Filling the Oceans with Trash

This special Holiday Consumer Edition of Too Late To Be First sends a shout out to every revolting pig slob who is contributing to filling the five ocean gyres with growing islands of floating plastic waste and making a dump of our nations waterways and beaches. This is REVOLTING, YOU DISGUSTING PIGS!!!

You're too late to be first, but how about making the most recent time you threw trash out the window of your car, or in an alley where "it doesn't matter anyway" ... your LAST.

And while you're at it, get off your lazy bum and RECYCLE.


Not-quite nanomobiles for intracity commuters

Historical Roots


Current Concepts

http://www.news.com/2300-13833_3-6216805-1.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/mits_stackable.php
http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/30/mits-stackable-concept-car/

One Practical Use Model

Stack 'em up at commuter train and highspeed rail stations ... people pay monthly subscription fee to grab one off the stack and drive it home for the night ... bring back to the stack the next morning.

ISO: Story Arc or "whatever happened to ..."

We've all become familiar with the little chicklet icons for social tagging, saving, sending, promoting, and reposting. What I'd like to see is a chicklet that lets me find out what's happened about this story since it was originally published? Call it story arc, or something along those lines. This would be a great challenge to natural language gurus to extract meaning, context, and nuance (the supposed st. elmo's fire of the post below) and of great practical use to humans. So this is another item I'm scanning for Too.Late candidates. Please feel free to clue me with a comment if I've missed the obvious. For example, what's happened on this topic, since the "robots took over" ...
Robot reporter crunches financial data
Posted: 21/08/06 By: Robert Andrews
email this story | post a comment | digg it | story arc

US business information provider Thomson Financial is to expand its use of automatic computer programmes to write news stories.

Thomson, which last month acquired the London-based AFX financial news service from AFP, has been using an automated facility to replicate the work of business journalists since March.

The robot reporter can crunch market data in financial reports and file a wire copy round-up with real English sentences within 0.3 seconds of a business releasing the information, according to the company. Thomson has been so pleased with results, it will now widen the scheme's use, Matthew Burkley, senior vice-president of strategy, told the Financial Times.

But the system was criticised by Associated Northcliffe Digital strategic analyst Seamus McCauley, who wrote on his blog: "An automatic news generator is unlikely to pick up the nuances of pro forma reporting.

"Traders executing automatically on the basis of nuanceless computer-generated news are going to get themselves into all sorts of problems when a closer examination of the data reveals that the formulaic constraints of regulated reporting simply don't often reflect the meaning of the news."

Foot-tap-tap-tap ... still WAITing ... Bluetooth Watch Phones

I'm still waiting to name a Too.Late winner in this category. What's the big hold up?

Come on, people ... how hard can this possibly be? I've been describing this device to friends around the Stanford campus for at least a couple of years, now.

  • GET OVER your addiction to keypads and buttons and screen.
  • GET USED to voice interaction with computers.
Samsung is barking up the wrong tree. Kludges like this are about the most inelegant cluster-mucks imaginable.

Sony is getting the form factor right, but functionality wrong. Currently, this looks like the FOLIO of bluetooth phones; didn't you get the memo from Jeff Hawkins, Sony? CONSUMERS DON'T WANT multiple mobile devices to extend our multiple mobile devices. We want MULTIFUNCTION UNIFICATION and DESIGN ELEGANCE.

Now that phones are nothing more than single chips, convolutely obfuscated by the necessity of big clunky human interface accouterments like buttons and screens and dials and rockers, there is no reason to keep thinking of Phone As Phone, in the classical sense. ANYTHING can be a damned phone, including a REGULAR SIZED watch. The phone chip, by design, already has a "watch" inside it for crying out loud! They're handing this to you on a silver platter, manufacturers.

