Don't Drive-Dial-Text-Post Drunk!

You've heard of drunk dialing, right? That's the unfortunately not-so-uncommon phenomenon of calling someone, typically an ex, when you've had one (or seven) too many, and either a) professing undying love; b) ranting; c) starting an argument, d) hitting redial one-to-one-hundred times, or (possibly worst of all) d) leaving an incoherent and horribly embarrassing voice message. This has become all the more dangerous with cell phones, since we have such easy access to them, and redial is so easy.

Wouldn't you know, somebody has thought of that, and taken care of it. Actually, more than one somebody.

DON'T DIAL (for both Android and iPhone, just $.99)  "lets you lock out those dangerous numbers for up to 24 hours. Don't worry: As soon as you're sober, they'll re-appear in your phonebook.

You can also opt to make a friend into your "designated dialer," and let them set a password for the evening.
Hangovers are hard. Don't Dial is easy:

• Pick all of your usual suspects from your contact list.
• Choose a block: use the timer, or have a friend enter a password.
• Go out, knowing you're safe from embarrassing drunk dial incidents!
• The next morning, run the app again to unlock everyone."

BAD DECISION BLOCKER works in a similar way, and also protects you from texting while intoxicated, as does NIMBY (No Intoxicated Messaging By You). "This app strives to prevent you from sending a regretful email or tweet. Once you write you message, the app prompts you to complete one of three tests within 30 seconds. The brain busters consist of a word search, completing basic algebra or navigating a mouse through a maze. If you can't finish in time, you can't send the message." (http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/the-scene/shopping/Save-Yourself-From-Tech-Regret.html)

And in the final category of "protect-me-from-my-drunken-self," there are social media applications.

"Chrome/Firefox: Social Media Sobriety Test is a simple extension for Google Chrome and Firefox that administers a set of sobriety tests to keep you from drunkenly leaving a post on your boss's wall or sharing your margarita-fueled musings via Twitter.

"Similar to the "Mail Goggles" feature in Google Labs—which require you to solve math problems to deter late night drunken emails—Social Media Sobriety Test locks down your social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Tumblr, as well as a custom URL.

"When you visit those sites between the hours specified in your settings you'll have to take a "field" sobriety test like following a finger drifting around the screen with your mouse or indicating which side of the screen is blinking in a "Simon Says" like puzzle. Fail to pass the test and you can't log in to the social network."(http://lifehacker.com/5685388/social-media-sobriety-test-saves-you-from-drunken-status-updates?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lifehacker%2Ffull+%28Lifehacker%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher)

 So spare yourself humiliation the morning after the night before, and lock your keys in a combination box, and lock your social phone and computer access until you've had a chance to sleep it off!

Smart Idea for a Smart Phone

I went to a conference in San Jose about 2 years ago. The conference wasn't all that large, but did have several venues going on at once in various locations around a large hotel. In addition, there were many people there I wanted to make contact with, or join for dinner or a meeting.

As is the usual procedure, the conference organizers handed out nifty little printed lists of what presentation or dialog session was going on in which room when - and that was about it.

Needless to say, I wanted more, and I started to think about an app that would amount to a "virtual concierge" for meetings, conferences, even huge events like SXSW (South by Southwest for the uninitiated, a huge event held in Austin, TX each year; one week is devoted to geekitude, the next to music. A strange but workable conbmination.

Anyway, my app would allow conference attendees to register online, and choose the sessions they wanted to attend, and the "friends" they wanted to keep track of at the event. Local establishments and businesses could offer service and specials, like discounts on dinner or drinks, or entrance to local attractions. More, businesses and booth owners could broadcast specials to registered attendees who happened to be within a certain proximity of their location (geo-fencing). "Stop at our booth now for a 25% discount on your next order."

When a session was about to begin (a really smart app could even warn an attendee when he needed to started heading toward a session if he was going to make it on time), the user would be pinged and reminded to get over there, perhaps even be told that certain of his friends would be there as they had registered for that session, too - maybe even allowing them to set up a meeting location.

A friend pointed out that this could be used at malls, or fairs, or other places where people want and need to keep track of each other, and would welcome special offers and sales just for users of the virtual concierge app.

The one big roadblock to all this, is, of course, the capacity of WiFi to handle the traffic in a limited space. As it happens, the company sponsoring this particular event in San Jose was boasting that it could support streaming video to fifty different devices in 500 square feet of space - no mean feat. Streaming video is the biggest bandwidth hog there is, and having that many devices all demanding huge amounts of data streamed live at one time, and delivered, is remarkable.

And, as with all good ideas, this one was already under development. Of course, there had been apps like FourSquare around for quite a while - an app that you could log on to and announce your location (whereupon, vendors and businesses who were also subscribed could offer specials, and where friends could say, hey, I'm in that area too, let's meet at this bar in ten minutes). FourSquare is, in my opinion, a little silly in that it was half app half game - you visited Joey's Bar more times than anyone else in a certain period of time and you became "Mayor of Joey's Bar." Whee. Still, it has its value as a networking tool.

