Scott Rettberg » software

The View from Above

Scott — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 18:11:34 +0000

A satellite view of my neighborhood on Google Maps, which now has satellite imagery.

Frontier to go Open Source

Scott — Sun, 23 May 2004 02:34:00 +0000

Dave Winer recently announced that Userland will soon be releasing the kernel on which Frontier (the system used for the blogs here at Stockton) and Radio are based for open source development. That's good news. Though details on the licensing haven't been released, even if an open source developing community doesn't develop around it, should Userland go under, their software won't die with the company.

SubEthaEdit Collaborative Writing/Coding Tool

Scott — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 02:09:00 +0000

This weekend Nick and I used SubEthaEdit to work on installment 4 of Implementation. SubEthaEdit is a great piece of freeware for Mac OSX, allowing multiple people to work on one document at one time, either on your local network via Rendezvous or over the Internet. A tool like this would make the kind of “jam session” writing that Dirk, William and I liked to do when we could get together in person while working on The Unknown a lot easier from remote locations.

The name of the software, which seemed strange to me, is from Douglas Adams. Cool:

The Guide was compiled by researchers roaming round the galaxy, beaming their copy in, which was then instantly available to anybody to read. Over, believe it or not, something called the SubEthaNet. [...] I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course – the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end. But I did have the inkling of an idea that a collaborative guide, one that was written and kept up to date by the people who used it, in real time, might be a neat idea.

– Douglas Adams

iSight on Wireless Walking Down the Street

Scott — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 00:48:00 +0000

This afternoon while chatting with Jill, I decided to test the limits of my wireless connection. It went further than I thought. Unbeknownst to me, Jill was taking snapshots as I strolled.

I have a decent connection all the way to the bay. I was able to show Jill some pixelated ducks.

Not quite to the beach though. As I walked down the street, Jill watched my image break up

into something resembling a futurist painting.

Cool XML photo ap, and jukebox ap for blogs

Scott — Thu, 25 Mar 2004 10:00:00 +0000

If I have time this weekend, I might try and see if I can install photoblox, one of several very cool little Laszlo widgets that Marc Canter is using on his blog.

Jabberwacky

Scott — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:27:51 +0000

We’re reading Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen in my Internet Writing & Society class, and discussing AI. While googling around trying to see if there was a working version of Depression 2.0 out there, I ran across Jabberwacky, a Web chatterbot that took 3rd place in the 2003 Loebner Prize.

The bot is different from earlier systems, such as the classic Eliza, in that it learns from the aggregate knowledege of its users: “It stores everything everyone has ever said, and finds the most appropriate thing to say using contextual pattern matching techniques. In speaking to you it uses only learnt material. With no hard-coded rules, it relies entirely on the principles of feedback. This is very different to the majority of chatbots, which are rule-bound and finite.” While it wouldn’t pass a Turing test, Jabberwacky returns some very interesting responses, and can respond in many different languages. I find the idea of a collectively authored bot very compelling — sort of like Eliza as a globally authored-and-corrected FAQ. The winner of the 2003 Loebner Prize, Jabberwock actually responds in a much more “human-like” way, even though its system is more like the standard “Eliza-style” AI, with a “brain file,” produced by the system’s creators and a good collection of stock phrases used to “fudge” when the system can’t come up with a good match. The 2004 Loebner Prize competition final round will take place in September in New York.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto

Encore 4.0, TraceBack

Scott — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:22:55 +0000

Yesterday I attended Jan Rune Holmevik’s dissertation defense at the University of Bergen. While I haven’t yet had a chance to read it in its entirety, from attending his defense, I can report that his dissertation, TraceBack: MOO, Open Source, and the Humanities, includes a great historical overview of the open source movement, as well as a history of LinguaMOO and the development of Encore. His dissertation in Humanistic Informatics also included a program, the Encore MOO system that he and Cynthia Haynes developed. In conjunction with his successful defense, he also released Encore 4.0, which is is distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Gratulerer Jan Rune!

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto.

Collector's Accessory

Scott — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 10:00:00 +0000

Wow what a great toy for a book, cd, or dvd fetishist. Brian sent along a link to the Intelliscanner Collector, a personal barcode reader for the mac with integrated software that automatically downloads cover art and title info. $180 though. I'm not buying it. I'm trying to shed things, Simplify, Simplify. But maybe I'll buy one when they come down to $50 or so on eBay.

ToySight

Scott — Sun, 21 Dec 2003 22:15:40 +0000

I recently downloaded the demo of ToySight, software that uses the mac’s iSight camera to integrate object and motion control into a variety of videogames and “toys.” The demo includes “Freefall,” a game in which you stand in front of the camera with arms extended as your avatar falls through the clouds, trying to collect balloons and land on target, and “Laser Harp,” a toy harp in which you pluck strings that appear in front of your image. It might just be the gee-whiz factor, but I see a lot of potential for this kind of cam-based interaction (admittedly not enough to buy the package, but I looking forward to playing more of the games with my friend’s daughter when she gets it). I wonder what kind of electronic literature we might dream up for this form of interaction? Maybe something like Noah et al’s Talking Cure could soon be coming to a laptop near you.

This post was originally published on Grand Text Auto.

Leave Nick's Mind Alone!

Scott — Sat, 08 Nov 2003 10:00:00 +0000

Nick, in response to the recent Copyright and the Network Computer: A Stakeholder's Congress conference, asks the DRM-obsessed of the world to Stop Handcuffing My Mind. Nick has a good point — most digital rights managements schemes are “code” for “we're working with congress to make your computer less useful than it is today. Darn it!” Which reminds me of a recent comment on GTA, by an unemployed recording industry middle-manager (I assume). Nick describes a world in which the general purpose computer might become the restricted-use computer, via legislation (set your time machines several weeks into the future).