Introducing my introduction to my final paper! lol wut

Topic: Cloud Computing

How will I start my thesis?: By giving a little background info about cloud computing, and some examples (Google).  Will also touch on the hopes and dreams of “Computing in the Cloud”.

What is my thesis?: I think that as time (and the internetz) progresses, and more everyday focus is placed on mobile devices, cloud computing will continue to gain in popularity.  I don’t, however, see it as being the “end all, PC is dead” revolution that some people are claiming it is.

Counter argument: There are downsides, and the biggest one I see is security and data usage.  Google has a crazy amount of personal information that I’ve provided them.  What do they do with it?  How is it kept secure?  Where is it really housed?

My argument:

• Convenience factor
• Co-colaboration factor
• Doesn’t rely as heavily on hardware

Conclusion: Yes, the cloud is awesome, but until some of the downsides are addressed, I can’t see large scale business adopting it, at least not completely.  Personal users may well be another matter, however.

Sources:

• Cloud Computing, Wikipedia (this isn’t going to remain a source, I more use it as a source of sources)
• Google’s Cloud: 8 Key Questions, Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine
• What Cloud Computing Really Means, Eric Knorr & Galen Gruman, InfoWorld

Code Chapter Summaries

Code is Law

Besides giving a brief summary of what latter parts in the book will be about, you start to get a sense of the author and his background.  With a background in constitutional law, he’s not what you would first expect, but as he continues to compare and contrast the beginning years of the internet with the beginning years if a new form of government, you start to see the relation.  He draws on his experiences in eastern Europe during the fall of communism to make people understand how the shift from strict control to an open environment, then back, can occur, but warns that our cyber rights can be just as easily trampled as our physical ones.

Four Puzzles from Cyberspace

The second chapter shares four stories, each meaning to point out a particular notion, those being regulation, regulation through code, latent ambiguity, and competing sovereigns.  It then describes what each story has to do with each point, and promises to tell all farther into the book.  At this point, it’s fairly obvious (it was to me at least) that this book is brilliant.

is-ism

This chapter argues that despite (at least initial) popular belief, cyberspace can, indeed be regulated.  One of the main points is that since it’s not natural, since it’s all human created, coded, it is totally unrealistic to thing that there can (or will) be no regulation, or for that matter, change.  It’s possible, therefor it will happen.  The author goes on to talk about different levels of control, or closed vs. openess.

Architectures of Control

The chapter begins by stating that in order for a government to regulate, it has to know “who did what, where?”  It then goes on to talk about identities, authentication, and credentials, how they interact, and why they are important.  As the chapter continues, it is discussed that while currently the main portion of the internet (TCP/IP) is open, it wouldn’t be too hard to start adding identities to the various packets, but that already it is relatively easy for ISPs to trace IP addresses back to users.  Towards the end, the chapter talks about cookies and how they came to be, and even goes into cryptography.  This is a pretty lengthy chapter, and as such hard to summarize down into one paragraph.

Regulating Code

This chapter details how, in the name of the unseen terrorist threat, the government has already started to change internet protocols to make it easier for them to track, search, and create wiretaps.  The first example is how in 2005 Congress decided that VOIP protocols needed to be restructured so that they “must be designed so as to make government wiretapping easier”.  It doesn’t get a whole lot clearer then that, and frankly, it terrifies me.  As you go further into the chapter, it goes into detail about what some of the advantages of a more… concrete online identity are, mostly in terms of commerce and the like.  It goes on to detail different code origins, and their differences.  Towards the end of the chapter, there’s even a Jeff Goldblum reference thrown in.

Colloquia Response

The following is a response to the lecture “Where Do Designs Come From and How Can We Get There?” presented by Gilbert Cockton.

Gilbert Cockton is researcher in HCI at University of Sunderland in England, which means among other things, he has a sweet British accent, instantly making his presentation even better.  He’s been published a ton, is members in all sorts of British things that I have no idea of of the meaning, and and has some interesting, abstract ideas about HCI on the whole.

He starts out with comparing basic menu design to the Monty Python Spam skit and a menu from a high end French restaurant, written in french.  His points is that in order to have a good design, you must adapt to your audience, and also present it in a way that is easy for the targeted users to understand.  He continues that without a good menu, it is hard to create informed choices, making it near impossible to successfully use a system.

As the lecture continues, he speaks on how to evaluate the targeted audience, but even more so upon how to evaluate your own evaluations.  If you aren’t asking yourself the right questions, you’re never going to get it right.  His point is also that HCI is more complicated then other fields of designs, as the line between technology (product) and user is so much harder to define, and without a user, much of the hardware or software would be pointless (like in social networking).

During the latter part of the presentation, he makes the point over and over again that in order to truly advance technology, we need to focus on the actual people during the development, and less on the actual end product.  The question should be less does the product itself work, and more does the product’s end result achieve what we set out to achieve.  For example, an MP3 player (hardware) may play music, but is it easy to use in a portable setting?  The questions aren’t really the same.

An interesting presentation, which makes me wish I had more of an HCI foundation to really understand the basics of the field.

Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0

A response to Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 as posted on Official Google Blog

Since 2005, millions of people have relied on Google Maps for mobile to get directions on the go. However, there’s always been one problem: Once you’re behind the wheel, a list of driving directions just isn’t that easy to use. It doesn’t tell you when your turn is coming up. And if you miss a turn? Forget it, you’re on your own.

Today we’re excited to announce the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

This new feature comes with everything you’d expect to find in a GPS navigation system, like 3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection.

As the VXW Droid release date keeps coming closer (this Friday!), and Android Mania continues to rise, more and more features of Android 2.0 are being unveiled, and one of the (if not the) coolest features so far looks like Google Maps Navigation, which will be released in it’s beta form.