I've said it many times before, but apparently it bears repeating:
  • I want a STANDARD FORM FACTOR watch with the phone chip inside. Can provide variety and choice for consumers by creating many classical analog and digital form factors.
  • The watch comes with bluetooth ear piece, pre-paired and tested from the factory, but is also 100% compatible with any after-market bluetooth ear piece.
  • Yes, AS ALWAYS, we engineers will scream that we need to get even more creative than ever with both antennas and batteries. BUT, an antenna on a wrist is most certainly less risky to brains than antennas near craniums.
  • There may be opportunities for very compact and innovative solar batteries. Unlike a solar-powered phone, a device worn on the wrist has a MUCH higher probability of capturing at least some non-zero amount of juice for anybody who goes outside with any regularity (hopefully, we all do that, for our own sakes).
  • Here's how you work the stupid thing:
    • Push button on either watch or ear piece to activate interaction mode.
    • Say one-word introductory command such as, "Call" ... "Dial" ... "Voicemail" ... "Email" ... "Find" ... blah, blah, blah.
    • After call or dial, simply speak the number "650 555 1212" (yeah, yeah, yeah, user settings deal with default country code or allow for speaking country code on every call for that type of user). This is TRIVIALLY easy to do with today's voice recognition.
    • Rest of menu choices follow probabilistic hierarchical choices, per existing phone user behavior understanding.
    • Blah, blah, blah, I'm not going to write your whole design spec, here. You'd have to hire me for that.
Truly, there is no reason why I should be able to buy one of these at Fry's Electronics or Best Buy for Christmas 2008. So let's get crackin', shall we?


Powered by ScribeFire.

Make Hyperlinks a Crime

This ignominious Too.Late goes to the Gloucestershire County Council, UK, in association with a group called The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT www.fact-uk.org.uk) -- you didn't really think I'd actually dare create a link to them, did you? -- for shutting down and arresting a 26 year old who provided links to videos hosted on the internet. FACT went after this kid because it was the Cheap, Easy Kill instead of actually PURSUING THE LEGAL OFFENDERS, which include Google Video and others who host vast repositories of anachronistically-categorized illegal content.

Hell-ooo ... clearly, Google and others are the pirate video web sites here, not some kiddie site that merely points to that content.

The fact is that FACT's move is akin to the police arresting you because you told someone where to find an underground massage parlor or other house of similarly ill repute. Just because you TELL someone where they can go to find trouble does not mean that you forced them to go to the trouble, much less can you be held responsible for operating the trouble itself.

For example, your buddy goes to the Happy Endings massage parlor and the police come and arrest you. They don't go raid the parlor, they don't to shake down your buddy, they arrest YOU, because you told your buddy where he could find the trouble.
A man is now in prison because he runs a site where other people can link to low-resolution tv shows, hosted by Google. FACT did not raid Google, they raided a site which merely links to TV shows.
Additional useful coverage and clueful context by Reddit and GeeksAreSexy.

Sue The Entire Internet and make the Ultimate Fool of Yourself

This ignominious first goes to none other than the RIAA.

WTF???!!! Sue USENET??? Why not just sue NNTP? Or the Entire Internet, while you're at it? This is beyond absurd. You can't sue a stream of electrons or a communications protocol.

Moreover, there is absolutely ZERO excuse for a source like Wired Magazine to refer to Usenet as "a message board." For goodness sake, the RIIA might as well sue the INTERNET. In fact, without Usenet one could build a convincing argument that there would be no World Wide Web as we know it. You might as well make the Internet illegal. It is absolutely inexcusable from publication with such deep technological roots to not defend Usenet to the utmost.

AN ALL CAPS, NETGODZ AND FOUNDING FATHERS WAG-OF-THE-FINGER AT THE RIAA!


Pay Whatever you Want for New Music Release

Radiohead ponies up with a major global brand first: PAY WHATEVER YOU WANT. Sure, many up and coming artists have experimented with this model, but this is RADIOHEAD ... they could clearly defend the old machine (as Metallica and others before them) if they so chose. This is a bold and brilliant move that I hope we will all reward and validate by doing the right thing with this opportunity.



So go now ... and if you truly have NO MONEY, go ahead and get it for free.



But if you really want to see the market for music radically shifted in YOUR FAVOR, then pay something ... anything ... preferably, pay what you really think the art is worth.

Finally, why not order the very impressive full box set (which still includes a FREE download)? It's full of interesting historical artifacts and bonus material.



So see? It's never too late to be the FIRST in your neighborhood to DO THE RIGHT THING and thereby, change the world for the better.

Make Insertion of Timed Comments in Video Trivially Simple

Looks like Viddler.com was first to really get this right. As always, your corrections and pointers to prior art welcomed.

