Common Paradox Tech Blog

If passed, something called the Digital Economy Bill over in the U.K. could do the unthinkable in this, the digital age: Ban open wifi spots.

The ban comes as part of a bill that seeks to limit copyright infringement, or something. In summary, schools, small businesses and even libraries would have to effectively become their own ISP and manage the wifi hotspot—or face hefty fines. Even if a shop password-protected their wifi and posted the PW publicly (as they probably should be doing anyway), this “management” would also entail detailed record keeping, as the bill requires that hotspot providers log users who’ve been on their network. Sounds fun!

I’d love for any UK-based small business owners to weigh in on this debate, and the bill. Is it really as annoying as the ZDNet article makes it sound? Are daily, detailed user records really too much a burden for the corner coffee shop to bear? Light those torches and brandish your pitchforks in the comments! [ZDNET]

In today’s Remainders: the unfun. Wait! Don’t go. The items themselves are fun! They just involve unfun. We have a no fun WiFi school bus; a no fun eBook from the White House, an unspectacular Samsung smartphone reveal, and more.

Boring Bus
I recently took my first trip on a WiFi-enabled airplane. At first I thought, “How cool! I’ll never be bored on a flight again!” But I quickly realized that in-flight WiFi, in some perverse way, made me MORE bored. That special in-the-air-with-nothing-to-do time had been invaded by the regular old routine of checking e-mail and reading through my RSS feeds. So it is with a heavy heart that I read this story about a school district in Arizona that plopped a mobile WiFi router on top of a school bus, effectively turning it into a mobile study hall. And the worst part is the kids are just going along with it. Apparently all of the regular back of the bus mischief has subsided and now the kids just sit and do homework. That’s no fun! I remember one time when I was on a school bus a weird kid put SIX FRUIT ROLL UPS in his mouth at one time and nearly suffocated himself in the process. If we’re entering an age in which WiFi is the replacement for adolescent fruit roll up shenanigans, count me out. [CrunchGear]

Boring eBook
For the first time, this year’s Economic Report of the President will be made available as a free eBook. They have versions prepared for Nooks and Kindles and will offer an ePub version for the Sony Reader and other devices that get down with ePub. I applaud the effort, but I imagine that I’d have such a hard time concentrating on this to begin with that it would take approximately one E-Ink page refresh for me to give up completely. [Engadget]

Boring Reveal
Oh Samsung. You tried to keep your new Bada smartphone under wraps until MWC. You were so close. But then you went ahead and put up this gigantic billboard mere days before the event. Sure, the ad doesn’t reveal much about the Wave’s specs—just that it has a camera and a full touchscreen—but talk about fudging your big unveiling. [Unwired View]

Boring Sergey
TED curator Chris Anderson brought Google’s Sergey Brin on stage for an unplanned Q&A about his company’s recent cyber-beef with China. Wired made note of Brin’s statement that he was remained “optimistic” that Google and China could work something out, and quoted him as saying he thought Google could “really work within the Chinese system.” On the whole, it seemed like Sergey might’ve been backing down from the no-censorship ultimatum his company announced earlier this year. But a quick read through a transcript of the question and answer session reveals that he addressed the ultimatum explicitly—it’s still there, just sugarcoated a little bit:

Yes, we’ve made a statement of intent. That we intend to stop censoring, and you know, if we can do that, within the confines of Chinese policy, we’d love to continue Google.cn and our operations there. And if we cannot, then we’ll do as much as we can but we don’t want to run a service that’s politically censored. I’m not talking about things like porn and gambling and things like that. Political censorship.

So, no, Google’s not backing down. Just being diplomatic. [Wired]

A professor of electrical engineering at Penn. State and his research team managed to get an infrared signal to transmit data at 1Gbps. Optical networks have a host of potential advantages over traditional radio networks such as more security, less interference, and obviously speed.

Penn State graduate student Jarir Fadullah along with his electrical engineering professor Mohsen Kavehrad developed the system. In a nutshell, a modulating beam of infrared light was focused on the ceiling, while a specifically modified photo detector picked up the reflections.

The research pair seemed to think that by their calculations, there is much more bandwidth to be found using infrared light. The new technology is touted as the future of wireless communications as the RF spectrum continues to be gobbled up and overly congested.

Image Courtesy of Gizmodo

Our friends over at tech blog Engadget have assembled the votes and put together the nominations for the 2009 Engadget Awards, and Palm is recognized in every category (five!) in which it ought compete. There’s some tough competition out there, but you know that we think that the Palm Pre and webOS indeed are the gadgets of the year. Despite the fierceness of the competition, the Pre and (surprisingly) Touchstone are holding their own in the polls. While we have no doubt that Palm is the tops, the only opinion that counts here is the mass opinion: your vote.

What’s Palm up against?

See? Tough competition there. As you can imagine, if the Pre and Touchstone are to stand any chance of remaining in the fight, they’re going to need your vote. Voting is open until February 20, 2010.

May the best gadgets win!

