Category: Technology

Google Insights offers a nice way to compare two terms to see their relative search frequency.  For example, the chart below shows that black cats are much more popular than brown cats when it comes to Google searches:

Notice that the interest in black cats seems to peak around Halloween each year.

This is all nice, but it is all relative. We still have no idea how many searches are run for black cats each month. However, if we can find a single term were we know how many searches are performed each month, we can use that to figure out the approximate search frequency of any other term.

Google Insights is particularly useful if you are trying to target a specific geographic area. There are language differences that will influence what search terms people use. It is worth comparing a number of different near synonyms for a particular term to see how most people are searching in the particular geographic area you wish to target.

When you watch a 3D movie there is a difference between where your eyes are focusing and the triangulation that your brain uses to perceive depth correctly. Strabismus or lazy eye is what this is called when you can’t bring both factors into alignment. Some people have trouble with this and there is concern that the new in home 3d televisions may hamper the development of these linked sense in children

Anyone who learned the technique that allows them to peer into stereograms has taught themselves a temporary form of lazy-eye. Stereograms are those pictures that look like confetti but transform into three-dimensional images if you stare into them long enough. They’re popular with college kids experimenting with Escher.

The modern digital 3D effect using glasses makes this same effect effortless. Your eyes are invited or forced not to properly focus in order to get the full effect of eye-popping 3D.

via 3D Video Hazardous to Your Health

Allegedly the 3d headset that Sega was working on years ago was shelved because of this potential problem.

While going to see a 3d movie once in a while probably isn’t going to ruin your eyesight, there is concern about using the technology constantly in the home–especially use by children.

I don’t do a lot of gaming, but I have enjoyed playing Portal. It is game where you run around with a gun that can shoot a blue or orange doorway. You can walk through one doorway and come out the other. The game revolves around solving puzzles by using these doorways to throw yourself over wall, drop objects on attacking robots and redirect energy balls.

The game runs on Steam which until recently was a windows only game distribution system by the makers of the Half-Life series of games. Until yesterday I had to use an application called Cross Over Games to play on my Mac. (Cross Over Games basically emulates Windows so the app will run. However, they just came out with a Mac version of Steam and are working on porting other games as well.

They are making Portal freely available for awhile, so if you’d like to try it out now is a great time. They also have a number of other games available that will work on both Mac and Windows. Another puzzle game I’d recommend is World of Goo. My daughter and I are working our way through it and it has been a lot of fun–its nice to have a decent game you can play with a three year old helping.

Recent statistics show that the prevalence of spam filters isn’t reducing the amount of spam traveling over the Internet.  If anything it is increasing it as spammers attempt to increase their volume to get messages through.

There have been a variety of different suggestions for slowing down spam.  One was to charge people for sending messages.  By charging a very low cost, the fee would be almost nothing for most people who send emails, but very expensive for people who are sending out spam. The problem of course, is who gets to keep the money.  Here are two suggestions:

Pay me to receive your email

One idea is to let the recipient keep the payment.  So if it costs you $0.01 to send an email to me, I get the penny.  Since I’m likely to send you an email back, the end result is that not much money has to actually change hands–unless you are sending out a tremendous number of emails every day.

Pay my charity

Another possibility would be to set things up so charities can benefit from the payments.  So if you want to send me an email, you have to give a penny to a charity that I’ve preselected first.  This would probably translate into a significant amount of money for a charity because many people would choose the same charity to support.

Variable rates

Another idea would be to let people set their own rate.  If you get more emails than you like, you set your rate to $0.25 per email while someone who wants to be easy to connect with sets their rate to $0.01.

All in all, I don’t think these ideas will go anywhere.  The reason is that to make something like this work would require infrastructure just as great as the current PKI infrastructure that can be used to encrypt emails now.  Very few people use the current system, so I can’t imagine someone being able to convince everyone to use a new system just to help limit spam. If enough people used it PKI could basically become a way to limit spam by requiring everyone to prove their identity (in some way) before getting a recognized certificate and then only allowing messages through that have a valid signature.

The problem (just like everything else) is that it only works if everyone uses it. Getting the whole world to change is going to be very very difficult no matter how brilliant the idea or method.