I have an uber-geeked out post on the chromakey program built into Adobe’s new CS5 version of Premiere Pro over at the Edgelings blog. If DIY video is your thing, click here to read it.

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I’m in South Jersey this week, and while staying at the local Courtyard by Marriott, and using one of the computers in their lobby, I came across this message while attempting to access Instapundit, presumably because of this post. (Click screen shots below to embiggen):

That’s really lame; I wonder if the software filters all news sites that use that phrase, or if say, CNN, the Times, WaPo, etc. are exempt. (In case you’re wondering, this popped up on two different lobby PCs, one on Monday night, when I first noticed it, and this morning, on another lobby PC, when I went back for a screen capture.)

Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there are no filters on the broadband that’s piped into the individual hotel rooms, but the Interwebs themselves can have their own issues. F0r example, while attempting to log onto the American Enterprise blog (from my laptop this time), I got this error message, from Google:

Why yes, that message certainly did ring a bell; upon seeing it, I emailed Nick Schulz, the AEI blog’s editor in chief, who used to edit Tech Central Station (including my own articles back when I was a semi-regular contributor there).  TCS was itself was the victim of a similar attack in 2007, along with the American Spectator’s Website, and around that time, if I recall correctly, Pajamas as well.

Perhaps because of that past experience, AEI’s technical boffins appear to have resolved this pretty quickly, as the site — at least of the time of this post — no longer generates that message on Google. I’m sure such attacks happen to leftwing and non-political sites as well, and that no side of the aisle is immune from mischievous pranksters. But given that this is an election year, and that there’s a past history of right-leaning Websites being attacked to reduce traffic from Google (and possibly other search engines as well), they should be aware of these sorts of attacks and how to defend against them.

The filtering and hacking I came across yesterday appear to be entirely unrelated, but both should serve as heads up for anyone in new media.

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Roberts invented the Altair 8800, pictured above, which was the PC I cut my teeth on, when a math teacher at St. Mary’s purchased one, hooked it up to a used teletypewriter as its I/O device and started my school’s first computer club in the mid-1970s. Oh, the epic battles of Wumpus, Star Trek, and Lunar Lander we fought, my friends.

AP reports:

Dr. Henry Edward Roberts, a developer of an early personal computer that inspired Bill Gates to found Microsoft, died Thursday in Georgia. He was 68.Roberts, whose build-it-yourself kit concentrated thousands of dollars worth of computer capability in an affordable package, inspired Bill Gates and his childhood friend Paul Allen to come up with Microsoft in 1975 after they saw an article about the MITS Altair 8800 in Popular Electronics.

Roberts, an ex-military man, later went on to careers as a farmer and a physician, but continued to keep up with computer advances: He recently told Gates he hoped to work with new, nanotechnology-enhanced machines, according to son David Roberts.

“He did think it was pretty neat, some of the stuff they’re doing with the processors,” said David Roberts, who confirmed Gates rushed to Georgia Friday to be with his mentor.

Roberts died in a Macon hospital after a long bout with pneumonia, according to his family.

“Ed was willing to take a chance on us — two young guys interested in computers long before they were commonplace — and we have always been grateful to him,” Gates and Allen said in a joint statement released Thursday. “The day our first untested software worked on his Altair was the start of a lot of great things. We will always have many fond memories of working with Ed.”

The man often credited with kickstarting the modern computer era never intended to lead a revolution.

Born in Miami in 1941, Roberts spent time in the U.S. Air Force and earned an electrical engineering degree from Oklahoma State University in 1968, according to information provided by his family.

He later parlayed his interest in technology into a business making calculators; when large firms like Texas Instruments began cornering the business, Roberts soon found himself in debt, David Roberts said.

Meanwhile, he was gaining an interest in computers — at the time, hulking machines available almost exclusively at universities.

“He came up with the idea that you could have one of these computers on your own,” said David Roberts, adding his father expected to sell a few units. “Basically, he did it to try to get out of debt. ”

Roberts himself would later describe the effort as an “almost megalomaniac kind of scheme” that he pursued out of youthful ambition.

“But at that time you know we just lacked the, eh, the benefits of age and experience,” Roberts said on a program called “Triumph of the Nerds” that aired on PBS in 1996. “We didn’t know we couldn’t do it.”

