Idea: How Smart Kitchens Should Work

Why would someone want to configure their blender for Wi-Fi?  Or upgrade the firmware of their toaster over? Or replace their perfectly working microwave because their refrigerator does not support it anymore? It is unlikely that someone would want to do these things but this seems to be  the direction where smart kitchen appliances are heading with the Internet of Things. 

For the "Internet of Things" many of these "things" are just low powered computers put in a device and then connected to the user's home network.  This means that they have the same basic needs as a computer, tablet, smartphone, etc. in that they need to be:

• Authenticated so they have a secure connection
• Able to protect themselves against malicious traffic
• Patched when flaws or vulnerabilities are discovered
• Upgraded to support new features

These are very important tasks but they are not something users like to think about and probably not something they want to do with their blender, toaster oven, microwave, etc..  Despite all the benefits of smart appliances one does not want to wait for their smoothie to blend because of an installing patch or have that new game on their tablet decide that their baked potato should be very, very well done. To solve this problem I suggest the creating a smart kitchen instead.

Rather then having each appliance on the home network individually, have only a dedicated computer in the kitchen on that network.  This computer could then treat the other appliances like a private network and would be the only interface between them and devices on the other network.  It alone would need to be configured and would also have a firewall just like a regular computer in addition to managing all the patching to ensure that the kitchen operates smoothly. 

A critical benefit is also that the computer can be the primary point of interaction.  Therefore, when cooking a roast when the user opens up the their recipe the oven would preheat, the timers would automatically be set and anything else they need would be configured and ready to go.  Also as it is a standard computer it would be possible to install new kitchen applications to increase functionality as well as browsing the Internet, using email, etc. when additional information is needed.

The main hurtle is that standards need to be established to ensure compatibility among vendors but I imagine that would be easier convincing people to enter a WPA2 password on their blender, toaster oven, microwave, etc..

The Third Generation of Autonomous Vehicles

Currently several companies, especially Google, are working on the first generation of autonomous self-driving vehicles.  These seem to do a good job of driving and hopefully once on in production they will be better then people driving themselves.  That is in fact the main selling point, a vehicle that can avoid accidents because it is relentlessly watching the road. However, based on the current laws for these vehicles there still needs to be a licenced driver that is ready to quickly take control if needed.  In other words, the first generation will really be an autopilot.

The second generation is going to be what we see on television and in movies: vehicles driving themselves with passengers not even bothering to pay attention to what is happening around them.  It will be like the best driver imaginable is at wheel. Accidents should be cut down to nil due to the computer's literally split second response when avoiding an obstacle, be it a jaywalker or a child chasing after a ball.  However, when not exceptionally avoiding accidents one would expect them to still mimic current driving patterns.

However, we need to consider not just how the cars will evolve, but also how people will.  Due to issues with people driven vehicles we got used to the derogatory term Jaywalker and related laws  were created to prevent people from getting injured or killed by walking into traffic.  Children were taught not to run into the street for the same reason.  However, people still randomly run across the street at their own peril and once the danger is removed, why would society continue with the probation?

While getting rid a crosswalks the thought will turn to controlled intersections and speed limits.  Current intersections are to allow people driven traffic to cross paths and inconveniently stops all flow of traffic in certain directions to allow the other directions to safely proceed.  Speed limits are designed to ensure that the driver can keep control of their vehicle.  This leads to the slowing of traffic and in extreme cases, Gridlock.  However, with a computer in control, speeding down the road or crossing a lane of traffic would be no more dangerous then walking down a sidewalk or crossing the flow of people.

These social changes will bring about the third generation of autonomous vehicles, designed to find a path from point A to point B as fast as possible while preventing accidents by  intelligently predicting and dodging around or between obstacles.  Stoplights will have gone the way of the milkman and just people waking into the street would be normal. 