Create a Web Startup that's Older and Cooler than Google

DreamHost Turns 10 at roughly the same time Google turns 9. While Google may be full of trillionaires, that kind of startup success comes only from the lightening strike rarity of copping a check from Doer or Jurvetson, et al., at the right shmooze fest. In contrast, Dreamhost is indeed the Everyman's success story. No adopted rich uncles, no stable of cling-on lawyers, nobody breathing down your neck -- except for your customers, who's job it is to breath down your neck so that you have a job, and your career independence.

Congratulations to the Original Four Honchos and all the contributors along the way. While $1,000/share stock targets may be the ultimate dream for the architects of World Domination and Galactic Surveillance; MOST young entrepreneurs just need to know that they can indeed band together with a few friends and given a Good Idea, Hard Work, and Perseverance ... make a living doing what they want to do.

Sure, the Google golem is a wonderfully phantasmagorical freak of nature, a beasty braniac behemoth that has changed our world forever; but Dreamhost represents today's authentic and ATTAINABLE American Dream, and like any good older Brother or Sister, it reminds it's bling-laden sibling of the values that used to bind them.

Namely, Dreamhost's success can be attributed to it's unspoken and unadvertised implicit tagline:
"We ALWAYS tell you the TRUTH when stuff is borked: even if it's embarrassing or stupid on our part."
As I said, this is not DH's tagline, but it's what I've EXPERIENCED from them, as a customer. Unless you've been a long time customer of Dreamhost like I have, it's impossible to convey how wonderfully refreshing it is to experience this philosophy in action. Alas, without that prerequisite promise and proven performance thereof, any slick SEC-filed sermonette about not being evil is pretty much destined for the usual pulpit-dweller's outcome.

So let's get these Dreamhost founders on GMA and the The Big Idea and let's get Americans back to seeking and finding the attainable instead of medicating themselves into oblivion because the odds of breaking out of a social class today have dropped faster and farther than Vonage stock.

Create a Heirarchical Temporal Memory Platform

This one speaks best for itself:

"Numenta was formed to develop and promote a technology called Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM. We are confident that the principles underlying HTM are the same principles that govern much of the operation of the human neocortex; thus, HTM enables the creation of machines that have some of the capabilities of the human brain. We see HTM as a fundamental new computing methodology able to solve longstanding problems in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Be sure to read the white paper on our web site that describes the basics of HTM and what it can do.

We believe that the potential applications for HTM are broad and far-reaching; yet we know that our small company can only work on a piece of this application potential. Consequently, our goal is to create an industry built on HTM, opening up the platform to the world of creative developers. To this end, we have created a set of software tools that allows anyone to experiment with HTM, to apply HTMs to different problems, and to extend the tools. We call this set of tools the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing or NuPIC, and we have made it available for anyone to download under license."

The First Occasional No-Duh Award (FONDA)

Too late for you to win The FONDA, as this edition's recipient is Mark Cuban, for a 10 years-too-late realization that it's the massive symmetric bandwidth, stupid ... and a trailing, stale, derived pseudo-proclamation that The Internet is Dead and Boring, a reality that I've been challenging Stanford undergrads with in the Shadow/Mentor program for some time, now. Just scroll down a bit for more variations on the theme, if you like.

But let Billionaire Boy proclaim such things, and all of a sudden it's a topic of discussion. The myths about the power of pure ideas and thought leadership are just that - myths; at least in America. Ideas are worth jack here -- it's cash and cajones to execute ideas that count.

Although I suppose I should be flattered if BB has been lurking at TLTBF to keep up; pardon just a bit of non-billionaire counter-banter as we recall that BB made his billions on glam-ware like everyone else during the very time that we were explaining to Sand Hill Rd. the UNIQUE and CRITICAL post-Telecom-Act environment that would have enabled us to TRANSFORM and OWN the wholesale Ethernet First Mile bandwidth platform (ETTH) by 2008.

As ranted here many times before, we still have late 90's business plans that effectively nailed this projection to 2008. But nooo ... there was a "glut" and "what would anyone ever do with such bandwidth?" Nice job, geniuses; really good work. You're such valiant visionaries. Now that you finally get it, it's too late ... unless you want to spend THOUSANDS of times more than it would have cost you in the first place, while feebly attempting to take on a fully re-constituted telecom oligarchy, now exporting the same squelching influence long secured in the homeland.