As Al Ries and Jack Trout noted in one of their marketing books, a big reason why Roberts isn’t as well remembered today as he should be is that, while he got there before them, Woz and Jobs did a far better job of branding. Unlike Altair (the story goes it was taken from an episode of Star Trek that Roberts’ daughter was watching one week), the name Apple is simplicity itself. More importantly, the sleek white plastic case of the Apple II also promised ease of use, in sharp contrast to the scary and confusing looking switches and LEDs on the front of the Altair.

Today, the Altair is mostly found in computer museums, including the Bay Area’s Computer Museum History Center, which I described back in 2001 for National Review Online.

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Paging Mr. Bond. Mr. James Bond, to the white courtesy phone, please:

Gizmodo reports:

Tell what I really want to know: how can I get my hands on one?

After nine prototypes Martin Aircraft have an accurate expectation for how much a jetpack will cost, and suggest that at $86,000 it is pitched at the level of a high-end car. As sales and production volume increase they expect this to drop to the price of a mid-range car. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence; progress payments are made during manufacture with final payment due on delivery. Details and a deposit contract are available from their Martin Aircraft’s website.

And when will I be able drive it to work? Again it’s a waiting game as currently air traffic control technology is not yet advanced enough to cope with jetpacks, but the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing “highways in the sky” technology – 3D highways based on GPS tracks. Initial tests have been positive but the technology is unlikely to be implemented for another 10 years yet so for the meantime initial use will remain recreational as with jet-skis, snowmobiles and ultralights. Until then we’ll keep waiting and watching the sky…

Excuse me, I have to go mount a trailer hitch to the back of the Aston-Martin…

(Hat tip: Judd, Orrin Judd, of the New Hampshire Secret Service.)

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In his brilliant and frequently-updated non-fiction book, Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke famously quotes a remark attributed to William Henry Preece, the chief engineer of the British Post Office, when he was told in 1877 that the Americans had stumbled across a then-bleeding edge communications technology:

“The Americans have need of the Telephone — but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

In contrast, Clarke had infinitely more foresight. In 1967, he gave a speech in which he said:

Newspapers will, I think, receive their final body blow from these new communications techniques. I take a dim view of staggering home every Sunday with five pounds of wood pulp on my arm, when what I really want is information, not wastepaper. How I look forward to the day when I can press a button and get any type of news, editorials, book and theater reviews, etc., merely by dialing the right channel.Electronic “mail” delivery is another exciting prospect of the very near future. Letters, typed or written on special forms like wartime V-mail, will be automatically read and flashed from continent to continent and reproduced at receiving stations within a few minutes of transmission.

And as the first of Clarke’s Three Laws goes, “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

So with all of that background, how did Newsweek do in 1995 just as the World Wide Web, the still-new graphical interface running atop an Internet that had been around since 1969 was just taking off?

Just came across this article from Newsweek in 1995. It lists all the reasons the internet will fail. My two favorite parts:

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

* * *

Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

If Newsweek is as good at maintaining the journalism industry as they are at fortune telling, they should be around for a long time.

Heh. Although, maybe not at this burn rate.

In the meantime though, Newsweek is determined not to get caught flat-footed once again. Via Tim Blair, a photographed smuggled out of Newsweek HQ just moments ago shows a highly-paid, smartly dressed consultant explaining the latest in technologies to the magazine’s crack staff, who stare wide-eyed at the wonders of the future to come:

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If Santa brought you a camcorder for Christmas, or you’re simply encouraged by the videos over at PJTV, or our own efforts here, you might be looking for some tips to jump start your own creativity. Videomaker magazine, where I frequently contribute articles is excellent and its Website warrants plenty of exploration time. And you may also want to supplement your study of DIY video with…video. Here’s a great place to start, as producer D. Eric Franks writes on his Videopia blog:

A few years back, Digital Juice produced some really great programming for DJTV that I was lucky enough to be involved with. It sure didn’t last long, offically from October 2006 until late 2007, but the concept was well ahead of its time and most of the content still feels fresh in 2010. Unfortunately, while almost all of the shows are still available for free online, they are also almost completely and hopelessly lost in the chaos of Digital Juice marketing, promos and lesser screen-grab training segments. (Yes, I have contributed to the “lesser” content, but I accept no responsibility for the lack of organization!)