I imagine these vehicles would look similar to the spherically wheeled vehicles in I,Robot or maybe the domed vehicles in The Jetsons.  They will be able to accelerate in any direction and rotate freely.  The occupants might prefer to be laying back watching the sky as it moves and twirls if they become too dizzy watching the road.  The computer would have to accommodate inertia to ensure the occupants are not injured while food and drink would also be impossible, as would anything requiring hand-eye coordination, except for perhaps a mounted or worn electronic device.

If a  person from today woke up in this future it might be a beautiful site to see someone or even be the person that runs into traffic for the elegant ballet that will ensue ensuring the safety of all.  For others, it could be horrifying, like the legend of the people who saw that train coming at them from the movie screen and ran for their lives.

Perhaps even both.

Ways Virtual Reality Could Help Make People Fit

While writing my entry on the future of eCommerce and thinking about how it could be implemented, one idea that came to mind was to use an omnidirectional treadmill so the user could literally walk around the virtual store. The result would be an online shopping trip  that would provide exercise instead of the user just sitting in their chair exhibiting limited muscle movement. This and the new HoloLens got me thinking about how virtual reality could be integrated with everyday computing tasks in a way that would help make people more fit.  

Fitness games are already common but they are only useful when a user is purposefully playing or exercising. What I am thinking of is situations where the current implementations do not involve much physical activity when done on a computer but could be modified so the user would not only get a fitness component added but also a new level of interaction.

Google Streets View

With Google Streets View people can already wander around a virtual representation of a city almost as if it is a 3D game.  I think Google should work to make the current version  exactly like a 3D game and allow the user to "walk" around freely with the same controls as a game.  As games are one of the main uses of virtual reality technology, its use with streets view would then be a natural evolution.

Files

This could be a full workout as the user could walk around their hard/cloud drive if not run around when they need to find something. When the file or folder is located and they want to move it, they would physically bring it to another location.  In addition, if something could simulate varying weights, the size of the file could be used as a weight and provide extra benefit to the user. For example, if the logarithm of the size is used then a 100 MB file would be equivalent to 2 kg while 10 GB would be equivalent to 4 kg.

News/Social Networking

Rather then scrolling through a list of posts imagine walking through an endless hallway/walkway of  stories, shared items, tweets, photos, etc. lining the walkway like signs.  The user could either stop to read one, pick it up to read a floating version or even start walking through the text itself.  This leads to the last idea...

Text and Books

One of the most time consuming things people do is simply reading and since the documents are linear by nature, a user reading a document as they walk it is a natural fit.  One way this could work is if the document was displayed as if it were painted along a wall the user are passing. Another option would be to put the text on the walkway, although if the user does not want to walk backward they would have to get comfortable reading bottom to top.

The Future of eCommerce

Today shopping on the Internet is essentially the same as shopping with a catalog in that you are simply seeing lists of items with descriptions.  As you shop you add items you want to a "shopping cart" that is essentially just a product list and when you are ready to place the order you fill in your contact and billing information on a form.  While doing this on a website is much more easier and accurate  than using older methods of ordering, such as the telephone, I think that new technologies have the potential to make this a much better experience. Specifically, virtual reality devices like the Microsoft HoloLens could radically change  the online shopping experience and perhaps even bring relief to failing "brick and mortar" stores.

Imagine this scenario: a person wants go shopping online at a technology store that also exists as a brick and mortar chain.  Rather then head to a web browser, they launch their favorite shopping application that works with their virtual reality headset.  They put on the headset and they are standing in front of a virtual simulation of the physical location where they normally go.  After walking through the door a cart is automatically provided and they start their shopping trip by walking around the store.

When they get to a product they are considering, they reach for it and a virtual version of the box appears floating in front of the its peers on the shelf.  After grabbing the floating product, they start examining it, flipping it over to reading the back. They decide to buy this item so they place the product in their cart.  They repeat this with another product but after deciding not to buy it they place the box near the shelf where it was floating and let go.

As they finish their shopping trip and are ready to complete the purchase of their items, they head for the checkout counter.  When they arrive the cart disappears, its contents tallied, and the customer is    prompted for their billing information. After providing it, as well as a shipping address, they receive a receipt and shipping information so they know when their order will be delivered.  They then walk through the exit door and back to the virtual street or virtual mall.

