science fiction movie. It’s all just a little too detached and surreal. But unfortunately even if the hunting thing never takes off, I sadly predict that other virtual adventure ideas will quickly become big business. We can only hope that someone is working on a real working Holo Deck (re: Star Trek) before too many animals or people get killed trying to satisfy armchair adventurers.