Filed under Links, Web 2.0 by Rob.
Filed under Links, Web 2.0 by Rob.
Can’t get enough tools, can we? Try these for size:
I mentioned earlier that some laptop computers – Lenovo ThinkPads for sure – come with in-built accelerometers (to sense imminent impact and shut down the HDD) that can be tapped into by other applications… well Tom Yager has just mentioned in his blog that the iPhone has that feature as well, and he goes further in suggesting both gaming and general user-interface applications. I too can think of many more applications for accelerometers, but that gaming idea is a good one that opens up another rich vein of income for Apple and the iPhone. In my personal vision of the future all handheld or small-format devices will converge, and coupling a processor, input system and visual output with an accelerometer plus GPS and multi-modal wire-less communication (G3, WiMax, WiFi, Bluetooth) opens up a wealth of serious applications.
Anyway, Tom wrote this: I’ll leave you with two details that put iPhone way over the top for developers: namely, the multitouch display and the three-axis accelerometer. Both of these are accessible in native code as well as JavaScript. Complex multitouch gestures such as pinch, spread, sweep, and circle are sent to software as events along with the basic tap and drag. To make the on-screen keyboard appear, you don’t ask for it. You simply move the focus to a text field. The accelerometer is developer candy that will break Apple into the gaming market in a way that the Mac never could. iPhone can sense orientation and movement in 3-D space. As you move, or whatever is carrying your iPhone or iPod Touch moves, an application can know about it. The possibilities are endless, and there are serious uses for 3-D position sensing that can’t be set aside. It’s an ultimately intuitive controller for complex processes that currently require operators to bypass humans’ natural 3-D perception in favor of 2-D controls such as buttons, switches, mice, and joysticks.
- Whilst browsing Flickr I found this link to BigHugeLabs with some useful tools to make cool stuff with your photographs
- I realised a little while ago that you can blog from Flickr, just like blogging (or ‘sharing’) from YouTube. That counts as a plus in my book
- Speaking of Flickr, I’ve finally turned pro – meaning I’m paying for the privilege, but it’s (probably) worth it for the extra space. Nice little income stream for Flickr, and Yahoo, and anyone who buys Yahoo I guess (think Microsoft, but anyone cashed-up who needs to amp up their web services exposure)
- I also signed up to a small monthly fee on Skype (hmm, who owns Skype now?) which at least gave me a discount on things like phone numbers in other countries…
- Why you would you need a foreign phone number, you ask? Firstly it’s just plain cool. Secondly if you have a friend or customers in the US, say, but you are in Australia, say, well you can buy a US phone number (or 2 or 3) and let non-Skypers dial those numbers. Yes folks, some people still use real telephones rather than VoIP ones (bizarre but true)
- And with a real US phone number and caller ID from getinfo you can sign up to Jott and send yourself short text messages in numerous ways (like Jotting down a note to yourself, but over the phone or on the web). Jott will post these to your mobile phone as SMS text reminders, or to Twitter or Tumblr or whatever… cool, I reckon!
OK, so I think the way of the future is less actual travel and more virtual travel. That means more Internet connections, more working online. Although I still burn a bit of coal (at the power station end of things) by running my PC, overall I save a lot of energy by avoiding the gasoline otherwise spent in commuting to an office. I also save time, which I spend with my family… and by taking ‘time out’ to blog and maintain my websites. Although blogging is very much a sideline for me, born of my inner need to keep on top of changing technology, it’s key to where we are headed in the future. With that in mind I’ve test driven a few things bloggish lately which I’ll share you ’cause I can.
- Twitter, well I’ve mentioned this before, and Jaiku, ditto. Both great for microblogging. These are tools for bloggers who have become jaded and no longer wish to write heaps, or for readers who just want one place to read everything. Microblogging is also great for staying in touch as it can be updated so darn quickly and easily. You just log in and whacko! a great big list of microblogs appears before your eyes. Assuming you’ve subscribed to a few, of course. You can send your favorite blog streams to Jaiku and they’ll aggregate them
- Tumblr will aggregate your blogs and create for you… another blog! Fantastic service! You get to look at everything in the one place, even your Flickr stream
- One way to get your content out of blog A and into page B, or blogs A, B and C into page X, is to use Feeddigest. It’s a great little RSS aggregator that grabs your latest blog posts and bundles them into packages of your own design. You then take a bit of code away and plug it into your blog (or another page you maintain) and your content will be streamed into that space, automatically, as it happens. I use it on my blogs to provide a window to all of the other stuff I do. I can make the content as broad or focused as I desire and can customise the look and feel. Let me stress this is just a way to move your own content around, it doesn’t write it for you or steal someone else’s work
- You can of course use Freshcontent to get some some relevant news items streaming into your page, stuff that you don’t have to write yourself but adds value to your site. Don’t abuse it, this adds value and convenience – it’s not enough just to stream headlines, is it? You actually have to create as well!
- And of course I use Skype, one of several alternatives; what would we do without VoIP? (Probably just continue to move to cell phones and G3 I guess, and WiMax and all the rest. We’ll do that as well, eh?) It’s everywhere now but will get even bigger. With Skype and its ilk you can call PC-to-PC generally for free, and can call “out” to a landline for a small fee. You also get video, so the video phone is here, now. You can also buy real phone numbers so people stuck Skype-less on landlines can ring you. You can buy these numbers from a range of countries, so you can act like a big wheel and make friends or clients happy with local dial-in to your own VoIP system. I’m sure someone is already offering an OpenSource online PABX, I just haven’t stumbled upon it yet…
- Oh, and this is handy: RSSfeed to email conversion. You can also get RSS to podcast audio via Talkr
I could go on, but you get the drift. Great tools that help you blog in many places from anyplace.
