My phone is self-aware

My Egypt trip including Abu Simbel, Aswan, Luxor, Cairo

In early April I wrote of the need to utilize our mobile phone technology to address use cases ranging from personal navigation issues to large scale disaster response.  On the small scale, my personal scenario involved getting lost on a mountain top after sunset in Jordan (wanting to retrace my steps with my iPhone).  On the large scale, thousands of souls were lost on the coast of Tohoku, Japan when a tsunami struck in March, their loved ones not knowing where they were, even though many of them likely were carrying cell phones that could have been tracking their position, if there'd been an app for that.

Subsequently, several crafty developers uncovered a location file that resides on iOS4 Apple phones.  Unfortunately, there aren't ways to access this data in real time from the personal perspective, or from a server backup from a broader perspective.  However, at the O'Reilly "Where 2.0 Conference", Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan demonstrated and published a program called iPhone Tracker for individuals to view their own device-embedded data.  I recommend everyone try this if you're an iPhone user. 

My motion through Cairo over a five day period

Using the iPhone Tracker application on my Mac, I was able to extract data my iPhone had captured during my trip through the Middle East.  Upper left you can see my tracks from Egypt's southern-most town of Abu Simbel, along the Nile through Aswan and Luxor (Old Thebes) and on to Cairo.  Zooming into detail on my Cairo stay, at right, you can see the day I spent at the Cairo Museum and Tahrir Square overlapped with the day I spent in the historic Islamic Cairo quarter, then two separate days for the visit to Coptic Cairo and the Citadel Mosque built by Salah ad-Din atop the hill to the south of Cairo to defend from crusaders.  The far right cluster of points is my last few hours at the airport before departure. 

Since the release of the iPhone Tracker for computers, the research and development team at the New York Times has launched a new web service to allow any user to upload their personal location history file to the web for backup in case Apple discontinues or alters the format of the location file.  You can do a similar rendering of your data like the maps above by visiting their service www.openpaths.cc  

According to Apple he location file on iPhones is meant to keep a history of phone connectivity through cell towers or wi-fi hot spots as reference points to quickly render map data, not for actual tracking of a user.  (The data stays on the phone and is not transmitted externally.)  However, I see incredible value in an app that actually does transmit location information to an external server for the use of location-backtracking as I needed while in Jordan, or as relatives need to check in on the location of their loved ones in emergencies.  As the technology is now prevalent to do this, it just takes the will and the time to make it so.

Stay tuned...

Future-scope

I was listening to the Apollo 11 logs sampled in the Austere composition "Principium Somniferum", recorded when the spacecraft departed Earth's gravitational field to be captured by the Moon's.  It's a profound composition inspired by the similarly profound story of men sling-shotting themselves in a bubble of metal away from the protection of Earth's physics toward a desolate chunk of rock based on an extreme faith in their mathematical calculations and belief that they'd packed adequate provisions for the journey. 

The transitional moment the Houston engineer spoke of reminded me of a concept my father often pondered and discussed.  Humans, being bipeds who evolved with their brains accustomed to living at walking or running speeds, have to adapt their thinking to the discontinuity of the way we travel today.  Our minds have a timeline of prediction that leads minutes, hours, days ahead of where we are at the present time.  When we make large leaps like from SFO to NYC, he says there is a point before we get to our airplane that our minds make the leap ahead of us.  For those moments after the mental leap, our bodies walk in old-space while our minds operate and plan in new-space.  We become spatially-spread zombies with head in one place and body in another.  (This may be why it's so disorienting to have our flights cancelled.  As it's virtual decapitation.)

These thoughts in turn make me think of how long it will take for our technology to catch up with our travel-bound heads.  Our location based services (LBS) are great at tracking the trail we've left behind.  They help us savor our last meal with lovingly posed spreads on Yelp, they help us scan the crowd at a venue we visit to see if the digital presence of our kin can be sniffed through the crowds on Foursquare/Gowalla.  The first pioneers of the space are using the mechanics of group interaction to capture shared intentions.  (Ditto, Plancast and Tripit see that social momentum of friendship can result in shared plans that otherwise might be solitary if not communicated.) 

The way we engage with the world through social interactions is perhaps the easiest way through current technology to make predictions about the future.  For example, we can tell if a 415 area code starts communicating intensely with 212's, more than all local interactions, that this phone's owner in travel-zombie state.  Tools like Waze crowdsourced maps can measure velocity to make aggregate predictions about the status of the location they are moving through and even of the phone owner themselves. 

We are soon to see a future-scope tool, perhaps first in mobile app form, that will help us make the "teleporting" leap from where we are to where we intend to be.  Perhaps we can flag to those around us a status message of "I'm not really here" so they behave courteously to our zombie bodies as the shift in reference is made to our new place of being.  Perhaps those in our new location will be able to sense our presence.  Our disembodied head of intent will manifest its presence before our physical body has to show up.  Our travel limbo will always be disorienting until body and mind can move at the same speeds.  Right now technology we experience is footprint-centric instead of intention centric. 

