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Archive for the category “business”

12 Jun 2013

Of personal interest – Stanley A. White’s and Richard Reneau’s accounts of the beginnings of Printrak

This post is primarily of personal interest to me, but it’s my blog so nyah nyah.

The IEEE has published an oral history from Stanley A. White, who joined Autonetics, left to go to college, and then returned and stayed on after the company became part of Rockwell. While he stayed with Rockwell in the 1980s when the “Printrak” portion was sold to De La Rue, White was there for the beginnings of what would become Printrak (the company that I joined in the mid-1990s that is now part of MorphoTrak, where I still work).

Here’s the relevant excerpt:

White:

We used to joke that necessity is the mother of invention, assumption is the mother of screw-ups, and Autonetics is the mother of reorganization. I was eager to see what lay ahead when in 1972 opportunity beckoned again. The Electronics Research Center offered me the challenge of establishing a new Digital Systems Research Group within the Information Sciences Branch of the Advanced Technology (AT) Department. I was appointed Group Scientist of Digital Systems, rounded up some tried and proven performers and we were off and running.

AT contained an intense concentration of genius and was headed by Dr. Dick Gudmundsen, a world renowned laser physicist and all-round good guy. A component organization of AT, Information Sciences, was headed by Dr. Visvaldis Vitols, known as V2. Three incredibly talented senior staff members who worked for V2 were Dr. Art Rabinowitz, a speech-recognition expert, and two extraordinarily sharp EEs, Dr. John Riganati and Dr. Jim Paul. The Information Sciences senior staff was then further strengthened with the addition of DSP expert Dr. Tien Lin Chang and image-processing expert Dr. Dave Hench. Information Sciences had picked up the DSP (digital-signal-processing) responsibility for much of the company. We were in the midst of speech (Jim) and image (everybody) processing, encoding, implementation, and support for the radar (me) and sonar (V2 and me) shops. Jim had developed a real-time adaptive filter for speech filtering based on the TRW MAC chip. He did the complete design down to the pin-outs over Christmas vacation, and quickly brought a product line (ADAP 256 and ADAP 1024) to market in record time. ADAPs became very popular with law-enforcement agencies for cleaning up recordings of jail-house confessions and the like.

Our biggest contract was the FBI Automated Fingerprint Reader System. For a while it seemed to absorb the entire staff of Info Sciences.

Nebeker:

Did you keep track of what happened to these people?

White:

Jim quit and founded his own Virginia-based company that now designs and manufactures digital adaptive signal processors for law-enforcement agencies. John became a Bureau Chief at the former National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute for Standards and Technology. Tien-Lin died of brain cancer. Dave still works in image processing, currently for the Air Force at Rome NY. Art stayed with the fingerprint reader that was bought by Printrax, and V2 retired.

Incidentally, I found Rabinowitz on LinkedIn; he left Printrak several years before I arrived. Riganati and Vitols are cited in early Rockwell fingerprint patents such as this one.

Incidentally, there’s another account from Richard Reneau that takes the story farther back, into the 1960s:

The FBI then narrowed the choices to digital imaging developments. In 1967, contracts were awarded to Coronell Aeronautical Laboratories Inc. (which became Calspan Corp. and later, wasn’t heard from much) and Autonetics Group of Rockwell International Corp. (which was sold to Dalarue of London, sold to a management group, sold to Motorola, sold to Morpho) for engineering. Significant results were obtained by 1969 and further developments proceeded (development costs from 1971-1977 were a mere $21,535,700, by current spending standards a real bargain).

There’s a lot of detail in the account, including this observation (timely because “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez recently passed away):

What is very interesting to note from the old guy’s perspective is that much of the early “sales” of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) centered around “hits” made from searching latent prints in the system. AFIS capabilities as a crime fighting tool quickly overshadowed its speed and accuracy of the ten-print searching and identification abilities. The latent print function of the “Big four” quickly captured the public’s attention on the news. For example, one of these political sausages was the direct result of the automated systems “hit” of the “Night stalker” case. It was all about getting your own stand alone system at that point.

A central discussion I recall at the time was whether we should let the crime fighting capability take the lead — won’t wide-spread publicity cause the criminal to stop leaving prints at the crime scenes. Since the release of fingerprint information hasn’t stopped the criminal in the last 100 years, it probably won’t stop now, we opined. How right we were –backlogs are still growing.

