Speed Cameras - Not So Fast!

By I.J. Hudson

It was one of those moments.  It was the intersection of technology, law-abiding citizen and the fear of being caught speeding.

It’s about those pesky cameras along the highways that can catch you speeding.  It’s widely publicized (and the law in MD) that the cameras give you 11 mph OVER the speed limit before the “flash” and ensuing ticket in the mail.  No points, just a ticket for 40-dollars.  11-miles OVER. Did I mention, OVER!!

Okay, here’s the thing.  Even though we’ve been told we get 11 mph to spare, many of us are afraid to put that into the equation – at least by the way we drive. Introduce a speed camera and we freeze up. 

(hushed)  Maybe they lied.  Maybe it’s really set for 10 mph over the limit and they’re playing us. Or 5. 

Let’s say the speed limit is 35.  That means you would have to be going at least 47 for the light to flash and to be “caught” breaking the law.   

Paranoia sets in.  Maybe "they" lied.  The technology could measure when we’re only ONE mile over the limit.  My speedometer is probably wrong.  I’m going to get a ticket.  I’ll slow down to 34…33…32…31.. I’m NOT going to get caught. I'll have to hit the brakes.  My car does 35 all by itself.  Oops.  Almost a rear ender.

If an officer (my son is a cop) sets up a speed trap, he/she would probably give you at least 10 miles over the limit before pulling you over.  Some will even give you 15 mph over the limit just to make sure you don’t challenge the ticket in court.  And if you saw a real speed trap, you would slow down to 5 miles or so over the limit. No biggie.  Most of us drive over the limit all the time.

And face it - on the big highways, you set the cruise control to at least 5 or 6 miles over the limit – maybe 10!! And don’t worry about getting a ticket. You don't even pop a bead of sweat when you pass an officer just waiting for that special speeder doing 25 over the limit.

So why do people approaching speed cameras S-L-O-W down to 5 miles below the limit??!! 

Beats me. 

Technology scares us, while real speed traps don't???

CueCat, Internet Radio - Pandora and Digital Photography Takes Hold

By I.J. Hudson

Only 11 years ago, the fight to transmit 100 channels of music/talk from geosynchronous satellites to your car or home began.  Let’s have launch.  The New York based Sirius put the first of its 3 satellites up.  XM was a little late putting up its two birds, but on the ground was building a gorgeous set of studios in a converted printing plant in Northeast Washington, DC.  As the saying goes in The Highlander, “there can be only one.”  And now, after a lot of struggles, there is – only one.  XM Satellite Radio dissolved early in 2011 and was merged into Sirius XM.

Speaking of music, the progression of Internet Radio is certain worth a mention.  I remember visiting an Internet radio station operating out of a very, very small studio in Alexandria.  If I remember correctly, it was a room off a store. Early Internet radio was a bit on the sketchy side – audio quality not so good at first because of noisy phone lines, etc.  Obviously, things sped up and quality improved. While a little thing like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act muddied up the waters, Internet radio survived the tumultuous changes in the music industry.  Then Apple’s iTunes came along in 2003…and more sea changes followed.  Now, if you mention Internet radio, names like Pandora come up.  Cool.  The quality is good, wide selection. I’m listening as I write this.

Digital cameras were starting to take hold.  Digital quality didn’t match film yet, but you still had the advantage of deleting a bad picture and taking another bad picture.  Storage was on floppies or super disks.  Owners bought stock in battery companies.

External hard drives to store all of these pictures and the coming video revolution were coming of age.  Maxtor offered a full 80 GB of storage for only $360.  

Privacy was being debated at every level.  Website that would protect your identity popped up – anonymize.com and zero knowledge were a couple of them.

I close out the year 2000 with CueCat.  Some of you who remember this little device will smile.  The short story is CueCat (attached to your computer) was a scanner that read a bar-coded hyperlink in a magazine or cat-alog. And when you saw the perfect BMW in the auto magazine and ran CueCat across the bar-code, your browser would be taken to the “landing page” for the Beamer you were looking out.  It was also used to take Olympic fans to pages specific to events they were reading about.  Radio Shack, Forbes and Wired magazines were major partners. This cat did not have nine lives…….