OK, here’s a preamble. Words themselves are symbols, and are made up of smaller discrete symbols. These symbols have meaning and are interpreted by our brains as we “read” them. You are doing this now. (Whoopee, the reader says.) If the words fall within our “memory” we “understand” the meaning to a reasonable approximation of the writer’s intent, and we can refine this understanding further by looking at the context of the word within a sentence, a paragraph or even more. All of this almost-instant understanding can be verified by checking individual words in a dictionary, although English provides so many alternatives that even simple words can blur somewhat and will require some guesswork. Now imagine if the writer further confused us all by using a thesaurus, a device by which the writer can appear more studiously wordy and worthy than the reader. Great. We have obfuscated ourselves into a hole (but not a whole).
Now amplify the simple thesaurus with visuwords, a cool tool that can search, show and zoom on words and their connections with related words. Go on, try it. Waste some more time on the net and find some fascinating word associations in the process. Great. Don’t forget to check out Princeton’s WordNet link on the same site.
- The World Airline Historical Society… interesting meeting place for airliner anoraks/nerds/enthusiasts
- Craig’s Aviation Collectibles… for the “wow” factor, if you collect airliner postcards (as I must admit I once did and probably still do, given the box of cards at my feet)
- Apparently Kaysellscards, in packs, too. Playing cards, one imagines… of airliners and trains??
- If you have the time, look behind the Green Door
- And check out Mike Charlton’s Airline Postcard site, too
- Visit the Aviation Postcard Club (which looks a bit expensive and uses the dreaded .PDF file (aaaargh! why do people do this, why not use HTML and CSS unless you really, really need to preserve absolute, exact formatting online?)
- And last but not least, don’t miss Bill Demarest’s wonderful collection.
I happened along to this amusing and provocative account of what Australians and apparently Wisconsins (but no one else) call a bubbler, i.e. a drinking fountain, by Sydney Poet Johanna Featherstone: There are only two places in the world where a bubbler is called a bubbler: Australia, and Wisconsin, USA. It was invented in 1888 at a small waterworks company in Kohler, Wisconsin. From there it was exported throughout the American mid-West, and then to Australia and then the rest of the world. But only Australia kept the original name. In other countries it is a ‘spout’, ‘fountain’, ‘trough’ or ‘cascade’. Whatever you call it, it’s a curious creation. In city streets, swimming pools, schools and alley ways, this humble urn is a point of stillness, a rendez-vous for humans, insects, animals and myth.
Filed under Humanity, Links by Rob.
A climate resource provided by climate scientists? I started reading and couldn’t stop: RealClimate.org
I’ll let you decide how real it is… I found it via Sun Micro’s OpenEco.org, btw. Excellent idea to ‘open source’ climate change support software.
Who will pay for the seawalls, the pumping stations, the levees and the relocations if our global mean sea level really is rising? Some people will lose their homes, their lives, or even their entire country (think Tuvalu for one example).
Now not everyone believes, and some actively dispute what we are “told”. I quote “told” because some of us – myself included – tend to preach a little at times. And for many and various reasons it won’t affect everyone or every place in the same way, if indeed it is happening. Maybe it isn’t, after all.
Assuming it is true, who pays? I’m thinking that the community – local and global – will eventually have to cough up to help some people and others will just have to help themselves. Is it fair that those who have wantonly chosen to live in exposed areas have to be subsidised by more prudent – or lucky – folk? It’s probably true to say that many people choose to deny what’s happening, and others just don’t realise it affects them. So they go on over-capitalising dwellings that in 50 years time will be surrounded by water or will lie behind a very unattractive seawall. As a community we’ll just have to make a decision on how best to help these people. If you are one of those close-to-sea types living in what are drained swamps or beachfront communities built on sand-dunes you may like to prudently cash-out now; or hope like hell that the community is prepared – or able – to assist you in 10, 20 or 50 years time. Just a thought.
As to the evidence, well here are some more seemingly compelling yet possibly confusing sites to visit. You can decide for yourself if they are reliable or distorted sources of information. I should add that it’s not simple. As the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project“>Australian Bureau of Meteorology points out in its analysis of Aussie data, whilst the mean sea level trending appears to range from a rising rate of 1-8mm per year at most of their stations, when you subtract mechanical variations in recorder height and the inverse barometric effect on sea level you get much, much reduced – if not negative – trends. Which is a bit of a contradiction, eh? However they also point out that the long-term data is influenced by the fact that we didn’t understand the importance of the data and the full range of effects acting upon it until relatively recently – so the older data may in fact be wrong. They point out as the data set grows the trends will flatten out and become more reliable… which is apparent in the graphs they display. Nevertheless the national corrected average trend is 0.9mm per year (with 2 noted negative ‘outliers’ – exclude them and it rises to 1.2mm/yr).
Another effect mentioned is an apparent “sloshing” of the Pacific Ocean. Sea level is rising on the western (Aussie) side but falling on the opposite, eastern (Peruvian) side… a bit like sloshing water in a basin. Throw in the El Nino effects and we have some diabolically complex analysis ahead of us to sort it all out. It makes it hard to be convincing about the real rate of sea level change globally, although if your particular part of the world is getting sloshed then you will definitely notice…
Confused? Try this huge list of links to datasets and informative websites. Indian Ocean datasets are here. Visit the global database at GLOSS. The CSIRO says: In Australia the rise of sea-level relative to the land (June, 2001) at Fremantle is 1.38 mm/year with more than 90 years of data, and at Sydney 0.86 mm/year from 82 years of data. (Corrected for land motion, the rate of sea- level rise at these two locations is estimated to be about 1.6 and 1.2 mm/yr respectively.). However they also say this:The longest tide-gauge records (starting from as early as 1700) show an acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise. However, no acceleration has been detected during the 20th Century. Hmmm. To be fair John Daly posts a lot of words of refutation here, but I can’t see that it’s more than pettifogging quibbles most of the time – a little like Nero fiddling whilst Rome burns (or Venice sinks). Still, thats just my view and it’s worth a read just to be balanced – or unhinged, perhaps!
