More thoughts on the FitBit One and Personal Data

I've been posting about the FitBit One since I got mine back in January.  I was having lunch with a friend and mentioned that I had a FitBit.  He mentioned that he had one too, a while back, until his son put it in the washer.  But, he wasn't too torn up about it.  He felt that he had learned pretty much what he was going to from the data provided.  This, along with two other incidents got me thinking about the following:

When is Data Most Useful?

I have found in many situations that I care most about my data immediately or soon after it has been created.  This is not always true (e.g., pictures, movies), but for many things it is.  I take notes at work (via Mac Mail, fairly convenient given the built-in synchronization of IMAP) and find that I refer to them most frequently within the next week of writing them.  In addition, I do a fair bit of searching in my email to recall what happened in certain work situations or what decision was made.  That said, it is rare (but still happens) that I want to go beyond the last week or so of email activity to find my answer.

How does this Apply to Personal Data?

I think people need good feedback to change their behavior.  In school, we all got very timely feedback about how well we were learning the material (or at least, to the degree to which testing is an indicator of such).  When we work, we get reviewed at least annually and more importantly get raises that recognize our increased value to our firms.  The physical side of our world has few quick and easy means of providing feedback.  The FitBit should be that feedback mechanism:

• Quick
• Clear
• Actionable (advice?)
• Easy

How does FitBit and its Competitors Stay Relevant?

It seems to me that makers of more race oriented devices will have no problem staying relevant.  Think Garmin with their GPS watches that are serving runners and bikers quite well.  For companies like FitBit that are trying to fit into a more routine, they are going to have to do better in keeping people's attention.  They are trying to do this now, to some degree, by providing weekly summaries of activity and badges.  I think that they'll have to do better if they want to continue to grow and to remain useful for their current customers.

Here are some thoughts on how they can do this:

• Add features/information to the weekly summaries:  Right now my weekly summary only includes the stats for the week and little up or down arrow indicating if a specific statistic increased or decreased over the last week.  Not terribly helpful.  How about links that allow me to see in detail how this compares to other of my weeks / my friends week / all FitBit users' week / all weeks of all FitBit users' / all weeks of FitBit users of my rough characteristics (male, age, location?).  There seems to be a profound lack of imagination on the part of the developers.  
• Compare Variables: Are there any correlations in the data that have been found between certain behavior and weight or other activities?
• Better interpret activities: I've logged the fact that I'm doing weight lifting many mornings before I do some interval running.  Why can't the FitBit suggest that I could have been doing this and let me log it by hitting an "ok" button rather than going through the whole logging experience on the website.  I'm not sure where processing is done on the FitBit (before or after the data is transferred to the website), but in either case, it would seem that it could likely infer what I'm doing and auto-log.
• Send reminders to people: Allow synching of the FitBit to one's iCal or better Google Calendar.  Meeting or other reminders could cause an "alarm" on the FitBit.
• Initiate Long Term Studies of behavior:  I think the risk of losing most of its users is pretty high for FitBit and their competitors.  They'd be in a much better position if most of their new devices were being sold to people upgrading (think the Apple iPhone) than to new customers (churn is a terrible thing).  Studies of the persistence of changes in personal behavior and the potential medical benefits of having long term data about people's movement could be compelling to keep otherwise fence-sitters from dropping it.

Fitbit after 250 miles

Like them or not, when you wear a Fitbit and track your activities, you will get badges.  "Badges", you say, "We don't need no stinkin' badges!"  Maybe not. But in any event, me getting my 250 mile badge was a good trigger for me to sit down and write this blog entry to say what I'm liking and not liking about my Fitbit One.

The Good

• Battery Life: It's been excellent.  I charge for maybe an hour every week or so.  Each time I plug in, it appears as if I'm still halfway charged.  I thought I'd have to manage this more closely and am very glad that I do not need to.
• Data: It collects data in a very seamless way.  Especially when combined with the Aria scale, its a pretty powerful set of information to drive good decision-making.
• Alarm: I no longer wake my wife up in the morning with my alarm clock.  Which is good because I just broke it.  Powerful motivator to wear the Fitbit at night.
• My wife likes it.

The Bad

• Nighttime Braclet: The odd velcro-like closure is already starting to wear and catch on my covers leading to it coming off a number of times while I was tossing and turning.  I expect that I will have to be routinely purchasing these (perhaps at 4 to 6 month intervals).
• Sleep Monitoring: Seemingly uncorrelated with how well I feel when I wake up.  I moved to the sensitive mode because I was routinely sleeping with 99% efficiency.  Now, it claims I'm only sleeping between 4 1/2 and 5 hours a night.  I hope not.
• No feature updates via software (yet): I'd still very much like to be beeped at if I remain stationary for 10 or 15 minutes.  And then more vigorously beeped at if 15 becomes 30 minutes.
• Proprietary Data: Where is it?  Can I get to the raw or treated stuff?  Not clear.
• Dashboard 2.0: I switched over to it not long ago.  Lacks an easy ability to see different date ranges as you could with the original.  Some displays of the data are clunky (while others are notably improved - sleep over the last seven days).
• Changing Logs:  At least for sleep, once a record is created, there doesn't appear to be an easy way of changing it.  Make a mistake and forget to tell it your done sleeping?  You are out of luck.  Seems like an obvious oversight.

One Step Beyond?

• More types of data: I'd love to have my pulse, oxygen levels, sweat levels and blood pressure constantly across the day.  I don't know how to do it, but somebody will figure it out.
• More sensors: I can tell the Fitbit that I did a "light to moderate effort" free-weight workout for 35 minutes.  The moment I go for a run on the treadmill, the Fitbit knows exactly what is up.  It would be much more useful if I didn't have to tell it what I was doing, it should be able to figure whatever it was, out.  I'd be willing to wear ankle sensors, wrist sensors and a waist sensor, almost whatever it would take.  Whoever figures this out, will have me in a heartbeat.
• Waterproofedness: I've been spending a fair bit of time in the pool with the boys (now that we have a basketball hoop and volleyball net).  None of this activity can be logged or reasonably represented from my fitbit, as noted here.  Waterproofing seems like a fairly reasonable upgrade and one that would likely provide some additional robustness to their design (avoid failure due to being overly sweaty). [Added 2013-07-22]

Software as Sensor

I am seriously intrigued by the notion of using software as the key enhancement to already existing (and hopefully simple) sensors.  Think already existing video cameras being used in ways that hugely extend their usefulness simply through the use of algorithms to process the image data.  I know I'm a bit late to the party here but, even so, wanted to capture my thoughts.

This line of thinking was driven by seeing a NY Times article (which I can't find now), but perhaps even better than that link is a link to the MIT Website.  Pretty fascinating stuff.  How else could this be extended?  Let's take things One Step Beyond . . . 

Simple extensions (tiny steps):

• Pulse monitoring on Treadmills and Exercise Bikes:  As long as your face is visible to a presumably cheap camera, your pulse should be available.
• Threat Monitoring: TSA, stop scanning us by shooting all sorts of wonderful radiation and start videotaping movement and faces and bodies.  Surely there must be some tell-tale signs of having a gun stuffed in your pants that would be obvious when you are magnifying movement by 100x?  Perhaps there should be separate face, torso and leg video scanners each looking independently for threats.  Perhaps this wouldn't be sufficient, but cheaply additive to existing measures.  Would probably work best if you make people walk at a normal stride for several paces prior to getting to the metal detector.  It seems as if the TSA could easily add some barriers/ropes and a stop line to make this happen.
• Pilot/Driver Monitoring: I think some of these systems are in place already on high-end cars, but this could potentially make it much less expensive to roll-out to our commercial trucking, bus and aviation industries.  Especially when large numbers of people are involved, the vitals of our pilots ought to be monitored.  Eventually (with much experience), roll this out to all cars. Add distracted driver alerts.  These alerts could be triggered not only by texting or email, but also by overly engrossing conversations. 

