Wearable Computing and the Etiquette of Presence

It doesn’t take much extrapolation to imagine that wearable computing is going to create a whole new set of social etiquette do’s and don’t's – and train wrecks.

At the bank, at the gym, on plant sites, in meetings – everyone should be prepared for a barrage of “leave your wearable devices at the door” rules being handed down.

For good reason.

Society isn’t prepared for the ubiquity of being “always on” that wearable computing hastens – just ask anyone who has said something ill-advised near an open recording device.

For your consideration: the “explorer” model of Google Glass has no indicator that video is being recorded. Let that sink in. It will be practically impossible to detect when you’re being recorded by someone wearing Google Glass (as currently constructed).

Further, being based upon Android practically guarantees that Google Glass will be rooted; in fact, it already has. Glass was successfully rooted this week, after being available to “explorers” for only a handful of days.

I’m not purposely trying to pile on Google. Their device is simply one of the first – of many – devices that will change our view of privacy and personal space, forever. What I am saying is that just because we have the technical capability to do something amazing, it doesn’t follow that we have thought through completely what this will mean for us as a community and as individuals.

And that ultimately, it may not be a good “thing” at all.

As the development of new accepted norms have followed the disruption caused by cell phones and other mobile devices, so too will new norms be created to accomodate wearable computing.

But the problem is, the level and depth of penetration of social disruption that wearable computing brings is an order of magnitude greater than anything caused by the current state-of-the-art in mobile computing. When someone is recording us with a cell phone, we see them do it and can acquiesce or decline. With wearable computing, normative social cues aren’t there. At least not yet.

Besides privacy, there are also issues of personal security and well being that will be challenged. Is a registered sex offender recording my children? Is my ex-spouse recording everything I do, and everyone I talk to? Is my conversation with a trusted colleague really confidential?

The challenges are many. The time to start thinking about these issues is immediately, if not sooner.

Ready or not, the future is now. And we need to get Miss Manners – and George Orwell – on speed dial, stat.

Raspberry Pi Bake-Off

The Raspberry Pi Bake-Off is happening Thursday, 3.14, from 6 to 9 PM in the Campbell Dining Room of the Student Life and Technology Center on the Campus of Hendrix College.

UPDATE: The event was a MONSTER success! Thanks to everyone who participated!

Thoughts from the Road

I’m in Tampa, at the University of South Florida, attending the Higher Education Enterprise Mobile Applications Conference (HEEMAC). I’ve seen and heard some really great things that colleges and universities are doing, from a mobile enterprise perspective.

One group, however, is strikingly absent – faculty. I’ve run into Associate Deans, technologists, native app developers, web developers, and even the odd CIO… but only one or two faculty members, out of 100+ conference attendees.

Admittedly, this is an enterprise mobile conference, and not one centered upon pedagogy.

Still.

I believe that faculty are under represented, overlooked, and generally ignored in conversations of campus technology, where they are every bit as much stakeholders as the students we strive to support. This week is only reinforcing – at least, for me – the great divide between academics, and the information technology infrastructure supporting the administrative side of things.

I was heartened to hear words like “enable” and “facilitate” in the context of opening up APIs, mobile development best practices, and providing software development guidance.

I was equally disheartened to hear that some mobile projects are being intentionally “slow walked” in order to have these projects wither and die from neglect.

To paraphrase from Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle mobile application.”

We have much yet to do to make our technology decisions inclusive of all stakeholders; not only because it is the right and proper thing to do, but because we are allowing strategic decisions be driven by what is simple to support and easy to do. If we are to innovate, stand out, and convincingly argue our institutions’ cases for value within the current environment of uncertainty, high debt, and questionable sustainability in higher education, then I believe we must do better than simply be “good enough.” We must be exemplary. And that can’t be done on the cheap, nor the easy.

We have real innovation occurring in higher ed mobile. We also have a lot of cookie cutter, least-common denominator solutions.

Is that good enough?

I’m grateful for the forum that our gracious hosts at USF have afforded us to conduct this inquiry into values, technology, and mobile strategy. We have our work cut out for us.

