Off Course-On Target

Cool Tools I Use: SPOT on!

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them.  I'd like to hear about yours.  Meanwhile, here's another one of mine:

This SPOT messenger system is one of my newer "can't live without" tools and a "mashup" of hardware and software technologies, namely GPS, satellite-based communications, realtime mapping, and more.  It is also an example of the kind of "advanced" functionality that is quickly moving out of the hands of experts and high budget projects or pure luxury objects into the consumer mainstream. This is a trend we are seeing much more of these days, and is one I see escalating exponentially in the years ahead.

Look, look! See SPOT run!

SPOT is a great example of the power of simple purpose combined with simple design.  It essentially does ONE thing very well: tells anyone you choose to know precisely where it (and you!) is on the planet with the push of a single button. It uses GPS to precisely calculate where it is when you push the "check" button, and transmits the latitude and longitude coordinates via the worldwide (almost) GlobalStar to a list of people (text message or e-mail) that you give it and to a website-based map. 

It costs less than US$150 along with an annual subscription of about $90. For people like myself who are regularly in very remote and varied locations, and involved in possibly life-threatening or risky situations, this is a no-brainer purchase.

Simply Great!

Simplicity is one of the things that makes this such a marvel for me and why it's made my list of Cool Tools to share with you. Designing for simplicity is in fact very difficult, and it seems a bit of a lost art these days, although it one I believe and hope is making a comeback.

The SPOT device itself is relatively small (about the size of slightly rotund older cell phone), and while I sometimes wish it were smaller, I must admit that I lose smaller things much more easily, and this device is not cumbersome. But if you were wearing it on your belt or carrying in your purse, it would be nice if it were smaller. I suspect that the size is mostly due to the lithium battery (replaceable), which is probably more suitable for safety in high risk safety situations.  It need to be very dependable and must last for a long time (years vs. days or weeks). Getting a "sorry low battery" warning is NOT something you want to see if you are using this.

Continuing with the simplicity theme... there are no wires, no plug-ins, no attachments, no protrusions (such as antenna), and it has a VERY simple interface consisting of only four buttons: on/off, OK (CheckIn), 911, and HELP, with a red/green indicator light for each one. 

How Do I Use It?

If you think you or others you know and love might have a good use for this device, you can read more on the SPOT website,  but here is the quick overview to help you see just why I think this is such a Cool Tool for me and perhaps for you.

SPOT has two primary functions that I use on a regular basis

√ Check in:  When I push the "Check In" button on SPOT it sends a short message with my exact latitude and longitude information via satellite to a list of people I have provided. Being satellite-based means this will go out independent of any phone or radio systems anywhere on the planet.*  It can take up to about 2 minutes for the message to go out via satellite, BUT it will go out as long as it has a clear view of the sky, which can be through windows, but not through steel or other physical obstructions.  Of course, this is not a major limitation, since its primary use is for outdoor activities. However, I've had it work well even inside buildings as long as it is placed in an outside-facing window.

*  This is not completely true as SPOT uses the GlobalStar satelite system and they do not quite have true planetary coverage, since there is a "hole" over the Pacific ocean.  Other than for those living in such remote locations and blue water sailing types such as myself, this is not much of a problem and will hopefully be resolved later this year or next when and if GlobalStar adds another satellite to their system.

These messages include both a short bit of pre-set text I can provide such as "Hi, this is Wayne reporting to you with my current location" and the lat/long coordinates at the time I pressed the button.  As part of the setup, I go the website and put in the mobile phone numbers (for text messages) or the e-mail addresses of the people I want to receive these messages. Thereafter, every time I press the √ CheckIn button, all of these people get this short message with my updated location. Simple, handy, powerful.

Having used this for the past few months while I've been out sailing, I've also come to appreciate that this lets everyone who cares not only know where I am, but also that I'm OK since I have had to consciously press the √ CheckIn button.

Track Progress:  The SPOT also has an automated position reporting option that they call "SPOTcasting" and I use this a great deal. When it's turned on (by simply holding down the  √ CheckIn button for 5 seconds), SPOT automatically transmits my lat/long coordinates every 10 minutes for the next 24 hours to a web server. 

 

Of course, it would be rather obnoxious to have these going to people's mobile phones or e-mail inboxes, so instead, these "SPOTcasting" messages are just stored on a server and are accessible to me as either a historical log, or as a set of points displayed on a map that I can share with anyone.  Initially, I could only provide access to people by giving them my login information and password for the site, but a few weeks ago they finally added my #1 wishlist request, which is the ability to create and share a web page that displays all my check and track points "live" on an interactive map like this. By combining or "mashing up" an interactive online map (Google maps) with a feed of my check points and/or track points as they are broadcast from my SPOT via satellite messages to this server page, I am able to provide access to the complete history of my travels and my current or last location to anyone with a browser.

