Awesome Stuff: A Mesh Network For Your Things

from the never-forget dept

Plenty of people have tried to market various devices for keeping track of your keys or never losing your wallet, but they've tended towards the cumbersome and gimmicky, and have always been pretty limited in their function. This week, we're taking a look at a much cooler approach to the same problem: little computers called Trakkies that attach to your things and link them all up in a mesh network.

The Good

Trakkies are a great example of innovation at work. The problem — people losing their keys, forgetting their bags, etc. — has an obvious solution in a world of wireless technology, but implementing that solution in a functional and stylish way that makes people say "wow, I want that" is another challenge altogether. Trakkies go beyond a simple proximity or location system, and instead make all your stuff smart. The little node tags come in two sizes, each with a bunch of sensors and a big configurable button; they locate each other and form a mesh network with Bluetooth and NFC connectivity, and begin learning what you bring with you and when. Your wallet can warn you if you're leaving the house without your keys, and vice versa — or you can tap the button on any one tag to find out if all the others are with you. The associated mobile app is optional (a beautiful thing) and brings your phone into the mesh network without the need for an an attached node tag, plus provides additional tools like looking up the last known location of all your tags on a map.

The network can communicate with lots of other smart devices and can be hooked into IFTTT for programmable behaviours based on a wide variety of factors. And the buttons on each node can be set up with context-sensitive functions — so the button on your coat could be set to tell you if your phone isn't with you, but serve as a music skip control if it is; it could check for your wallet and keys when you're getting off the bus, but turn on and off your smart lightbulbs when you're at home. Trakkies take a big leap beyond solving a simple problem, and actually spark excitement about the new things they could enable.

The Bad

Truthfully, at this stage, I don't have much bad to say about this project. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. The price isn't cheap, but it isn't prohibitive either, and the designers have made what I'd consider all the right choices. The "internet of things" has been looming on the horizon for some time now, and a device like this could represent a meaningful step in that direction.

The Background

There's an interesting bit of backstory to the Trakkies on the Kickstarter page: the whole thing actually started as a software pursuit. The original team was a research company at European Space Agency BIC, and was focused entirely on the data science and machine learning aspects of the project. The switch to a focus on hardware only came when the team realized that nobody was making hardware capable of doing what they wanted their software to do. That's the path innovation often takes, and beautifully illustrative of the fact that the simplest problems — people sometimes forget their keys — can yield the most interesting and groundbreaking solutions.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, mesh network, smart things

Silicon Valley Was Built On Permissionless Innovation; We Shouldn't Give That Up Just Because 'Bitcoin' Is Involved

from the licensing-is-a-problem dept

Innovation in America, and Silicon Valley in particular, has never waited for permission. The ease of starting companies, the low barriers to accessing capital, and (of course) the existence of an open and free internet on which anyone can build anything have all been major contributors to the vitality of Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry, which permeates nearly everyone's daily life. The most successful companies of our time — Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and more — didn't have to ask anyone for permission to innovate. They didn't have to explain their businesses and get special licenses. They just came up with an idea and built it.

This is important.

Innovation only exists when those who have ideas can go out and try to execute them, quickly, with as few barriers as possible. Each hurdle weeds out more and more innovators before they have a chance to breathe the open air of the marketplace and find out whether or not they've truly created something useful.

So we should be concerned when governments create unnecessary "permission" requirements without clear benefit.

Back in March, we wrote about a problematic bill in California that would regulate Bitcoin-related businesses, effectively requiring them to ask the state government for permission to operate. A few months ago, the bill moved forward. And now it's on the move again, passing the House and heading to the Senate for a vote.

The bill has improved quite a bit since the initial version, but there are still serious concerns about the framework it sets up. While there's a reasonable argument that an absence of rules is problematic, mainly for the uncertainty it creates, the rules that are put in place could have a tremendous impact on future innovation. We should be exceptionally careful when implementing rules that have the potential to shape — or strangle — the very roots of innovation. New York, for instance, has already established BitLicense regulation, chilling Bitcoin innovation in the state that is the financial center of the world.