On another visit, as the inventory on the virtual shelves is the same as that stores physical shelves, they remember they really need ink and it looks like the store going to run out again as they were out of luck last time they needed ink.  They are also enthusiastic to look at the new monitors more closely so they decide to take the time to head down to the physical location.  While they have only visited it a handful of times, their hundreds of visits online mean they know the location of every product with their eyes closed.

Is this possible today? There are already technologies available to do the sensing and virtual reality display in addition to screen based first person virtual reality that is as old as first person games.  Moreover, there could be different ways of presenting the virtual store that is familiar to the layout but more efficient then a full simulation, such as an interactive map.  Technology is causing the physical world and the virtual world to move closer and stores will need to respond to ensure customers have the best shopping experience.

Should Humans Learn To Count in Hexadecimal?

Computers use a binary or base-2 counting system for reasons that are beyond this post. Since binary numbers are large to write, programmers adopted larger base systems that could directly represent the bits, namely octal (base-8,3 bits) and hexadecimal (base-16, 4 bits) with hexadecimal more commonly used. Two hexadecimal digits represent a byte and other computer words all have a number of bits that can be divided evenly into bytes.   For example, 32-bit address is 4 bytes or 8 hexadecimal digits. To write these extra digits, A-B-C-D-E-F is used, representing decimal the numbers 10-11-12-13-14-15 and to make the distinction clear numbers are often prefixed with 0x or #.

Decimal numbers, or base-10 is what  humans mostly use and while it seems logical when looking at our hands, unlike computers, using this system is arbitrary.  Humans can use any base system (see below). The result is that computers have to convert the base of numbers that are displayed to the users and also convert numbers that are entered by the user.   While this is not difficult, this extra step itself can create issues that need not be created.

One of these issues is rounding error.  In both systems 1/3 cannot be represented exactly, as the best that can be done in base-10 is 0.33333... and hexadecimal (and convertible to octal and binary), the number is 0x0.5555...  There are also numbers that can be represented in decimal but not hexadecimal.  For example, 0.1 is 0x109999....  While people easily understand the issues with base-10 figures, such as seeing a graph with three 33% and knowing they really add up to 100%, issues with this conversion are often not noticed or create odd numbers such as 0.9999 when people expect to see 1.

Another issue is that many things in computers are limited by the binary system but with base-10 the limitation seems arbitrary.  Take the RGB colour values used by many programs, including photo editors and CSS.  The user can only enter 0 to 255.  There seems no rational reason that they cannot change the third digit 255 to 256 unless the user realises that it really is a two digit hexadecimal number.  Then they would understand clearly that  0xFF + 0x1 = 0x100, a three digit number too big to fit is the two digit space.

A high point is that the cost of learning is minimal because people already have the tools to use hexadecimal numbers.  For example, to calculate 0x4D + 0xC5 using elementary school techniques:

• Add 0xD + 0x5 to get 0x12
• Carry the 0x1
• Add 0x1 + 0x4 + 0xC and you get 0x11
• Carry the 0x1 again and since it is the only number the first digit becomes 0x1
• The answer is 0x112

While there is a necessity for new symbols and vocabulary, people also no longer using Roman Numerals (base-1 with compression?) and have also switched to the Metric system.  As computers are now the primary tool used in mathematical calculations, it seem only prudent that humans consider using the native numbering system of computing when doing math themselves.

Idea: Add .localhost,.lan,.vpn,.ian and .wan to the DNS standard

An important part of the IPv4 protocol is that there are ranges of addresses that are reserved and cannot be used on the Internet.  These include the localhost address 127.0.0.1 and the ranges for LANs, such as the address in 192.168/16 that are commonly used with retail Internet routers when assigning LAN addresses.

These addresses are critical in making the Internet work since they allow the Internet to easily coexist with private networks, especially when using standard devices.  For example, every router sold by a company can have an admin address of 192.168.0.1 without interfering with other routers of the same brand. However, while there is support for naming devices on a network, a major problem is that unlike with IP addresses, DNS does any robust conventions to prevent conflicts with internal networks.