And so, I present here my annotated and completely biased catalog of DJTV programs and episodes. Much of this content is also available for purchase on convenient, conventional DVD-Video disc from Digital Juice as well, but you’ll have to track that down yourself!

Click over to Franks’ blog and follow the links for a variety of extremely useful tips — you’ll probably recognize more than a few that I’ve borrowed from time to time to spice up my own Silicon Graffiti videoblog. Probably the best place for a beginner to start is DJTV’s first series, Take Five. As Franks writes:

Take Five was really the pilot show for the entire DJTV venture. It started as a narrow sort of “Tips for Using Digital Juice Products” marketing piece (nothing wrong with that at all and a great idea) and eventually expanded to cover more than just Digital Juice, which, in my opinion, made the show much more broadly interesting and useful. Relatively easy to produce, it was never a fancy flagship showcase, but man, between Chuck and Rick, the 30 or so episodes (and 150 Tips!) sure were fun to watch. Unfortunately, due to the disorganization over at Digital Juice, these episodes are truly lost in the clutter and I couldn’t figure out how to tease them out of a simple search. Some day I’ll see if I can’t manually dredge through the files and find them for us!

Here’s a quick and dirty Google search of the Digital Juice site for the words “Take Five.” You should be able to track down most of the segments from there. Happy viewing!

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“Will Avatar put actors out of work?”

Perhaps synthespians should start small — say, with music videos — before attempting to take over the big screen.

Related: “Inventor spends Christmas with his perfect woman – a £30,000 custom-made fembot.” I don’t think the Tyrell Corporation needs to worry about the competition just yet, though.

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“HP computers are racist!”

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It’s the Spatula City of the B-Roll industry!

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Speaking of classic science fiction movies ahead of their time, “the sexbots are coming!”

In other news of science fiction become fact, “Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet that is larger than our own and may be more than half covered with water, according to a study published in the science journal Nature.”

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And they need to pick up the December issue of Videomaker magazine, which contains an article I wrote titled, “How A Camcorder Sees Light” — or read it online, here.

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“The Prometheus Device”; it’s Johnny Storm meets Peter Parker! As Jonathan Last writes, this might be the coolest — or perhaps hottest — device ever built in a garage.

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Shortly after I moved to Silicon Valley in 1997, I remember seeing billboards encouraging high-tech workers to move from warm sunny Northern California…to cold, blustery Minnesota. As HR Magazine noted in 1999, it was one of several state-run campaigns at the time:

Nebraska, for example, discovered that its former residents were fleeing to warmer climates in Texas, Florida and Arizona, with the greatest percentage settling in California. It made sense, then, for Nebraska Works, a workforce development initiative created by the department of economic development (nebworks.ded.state.ne.us), to hold a career fair in California.

However, campaign creators didn’t think it made sense for them to compete with California’s high-tech Silicon Valley image. Instead, they played up the lifestyle available to workers if they moved to Nebraska.

“Californians are amazed at our state’s housing costs,” says Patty Wood, workforce development supervisor for Nebraska in Lincoln. “We also have the best student-to-teacher ratio in the country, a low crime rate, less traffic, small communities and a slower pace.” She says the state hopes these attributes will attract former Nebraskans and workers looking for a lifestyle change.

It seems to be working. Last fall, Nebraska Works ran stadium ads during an important college football game that draws a lot of out-of-state fans. Approximately 14,000 users visited the web site set up for the campaign and nearly 800 people requested job applications and Nebraska living packets.

Wood’s department also piggybacked onto Nebraska’s nationwide “Genuine Nebraska” tourism campaign by creating links from the tourism web page to “Work, Play and Stay” pages that itemize Nebraska’s cost of living and quality of life. In the future, Nebraska Works would like to target military personnel affected by base closures, as well as to continue its job fairs and targeted advertising.

“We’d also like to create workshops on ‘best practices’ in recruitment and retention to deliver [to employers] across the state,” says Wood. “These workshops should be ready by the fall of 1999 or early in 2000. Retention is a huge part of this, not just recruitment.”

Minnesota’s campaign, “Come Home to Minnesota,” also targets former residents, particularly among professional and technical job seekers. “Our ‘Minnesota Living’ brochure, which describes the quality of life, education, outdoor and recreational opportunities and the like, should trigger memories from former residents,” says Gary Fields, deputy commissioner of the state’s department of trade and economic development in St. Paul.