More than that, though, new releases of smart phones already come equipped with the geo-fencing capability, enabling users to create a "fence" around a particular location - say, your house. Then you can assign tasks or reminders to that location, and when you get within a certain proximity of that location, the tasks or reminders you've assigned yourself will pop up on your phone.

As with any technology, there are always limitations, and as I've pointed out, traffic on WiFi would be one of the limiters of this app. But I have confidence that as more and more of us rely on our smart phones for more and more of our lives, this, too shall be overcome!

Movin' Your Mail

I think I shared with you a few posts ago a friend's horror story: computer crashed, and she lost all her emails (contacts, etc.). It was a sad day in Mudville. I've always liked the idea of webmail, but assuming you're on a local client (like Outlook, for example), the prospect of moving everything, and notifying everybody, can be daunting.

And we've all had one of those email accounts that turned into a spam collection device: you made the mistake of buying a product online, and after your email address was sold a few hundred times, you found yourself clearing spam out of your inbox for up to an hour a day in a worst case situation.

Or maybe you've built a new website, and you'd like to use your new domain for email, to further promote your site.

This is where TrueSwitch (www.trueswitch.com) comes in. Basically, for $19.95 (or free if you're migrating to one of their partner services) they'll do it all for you: copy your personal data (all your past emails and folders); notify all your contacts of your new email address; forward any emails that come in to the old address.

The copy feature includes copying not just your contacts and emails, but your calendar and favorites as well.

The notify feature will send a polite notification that you've switched email services, or you can customize this message if you choose.

Finally, the forward feature (one that is very important to anyone doing business via email) will watch for 30 days and forward any mail that arrives. Now, one caveat here: it applies to Internet email only, and you must maintain your account for the full 30 days.

And while the normal fee is, as mentioned, a modest $19.95, it's free if you're switching to/from one of TrueSwitch's partners, such as Gmail, Hotmail, Comcast, and a handful of others. (Check the website for a complete list.)

So, basically, what's your time worth? If you reckon it's more than about $20 or so for the hour (or more) it will take you to copy your contacts, write an email and send it to your contact list. (While studies have shown that most users have between 30 - 50 contacts, I have literally hundreds! So for me, the service would be invaluable!) So if you're not happy with your current email service, or you simply want to move to a web-based email service (with all the backup benefits), but you're been reluctant to take on the task, here's an easy out: let someone else do it for you! There's a solution I can feel good about.

Suprize, Suprize

Readers of this column know I love it - serendipity. The word is so good I'd love it all by itself, but it's also one of life's little pleasures. (In case you don't know, serendipity is a "happy accident," or "pleasant surprise." I most often think of it in terms of a chance series of discoveries.) On a rather more boring than usual early January day, I  was lucky enough to stumble on a little serendipity.

Most often, there isn't really any reason why these things are fun and interesting, but there's no doubt that the Internet has made them far more accessible. Yes, I admit it, I was one of those people who'd go to a library and simply stroll around, looking for the odd book spine that would attract my attention - or thumbing through magazines I'd rarely see to "discover." Later, of course, Barnes & Nobel would do just fine and a cup of coffee, too. But better yet, of course, is simply sitting at your computer and happening on things. This was how I first fell in love with the Internet.

There's even a site dedicated to just that - we've covered that here before. It's called "StumbleUpon," and it's a free-but-subscription-based service that allows users to define subjects that interest them, then "stumble." Content is randomly served up, which users can then rate to "teach" the system their preferences - what amuses or amazes.

Today, I was actually reading through some of the many email newsletters I get (and typically delete). This one happened to be discussing QR codes - again, a subject we've covered in this column. These are the pattern codes associated with products or services that can be scanned by your smart phone, and then that scan used to access more information, such as price comparisons, about that product or service.

The article (from Mobile Insider) was touting the potential of in-store use of QR codes, but acknowledging that unreliable wireless reception was the biggest stumbling block to customers' relying on QR codes to gather information, and next was that old reliable: attention span! While marketers love-love-love the idea of consumers standing in the aisles looking at all the rich content they make available that explains why their product is better-than-great, consumers are not so apt to be easily transfixed. (Actually, have you ever watched customers in a mall or big box store? They're transfixed, alright, but they just keep moving. It's apparently some sort of herd instinct, but I digress.)

What writer Steve Smith finds is that now that (especially tech) store associates understand how to use them, QR codes can be useful sales tools, particularly when they don't understand the product very well.