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07 Jun 2013

A literal “time shift” – a celebrity meeting that saved a life

Many things happen because of chance, and it was just chance that Lara Lundstrom Clarke met a celebrity one morning – one Gwyneth Paltrow.

Both had been exercising that morning, Paltrow taking in an early yoga class, Clarke rollerblading along the Hudson. While Clarke was crossing in the middle of a West Village street in New York, Paltrow was driving in her silver Mercedes SUV. Suddenly, Clarke looked over and realized who was in the SUV. Clarke and Paltrow each stopped and the two of them exchanged greetings. This small delay made Clarke miss her train….

This happens often – something is both good and bad. The good thing for Clarke was that she met Paltrow. The bad thing was that the meeting caused her to miss her train…

…to her job…

…at the World Trade Center…

…on September 11, 2001.

She caught the next train and stepped off the platform just in time to see the first plane fly into Tower One.

This is just one of the stories of people who, for various reasons, avoided being killed on September 11.

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05 Jun 2013

Secret narrative science

Remember when I was looking for updated information on Narrative Science, the company that is working to automate the production of news articles?

Well, Narrative Science has hit the news again, but not because of anything that the company itself has done.

Companies don’t only make money by generating revenue. Companies also make money by getting investments, either privately (for example, when FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook) or publicly (when Facebook itself went public).

And Narrative Science has just received an investment of an unknown amount. Yeah, the funding amount is secret, so we don’t know if Narrative Science raised one dollar or one billion dollars. But we do know who made the investment – In-Q-Tel.

Now most of us are unfamiliar with In-Q-Tel, but the company is an active investor. And its investments are made on behalf of another entity – an entity which, when I lived in the Washington DC area in the early 1970s, was identified on local maps as the “Bureau of Public Roads.” Even today I have a conditioned reluctance to name the entity, but I will reveal the entity’s initials – CIA.

The investment makes sense to Peter Kafka of All Things D:

Those guys have a lot of data, and it would probably be helpful to have some of that sorted into sentences and summaries. It would be great to show you an example of that work, but obviously that’s not gonna happen.

Perhaps we will see some of this. The CIA – OK, I guess I can say “Central Intelligence Agency” in the 21st century – has become a lot more open about certain things. Imagine, for example, a version of The World Factbook that is edited in real-time.

Now imagine someone using Internet pages to introduce spurious information into a Narrative Science-updated World Factbook. For example, if I were a hacker and successfully spoofed https://www.gov.uk/, I could arrange things so that the CIA’s World Factbook would authoritatively report that Scary Spice had been named Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

This could be interesting.

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04 Jun 2013

Internal control, B.C. version

As part of his day job, Jim Ulvog advises nonprofits on financial issues, including the need for financial controls to minimize the chance of fraudulent activity (see “The Tragedy of Fraud” post series. In a recent post in his blog Attestation Update, one of Ulvog’s former colleagues brought a 5th century text to Ulvog’s attention. According to the colleague, the quote below is taken from the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 449 A.D.:

As we have learned, in some churches, the bishops administer the material goods of the church without a treasurer; it has seemed right and proper that every church with a bishop should also have a treasurer taken from the clergy who will administer the church’s goods with advice of his own bishop. In this way the administration of the church will not be without checks and balances, the goods of the church will not be dissipated, and the priesthood will be free from all suspicion.

Let’s face it – no matter what type of organization you’re talking about, money is a temptation, and it’s wise to impose some type of control over the handling of money.

Not all nonprofits feel this way, unfortunately. In fact, according to a 2007 Christianity Today article, an entire “we’re not a denomination” denomination holds to a different practice, and cites Biblical authority for justification of its view:

“We take the model from the work that God established in the nation of Israel,” [Chuck] Smith says. “Moses was the leader appointed by God. He took 70 men, and they assisted Moses in overseeing the mundane types of issues that developed within the nation. There was the priesthood under Aaron.” Similarly, he says, “we have assistant pastors, and they look to me as the senior pastor. I’m responsible to the Lord. We have a board of elders. We go over the budget. The people recognize that God has called me to be the leader of this fellowship. We are not led by a board of elders. I feel my primary responsibility is to the Lord. And one day I’m going to answer to him, not to a board of elders.”