Evidently, it was a success, as Minnesota’s broadband is now straining under the weight of it use:

Internet speeds in more than four-fifths of Minnesota are too slow to support technologies that could draw new jobs, take cars off the roads and bring new services to people in their homes, a new report said Friday.

The Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force is calling for minimum Internet speeds of 10 megabits per second for the entire state by 2015, setting a standard 15 times faster than the current federal definition of broadband.

By that measure, 83 percent of the state needs an upgrade.

The group’s report describes broadband as “an economic and social necessity for all citizens of the state no matter where they are located.” It says faster Internet could enable everything from more telecommuting for workers to telemedicine linking patients and doctors through two-way high-definition video.

“It’s an important economic tool as we try to attract and retain the best companies here so we can have good jobs,” said Rick King, chief technology officer at Thomson Reuters Legal and the task force’s chairman.

King presented the report during a hearing before two legislative panels, where lawmakers said slow Internet service is a drag on the state’s economy. They hope Minnesota will compete successfully for federal stimulus grants to expand broadband in rural areas.

“It’s time to start thinking of broadband as a baseline utility accessible to every Minnesota home and business,” said Sen. John Doll, a Democrat from Burnsville.

Based on the number of great bloggers in the region (Fraters Libertas, James Lileks, Ed Morrissey, and two-thirds of the Power Line guys come immediately to mind), I thought it already was!

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Harvard discovers the hyperlink:

The Stalinist (sorry — couldn’t resist, Frank) Vast Right Wing Conspiracy sets out to capture the high ground of cyberspace! Don Surber dubs it, “The Axis of Instapundit”:

Oh no!

A blogger at Harvard has discovered that blogs link to one another:

At the moment I will not address the merits of the criticisms, but focus instead on the interesting diffusion process that followed from the initial criticism from Coburn. Each day it was picked up by another few blogs. A quote from John Stossel provides a sense of the tone of the postings: “This summer’s town hall meetings made many congressmen and senators uncomfortable. No worries. The sycophants they fund have used your tax money to fund a study that advises politicians how they can avoid seeing you altogether.” Initially, I would infer, the first few blogs must have been on some distribution list from Coburn’s office (i.e., they weren’t just watching his website) because there were quotations from materials from Coburn that were not on his website. Thereafter you could see how different blogs picked up on the story, typically quoting or copying from another blog. So what one sees is a signal propagation process through the blogs. And as the signal propagates it evolves. Thus, for example, Stossel quotes from the Heritage blog, but then adds his distinct emphasis. The link and copying structure reflects the attention each blogger is paying to other blogs, however one would guess that each blog has a different but overlapping audience.

So the lesson here is that bloggers communicate with other people, including fellow bloggers.

Eureka!

This has to be the ultimate example of “I need a study to tell me this?” Though as Don writes:

Actually, it is quite flattering. I just love how a blogger in Poca, West Virginia, with a few thousand hits a day is placed on par with Sean Hannity, who reaches 10 million listeners. There is something very American — and very strange — about that.

Don adds, “Heaven help us if Harvard ever discovers Twitter.”

Heh. Maybe we can give them a head-start if they’re following blogs linking to their breakthrough study.

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Sorry for that Lucasian cliché. But as Katherine Mangu-Ward writes at Reason, “There Is No Way To Write A Punchy Headline About Metadata:”

When you write in Microsoft Word, record an audio file, take a photo, or otherwise digitally create stuff, you’re also creating metadata—a bunch of information about who, what, when, where, and how that adheres to your data.

A ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court yesterday means that from now on the metadata of public records is now part of that record, and has to be handed over in response to a public information request. The original Arizona case concerns a police whistle blower, who suspected that bad performance reviews had been created after the fact in the digital personnel files to justify his demotion. The department refused to hand over the data about the creation of those records, but now the court has ruled that they must.

Transparency advocates are excited about the ruling, because—among other things—metadata has been useful in revealing the influence of lobbyists and other special interests on the legislative process:

One of the most famous metadata lobbying goof-ups occurred in 2004, when Wired busted California Attorney General Bill Lockyer circulating an anti-P2P [peer-to-peer filesharing] letter that, after a look at its Word metadata, appeared to have been either drafted or edited by the [Motion Picture Association of America].