The proposed California bill does not go that far, but still revolves around obtaining special licenses — i.e. permission — before innovating. As the bill itself says:

This bill would enact the Virtual Currency Act. The bill would prohibit a person from engaging in any virtual currency business, as defined, in this state unless the person is licensed by the Commissioner of Business Oversight or is exempt from the licensure requirement, as provided. The bill would require applicants for licensure, including an applicant for licensure and approval to acquire control of a licensee, to pay the commissioner a specified nonrefundable application fee and complete an application form required to include, among other things, information about the applicant, prior virtual currency services provided by the applicant, a sample form of receipt for transactions involving the business of virtual currency, and specified financial statements. The bill would make these licenses subject to annual renewal and would require a renewal fee paid to the commissioner in a specified amount. The bill would require licensees to annually pay the commissioner a specified amount for each licensee branch office. The bill would require applicants and licensees to pay the commissioner a specified hourly amount for the commissioner’s examination costs, as provided. The bill would also require the commissioner to levy an assessment each fiscal year, on a pro rata basis, on licensees in an amount sufficient to meet the commissioner’s expenses in administering these provisions and to provide a reasonable reserve for contingencies.

The authors have clear and reasonable intentions. They're worried about the kind of virtual currency-related fraud that has shown up in several recent and troubling stories. The bill strives to limit the licensing requirement to companies that are engaged in moving currency around — an area already covered by many existing laws.

But Bitcoin, and (even more importantly) the blockchain technology that underlies it, does much, much more than just move money around. It's sometimes difficult to understand this if you're not immersed in the Bitcoin world, but Bitcoin and the blockchain are two separate but deeply intertwined concepts. They exist because of each other, and they need each other — but Bitcoin is just the currency aspect, and the blockchain itself is much more powerful. And there's a real risk that when you set up a permission-based system for Bitcoin you slide down a very slippery slope towards regulating all blockchain-based innovation, even things which are wholly unrelated to "moving virtual currency around," despite their ability to do so.

At this stage of the game, creating licensing regimes and putting permission barriers on innovation is very, very premature. Everyone is still figuring out just what the blockchain is good for, and it's a long and varied list. Blockchain technology was crafted to solve a difficult currency problem, but it has enabled all sorts of powerful new apps and services that are often much more secure and useful than the alternatives. But it's still too early in the rise of this core infrastructure technology to say for certain what those "killer apps" will be.

On top of that, because Bitcoin is programmable, many of the biggest concerns that regulators are expressing can be dealt with in the code itself. Rules can be built into the code without having to rely on a centralized bureaucracy. In fact, that's one of the key features of the blockchain concept.

Blockstream, Bitgo and a few other companies that are innovating heavily in this space already have now sent a letter to the California Senate, which we at the Copia Institute helped them put together and advised them in writing. As Blockstream notes in a related blog post, we should be careful about requiring permission without a clear reason:

A key topic at issue in any of the legislative debates underway in California and elsewhere is licensing. In systems like Bitcoin, which establish a trustless and decentralized infrastructure, licensing offers little upside in terms of consumer protection and security, yet imposes substantial costs and burdens on innovators. We strongly believe the California law should not require licensing of entities that don’t hold unilateral custody of digital currency. And even when an entity is a custodian of users’ digital currency, we see value in alternative policy approaches like safe harbors or the UK’s voluntary consumer protection standards in striking a balance between consumer safety and innovation.

Again, the intentions here are good. The authors of the bill want to prevent truly bad actors from doing dangerous things, while at the same time laying out the ground rules under which companies in this space can act. But the bill is still a step down the path towards requiring permission to innovate, and that's something to be very careful about, especially when other jurisdictions aren't erecting the same barriers. We should also be wary about deciding to put layers of government bureaucracy on things that can be accomplished in the code itself. As the quote above notes, the UK has taken an innovation-friendly approach that does not require permission, and is thus becoming a welcoming home for innovators.

Let's look at a counterexample from the rise of the internet itself. One of the most powerful factors in fostering online growth was Section 230 of the CDA, which set up a "safe harbor" for intermediaries of internet content. The key was that it set out useful ground rules, and said "if you follow these rules, you are free from liability." It did not require you to ask for permission first. As we enter an age of innovation in the blockchain, we should be looking for similar solutions. It's great to define a safe harbor where open innovation can occur, but requiring a specific "license" only creates headaches for everyone involved.