Nope, it just ain't happening in America. We gave you first shot at it and you blew it, so we're building it EVERYWHERE ELSE in the world, instead. 100Mbps is only $20 to $40 /mo. in many global markets and One Gigabit to Forty Gigabit fiber optic ETTH is emerging in many global markets ... but just not YOURS, America.

Wake up, America, you live in a Second or Third World Bandwidth nation and you did it to yourselves. Just because things are "faster than they were" does not mean they are as fast, affordable, or secure as they SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Ah, now that was a polemical rant if ever I've read one! Feel better? You bet!

Take Ad Supported "free" Music and Media Downloads to Scale

Um, well, not exactly the newest idea in the world; besides, if you consume the advertising, it's not FREE now, is it? Nevertheless, companies like SpiralFrog and QTrax once again have old media's panties in a bunch and there is renewed banter about which of these services might be first to achieve sustainable, profitable, markets of scale and universal kitchen-table brand awareness such as a Yahoo, Google, or Ebay.

So given that their panties are already in a bunch, isn't it just about time to go for the full wedgie and distance ourselves from the old media playground bullies altogether? Why should they continue to collect their fat paychecks from a machine that no longer delivers the audience that it delivered a quarter century ago? The answer is, they shouldn't, and won't for very much longer, despite (or perhaps because of) the increasingly disingenuous and presumptuous anti-piracy jihad against media consumers.

In Is P2P Ready for Sponsored Downloads? on eMarketer.com, we see yet another clear example that old media's terrorist jihad against defenseless college student music downloaders is as disingenuous as it is exploitive of people who are in such a captive situation as being shackled by student debt and confined to a college campus.
The suggestion that music can be free, even if supported by ads, tends to draw controversy. Prince recently drew fire by giving away copies of his latest CD in copies of the UK Mail on Sunday — never mind that The Mail paid him do to so.
Case in point: the artist, formerly and now re-known as Prince, created a product and sold that product to a customer. So what's the problem? The problem is an increasingly irrelevant and obsolete regime attempting to hold artists and new distribution technologies hostage to Cold War model for media management, distribution, and monetization.

R.I.P.: The Desktop

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the desktop is still PERVASIVE but it's a walking ZOMBIE. Others have long written far more responsibly and less hyerbolically about this trend, but this is a site that earns its stripes through highly probably hyperbole, so it' safe to assert: there is no long term future in the stand-alone "local desktop" rubric. It is a lifeless shell of it's former glorious self. It has served humanity well, and ought not be derided for running its leg of the computational relay race as best it was able.

However, go take a look at the demo site for Mail.Zoho.Com; particularly the "Bureau" view, a name and dashboard view which I hope they will keep into full production. Or for an advanced full-blown web desktop, try Desktop Two (hey Adobe Corp and BSD developers, we really *need* flashplayer9 and up to date adobe reader plugins for the most innovative early adopter group -- *ix geeks -- to help you jump start adoption, man!) So, it may take a few more years to breath its last gasp, but it's officially time to re-re-re-redeclare ALT.DESKTOP.DIE.DIE.DIE is imminent.

Zoho's FIRST here is to provide a viable, scalable, working prototype of a client-side office WebTop. Others have done bits and pieces, and these sites have clearly built upon the shoulders of giants; however, it is now Too Late To Be First to bring almost 20 years of supportive efforts together as a single, compelling, easy-to-use WebTop environment. I'm thrilled that there are many others working to keep Zoho honest, but there just appears to be nothing missing here.

Zoho seems to have Nailed It.

By 2012, just give me BANDWIDTH and a BROWSER and I should have all the client-side computing resources I'd ever need, right at my fingertips! If that sounds aggressive, or too soon, realize that 2012 would be nearly two decades from the time the idea of WebTop initially emerged!

Cudos again to Sun Microsystems, who made the official First Call on this one with their Java WebTop framework, so long ago! Some of the earliest usenet mentions of "Java" and "WebTop" date back to the summer of 1996!

THE WEB *IS* THE OS!

THE NETWORK *IS* THE COMPUTER!

FINALLY!