As we slingshot ourselves about in our metal bubbles with extreme faith, half present where we are, perhaps technology will help us be the slightest bit more aware.  Often, in travel, we could not be more absent.




For downloads of Austere's Principium Somniferum visit:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/freqmagnet
For Austere discography visit: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Austere

Quoted from Apollo 11 Mission logs:
"This is Apollo Control at 61 hours, 39 minutes. We've had no further conversation with the crew since our last report. Flight Surgeon says there is no indication at this time that they have begun to sleep, but we expect they'll be getting to sleep here shortly. Coming up in less than 10 seconds now, we'll be crossing into the sphere of influence of the Moon. A computational changeover will be made here in Mission Control at this point, as the Moon's gravitational force becomes the dominant effect on the spacecraft trajectory, and our displays will shift from Earth-reference to Moon-reference. At that point, which occurred a few seconds ago, the spacecraft was at a distance of 186,437 nautical miles [] from Earth, and 33,822 nautical miles [] from the Moon. The velocity with respect to the Earth was 2,990 feet per second [], and with respect to the Moon, about 3,272 feet per second []. The Passive Thermal Control mode that was set up for the second time by the crew appears to be holding well at this point, and all spacecraft systems are functioning normally. Mission going very smoothly. At 61 hours, 41 minutes; this is Apollo Control, Houston. " 

Source: http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/10day3-flight-plan-update.htm

Drive Into the Tsunami

This morning I was struck by the story of Susumu Sugawara on CNN who said that when he heard the tsunami sirens on Oshima, he jumped into his boat, riding into the oncoming wave to avoid losing his boat and risking his island's isolation in the aftermath.

The fact of his survival is miraculous.  The testament of his humble dedication to his community and his boat, to whom he said, "If we live or die, we'll be together," is profoundly touching.  (As he fled land he bade an apologetic farewell to all his other boats whom he could not save.)

It is amazing to think how many stories were lost in this tragedy.  I wondered this morning if we might be able to develop personal or device black-boxes (the way that all airplanes have to prove as record of what happened to them).  I say this not to be morbid as in the case of the posthumous/forensic case of airplanes. 

When I was in Jordan last month I irresponsibly hiked up a mountain late in the day.  When night fell faster than anticipated due to cloud cover, I was able to use my photographic history of my hike to piece together where I had been and the geology around me to help me find my way back to the road.  But if my phone had been dropping geotagged pins as I hiked, that would not have been necessary as I could have just retraced my steps.

App developers could take note of this use-case.  As it could be easily developed using Skyhook or other background geo-lookup tools already existing in most smartphones.  And perhaps in the future we'll all have devices with us that communicate actively to servers to state our last-known position and current well-being if we are ever trapped in earthquake debris needing timely help.

If someone tweets in rural Haiti, and they're using a feature phone, does anyone read it?

During the recent Tsunami in Japan, the internet infrastructure upon which Twitter and Facebook (including their mobile equivalents) are based, was taken offline in eastern Japan near the epicenter of the earthquake.  However, social networks that were built on the widely distributed feature phones in Japan continued to transmit messages over GPRS (General Packet Radio Service).  As a result, 80% of short message communication during the disaster was made on the social network maintained by Gree, a leading social network which is embedded on these feature phones distributed in Japan. *

This brought me to realize that other internet initiatives in markets dominated by feature phones could leverage similar approaches to get communities onto the web grid.  Most networks in the developing world are feature phone-dominated.  Though they may lack the GPRS network of Japan, they do have the ability to distribute bundled apps pre-loaded into the widely distributed low cost mobile handsets.  Though these networks are mostly dominated by voice and SMS messaging, there is a potential to use data hubs that would synchronize with web-based servers to deliver some compelling internet based applications in these markets.  (For an example of this SMS-based concept see Mobile-XL)

Last year I had the opportunity to consider this problem with Random Hacks of Kindness which hosted a hackathon around the United Nations Global Pulse initiative.   Our challenge was to consider how current internet technology could reach markets like rural regions of Haiti post-quake for monitoring and dispatching disaster-relief initiatives.  The motive was to enable commercial tool sets run by for-profit businesses like Twitter and Facebook to be used in markets currently beyond their reach.  Naturally its easy for the most privileged in any society to use social communication tools to reach out for help.  The voices that sometimes most need to be heard though are those without access to these tools.  If we find a way for communities that have access to feature phones to "get on the internet grid" by connecting SMS gateways to web servers that then render these messages into internet protocol, the for-profit community can go the rest of the way in developing the algorithms necessary to watch for trending signals that deserve attention from aid organizations. 

During South by Southwest Interactive convention Kate Schnepel of WildlifeSOS presented on how their organization is using a cumbersome workaround to just this problem.  Kartick Satyanarayan (pictured above with one of his rescued animals) is their main activist on the ground in India, often dispatched in parts of the country only accessible via voice and SMS communications.  He therefore sends updates from the field via SMS to someone with Internet connection who in turn tweets the update in real-time.  It's easy to see why it would be valuable for those in rural areas to have access to distributed SMS gateways that would obviate the need for this to be a two person task. 