Critics say this “Moses model” produces pastors who refuse to let their authority be challenged. Such pastors often resist accountability measures such as financial audits and providing detailed financial statements. Some curious Calvary Chapel attendees, who have sought financial information from their churches, say they were ostracized.

Did the twelve tribes have lax financial controls during their years in the desert? Well, according to this abstract, they certainly established financial controls by the time they settled down:

Abstract: We examine the Hebrew Talmud’s account of internal controls in the ancient Jerusalem Temple (c.823 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.) This far-reaching enterprise involved an extensive system of sacrificial offerings, management of three annual pilgrimages, a court system and maintenance of a priestly class. We outline the annual process of collecting half-shekel and other donations, withdrawals from the Temple treasury and the sale of libations. The Talmud describes numerous internal controls: donations were segregated according to their specific purposes and donation chests were shaped with small openings to prevent theft. When making withdrawals from the Temple treasury, the priest-treasurer was required to wear specific clothing to prevent misappropriation of assets. The Treasury chamber itself had seven seals, requiring the presence of seven different individuals, including the king, in order to open it. The process of selling libations and meal offerings required purchasing and then redeeming different tickets, which were specifically marked to prevent fraud. In explaining the reasoning for this tight system of internal controls, the Talmud reveals that an individual “shall be guiltless before G-D and before Israel” [Numbers 32: 22], so that a sound system of internal controls prevents both theft and any suspicion of theft, thus establishing the fiscal credibility of the Temple institution in the eyes of its congregants. Such an approach indicates that accounting did not represent a profane, secular vocation at odds with the Temple’s mission. To the contrary, a system of accountability formed integral steps in the Temple’s ritual processes.

Now for me personally the Talmud is not an authoritative religious book that governs my life, but it appears that there is some wisdom in its financial control system.

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01 Jun 2013

California Assembly Bill 642 and newspapers of general circulation

Early Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in Goodwin’s Organic Foods & Drinks in Riverside, California, sipping on a carrot apple juice. However, I wasn’t planning a sit-in to protest genetically modified snail darters. Instead, I was reading a newspaper.

Now perhaps I need to explain that term to younger readers. You see, a “newspaper” is just like it sounds – a collection of news stories printed on paper. It’s kind of like having an AOL publication such as the Huffington Post, but instead of looking at it on a computer as normal people do, you actually hold pieces of paper – sometimes very large pieces of paper – in your hand to read the news. In fact, some major news web sites, including famous websites such as the New York Times, actually started out as newspapers!

(Someday I’ll post the story of my years as a “paper boy.”)

Oh, and because it prints on paper, the newspaper copy that you have may not have the latest news. In fact, I was looking at a newspaper from Friday, the day before – which is probably why it was left lying around.

So what was in Friday’s paper – in this case, the local Riverside Press-Enterprise? Well, I saw a few stock quotes from Thursday – not a lot of them. And I saw an account of the Heat-Pacers basketball game from Thursday night. And I also saw an ad, placed by the paper itself, regarding California Assembly Bill AB 642.

If you haven’t heard of AB 642, it is a legislative attempt to change the definition of a “newspaper of general circulation.” Why is this definition so important? Because in California, as in many other jurisdictions, a newspaper of general circulation is the only type of newspaper that is authorized to publish official notices – fictitious business name statements, petitions to change names, notices of auctions of unclaimed property, and the like. So if you happen to be a newspaper of general circulation, you can run these ads – and charge money for them, which provides a nice revenue stream.

But what if the definition of “newspaper of general circulation” changes? Well, that’s what AB 642 proposes to do. Here’s part of the legislative counsel’s summary of the bill:

AB 642, as introduced, Rendon. Publication: newspaper of general circulation: Internet Web site.

Existing law requires that various types of notices are provided in a newspaper of general circulation. Existing law requires a newspaper of general circulation to meet certain criteria, including, among others, that it be published and have a substantial distribution to paid subscribers in the city, district, or judicial district in which it is seeking adjudication.

This bill would provide that a newspaper that is available on an Internet Web site may also qualify as a newspaper of general circulation, provided that newspaper meets certain criteria.