It builds up bureaucracy. It becomes a weapon wielded by incumbents to block competition. And, worst of all, it repels innovation.

Silicon Valley was built on permissionless innovation, especially on the internet. Saddling new core infrastructure like Bitcoin and the blockchain with a permission-based framework sets the wrong tone entirely, and virtually ensures that Silicon Valley won't be home to the leading innovators in this new and exciting space.

Filed Under: bitcoin, blockchain, california, innovation, licenses, permission, permissionless innovation
Companies: bitgo, blockstream

Awesome Stuff: Supplying The R For VR

from the look-all-around dept

A few weeks ago, we featured the Gloveone and talked about the growing market for supplemental virtual reality devices. We also talked about the coming VR future on this week's podcast episode. But there's another half of the VR world we haven't talked a lot about: the capture and creation of VR environments. This week, we're looking at the Sphericam 2, a 360-degree 4k camera.

The Good

As VR devices like the Oculus Rift become more popular, there's going to be a huge thirst for content — and in this everyone-is-a-creator world, a huge thirst for content-making tools, too. Though much of the excitement has been around video games and from-scratch environments, there are also plenty of compelling things to be done with material captured the real world. For that, you need an elaborate multi-camera setup — or a device like the Sphericam. It's tiny (about the size of a tennis ball), rugged and full-featured, and requires no special knowledge to capture 360-degree footage which can then be converted to a navigable VR environment. It's basically a GoPro combined with a Google Street View car, and that's pretty cool. For the videophile, it has solid specs: 60fps raw video at 4096x2048 resolution, on six cameras with no blind spots.

The Bad

There's really only one major drawback here, and that's the price. At $1500 plus shipping, it's not something that's going to find its way into everyone's pocket overnight. That's not to say the price is unfair — given the amount of technology packed into the device, it seems at least reasonable, but for the time being it remains an obstacle. Still, just like the VR devices themselves, it's likely that things like the Sphericam will only get more and more accessible as time goes on.

The User Generated

This is the part that's really exciting and interesting about devices like this. Today, it's simply no longer enough to release a new means of consuming content to the world — it needs to come with ways of creating that content. The world of virtual reality will have no multi-decade gap between early "professional only" days and later "everyone's in on it" days, like photography or film or recorded music — the two will arrive almost simultaneously, with content coming from a huge spectrum from amateur to professional and everything in between. Devices like the Sphericam are paving the way for this, demonstrating that even something cutting-edge like virtual reality can and will be adopted by creators of all classes. It's going to be an interesting future in more ways than one.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, cameras, video, virtual reality

Help Copia Draft A Statement Of Innovation Principles

from the promoting-innovation dept

Last week, we announced the new website for the Copia Institute and talked about our philosophy of hacking policy through innovation, not lobbying. This week, we're inviting everyone to get involved in one example of this philosophy in action.

In this world of rapid technological innovation, nobody can truly claim their efforts stand alone. Everything is built upon previous innovations, and everyone benefits from those who took a pro-innovation stance when building their businesses and technologies. Today, everyone bears some of the responsibility for ensuring that we continue to promote innovation rather than stymie it, and it’s to that end that Copia is creating the Statement of Innovation Principles: a clear, robust statement for innovative companies to sign on to, laying out a variety of principles they intend to uphold in order to promote future innovation, ranging from how they deal with data and intellectual property to how they structure their APIs and developers’ kits.

We started this project in March at our 2015 Inaugural Summit, where we presented an initial version of the statement to a roundtable of General Counsels from innovative companies, then opened up a revised draft for discussion with everyone present. There were lots of interesting points raised at the summit, and you can watch the full roundtable discussion for some background on the project:

Based on all the comments and ideas from the summit we've made another round of revisions to the Statement, and we have now published the updated draft and are seeking feedback from the public. We've included some notes on key questions that were raised at the Summit and which we feel deserve further discussion, as well as a list of possible additional principles that were proposed but haven't yet been adopted into the complete list. We'd really love the community here at Techdirt to get involved, since we know you have a deep understanding of and interest in these issues, so we hope you'll head over to the project page on the Copia site where you can read the current draft and leave comments on individual points or the document as a whole. We look forward to hearing what you have to say, and will be incorporating the feedback into a new draft later this year.