Frankly I’m not a climatologist but the reports written by acknowledged scientists working for real government-financed institutions seem to be balanced in the extreme. They go into depth about anomalies and tread warily, explaining everything from what they think is happening to how they think it is happening and why. It’s mind-numbing stuff to go into, and most people don’t want to read about inverse barometric effects for one example, or simply don’t have the time. I don’t have the time either! But from what I’ve read it looks like some places on this globe have a real problem and some other places less so, or no problem at all. It also looks complex and to be frank “almost everyone” on these government-funded sites say that they think there’s a positive trend – and can show it – whilst acknowledging that they need more data to improve statistical reliability.
You can quite reasonably argue therefore, ‘let’s wait until the data is reliable’. But the counter argument is that it may be too late. Anyone into risk management?
I don’t have all the answers, just lots of questions and some smugness that I don’t drive a fat car 
But what is “out there” for the people to read on this topic? Do we trust wealthy, politically-aligned, self appointed experts like Al Gore or the equally self-appointed unverifiable naysayers? Well I had a look and this is what I found first up – read it or not, your choice…
First up, read dinosaur on this topic. It’s well thought out and uses some data to back up the analysis whilst being detached enough to recognize some shortcomings. I don’t agree, though, particularly as the Canadian data seems unsupported by background data on precise data-taking locations, local geomorphological influences like subsidence or sedimentation, water temperature, sea traffic variations over time, wave type and height variations and so on. It may be corrected data, ie data that excludes all other influences, or it may be raw data simply averaged. We don’t know. But that’s quibbling. It’s an interesting read and we should look at all sides.
Next, check out Wikipedia. It (or “they”, whoever “they” who wrote it may be) goes into detail about how to measure mean sea level, where to measure it and how to analyse it. I’m convinced enough by this graph to believe that sea levels are generally rising over recent times, or that it’s faked like the moon landings
The data apparently came from the Proudman Oceanographic Lab. Looks like a good source of data, actually, but who can really be sure? It could be a scam, a fake, a trick and all part of the conspiracy to undermine the fabric of Western capitalism.
Then I found this great site on Scottish sea level changes over time – as in a long time. It’s a great read if you like stories of drowned shorelines and 5,000 year old tsunami evidence. As I do. They also say this about “now”: Finally, some researchers are examining the effects on Scotland of the present rise in sea surface levels across much of the globe due to climate change (as summarised in Smith et al., 2000). Isobase maps of land uplift help to define the areas likely to be affected markedly by sea surface rise. Such areas are undoubtedly the Outer Hebrides and Northern Isles, far from the former main centres of ice, where land uplift today is small or absent and where the sea surface is gaining on the land. While Britain understandably worries about sea level rise in the heavily populated South-East, it is perhaps worth sparing a thought for the islands beyond the Scottish mainland, where the threat is real and continuing, and where communities, though small, may be equally affected in the future.
Sounds like they are convinced, anyway.
The US Geological Survey are also in on this conspiracy: Rates of sea-level rise along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States may exceed the ability of the ecosystems to adjust to increasing water depth and salinity. One example is Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland, where the USGS has assessed the impact of sea level rise on the coastal wetlands. The model developed for this assessment forecasts that most of the refuge will be in open water in approximately 50 years.
The USGS has even faked some pictures of drowned forests: The Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is an example of “wetland loss” resulting from rising sea level. In 1877, the area was mapped as a forest; today much of the land is less than one meter above sea level.. Now we all know it’s a conspiracy, and I suspect NASA is involved as well.
Another guy in on this apparent lie about sea levels rising is Robert Grumbine and he says: So, the proper answer to the question “Will sea level rise or fall in a greenhouse world” is yes. Warming the ocean will cause a sea level rise. Ice will act either to raise or lower the sea level. The major player for catastrophic change is West Antarctica, which is currently in an unstable configuration. It _will_ either advance or retreat. Current glaciological opinion favors a collapse. So far, observations of the major ice sheets (East and West Antarctica, Greenland) are inconclusive as to whether the ice sheets are currently growing or shrinking. It is true, though, that in the last century, sea level has risen. So who is this Robert Grumbine? Physical Scientist NCEP/EMC/Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch Camp Springs, MD Oh, OK, so he may know about this stuff. Or he could be a co-conspirator.
Greenpeace si convinced, but they would be, wouldn’t they? A global average sea level rise of 9-88 cm (3.5–34.6 inches) is expected over the next hundred years, thanks to the greenhouse gasses we have emitted to date and likely future emissions. This will come in roughly equal measure from melting ice and from thermal expansion of the oceans (water expands as it heats up)
Now to the question of the disappearing Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu. You’ve all seen it in docos – it’s dead flat and protected from the Paciific Ocean only by a coral reef… and the locals are deserting the island as the sea invades their homes and farms. Hmmm. They seem to be convinced, too. John Hunter from the Antarctic CRC (don’t ask me why he’d write about something as tropical as Tuvalu, I guess he feels some connection with those disappearing ice sheets) has written a very interesting and seemingly balanced and complete account of sea level rises on Tuvalu since 1977. Bottom line is that the sea is likely rising, but we need more data (I think another 56 years, in fact) to be certain of the rate of increase. He does a linear regression on the data (and quotes his data source, too) and points out a few salient features such as the land is probably rising, but not as quickly as the sea, and that the measuring gauge is probably sinking. He also notes that the data timescale is not long enough to be used as a benchmark against IPCC estimates. On the other hand it’s definitely happening. He doesn’t say it but if you lived on Tuvalu you’d want to invest in a boat well before the final, reliable dataset was available in 56 years time…
Or it’s all a conspiracy. I keep saying that, but people do like conspiracies, don’t they? They are mysterious and all-powerful and help us explain what we want to deny. I can understand that we want to test and analyse and pull apart what are difficult, challenging statements; and I totally agree that we should not just blindly accept what is fed to us. I also understand that people like their world-views and have invested time and argument in support of their own personal beliefs. If we have a stake in mass consumption, and we all do; and if we enjoy the fruits of our labours, as we also do, we don’t want to risk that success by jumping on board what may be an unfounded bandwagon. But as the evidence mounts up there’s also a time to draw the line and work out a solution to the problem, rather than just continuing to argue a case that’s less supportable every day.