Now this bill, if passed, means that current newspapers of general circulation, such as the Riverside Press-Enterprise, would have to compete with Internet-only publications, such as the Lake Elsinore-Wildomar Patch, an online-only news source in the Press-Enterprise’s territory.

As I mentioned, the newspaper that I was reading had some comments about AB 642. You can guess how the Press-Enterprise feels about it.

Although I couldn’t find the Press-Enterprise’s ad online, I did find similar sentiments from another newspaper publisher, Brian Hews. In a March 15 piece entitled AOL, Patch Declare War on Newspapers in California, writer Randy Economy quotes from Hews:

“AB 642 requires no brick-and-mortar presence, no business office, and therefore, likely no local publisher, editors, reporters, local ad staff, production and circulation staff. A single regional editor aggregating content from the worldwide web and rewriting news credited at great expense by real newspapers would qualify,” Hews said….

“AB 642 would allow the adjudication of a petri dish,” Hews said. “This will kill some great local newspapers.”…

“Internet-only publications, especially The Patch are undependable, have no permanency, are subject to constant change and susceptible to technology failure. Internet connections fall, server’s crash, links die and websites are hacked all the time,” Hews said.

But not everyone is worried about the crashing of “server’s.” To some, the anti-competitive stance of the current newspapers of general circulation is the last gasp of a dying industry. In a letter to the editor of the Press-Enterprise, Dana Sutton was unimpressed with the Press-Enterprise’s arguments:

In response to your large advertisement March 27 that urged opposition to AB 642, I urge California legislators to support the bill….

What we have is a yelp of pain coming from a moribund industry. Spokesmen for the whale oil industry no doubt issued similar howls when electricity came along. But, of course, technological progress always creates losers as well as winners. The Legislature has no business protecting such victims from the natural and inevitable consequences of obsolescence.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I found all of these quotes on the Internet. But on the other hand, Sutton took the time to pen (I mean type) a missive to this generation’s whale oil salesmen.

This whole episode, including the behind-the-scenes jockeying by competing business interests, is merely another illustration that technology itself is easy to change. Heck, technology would permit THIS blog to publish official notices – something that would strike fear in the hearts of the Press-Enterprise and AOL alike. It’s the business rules that are tough to alter.

Posted in business, inland empire and tagged | Leave a Comment
19 May 2013

Freedom vs. privacy – the Federal Trade Commission’s view

In my Empoprise-BI business blog, I recently introduced one possible solution to the tension between freedom and privacy.

So let me present my Empoprises Rule Regarding Recording Freedom and Privacy:

I am allowed to record anything that I want.

No one, however, is allowed to record me unless I say that it’s OK.

For some reason, some of you may think that this is not a good rule to apply to society. However, I don’t see any problem with it myself. :)

James Ulvog doubts that my proposal would work if it were universally adopted.

I think there may be a few little implementation issues if he ever is around another person who has also adopted his rule.

So I’ve continued to search for a better solution. My search is not only motivated by the recent discussion of Google Glass, but also because this conversation impacts upon my day job. (Needless to say, the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer MorphoTrak, who offers facial recognition products.)

And facial recognition, one of the technologies that happens to be offered by my employer, has popped up in a couple of instances over the last few days.

If you follow Jesse Stay on Google+, you may have noticed that he asked the following question a few days ago:

…any devs with strong facial recognition and object scanning tech experience interested in partnering on building something with my Google Glass?

In a post published today, Stay shared a possible solution:

In your Google+ account settings there’s an option to notify you if someone “Shares a photo or video with me that I might be in.” Enable that and even set it to send you an SMS when it happens. When someone takes a picture of you via Google Glass and shares it to Google+, it should notify you. Approve that, and now they know who you are.

Of course, it’s a bit of a hack, and the person you’re taking a picture of must be using Google+ and have this enabled to work, but it is a way to know who you are taking pictures of.

Basically Stay has taken two separate technologies and hacked them together to come up with a solution. The fact that both technologies are Google technologies is a happy accident; it could just as easily been technologies from different companies.

Of course, Stay’s solution only works if both people have opted in. But you may not necessarily have to opt in yourself for your data to be available to facial recognition software. This was reinforced in a recent 60 Minutes report that described an experiment by Carnegie Mellon’s Professor Alessandro Acquisti:

He photographed random students on the campus and in short order, not only identified several of them, but in a number of cases found their personal information, including social security numbers, just using a facial recognition program he downloaded for free.