I apologize for the number of posts today.  Once I got started reviewing my scripts from 2000, I realized that I had to keep going. It was a big and busy year for tech.  It brought back a lot of memories about the seeds of change along the Information Superhighway (remember when we used it call it that!!!)  Some of the seeds grew; others didn’t – but, it’s a very wide and very fertile field.  And we just keep planting more seeds to see what survives.

The Maturing of the Net and the Pluses and Minuses That Came With it.

 By I.J. Hudson

As the number of websites exploded so did the amount of information to sift through and to gauge its credibility.  The Internet was no longer the exclusive domain (sorry) if the white male geek.  The rest of us were joining the party, and by 2000 half of the netizens were female.  They used the Internet a bit differently from men, and in particular, were interested in health information for their families and themselves.

A group called the Alliance for Aging Research had been around for a few years and served as a clearinghouse for reliable health info. A lot of bad info promising cures for this and that was all over the place.  The Alliance is still around today.

It may not have been the first use of social engineering, but the “I Love You” virus certainly caused a stir. people were apparently eager to believe someone actually loved them, so they clicked on the email attachment.  That triggered a little program that sent the virus to everyone in the person’s Outlook Contacts.  Ah, sharing the love.

I interviewed a young CEO of an internet security firm about viruses.  The company was RIPTech; his name, Amit Yoran.  One of his quotes from my story: “We need to be ready to protect our infrastructure.” Yoran went on to become the National Cyber Security Division Director for Homeland Security, and then on to other things.

Cell phones, wireless phones, smart phones – whatever we call them ---- we had about 92M of them in the U.S. in the year 2000; now it’s more than 300M.  And about 26% of us use only a wireless phone – no landline. You can get more stats at the CTIA’s website.

AvantGo was an interesting mobile service that was trying to bridge desktops with the “almost” wireless world of Windows CE and Palm organizers.  Believe it or not these devices could store email and news.  When you synched – you got new stuff from AvantGo sources.  AvantGo is no longer in this bizz. 

In 2000, the music industry was busy shooting itself in the foot - and suing Napster.  The suit charged Napster was enabling piracy.  My, how the business model for online music has changed. 

Vision III Imaging is still out there.  I saw some of the neatest video at their place in Northern Virginia.  They developed MOE, a Moving Optical Element.  The iris of the camera was computer controlled for exposure and scanning – and the frequency at which the iris moved determined how much information would be picked up in the frame.  The results were impressive.  I would love to catch up with these guys….

Shave and a Haircut - Two Bits of Social Media

I got a haircut this morning.  It’s a Saturday morning ritual that happens about every three weeks.  Not a big deal in my life, but often my time in the chair at this Darnestown, MD shop does three things.

1.      It gives me a chance to talk to George (my guy) and to look and listen as others carry on their conversations. The guys that own the shop are Greek-Americans and the home language is spoken to some customers who come from far away to sit in the chair and chat.

2.       It gives me the chance to observe small things, including acts of human kindness and marketing (intended or not).  As many of you know, I spent many years watching and listening, and about 1:30 each day talking - (TV stories)

3.       It takes me back to my boyhood days when the barbershop was full of cigarette smoke, sports and “other” types of magazines – and gossip.  This was back when the Coke machine was a cooler with metal guides.  You lifted the bottle slightly to move it to “exit.”  If you had put in a dime, the “exit” was unlocked and you could pull one coke straight up….and out.

Item three is mostly nostalgia, but Items one and two actually merge.   This morning, an older gentleman got out of the senior barber’s chair.  The senior barber is the Dad of the family that bought the shop several years ago.  As the customer went for his wallet, the barber just waved him off and very quietly said, “next time.”  The customer was stunned for a moment and then left.  Fifteen minutes later he was back and said, “it bothers me, please take something.”  The response:  “Naw, get out of here!  Next time.”  And the man said “thanks” and left with a smile.

This, in my opinion, is a combination of a nice man being nice, a random act of kindness – nothing more than that.  But for anyone paying attention, what they saw was a reason to tell people about this shop.  They already had reasons to come here themselves: The haircuts are good, prices haven’t changed in several years ($15) and they even shave your neck like the old style barbers.  Now some of the customers who saw this exchange will pass it on to friends (Facebook and otherwise).  

That wasn’t why the barber gave a free haircut this morning, but it is something that makes a shop stand out and prompts “fans” to tell others, whether by word of mouth or by word of pixel. 