More complex extensions:

• Body fat measurement:  Maybe I'm obsessed with this one, but it seems to me that all of the measurement technics are pretty terrible.  Either crazy expensive or not super accurate nor descriptive of distribution of fat.  Maybe video isn't necessary here, but still pictures would work.  First thought is to include age, height and weight and then mix some measurements of body parts (including "hard measurements" - places with likely little fat buffering - to get a clean view of the skeletal frame) with pictures of the individual from various angles (i.e., front on and view from every 45 degree increment).  Video would interesting here because presumably you'd get the view from many more angles.  An even further refinement would be to add pictures of the individual with a series of rubber bands on.  These would be applying a known amount of force (pressure on the skin) and thus able to measure the surface squishiness.  Ideally, this results not only in a reasonably accurate aggregate assessment of the individual, but also a view as to the distribution of fat in their body.  Fat mixed among one's internal organs would obviously not be measured easily using this method.  But given that its primarily software driven, I bet a package could be put together (with a digital tape measure) for only $30 or so.  Bonus step: instead of taking stills, take a video and have the digital tape measure slowly retract or tighten (similar to a blood pressure monitor) and calculate the squishiness based on the air pressure.
• 3D Modeling of Objects: Spin an object on a spindle, strip out the spindle and go.  3D scanners already exist and will be a critical adjunct to 3D printing.  Some software scanners also already exist.  Reasonably useful, too, from my exploration.  That said, get your 3D scanner software fast, before some knucklehead tries to prohibit via DMCA or some such nonsense.
• 3D Modeling of buildings: Similar to above, but of "inside" surfaces instead of outside surfaces.  How cool would it be if you could walk through your house with a video camera and make a complete 3D model (think, you are trying to sell your house).  This will happen via consumer grade (think, mobile phone) video soon and at much lower cost than is happening now with complex laser scanners (of crime scenes, for instance).
• Consumer Speed "Trap": Tired of your neighbors driving too quickly down your road?  Set up a camera in your front yard and then process both the license plates and the speed of the car (easily detectible from identification of the make and model - and its interaction with the optics of the particular video camera) by comparing successive frames.  Upload to one of the "bad driver websites".

More to come (maybe).

Google Glass

I'm a big fan of trying out new technology and tracking data about myself.  For example, see my post here about life (so far) with a Fitbit One.  I think that the new Google Glass would take that tracking to a whole new level.  Despite not having worn glasses since the fifth grade (long story), I'd be willing to get back in the groove and expand the human experience by being a Glass Explorer. However, given that only 8,000 invitations are going out to the most creative among us (living within reasonable travel distance to NY, LA or SanFran), I do not expect I would ever be a chosen one, so this will not be an application, rather just a collection of my thoughts on the subject.

By the way, what is wrong with mid-westerners or Texans, Google?  By omitting Chicago or Dallas as a city from which a person can pick up a Glass (you have to attend a special pick-up experience), you are omitting the heartland from this exercise.  I care only modestly what the coastal hipsters can dream up to do with these new fangled devices, but would love to see how real people in the middle of the country use them.  Is the point to record your skydiving adventures or to make life better for as many people as possible?

Things I would actually do with my Google Glass (for which I believe the functionality probably exists):

• Enjoy the view: I live outside of DC - there are a ton of places on and off of the beaten track that people should see.  Best choice is to go themselves, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that there are plenty of places I don't want to visit, but I'd love to see them (Moscow and Russia in general is on this list).  This is not an original thought, my first real thinking on the topic was done after I read this post on Marginal Revolution.  
• Run & Ride:  There are a lot of good trails near where I live.  I would like to share the trails at River Bend Park, Great Falls National Park, the Cross County Trail and other places with a wider audience in an easily produced sort of fashion.  Some can't run or ride, but should be able to explore nonetheless.
• Voice blog/track thoughts: as far as I can remember, I have some pretty good thoughts for blog posting or just ideas when I'm driving or otherwise in a position that I can't write things down.  I would love to collect these random thoughts simply.  "OK Glass, blog this for me:" and start rambling.  I would guess that I'd still want a keyboard and screen to help organize the thoughts later on, but initial gathering would be great.  Imagine yourself in the middle of a home-improvement project with lots of measurements to record/track.  Would be great to have them all recorded and retrieved with a few statements.
• Record my commute: better than a dashboard cam?  Probably not, but seems like it could serve the purpose without having to have a dedicated device.

Ways in which it would actually make my life better, if the functionality existed:

• Facial and voice recognition: I interact with several hundred people at other firms.  I can't keep track of them all.  How about an auto-facial/voice recognition mode that will fill me in on who I'm talking to without me having to say, "OK Glass, who is this joker and do I want to talk to them?"  Potentially also useful to other people with big families or politicians.  
• Food recognition: I am a fan of Lose It! to track my food intake.  How cool would it be if I could just put a credit card down on the table (for scale), take a picture of my meal and have the calories estimated?  Better still, record the meal in the background and process for the following: food calories, drink calories, appropriate number of chews per mouthful.  Provide feedback by meal, day or week.
• Workout/lift: I write down what I do every session that I work out.  My little dog-eared notebook is a relatively impenetrable database.  Why not record a workout and then process it down to its essentials: exercises performed, weights used, timing of each rep and set, heartrate through-out (bluetooth integration here?)?  The user could provide some guidance up front by inputting the plan and then speaking the exercise so that the processing is simplified.
• Little reminders: If it were near effortless, I'd love to be able to remind myself of certain things.  For instance, before I go to work tomorrow, remind me to bring my lunch.  I'd like to get this reminder as soon as I step into the garage tomorrow morning.  There is pretty much no way to make this happen with current technology, but if Glass was tracking where you were in your house at all times, this could be a reality.  Then, I would have no excuse for leaving without the right things.
• Track Daily Activities: I'm pretty good about flossing, brushing and washing my face.  Glass could be building up a database of things I normally do and remind me to do something when I leave it out of the routine.

Things I will not be doing with my Google Glass:

• Going to work:  Nope - I think that this will be a problem for almost everybody.  Nobody wants a potential recording device around in such an obvious way.  Yes, everybody's mobile phone can record conversations, even surreptitiously, but that isn't the primary purpose of such a device.  Given that the Google Glass is new, there will be concern.  Also, you'd love Google to be an additional searching tool, but in these litigious days, any of your work related materials can be "discoverable".  Do you want (or can your business tolerate) that?  Do you end up with work and personal Glasses?
• Sleeping: That would be seriously boring and pretty much useless.

P.S. I think that there will be some healthy debate over "Google Glasses" or "Google Glass".  But that could just be me and my cynical view of human language skills.

P.P.S. Imagine yourself leaving your house without your mobile phone today.  If you are anything like me you feel totally naked.  Imagine then a future state where you've been living with Google Glass for a year and you walk out of the house without them.  That would have to leave you feeling 10 times more naked than being without your phone.  Is this a good thing?

#ifihadglass

Fitbit - Thoughts a Month In

For those that know me, they know that I like to collect data about myself, my house and things around me (weather, etc.), but particularly about myself.  I have a Garmin GPS watch with a heart rate monitor and am disappointed that I could never get the foot pod to work and give me more information about my pace & stride.  When I saw the opportunity to get information not only about my daily activities, but my nightly activities, I jumped on it.

The Fitbit One is a small accelerometer/pedometer that has been enhanced in a number of very useful ways: it collects data all the time and is capable of transferring it via BlueTooth to your computer or to your iPhone and then synch with the Fitbit website.  It tracks your steps, your stairs climbed (rounded to the nearest flight) and your sleep.  Its as easy as hooking it onto your pants (or bra) and wearing it.  Very easy to use.

