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Byte Magazine, August 1981

In 1983, my former professor and friend Howard Rheingold read an article by Alan Kay. Immediately, he wanted to experience the Alto and the future of networked minds. He started calling PARC on a weekly basis. Nothing. Then when he called back to remind HR of his existence, he was given an immediate assignment: write a last-minute speech for a Xerox executive. With that, Howard had landed himself his “dream job” at PARC as an in-house writer. Howard’s gig involved interviewing researchers and scientists about their work with interfaces, LAN, etc. Super cool in retrospect and at the time, I’m sure. He goes into great detail in his book Tools for Thought (pictured), which explores batch processing, the 1960s, time sharing, and more at Xerox PARC. Howard’s insights into the successes and failures of Xerox PARC are well worth a read. Here’s how he framed PARC’s trajectory and missed opportunity in his Wired article from 1994: Personal computers did not spring naturally from the computer industry. They were deliberately realized by a radical fringe, against all the force of the day’s accepted wisdom… These zealous wizards handed Xerox an astounding lead in information technology in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade, Xerox watched as upstarts like Apple and Microsoft grew wealthy off Xerox’s discoveries. Neither Apple nor Microsoft even existed when the first Altos were designed in the early 1970s; by 1990 either company could have bought Xerox. The tragicomic Xerox saga is recorded in Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander’s Fumbling the Future . Here’s the question he ended his 1994 article with: So how will PARC guarantee that this time they won’t fumble their new future? Three ways, says JSB [ John Seely Brown ]. “One, we are more careful about intellectual property. Two, we are working smart - looking for entrepreneurial partnerships to develop ideas quickly. And three, Xerox has radically repositioned its organization so that its corporate strategy is shaped and informed by PARC and PARC is being shaped and informed by corporate strategy.” And, of course, here’s what eventually happened: By 2002, PARC became in independent research business with the ability to license its own patented tech and discoveries to other companies, institutions, and start-ups, especially the recent wave of alternative energy upstarts. While there are still ties to Xerox, PARC’s profits are entirely its own. What’s more, I’m told revenue is even split up among PARC employees. Lessons learned.

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PARC: Un-fumbling the Future

There are plenty of nifty search engines that don’t begin with “Goo” and end with “gle,” as Wired points out . But one site they forgot to include is MrTaggy , which was created by PARC’s Augmented Social Cognition Area. Unlike other engines, this one doesn’t index the content of web pages. Instead, it uses PARC’s TagSearch algorithm, which aggregates and sorts the user-generated tags added to social bookmarking sites like Delicious . From there, users can give thumbs up or down for each and every result. The goal: be part-search, part-recommendation engine by tapping the wisdom of the crowd. BBG asked the ASCA researchers to connect the dots between PARC’s earlier forays into search and MrTaggy. Here’s what Ed Chi, Manager of ASCA , shared with us: First, one of the most efficient ways of browsing and navigating toward a desired information space was illustrated by the pioneering research on Scatter/Gather , a collaborative project on large-scale document space navigation between amazing researchers such as Doug Cutting (of Lucene, Hadoop fame) and Jan Pedersen (chief scientist at AltaVista, Yahoo, Microsoft for search). The research done in early to mid 90s , showed how a textual clustering algorithm can be used to quickly divide up an information space (scatter step), ask the user to specify which subspaces they’re interested in (gather step). By iterating over this process, one can very quickly narrow down to just the subset of information items they’re interested in. Think of it as playing 20 questions with the computer. Second, also around the mid-90s , an important information access theory was being developed at PARC in our research group called Information Foraging , which showed that you can mathematically model the way people seek information using the same ecological equations used to model how animals forage for food. We noticed that we can use information foraging ideas to model how people used Scatter/Gather to browse for information. It turns out that it was possible to predict how people use the information cues (which we called ‘ information scent ‘) in each cluster to determine whether they were interested in the contents inside the cluster. It turns out that Scatter/Gather can be shown to be a very efficient way to communicate to the user the topic structure of a very large document collection. In other words, people learned the structure of the information space much more efficiently using Scatter/Gather interfaces. I hope it is quite clear that the relevance feedback mechanisms are very much inspired by Scatter/Gather. The related tags communicate the topic structure of what’s available in the collection. Through this process, we designed MrTaggy, hoping that it would be just as efficient as Scatter/Gather in communicating the topic structure of the space. Third, our group had developed Information Scent algorithms and concepts to build real search and recommendation systems. These algorithms build upon earlier work on a human memory model called Spreading Activation . TagSearch algorithm uses similar concepts here. It constructs a kind of Bayesian modeling of the topic space using the tag co-occurrence patterns. TagSearch’s algorithm owes its heart and soul in concepts in Spreading Activation, which helps us find documents that are related to certain tags, and vice versa. So what it’s like to actually use MrTaggy? I started a search with the suggested tags “funny” and “video.” Less than 30 seconds later, I discovered this Bruno-related gem from FunnyorDie that had, until now, somehow escaped my attention. Digg Dialogg with Bruno - watch more funny videos Good find, MrTaggy!