* I do my best to practice the experiential learning I'm so often expound on here, and real-world use is one of the key requirements and values I have for these Cool Tool posts. If you're interested in a real world example of the use of SPOT type technology ,you can follow this link to my personal travels of late.  I'm writing this on June-4-2008 at about 14:07 UTC so I'll let you figure out where I was at that time. 

Emergency use:

Fortunately I have not had to use either of these yet, but SPOT has two more buttons for emergency use:

Ask for Help:  I would press this one for non-life-threatening siuations. It is diffferent from the CheckIn message because it sends out a pre-programmed message to my contact list, telling them I need assistance and giving them my location data and a link to it on Google Maps.

Alert 9-1-1:  This, as you might expect, is for life-threatening situations, and it's the one you hope you never need!  When pressed, this sends an alert to the Emergency Reponse Center and sends a distress signal. the appropriate responders at that location, such as police, Coast guard, country's embassy or consulate or other emergency response or search-and-rescue teams.  It also notifies my emergency contact person(s), which I have provided when I initially set up the device.

And that's it!  Simple, easy, powerful.  The SPOT is not for everyone, but this is part of what I had in mind for these Cool Tool posts—not a Top Ten list of what is most popular (there are lots of these for you already), and not just something shiny and new, but something very useful and valuable for the right person at the right time in the right context. We (both individually and as groups) are unique "snowflakes", as are our situations, and so these Cool Tools are aimed at helping all of us discover things that will match our unique needs or the needs of those around us, and share a part of the overall Snowflake Effect, which my great colleague Erik Duval speaks of and write about so often.

Hope this SPOT satellite messenger is of value and interest to you.

***********

Have  "Cool Tools" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information:

• Name of the tool and source for getting one. 
• What does it do? 
• How did you come to discover this? 
• How do you use it? 
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?

Serious Play: Are We Humans the Biggest Computer of All?

Would you be interested in a future where the pursuit of fun and enjoyment was one our our major roles in life because it leads to solving extraordinarily large and complex world problems? For example, what if all of us helped to digitize all the content contained in all the books in the world? Almost none of this content is currently available on the Web or in any digital form and as such, is largely inaccessible to most. And would you be interested in a world where the relationship between computers and humans is a very positive and symbiotic one? I know I would. 

I'd like to bring your attention to some of the ways in which this is already happening. Let's see if this excites you so much that you'd like to not only participate in some of these processes, but also start to use some of these models to help solve some of the problems you and your profession or areas of interest face.

In my previous posting "Moving aLOM", I mentioned some of the exciting, yet daunting, challenges of the future of metadata, such as how to create, in staggering volume, some of the more "subjective" metadata—things like the infinite characteristics that describe people, places, and things—where we humans are still the only source. This effort would include things like creating metadata for all the images and videos out there—still a largely unsolved problem—the absence of which not only makes them very hard to find, but also makes the Web and computers very inaccessible to the visually impaired, which, with age, might include a lot of us!

The Exciting Work of Luis von Ahn

Perhaps most notable in this area is a relatively young new professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Luis von Ahn, standing at right in this photo with his PhD advisor Manuel Blum. Luis has already completed some amazing work on what he refers to as "human computation" and how to put "wasted" human cycles to use in solving problems a computer cannot solve at this point in time, but humans can solve easily. Luis also picks up on a theme we have discussed here on Off Course - On Target in many other contexts—the power of the "network effect" achieved by connecting everything and every one together. Human computation is obviously focused on the latter, and Luis wants us to consider having all of our brains connected together as an extremely advanced large-scale distributive processing unit. Not to worry, no wires or direct connections to your head are required!

Before I go any further, and especially if you are more of a visual and auditory learner, let me recommend that you immediately watch this talk called "Human Computation" that Luis gave on July 26, 2006, about the power of human cycles. This 51-minute talk is part of the Google Video Text Talk series (also highly recommended), and while it is long by some current standards, I feel very comfortable recommending this to you, since I'm convinced you'll agree it was a VERY good use of your time (actually Luis' talk only runs 40 minutes, and is followed by about 10 minutes of a good Q&A session).

Another excellent reference for you, which contains more fascinating details and examples of von Ahn's work, can be found in Clive Thompson's article "For Certain Tasks, the Cortex Still Beats the CPU"  in the June 2007 edition of Wired magazine.

