Non-interop earphones with DRM, HVAC swarms, paperprints, and product constipation at GOOG:
- Apple iPod Shuffle (3rd gen) — “Surprise: the only third-party headphones that will work are ones that haven’t even entered manufacturing yet, because they’ll need to contain yet another new Apple authentication chip, which will add to their price.” It’s interesting to see Apple prioritising the different interactions with the device: the ease from using standard connectors is less important than how it looks (no buttons!), and both are less important than securing those hardware margins by tithing every corner of the aftermarket thirdparty addon space. I hope users revolt, but I suspect it’ll be viewed like the needless diversity of power cords–a non-fatal inconvenience and irritation. I can only imagine the state of mind that thinks it is acceptable to irk a million people so as to be able to make a few bucks on each set of third-party headphones.
- Managing Energy with Swarm Logic — intelligent HVAC gear that wirelessly communicates, figures out the individual power cycles of each appliance, then coordinate (with no central control) to figure out how to optimally run the appliances for maximum efficiency.
- Fingerprinting Blank Paper Using Commodity Scanners — Ed Felten’s latest work of genius, cranking the contrast on scans of paper at different orientation to produce a texture from which can be calculated a fingerprint that survives printing, crumpling, and moisture. (via bos)
- Tim Armstrong to Head AOL (Battelle) — interesting quote from former Googler, “It’s very hard to take risks at Google.”