And all of the protections that you personally implement regarding your data may be for naught. One example:

“One of the participants, before doing the experiment, told us, ‘You’re not going to find me because I’m very careful about my photos online.’ And we found him,” says Acquisti, “Because someone else had uploaded a photo of him.”

And that applies to other information about you, some of which is either public by design (home sales information) or public by accident (when a U.S. company accidentally leaks customer ID numbers when the numbers are in the form nnn-nn-nnnn).

Which returns us to our initial question – what is a workable way to strike a balance between freedom and privacy?

Last October Seth Colaner noted that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was working on the problem, and had issued a report entitled Facing Facts: Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies. According to Colaner, the report presents an issue that many of you already know – because of the combination of technology and data, it is possible to identify people who were previously anonymous.

Now the FTC does not have the power to legislate – only Congress can do that. (And, of course, it goes without saying that neither the FTC nor Congress has any legal standing outside of the United States.) But the FTC can certainly recommend, as Colaner notes.

The FTC report boils the above down into three short and sweet principles:

1. Privacy by Design: Companies should build in privacy at every stage of product development.
2. Simplified Consumer Choice: For practices that are not consistent with the context of a transaction or a consumer’s relationship with a business, companies should provide consumers with choices at a relevant time and context.
3. Transparency: Companies should make information collection and use practices transparent.

While the FTC’s recommendations are laudable, there’s another tension that prohibits wide adoption of them. And that’s not the need to strike a balance between freedom and privacy. It’s the need to strike a balance between profit and transparency.

To be continued…

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17 May 2013

How demographics changed daytime television after 1980

Before I get into this tymshft post, I wanted to briefly go off-topic and mention a wonderful Google+ community called Alternate History. Perhaps someone there will write a “what-if” scenario entitled “What if U.S. morning television had remained the same, despite demographic change?”

Of course, the person who wrote such an alternate history would have a tough task, since many people today would not recognize daytime television from the 1970s.

Young people today may not believe it, but in the 1970s daytime television was entirely occupied by game shows, soap operas, and inconsequential talk shows. The reason for this was an admittedly sexist assumption – since the men of the house were working outside of the home, and since the women of the house were housewives, some light entertainment was needed to occupy the women when they weren’t cleaning and baking.

While one can truly question whether this was ever true, the three (at the time) commercial television networks certainly thought it was true, and structured their programming accordingly. Unbeknownst to the network television executives, however, the demographic landscape had changed. There were fewer and fewer housewives as more women worked outside the home. More and more of the daytime television audience consisted of college students. And at the same time, technologies were emerging which allowed someone to videotape a show during the day, and watch it in the evening. Because of these factors, daytime television presented an opportunity for the networks to present edgy programming – if only they realized it.

The first network to engage in such programming was NBC. While some would later say that Fred Silverman’s genius was responsible for the change, even Silverman himself subsequently admitted that it was all an accident. NBC was being trounced by CBS and ABC, and Silverman was desperate to try anything to escape the cellar. While much of his enormous energy was concentrated on NBC’s prime time schedule, he also paid attention to other parts of the schedule. NBC had a young comedian named David Letterman under contract, and Silverman decided to put him in the morning slot, cancelling several game shows to make way for The David Letterman Show, which premiered on June 23, 1980.

It soon became apparent that this was not your typical show for housewives. One of the earliest indications of this was the appearance by Andy Kaufman as a guest.

By the end of the summer of 1980, David Letterman was the most talked-about personality on television. People began to call in sick or claim to have car problems so that they could stay home and watch the show – in fact, “Stupid Car Problems” became a recurring theme on the show.

Networks, as they always do, attempted to counter-program Letterman’s success. While ABC’s morning show with Andy Kaufman himself was not successful, CBS found its own comedian, Jay Leno, and built a show that eventually surpassed Letterman’s. After the Kaufman failure, ABC tried a different tack, luring newsman Edwin Newman away from NBC to launch a hard news show called “Dayline.”