Anyway, the UN says this: Sea level change is difficult to measure. Relative sea level changes have been derived mainly from tide-gauge data. In the conventional tide-gauge system, the sea level is measured relative to a land-based tide-gauge benchmark. The major problem is that the land experiences vertical movements (e.g. from isostatic effects, neotectonism, and sedimentation), and these get incorporated into the measurements. However, improved methods of filtering out the effects of long-term vertical land movements, as well as a greater reliance on the longest tide-gauge records for estimating trends, have provided greater confidence that the volume of ocean water has indeed been increasing, causing the sea level to rise within the given range. It is likely that much of the rise in sea level has been related to the concurrent rise in global temperature over the last 100 years. On this time scale, the warming and the consequent thermal expansion of the oceans may account for about 2-7 cm of the observed sea level rise, while the observed retreat of glaciers and ice caps may account for about 2-5 cm. Other factors are more difficult to quantify. The rate of observed sea level rise suggests that there has been a net positive contribution from the huge ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, but observations of the ice sheets do not yet allow meaningful quantitative estimates of their separate contributions. The ice sheets remain a major source of uncertainty in accounting for past changes in sea level because of insufficient data about these ice sheets over the last 100 years. And of course the IPCC is here.
Woods Hole says this:Isotopic dating indicates that the initiation of cordgrass migration occurred in the late 19th century and is coincident with a recent acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise. If current rates of sea-level rise continue or increase slightly over the next century, New England salt marshes will be dominated by cordgrass. If climate warming causes sea-level rise rates to increase significantly over the next century, these cordgrass marshes will likely drown, resulting in extensive losses of coastal wetlands.
Those key conspirators NASA are also rising-sea-level believers and have presumably faked this graph using satellite data. Actually they present quite a lot of interesting SL animations and graphics here. All faked, ha ha.
Oppenheimer from Princeton gives a balanced view here with his conclusion being (my paraphrasing) that we don’t really know for sure what will happen if the ice sheets melt and it probably won’t be as bad as we think, but let’s be careful and do something now rather than wait around. Interesting charts on warming in Greenland as well as sea level rises, too.
OK, OK already. I’ll stop. I give room here for disbelief. It could be a conspiracy. It could all be faked. They could all be wrong. And I agree that whilst sea level may be rising particularly quickly around the middle of the planet it could well be not rising much at all in other parts, or that the data may be skewed and incomplete. And also that it’s impossible to remove all of the variables and be certain that “we” did it. It could indeed be a natural cycle. Maybe. But I’m convinced that we humans are numerous enough and are clearing enough land and burning enough fossil fuels to be a factor. And I’m convinced that climate is changing, for whatever reason.
And yes, sea levels have risen and will likely continue to do so. Like good Boy Scouts let’s be prepared.
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If you think that our cities and civilisations are going to be around forever you should check out what we’ve lost…
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Along the lines of searchable video databases there is also Metacafe.
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Blinkx promotes itself as the most advanced video search engine on the Web. So does it work? Yep, seems to. Also has a cool Pico-bar that monitors what you are doing and feeds you suggestions… hmmm. I think I’ll leave that option alone for a while.
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Read if you dare.
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I just dug this out of the “This Week in SCIENCE” emails from AAAS, from May 12 2006, 312 (5775). The AAAS says: “Not So Fast…The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has decayed since accurate measurements began in 1840, and these changes have led to speculation that the field will disappear or reverse within this millennium.” Which would be pretty scary. We’d either have no north/south poles or our north would become south and vice versa. You can imagine how confusing and dangerous that alone would be… Continue »
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Here’s an excellent resource – the BBC Languages site…
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Yes folks, there’s a flight simulator built into Google Earth and by Jove it works. Just try ctrl-alt-A or maybe ctrl-windows-A when over a location and a screen will appear giving you some options. It works, and it’s as realistic as Google Earth itself. Big wow factor. I picked it up from Techcrunch, here.
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Need to draw some flowcharts? Used to Visio but not tied to it? Try Gliffy or a newcomer from Lenovo, Best4c, for free diagramming and charting on the web…
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LIve version of Firestarter… weird, creepy.. fan-tas-tic.
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Outside of rock, of R’n'B and the classics, there lies the Prodigy and electronica. I do like this…
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Read about the virtual Rome project here and check it out here. Yes, I mean Ancient Rome. Absolutely engrossing.
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Can’t resist…
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OK – I really like this idea. First let me paint this picture. You have a sqillion MP3s, videos and images on your PC and no backup. Or you backup onto another PC or a storage unit. Or maybe you backup on a few DVDs. Whatever, it’s a pain. But if your main PC dies you lose the lot, so you take the small pain over the big, big pain. Now Drobo is a smart storage box that takes 3.5inch hard drives in standard bays. That’s not new – you can buy big external HDD boxes that plug in via FireWire or USB anyway.
