loose wire blog

Poffertjes and Power

Continuing my search for a place to plug in and work at airports, I was pleasantly surprised to find that HSBC has laid out the red carpet for its Premier account holders, at least at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta Airport. If you have one of their fancy accounts, anywhere in the world, you and your partner can partake of their lounge services.

It's all a bit new, and, dare I say it, charmingly Indonesian: More people (three men watching one female doing the work) were involved in making my poffertjes (a Dutch batter treat popular in the former colony) than there were actual poffertjes:

HSBC's Poffertje-Making Team (4)

HSBC Poffertjes (3)

But that's not to say I wasn't pathetically grateful. Food is never good at these kinds of places, so that the HSBC PMT (Poffertje-Making Team) took such care with my poffertjes was in itself a cause for celebration.

What impressed me, though, was that there was ample room there to work -- several little cubicles, a couple of actual offices, and, blow me backwards, lots of power outlets -- either in the walls, or in the floor. Like these, which pop up at the flick of a little switch. No Wi-Fi or anything, but you can't have everything. Well done, HSBC.

Technorati Tags: pofferthes, indonesia, airports, power, outlets, wifi, laptops, travel

Bluetooth's Missing Suitcase

Remember when Samsonite launched the Bluetooth suitcase? No, well, that's not surprising, because they didn't. This week's WSJ.com column is (subscription only, I'm afraid) the first in a series about finding stuff in the real world. I started with a hunt for the Bluetooth suitcase, first announced in 2002 (and weirdly, still up on the Samsonite website):

I got all excited five years ago when Samsonite announced a suitcase that used Bluetooth, a wireless technology more commonly used to connect cellphones to headsets, to carry data about the owner and alert him or her if the case was moved. Hooray, I thought: Now we'll all know where our luggage is. Unfortunately not: The Samsonite Hardlite never saw the light of day for technical reasons, although the company says it's still looking at other ways to identify and secure luggage.

This is about as close as we came to the idea that the wireless technologies we now take for granted -- Bluetooth, WiFi, infrared, cellphones, GPS -- would actually help us stay in touch with the important things in life, like our stuff. Which is a shame. I would love to be able to ping all the Bluetooth gadgets in my house via my cellphone and know where they are. One Bluetooth headset has been missing for years.

I then take a look at what's available. But what intrigued me was: what happened to the Samsonite case? This is what Samsonite PR came up with:

It seems from what I can gather this collection was in the end not launched. The reasons seem to be quite numerous - the cost to the consumer would have been significant, a lot of mobile phones were not compatible with the technology at the time, and today would still require additional memory.

Another person I contacted had this to say:

Basically the project did not make it to the market because of several reasons.

About 10 pieces were made for field testing, but there were issues on the standardisation. At the time Bluetooth technology was still at an early development stage and not yet standardised, so for a product to be able to ‘talk’ to another wasn’t that straight forward and obvious. Therefore after the field testing it was decided that the benefits for the consumer just weren’t sufficient. At the moment there are no plans to resurrect the project.

Which I found interesting. To me, back in 2002, the suitcase made all sorts of sense. Bluetooth, cellphones, missing suitcases: who wouldn't have gone for something like that? But Bluetooth has always been a bit of a devil when it comes to anything other than really basic connectivity. Even Mac users have been heard to complain of connecting Bluetooth devices to their laptops.

Would today's Bluetooth be able to cope with with this kind of concept now? Is it already doing so? Or would security concerns -- how long would it take before someone puts together software to reprogram the data on a Samsonite suitcase so it gets diverted to Luang Prabang?

Technorati Tags: bluetooth, travel, suitcase, samsonite, security, airports

Cabin Fever

Flight International reports (sorry, can’t find a link, but here are some similar stories from Thisislondon and New Electronics) that “BAE Systems and its research partners have completed initial tests with an in-cabin computer vision system intended to identify suspect behaviour by potential terrorists.” Seems the system involves cameras in the cabin with software that analyses the image “for movement or other actions that indicate an unruly or potentially dangerous individual, whether seated or standing.” Some of this, says BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre human factors specialist Katherine Neary, involves face recognition. Given most people behave badly on airlines, I think they’re going to have to tweak their algorithms if they don’t want to subdue everyone on the flight.

I think I’d prefer an airline like Thailand’s Nok Air, which takes a friendlier attitude to passengers. According to Flight, the low-cost carrier “is expanding its fleet Boeing 737-400s and its fleet of scantily-dressed “PDA girls”” who help check-in passengers that only have carry-on bags. Chief executive Patee Sarasin tries not to sound surprised when he says “It’s been fantastically well received". Of course he then spoils it by adding: “It is very efficient and costs you less than $4.00 a day to have these girls walking around in Thailand.”

Khun Patee’s walking check-in counters

 

ThinkPad Joins the Exploding Laptop Parade?

Looks like the days of the laptop (and perhaps other gizmos) on airlines are numbered. First, Virgin becomes the third airline [CNET news] to place restrictions on Apple and Dell laptops, allowing them on planes only if the battery [Virgin site] has been removed, wrapped and stored in carry-on luggage. (Qantas and Korean Air have already placed restrictions [CNET news].) You can use the laptops from a power source in some instances on these airlines.