Fitbit has taken this One Step Beyond (maybe two) by doing the following things:

• Integrating a wi-fi scale/body fat measurement device called the Aria that synchronizes with the same data.  Pretty sweet.
• Allowing the user to track calories in via food intake.

Overall, I very much like the product and plan on using it for the long haul.  I've been happy to see it making in-roads amongst other nerds and believe Fitbit could have a good future in front of it.  I had a business lunch recently and three of the nerdier ones (myself proudly included in that group) were wearing their Fitbits and all were enthusiasts.  Keep that last comment in mind as you read the below comments, but I would definitely recommend you doing your homework and learning about the product before taking the plunge (but you'll probably want to take the plunge).

Here are my initial thoughts on the positives:

• Easy to get started: It took me only a few minutes to be up and running with my Fitbit.
• No continuing fees: The website is supported by your purchase of the device.  It costs nothing to keep using it.  Though I haven't looked into it, Fitbit appears to be looking for ways to add premium features (like coaching) to the website that would require an on-going payment.  I like the model, as long as it is successful and they don't start requiring me to pay for access (if I don't find the premium features worth the cost).
• Easy to keep it on:  I've been wearing it for over a month and have very rarely forgotten to make sure it's on.  Slight downside that one does have to keep track of one more thing.  My standard check before I leave the house (for phone, wallet, keys, watch) now includes Fitbit.  Not difficult addition to make to the routine.  The wrist band for use during sleep is comfortable and easy to use, as well.
• Well laid out website:  Fitbit's website is mostly easily navigated and you can get to where you want to be quickly.  Body measurements are buried a little bit far, but it does make some sense that they are 
• Long battery life: I charge maybe once per week and there still seems to be a fair amount of juice in the Fitbit.
• Excellent application integration:  Fitbit has some real potential for an eco-system to develop around it.  There are a number of applications available - my favorite part is that Lose It! calorie data can by synch'ed.  Lose It! is my favorite app for easily entering meals and then entering them again in the future.  I'm a creature of habit.  My breakfasts and lunches rarely change too much.
• Can "invite" lots of people to the scale: You get seven invitations for people that can be users of the scale and set up a free Fitbit account to track their body fat and weight.
• Can track other both measurements:  Specifically measurements that matter to me: blood pressure, pulse, and various size measurements (chest, hips, thighs, biceps, forearms, etc.).

Here are my initial thoughts on the negatives:

• Sleep monitoring is very flakey:  The bottom line here is that I don't much trust the sleep monitoring results.  I sleep pretty soundly most of the time and the most useful aspect of the sleep tracking for me will be just the total amount of time asleep.  My wife does not sleep soundly.  She had a night this week where she couldn't sleep for hours - until well after 2am and the Fitbit claimed she slept the whole time.  Gave her a 90% sleep efficiency score.  Not at all realistic.  Also problematic, there is no way to provide Fitbit feedback on this to help them improve.  Perhaps this is just a really hard problem?  [Note that there is a "sensitive" option for sleep tracking, that I just found when poking around the website.  I will use this and see if my results seem more reasonable.]
• Built-in food/calorie tracking is lacking:  I have found it not nearly as convenient/easy to log food and meals on Fitibit as compared to Lose It!  Not a fatal flaw given the comment about the app environment above.
• Would prefer more customizability of the dashboard: From what I can tell, I have no ability to change what I see as a default.  For instance, I don't care so much what my weight is right now, I care more about my body fat percentage.  Perhaps I'm deluding myself that it could happen at my age, but I do lift regularly and would have no problem if my weight stayed constant or went up if my body fat was decreasing at the same time.  It would mean that I was just that much more "buff".
• More flexibility in presenting data, generally:  Allow the users to build graphs that matter to them.  The interface should allow both x-y scatter plots as well as temporal graphs.
• Lack of transparency in body fat calculations:  Fitbit only provides a number (would it be hard to provide a "Learn More" link that they goes into the nuance -- only those that are interested will follow it and you won't confuse those who don't care?).   What they don't provide you with is any sort of perspective on what information they are or are not using.  From what I can tell, they have to be using gender, but beyond that, its not clear if they are using age or height or other body measurements.  They also don't provide you with any guidance as to your confidence interval around the measurement (i.e., what is the 5th percentile to 95 percentile range that your body fat could be given that the statistical relationships are not super strong).  See here for some initial introduction to Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA).  All that said, BIA is supposed to be useful in tracking an individual's body fat over a period of time.  Just try to be as consistent as possible in when and how you take your measurements.  I wake up, pee and then weigh.  Hopefully, I'm not over of under-hydrated and I should get a good day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month view of my body fat.  
• Give me direct access to my data: Not through some data vault that Microsoft has developed, but via XML and CSV.  Perhaps this will come over time?  Seems pretty important for me to have long-term confidence in Fitbit.
• Can't wear it in the shower:  Not really serious.

Obviously there are aspects of the Fitbit that I can't comment on (yet):

• Durability: I've only had it for a month.  Haven't dropped it from any height or seen it withstand something impressive.
• Battery life over the long term:  Off to a good start as noted above, but its long-term usability will depend heavily on long battery life.  I don't need something else to charge in everyday.

Areas where I would like Fitbit to improve (not explicitly or implicitly noted above):

• Recognizing what you are doing automatically:  I went skiing with my Fitbit.  It seems to me that Fitbit ought to start asking you if you are skiing if it has tell-tale signs.  These signs should easily crunched out of Fitbit's own data given that presumably thousands of users are logging their activities and Fitbit has their accelerometer data for these periods of time.
• Improve on the silly badges: I don't have great suggestions here, but it would seem like they could come up with some more meaningful badges than what they have.  Perhaps a little fun and silliness is all that they should be, but if so, let me turn them off.  Perhaps what they should really do is allow users to create badges that can be shared by the others in the community.  I'd be interested to see what other people find noteworthy about their health.
• Allow for more nuanced goals: I'd like to maintain a certain minimum percentage of my day that is non-sedentary.  This goal is probably best viewed on a rolling average basis (maybe two or three day average), but matters more to me than just a one day value.
• Improve alarm features: I'd like to have the Fitbit One buzz when I've been sedentary for a particular period of time.  I spend a lot of time in front of my computer at work five days a week.  It'd be good to know when I should think about stretching my legs and doing a lap around the office.  Fortunately, this seems like it can be dealt with solely by software (so we may see this improve).  This may be asking a bit much, but would iCal integration be that hard?

What do you think Fitbit needs to do better?  I plan on doing a follow-up post six or so months in to let you know what my thoughts are then.  Maybe Fitbit will have added some of above requests?

Dead Apple TV

I have had an Apple TV since there was one (spring 2007, for the curious).  Thought it would be a cool device to rent movies on the fly with.  It has served that purpose, and pretty much only that purpose since I've bought it.  I considered myself reasonably happy with the purchase (but not extremely so).

It died tonight as evidenced from my failed attempts to purchase Looper and watch it.  At first, I thought it might have something to do with the HDMI going through my receiver, but after isolating that issue, it became obvious that it was just the Apple TV screwing up.  My son googled the issue and within seconds declared that it was a video card issue.  Oh well.  Its dead and their probably won't be another one in the house in the future.

Update 2013-02-24:  After looking at my options, I decided to replace the Apple TV with a Roku 2 XD.  The content options look better on Roku than Apple TV - the former really only having one option (iTunes) from which to rent movies.  While not a terrible choice, it seems a bit limiting.  Worst case scenario, Amazon has the same movie set (from what my limited research indicates) available for $0.01 less.  Not a huge discount, but there will be options.

A TV for the Woman or Man Who Has Everything

Forget 4k!  Ultra HD is so yesterday.  Sure, you may have 8 megapixels, but can you watch Skyfall outside?  On the grounds of your mansion?

While I still half think that this is a big prank, a friend showed me one of their videos yesterday.  They at least have a cool website.  No prices listed.  If you are in need of a 201" outdoor TV, please check out their website.