So where does the serendipity come in? Well naturally, I had to find out a bit more about QR codes, and code-reading in general, and came across this site: http://www.evoretail.com/. Here is a company devoted to retail robotics - and their latest-and-greatest product is something called LaneHawk. LaneHawk is a bar-code-reader that stores can build into the lower part of a checkout counter, and it will read "BOB" items - bottom of basket. So if the customer forgets, or "forgets" to bring the item up and scan it, LaneHawk will read the item's barcode - compare it to the customer's itemized order - and let the store know if the item hasn't been paid for yet.

Who'd have ever guessed?

More Music!

Many (frighteningly many) years ago, one of my favorite radio shows was the New Music program in the mid-afternoon on the then-student-run WAER (the SU radio station). What I loved about it was the discovery of music that didn't get air time on the commercial stations. You remember those bad old days: we got to listen (over and over and over) to the rotating "top 40" or whatever was the formula for programming music at that moment, and you had a single genre - the station was pop, country, easy listening, or whatever.

How things have changed! One of my favorite music gurus FB posted that we music lovers should keep an eye on two new services, Grooveshark and Deezer. So naturally I had to try them out and see how they compare to services I've written about before, Blip.fm, Pandora Radio, and Spotify.

Most of the services do something essentially similar: you enter a song name or an artist, and you'll be provided music that somehow relates. Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) adds the neat feature of throwing just about everything an artists has created up when you enter the name of that group. You can then select a particular song, and you'll be shown all the other cuts on that album. You have an option to create a playlist based on genre or artist (or whatever other criteria you might have - like Spotify's "mood," for example); you can link to your social media accounts (if you favorite a song); you'll get album cover art; you can "pin" a song to your profile; and you can see videos created to accompany the music by other fans. Of course there is a "community" where you can meet up with like-minded listeners. The service will supply you similar artists, and offers you the opportunity to buy a song or album. All nice, and while I love Pandora Radio for discovering similar artists and songs to things that I already enjoy, and while I use Blip.fm for both discovery and creating a saved song playlist, I much prefer the idea of being able to program a playlist that I can return to again and again. One of Blip's failures (for me) is that even if I save a song, it's often lost if/when a particular link or version is moved or lost. I'll have to see how long my playlists persist on Grooveshark. The basic account is free (with ads), or you can opt for $5 a month (no ads, online) or the mobile version (again, no ads, $9/month). I may even consider this, as I'd be able to listen via my iPhone while traveling.

In addition to searching for music, you can use the Explore option, which provides artists by type, "tastemakers" playlists, or look for a genre. One small gripe: the play/pause controls are, for me, and on the browser Firefox 9, hidden at the bottom of the screen. But otherwise, you're right, Kevin, this is a service to watch!

His other recommendation, Deezer, isn't new - it was launched in 2007, in Paris, but unaccountably has not yet made it to the U.S.! I'm going to guess this has something to do with DRM (digital rights management). As Wikipedia explains it, "Deezer has negotiated rights to make 165,000 songs available for streaming legally via an agreement with Sony, as well as some of Universal's catalog. After its launch, there were legal issues relating to the uploading and sharing of music on Deezer, but this was resolved when Deezer updated its site on 9 February 2009.



"Deezer was the first music site based in France to sign an agreement with a publisher rights' organisation to reimburse artists through advertising revenue.


"There are four million registered Deezer users according to the home page of the website. In September 2011, Deezer stated that there were 13 million songs available on their service."

Deezer evidently allows users to download playlists to their smart phones, and listen when away from their computers. Other features include "the ability to create blind tests, in which one or more songs is played and questions asked about them, and send them to friends on the site. Users can also create a blog page where they can present themselves, copy or share playlists with other members or add other members to their friend list. Also, a mail feature is available to members, allowing them to talk with other members and a music news feature, also available to non-members, which displays recent music news."

Decisions, decisions. I guess my choice of music service will depend on what most intrigues me on a given day: discovery, sharing, playlist playback, and naturally, what music is in the collection. All in all, though, I can't help but wonder what all this is telling us about the future of radio, particularly as these services go mobile - and our ability to connect our portable devices to our car's and home's sound systems. 

Musing

File this one under speculative non-fiction.

I'm listening to David Brook's book, The Social Animal. It's about human cognitive development, decision-making, and mental process.

A lot of it is based on some research done in the 60s and 70s, collectively known as "heuristics," or "experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery." This term has become associated with the evaluation of human-computer interface models - how you expect a website to behave, for example, and what cues you get to do what you do with it, the so-called "intuitive" design of said site.

Some of these heuristics include: priming, anchoring, expectation, framing, inertia, and arousal. Put simply, priming gives people a set of cues they may or may not even be aware of. Their behavior will incorporate these cues (talk to them using words like "tired," "old," "ancient," "weary," and "lame," and they will walk more slowly than if you talk to them using words like "fit," "active," "quick," and "athletic").

Anchoring hands people a value - a number, or a grade, or some other evaluative idea (unrelated to the subject at hand), and then when they are asked to assign a value to something, they'll most likely reflect that "anchor" value back.

