Needy and therapeutic robot toys

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A group from New York University (NYU)’s Interactive Telecommunications program has come up with an intriguing idea that seems to have struck a chord. Their “Needies” are soft stuffed toys with microprocessors and wireless technology that not only vocally request attention from the people around them and respond well to being petted and held, but actively compete between each other for attention. Jealous Needies may shout out “me, me, me!” or even “throw him!” if another Needy is being held. A video interview shows the Needies in action.

This reminds me of Paro, the Japanese robot seal, which responds to affection (but without the jealousy). It has successfully been tested with autistic and handicapped children and with elderly people, who can respond by becoming more social and interactive with other humans. Other robots are being used for similar therapeutic applications based on human/ machine bonding. While the Needies are intended as novelty toys, there is no question that people will will increasingly form emotional ties with robots. Tamagotchi was just the beginning. When robots are cuddly, responsive, and can speak, real bonds will be formed. A robot nanny that children will love will be here in a basic form in the next few years. Of course it would terrible if people left robots to bring up their children. But emotion-focused robots can and will play a positive role in play, care, and society.

Update: Sony withdraws its DRM

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Following on the previous story on Sony digital rights management, Sony has announced it will stop making CDs using this DRM technology, after the first virus that uses Sony’s copy-protection software to hide had been discovered. At a public event yesterday, Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary for policy at the Department for Homeland Security made pointed comments evidently aimed at Sony: “”It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer,” as he discussed the implications for the security of technology infrastructure. Given the Bush administration’s tendency up until now to support sometimes even the heavier tactics of the entertainment industry , this is encouraging.

In 1421 the government of Florence gave the first patent to Filippo Brunelleschi for inventing a way of bring goods up the unnavigable river Arno to the city. He asked for and was given the right for three years to burn any competitor’s ship that used his innovation. I think we’re finally realizing that potentially destroying the computers of your customers is not valid, even less than burning ships of competitors. This event has been an important turning point in perception of how digital rights management is used and intellectual property enforced.

The Sony DRM debacle shows you can’t hide

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The big story this week has been how Sony BMG has way overstepped the mark by how they have used digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent copying of its music CDs. This could shift the course of the debate and public perception of DRM. For those who haven’t read about this yet, Mark Russinovich, a specialist in the deep innards of PCs, stumbled across a “rootkit” installed in his computer. A rootkit is software that installs itself at the heart of the PC operating system and reconfigures files to hide its presence. Not surprisingly, this technology is usually only ever found in “malware” that is designed with nefarious intent. In this case, it turned out to have been installed when Mark had played a Sony CD on his PC. There are a couple of interesting implications of the installation of the rootkit. Anyone who tries to delete this uninvited presence on their PC risks irremediably damaging their computer. In addition, the presence of the rootkit makes it far easier for people less benevolent than Sony to hack into the PC and hide their activities, including from anti-virus software. This is potentially a massive security risk. While Sony states on the CD packaging that it has used copy protection software, it doesn’t indicate in any way what this software does. While consumers can ask Sony to uninstall the rootkit, they need to apply, provide personal details, and are then given another piece of software to uninstall it.

There is no question that Sony has gone too far here, certainly ethically, and potentially legally. While the protection software was extremely carefully hidden, it was naïve at best to imagine it would not be uncovered, and for this to become a public issue. Increased transparency is one of the most powerful trends today. The reality of transparency is not only that things get found out, but that if people are interested, word will spread very rapidly. While all the mainstream media reported this story after the case, this was first reported on a blog, and news spread through blogs. The very measure of people’s distaste for Sony BMG’s activities is how quickly this became a major story. In trying to hide what they are doing in their customers’ PCs, Sony BMG has created security risks for their customers, and created a major problem for itself. Openness is and will be rewarded in the market. Sony BMG doesn’t understand this, and undoubtedly will be punished in the market. Digital rights management has a role, but precisely how it works must be visible. Otherwise the backlash will be far bigger than the entertainment and content companies seem to comprehend.

Your printer is telling on you

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the most active and powerful organization aiming to protect civil liberties in the digital world, has just announced that it has cracked the secret codes printed by the Xerox DocuColor color laser printer, as a first step to bring color printer secret codes into the open. The U.S. Secret Service has made agreements with Xerox, Canon, Brother, Dell, Epson, HP and other printer manufacturers so that their color laser printers print almost-invisible codes on every page they produce, marking the date, time, and serial number of the printer. This is ostensibly to track down printers used to produce counterfeit money, however the information could be used by government in any way. Now the code has been cracked, it is a far broader privacy issue, as now anyone can discover by which printer a document was produced. However this had to be understood as a possibility when the initiative was created. What can be created and used (or abused) by government can equally be abused by others, and the only resort is to make it completely open. As the EFF note, if we find the US government is making behind-the-scenes deals with private corporations to compromise our privacy through our printers, who’s to know what other of our personal technology is being compromised in this way? The potential for abuse comes not just from government, but from anyone else that has access to or uncovers this information. That’s one of the reasons why I have problems with the “people who have nothing to hide shouldn’t be worried” argument about privacy loss.

