Self Driving Cars? How About You?

You may have seen the news that Nevada has ok’ed licensing for Google to test one of their self-driving cars. This is both exciting and disconcerting, and raises as many new issues as it resolves. If perfected, the self-driving car will be a boon to those who aren’t able to drive. I have a couple of relatives who have lost sufficient sight as to be unable to drive now, and are always scrounging for rides to purchase groceries, necessities, and to make it to medical appointments. Self-driving cabs could be an interesting addition to major cities…although in addition to costing jobs, we would lose some colorful entertainment in the person of those often interesting cabbies.

The issue has already come up regarding insurance. If the car crashes, is the human passenger responsible? The company that provides it? The software designer? This will make for some interesting litigation as all of these details get sorted out over the course of years…just as every other area covered by insurance has been.

Here’s a thought though…who or what drives YOU? Do others drive you, are you self-driven like the Google car, or does a burning idea drive you to bring it to fruition? If it’s the former, it might be good to give some thought to making some changes in your life to roll with #2 or #3. You might not become another Google, but you will still go a lot further and faster down the road when it’s YOU at the wheel!

Sometimes the 2 Percent Outlier Happens

Sometimes, life throws a really interesting one at you. When you and others have carefully assessed a situation, and calculated the three possible outcomes and the likelihood of each…occasionally a 4th one turns out to be that one that no one even remotely considered…that 2% outlier that ‘never happens.’ The moral of this little post…like the Boy Scouts, ‘Be Prepared,’ even if it’s for that 2% outcome no one saw coming.

For those who live in earthquake country–so, do you have your emergency kit?

Will There Be a Dick Clark of the Internet?

With the passing this morning of Dick Clark, who gave us American Bandstand, game shows, and brought in the new year from Times Square for so many years, the question arises: will there be a Dick Clark for the internet?

Dick Clark gave numerous acts their big break during the golden age of Rock and Roll. There are so many rock acts that owe him, and certainly a legion of radio personalities and tv personalities who stand on his mighty shoulders. Will there be someone that can launch so many careers producing content on the web? Is it even reasonable to compare the content produced for radio and then television with that produced to entertain on the internet?

I don’t have the answer to that last question, but I sure hope so. It’s great to look to the iTunes Store or the Android Market for apps, and apps are content as surely as music was and is for radio, but will we see a larger than life personality who genuinely loves the content (whether music, video, apps, or whatever), and wants to share it as widely as possible explode on a web based platform to spread enjoyment through that content?

In Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Understanding Media,’ which came out decades ago, he stated that radio was the only ‘hot media,’ one that really touched people. My contention is that the internet is the second ‘hot media,’ in the way it touches people through social media, multiplayer games, chat, etc.

I’ll be waiting on that great internet Dick Clark to show up and spread the love of great content across the web universe. Sure hope he gets here before too long!

Not Quite Off the Grid

As I sit here, watching the blinking light on the cable modem, reminding me of its cohorts that are dark, it brought home again how dependent (some say addicted) we have become to this always-on, connected state.

Of course, there is a backup…the cellular system, but when the big one hits (maybe not an earthquake, but a tornado, hurricane, or whatever it is elsewhere), even that will be out.

After trying in whatever way to check on family and friends, my thought is, how will we Tweet, blog, and Facebook about it all? Will this be a new corollary to PTSD when folks aren’t able to do those things? Will there be “no Internet rage,” kind of like road rage, making it necessary to avoid irate people?

I don’t have the answers, but for now…I’m blogging about this!

The iPad Heat Fakeroversy

Here we go again. The new iPad reportedly runs as warm as 116 degrees when playing graphic intensive games. This is apparently 12-13 degrees hotter than the preceding model, the iPad 2. Even the testers admit that this is warm, but not really hot.

A few users have even gotten a heat warning on-screen…although in several cases, they were using the device in direct sunlight…never a brilliant idea with any battery powered electronic device.

This reporter can testify anecdotally that he has written this on one, and survived without any burns to the lap. What will the next silly non-issue be, and when will it be breathlessly reported? Stay tuned for a minute…that’s probably as long as you will have to wait!

Your Life In (On) The Cloud

Just about everything you read in the tech press seems to point to the inevitability of the cloud. All of us will ultimately have our data on the cloud, i.e., remote servers and systems that store and retrieve our data and even applications. For some business users and for attorneys, this opens up concerns about their confidential data, and the potential ease of it slipping into the wrong hands. 