Before anyone freaks out, Gmail was beta for what, 18 years before it was finally released?  So yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much.

I purchased a Garmin GPS a few months ago, finally fed up with bumbling my way around cities like Chicago or Lexington where I have close friends I visit regularly, getting lost while trying to make a catering delivery for work, or trying to find some random persons house or an unknown to me bar.  It’s pretty cool, picks up on FM traffic alerts which is nice in Chicago, and generally works pretty well.  The downside is it’s one more electronic device that I get to mess with, which I guess isn’t too much of a downside, since new toys are fun.

Regardless, I think one of the things the iPhone did is show that a well designed phone can really be much more, and that device integration is possible.  Music, maps, contacts, calendar, it’s all there, all on a fluffy cloud so you can sync it up with other stuff in your life, which is pretty darn cool, except that I still refuse to be on AT&T, and the iPhone Maps app, while cool, leaves a whole hell of a lot to be desired.

So enter the new Google app on Google’s Android 2.0 mobile phone OS.  You can port contacts in from Gmail and Facebook’s address book to your phone, input them, and because the Google app is connected to the internet, your map data will be up to date, which is cool, because my couple month old GPS with the newest map software (which is $100 to upgrade) isn’t.

Not something in your address book?  Search for it, either by categories (sushi near your mom’s house), or a bit broader (Colt’s Stadium in Indianapolis).  It’s a smart search, and is voice search compatible, but if it’s anything like Google Voice, it’s gonna be rough.

Top it off with street and satellite overviews like what can be found on Google Maps and Google Earth, and it’s pretty ****ing cool.

But will it be able to tell quickly when you’re off it’s chosen route and recalculate?  How quick will it be to update once you’ve made a turn?  What’s the overall UI really like?  Is Google going to slowly take over the world?

We shall see, and I shall see hopefully on Friday.  I totally plan on running both my Garmin and Droid in my car simultaneously, which I think will grant a bonus of +500 techie uberness to my VW.

I also want a job with Google.

Teens Sue High School That Punished Them for Racy MySpace Pics

A response to Teens Sue High School That Punished Them for Racy MySpace Pics as posted on Wired.com

This is a disclaimer, and also why I wait until the last moment to blog for Tuesdays class.  If I wait long enough, I’m bound to find something that fires me up to write about.  Before I really get into this, I’m going to try really hard to not use profanity, and write a well thought out, coherent post, but you’re going to have to bear with me, because I’m really (insert profanity) pissed.

Two Indiana teenagers have sued their school district after they were punished for posting suggestive photos on MySpace.

The girls, 10th-graders at Churubusco High School in Churubusco, Indiana, say they were humiliated after the school banned them from fall semester extracurricular activities and forced them to apologize to the all-male Athletics Board (composed of varsity coaches). The girls also had to attend three counseling sessions.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed the proposed class-action suit on behalf of the girls and all present and future students at the school who participate or may participate in extracurricular activities. The ACLU argues the district violated the girls’ First Amendment rights and should not have punished them for activities conducted outside school. The suit names the girls’ high school, school district and principal.

Now some of you may be wondering how this relates to Informatics, and you may have a valid point, but this is my blog, and I’m going to blog what I damn well please, and since only about three people are going to read it, I’m not going to worry too much about it.  As much as I would love to go off on a tangent about silly things like the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, and how the majority of our education system (obviously this class notwithstanding) is whacked, I’m going to instead try to answer the question, and maybe even meet the criteria of the assignment if I play my cards right, so sit back, grab a beer (you know, if you’re of age), and follow along.

Something that was mentioned early in this class was if you want to make bank in this field, design a free service that people will all want to use and incorporate in their lives, and get them to simply provide you with information, down to the most minute details of their life.

Enter, stage left, social networking.

The problem with the internet one of the problems with the internet is that it is so amazingly simple to share information.

“But John, that’s what makes the internetz so great!!11!1one”

Yeah, that’s true, but besides all of the sick puppies, haters, and tweens out there on the Information Superhighway (I’ve been wanting to use that retro namedrop for awhile now), there’s also a major lack of privacy anymore.

Look, I use Facebook.  At this point, I can’t really imagine not using it.  You hit up someone on their wall inviting them to chill this afternoon, post links and videos, and the pictures, oh the pictures.  It’s fun looking at all the pics from that drunken Halloween party (two drunken parties) and laughing at all the fun slutty costumes.  It’s fun to share your life with your friends.

But do you really have 985 people that you need to share intimate details of your life with?  Does your boss, professor, neighbor, family friend, and that random dude in your group really need to see you doing a keg stand in your slutty nurse/teacher/fire fighter/baseball player/witch/whatever costume?  Do you really need to provide your cellphone number and email address to all those people as well?  You give me a name, cell number, and a university email address, and I guarantee with a little Google-fu, about a third of the time I’ll be able to figure out where your parents live, and probably where you do too.

Am I the only one that is terrified by this?

Please, think before you post things.  Limit your personal information that is online, limit what you post, what is affiliated with you, and who can see that information.  Not just as a privacy matter, but because things will come back to you if you’re not careful.  Employers (and future employers), schools, weirdos, you think they don’t check this stuff out?

Internet 2.0 will be more and more user driven as it develops matures, but the downside to that is a major loss of privacy.  This is all so new, it’s full steam ahead, and no one is slowing down long enough to stop and think about what some of the implications might be.  So many of these issues are without precedents, it’s hard to do an intelligent analysis of where we will end up and how it will really effect us.

One thing is for sure though, the more in touch we all get with each other, the less our lives will be truly private.  Social networking, internet privacy and ethics, these are all major issues, and I think that as the generation that is really inheriting the technology, we have an obligation to be aware, to pay attention, to think, and to question all of it.