But this story doesn’t seem to be going away. A person posted a story on the Awful Forums (the account is also posted on Gizmodo.) alleging that an “IBM laptop” (presumably a ThinkPad, now owned by Lenovo) caught fire on a United plane boarding at Los Angeles airport. The passenger reportedly ran up the gangway from the plane dropping his laptop on the floor of the departure lounge where “the thing immediately flares up like a giant firework for about 15 seconds, then catches fire”. The owner, apparently, had checked his battery against a list of those of these being recalled, and it wasn’t on it.

Notebook Review has this to say: “An incident like this makes you wonder how long it is before in flight laptop use when running on batteries is just banned altogether.  Which would be a black eye to both the airline and notebook industry.” I’d tend to agree.

Podcast: Receipts

How to get rid of receipts, without just binning them. Another piece from the BBC World Service.

Podcast: Hotel Access

Another BBC World Service recording. This one's about getting connected in hotels.

How to Hold a Book

I did a piece a few weeks back for WSJ.com (subscription only, I’m afraid) and The Wall Street Journal Asia about bookholders. These are devices made to help folk read more easily. As one of my old bosses said: “neanderthal”. But I still love to hold a book and would definitely opt for paper over digital for most reading:

You're more likely to find them advertised on the back pages of quirky British publications such as Private Eye and The Countryman than in glossy international fashion or gadget mags, but they grapple with one of the thorniest design issues since the invention of the printing press: how to read a book in the bath. Or on the beach. Or in bed. Or at dinner. Call it The Search for the Perfect Book Holder.

The problem is a simple one: Books have long mocked the naysayers who predicted their demise in the face of radio, television, audio books, the Internet, eBooks (books you read on a hand-held device), eReaders (devices you use to read eBooks) or whatever. But books do have one design flaw: You have to hold them open. While this may not sound like too much of a trial, it can be if you're trying to eat/type/take notes/get an even tan/wash your back/sip cocoa at the same time, or if, for some reason -- through repetitive strain injury or arthritis, say -- you have a problem gripping things. Perhaps if we didn't actually have to hold a book up while we read it, at least some of us might have read Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" to the end, and J.K. Rowling would have sold even more copies of her 672-page doorstop "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" if we hadn't been afraid of dropping it in the bath.

Here are some links to the ones I reviewed. They’re all great, the products of minds both mad and brilliant at the same time. Who would spend so much time and money trying to make a book stand up?

• PageStay: great for cooks
• thumbthing: great for small paperbacks
• The Gimble and Reader Cushion: great name, great in the bath
• BookGem: Great for standing books up on flat surfaces
• easy-read Great for standing things up on non-flat surfaces

There are some more I reviewed, or at least heard about, which I may post later.

 

USB, Off The Cuff

Always looking for a new way to carry my USB key drive. Here’s another option (via Ubergizmo):

Designed by Berlin-based Tonia Welter, the cufflinks are a prototype, but with plans to build with a capacity of up to 1 GB. A bracelet is in the works, which looks not unlike Imation’s Flash Wristband’, and will be released by Koziol in the autumn. Koziol currently sells Neil USB Station, which, er, “positions a USB port on your desktop, putting an end to acrobatic antics underneath it. One end of the the cable is simply plugged into the computer. NEIL keeps the other end on his back as he waits patiently by the keyboard, ready for take-off!” No, I don’t know what it means either.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, how about a USB Memory Stick, fresh from the wood?

Turning Back the Telecommuting Tide

Good piece in the MercuryNews.com on HP’s decision to cut back on telecommuting: “HP believes bringing its information-technology employees together in the office will make them swifter and smarter. The decision shocked HP employees and surprised human resource management experts, who believe telecommuting is still a growing trend.”

Speaking as a telecommuter still in his morning sarong, I’m disappointed. But from a manager’s point of view I can understand. Telecommuting inhibits the natural transfer of skills and experience from the old timers to the newbies: The piece quotes the architect of the HP division's change, Randy Mott, as saying that by bringing IT employees together to work as teams in offices, the less-experienced employees who aren't performing well -- which there are “a lot of” -- can learn how to work more effectively.

Then there’s the problem of folk abusing the telecommuting option:

[O]ne of HP's former IT managers, who left the company in October, said a few employees abused the flexible work arrangements and could be heard washing dishes or admitted to driving a tractor during conference calls about project updates. The former manager, who declined to be identified because he still has ties with HP, said telecommuting morphed from a strategic tool used to keep exceptional talent into a right that employees claimed.

Shame, because reversing telecommuting in a company that may have attracted better talent because of its telecommuting opportunites is not as easy as HP may think:

By August, almost all of HP's IT employees will have to work in one of 25 designated offices during most of the week. With many thousands of HP IT employees scattered across 100 sites around the world -- from Palo Alto to Dornach, Germany -- the new rules require many to move. Those who don't will be out of work without severance pay, according to several employees affected by the changes.

As one employee tells the paper’s Nicole C. Wong: “I like my flexibility. The only reason I've stayed with HP this long is because I've been telecommuting.”

A Modular Packing Expert Speaks

Today's podcast is given over to an interview with my old friend Jim, further identity concealed, as we catch him via Skype on mission in the southern Sudan and ask him, not about the tense political situation and his efforts to bolster democracy in that troubled country, but about how he packs his underpants. Anyone with an interest in packing, or even in Jim's underpants, should take a listen. Quality of recording unsurprisingly poor despite the great efforts of Skype recording tool Skylook.
Here's the podcast (about 2 MB): Loose Wireless on Modular Packing I