R.I.P.: Web 2.0 Is Dead

Every now and then, gotta' claim another Too Late for the home team. So without further ado I hereby ostentatiously and presumptuously proclaim that I am FIRST to pronounce Web 2.0 DEAD. Here's why ... it's like a morbid Kevorkian TIVO recording of Web 1.0's last gasps:
More! Better! Faster! Infinite Everything All The Time for Instant Startup Stardom! Hurry! Act Now! Web metrics are standing by to take your click as your most carefully crafted stylesheets cascade off into oblivion!

Brutal, I know. But in other news, it could be that Web 3.0 is born.

FIRST Complete Privacy Options from ASK.COM

Well done! Congratulations! After calling for tools like this for years, ASK.COM has finally become the first to meet this undeniable requirement for Web 3.0, protecting your Individual Privacy as you Search. Ask.com to be the First Major Search Engine to Offer Complete Privacy Options.

We'll see if several logical next steps follow, and when they do, today could well be the day that we can look back to say Web 3.0 - The Identity Web was born.

Too Late for GOONgle to be first, but now they better get crackin' and become second. In all fairness to the goongies, it looks like their avarice and greed could actually create some powerfully positive side effects for Ethernet Everywhere if they break open the spectrum gridlock and pave the way for UNIVERSAL SYMMETRIC BANDWIDTH.

Put a Handle on tabletpc Slate format


The Motion C5, the first mobile clinical assistant (MCA) that integrates technology from Intel Health, combines durable design elements with key data capture technologies to simplify workflows, increase productivity and improve overall quality of care. Designed based on input from thousands of clinicians, the C5 brings reliable, automated patient data management directly to the point of care.

Motion Computing - C5 mobile clinical assistant

Powered by ScribeFire.

802.11N: The "N" is for Nice Design

0Kudos to Belkin for being first to toss out the 802.11B-is-for-Boring and replace with an 802.11N-is-for Nifty, iNformative, and just plain Nice product design. The display panel on these devices is something that many may soon wish they'd acted upon first. So this time it's too late to be first for DLink, Netgear, Linksys, et al, in the useful and appealing design category.

Now, if we can find an 802.11N device that will be the first to ACTUALLY WORK AS ADVERTISED, then we'll really be in business. After an entire weekend of testing the D-Link DIR-655 with the matching Xtreme N Notebook Adapter PCMCIA card, I'm saddened to report erratic connectivity.

When connected, speed performance was easily 5x greater (keeping distance from AP constant) than the Linksys WRT54GX4 "SRX 400" MIMO router that I hoped to replace; however, we just couldn't get the DIR-655 to stay reliably connected to any of the six following computers: Macbook Pro w/ OS X, IBM Thinkpad w/ XPSP2, Toshiba with XPSP2, Sony w/ Windows 2000, Lenovo w/ FreeBSD 6.2, and Acer w/ XPSP2. Chertoffesque "prophetic gut" theory? Pre-draft N may not have been sufficiently polite to neighbors; but this Wi-Fi Certified Draft N box may be TOO POLITE.

I may put just a couple more days free time into messing around with the amazingly detailed options in the 655's Admin Console; but so far, I've been unable to come close to confirming Tim Higgin's results. I'm not at all questioning Tim's excellent work -- for which I'm very grateful -- and perhaps the neighborhood network density in my location has something to do with current results; so as always, your mileage may vary.

First to Sell Limited Unlimited Email

But wait, there's more! You'll want to HURRY because this Less Limited Unlimited Offer is for a LIMITED Time, Only!

Yep, Yahoo gets the honors yet again. Now, with Yahoo New Mail Plus, you can go from Free Unlimited Limited Email to PLUS Unlimited Less Limited Email for just $19.99/year! Brilliant! What's the incentive? Well, the SPAM CANNON we have pointed at your limited unlimited head, for one.

Yahoo Unlimited Limited DUH 0.0


Yahoo Unlimited Limited DUH 0.1

Free Unlimited Webmail

Yep, that would be Yahoo! TOO LATE, shpoogle.

Making Operating Systems Utterly Irrelevant

This list of 30+ Resources to Get Things Done is only the tip of the iceberg. The missing ingredient is universal access to massive symmetric bandwidth. Ultimately, it isn't an operating system that will win, but bandwidth that will obviate the desktop. Another case in point: YouTube on the iPhone. Who cares about the OS when all your interaction is inside the context of a browser?