Expectation is "you're really going to like this," versus, "don't be too disappointed with," and the predictable likelihood that people will react as you've instructed them to.

Framing sets something up in a context that gives its absolute value relative meaning. For example, if you put a $30 bottle of wine in amongst $6 bottles, the $30 bottle seems very expensive. But if you "frame" it with $120 bottles, it suddenly seems quite cheap.

Inertia is simply that tendency to leave well enough alone. If your television is set to certain color values, for example, most of us won't tinker with them, unless they are so far off it's impossible to ignore.

Arousal predicts that we are more likely to act - and act impulsively - when we are aroused. So, blaring music at your local Abercrombie store results in more impulse purchases than soothing or no music.

None of this is new, of course. Marketers have been using this kind of information for decades to push, prod, and urge us into doing what they want us to do. In one famous study, a group of so-called "creatives" were driven to a test site, where they were asked to come up with an original campaign for some product. They were all driven past a billboard that contained a very specific image. Every single one of the "creatives" included some variation of that image in their "original" campaigns. So much for "out of the box" thinking.

What's of greater interest to me these days is something that has again, been known about for a while, but has been relatively difficult to exploit until recently: flocking behavior.

The Internet has opened a door to not only influence behavior using all the methods shown above, but moreover, to influence behavior simply by the behavior itself. I Tweet because: I Tweet. I watch a viral video because everybody else is watching the viral video. I have a Facebook page because everybody has a Facebook page! I once found a video on an obscure little site I visited from time to time, and found it funny. I noted that it had had a few hundred views. I passed it along to most of my friends. The next time I visited the site, it had several hundred thousand views.

I suppose in a way it's like a yawn - if I am around someone yawning, I'm much more likely to yawn myself.

A yawn, of  course, if fairly innocuous. An opinion, or worse a "fact" that spreads like wildfire around the Internet, and that gains credibility simply by virtue of the fact that it is passed from computer to computer, has far broader - and more alarming - implications.

We *think* we think for ourselves. Studies like the ones referenced above make it pretty clear that what we think can be relatively easily manipulated, given enough time and, as advertisers call it, impressions. Now that we add to it the weight of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people sharing our experience - within a very short time frame (hours? minutes?) - what will that mean for our freedom of choice, opinion, separating fact from fiction? It must be true - I read it on the Internet!

SOPA?

If you've not already heard of it, you owe it to yourself as a netizen to get up to speed on SOPA, the "Stop Internet Piracy Act." Like many well-intentioned bills, this one has a reasonable purpose, but executes it in what one reviewer called a "draconian" fashion.

The issue isn't simple. As we all know, there are many, many websites, particularly foreign sites, that offer pirated copies of music and movies that can be downloaded via "torrents," or little packages of data that take a movie, for example, break it into little bits, disperse it, and reassemble the bits and pieces once they're downloaded to your computer. This technique makes it very difficult to "find" the perpetrator, and hold anyone accountable for piracy.

According to money.cnn.com, however, "Opponents say SOPA -- and a similar bill called the Protect IP Act that is making its way through the Senate -- effectively promotes censorship.If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. The law would also force intermediaries like search engines and payment processors to withhold their services from targeted websites."

Interestingly, the bills don't just apply to movies and music, but to other things like auto parts, drugs, and infant formula.

The bit that has people concerned isn't the idea that a website offering stolen property, or counterfeit goods, shouldn't be targeted and shut down - to the extent that the U.S. has jurisdiction to do so - it's the notion that any site offering links to such sites can be censored, and that domains can be, in essence, blocked. So, as in China, Google can't return a full set of results when I do a search; Facebook can't post my link to a funny video because there is - or might be - something on that site that Miramax doesn't like.

In one sense, particularly the entertainment providers may be shooting themselves in the foot. When I listen to a song posted on blip.fm, and "blip" it to my Facebook friends, and they like it - they just might buy it, or certainly might discover talent they didn't know existed before. On the other hand, as a writer, I fully appreciate the need to protect intellectual property,  and to be sure that artists are compensated for the work that they do.

The problem with the acts as written is the broad brush approach: if Wikileaks publishes copyright material, demanding that that material be removed is a first remedy. Shutting down Wikileaks is a difficult, but appropriate second step. What these bills propose, however, is that the U.S. government would have the right to block any site linking to the infringing site. You can imagine where that could lead. Sites like Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA. In other words, those sites whose purpose is social networking - sharing info and ideas - feel the most threatened.

As one friend of mine is fond of saying, "I don't have any answers," because I do think the piracy issue isn't small and it isn't going to go away. So my free speech side and my protect the artist side are in full cognitive dissonance mode. I'm not convinced that either of these bills is the right way to solve the problem, as censorship has never served "we the people" very well.