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The SMH is spruiking the end of the computer, as the young people of Japan adopt smaller form factors in lieu of PCs. They suggest that this trend will spread across the world. I tend to agree, although by ‘computer’ we have to accept that they mean ‘PC’. And I have some reservations. Japan is a smaller, more densely populated country that Australia, so wireless communication is easier – and cheaper. This applies less so to the US, but similar geographic factors do apply.
Continue »
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Another cool tool… Trendtracker from MobiFeed.
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Check out IBM DeveloperWorks online – and especially Spaces, a new social-networking-Web 2.0 collaborative developer area. I’m not that technical – I understand maybe 45-50% of what’s going on but I love to stay informed of what’s at the cutting edge. This is a great site to visit and browse but as I say it’s for developers and those interested in coding with IBM products or open standards. (And yes, I work for IBM and these are my views, not necessarily the company’s.)
Well, compelling enough for me, anyway. Apart from the sheer joy of all the stuff you can read, from online libraries to Wikipedia, there’s also…
- Online maps, like Google’s, which you can use to get you around, or use to document and share info, or mash up into new web services
- Weather radar, and other meteorological services including satellite maps
- VoIP, nearly-free telephony
- Online shopping, my personal favorite – books, DVDs and whatever from Amazon, stuff from dealsdirect
- Online databases, especially those that leverage a community of knowledge creatively, like IMDB
- Online serve-yourself services, where you provide the content, like YouTube
- Lots more, I’m just tired and want to stop. But just think about online communities, bulletin boards, forums, blogs, podcasts… and the opening up of ideas, thoughts, opinions, hobbies and specialties, from being something that was often distributed only via select, formal channels, to freely and openly searchable via the web.
The most obvious business connection is with Second Life – if only because it’s had good media coverage and many corporates like IBM and Dell have built virtual spaces there already. IBM in particular (yes, yes, I work for IBM and these are my opinions, not necessarily the company’s) has made a name for itself with virtual representations of open-level pro tennis matches that re-create reality ball by ball. But a metaverse of 3D worlds is being used by small and large compaines alike to promote products, hold special events, generate innovation and generally just “be there” in case it does take off. Consider these metaverse-related options…
Octaga… very business oriented, building visualisations in 3D of major projects like highways and corporate training simulations.
The Torque Game engine… very much a games engine but capable of relatively easy development and with low-latency Internetworkability – so bringing lots of people together in a virtual world – perhaps a business world – over 56kbit modems or better is a reality. C2C Simulation use TGE in their military and ‘cultural’ simulations.
An alternative games engine is Unreal… and it has an extensive portfolio of successful games to demonstrate its impact on the market.
Or consider the big player in MMOG, BigWorld… offering what appears to be a comprehensive suite of development and server-based operating environments that will robustly support massive multiplayer online gaming, or perhaps your corporate virtual needs.
Perhaps Open Source is your preference? Check out the Croquet Consortium… and Qwaq, a virtual corporate collaborative forum built on OpenCroquet.
Or, lastly, how about the big-iron MMOG BitVerse? Yes, I know, more IBM content but it is an interesting take on what can be done with Linux running on some big-iron servers. Taikodom from Brazil’s Hoplon is the offshoot virtual social, or perhaps sci-fi, world.
Anyway, if none of that interests you I’ll let you go and do some Google searches of your own… maybe start with Kaneva?
Forbes hints at what comes next here: advertising, of course. You create this ultra-realistic 3-D mapping environment (be it Google’s, Map-Quest’s or Microsoft’s) and of course we stick up virtual billboards as well. Not so ultra-realistic now, is it? More like reality mashed with the advertiser’s whims. When you think this through you get to not just a new type of online reality, but the opportunity to merge that seamlessly with unreality, as with Second Life or any nuimber of multi-player games. If you get the basic building blocks right you can set up your billboards virtually – and I do mean virtually – anywhere.
Not so cool? How about a news report on TV that allows you to click on a detail in the background, bringing up extra options such as a map, or a 3-D view down a street nearby, so you can see the context of the news. If you get your geo-locations aligned with with virtual ones you could get your avatar involved in reporting, viewing, or even participating in the news, or anything else on a screen, really. With the obligatory billboards, of course, to pay for it all.
Yes, I dreamed of this, just like you. Maps that included 3D views of the actual streetscape. Read about it here at InfoWorld, or try it there at Google’s preview site. Yes, it works. Click on the Streeview button, choose a location and then just spin the view around and see the merged photograhic images of – yes – the real street scape. One day it’ll cover the world, but for now it’s just a few select locations. But boy oh boy, it’s great. What’s next? How about video streetscapes?
Filed under Links, Web stuff by Rob.
Some countries – and some companies for that matter – block access to some sites on the Web. Typically these are attempts to restrict access to information that ‘the government’ deems either unsavoury and immoral – like porn – or counter to the stability of the country; or perhaps just the stability and longevity of government itself. We can be critical of these attempts, sitting as we do in countries where freedom is relatively unrestricted, but we should (here I go preaching again) be aware that (a) not so long ago Western nations were just as censorious and (b) it’s all relative. We don’t want terrorists, racists and extremists of any sort having unfettered access and influence, do we? Indeed as parents we restrict our kids’ access, and companies want employees to focus on their work rather than on MySpace, so it’s not so difficult to imagine wanting to restrict other groups for other reasons. Whether you do or not depends upon your personal moral and philosophical stance.
Having said all that, it’s equally valid to want all citizens of all countries to have the freedom to express their views without fear, and to receive access to whatever they want, when they want. Bottom line, it’s not always easy to allow that, indeed it can be counter-productive to moral and political stability, and some countries take greater care in blocking out what they don’t want their citizens to see. Of course some countries take a less democratic approach to such actions, and that’s where some Westerners, used to taking what they believe is the high moral ground, get passionate about civil rights. And some repressed citizenry get rightly upset as well.