1GB MP3&4 Audio Video in Watch Form Factor

Can anyone explain to me WHY -- in the name of all thing extropic -- WHY is this STILL not a phone, as well? This is no longer rocket science, boys and girls. The absence of an affordable Dick Tracy wrist-phone with Bluetooth voice-dial interface is merely a matter of a missed perception of market size for the device. There is less than ZERO reason to have number keys on phones, these days. It requires merely a handful of bits for a cheap chip to be trained to recognize my intonation of the letters zero through nine; and yet, we still insist on 19th century input methods on our 21st century communicators. Go figure.

Build a Better Velcro

Engadget:
While others would likely suggest otherwise, [66-year old inventor Leonard Duffy] doesn't seem willing to budge on the name, insisting that "it's slidingly engaging... it's the slidingly engaging fastener."
Winner of a Popular Science invention award, SEF is able to support eight times the weight of velcro and is COMPLETELY SILENT. BTW, when you invent something better than SEF, you get to call it whatever you want; until then, STFU with even the slightest name critiques, deal? Oh yeah, and just be sure to remember that all old people have nothing to offer because they've lost all their creativity, initiative, focus, and ambition when you pay $200 for that first pair of arrogant punk-ass SEF shoes, right?

Yes, it's a rare cross-post, so relax already.

Bring IRC to Web 2.0; This time, 100% traceable

Yep, Twitter and a Ton of Twitter Tips and Tools have done it. A total free-for-all, IRC-style, complete with private messaging using the @username syntax. Obviously, I'm not implying that this is anything close to IRC, but for the new crop of net-chillens out there, it may keep them from ever discovering IRC; which, of course, THE MAN would simply love, right? I guess if you can't intimidate IRC out of existence, might as well try to distract and detract it into irrelevant oblivion; which shouldn't be too hard to do for anyone easily hypnotized by the likes of complementing mashups like TwitterVision and FlickrVision.

HyperLink 2.5e -- Document Viewer and Web Browser for the C64/128

An oldie but a goodie for Mother's Day on TLTBF. The 2003 edition of HyperLink 2.5e -- Document Viewer and Web Browser for the C64/128. All these years later and you STILL rant about how it was "your idea" first. Yeah, well, that's how much ideas are worth, my friend. It's all about execution or lack thereof.

Powercast and other Reasonably Responsible Rants on Wireless Power and Other Arcane Yet Ostensibly Achievable Eventualities


Powercast makes pretty good sense for TLSIADT/TLTBF as the "industry leader in the emerging technology of RF energy harvesting, [which] enables the [safe] transfer of power without wires." Additional thoughful consideration of this technology can be found it Backreaction's take on Wireless Power and Dale Wright's web log.

Make Every Cell Phone a Pocket-Sized Broadcast Station

0

This first goes to Kyte.TV, even if you really DID IT first; which you probably did, but they got the capital and street cred, so there you have it. Too late to be first, even when you really were first. "It's so unFAIR." - Dr. Gregory House


ID the Lackluster Omnivore Technology Market Segment

Missing Image Note: Hmmm, ImageShack apparently lost or killed access to http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/9301/ topographychart4974685sa8.png which was here in the original post. Not exactly clear why.
You gotta hand it to PEW for trying, but they still missed one segment ... the Lackluster Omnivore. Sure, this may be like .02% of the market, but it's also the .02% that will risk millions of dollars of it's own capital in order to make things better (yeah, yeah, a loaded term, yada-yada) for the both ourselves and our friends across the 99.98% side of the aisle. It's not that this tiny slice of society is any better than the rest, it's just DIFFERENT. Remember the old Apple Computer campaigns? Okay, maybe that makes Apple users a little better than the rest of the world; but this post isn't about that.

One of the whole points of this blog is to skewer my own inner technology "Omnivore, [those] who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages," while navel gazing in contemplation of the myriad and sundry inconsistencies, ironies, and even injustices involved in these peculiar little human practices we like to call: innovation and adoption.

According to the quiz, I'm about as hard core an omnivore as you can find (but if you look at the charts, it helps explain the very frustrating and discriminatory experience of encountering 99.9% of Omnivores who also come with an equally hardcore PREJUDICE against people like me because I break the "age rule" by about 20 years); hence, I wonder why I might bring a Lackluster Veteran's perspective, "those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it" according to the latest survey that claims to 'shatter technology assumptions'?