Once we solve the hurdle of getting the signal to the web, which is purely technical, the matter of looking for signals from those in need of aid in the developing world can be addressed separately.  For example, the UN Global pulse hopes for a platform that could pick up mentions of the word "cholera" in a place that it has not been heard before which would allow its local branches to address the problem swiftly before it becomes a regional crisis.  This could be a simple signal amplification algorithm that analyses the linguistic landscape of chatter social/business communication for statistically uncommon signals.  If you apply tracking just to new phrases that come onto the scene, normalized for internet memes and news topics, then pay particular attention to those that spread the way diseases or word of disasters might, the UN Aid organizations and NGOs should then be able to respond to the crisis in a way that could prevent lasting damage to the community.

The Gree model of feature phone social networking applications on widely distributed devices, or the Mobile-XL method of providing SMS gateways to the web, may be just what under-served markets need to bring the boon of social media platforms to all regions of the globe.  As the popular revolutions in the Middle East have proven, it is crucial to have access to these advanced tools to bring attention and aid to areas of need.  Tunisia and Egypt had the benefit of these tools to amplify a signal that might otherwise have been mute to those outside their borders.  More people in the world can benefit from these amplification platforms.  The hurdle to bring it to them is not prohibitive.

*Presentation by Eiji Araki, VP of Product, Gree International speaking at the Japan Mobile Leaders Forum
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8378

Shopping for Horus

Walking through the Khan al-Khalili Market in Cairo I met a clairvoyant merchant.  He welcomed me into his shop and let me peruse around at his amazing collection of ancient Egyptian graven images.

At one point my eyes alighted on a delightful sculpture of Horus.  He said, "You probably can't afford that one," and pointed me to another one that he thought was in my price range.  I asked, "How do you know what I'm able to afford?"  He said, "Because I watched what you paid attention to when you came in, and they were all items within a very specific price range.  My guess is that you have less than $10 in your pocket right now."  He was right.  He was able to assess my liquidity as easily as a doctor estimating visual acuity using a Snellen chart.  It left me with an interesting concept, you can measure a man by how he limits his vision.

There have been tech projects I've worked on over the last decade where I believed the scope my colleagues were considering was due to their perspective on what they thought was within their grasp.  (Either restrictions of wallet, market scalability or marketing potential)  Often what we think is possible is constrained by our perceptions of our resources.  Within an individual company, your perception of your own resources and your potential is often definite.  It can limit your thinking.

What I like about being in business development is that we don't have to constrain our thinking by immediate "build vs. buy" decisions within the company, which tends to limit your ambition by your existing pool of assets/capital.  Instead we can look for partners in the market who offer us scale of marketing that we ourselves do not have and offer them in trade resources that we have which they lack. 

In my field, entrepreneurs tend to dream scenarios of market saturation with their product.  That's unrealistic, but their drive leads to the invention of disruptive technology advances that can get us part way there.  In actuality you can get further through synergistic partnerships than you can by Pinky & the Brain's "Try to take over the world!" mentality.  As Charles Darwin put it: In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."

It is collaboration, not competition that wins the day.  While I am fine with haggling, I prefer the collaborative synergistic negotiation.  I prefer to trade in a way that makes my counterpart much better off than I can in a haggle over fixed resources.  Collaboration can't happen in a merchant transaction.  The merchant and I had to compete in our negotiation until we found an appropriate margin for him that was palatable to my skimpy wallet.

In the world of direct commerce there aren't many synergistic trades.  I might have dreamed for an alabaster Horus, but it was clearly beyond anything that was likely to happen.  Merchant transactions are one to one ratios of assets.  His flexibility on price was limited by the margin he needs atop what it took him to acquire the product himself.  Little in this transaction can lead to him being exponentially benefited from the transaction.  He said that he wanted me to have a Horus, so we haggled to about $5, at which point we were both happy.

Fortunately, in the world of technology, we can render services to each other that are far greater than our limited capital resources. That's why it's my sandbox of choice.

Use Collecta to track your brand on social networks

Have you ever wanted to track mentions of your company brand across all the major social networks?

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The screenshot left is a view of Collecta tracking ncubeeight across Gowalla, Blogger and Twitter as shown from my iGoogle homepage.  This is an affordable way to track your company's reputation.

Steps to add Collecta to iGoogle are first to click on "Get Widget" from any one of our 80,000 publishers or go to widget.collecta.com and choose the "Embed in a Network" tab after entering your keyword.  Once you select "Add to iGoogle" you will see a confirmation page.

Collecta Widget Builder Preview

Google Widget Confirmation Screen

After your widget appears on your logged-in iGoogle page, you can reposition it, or add other widgets to track other topics with Collecta.