What about you or I, though? Most people have information on their computers at this point that really needs to stay private and confidential. What little privacy is left in this digital world certainly extends to information like tax returns and financial information. It seems to me that something Steve Jobs based the original iTunes store on applies to that personal data or yours and mine. When initially launched, one of the selling points of the iTunes store was ‘you download it, you own it.’ This was opposed to several other systems where you paid a certain amount a month, and had unlimited access to songs, but should you quit paying…poof…they were gone to you.

 It is my contention, and I don’t think I’m close to being a Luddite, that people will ALWAYS want to keep some of their most personal information locally, and not in the cloud. it seems the Jobs iTunes principle applies here…even with the current iteration of iTunes, you can keep songs living on your local drives… why wouldn’t you want that for your most private data? 

 Time will tell if I’m right…

Your Heart in San Francisco

It was very special to a lot of residents of the Bay Area to have Tony Bennett in the City today, singing “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” at City Hall on the 50th anniversary of the song. If you were able to attend, you had a rare treat. With rain yesterday and moving in again this evening, even the weather cooperated…it was sunny and in the 50’s. Tony added to the sunshine by serenading the City by the Bay with his signature song. Bay Area residents and even others are fond of throwing around ‘only in San Francisco,’ but in this case, it truly was one of those special moments.

Proposition 8 Held Unconstitutional- What’s Next?

A three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today held 2-1 that California Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. The case was decided on very narrow grounds, and only applies in California. Basically, the Proposition took away the marriage designation to about 18,000 couples who were married during the time it was legal for gay couples to marry in California, but left all the other rights of marriage for them intact.

It will certainly be appealed, ether to the 9th Circuit en banc, or to the US Supreme Court. The opinion is crafted so narrowly that the Supreme Court may actually pass on hearing the appeal. If not, and they hear the case, there is no telling what way they might rule. Due to that very narrow ruling by the 9th Circuit, the holding will probably be quite a narrow ruling as well, whether it upholds or overrules the 9th Circuit panel.

Predictions concerning the Supreme Court’s holdings on cases such as this generally are about as accurate as predicting Superbowl winners at the start of football season, or predicting the weather more than a week out. The best advice…stay tuned!

Supreme Court GPS Ruling

Today, the Supreme Court in a unanimous vote, ruled that police must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to a suspect’s vehicle. This is one of the few decisions in quite a while that hasn’t reduced rights under the Fourth Amendment. It is also one of the first major cases testing the constitutionality of a digital technology in this way.

What will the ramifications be? It’s easy to speculate one way or the other, but here are a couple of thoughts concerning the ruling. A former police officer friend of mine pointed out that good old helicopters and unmarked cars still work pretty well for the police. Even here in the neighborhood of Silicon Valley, our law enforcement people still use these lower tech methods.

Another individual commented that police can still track suspects via the GPS in smartphones. That’s true, but in that case, a citizen can always turn off their smartphone and retain some control of knowledge of their whereabouts…unlike a GPS unit secreted under their car.

Here’s a third thought…not right on point for this case, but related. What about the use of police dogs to sniff for drugs in students’ private cars while parked at school?

As always, there will be unintended consequences flowing from this ruling. Even with the fine minds that sit at the Supreme Court considering all they can, there always are!

The Netizens That Roared

Yesterday, we saw quite an uproar over SOPA and PIPA, and watched as a number of supporters of the bills in Congress either switched sides or walked back from the bills.

Apparently, Google’s petition against the bills got 4-plus million signatures, and there were several other petitions online that also picked up large numbers. These, in combination with many sites going dark, have caused the wheels to come off the two bills, and it’s one of Hollywood’s few losses ever in Washington.

Opposition to the bills appears to cross liberal and conservative lines. I don’t think people are seriously opposed to stopping piracy at all, but the blunt force approach of this bill was just too much. It has been noted that a person could actually be prosecuted and convicted, and get one more year of jail time for downloading a Michael Jackson song than the doctor that killed him has been sentenced to! My objection is that the enforcement in the bills is similar to a private attorney general action in that a content provider could get a court order and close down a site, with no ability to have a day in court, present evidence, or appeal. The site is just out of business, even due to a link posted by a third party on the site. (This is also why the American Bar Association opposed the bills.)

It’s not hard to predict that these bills in another form will reappear and start winging their way through Congress again. Let’s hope this time that Hollywood will agree to meet with the tech and web folks, and craft something that will work on piracy, but not cause the wholesale destruction of free speech rights on the web.