Amazing and cool site: Ninite.com

I am rarely impressed, but the function this site performs is one of the best things that have come along. How would you like to install all the programs you want in one go? Well that's what Ninite.com offers. It does something that we all need at one point or another. It certainly isn't used everyday, but Ninite.com is really handy when you set up a computer. Check it out here.

Basically Ninite lets you check off the programs you want to install on your computer. Programs like flash, firefox, vlc, aim, skype, and others are offered. It's an all in one function that bundles all the programs you wanted installed and does it all one in run. It downloads the latest programs from the original sites and installs every program one by one. So if you were to keep the program file, you can actually use it to also update those programs months or years down the line.

Enjoy!

Bandwidth as a resource

There has been talk about the way cellphone companies have been limiting bandwidth through subscription plans. As of August 15, 2011 Sprint remains the only company left in the United States that offers an unlimited data plan. It looks like data is now recognized as a commodity; something similar to how electricity is treated.

In economics services and goods have a certain value because they are limited. The scarcity determines the price. Cellphone companies are now trying to create a market in cellphones where there is a scarcity. Whether they intended to or not, scarcity means money. This Nytimes.com article has laid out the story of how data was a unlimited resource that became limited. For years, people have been using a phone jack or high school cable to connect to the Internet without worrying about how much bandwidth they used up. The cellphone companies claim that in order to control the flux of data intensive applications that cellphones use, they are billing subscribers in order to keep these subscribers from overtaxing the entire network.

These assumptions about overtaxing the network is not unfounded. Subscription plans now charge a fee for 2GB's of data or more. Video apps and other data intensive applications on smartphones especially, could eat up an enormous amount of data in minutes.

What the cellphone companies don't explain is why they don't just upgrade their infrastructure in order to meet demand as they grow. Or why they don't enforce a bandwidth cap. They'd rather charge for the privilege of using more data.

Now think of how electricity is billed. You use this much electricity, you pay that much. Sound familiar? I don't know about other people, but for me, I generally don't pay attention to how much bandwidth I use. If the cellphone companies are really trying to reign in on over-consumption of data from cellphone users, then they should provide feedback for every cellphone. Why not show a meter for how much bandwidth you have used? On the front screen of your cellphone perhaps?

I was once part of a project called the Kukui Cup a dorm room competition in the University of Hawaii that with competing dorms trying to use the least amount of electricity. The main focus was the observe how people used electricity and whether providing a meter that showed near immediate feedback could change their behavior in energy usage. As I write this, they are on their way to initiating the competition in October of 2011. The idea is that if you get to see how much energy you are using, you'll not only see the results for each appliance, you'll understand the impact on your wallet each time you use a electronic device and look at the meter.

These kinds of feedback interfaces and devices could go a long way to not only providing feedback, but slow down consumption by letting people make a conscience decision to change their behavior in the name of conservation or just to save money. Energy and data has been the very source of technological advance in everything. Charging people for data usage in a limited way is not going to be effective against over consumption. Since when did people stop watching TV or stop turning on their Christmas lights just because it cost money?

photo from cloudcentrics.com

iPhone and other 'i' products changing the way we speak

Before the iMac and the iPhone can out, were there any words that sounded like it? Maybe isosceles or Ikea, but most of them were obscure or brand names. Most other words with an 'i' in the beginning usually start with an 'ee' sound like in cheese. In fact most people now pronounce countries like Iran and Iraq as iRan and iRaq.

This bothers me a lot. Granted English is a very flexible language, but when technology companies reshape the pronunciation for a type of word, it's a monumental event. In effect Apple has repackaged all i-starting words into their own brand of things. Mad TV a now defunct television show had a skit that parodied how a lot of things could be branded into the Apple line, and is a metaphor for the Iraq war.