Too Late To Be First: October 2007

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?

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.