Filed Under: copia, innovation, innovation principles, statement of innovation principles

Awesome Stuff: Not Quite Google Glass

from the heads-up dept

The failure of Google Glass was an interesting thing. Somewhat-overblown privacy issues aside, the device may have just been ahead of its time, or ahead of the technology powering it — or it might have simply been way too expensive. Whatever the case, wearable computers and head-mounted displays aren't dead, and in fact we'll probably be seeing a lot of them in the future. Today, we look at one such offering: Vufine, a wearable display that does less than Google Glass, which might be its biggest strength.

The Good

As the video reveals, the creator of the Vufine has tried just about every wearable display product around, and concluded that they are "unfocused, overpriced, impractical and overcomplicated." That's a pretty solid diagnosis, and the Vufine attempts to solve it. Firstly, it's just a wearable display, not a full computer like Google Glass: it clips onto your glasses or sunglasses, connects to any device with an HD video output, and then projects a small HUD-like display box in your field of vision. This enables lots of integrations, with two immediately obvious ones: hook it to a smartphone for heads-up maps and communication and media, or hook it to a GoPro camera to serve as a viewfinder when shooting your own action footage. Turn the camera around, and it can serve as a rear-view mirror.

By limiting the device to this single, simple, useful function, they skirt around all sorts of issues that are raised by more robust products like Google Glass, including the aforementioned privacy freakouts about head-mounted cameras and microphones. The most immediately noticeable difference is the price: the Vufine aims to retail for only $150, an order of magnitude less than Glass.

The Bad

Of course, simplifying the device also means giving up a lot of functionality. Things like voice control, gesture control, and streaming video from one person to another won't be possible unless the Vufine is hooked up to hardware and software that provides those abilities. This is less a "revolutionary new device" and more an innovative display for existing devices — not that there's anything wrong with that, but it may not generate the hype of something like Glass (though at the same time, probably won't generate the ire, either). And there's one feature that will likely irritate some, especially those who pursue wirelessness in all things: the Vufine attaches to your smartphone, camera or other device via a Micro HDMI cable. There are surely a lot of engineering and performance advantages to going the wired route, but the sight of a cable hanging from your face and disappearing into your pocket might be enough to put some people off the device altogether.

The Quantifiable

We've already looked at one of the Vufine's very attractive numbers — the price. Now let's consider a few others. Display-wise, it uses a 4x3mm micro-display that appears as a 4" display positioned 11" from your eye, at a resolution of 960x540 (a higher definition than Glass). It also weighs only 22 grams — about half of Glass and a quarter of the Recon Jet glasses. There's one slightly less attractive number though: the battery life, which clocks in at 90 minutes (compare that to 4 hours for the Jet, and a full day for Glass, though the latter can be drastically shortened depending on what features you are using). It can be attached to a USB charging pack for additional lifespan, but running a second cable from the Vufine to a pack somewhere on your person could be pretty cumbersome.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, hud, wearable display

Awesome Stuff: Immortal Data

from the forever-files dept

As we move ever deeper into the digital age, the question of data preservation as gotten bigger and bigger. Recently, people got a scare when it was suggested that SSDs have an even more dismal lifespan than presumed, though it turned out people were taking that study slightly out of context. Today, we look at an entirely different approach preservation: the Nanoform, an engraved sapphire disk that keeps your precious data around forever.

The Good

I imagine almost everyone feels a little attraction to the Nanoform. It's just a damn cool idea that plays on all sorts of curious, in-built human fascinations: precious minerals, miniaturization, and of course the desire for permanence. The engraved disks are beautiful, even just for the sheer amount of information that's packed in — one shot shows the entire text of War and Peace taking up only a fraction of a single disk. You could easily make one to include your entire life's memoirs, every letter you've ever written, a whole family history of photos, and then some. The engraved and sealed sapphire disks will likely live up to their promise of an essentially-infinite lifespan — we're not dealing with complex ways of storing bits and bytes, but a straightforward use of the world's third-hardest mineral. The whole concept puts me in mind of the Pioneer Plaques or the Voyager Golden Record (and indeed, the Nanoform might be a great choice for any future irresistible plans to attach a message to a spacecraft).