By 1985, the transformation of morning television was complete. The soap operas and game shows were moved from the morning schedule to the evening schedule, although many commented that “Wheel of Fortune” and “Dallas,” while successful in so-called “prime time,” could never make it in the mornings. (Even today, the block of programming between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm Eastern time is still called “prime time,” despite the fact that this is an almost forgotten part of the schedule.) Daytime, however, was a hotbed of activity, as hard news shows hosted by Newman, Pat Buchanan, and Al Franken battled against edgy talk shows from Leno, Letterman, and Phil Donahue. ABC tried to buck the trend by heavily promoting a lighter talk show from Oprah Winfrey; the show, however, was a complete failure, and was quickly replaced by a hard news show with Geraldo Rivera.

While many of the daytime personalities have changed – Al Franken, Pat Buchanan, and Phil Donahue left television for the U.S. Senate, and Leno and Letterman have long since retired – the nature of daytime television programming remains the same, even in 2013. But today’s stars well understand their debt to the pioneers of daytime television. Recently, talk show host Michele Bachmann scored a ratings coup by having David Letterman and Jay Leno appear on her show together. The segment was moderated by Bachmann’s co-host, the resurrected 1980s failed star Oprah Winfrey.

I hope to write a future post to explain how Leno, Letterman, and the like contributed to other massive changes – the proliferation of flexible work schedules, technologies that allowed time-shifting of television shows for those who didn’t have flexible work schedules, and the massive increase in people who worked from home.

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14 May 2013

That one little catch with all of these new technologies – they’ll cost you

Hiram looked with amazement at Abner’s demonstration.

“And this,” Abner concluded, “is the power of electricity. It will truly revolutionize our lives.”

Hiram almost jumped out of his socks. “So when can all of us have this power of electricity?”

“Trust me,” Abner replied, “Mr. Edison and the other businessmen would love for you to have this power of electricity as soon as possible.”

“This will be amazing,” said Hiram. “It would be handy to have the power of electricity around harvesting time. Perhaps there may be other times of the year in which I could use it also. Although frankly it would be ridiculous to use electricity all of the time.”

Hiram noticed the frown on Abner’s face. “Am I proposing too great of a use of electricity?”

“No,” Abner replied. “Quite the contrary. The businessmen desire that you use electricity all the time. Every month. Every day. And every night.”

Abner continued, despite the puzzled look on Hiram’s face. “You see, Hiram,” he explained, “once you begin to use electricity, you will have to use it forever. Today, it seems to you like a luxury. Later, you will want to use it. But after a while, you will need to use it. You literally will not be able to survive without it.”

“And you will need to pay for the electricity,” Abner continued. “At first you’ll only have to pay a little bit, but a hundred years from now you will have to pay a lot. Your home will have a number of devices that require more and more electricity, including automatic fans that cool your house using electricity, fancy types of phonographs that play records and other things, and new devices that we cannot even imagine today. And every month, you will receive an electric bill. You will have to pay that electric bill every month. And that monthly electric bill may be in the hundreds of dollars.”

That shooke Hiram up. “Hundreds of dollars a month? How can anyone pay hundreds of dollars a month for electricity?”

“Actually, it’s not that bad,” replied Abner, “since people will make tens of thousands of dollars a year by the time hundred dollar electric bills become commonplace. But the important thing is that you will have to pay this every month, whether you like it or not.”

“But can’t I just not pay one month and then get electric service the next month?” asked Hiram.

“No,” replied Abner. “Can you just not eat for a month and then resume eating the next month? It will be the same with electricity.”

“I’m not sure that I like that,” said Hiram. But then he took another look at Abner’s illuminating light and his phonograph. “But then again, perhaps it may be a small price to pay after all.”

As Hiram thought about this, he noticed that Abner was fiddling with a most unusual set of spectacles. They looked like normal spectacles, but there was a strange box on the corner of the spectacles.

“Abner,” asked Hiram, “what are those spectacles? Is this something else that will use electricity?”

Abner placed the spectacles above his nose. “After a fashion,” he replied. “There will be a day when everyone will have to wear these special spectacles. Otherwise, they will fail to detect the driverless car without headlights – oh, never mind. I was just musing on some things.”

(Those of you who are equipped with an electrically-powered computing device may wish to read this thread for some further background.)

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13 May 2013

Coolidge-era real estate promotion goes sour

It was a peaceful area. People grew crops by their homes here. The neighborhood received a little fame when it staged a production of William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in a local canyon. The local residents, along with students from the nearby high school, acted in the production.