Finally FiOS

Back a fair while ago, I posted about why I wasn't going to get FiOS.  It was largely a price comparison where the end price would be similar to what I was paying Cox and the internet speeds not "crazy fast".  The FiOS speeds I was looking at were 25 Mbps down / 15 Mbps up.  Last week I signed up for FiOS.

A few things changed:

1. My interest in higher speeds has gone up.  We have two teenage boys that can be bandwidth hogs when playing games.  We have "high speed with Turbo Boost" which is "up to" 20 Mbps down, 2.5 Mbps up.  
2. Our internet service with Cox hasn't been awesome.  We have never achieved the maximum and only rarely are close (around 15).  Usually we are well under 10 Mbps with times where we are seeing 3 Mbps.  With four or five of us trying to doing things on our computers and watch a streaming Netflix movie, that is a problem.
3. Our TV service with Cox hasn't been awesome.  We still have shows that we've DVR not record properly because the digital signal has been insufficient.  We've called Cox (and they've come out to fix it) to no avail.  At some point you just stop trying. 
4. FiOS has made much faster internet available for only modestly more a month.  75 Mbps down / 35 Mbps up can be had for $15 over the basic 25/15.
5. I've decided that we don't really need TV service, except for our main TV and the TV in the master bedroom.  One of the chief downsides of FiOS is that you have to pay per month per box to decode.
6. FiOS is offering a multi-room HD DVR, Cox is not (at least not to me).
7. I've been notified several times that I've gone above my "acceptable" level of network traffic for a Cox user and that the next step would be for them to force me to buy a more expensive level of service.

Since my last post, our service with Cox has gone up to roughly $150/month (from roughly $137).  I spent an hour this past weekend figuring out if I could make it work.  My son (Andrew) was standing over my shoulder cheerleading for the 75 Mbps service, which explains why I went so big.  In the end, I don't think I'm going to save any money (assuming the taxes are in line), but I will get a broader TV lineup and much, much, much faster internet.  Let's hope my ping is as good as Cox's has been.  Otherwise, our gaming experience (no matter the speed) will not be very pleasant.

To point 7 above, I realize that I may have an issue with Verizon in the future.  They do have this gem in their FiOS terms of service:

The following are examples of conduct which may lead to termination of your Service. Without limiting the general policy in Section 1, it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to: (a) ... (i) generate excessive amounts of email or other Internet traffic;

Not ideal, but I think that is better than the already explicit "soft cap" that Cox has in place.

I will post about my installation experience, as well.  I'm a bit worried about how smoothly it will (i.e., whether they will do a reasonable install without doing stupid things in my garage or on the outside of my house).

Robots are taking over?

[Under Construction - but I've run out of steam - will get back to it when I get more - steam]

Recently, Wired published a story about robots taking over the workforce. I really don't see that happening quickly, though I would like to capture my thoughts about things that I would like to automate for me.

One thought at the start is that I think these tasks that I'm seeking to be done are all part of normal life.  Everybody (more or less) has to tackle them.  I also consider all of them, "work".  As in, they are things that we have to do, but don't seem particularly enjoyable.

The tasks are also repetitive and thus warrant some amount of specialization and I talk about each of them in that context.  If these specialized 'bots will exist in the next 5 or 10 years, I don't see the generalized 'bots coming for another decade.  But I'm probably optimistic on both fronts by about a decade.  This goes back to the adage about forecasting: we tend to over-forecast short-term change and under-forecast long term change.

Here are my separate categories.  I'm definitely open to additions from anybody out there that stumbles on this post.

1. Driverless Car: Yes, I would like to sit in the backseat.  And have it automatically valet my vehicle (that includes paying the garage fees, if any).  I don't know what I'm going to do that is productive when I'm commuting in the back seat, but it would still be awesome.  Long trips would be even better.  This sure wasn't me when I was younger and saw driving as a path to freedom.  Now, it's just a chore.
2. Home Organization/Cleaning: a broad category, yes.  Here are the subtopics:
1. Pantry: Combination of inventory management and organization.  Ideal situation would be that it would stock, reorganize and order more whenever a stock-out occurs.  For this to happen, the device would have to be able to continuously scan present items (I wouldn't restrict access to the pantry to the robot) and know how to order more.  This wouldn't be literally limited to a pantry, but over-counter cabinets, as well.  Lots of flexibility necessary for this one.  Would need the flexibility to recognize items in the pantry that it didn't put in there (even asking the owner what an item is if it doesn't recognize it).  Should also be able to respond to fetch commands.
2. Refrigerator:  Same as pantry, except with refrigerated items.  Should also clean/disinfect regularly.
3. Closet/Laundry: Collect, load, clean, unload, dry, collect, fold, stack and arrange.  Super complex and varied set of skills.
4. Kitchen: Clean counters, floors, tables.  Load dishwasher.  Dispose of food.
5. Bathroom: Mostly looking for cleaning skills here. Who wants to have to clean their own toilet?  Floor, shower and sink cleaning would be nice additions.
6. Trash/Recycle-ables: Remove trash from all trash receptacles around the house (but primarily the kitchen), put into a larger trash bin outside and replace the bag.  For bonus points, it should take the garbage cans to the street at the right time(s) of the week.  I think that the receptacles would have to be redesigned to make this an easy activity for a machine.
3. Cooking: Not in a huge hurry for this one.  I don't mind cooking (what I do of it, mostly grilling) and my wife likes to cook.  Its the cleaning up, mentioned above, that we really don't get any satisfaction out of.
4. Yard Maintenance:
1. Lawn: Yep - something like this.  There was an article recently (in the Financial Times, I think, but I couldn't find it when I looked) about lawn robots that suggested a couple of interesting things: (a) Europe is in the lead because lawn services are more expensive due to higher labor costs and (b) when people have reliable systems they are often used to cut the lawn daily instead of weekly.  They machines are battery based, and will cut within a defined geography without any human intervention.
2. Pruning/Bush Management: Complex.  Trim my bushes.  But it would be awesome.  Tree pruning is a reasonably infrequent and probably very difficult due to the heights.  
3. Fertilization/Watering: This could be a simple means of depositing some fertilizer on the tail end of the lawn robot's activities.  Simple task.  More interesting would be for the system to know how much water and fertilizer to deposit based on an array of sensors around the yard.  
4. Weed Control: How cool would it be if you were able to plant what you wanted and then not have to worry about weeding through the entire growing season?  If we can mow lawn, presumably we could get a smaller device that would work around delicate flowers or herbs or vegetable garden.  If it could also patrol the garden for deer and rabbits, that would be pretty kick ass.
5. Debris Management:  We get a lot of sticks and branches that fall from mature trees onto our yard.  I'd love our lawn to be thoroughly scoured of this after every big storm or at least every couple of weeks.  Some of this happens now just from a large lawn mower blade chopping up small branches.  Pretty sure that the lawn 'bots aren't  to be quite this big (at present).  When they are, this is probably just an infrequent activity that I still have to do in person.
5. Pool Maintenance: So, we already have some form of "pool robot" that we use to clean the bottom of the pool.  Our Polaris has no intelligence but is still useful.  I'd like something that knows when its done and turns itself off (potentially climbs out of the pool and then turns off the auxiliary pump).  Some better designed pool equipment would be important, too.  Here are a couple of thoughts: (a) Pool filters should automatically back flush when they need to be (I can't believe that this isn't the case already) and (b) skimmer baskets should be designed to automatically empty.  I don't see an easy way for this to work in their current configuration, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be changed.

Eat What You Want!

I can't help but pass along a link I saw today about a fantastic idea (not totally serious) to hook up a tube to ones stomach to immediately remove some of that high calorie food that one has ingested.  The article was linked from Marginal Revolution (one of my favorite blogs to follow).  The link is here.  As the brief article describes, there are some complications with its use.  In addition to a massive ick factor.  That said, it seems to be much better than forcing oneself to throw up (my least favorite biological activity of all time).  I guess you get to enjoy all the benefits of the tasty food and indulgence without any of the negative consequences.