Here’s a neat Instructable for significantly increasing the geek factor in your car’s rear windshield, showing how to modify a Wi-Fi-detecting t-shirt into a Wi-Fi-detecting bumper sticker. At some point in some traffic jam, you’ll make a fellow nerd’s day.

Starting with a novelty t-shirt that displays the strength of Wi-Fi signals in the area, an Instructable user lived up to his matching user name and license plate of “MacGeek” by hacking together this Wi-Fi detecting bumper sticker.

While it may not be entirely useful for finding access points, except maybe to a laptop-wielding driver behind you in a serious bumper to bumper, it will definitely be useful for announcing your geek pride to your fellow drivers. [Instructables]

Even in these days of instant communications through text messages, instant messaging, and Twitter, there’s something to be said for the robustness (and openness) of email. Thus, when email goes wonky you can be assured that there will be noise made of it. While this blogger’s Gmail-not-pushing issue managed to magically resolve itself, other users have noticed a different problem with their email: push simply doesn’t work over WiFi, and for some in that group their email pushes very late (10-15 minutes) over EVDO. And of course, there are those who simply can’t get push email to work at all.

We feel your pain, and even though signs point to the issue not being a widespread one, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask around. So here we are, asking, with the preferred mass data gathering method of politicians and the media alike: the poll. And as an added bonus, you can also comment on this article (like any other). In particular, if you’ve had this sort of issue and figured out how to resolve it, we’re all ears.

Are you having troubles with email?(polls)

I’ve heard of people making claims about “electromagnetic allergies,” but so far, no one has been able to prove that this is an actual, physical ailment. Still, Santa Fe resident Arthur Firstenberg was forced into homelessness by his neighbor’s gadgets.

In fact, Firstenberg is suing his neighbor for refusing to turn off their cellphone, wifi, computers and other electronics:

Firstenberg “cannot stay in a hotel, because hotels and motels all employ wi-fi connections, which trigger a severe illness,” says the request for a preliminary injunction. “If (Firstenberg) cannot obtain preliminary relief, he will be forced to continue to sleep in his car, enduring winter cold and discomfort, until this case can be heard.” The case has been assigned to state District Judge Daniel Sanchez, who has yet to set a hearing.

I’m not saying that this guy isn’t suffering and that wifi allergies aren’t real (I’m only insinuating that it isn’t real—big difference), but it’s some bullshit to tell a neighbor that they can’t have any electronics working in their own home. Wear a tinfoil hat or get some damn electromagnetic field-blocking paint. [TMC via DSL Reports Image via Flickr]

Sony has announced yet another product at CES. This one is a bit of a head-scratcher for us, though. The Dash Internet Viewer is a sort of touchscreen widget station. Think Chumby, but with a larger (and frankly, beautiful) 7 inch screen and sleeker design. As it turns out, that’s exactly what it is; the Dash runs the Chumby OS.

Sony is pushing the app angle hard, because well, isn’t everyone? The Chumby OS already has over 1000 apps available, and Sony will be making some new ones of its own. The Dash will have Wi-Fi so you can use it to pull down data for those data-hungry apps. There is no internal battery, so don’t confuse this with a tablet device as some already have.  Is this something you need? If so, the Dash will be shipping in April for $199.

LaCie is hitting CES hard right out of the gate announcing a new LaCinema device, network server, and Wuala USB drives. The new LaCinema Mini HD is a DLNA compliant media player capable of 1080p output via an HDMI port. The Mini HD has an internal hard drive that can be loaded up with content over the network or by way of the USB port. It will support 802.11n Wi-Fi and most codecs including DivX, MKV, and AVC.

Next up we have a network server that LaCie is just calling Network Server.It will support five drive bays, gigabit Ethernet, and runs Windows Home Server. Customers will also have access to LaCie’s Wuala backup technology, but no details were available at the time.

Finally we have the new line of CoolKey and WhizKey USB keys (that actually look like keys). They are only USB 2.0 instead of SuperSpeed USB like many devices we’re likely to see around the CES floor this week. LaCie did sate the drives would be capable of 30MB/s transfers and are waterproof. They will be available in sizes up to 32GB. They also come with 4GB of Wuala web storage for two years.

When crazy stuff happens on airplanes, as it did on Christmas, you can be rest assured security will tighten and terrifying electronics restrictions will fall into place. But in this latest case, our electronics? They may still be “safe.”

I bring that up because there was apparently this nasty rumor going around that all electronics would soon be banned on all British Airways and Virgina Atlantic flights once these inevitable “new security measures” went live. And could you imagine? A trans-Atlantic flight without laptop movies, MP3 jams and podcasts, and positively no covert airplane mode smartphone adult content? Hell in an aluminum tube, says I.

But it’s apparently not true, for now. Both airways said electronics are still GO, even as some previouslt reported “unpredictable” security measures go into place over the next few days.

American carriers, like Continental, United and AA, have also not changed their security measures in the wake of the attempted Xmas Day terrorist attack—yet—so getting home from your relatives this week could still be moderately bearable, as far as air travel goes anyway. [Pocket Lint]