Science and Industry

Still on holiday, but time to do some minor things into the site itself. First about the full version: a new look and feel coming up. I’m not so good with images, but they give a certain feel into the blog. I had huge plans in my mind, but here’s the realization. Maybe again later with help of real experts.

The other, more technical thing is mobile (simple) view of the site. I know most of the cool devices, like iPhone, N95, N810 etc. should be able to handle this site well. But, the variety of internet enabled devices is bigger. I’ve used Opera Mini on top of Series 40 device and started to like the less is more approach of websites. And for some services, like textual view (Finnish newspaper) I use textual view also on regular desktop. It’s faster and cleaner, no extra flash-ads everywhere.

But to other things then. My brother asked if I could have a look at Movino-system: he plans if live streaming could be somehow used in his work. I promised to have a look with that. But, more generally, the tech persons are using services like Qik to share live video on the spot. I did my trials with ComVu and noticed one problem: I’m not ready to walk in the city and film everything I share to internet (I tried that during the New Year party 2008): the privacy issue is difficult.

I see the possibilities this would allow, but some things bother me. Maybe I’m too old for this Internet world, but let’s take the example of Google’s Street view — really interesting idea. But at the same time I feel that it might share my whereabouts into the world; but not only that but also details like who are with me. Plans like blurring faces might not be enough: those who know me well might notice my hat which makes me rather easy to spot.

Of course this is not the only thing: services that involve sharing may have same kind of problems: when everything is stored is there any way I can control what’s out of me? I’m waiting to here about Nokia Chat and it’s automatically presence updates and location sharing possibilities. As Conversations site asks: how open we want to be?

Dr. Wesch pointed out rather important thing in famous The Computer is Us/ing us: we need to rethink certain things, like privacy. Maybe I’ll blog more when I understand more of this tiny but important word.