BitCoins: The World's 1st Digital Currency

With the current world economic climate, it's becoming clear that the American dollar, among other currencies, is becoming weaker and weaker as our domestic and foreign policies continue to falter. As this happens, inflation rises, prices go up and income goes down, the world looks for a new way to acquire goods. In the beginning days, everyone provided for themselves, and bartered for everything else. If you didn't have it, someone else did, and you'd better have something that they wanted if you wanted it. Then came bullion or gold used as a medium for transaction, where the weight of the gold indicated its value. As the world began to run short of gold, they began using fractional value to create the paper money that we use today. Finally, as paper money grew thin, the credit market arose so that if you didn't have it now, you could pay it back later (debatable). Now that the credit market is beginning to fall apart due to speculation and over-borrowing, it seems as if online is the way to go, as is the case with most things nowadays.

Enter BitCoins: the world's first digital currency. The coins are generated through an algorithm that will only allow for 21 million by 2040. Additionally, bitcoins can’t be frozen (like a PayPal account), can’t be tracked, can’t be taxed and have extremely low costs as opposed to credit. The resulting feeling is that bitcoins will be a viable alternative to physical or credit-based money, given the world governments don't crack down on them, which is becoming more likely as of late. PayPal and the credit card companies have already halted their transfer, as they cannot (or do not want to) exchange currencies legally. Additionally, governments seem poised to take action against them because bitcoins completely eradicate the need to use gold or federally-based forms of currency. Also, at around $6.70 per bitcoin, the average person would never take that risk. Yet the idea is an enthralling one. It's taking the power away from the government and putting it in the hand of the user. Also, it can be used on the black market to buy anything from drugs to playing poker, so the government also has vested interest in taking them out. Overall, I can see this idea only taking shape if governments are willing to admit that their money is losing its worth. Maybe by that time, I'll have saved up enough bitcoins where I won't need dollars...

Touchscreens of the Future

If I told you that the old ideas about 'the Future' from movies would come true in the next decade, would you believe me? Now that I think of it, I might not believe you either. The fascinating technological concepts of movies such as Minority Report, the Matrix and the latest Star Trek, always seemed farfetched, considering how slowly companies are to unveil their future plans. However, that doesn't mean those pipe-dreams can't or won't be achieved in time for my generation to care or take advantage. Swedish tech startup, TAT, commissioned a bunch of designers, tech people and computing engineers to design a realistic and aesthetically-captivating model of the future of the touch screen, called Open Initiative. The result is quite astonishing, to say the least. The video above shows a rendering of what the future holds for us, computing-wise. From alarm clocks you don't have to fumble around the snooze button for, to mirrors that show news headlines, to wireless collaboration and sharing over touch-friendly user interfaces, it seems as if the sky is the limit. It will be interesting to see if companies pick up this model or can run with it at all, because this simply looks cool. The fact that it's integrated in regular life, but not hindering it by being too (there is such a thing; think robot vacuums) has me thinking the future won't be as automated as we think. My only concern is how integrating all of the networks we have will work out. That's neither here nor there at the design point, though. Check out the video, and see what the next generation is looking like...

America's Emotions via Twitter

If you want to see how someone's day is going, chances are you can check their Twitter and get a pretty good idea. That said, aside from your own personal friends, it's really impossible to get a serious feel for the rest of the world's affect (look it up) at any given time... Until now. Computer scientist Alan Mislove from Northeastern University and his colleauges in Boston have done a study that finds that the west coast is happier than the east coast, and across the country happiness peaks each Sunday morning, and hits a low on Thursday evenings. The study is called 'Pulse of the Nation'.

Mislove took all public tweets between September 2006 and August 2009, filtered out users from outside the US (and those with no location listed), then filtered them against a psychological word-rating system called Affective Norms for English Words. ANEW ranks lower scoring words as negative and higher ones as positive. Positive words like 'love', 'diamond', and 'paradise' have higher scores, while negative words like 'funeral', 'rape', and 'suicide' have lower ones. He then took those scores, calculated the average mood of all the users in a state hour by hour, and plotted the scores on a 'mood map'. The mood map transforms every hour based on how many users in a state are tweeting, and how that state is tweeting (happy or sad). The result was the video above, a 24-hour map of the emotional ups and downs of Twitter.