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Mr.Taggy & the History of Search at PARC

“Uh, I think I snapped it…” I got my first tick on the BBG camping trip. I was lucky. I didn’t even know it was there until it was gone. I brushed it off in the shower somehow without leaving any of the tick in my body *knock wood*. My completely uneducated guess is the hot water must have shocked the little bugger, and when I inadvertently passed my hand over him, he backed out and/or fell out because he had yet to burrow? (if you’re a tick expert, feel free to weigh in). Next time, I won’t be so lucky, which is why I’m going to: a) use bug spray, and b) pick up a legit tick remover just in case. Cause there’s no way I’m going to try the above method. Here’s a series of tick removers, including one that uses cryotherapy . I’m tempted to buy the one with a mini-lasso and just call it a day. Before I do, though, please feel free to chime in with any suggestions, experiences or links to videos of yourself removing ticks. Tickner (”My name is Freeze . Learn it well. For it’s the chilling sound of your doom.”) Ticked Off (you can personalize yours ) Tick Off (battery-operated) Tick Key (comes in a variety of colors) Trix TickLasso (via Cool Tools ) This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Camping .

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Tick Removers: Which Do You Use?

Kevin Kelly pointed me to the idea of ditching a sleeping bag for a tech blanket. He learned the tip from Ray Jardine, who extols the virtues of lightweight backpacking and camping in a series of books, including the recent Trail Life . The basic premise is that the flattened bottom of a sleeping bag is wasted material, since you’re compressing the insulation. A blanket can provide more warmth because it contours to your body rather than maintaining a bag or mummy shape. Plus, it’s much easier to overheat if you’re crashed out in a bag, as opposed to a blanket you can drape and quickly adjust throughout the night. Ray sells his own quilt kits , which I’d love to try. For the recent BBG camp trip, I used Therm-A-Rest’s $50 Tech Blanket (pictured). It is light to carry (1 lbs, 5 oz.), warm (quilted nylon exterior, polyester fill), and packs quick, easy and small (mine packed up smaller than the no-frills sleeping bag I have). What’s particularly smart about Therm-A-Rest’s set up is that their Fitted Sheet ($21) and blanket have snaps positioned periodically lengthwise, allowing you to quickly attach and remove the blanket. Not a pain to set up, take down. Better yet, it was far more comfortable than any sleeping back I’ve ever used. We were camping in mid-50sF, and I was never cold and never too warm. What’s more, unlike a sleeping back you might unzip and find completely open by the morning, the Tech Blanket provided enough room on either side for me to turn over without disrupting the whole tent. If you were camping in warmer weather, I’d imagine un-snapping one button on either side in the middle of the night wouldn’t be too difficult either. Note: I used the blanket and sheet with Therm-A-Rest’s $100 LuxuryCamp self-Inflating mattress and $28 Compressible Pillow . You don’t have to go all-out and get either of these. My favorite makeshift pillow is a small fleece case a friend made and gave to me. You just fill it with your clothes, towel, etc. The only thing you want to be sure of, is that you use a pad that’s size/shape is comparable to the fitted sheet. Otherwise, you won’t feel as snug. The sheets come in medium, regular and large which are 20×66 in., 20×72 in. and 25×77 in., respectively. If you already have a sleep pad that size, you should go for it. Again, we’re talking $21 for the sheet and $50 for a blanket that could also serve double duty at home. I’m in.

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Review: Therm-A-Rest Sleeping System

The Hubba Hubba HP is a $450 3-season tent that weighs a scant 4 lbs when fully-packed (at just 20 x 7 inches), making it ideal for longer-term packing or anyone looking to lighten the load. When assembled, the HP provides 29 sq. ft. Not exactly the Taj Mahal of tents, but my wife and I slept comfortably inside (disclaimer: we’re both under 5′ 8″). Plus, it’s dual-doored, meaning no one has to crawl out over anyone. The real beauty is in the details: there is only ONE tent pole with various offshoots that make up the frame of the structure. It made for a ridiculously-easy set up: The very first time I assembled the tent, the whole process took less than 8 minutes, including stopping every once in a while to say, “Man, this is really easy.” The first time I packed it up, too, the whole experience took less than 5 minutes. The HP version includes a body that’s primarily made of fabric (as opposed to the mostly-mesh Hubba Hubba ), which lightens the load by a few oz. and makes it preferable for colder conditions or where there’s wind and sand. We used our tent in very mild conditions (mid-50Fs at night). No rain, no snow, and virtually no wind. So I can’t really say how it will handle in more extreme environments, but considering it’s twice as expensive as some of the other 2-person tents we tested, it better be able to withstand a nuclear blast. This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Camping .