The Bad

Well, let's face it: this isn't exactly practical. The Nanoform gets its data permanence by trading in data usefulness: it's an analog medium, retaining things for curious posterity or just decoration rather than being a serious means of storage. Retrieving it doesn't require a card reader or a disk drive, just a magnifying glass or a microscope. Getting it back onto a computer requires a high-res scanner (and all the massive limitations that method entails). So I think it's safe to say that, outside some incredibly fringe cases that I can't quite think of, the Nanoform is for fun not function — and given its understandably hefty price tag, it's outside many people's "fun" budgets. The impact of the price is softened slightly, though, by the fact that a Nanoform really will last a lifetime — a very rare thing in the days when people regularly spend just as much money on devices that are either bricked or obsolete within a few years.

The Giftable

Once many years ago, I met someone carrying a huge binder of printed pages, and asked what it was. She explained that today was the birthday of her best friend, with whom she had almost-daily instant messaging conversations that dwindled late into the night covering every aspect of both their lives, and so as a gift she had printed off their entire chat history. Later I saw the gift being given, and it was clearly one of the most fun, interesting and genuinely moving presents the person had ever received. I thought about that story when I saw the Nanoform. If I were to make a guess, I'd say the number one place the Nanoform will catch on is the world of gifts. Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays — a permanent, decorative record of a lifetime is a fitting and excellent gift for all of them. And just like in that case, our online lives produce a huge amount of material that could make such a memento highly personal and meaningful.

Of course, that abundance of data about our lives is something that makes a lot of people nervous, but few people are willing to truly let go of it precisely because it represents so many memories. Maybe transcribing some of that information to an indestructible sapphire disk and getting it the hell off the cloud is exactly the solution nostalgia needs.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, data preservation, nanoform, sapphire

Awesome Stuff: New Digital Instruments Done Right

from the bleep-bloop dept

A couple weeks ago, I discussed how some bad implementation choices raised serious questions about an otherwise-cool digital crossfader for DJs. This week, we're looking at OWOW, a set of digital music controllers that are far more robust and actually make a lot of smart, musician-friendly choices in their design.

The Good

The OWOW devices all look pretty cool, even if they aren't all revolutionary. One essentially serves as a theremin, one as a tiny drum pad, two as neat handheld motion controllers, and the most innovative of the lot: a scanner that converts lines you draw freehand on paper into music. All of them are extremely compact, and the scanner is (to my knowledge) entirely unique. None are standalone instruments, though — they serve as controllers for digital music software. But unlike the aforementioned crossfader, these devices are designed for maximum compatibility with everything in that world (they appear to use MIDI-over-USB) rather than being tied down to a proprietary, platform-specific app. When combined with studio software like Reason or Ableton, these might be very powerful and would at least be a lot of fun.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about OWOW is the choice to offer two versions of the devices: one full formed with a sleek aluminum casing, and one at a lower price that is just the raw circuit board on its own. The open circuit will work just fine by itself (and many aficionados of synthesizers and other gear are happy to work with some exposed boards around), and the designers are also supplying free schematics for 3D printing your own casing. The OWOW instruments, like all such devices, aren't cheap — and the DIY offering is a great way to help out musicians operating on a budget and support the maker-musician community.

The Bad

Funky-looking little high-tech MIDI controllers actually come along quite often, and only a handful turn out to be truly useful. Based on the video and the norm for such controllers, there's a good chance there will be some responsiveness issues, but whether these will be "occasionally annoying" or "crippling" is uncertain. With a new digital music device like this, you can never be entirely sure whether it's a tool or a toy until you've tried it out yourself. It remains to be seen whether some or all of the OWOW instruments are really worth the price — but, so far, they are ticking all the boxes and then some.

The Clever

There's one other thing worth noting about the OWOW: a creative approach to Kickstarter fundraising that I've never seen before. While most projects for higher-price devices like this fill out their lower backer tiers with stickers and T-shirts and other secondary gear for people who want to support but not buy, OWOW is offering up a five-euro mobile game for iOS and Android. The hook? The player with the top score in the mobile game at the end of the campaign will get a complete set of all five instruments for free. That strikes me as a fantastic way to engage backers and offer low-budget supporters a good reason to buy, and I won't be surprised if that tactic starts to catch on in the world of crowdfunding.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, midi, music