Internet everywhere

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I am currently flying on Lufthansa between Frankfurt and Hong Kong. Lufthansa is one of the first airlines to use Boeing’s Connexion service, which allows in-flight internet access. This post is going live while I am approximately 30,000 feet above Kazakhstan or thereabouts. So, airplanes no longer provide that personal space where you are far from responsibility, and can’t access email on what’s going wrong in the office, or find out the latest news. The other side of this story is the fact that we have to exert choice. If we are always accessible on our mobile devices, we are the only ones who can press the off switch. Many people tell me how they can’t resist checking their Blackberry’s, even at home or during the night when messages come in. So far we’ve been able to get out of mobile range or away from email. No longer. Strong will and managing others’ expectations are essential in choosing and creating pockets that are entirely your own, unbeholden to others. Are you up to it, or will you be always connected?

Back to monetizing eyeballs

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I just caught up with Tom Gruber, who I met when he was Chief Technology Officer at Intraspect, an innovative company providing collaboration spaces based on email, which was acquired last year by document management vendor Vignette. Tom’s new initiative is realtravel.com, a site that allows individuals to create personal word and photo journals of their travels, and to share them with their friends or the world. The intent is to build this into a community where travellers can get great recommendations and insights from other experienced travellers. Excellent features include creating maps showing travellers’ itineraries around the world. The business model is built on advertising and referrals. Back in the dot-com heyday, start-ups focused on getting “eyeballs” – that is people’s attention – and then “monetizing” the eyeballs. The problem was, there wasn’t much money in people’s online attention. Today, however, online advertising amounts to $10 billion, and referral payments for sending people to sites selling books, gadgets, travel and more add up to a similar amount. Travel is in fact one of the real commercial successes of the Internet, with a substantial proportion of travel bookings now made online. As such, if you can create a compelling place for travellers to visit and spend time, as Tom and his colleagues have done, there can be a very viable business.

Aggregation is the word

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One of the most important concepts of the digital world is aggregation. The Internet gives us access to far more information and services than we can handle. We have to choose what we access, unless there is a way of bringing together relevant sources into one place. In this vein, Lycos has recently released a dating seach aggregator, which allows users to search for potential partners across iMatchup, loveaccess, Matchmaker, and True. One point provides access to all of the people across these sites. A company currently getting a lot of attention, Oodle, searches and aggregates classifieds listings across eBay, Craigslist and many more sites. Why go to the individual sites when an aggregator can give you access to them all? The increasingly open nature of the Internet, based on web services, published APIs (application programming interfaces), and other tools to integrate digital flows, means that aggregation is far easier to implement than in the dot-com days. Expect many more innovative plays in this space.

Manufacturing goes personal

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The amazing eMachineShop represents a turning point in personal manufacturing. The company enables anyone to create machine-shopped pieces using a vast arrray of techniques including milling, extruding, thermoforming, water jet cutting and far more, on any choice of materials, to create whatever they want. The company provides free, extremely easy-to-use 3D CAD (computer aided design) software which automatically inputs into their systems, so you can, within an hour of having logged onto their site, sent off a design to be created. The applications are vast – in essence you can make for yourself anything you want, at a low cost. No more unavailable car parts or overpriced spare parts for machinery, and sculptors can simply imagine their sculptures rather than work for years to acquire mechanical skills. The next phase from here is the rise of “fab labs“, where the creation of the piece is done in your own office or home rather than having to be sent away. This truly is about power to the people. What will be unleashed by the power of these tools, available to anyone?

When is the next tech boom?

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The New York Times reports on increasing valuations for start-ups, with venture capitalists having to pay more to get into deals such as the recent rounds for the school social networking company Facebook and podcasting platform Odeo. That these companies are so hot is a great illustration of the themes explored by this blog.

On another level, this is one possible early-warning sign of another tech boom. For around four years now the technology sector has been subdued, hardly surprising after the extravagances of the dot-com boom. What’s interesting is that in this decade we have in fact seen many of the wild predictions of the late 90s quietly come to pass. Moving on from the selling-pet-food-over-the-Internet phase of technology commercialization, there is now a swelter of new technologies and – more importantly – applications that are compelling (or at least appear to be). Social networking technologies, pattern recognition, bioinformatics, new generation content production and distribution, location-based services and far more represent some of the new wave of opportunities. I believe it is inevitable that at some point within the next five years we will go through another technology boom, perhaps not dissimilar to that of the turn of the century. Those fateful words: “This time it’s different,” will be heard. So for those that missed out on the first boom, position yourself well!

Spam is OK if it’s us

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In a startling development, the Australian Army is considering sending broadcast SMS for recruitment purposes. Presumably they would meet Australia’s strict Privacy Act, however this is not fully clear from the news release. Particularly as SMS marketing is a relatively new medium, people tend to respond negatively unless they have actively opted-in to receiving messages, rather than having forgotten to tick a box somewhere to avoid getting on a generic list that will be sold to all-comers, the Australian Army included. The Australian government has implemented strong ant-spam legislation, so it is rather disappointing that one of its arms is undermining those messages. Legitimate SMS marketing definitely has a role, but if the medium is abused, there will be a backlash.