Not Bill Ayers?

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As the Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro writes, “Windows 7 arrives; Windows Vista leaves”:

The waiting is over, and the upgrading can begin. Today, Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system arrives in stores and on new computers. Microsoft is celebrating the occasion with characteristic hype, staging a gala event in New York to unveil the software.

I will likely start switching over at some point, if only to access the extra RAM that the 64-bit system allows, unlike the 32-bit version of XP Pro.

I’ll eschew the launch party though. Unless it’s this kind of launch party:

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Ray Kurzweil believes that “By 2040 you will be able to upload your brain.”

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As the Hollywood knew in its golden days, it’s what you don’t talk about that makes it intriguing. In other words, this is a pretty *$#*@#-ing good parody of an otherwise staggeringly lame advertisement:

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(VodkaPundit and James Lileks will debate this and the dreadful original version of this ad on the upcoming edition of PJM Political this Saturday.)

Update: Proof that at Microsoft, some things never change. Found in the comments section of Lileks’ post is a much earlier Microsoft promo video, designed to explain the miracles of Windows 386 to nascent computer retailers. As the comment below it suggests, click on the button below the video that advances it to the 7:00 minute mark when the descent into ’80 Hell is complete.

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Great moments in Urban Modern prognostication:

1997 NYT Flashback: DVDs Can’t Match “Pop-and-Play Ease of VHS Tape”

Oh, people of 1997: how easy it is for us future people to mock you, sitting in the fancy Jetsons-like high-rise called Hindsight. Twelve years ago today, the New York Times asked whether an upstart new technology called “DVD” could possibly succeed.

Today, BTW, the Times Business Section had a feature on Redbox, a company that rents DVDs for $1 apiece and is undercutting older distribution models.

A few choice quotes from the 1997 article (emphasis added in bold):

“[Disney] regards DVD as ‘an excellent technology,’ a Disney spokeswoman said, but it has no plans to release movies in the format.”

“Anyone considering purchase of a DVD player should bear in mind certain realities. The presentation of movies on the disks hardly matches the pop-and-play ease of VHS tape.”

“[i]t is almost unimaginable that the Hollywood studios, which agonized long and painfully before splintering over copy protection on DVD, would ever allow high-definition digital software to reach consumers.”

“NASA will sell rocket cars before Hollywood places such technology in video shops.”

Speaking of NASA and rockets, the Times was right on top of that story, as well.

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Having previously skewered the lack of logic in Star Wars’ technology, “John Scalzi’s Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs – Star Trek Edition” boldly goes where no man has gone before; demolishing the crack design teams of the 23rd century:

The Alien Probe of Star Trek IV

The programming of this probe is even more simple than that of V’Ger, and could be written in four lines in the BASIC programming language:

10. GOTO Earth

20. INPUT “I can has humpback whalez?” A$

30. IF A$=”no” THEN GOTO 40

40. DESTROY EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING

I’m pretty sure this is not optimal design.

Holodecks

In fact brilliantly designed (except for the fact that it’s a little too easy to override the safety protocols, and, you know, die), but none of the movies ever addresses what anyone who’s ever thought seriously about holodecks knows: Given that it’s hard enough to get some MMORPG players today to take care of their basic bodily needs with Cheetos and moist towelettes, what’s keeping the entire population of the Federation from queuing up the “Roman orgy” recreation, stepping into a holodeck, and never ever coming out again? If you say “they have to eat,” allow me to introduce you to the magic of the food replicator.

Given the technology of the holodeck, plus the replicators, and how posh life on Earth in Star Trek’s future is inevitably pictured, I’ve always assumed that anybody who volunteered for a hazardous five year exploration mission in deep space has to be a little nuts. Or perhaps it’s the lack of holodecks on the original Enterprise that helps to explain Capt. Kirk’s licentiousness whenever he encountered shapely female alien life forms on distant worlds. (A weekly occurrence, by the time of the third season.)

Since no pine-shaped air fresheners are ever shown hanging in the Enterprise’s corridors, this is probably also standard issue gear in the Federation to help mask the interstellar funk that must also accompany any spaceship on such a lengthy mission.

(H/T: Moe Lane.)

Related: “To Boldy Wear What No Dog Wants to Wear.” (Hat tip, the captain of the U.S.S. Constitution.)

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