Which brings me to proxy servers and other IP-cloaking techniques. Basically if you bounce your HTTP requests off a server that receives and resends that request, and on the opposite side receives and resends the response, you have a disconnect. There’s no direct connection between request and response as teh proxy stands between you and the target. Now this allows you to look as though you are accessing an approved site when in fact you could access any site, so you are cloaked, as it were. You could also wrap and tunnel your way out, but let’s just look at the simple way for now. Fact is that the proxies can be banned as well, but not so easily if (a) they move around a lot or (b) there’s lots of ‘em. So proxies let banned sites become accessible again, at least as long as they are unknown. Proxies are everywhere, but a simple proxy tool is gaining some mindshare and causing heartaches as well. Psiphon is its name. It allows anyone to set up a simple proxy server on their internet-worked PC. Anyone who wants to, can. Such proxies can then be seen as innocuous targets and remain unbanned, when in fact they could be providing a channel for ordinary people living under ‘repressive’ regimes to simply contact friends and family.
However Forbes has reported that these altruistic channels are also being ‘abused’ by porn-seekers, and theoretically could be used by anyone for any nefarious purpose. And the altruists can look in their proxy logs (surely a ‘breach of privacy’ to some, for starters) and see that abuse. Which of course has put some responsibility back on the proxy providers and resulted in at least some of them questioning what they are doing and – ironically – how they can ban ‘improper’ use. Which just goes to prove why censorship is all relative, doesn’t it?
Filed under Humanity, Links, Raves by Rob.
Forbes reports that Dell has indeed gone mad and turned to the bricks-and mortar retail channel – Wal-Mart, in fact – to get sales growing again. Now if you are an e-tailer who relies on pocketing the extra margin available from ‘disintermediating’, ie cutting out the ‘middle-man’, how exactly do you make any money by selling via Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart will hardly want to sell above your online price, so effectively you thin down your margin and take a smaller slice. Now this extra volume does hurt your competitors, sure, and it does keep your volume up (keeping per-unit costs down) and your revenue climbing in total value terms, but with less margin. Assuming this is an on-going arrangement, not a one-off that Dell walks away from in 6 months, the prospect is for ever-thinning margins… until?
I always imagined Dell would run out of products to cut the quality out of and assemble at bare-bones cost plus miserable margin. OK, they have been better than most – plenty of people jumped in and made clones – some of them pretty well (think Compaq). And Dell hit upon a few great ideas – efficient assembly of cheap parts, low cost production and low-cost sales via the phone and the Web. But I never imagined they would go retail. OK, they haven’t – yet. But they might! There’s a story here at Forbes that suggests a retail outlet could bump up Dell’s flagging fortunes. Yes, and cut their existing low margin as well. Perhaps with their efficient assembly line they can afford to lose a bit of margin in order to win another (maybe) $US800m in sales. That’s how most of the PC makers do it, anyway. And Dell are reputedly masters of the art of just-in-time, low-inventory manufacturing, so maybe they ahve more up their sleeves than meets the eye. Whatever happens, HP will lose some sales.
I love this (from a Forbes article on how hard it is to stop online ‘piracy’ of media: “The Pirate Bay’s copyright sabotage campaign is alive and well. Though Swedish police raided the site’s headquarters and confiscated its servers in May of last year, the site was soon back online, running on donated hardware. Since then, Pirate Bay administrator Peter Sunde says, the site has started distributing its servers and bandwidth to other locations to avoid the possibility of another raid. Sunde claims even he doesn’t know exactly where the servers are stashed.” My emphasis there.
It’s the fact that servers can get (effectively) lost that interests me. I did work with a domain name once that got changed (from .com to .com.au) and when we went to close down the old site we found that we couldn’t pin down exactly where the old box was. It was running, it had an IP address and it was one of a lot of other boxes somewhere in the US. That narrowed it down. But which room, in which building, in which city? Hey, it was a big company with big rooms! Whenever the box went down someone – or some thing – booted it back up. But we didn’t know where exactly it was… which brings to mind an important financial application, one that linked to South America for some obscure and largely undocumented reason. Break that link and the application (running in Australia) seized.. the guy who set it up had a reason, but he forgot to write the full story down. Or maybe he was living the good life in South America!
And there you have it. If you can get yourself a server and put it in a room somewhere, anywhere, all you need is its IP address and away you go. Want to pirate (and I’ll leave the legalities and ethics to one side for a moment) and avoid server confiscation? Use server obfuscation instead and simply lose it!
The world turns and things change… or do they? Forbes has an article here that asks the question, are we seeing a repeat of Netscape vs Microsoft, with Google replacing Netscape? With the additional question, is MS at the disadvantage this time around?
Brian Caulfield writes that where MS can tout its software expertise (Office, Photosynth, Silverlight) and afford to give a away a few hundred copies of Office in a promo, Google actually gives away the equivalent product for free to everyone. The point he’s making, of course, is that despite its seemingly endless resouces, MS is tied to a product-based model of revenue generation; whereas Google actually earns its dosh from clicks and the advertisers who pay for those clicks. Do you see the difference? Where Netscape gave it’s baby away for free and gained enormous marketshare, threatening MS and its web play, it didn’t really know how to convert that marketshare into cashflow. Google has nailed that one. As it adds to its suite of attractive online tools it builds both marketshare and revenue… it can afford to continue to try new products and beef up its existing ones as even the relative failures still build the brand, sustaining that Google momentum as the premier way to advertise on the Web.
Whereas MS is tied to selling you a copy of Office, or Vista, or whatever. Yes, that’s still a great business, but it’s getting undermined by Google with its Apps and by the entire LAMP/Open Source contingent. Open Source convert IBM – in particular – continues to grind away in the enterprise space, undermining at least one of the pillars that support the MS river of cash. Meanwhile MS is trying to catch up in the online advertising market but it faces a strong, dominant competitor with great cashflow: Google.