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Review: MSR Hubba Hubba HP 2-Person Tent [ultralight]

For our routine late morning walk today and at a neighborhood BBQ on Saturday, I put Uncle Milton’s Pet’s Eye View cameras on Ruby and Malcolm’s collars. They’re lightweight, mini cameras that clip onto collars and snap 640×480 photos at 1, 5 or 15 minute intervals. I set them on 1 minute intervals, and we were off! Photo: Ruby Keilana The above is Ruby’s photo stream. Most of the pics were blurry shots of the grass or of my legs, but she took several solid nature photos. I especially love the one of the gravel &mdash nice, isn’t it? The shot of Malcolm’s butt is lovely too. The camera only stores a maximum of 40 photos for up to 5-6 hours &mdash after that, the 8MB SDRAM internal memory erases itself and you lose everything. Most of the pics ended up pretty blurry, which made me wonder why this thing doesn’t have motion sensors or at least some kind of basic blur reduction mechanism. Photo: Malcolm Keilana Malcolm took a lot of pictures of my legs &mdash he must have wanted cookies from my treat bag. I expected to see a lot more of other dog’s butts, or maybe even their faces because he likes to sniff muzzles, but one major flaw of this cam is that it takes pictures not necessarily of what he sees, but what his neck is pointing to. Also, the camera just takes pics randomly every minute, so it’s likely they’re either sleeping or running around &mdash neither of which yield quality photo opps. These were the best six shots out of two rolls of 40 each. These cameras are $40 apiece &mdash it’s super low tech and doesn’t take great photos, but could be a fine gift for crazy dog moms and dads, maybe. Product page [Uncle Milton] This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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Pictures taken by Malcolm and Ruby using the Pets Eye View camera

My pug Gus is a lazy sack. No disrespect, but it’s true. Which is why I’m not at all opposed to putting him to work and/or keeping more rigorous tabs on his extreme indolence so that I can hold it over his head. Enter the SNIF system, an accelerometer built into an RFID tag that logs and transmits motion data to an Ethernet base station that plugs into your router. In addition to streaming real-time, online status updates (sleeping, sitting, walking, etc.), the SNIF web site creates a browse-able history of your pets activity or, in Gus’ case, inactivity. Check out my pug’s data, and observations after the jump… This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs . Quantifying your life , a variety of health data points, experiences, food consumed, etc. makes sense. But doing it on behalf of your dog ? Well, I just don’t know. The SNIF Tag system is simple to set up, easy to use, and $150, which is about as expensive as a no-frills, wristwatch heart rate monitor you could use to track your own activity level. However, what’s important to realize, is the SNIF doesn’t actually provide any hard and fast health data. It doesn’t measure calories burned or heart rate or even GSR . So what does it track? “Average Power Correlate” (APC), which the company claims is a “correlation based on empirical measurement.” In other words, a relative measure of the amount of energy that accumulates in the tag’s accelerometer. Thus, the charted numbers themselves are rather meaningless, which was a bummer in that I was unable to make any comparison(s) to my own level of fitness, distance traveled, etc. Still, the visual cues are interesting and do provide a clear picture. Days can be broken down by the hour: Then into 5-minute chunks: Potentially helpful if you have a sick animal (sad!) and want to determine whether he/she consistently loses energy after meals &mdash or anytime you’re not home. You can also call up historical data and “Compare” your dog to other animals registered for SNIF, including by breed, zip code, and general classification (Gus is a “Toy”): Of course, this data is potentially meaningless for a variety of reasons, least of which is the fact the data are only as good as the people submitting it. If I forget to put the tag on until after Gus’ morning walk, or neglect to charge the battery every night, then I’m submitting only a portion of his actual activity, which skews the results others might be comparing their animals to. It’s also worth considering the Hawthorne Effect , which suggests people don’t behave naturally in situations where they know they’re being monitored. Hence, some SNIF users might be taking their dogs on longer or more frequent walks than normal. And that, right there, seems to be about the only real reason I could see someone buying this device. It’s a reminder to take care of your dog, to dedicate extra time and energy towards his/her health. The real-time monitoring &mdash perhaps by virtue of the fact Gus isn’t a sporty little pugger &mdash was fun at first, but got old real quick: From a technical perspective, too, the system could be improved. I really wish the base station was wireless. Having to plug directly into my router was a pain in the ass &mdash and if I wanted to upload data via USB (instead of wirelessly via the tag, which only works up to 50 ft.*), I would’ve had to lug my laptop across the room to the router. It’s worth noting this was a non-issue for me, because the SNIF USB software isn’t yet Mac-compatible (another complaint). Lastly, SNIF offers all the familiar social networking tools and features: friend invites/accepts, messaging, wall posts, etc. To be honest, I found these all useless. There simply isn’t a critical mass of users: Total number of dogs in SNIF network: 212 Registered pugs: 7 (including Gus) Dogs in my zip code: a 9-year-old female Coton De Tulear (huh-wha?) One suggestion that could be kinda fun for some dog owners: Add in a customizable status update a la Critter . SNIF could let you program in a range of phrases for specific APCs, and then broadcast those 140-character messages to your mobile: “Dad, I’m totally bored right now,” “Your socks are delicious!”, “Am I kidding about the socks? Guess you’ll have to come home to find out, dude!” Then again, do I need or want to receive regular, sarcastic Tweets from my dog? …probably not. *you can purchase extra base stations for $75 Previously: The Pet's Eye View Camera lets you experience your dog's foulness … Zoombak tracks dogs (or anything else) with aGPS - Boing Boing Gadgets Putin's satellite-tracked dog not a harbinger for anything - Boing … Garmin Astro DC 30 GPS collar for hunting dogs - Boing Boing Gadgets