Now is where this post crosses over into the All Old People Suck blog category. The blatant overlap doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's always ugly. So the squeamish may want to click away from the page, right away.

It's not the technology that's a problem for me, it's the Workplace Discrimination and dismissive and condescending guffaw's from many younger omnivores whom I'd probably eat for lunch when it comes to configuring an OpenBSD firewall rule set, or configuring AMPS on FreeBSD. On the other hand, of course, are my demographic cohorts who simply seem to be too damned tired and lazy to RTFM, or too impatient to learn new and FAR BETTER ways to do things.

So, what the study fails to address is WHY some otherwise enthusiastic and successful technology innovators might become equal parts enthusiast, grizzled veteran innovator, early adopter, and simultaneously skeptical as hell. One suspicions is that for those who pursue the leading edge, the coercive market power of the middle of the bell curve can often hang like a dead weight around the neck of truly creative, breakthrough innovation. Finding a balance amidst the opposing forces of anthropological, technological, and financial vectors isn't exactly an exercise for the feint of heart. All too often, it seems, an innovator either has a rich uncle (or VC who thinks you're kinda cute) or not; and that's the deciding factor of what gets built to scale and what does not. Yeah, that could pretty much lay a foundation for "lackluster" probably.

So, unless you can point me elsewhere to prove me wrong, I'll now pompously and unceremoniously proclaim myself the the First Self-Identified Lackluster Omnivore in the Pew Internet segmentation model. Ah, the lengths we creatures of reason will go to just to feel more-or-less differentiated. What's up with that, anyway? I guess we'll have to find out in the next study.

In the meantime, you too can still take the quiz yourself, even though like myself, you are WAAAY TOO LATE to be first to this particularly swanky sardonic soiree; unless, of course, you can explain to me why you too are some statistically insignificant variety of under-appreciated, underpaid, under-recognized unholy half-breed or multi-dimensional freak-consumer that somehow defies the deistic power of "The Typology Groups," as they're proclaimed in the impeccably presented and authoritatively entitled table of findings, above.

MY RESULTS (FWIW):
------------------
Based on your answers to the questionnaire, you most closely resemble survey respondents within the Omnivores typology group. This does not mean that you necessarily fit every group characteristic.

Omnivores make up 8% of the American public.

Basic Description
Members of this group use their extensive suite of technology tools to do an enormous range of things online, on the go, and with their cell phones. Omnivores are highly engaged with video online and digital content. Between blogging, maintaining their Web pages, remixing digital content, or posting their creations to their websites, they are creative participants in cyberspace.

Defining Characteristics
You might see them watching video on an iPod. They might talk about their video games or their participation in virtual worlds the way their parents talked about their favorite TV episode a generation ago. Much of this chatter will take place via instant messages, texting on a cell phone, or on personal blogs. Omnivores are particularly active in dealing with video content. Most have video or digital cameras, and most have tried watching TV on a non-television device, such as a laptop or a cell phone.

Omnivores embrace all this connectivity, feeling confident in how they manage information and their many devices. This puts information technology at the center of how they express themselves, do their jobs, and connect to their friends.

Who They Are
"They" are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28 [so if you're in your 40's, you suck and you should act your lame age, despite your intellectual interests and capabilities]; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population [so clearly, you are some kind of a CREEP if you're just as accomplished and interested in technology at the age of 50]. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students. [So surprising, living off the WAGE SLAVE income of their parents and student loans, they have TIME AND ATTENTION to devote to embracing novel technologies -- how impressive of "them!"]

Build On-the-Fly Drag-n-Drop Web 2.0 Mashup Applications

If you've seen anything that can meet or beat Synthasite (when it emerges from stealth mode in a few weeks) please let me know. Until then, this seems to qualify as another great idea for which you are TOO LATE, loser.


Booster Blades

Sure, you claim that you THOUGHT of this long before "they" did; but once again "they" stole "your" idea by actually getting off their assess and BUILDING IT.

The Too Late of Web 2.0 Too Lates

0Go ahead, just TRY to keep up with Mashable while holding down a full time job. While you're at it, just go ahead and try to create a site that does what they do -- only better.