This lack of naming rules has caused problems as new top level domains are conflicting with names of internal resources and disrupting access. Before administrators only had to worry about a small set of conflicts, such as “com” or “ca” but now that anything can be a TLD, any name could potentially conflict with something on your network.  In addition, the .local TLD does not seem to be robust enough to help this situation.

To solve this and perhaps promote more consistent naming of resources, network administrators and standard bodies should consider adopting the following TLDs:

.localhost

• This already exists and would continue to refer to 127.0.0.1 alone.
• Subdomains could point to 127.0.0.1 or to another 127/8 address, but nowhere else.

.lan (Local Area Network)

• These would only point to LAN addresses, such as the 192.168/16 addresses.
• Lookup would only take place within the LAN, never consulting DNS servers on the Internet.
• “lan” itself could point a designated device, such as one providing DHCP services.
• A device could be responsible for its own name and can subdomain that name for resources available though that device.
• There could also be a way to define domain trees that are managed independently of the devices they point to, such as on the device with the DHCP server.

.vpn (Virtual Private Network)

• As a synonym for .lan, this would exist mainly to make it easier for the user to understand where their resource is located. For example, a computer at a head office named files.mycompany.vpn makes more sense than files.mycompany.lan since the server is might not be in the user`s local area network.

.ian (Internet Area Network/Internal Area Network)

• This would indicate that the domain namespace is defined using user controlled DNS servers or host computers.
• The IP addresses can be any valid IP address.
• Public DNS servers should not return information about a .ian domain unless the .ian address is acting like a proxy server.

.wan (Wide Area Network aka the public Internet)

• This would explicitly say the address of the resource your want in on the public Internet and not a localhost address, LAN or VPN.
• This would be a valuable safeguard in some cases, such as security or in the event of overloaded names not named with the above conventions.
• An administrator could also use this like a telephone outside access code and require all public addresses require .wan, as if “wan” is the name of a proxy server.

In the event there is not an extension the best default would to be assuming an implicit .wan it there is a period in the name and .lan/.vpn/.ian if it is a single name.  For these addresses, it would be up to the administrator or user to determine the best naming scheme to avoid and  resolve addresses issues.

I feel that using this naming scheme would make DNS more robust and  would allow for its future expansion, such as naming devices in the Internet of Things.

Smartwatches Should Be Round

One feature of the new Apple smartwatch is the knob on the side called the Digital Crown.  After seeing it demonstrated with a map, I would liken it to a mouse's simple but versatile scroll wheel as well as other digital knobs.  I agree that due to their small size some type of scroll device is probably a logical user interface feature for any smartwatch. However, since watches are normally round, my first thought was why use an angled wheel the surrounds the face.  After thinking about how the BlackBerry Playbook enables touch beyond the screen, the realised that it did not have to be a physical wheel but should be virtual touch circle.

With this the user would simply make the motions associated with rotating or scrolling by swiping anywhere around the face.  This would make zooming in or out on the watch similar to how a optical lens is zoomed or focused.  Making it angled would also allow for other interactions with the user, such as tapping or double tapping at specific locations related to the screen.  For example, the numbers zero to nine could be represented by the clock locations for twelve o'clock to nine o'clock with ten and eleven used for special purposes, such as the pound and star keys.  This seems like an easy to learn and elegant way to interact with a smartwatch.

Sadly, however, it seems that many smartwatches are designed with an rectangular face rather then a round face.   While I understand the efficiently of why rectangles are used for smartphones, tablets and computer monitors, smartwatches are not used in the same way as smartphones, tablets or computers.  It is unlikely someone would want to read a novel on their smartwatch or write a document.  They might video conference or watch as video, but letter boxing or simply removing the corners would be as acceptable as using a smartwatch for these purposes in the first place.

If smartwatches require a scroll wheel to create an acceptable user experience, then it would seem prudent for companies to design smartwatches that implement the user interface design described above.  Therefore, smartwatches should be round rather then rectangles.