Social media.  It’s free and is practiced even when you don’t know you’re doing it. It’s not even your choice.  I saw something in real life and said, “I’ve got to write about this.”   My choice.  I’m sharing observations with those who will bother to read what I’ve got to say. 

Sometimes you can just be yourself in business, and let others observe and pass it forward.

More on technology in 2000 - AOL, , Pocket PC

People looking for decent bandwidth in 2000 were trying things like modem-bonding.  The theory is that two modems hooked up to two telephone lines could be “bonded” using software. Theoretically you could download at 112k.  As they say, my mileage varied.  I got less – but more than 56k.  Back then if your internet service provider didn’t charge extra for using the second line, it might have been a reasonable deal.

AOL Anywhere was a familiar phrase in 2000.  The concept  was that AOL would bundle together a lot of information about restaurants, theatres, things to do, and help you complete a transaction using a wireless phone.  Yep, Ted Leonsis was a big part of that.

Miscrosoft was late to another party in 2000.  It was called the Pocket PC, which was to compete against the Palm/Handspring offerings, including the Palm VII.  Not only could the Pocket PC be an electronic Rolodex for contacts and schedules, it could play mp3 music and serve as a digital recorder.  At the time, Microsoft’s Steve Balmer called the Pocket PC, “A quantum leap forward.”

On the slightly technical side, the Digital Edge guy was once again reminding people to be careful about donating their computers without properly taking care of their hard drives.  The truth remains today that deleting a file doesn’t delete the information, just an entry in an address book the computer uses to find the information.  And when you put something in the recycle bin, and empty it.... it’s gone – except it’s not.  Again, just the address of where the information is.  Nothing is deleted until some stuff comes along and overwrites the old (several times to meet some standards).

Maybe this post has brought back a few memories…please share…  :}

More from the Reporter's Scripts - 2000

The year was 2000, and the specter of Y2K was fading fast.  We had survived.  Things worked after the stroke of midnight.  Almost everything worked.  We watched carefully as the New Year came in from Australia and headed toward us.  Each new celebration confirmed that Y2K issues weren’t going to cause the problems predicted by some.  

Did we survive because of all the preparation work, the hiring of folks who knew the older programming languages, or because we really hyped Y2K beyond its dangers?  I think I did at least three dozen, “will Y2K affect (fill in the blank) stories leading up to the end of the year.  I balked about doing a story on whether Y2K would affect your socks.

Several online services popped up after a Surgeon General’s report said that 1 in 5 Americans had a mental problem.  These new sites, including lifescape.com, suggested the Internet would help people open up.  There would be support through chat, etc.  I guess people have opened up a tad on Facebook.

In 2000, Flat screens were coming down in price (about $4500 for a family room set) and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was featuring a lot of MP3 music and CD Re-writers. 

On the less technical side, a story I did on gasoline prices grabbed my attention.  3/7/2000:  AAA says gas prices have risen 24-cents from mid-january to mid-March in 2000.  The average cost for a gallon of unleaded regular in the Washington, DC area is ----- (wait for it)

      $1.54

 

 More on 2000 later....

A Message of Few Words

I do not love abbreviations, acronyms and slang.

I do not think they are worth a dang.

(Whoaa! Almost went Dr. Seuss for a moment)

We refer to a gaggle of government agencies as “alphabet soup.”   We call them agencies, even though most of them are not agencies, but administrations. And, at least one of the “agencies” ending in “A” – the A stands for Affairs (Did you know that?).  Perhaps that’s where former congress people go after being exposed for wrongdoing.

We use acronyms at work, are subjected to hundreds of them on the TV cop procedurals.  BOLO used to be an APB.  BOLO is a letter longer, but a syllable shorter.  It seems everyone takes every opportunity to shorten anything longer than a word or two.  Low testosterone is “Low-T.”  I’m not going to let this post rise and fall on that one. 

Sports junkies know a team name can be shortened to almost nothing on the third reference.  A product, or even an entertainer can be shortened to a “symbol.”

I smiled when I read a recent story about the Wakefield High School Track & Field ordering sweatshirts that read, “WTF.”  It also stands for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (according to the cartoon, “Maxene.”)

Maybe it’s generational.  Is TMI “too much information” or “Three Mile Island?”  

Is there a point here?  Sure.  I buried the lead.

Make your point: clearly - concisely – in the context and language your target audience understands.  

Give your supporters something simple and direct to pass along that has a strong chance of maintaining its meaning.