It is similar, but perhaps more direct, than an idea that I've been espousing for the last few years: a device that one would hook up at night that would filter or otherwise remove excess fat or sugars in ones blood (similar to a plasma machine, but presumably, much simpler/costly).  If human fat were of any economic value, this idea would be money.

Or as it turns out, there is some value in people not being ridiculously obese.  Maybe some day under our new "affordable care" regime, people above a certain BMI will be forced to wear one of these devices.

What to track?

In The Island, each of the clones are cared for and tracked extensively by computer systems to ensure their healthy existence and usefulness as source material for the human that was cloned.  Though a disturbing premise, it does make me think about what we could do for ourselves now to better track our fitness and daily health.  Some things exist now - others, not so much.  Here's what I think the world needs:

1. Pulse Rate and Blood Pressure monitoring: this is an oldie but goodie.  Trouble with this is doing it consistently when its a separate activity.  Not likely to happen.  [Added: As Scott pointed out, Respiratory Rate should also be part of a complete picture here.  Unfortunately, there are no current tools that I know of to capture this - pulse is apparently an easier "on the go" measurement to take.  I'd rather not wear a face mask when riding.] 
2. Disolved Oxygen Levels: I just bought a handy finger tip device to measure this (along with pulse).  Great little device, but not connected to anything.
3. Urine Monitor: I haven't thought too much about this one, but it seems like a relatively easy thing to monitor.  Hang a device off the side of your toilet and it should be able to read some measure of the chemistry in the bowl before and after your deposit.  Somewhat gross, but I think that the results would be fascinating and useful.  Would have to have a means of distinguishing the depositor and transmitting the results.
4. Motion and Skin Moistness Monitor: I that this has been done (a la fitbit - for the motion part, which appears to be way better than Philips DirectLife; but Body Media Fit Link), but perhaps beyond acceleration and skin moisture content.  Add to it the following: temperature, blood pressure, oxygen and pulse levels could be recorded (all of the time)?  It would be great to be able to see how your body's metrics change as you: start your day, eat lunch, meet with stressful clients, start your workout, sleep.  Also, it would seem to be useful to provide alarms or silent vibrations when you've been sedentary for too long (like now while I try to collect my thoughts for this post).  This would be fantastic for an office worker such as myself.  I think form factor and ease of use will be the key here.
5. Weight: obvious one, I think.  Data preservation should take into account time of day, though.
6. Body fat measurement: handheld device to measure directly the fat in your body (or at least inferred through electrical resistance).  Likely related, but not perfectly, to weight.  The fitbit wi-fi scale looks like it does a good integrating this and weight (and makes it easy to track).
7. Waistline/neck/thigh: simple measurement, maybe, but I think that there should be more consistency - there must be a way to do it the same every time?  Digital measuring tapes and calipers could also be solutions here.
8. Sleep Monitoring: part of what the fitbit offers, but I'm not sure how much useful information it provides.  Should take some user input on when you've first laid down (though maybe this is obvious from the motion, or lack thereof).
9. Food Intake Monitoring: Aside from forcing people to record what they eat, I'm not sure what to do here.  I've done this over a couple of month period and it turns out to be reasonably hard to keep up with.  Need to find a way to make it easier.  How about taking a picture of what you are eating and the software figures out what you are eating and estimates how much of each thing?  Probably stupidly complex to make work well, but would be pretty sweet.

Design Principals:

1. Data preservation: all measurements are kept and timestamped
2. Data connectivity: all devices instantly pass along their measurements to a data preservation capable device (and ultimately send the data to the cloud).
3. Data ownership: all data should be available in a way that the user can easily manipulate on their own (CSV is probably the least common denominator).
4. Personalization of data presentation: different people are going to care about different things.  Let them customize the view.  That said . . .
5. Give guidance on what matters: Make sure that people know what types of things that they should be looking at.  Why does it matter?  What studies support the view?  How can they make small changes in their behavior to improve their health / outcomes?
6. Encourage the user to meet goals: goals should be chosen by the user and encouragement tailored to their interests - text message alerts/reminders/pick-me-ups and email summaries of progress would be fantastic approaches (and have already proven effective in studies on quitting smoking).  fitbit badges, etc. seem to be an OK start - but not quite the same.

A New Bulb

The only lightbulb on the outside of the house that was not an LED was the CFL that was lighting the stone chimney that is on the front of the house.  It was a CFL because I didn't have any LED's that fit in the light fixture.  Well, that bulb is dead.  I'm not sure that I should be surprised, but it was annoying giving that it is the only bulb on the outside of the house that requires the aluminum extension ladder to get to.  Fortunately, I combined changing this bulb with hanging the icicle lights, so it wasn't too much extra effort.  Let's hope that this bulb lasts for its rated lifetime of 30,000 hours!  (that would be roughly 8 years)

Is that a speaker or a light?

I saw the IAV Light Speaker yesterday in an email from SmartHome. Pretty cool concept: a virtually hassle-free installation for wireless speakers. I haven't seen any reviews to know if they are worth anything (but would be willing to test them out for the manufacturer if they asked). Immediately, though, here are some problems (IMHO) with their approach:

1. They are wireless, but the website doesn't have any information about the wireless technology (or even band) that is used. There is some information on this HomeToys press release-like article. But that is just enough to be concerned about wifi interference.
2. Its not clear that the speaker and the LED components are modular. What if one dies and the other still works? This seems like a problem.
3. High price - seriously, $200/speaker of unknown sound quality? $800 just to get started. Nope. No matter what you save in installation, this will be too high a barrier to most. Get it down to $100 for the base station and $100/speaker and I think you have something.
4. No digital audio in option. It seems that this would have been easier (and a path of lower sound quality degradation) than their approach. So it goes from Analog at base station input toDigital for wireless transmission (presumably?) to Analog to be played by the speaker. Why not skip the first A/D conversion?

Still, a pretty cool concept that has some serious potential use in my house full of recessed lights!

The New Hue: Review of the Philips Hue

A friend recently shot me a quick email asking if I was planning on getting the Philips Hue, noting that it was currently for sale at the Apple Store. I had never heard of it, so I had no immediate answer.  It didn't take long to convince me; after checking out the product for a couple of minutes, I placed my order and then went off to Mexico for a planned vacation.

This was very much of the same concept that I had laid out in a blog post four years ago. I was pretty excited to see the product in a commercial form. The Hue arrived yesterday, right after I got back from my trip; I had to open it right away (while eating dinner). Check out this (much more complete) review on Geek.com if you are interested in an alternative perspective.

 In the box

• 3 "connected" lightbulbs
• Zigbee hub
• Power adapter for zigbee hub
• Ethernet cable

Out of the box

Super easy setup, especially for how I was planning on using it. My plan was to put the three lightbulbs in the overhead light above our couch. One idea was that it could dim to red while watching a movie to provide a bit of light ("movie mode"), but not be disturbing our eyes to watch the movie (our son constantly complains if we have the lights on during a movie or TV show). This light is not far from my main 24-port ethernet switch (which still has roughly half its ports available). I followed the instructions on the box:

1. Screwed the lightbulbs in
2. Turned the lightbulbs on
3. Plugged in the zigbee hub (both ethernet and power)
4. Downloaded the free Hue app for my iPhone
5. Fired up Hue and began to play around

First Impressions 

When I turned the light switch on, the bulbs lit up. So far so good. After connecting the Zigbee hub and loading the Hue app, the app directed me to push the button on the hub. I didn't get a great "click" sensation from doing so, but soon the app was off and running finding the light bulbs. I was then given a series of lighting "scenes" that I could adjust the lights to. It was pretty cool to mess around with them and they all seemed like their names suggested.