Raspberry Pi Odds and Ends

Some random odds and ends from playing around with my Raspberry Pi computers that I got a couple of weeks back:

• Hendrix College will be hosting a Raspberry Pi Bake-Off on March 14, 2013 (Pi Day, of course – 3.14). The Bake-Off is essentially an event for local RPi enthusiasts – or wannabe enthusiasts – to trot their cool projects, and share their love of all things Pi. The event is open to anyone, and all ages are welcome.Tickets can be ordered here for the event: http://raspberrypibakeoff.eventbrite.com/
• After playing around with RaspBMC (Raspbian XBMC), I quickly came to the conclusion that it was (a) very slow, (b) inordinately hard to configure for wireless versus regular Raspian, and (c) very poorly supported Airplay. I imagine if I worked a little harder I might have been able to simplify some of what I went through with this implementation of XBMC to get it going on my configuration. But you really have to color me “unimpressed.” My advice – get a Roku box or Apple TV if you want a nice addition to your TV setup.
• It really does matter what kind of SD card you use with the Raspberry Pi. The unfortunate thing is that, even with nominally supported and approved SD brands, you still may experience high numbers of SD card corruption while running your Pi, even if you don’t overclock them. My advice – once you get a configuration setup on your SD that you’re happy with, backup a disk copy of that SD and make backup SD copies. Even a preloaded SD card from newark.com was corrupted the second day I had it. Fortunately, downloading images and creating new SD cards is quite straightforward. Be prepared to have to do – and redo – this at some point during the life of your Pi.

Small Wonder

EDIMAX USB WiFi Adapter

There’s Always Room For Pi

Burning the Ships

Cortez, during the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, was said to have burned his ships, so that there was no returning to the Old World – and ensured that his men were 100% invested in the success of their endeavor.

Daily, we read about the latest out-of-this-world valuation on some startup, from someone who isn’t a programmer, or has no formal business training, or has only a partial working brain in their head. Rarely do you hear of the level of commitment that those people have invested in to obtain their “overnight” successes.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t about going to cool parties, or hanging out to make a connection that will make or break you, or getting that killer round of Series A funding.

It’s about creating value where none existed before – and giving 100% of yourself toward reaching that goal.

When I started my company in 1996, my wife and I both quit our “day jobs” in the same week. I triple-booked business to ramp up. And worked my ass off 6 or 7 days a week until the checks started coming in. It wasn’t glamorous – but it was sustainable, and most importantly, profitable.

I wouldn’t have had the level of commitment to my enterprise if I hadn’t metaphorically “burned my ships” (i.e., quit my fallback, my day job).

If you think you’re ready to strike out and create the next Facebook, the next Instagram, the next Twitter, you have to be ready to scuttle the ties that are keeping you close the the shore, and head into the jungle.

Cause that’s where the gold is. Not on the beach.

Creating Calendar Events – Using WebView – in Android

Hey – it’s been a while.

No time like the present to write a post about Android coding.

Specifically: “how do I create a calendar event from within a WebView in Android?”

First, let’s talk game plan. I am going to construct an url “scheme” that will indicate to a handler that I want to create a calendar event, and not navigate to a web page; then, I need to call an Intent that will allow the event to be created.

Easy Peasy.

So, for my dates that I wish to portray on a web view, I do something like the following:

<a href='date:beginmonth, beginday, beginyear, 
endmonth, endday, endyear, My Event Description'>
My event link</a>

Then, I construct a shouldOverrideUrlLoading handler that will detect that a date: is being clicked, and handle it specially (see the code below):

final WebView crimeView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview_crime);

crimeView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {

@Override

public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading (WebView view, String url)

{

if (url.startsWith("date:")) {

Log.d(this.getClass().getCanonicalName(),url);

Calendar beginCal = Calendar.getInstance();

Calendar endCal = Calendar.getInstance();

Date beginDate = new Date(0, 0, 0);

Date endDate = new Date(0, 0, 0);

String parsed = url.substring(5);

String[] components = parsed.split(",");

beginDate.setMonth(Integer.parseInt(components[0]));

beginDate.setDate(Integer.parseInt(components[1]));

beginDate.setYear(Integer.parseInt(components[2]));

beginCal.setTime(beginDate);

endDate.setMonth(Integer.parseInt(components[3]));

endDate.setDate(Integer.parseInt(components[4]));

endDate.setYear(Integer.parseInt(components[5]));

endCal.setTime(endDate);

calendarevent(beginCal, endCal, components[6]);

return true;

}

return false;

}

});

Finally, we need code to invoke the Calendar intent. It looks like the following:

 // Create a calendar event
    public void calendarevent(Calendar begintime, Calendar endtime, 
                              String eventName) 
    {
        Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_EDIT);
        intent.setType("vnd.android.cursor.item/event");
        intent.putExtra("beginTime", begintime.getTimeInMillis());
        intent.putExtra("allDay", false);
        intent.putExtra("rrule", "FREQ=YEARLY");
        intent.putExtra("endTime", endtime.getTimeInMillis()+60*60*1000);
        intent.putExtra("title", eventName);
        startActivity(intent);
    }

And that, as they say, is that.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 50,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 19 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

ZamZar