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Review: A Few Days with a SNIF Tag

This video has nothing to do with click training (that I know of). But I’ll go out on a limb and say it had to have taken some deep, deep discipline to shoot that thing. Personally, I’m all about affirmative verbal cues and occasional treats. Other dog owners prefer the non-verbal conditioned reinforcements of a handheld clicker. So which is more effective? According to one study, recent study the use of a clicker resulted in a “decrease of over 1/3 in training time and number of required reinforcements” when compared to verbal conditioning. Plus, click training also promoted the superior acquisition of complex behaviors (on a limb again, but just look at that video!). Most of Clickertraining.com’s 15 Tips seem pretty straightforward and helpful: Click for voluntary (or accidental) movements toward your goal. You may coax or lure the animal into a movement or position, but don’t push, pull, or hold it. Let the animal discover how to do the behavior on its own. If you need a leash for safety’s sake, loop it over your shoulder or tie it to your belt. A clicker costs $1.50 . How hard could this technique be, really? If you’ve used a great book, web site or video, or just want to share your experience, please write us in the comments… This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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HOWTO Click Train Your Dog

Sometimes, my dogs puke. This is because they eat everything from grass to flip flops to sheets of paper towel soiled with grease. Twice, Ruby got into a huge bag of dark green iron pills and had to get her stomach pumped. Several weeks ago, Malcolm puked out a grass-and-kibble stew, which I didn’t discover until I got home hours later. All of these incidents had left seemingly indelible stains on my carpets and couch. Enter SpotBot Pet, a not-so-little cleaning robot that claims to work any stubborn pet stain &mdash be it puke, pee, or butt juice &mdash out of carpets and upholstery. It has three modes &mdash one for surface stains, one for deeper stains, and a manual mode for use with the attached hose. The SpotBot Pet has two fluid tanks–one for a cleaner-water mix and another that dirty water gets sucked back into. Below the dirty water tank is a pair of nylon bristle brushes and little vacuum cleaner heads that simultaneously scrub stains out and suck dirt in. Its diameter is 8 inches, so any stain bigger than that might require two treatments. The SpotBot came with a trial size of Bissell’s Pet Stain & Odor advanced formula cleaner, which supposedly works for pee, puke, and butt juice. Perfect. A full cycle of the set-in stain takes about five minutes and is deafeningly loud. It didn’t bother me that much, though &mdash after spending days trying to scrub canine vomit out with soap and water and Nature’s Miracle, I was beginning to think the couch would just have to sport a puke stain motif forever. I was willing to listen to this Bot do its deed. Five minutes later: The couch was soaking wet, but the stain? Gone! It was awesome. I tried it on an area of carpet stained with pee, too, and it worked great. At $140, it’s a tad pricey and it’s heavy and loud, but it works, and it doesn’t require any manual labor other than picking the thing up and placing it on top of the stain. Product Page (Bissell) This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs .

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Review: A puke stain with the Bissell SpotBot Pet