Thoughts on Technology and Society

Sometime in May 2017 Removed lock physically from the door (I’m getting good at this part now) and added it to almond. Put lock back on the door and it worked.  Added codes. It worked. Then it stopped working.  I put the GE module next to it again to try to boost the signal.  No help.  Got busy and left it. A few days later it worked for a few cycles of lock and unlock. Another learning point: I can reboot a z-wave hub many times without anyone noticing.  But rebooting the “primary” Almond --- not so much. Two teenagers and a wife who has her own consulting business with clients in many time zones. There is never a time when the wifi can be off for an hour without complaints. I was not sure what was going on.  But now I am. After much trial and error I have discovered that if the Staples Connect is powered on the Almond z-wave dongle has a very limited chance of success.  I believe that in the week where the lock mysteriously worked there were some power outages and the

The project began in in December 2016 when I got a three pack of Almond 3 Touchscreen wireless routers.  The routers replaced two Actiontech routers provided by Verizon (one is Gigabit capable for the wired ports the other is not, and a linksys.  The newest of these devices was probably from 2012. Around this same time The Staples connect that I was using for some home automation became abandonware.  It is still running fine.  The Staple Connect is actually the third staples connect I have owned.  The first was purchased in the spring of 2014 and worked okay, until it stopped working.  Zonoff customer service sent a replacement.  And then in the fall of 2014. I got the Staples Connect Dlink  for nearly free with the purchase of a couple sensors. So the initial setup of the almond was a terrible experience. I needed three screens to be able to access all of the features.  The built in touchscreen, the app on my phone and a PC to access the web interface. The worst part was

In the middle of the night Diana told me I need to write or teach. I agree. I need more time.

I really hate when people lie. And I hate it even more when the press reproduces those lies. For example Bryce Johnson of Fourteen40 in a press release about selling his company to Folletts is quoted as saying he came up with the idea about a year ago. Well they pitched my employer about a year ago so I did some research and discovered that they have been failing in the ebook space. http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=41458 Many of the pages I found at that time seem to have disappeared, or are buried under the new stories about the acquisition. But here is one. http://www.vcsmart.com/2006/02/fourteen40.html Not that the product being over a year old makes it bad. But why lie.

Trip Report: Google and Libraries: An international Conference From Timothy Murray On March 10 th I attended Google and Libraries An international Conference Held at Columbia University in New York City . The Key note was delivered by Yakov Shraiber of International Library Information and Analytical Center http://www.iliac.org/ This talk highlighted the rapid growth of Google in Russia . Google has only been in Russia for two years and now is the second most used search in Russia and has 30% of all searches in the Russian language. The national libraies of Russia are engaged in large scale digitization projects and are making content freely available online. These projects are complicated by Russia ’s recent decision to conform their copyright law to those of the EU. Jill Cirasella of Brooklyn College Library gave a presentation on the use of online tools in the library. The presentation is available: http://userhome.brook

Last week I was in the UK talking with a colleague about what the future of electronic books will be. I believe that this paper is addressing in a more abstract way than my talk about an abstract page for books or book-parts, one of my key points. The point is that scholarly works need to be citable and addressable. (I am hugely antagonistic of IRs which are mentioned and seem to be foundational to the ORE technology) And I think this is in some ways on on the topic of what he thinks is important about updates to a book.