Build Diamonds, One Carbon Atom at a Time

Practically spinning straw into gold, ADT Advanced Diamond Technologies makes diamond one carbon atom at a time. ADT’s ultra-nanocrystalline diamond (UNCD) is born of U.S. Department of Energy research and uses a nanometer-scale process to make a continuous film comprised of the smallest grains of diamond known. UNCD, consisting of diamond grains that are 3-5 nm in diameter, has uses in wireless communication, bio-sensors and nano-manufacturing. “"We turn 50 cents of natural gas into $500 of diamond by rearranging the carbon atoms,”" said ADT’s president Neil Kane.

UNLIMITED EMAIL, *with* IMAP!

Ummm, yeah, that would be YAHOO MAIL, ladies and gentlemen, not g00G13.

Declare the Net DOA

Nato's clearly not first to state the obvious demise of the internet, but he might be first to do so on a 100% pure Dokuwiki personal web site. Nicely done.

Capture and Store Human Thought at Moment of its Creation

Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm aims to be first; but you can still beat them to it! They've only rounded up 300 of the world's top neuroscientists to make it so; so what are you waiting for? It's not too late for this one!

Reflect Air

Well, or create a coating with the same refractive index as air, anyway.

o You Need a Place to Work on Your Projects?

If you hope to be first, better hurry to the TechShop, The SF Bay Area's Only Open-Access Public Workshop. Oh yeah, and the Shop itself is yet another idea for which you're late to be first, of course.

Be First to Score the Adobe Deal for Social Networking

Since Flash has literally redefined web site design, it stands to reason that whoever partners with Adobe in the social networking Web 2.0, 3.0, 172,845.0, whatever-point-oh space stands to benefit a great deal, indeed. So if your were hoping to be first to score the Adobe deal, you can forget it. Too late, Somebody is Already Doing That; and the somebody is Photobucket, Remixed. As reported in this Mashable Roundup:
Photobucket’s new Flash-based remixing tool, which they demoed to press and us humble bloggers last week, goes officially live tomorrow. It’s available only to those with Pro accounts, allowing you to remix photos, videos, captions, soundtracks and the rest, ala Jumpcut and Eyespot. The difference is that Photobucket already has a huge audience: 36 million users. It’s a partnership with Adobe: a first foray into the social space for the owners of the Flash platform.

Demonstrate the World's First Quantum Computer

Could it be real? Before cold fusion, even? Techworld.com reports the first Quantum computer to debut next week.

Implement UNIX | Command for Entire Feeds, Sites, Web API's, etc.

All I can say is, DAY-um! Check out Yahoo's Smokin Pipes. Take *that* Google Labs.

Procure the Penultimate Pooper

It's NOT too late, you could still be first at something!

First Vista PC Tests

First Vista PC tests? Yep, done. A PC World - Exclusive.

Put your entire research budget where your mouth is for ODF

Many talk about the benefits of OpenOffice over proprietary office suites like MS Office, but the CSIR has opted for open document format in its migration to an open source environment. This is HUGE vote of confidence by a significant actor in the scientific community. The biggest barrier to wider adoption of ODF has historically been the first-mover disadvantage, also known as the "nobody else is doing it, I better not either" effect. Yet now, "Towards the end of 2006, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) adopted the open document format (ODF) in support of access to information and as an enabler of the adoption of open source software (OSS). In terms of the adoption of the standard, CSIR word processor, spreadsheet and presentation files will be in ODF, wherever possible."

As a five-year user of OpenOffice, I couldn't be more pleased by this news. OOOnward!

Mac on a Stick?

Yep, done. Too late again.


On a ...

Give the Benefits of Sight To The Blind: Non-Surgically

It's called the the KNFB Reader Home Page. First saw it demonstrated by Kurzweil at the Singularity Summit in 2006. Utterly amazing.

Build a Better Darknet

"The" so-called Darknet (as absurd as saying "the" upper-case Internet) took over the Future of Content Distribution, long, long, ago. Today, we're simply seeing the manifestation of that future.

Create Hollow Silver Dollar Containers

Oh yeah, you know you want some of these babies ... also, you can click through to see all kinds of CIA spy goodies to satisfy your inner Secret Agent. Oh, and don't miss these great t-shirt ideas!