Movie Mode 

Getting the lights in to movie mode took some tinkering with the app. Finally, I ended up using the feature to set the color to that of a portion of a picture (forcing me to find a picture in my photo library with a nice solid red). This worked except for the bulbs were a bit bright. After more messing around, I was able to control the bulbs from the brightness / tone configuration screen. There was no solid confirmation that my changes had been saved, but apparently when any change is made, it is kept.

Turning the lights off

When I was done watching MNF, I turned off the lights and left the room. But at the back of my mind, I was wondering what would happen the next time the lights were turned on. Fortunately, what I consider the "right thing" happened: they turned on to be normal white light bulbs. I like the flexibility that they will do funky stuff when you direct them to, but otherwise will just be normal lightbulbs. You don't need to always use your iPhone just to turn on the lights (that would be supremely annoying).

Brief Comment on the Technology 

The bulbs communicate to the hub via Zigbee. Zigbee is based on a mesh network concept that should mean that every additional bulb expands the reach of the network. Unfortunately from what I've read, Zigbee implementations tend to be proprietary and thus you won't be able to control this from a MiCasa Verde Vera or other home controller without a special extension package. [Aside: this could be simpler than I'm suggesting depending on whether the Philips Zigbee hub has a nice API to interface with it.  I would have signed up to be a developer to know more, but apparently they are still "developing for developers"]  The Zigbee hub connects via wired ethernet (potentially a problem for your setup) to the rest of your home network (including your WiFi). Your phone connects via 802.11whatever to your WiFi router. My setup certainly does not test the bounds of possibilities here - the Zigbee hub was placed within 10 feet from the light fixture. Thus, I don't have anything useful to say about practical distance limitations for this setup.

One Step Beyond

First, some thoughts on my setup and then some criticisms. I have three bulbs in an overhead fixture. To the left and right of the TV there are four recessed lights for PAR 20s (two on each side) that the Philips Hue bulbs will fit in. At some point, I will spring to replace all of them to complete the room mood. Unfortunately, at the current price point, its going to be hard for me to do this. It would cost $60 x 4 = $240 just to finalize this. Ouch. For now, the Phillips Hue is just a fun toy. Someday, maybe more than that.

Improvements

It looks like Philips is towing the Open Source line for the moment. They are looking for developers to extend the Hue setup. Hopefully, the developers will add these capabilities soon:

• Party Mode: Dance to the music. Seriously would have made for some cool commercials. Not sure what they were thinking by leaving it out. That said, how complex would this be? Could AirFoil/AirPlay be used (using an iPhone as a receiving speaker with an App running to convert the music to light pulses)?
• Grouping of bulbs: Perhaps there are a few interface features that I'm not aware of, but it seems like it'd be difficult to have too many bulbs distributed through 
• Power meter: should be a trivial addition for the app to tell you instantaneously how much power the light bulb(s) is(are) using based on the current light settings.
• Room mapping (real scenes) and programming: It would be cool to be able to create more complex scenes that would be based on both interaction of paint color and a transitioning scene. Simple ideas would be to have a strobe effect (I have three bulbs in a circle on the overhead light) or a wave washing across a room (from left to right) or circling the room. Fancier still might be to have light patterns that could mess with your mind. I can see some OK Go!-like videos in the future here.
• Web-based (remote) control (oops - looks like this already exists - should have poked around the Philips Hue website a bit more.
• Different bulb shapes (this is supposedly in the works).

Automation of a Garage Door

I was inspired by this video that I saw on YouTube a while back to both automate my garage door opener and to also install a position sensor. I finally got off my butt today to get the project done. All of the purchases had been previously made, and I was pretty sure that I had the appropriate tools.

Equipment List:

• Already installed garage door opener
• Radio Shack Relay (125VAC/10A DPDT Plug-In Relay)
• Radio Shack Quick Crimp-On Disconnects (found here)
• GE 45604 Z-Wave Technology Outdoor Module for Lighting Control (at Amazon)
• Two prong extension chord (to be sacrificed).

Process:

1. Wire up the relay to the extension cord providing power to the relay.  Specifically, cutting off the extension cord and then using the end with the prongs.  I've never wired up a relay - so this was a first to me.  I used simple wire strippers and cut the wires such that they would fit into the quick disconnects.  I crimped them using my wire strippers.  
2. Wire up the relay to a blank section of the extension cord (just using some of the wire).  Added crimps on the end to be connected to the relay and left the end to be wired to the door opener stripped but bare wire.
3. Here's what it should look like when all done:
   
4. Add the Z-wave Outdoor Module to my MiCasa Verde.  I did this by plugging it in near the Vera, turning it on and having it add it.  I referred to it as Garage Door Opener.
5. Take everything to the garage and plug it all in.  This involves wiring the stripped end of the extension cord to the same wiring terminal as the existing switch and remote control. This is what it looked like for me when it was all done. Note that the Z-wave switch and the relay were just sitting on top of the garage door opener (hopefully things don't move around enough to warrant zip ties).
   
6. Add a scene to MiCasa Verde called "Garage Door" to turn on the switch and then turn it off in 5 seconds (the shortest amount of time possible).

Note: The wiring of the relay should be pretty straightforward.  The one I had, there was a simple wiring diagram on the back of it showing the state of the relay when it was open (off).

[Update 2013-12-16]
To add a little bit of clarity to exactly what I am doing with the relay here are some additional pictures and some explanation:

My relay was set up like this; the diagram depicts the configuration of the pins when the power is off.  When power is switched on, the link between 2 and 6 or 1 and 5 flips to 4 and 6 or 3 and 5.  This is essential to trigger the garage door, which needs a circuit to close for a brief moment (that is what your normal garage door switch is doing).

A little bit hard to tell here, but the power outlet from the Z-wave controller (the two white wires with the blue warning label around it) are plugged into the 7 and 8 poles.  The garage door opener is connected to poles 4 & 6 (normally open to one another, but when the relay is active, closed).

Another view from the business side of the relay; here you can see the numbers clearly on the left side of the relay (not used).

[End Update]

After it is installed, you may want to ensure that your previous means of raising and lowering the garage door still work (remotes, hard-wired All set.  Assuming the relay is wired correctly, when the scene is run you are good to go.

Bonus Round

I also and almost primarily wanted to know whether the garage door was up or down.  To do that, I needed an window or door sensor.  I chose an EverSpring Z-Wave Door / Window Sensor.  Prior to going to the garage, I added the sensor to the MiCasa Verde.

It turned out to be pretty easy to physically install, the key was finding a spot where I could keep the gap between the sensor to a minimum (less than 40mm) that was added to the door and the portion screwed in to the garage door frame. For me, this required adding a door shim behind the sensor to make sure it was close enough to the magnet in the traveling sensor. After final installation, it looks like the following:

After a few test runs making sure that there was no interference and that the MiCasa Verde was reading the position properly, I declared victory. Victory may be premature - my guess is that this setup may have issues in the cold - there is an air gap at the top of the garage door that might hamper the batteries in the sensor. We'll have to wait and see if that is the case, though. A 4.5V DC power supply could be brought to bear if need be.

Finally, I see the following in the room "Garage Door":

Spectrum wants to be Free!

In the winter of 2000, I came down to Fairfax to do an "externship" at AMS during what MIT calls its Independent Activities Period (or IAP for short).  While I was there, I ran into a guy who wrote a paper in his undergraduate time at MIT about sharing spectrum - ultimately arguing that nothing should be licensed and we'd be much better off with freeing spectrum.  Then, yesterday, I ran across this article in the NY Times that is essentially talking about doing something similar, but in a much orderly fashion, involving registration, but sharing a lot of government spectrum.  If this all pans out - it would free up an amazing amount of spectrum and free up a lot of data bandwidth.

Simplest technology the best?