Which way will it go? Perhaps we’ll see a rebalancing of the market ending with a new equilibrium, one based on a split between online delivery of applications and the traditional shrinkwrap product. Or will it all fall towards the online app? Either way I’d bet that MS will be in there too – maybe late to the party, but definitely with its best frock on…
Here’s a report we all should know about, “Roadless space of the conterminous US”. Wow. What it means is to put some numbers around the spaces between roads.. which is to say evaluate the size of the “roadless gaps” in the US. This matters to the animals and plants in the habitats between roads – if the gap is too small then you get a greater percentage of invasion by weed plant species, for example, and restricted movement by animals. If the animals in question can’t cross the road (or die in the attempt) they may not have access to food when stressed (by a drought, say). Or they won’t find a mate with which to breed. Or their diversity declines because they only have a smaller gene pool to dive into. Or all of the above. Which is to say that it does matter where you put roads… beyond just thinking about the cost of laying a road, let’s think about the impact on the environment as well.
It’s hard to know where to start, but the Harvard online site has been revamped and they sent me a ton of links. Now I’ve run out of time in my day to pursue every business and technology website, but this is a good one… here is the gist of the email with a few active links so you can easily check it out – and maybe comment?
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business people excited to be discussing their challenges and learning from one
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http://hbsp.ed10.net/t/HECSF/IQVS2/UP/SJM4X
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Visit us daily for our take on the latest business news and how it relates to
key management ideas. Join the conversation and share lessons learned from your
own business experience.
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Filed under Business, Links by Rob.
Songware? It seems odd that a great live band like the Who would find itself promoting software-generated songs, but apparently Pete Townshend has been working – nay dreaming – about this for 30 years. Who’s next grew out of Lifehouse – Pete’s idea of a connectedness that expressed itself through songs… and was for Pete a glimpse of a future world where connectedness was pervasive, electronic and creative. Which brings us to The Method, software that apparently takes personal data like a birthdate, a photo, an audio file and a beat and produces music.
Pete talks about it here on MP3.com… The legendary Who guitarist and songwriter said… that he is set to launch a new Web site that he has been thinking about for nearly 30 years. Dubbed The Method, Townsend said the site will use music composition software to take a person’s physical attributes and compose a brand new, personalized piece of music for that person.
“I’ve been thinking about this for such a long time,” he said. “The gathering that the Internet offers is meditation. You lose yourself when you’re listening to good music.” Townshend said he hopes the site will provoke more people to take advantage of the immediacy of the Web.
And Yahoo! says this: Rocker Pete Townshend on Wednesday unveiled an Internet-based software program that will help music fans compose personalised tracks at the click of a button. The Who guitarist/songwriter said that with a voice recording, a digital image and a rhythm clapped into a microphone, his new “Method” software will create spontaneous digital music and allow anyone to be a composer, and possibly a rock star. “You can put data in and get a piece of music out. It’s as simple as that,” said Townshend, a technical wizard who pioneered the use of the synthesiser more than 35 years ago on the classic tunes “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Riley.” The project, which started percolating during his art school days in the 1960s, was developed by mathematician/composer Lawrence Ball and software developer Dave Snowdon.
From May 1, users will be able to get free access to the Web site (http://www.lifehouse-method.com) for three months, and will be able to compose instrumental tracks that they can e-mail or post on their Web sites. From August 1, it will become a subscription-based service.
Sounds intriguing, anyway.
Interesting take on the Tour de Georgia… from above, from the ground, by GPS, by Flickr… you name it. It’s awesome, really. A great concept, mashing together a GPS-tracker with video and still picture feeds and a chatroom. Shame about the lame US comedy commentating team…
The screenshot gives you an idea.
Interesting take on the Tour de Georgia… from above, from the ground, by GPS, by Flickr… you name it. It’s awesome, really. A great concept, mashing together a GPS-tracker with video and still picture feeds and a chatroom. Shame about the lame US comedy commentating team…
The screenshot gives you an idea.
- A great place to start… Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there’s lots of great stuff
- This looks interesting… a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run… annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test… all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on “Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults” – especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I’m neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale… remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained… and I’m not particularly overweight (nor skinny).
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts.Kg |
Watts.Kg |
| 90 |
10.89 |
9.02 |
| 80 |
10.39 |
8.83 |
| 70 |
10.20 |
8.53 |
| 60 |
9.80 |
8.14 |
| 50 |
9.22 |
7.65 |
| 40 |
8.92 |
6.96 |
| 30 |
8.53 |
6.86 |
| 20 |
8.24 |
6.57 |
| 10 |
7.06 |
5.98 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
- And this…from the same link: “Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults“:
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts |
Watts |
| 90 |
822 |
560 |
| 80 |
777 |
527 |
| 70 |
757 |
505 |
| 60 |
721 |
480 |
| 50 |
689 |
449 |
| 40 |
671 |
432 |
| 30 |
656 |
399 |
| 20 |
618 |
376 |
| 10 |
570 |
353 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people… perhaps non cyclists?
- How about the Human Powered Vehicle association?
- Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike.
- Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one…
- And Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours… STOP IT! Go outside and ride!
- A great place to start… Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there’s lots of great stuff
- This looks interesting… a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run… annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test… all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on “Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults” – especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I’m neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale… remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained… and I’m not particularly overweight (nor skinny).