A few years later, the area attracted the attention of some investors, including some real estate developers and a newspaper publisher. To promote their real estate development, they erected huge signage, with letters 50 feet high and 30 feet wide, along with 4,000 light bulbs. The signage certainly attracted attention to the real estate community.

A few years later, however, the Great Depression hit, and plans to expand the real estate development were essentially dashed, along with many other business opportunities throughout the United States (and, for that matter, the world).

Meanwhile, the old advertising – the 50 foot by 30 foot letters – remained standing. However, the letters were falling apart, and the light bulbs had long since been stolen. The sign was only supposed to last 18 months, but it took 26 years for the city to finally decide to tear the sign down.

However, the city only tore down four of the letters – the letters L, A, N, and D. The remaining letters – HOLLYWOOD – still stand today, long after the real estate origins of the sign have been forgotten.

For more information, see this tweet, which inspired me to look up this story and this story.

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10 May 2013
2 Comments

How will people configure their information consumption options in the future?

(Note: I actually wrote this in March, but forgot to actually finish it, much less publish it. Since Google Reader is about to go away, however, the post is even more timely than it was before. Perhaps I should have waited until June to publish it.)

I should start this my making two disclosures that will be relevant by the end of this post. The first is that Jesse Stay is old. The second is that I am even older than Jesse.

Why are these facts relevant? Because for several years, both Jesse and I have chosen to consume information via something known as an RSS reader. RSS stands for either Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, and its purpose is to extract information from a source (such as a newspaper website or a blog) and present it somewhere else. The information reaches the “reader” (either the RSS software, or the person using the RSS software) by means of “feeds” that present all or a portion of the original content to the reader. A good RSS reader allows you to organize these feeds; for example, I can take all of my RSS feeds that relate to California’s Inland Empire and place them in an Inland Empire folder. If I want to see what’s going on in the Inland Empire, I can just look at that folder.

While there were many RSS readers a few years ago, things changed when Google entered the market and created a software application called Google Reader. As Google Reader became more popular, other readers died off or became frozen in time, not introducing any new features and not fixing any bugs.

After a series of unfortunate events (documented elsewhere), Google announced that it would discontinue Google Reader by the middle of the year. While some sought out those alternative RSS readers that were still around, others instead declared that “RSS is dead.” Those who believe the latter asked themselves, what next? How will we get information?

Jesse Stay suggested that an older technology may become the new alternative:

While RSS is great for B2B applications of sharing information and likely won’t go away, from a consumer perspective I think email has won this battle. If your site, which previously had a “subscribe via RSS” button on it doesn’t also have a “subscribe by email” button, it probably should. It is evident to me that while many are searching for a new RSS reader that the answer for many trying to guarantee delivery of content will actually be email.

But while Stay’s suggestion makes sense for him, and for me, does it make sense for everybody? It may not:

Email use dropped 59 percent among users aged 12-17, as well as 8 percent overall, according to ComScore’s 2010 Digital Year in Review. Users between 18-54 are also using email less, though among those 55 and older, email actually saw an upswing.

Young people are turning to social networks to communicate instead–the activity accounts for 14 percent of time spent online in the U.S.. That growth is fueled largely by Facebook….

Now that post is over two years old, and there is at least anecdotal evidence that some teens have even rejected Facebook and the like for newer services. But let’s assume, for the moment, that teens will use Facebook-like services such as Facebook or Google+ to consume information. (I’ll confess that as my Google Reader use has decreased due to the series of unfortunate events, my use of Facebook and Google+ to consume information has increased.)

How will teens get their information then? Through Facebook’s fake email address? Maybe. Maybe not.

Twitter? Twitter has huge volume, and if you’re subscribing to a few hundred people, there’s a good chance that you won’t see every tweet from those people. You could set up lists, but Twitter doesn’t have the elegance of an advanced RSS reader that retains items until you act upon them, or of an email application that retains items until you act upon them.

Perhaps I have to rid myself of the idea that everything has to be reviewed. If I see a company’s tweet, that’s great. If I don’t, too bad. (I hope this doesn’t lead companies to retweet every hour to guarantee that I’ll see their content.)

What do you think of the future of information consumption?

Posted in business, technology

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