I went on a 20 mile bike ride today, but didn't bring any water with me.  Great ride, but I was pretty thirsty when it was over.  No worries, there was a McDonalds on my way home.  I went in, bought a large soda and got a cup for water.  That is when the problems started.

First, the water dispenser wasn't working.  Then, the Diet Coke that came out of was so thick with syrup that it was kinda gross.  And I had so been looking forward to the drink.  Why, I immediately wondered, couldn't I mix the amount of syrup that I wanted?

If you've been to Elevation Burger or BGR recently, you've seen some fancy touch screen soda dispensers.  They are fancy and have endless selection.  Diet Coke with some orage splashed in, no problem!  Anything.  But getting the mix of soda water to syrup down requires you to navigate several menu screens to get to just soda water.  It does the trick.

But not really as well as the old school machines that on the Sprite have a simple lever (akin to the water lever that typically sits next to the lemonade dispenser) that says Soda and as the name suggests, just dispenses soda.  What a simple and wonderful solution to the problem.  Infinite choice in a very simple package.

Outdoor Lighting Quest

This probably should have been something that I did the first week we moved in here, but I have finally gotten to the point that every outdoor light works and is functioning. Here is the finished product:

The front (from a vantage point around the middle of the front yard)


The back We have heard that lighting is one of the keys for good home security - more important than a fancy system. This was told to us by somebody who sells these systems for a living (and owns his own company). I finally decided I should make this happen.

The road to get there was not trivial and involved learning that we had more lights than we thought. Specifically, we didn't realize until recently that the main outdoor light fixtures had elements pointing in the upward direction. Makes sense given how tall the light fixtures are, but we just didn't know. Also, we didn't know that there was a light facing downward on the chimney. All news to us.

Now for some LED fun. If we lit all of the lights in the front of the house with incandescent bulbs, we'd be burning close to a full kilowatt - or 910 watts. This assumes that each of the fixtures would have a 65 watt bulb, which is reasonable for the PAR 38s. So if we were to leave the lights on an average of 10 hours a night, it would cost us $365.37 per year to light up the front of the house at a rate of $0.11/kWh (roughly our current rate). With the LEDs (and one CFL, cause the LED wouldn't fit in that space), we are burning only 243.5 watts. As a result, we will be saving $267.60 per year on electricity costs. However, the bulbs do cost more.

A cheap set of 65 watt PAR 38 lightbulbs costs $2 each. So for our 14 lightbulbs, lets assume a baseline price of $28, which would probably have to be replace every other year. I recently bought the PAR 38 LEDs at Costco for $36.99 (12 in use) and a PAR 30 for $29.99 (one in use) and the CFL (one in use - about $7). The total cost for the LED arrangement is a lot. Without going into too much more detail in words, see below:


The one aspect that the above chart ignores is the cost of changing lightbulbs. Though my labor in actual terms is free, I'd like to believe that my time has some non-zero value. The LEDs should last somewhere in the range of 7 years, while its unlikely that the incandescent bulbs will last more than two. In fact, the LED's should never burn out totally - their end of life is defined by only outputting 50% of their original brightness due to a degradation of the phosphorus, which happens due to the heat). That said, I don't know how these bulbs will perform outdoors. There will very cold days, where its not likely that the bulbs will heat appreciably at all and other summer nights where they will be hot. All that said, not having to think about these bulbs for the next seven years is probably worth another couple hundred dollars (even if only $30 per year -- that's still $210). I know that this is one of the drivers of adoption of LEDs for businesses - and I think it definitely factors into my thinking, too.

Finally, here are some pictures about the process for getting everything set up:


This is the "new" light


Its actually a long ways up there; this is the view from the bottom


And from the side


I was also replacing a bulb here - note the bottle of water placed on the top to help disuade any birds from building nests there, which is what happened last year. The birds crapped all over the porch and generally made a mess of things. Not terribly awesome - we were hoping to avoid it for the future - and are looking for a more permanent solution.

Ultimately, the front and rear house lights are going to be controlled by my Mi Casa Verde system that I purchased a while back, but have no hardware running on. As soon as I figure out just what types of switches I have (2-way versus 3-way, etc.) and which ones will work from a systems integration perspective.

You Ain't Got a Thing if You Ain't Got that Ping

I have been testing a Verizon Pantech 4G LTE device for work. Basically, to ensure that it delivers 3G performance as good as our current devices and a solid 4G performance when that is available. Andrew suggested that I run a speedtest.net test on it and compare it to our Cox cable internet service. The results are not that impressive . . . for Cox. Here are the comparison points:


Cox


Verizon

You will note that the ping on the Verizon card is pretty bad and that could very negatively impact gaming performance. That said, its individual performance exceeds that of my cable internet service. Go Cox!

The one very important aspect that the above test doesn't address is the amount of bandwidth one gets for your service level. In fact, try to find it here:

Its not there for Cox. Wonderful. So what are the limits? You can chat with a live representative and get an answer:

So then, what are they for Verizon 4G LTE? If this story is correct, they are 4GB for $30/month, 10 GB for $50 and 20 GB for $80. Not awesome. Especially when a single download (Mac OSX Lion) can be 4 GB. Or an HD movie can be a couple of GB.

For now, it looks like sticking with a wireline makes the most sense, but only from a data cap perspective.

Nesting

I decided to take the plunge and purchase some Nest thermostats when I read some of the early press about them. You couldn't actually buy one at the time, all you could do was put your name on a list to get them first when they became available. I did so and then waited.

My motivation was pretty simple: I wanted something that was easy to program and internet accessible. In fact, the joy of a "self learning" system wasn't one of my primary motivating factors. The interface for the Nest looked good and my understanding was that it should fulfill my other wants - so I went ahead despite the reasonably high $250/unit starter cost. If I really could schedule easily, I could easily save the purchase price in a couple of years. Despite the fact that we had two programmable units in the house, I found their interfaces to pretty much be impenetrable and, for the most part left them unprogrammed.

On February 14, I got a message saying that I could order my Nest. But, "Click below to order, but please note that you can only order once using this personal reservation page." So I decided to take the plunge and ordered two - one for the upstairs systems and one for the downstairs. They shipped within two days and were here quickly - it was just a matter of me finding a few hours to install them and configure.

The installation was not difficult and the materials provided were well thought out. They even include a screw driver with interchangeable heads to allow you to easily unscrew pretty much anything that you'd encounter. There were also nice little (blue) stickers that you could use to label each of the wires positions before undoing anything; this should ensure that you don't mess anything up.

Despite all of the good documentation, there was a cryptic note about not having to jumper the Rc and the Rh (both red) lines together. It wasn't clear if I needed to attach one of them or both, if they were separate wires. I eventually concluded that there is only one red control line coming from the furnace and just connected it to the easiest place on the nest panel.

One of the more painful parts of installing the Nest is finding a part of our wall that wasn't chewed up with past thermostat installations. It would appear that they have been replaced multiple times. Strategically choosing a good position took the most amount of time in both cases (and even worse when I had to pull off the Nest upstairs after the first time due to one of the wires not being connected well).

Here are all of the install pictures:


So downstairs, I was starting with a pretty old Honeywell control unit - this was the starting point for the downstairs thermostat - not sure of the vintage


The old on the floor - with the new


Wires all labeled


Connected to the Nest mounting panel - conveniently with a built-in level


Mounted!


Mounted - upstairs!

After all of the wires were connected, you simply pop the eyeball (in Christa's words) on. It will want to connect to your wireless network, so the first step is to put in your password. After that, it updates to the most recent software level (the one downstairs did this several times before it was done - the one upstairs, just once). After that you can begin the setup; the first step is to show you which wires it thinks are connected. It does this in an incredible simple visual way, making sure that there is no question about whether its done right.