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts.Kg |
Watts.Kg |
| 90 |
10.89 |
9.02 |
| 80 |
10.39 |
8.83 |
| 70 |
10.20 |
8.53 |
| 60 |
9.80 |
8.14 |
| 50 |
9.22 |
7.65 |
| 40 |
8.92 |
6.96 |
| 30 |
8.53 |
6.86 |
| 20 |
8.24 |
6.57 |
| 10 |
7.06 |
5.98 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
- And this…from the same link: “Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults“:
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts |
Watts |
| 90 |
822 |
560 |
| 80 |
777 |
527 |
| 70 |
757 |
505 |
| 60 |
721 |
480 |
| 50 |
689 |
449 |
| 40 |
671 |
432 |
| 30 |
656 |
399 |
| 20 |
618 |
376 |
| 10 |
570 |
353 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people… perhaps non cyclists?
- How about the Human Powered Vehicle association?
- Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike.
- Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one…
- And Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours… STOP IT! Go outside and ride!
A great place to start… Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there’s lots of great stuff.
This looks interesting… a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run… annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test… all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on “Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults” – especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I’m neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale… remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained… and I’m not particularly overweight (nor skinny).
| |
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts.Kg |
Watts.Kg |
| 90 |
10.89 |
9.02 |
| 80 |
10.39 |
8.83 |
| 70 |
10.20 |
8.53 |
| 60 |
9.80 |
8.14 |
| 50 |
9.22 |
7.65 |
| 40 |
8.92 |
6.96 |
| 30 |
8.53 |
6.86 |
| 20 |
8.24 |
6.57 |
| 10 |
7.06 |
5.98 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
And this…“Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults” is :
| |
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts |
Watts |
| 90 |
822 |
560 |
| 80 |
777 |
527 |
| 70 |
757 |
505 |
| 60 |
721 |
480 |
| 50 |
689 |
449 |
| 40 |
671 |
432 |
| 30 |
656 |
399 |
| 20 |
618 |
376 |
| 10 |
570 |
353 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people… perhaps non cyclists?
How about the Human Powered Vehicle association? Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike. Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one… and Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours… STOP IT! Go outside and ride!
Still here? Ok, how about Aerodynamics for cycling? If you are getting into the maths, try this Human Power eJournal for size. And last but not least the informative guys at CyclingPeaks software discuss reading and comparing power outputs at different durations.
With all of those whiz bang Web 2.0 mashes out there it’s easy to forget really useful tools like SurveyMonkey. Need a professional survey? Fast? Free?
Filed under Business, Links by Rob.
Just did a quick browse around the web… you may enjoy it, don’t know…
- Started with Wikipedia – cycling
- Osteoporosis and master’s cyclists (that’s me): “Weight-bearing exercise performed during teen and young adult years did not appear to influence BMD, as there were no differences at any site between those within the upper and lower 50th percentiles for weight-bearing exercise during the 12-18, 19-34, or 35-49 year time periods. These data indicate that master cyclists with a long history of training exclusively in cycling have low BMD compared to their age-matched peers. Although highly trained and physically fit, these athletes may be at high risk for developing osteoporosis with advancing age.”
- Back to Wiki – Bicycle
- Dartmouth’s cyclewiki
- Would you believe it – the UCI’s official ProTour mediaWiki
- Not sure about this one – worldnakedbikeride Wiki
- Back to Wikipedia – Aussie cyclists
- Cyclepedia.org
- Interesting Aussie site, Spinopsys
- Biocrawler… on McEwen
And back to work for me!
Filed under Links by Rob.
Just did a quick browse around the web… you may enjoy it, don’t know…
- Started with Wikipedia – cycling
- Osteoporosis and master’s cyclists (that’s me): “Weight-bearing exercise performed during teen and young adult years did not appear to influence BMD, as there were no differences at any site between those within the upper and lower 50th percentiles for weight-bearing exercise during the 12-18, 19-34, or 35-49 year time periods. These data indicate that master cyclists with a long history of training exclusively in cycling have low BMD compared to their age-matched peers. Although highly trained and physically fit, these athletes may be at high risk for developing osteoporosis with advancing age.”
- Back to Wiki – Bicycle
- Dartmouth’s cyclewiki
- Would you believe it – the UCI’s official ProTour mediaWiki
- Not sure about this one – worldnakedbikeride Wiki
- Back to Wikipedia – Aussie cyclists
- Cyclepedia.org
- Interesting Aussie site, Spinopsys
- Biocrawler… on McEwen
And back to work for me!
Filed under Links by Rob.
Yes, I bought an ibike because I’m a data junkie…
here’s some of the story…or visit addicted2wheels for the whole lot! ibike – part 2 – mounting it on the bike and setup
No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely ‘rock-solid’ on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It’s easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks. 
Mounted it looks like this…
And the mounting itself looks like this….
All in all – dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular ‘wired’ bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it’s easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.
Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the ‘turn 180′ exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate – hey I was only out by 10m!).
All up – simple and quick.
ibike – part 1 – the purchase experience
OK, so I chose the ibike.The first hassle was the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can’t login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the ‘log-in’ option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 ‘tabs’ to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs… they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)
Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the ‘tracking’ option didn’t work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with ‘Velocomp’ written on the box… hmmm. Go figure.
The box looks like this:
Which is fine, although for around $A600 it’s a trifle underwhelming. Still, it’s the technology we are buying, isn’t it?
And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):
It’s showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.
And then I mounted it on the bike… well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.
More soon!
Power to the people – power meters for serious cycling
When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.
In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle ‘computer’, although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out BikeBrain for example)
Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go ‘ah, look at that average’ after a hard crit.
The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go ‘wow, that was a tough ride’.
Which brings me to my newest desire: power measurement. Up to now I’ve calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit. SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options – the German HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don’t offer download, so it would be a ‘write down later’ sort of thing – like back to the 80s.
The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end ‘real’ power meters. I also looked at GPS units like Garmin‘s and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.
Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces – wind, friction and inclination – and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren’t good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the “coasting” test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).
I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the “buy” button in the ibike website. I’ll tell you more later…
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