geek chic
Use Ajax. Optimize your dishwashing. Discuss the Marine Corps Marathon. purple motes leads you to geek chicdom!
“whites of their eyes” video quality test
Faces, particularly eyes, naturally attract human attention. One aspect of the biological machine of faciality is eye structure. Compared to other primates, humans have more salient eyes: the human eye lacks certain pigments found in primate eyes, so the outer fibrous covering, or “sclera,” of our eyeball is white. In contrast, most primates have uniformly [...]
Tagged: video
distributing computing between humans and computers
While human brains and computers are often considered to be general purpose technologies, like any real technology, brains and computers have physical structures and operating designs that generate constraints and imply trade-offs across tasks. A computer program cannot easily read an image containing distorted text, but a human can. Thus requiring blog commenters to pass [...]
innovative new telco co-branded product
A product sure to make you smile. The more you eat, the better you feel. Now I know how my friend Jon achieved his championship form.
Tagged: advertising, telcos
new media in action
Last Sunday a Galbi Think web 2.0 social interacter sent me this email: Ok! so you’re supposed to be this hotshot economist and analyst. So tell me this, a communication policy should serve to protect cultural values, provide information and safeguard public interests. After all these years, we are now being ruled by the influence [...]
Tagged: news
presence in communication services
A lot of interesting thinking and experiments are now going on concerning presence in communication. Mike Gotta’s post entitled “Presence: Complex, Pervasive And Evasive” highlights the business case for presence. Which industry structure do you think is better for private investment, competition among many firms, and innovation: an industry in which firms compete to supply [...]
custom regulatory searches
To help persons find information about communication regulations around the globe, I’ve set up a Google custom search that covers about 380 websites of national communications regulators, government websites, and intergovernmental organizations. These websites are not all in a common language, some are not limited to communications regulation, and some relevant websites may be missing. [...]
mobile financial services for low-income persons
Mobile phones have experienced astonishingly rapid take-up in low-income countries. For example, the number of GrameenPhone mobile phone subscribers in Bangladesh grew 105% in 2005 and recently surpassed 10 million subscribers. The telephone coverage rate in Bangladesh, however, is still only 12%. Coverage rates and demographics imply that, globally, almost all mobile subscriber growth in [...]
Tagged: telephones, wireless
video communication
3G mobile video calls seem to be a flop. What’s the problem? One view is that 3G video calls are useless except in a small number of circumstances. Luca Filigheddu reports: I quote what Mauro Sentinelli (former General Manager of Tim and “deputy chairman” at GSM Association) told me a few months ago: the target [...]
Tagged: video
Carnival of the Bureaucrats #4
I am pleased to report that the Carnival of the Bureaucrats continues to expand. This month’s Bureaucratic Hero is Grigori Perelman. Until recently, Mr. Perelman worked for the Steklov Institute of Mathematics. Mr. Perelman’s insistence on excellence, dedication, an ethical work environment, and no money makes him eminently worthy of being honored with the prize [...]