The rest of the setup to do on the machine is a breeze. The fun part comes when you sign up for a nest.com account. When you do, it recognizes the thermostat on your local network and you are good to go. From there, I took two different approaches. For the upstairs thermostat, I decided to set a schedule and for the downstairs I let the system learn our behavior to set the temperature.

The web interface for scheduling is pretty good, though not great. It does include copy and paste functionality. I don't know if its just an early quirk, but I lost the schedule the first time I put it together. The upstairs Nest had lost its connection to our wi-fi network, so that could have been a contributing factor. The primary iPhone application doesn't do much more than allow you to adjust the temperature, but that is exactly why I bought it.


What Its Missing:

• My chief complaint so far is that Nest doesn't share any data with me. I should be able to access a log of all of the events of the thermostat (turn on, turn off, all of the relevant parameters at that point in time, such as why it was turning off or on).
• The units are designed to learn about your behavior to help you save energy. But when that happens, it doesn't tell you anything about what its learned or what you have saved.
• My wife doesn't like the aesthetic. It looks like an ugly eyeball in her opinion.

One Step Backward for Compatibility

When we were visiting with relatives over the holidays, my wife's sister broke out a photo album. The album had a bunch of pictures from when the kids were young and she lived near us. I offered to scan the pictures in and give her back a CD with the scanned pictures on it. I figured it would be an easy exercise, given that I have a fairly capable HP ScanJet 5500c.

My first challenge was finding the power supply for the scanner. I tore up my office, but I eventually found the power supply. Only 45 minutes more into it than I thought I would have to spend.

I recently updated my Mac Pro to OS X Lion. While this is overall a great thing, it turns out that HP no longer supports my scanner for Lion. I bought the scanner in 2003 (judging by when reviews were published PC Magazine's website). Does it make sense that the scanner would be completely abandoned after just eight years? The old HP software was apparently written for OS X 10.4, but hasn't been updated since. HP's website suggests in one location that you should be able use it through Apple's built-in image capture program. No dice. Further research revealed that my scanner was just not supported. In the end, I will have to say that I'm not impressed at all with HP.

In any event, the only way forward was backward. What do I mean? I'm a bit of a pack rat, and I never got rid of my G4 tower. I booted it up, downloaded the most recent (10.4-compatible) HP software and started scanning. Three pictures at a time, but it did work flawlessly.

FAT!

I decided that I would add a new set of pictures to cycle through my digital photo frame. I've taken quite a few over the last year, all processed and edited through Aperture. I flagged the very best and then exported to JPEGs that fit into a 1024 x 768 pixel space (the native resolution of the photo frame).

For some reason, though, I couldn't add any more files when I tried to add them on my mac. I got a somewhat cryptic error, telling me that there wasn't any space left on the 2 GB card. There were only about 307 files totaling 55 MB on the 2 GB card. It wasn't adding up - I figured it was a PC formatted card and my Mac wasn't playing nice with it. I had a flash of brilliance - I just needed to copy the files from Andrew's desktop computer onto the 2 GB card.

I went to Andrew's computer (running Windows 7) and tried to copy files over. I got a slightly different error message on Windows and chased it down. I found the right advice here. Turns out that my 2 GB card was formatted at FAT16. Seriously? How does a device made in 2010 get formatted with a technology hailing from 1984?

Seriously, it was formatted as FAT16, like the file format that shipped with MS-DOS. That format limits the number of files in a directory to 512. The root directory is even more limiting. After a quick reformat to the fantastically current technology of 1995 that is FAT32, the pictures copied over fine.

Does HDR matter?

My new S100 comes with an HDR mode (along with a bracketing mode). Here's the differences:

• HDR Mode: JPEG only. Camera shoots three times and then processes the images into a single JPEG. No options for adjusting the mechanics of the HDR processing, but super simple and complete solution.
• Bracketing Mode: After choosing this shooting type from within one of the manual modes (M, Av or Tv), the camera will take three pictures bracketing the exposure with +/- 0.5 to 2.0 AEB levels. This would then allow the user to post process using specialized HDR software like Photomatix.

I took a few pictures this morning of a pretty high contrast scenes. Here is the first pair of results:

The first in all auto mode


The second with HDR scene mode

I think that the obvious place where HDR mode excels is the tree branches. They are severely washed out in the auto mode picture. While this can be partially corrected after the face by tuning the highlights down, you will end up with an unnatural green tint around those branches. HDR mode wins!

Here is another comparison, which involves more work using the bracketing function and HDR software:

Another Reason to Love Amazon

I'm a big fan of the notion that we should be in control of our own data and vendors that make our data more readily accessible to their customers will have a competitive advantage. Although this is probably conventional wisdom in the B2B or commercial space, I don't think that its well enough recognized in the consumer space.

On Amazon's site, you can choose: Your Account > Your Orders > Order History Reports and download a pretty complete summary of activity on your account in csv format. We are very satisfied Prime members and feel like we use Amazon a lot. We ordered 108 items on Amazon last year, making our per unit cost of prime less than $1. Some were food related (on subscriptions) but many were books and electronics. A great deal for us.

Some quick thoughts on extensions:

• Grocery Store: How cool would it be for you to be able to download an entire year's worth of food purchases. You know that they are collecting this information about you for their convenience. Why not make it available to you for your convenience? Layer some analytics on top of it. Sure, it will be an incomplete list of things you purchased, but it would also give you incentive to only shop at one chain, to ensure all of your purchases are saved in one place, making the analytics all that much more powerful.
• Drug Stores: Big missed opportunity here. CVS and Walgreens should be providing a means for people to print out receipts for all HSA/FSA eligible items that they've purchased over the previous year. This would be perfect for people like me who are not very careful to save their receipts, but then want to file all at once. Generate a PDF and you are good to go and submit.
• Home Improvement Stores: Another big opportunity missed: when selling a house, you can write off the gains, all of the money that you've put into the house. Why not let people track what they've spent on improvement projects (over long periods of time) with purchase order trackers for the individuals. This would allow them to separate out capital improvements from the purchase of lawn fertilizer, which is obviously not allowed.
• Discount Stores: Why doesn't Wal-mart or Target allow us to see how much we've saved by shopping there (relative to our store of choice)? This seems like an obvious way for them to reinforce how "everyday low prices" they really are.

I really can't think of good reasons for these types of retailers to not do this. Are they afraid that customers will suddenly notice that they've spent a lot of money on a particular category of items? Or is there just a profound lack of creativity on the part of companies with respect to the usefulness of customer data to customers?

Thoughts on an S100

I bought a Canon S100 for myself for Christmas. I've been working my way through the user's manual (over 250 pages) for a few nights while watching TV. Its been reasonably slow going as a result. I will be posting individual posts about features (and example pictures), but I also wanted to post some overall thoughts here:

• Lots of features: this camera can do a lot. The user guide is a bit long-winded with lots of pretty pictures and icons to illustrate, but this camera can do a lot.
• Why does pre-programmed have to equal JPEG? Argh!!!! Why does Canon limit me from saving to RAW when I use the scene or auto mode? I find this to be a deal-killer for using these modes. Many of the modes can be better done in post-processing (like color enhancement or blurring for a miniature effect), but some, like shooting in snow, would be great to shoot RAW instead of JPEG. It would make me much more comfortable, too. I would trust the special scene modes that much more, knowing that I had more flexibility to fix any potential problems after the fact.
• Reviewers are not joking about the short battery life: It doesn't last too long. Get a backup. Amazon has one (a Canon NB-5L) for only $35.
• I like GPS tagging as much as I thought I would: Its super sweet when it works. Just don't expect indoor shots to have a tag. The satellite icon lets you know where you stand. It does take a few minutes to find a signal, but once it indicates that the signal has been obtained, it will tag your photos.

LEDs in the WSJ

Though I may not pay for maintenance costs at my house in terms of dollars, the same calculus described in this article in the WSJ holds for me too. I don't want to replace bulbs 20 feet up in recessed lights in my ceiling.