The dope part about this study is that you can see where you fit in as a regular Twitter user. Weekends are usually fairly happy, while the middle of the week is pure drudgery. Also, the West Coast's overall happiness compared to that of the East Coast is dumbfounding. Even crazier is the fact that the Midwest seems to always be somewhat unhappy (sorry Detroit). It's interesting to see such a wide base of data being portrayed so simply. If you want to see an extended write-up with more infographics, click here. Other wise, check out the video and see how your mood fits into the pulse of the nation...

Facebook in Real Life

It's always funny to see technology transposed with the real life that it's supposed to enhance. In the case of Facebook, if we were to translate every poke, wall post, invitation or friend request into a real life situation, it would be.. awkward, to say the least. As a matter of fact, if Facebook was a real life, face to face thing, I don't think I'd have a Facebook. In face, Mark Zuckerberg would probably be just another geeky Harvard grad, because people would be too creeped out by all of the stuff popping up around them. If you don't see yourself wanting to say or do these things outside of the computer, then maybe you should cut back on the Facebook action. I know a friend request from a random person on the street, who happens to have mutual friends, would probably get ignored. Yet, online, it's fair game. I guess it's just something to think about, albeit in a humorous way. Check the video out...

Infinite USB Plugs?

Why is it that the Japanese are always on the cutting edge of innovation, yet some of the designs they brew up are so simplistic that you wonder why you hadn't thought of it first? I suppose this is one of those ideas. The good people at Yanko Design dropped another bomb on the head of needless technology, by making the typical USB cord into a pluggable chain of USB cords. It's so simple, I feel stupid. The only thing is that after 4 or 5 plugs, the idea gets a bit cumbersome. I suppose that's why most computers have more than one USB input in the first place. The color coding is a good look too. I hope this gets to the production line soon...

Dear Apple

via the New York Times:

Two titans of the tech world, Google and Apple, may soon be engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Or, more precisely, handset-to-handset combat.

Google plans to begin selling its own smartphone early next year, company employees say, a move that could challenge Apple’s leadership in one of the fastest-growing and most important technologies in decades.

Google’s new touch-screen Android phone, which it began giving to many employees to test last week, could also shake up the fundamentals of the cellphone market in the United States, where most phones work only on the networks of the wireless carriers that sold them.

The company, using the power of its brand, plans to market and sell the new phone directly to consumers over the Internet, and buyers would be able to sign up for service from any compatible provider, the employees say.

They say that every dog has its day. Apple, it's been your day forever. Everyone listens to music on iPods, calls their friends on iPhones, use Mac computers and live the iLife. That said, what is the one program that everyone uses?? What one name seems to stand side by side with you guys in the technological arena? What name is synonymous with the simplicity and functionality that you guys have? You guessed it: Google. With news that Google is coming out with their own phone, which will run their proprietary software, the smartphone playing field is looking less tilted in your favor, Apple. First of all, this phone will be able to be on any network, not just AT&T, like you guys. For everyone who didn't get an iPhone because of AT&T's terrible prices and even worse service (like me), that's a good look.

Also, having the Google name on the phone is better than cosigns from Jay-Z, Don Cannon and DJ Drama on the same mixtape. Think about it. Everyone has a G-Mail, uses Youtube, uses Google Docs, uses Google Maps, reads Google News, is Google Waving, Google Reading blogs, and not to mention Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Shopping and Google Translating. Come to think of it, if we're not doing something with Apple, it's with Google. You guys might want to look into just forming a mega-conglomeration and taking over the world. We all know it's happening some time. Might as well make it with the two companies everyone uses...

The Mailing List: August 2009 (#1)

1. Mac OS X - Snow Leopard



I'm a Mac, and I love it. All you PC's out there need to stop trying to fake the funk with Windows Vista (aka Insect-central) and upgrade your life to Mac. When I say that Mac upgrades your life, I mean it. In today's world, you are intrinsically linked with your computer, whether you like it or not. Why not have a computer that simply outperforms in every way? Whatever your preference, Apple is releasing their newest operating system, Snow Leopard. While the name is a little silly, you can't deny the improvements Apple made this time. In addition to making the OS more powerful, they refined their newer features like Time Machine, Stacks and Spaces to make them more streamlined. They've re-written the entire OS in 64-bit so that everything is faster. There's a new version of Quicktime and, hell, even startup is faster. If you're a Mac, do yourself a favor and buy Snow Leopard. It's only $29 this time around. Check more features at Apple and some screenshots below...