Games with a Purpose

But for those who don't have the time right now to look at these things more, here is a quick synthesis of what I find so exciting and interesting about the innovative use of our human "compute cycles", and the use of "fun and games" for very significant and "serious" results. What von Ahn likes to call "games with a purpose".

One of the most common and effective examples of this type of human computation is one of Luis' first applications, which is known as "Captcha". The name may be new to you, but I'm sure you're already a veteran Captcha expert! Captchas are those slightly difficult to make out words that you are asked to identify and type into a box when you are signing up for web sites. Captchas are used for responses online and in other situations where we want to prevent automated "bots" from generating unending amounts of "spam" or other undesirable exploitations of such online experiences. The problem is how to differentiate between a human response and a computer response, and Captchas are a simple solution to this problem, as well as a simple example of a problem that computers can't solve by themselves.

In itself, this doesn't sound like that interesting of a problem, although certainly it is an annoying one! However, part of what I would see as Luis' brilliance is in the more primary problems he is solving with this process.

In the case of Captcha, the real problem being solved pertains to my initial reference about the challenge of digitizing all the content of the world's printed matter, such as books. For more background on this digitizing and scanning challenge, you may want to refer to my previous posting from Jan 2007 "Books—the NEW old medium". Specifically, the problem is with all the words found in printed matter that scanning and conversion technology cannot make out, because the medium has a crease running through it, or it is partly missing, or other factors which make it impossible for the technology to recognize the words correctly.  Yet, show these words to almost any one of us and we can easily recognize the word.

So all those "fuzzy" words in Captchas are NOT just some random words that are blurred to fool a computer. Instead, these are the images of words which scanning technology has failed to recognize correctly! Luis refers to this specific application as ReCaptcha and you'll find much more information there, as well as instructions and free plugins for you to embed within your own sites, blogs, etc.

And that's just one side of why Luis von Ahn was awarded one of the MacArthur "Genius" awards and a Microsoft Research grant, for he has also managed to put these types of solutions into a game format that starts to look at solving these kinds of problems at a scale that is truly breathtaking! 

Solving World Problems or Playing Solitaire?

In his talks, Luis likes to use a very compelling metric of human-hours, and he often compares statistics on the the amount of human-hours that are "wasted", in his opinion, doing something like playing Solitaire on a computer. I too have always been amazed at the number of people I observe when walking down the aisles of an airplane, for example, who are hard at "work" playing Solitaire, but I had no idea just how much time is spent on this. According to the statistics that Luis uses, over 9 billion human-hours were expended playing Solitaire in 2003 alone! Better yet, he puts this into perspective by comparing this activity to such things as:

• The building of the New York City Empire State building, which consumed about 7 million human-hours, and thus equates to just 6.8 hours of collective Solitaire playing.
• Building the entire Panama Canal, which took 20 million human-hours and amounts to less than a day of collective solitaire playing!

Metadata for All Images?

Now imagine if we were able to put this kind of "human computation" to more effective use AND still do so within the format of games that people can enjoy doing themselves! One example is another one of Luis' creations, and one that has been running with staggering results for over three years called the ESP Game. As we've discussed many times, experiential "learning by doing" is often one of the best ways to learn about something new, so I'd encourage you to not only read about the ESP Game on that site, but to play it for awhile. (Caution: can be very addictive and time consuming!) When you do, you'll see how it puts two or more players (there is also a single player version) into a friendly competition by typing in descriptive words for a given photo (that metadata thing again), and they get points whenever they both type in the same word.

So what? While progress is being made in image recognition technology, this is still largely a problem that computers cannot do. And ask yourself, do YOU take the time to "tag" or create all the metadata for the photos and videos that YOU post, such as who and what is in the photo? Didn't think so. Yet by using this type of game format, the ESP Game has been running for over three years with no drop off in popularity and as of mid-2006, it was very fast, very cheap, and very accurate. If this were done as a popular online game site, it would be possible to label all the images on Google Image Search in just a few weeks! No surprise then that the ESP Game has already been licensed by Google in the form of the Google Image Labeler, and is used to improve the accuracy of the Google Image Search. We humans are relatively competitive animals and we like to do what we enjoy, so this approach appears to have a lot of promise.

Yes, but WHERE is that object in the photo?

Another problem that is even more challenging than identifying WHAT objects are in the image is identifying WHERE they are in the image. To do this, Luis has created another game called "PeekaBoom". The first player sees an image along with a word that describes an object within the image, and then clicks on the image where the named object is located. The second player sees only the object that the first player clicked on and types the word associated to that object. Once the second player guesses the correct word, the two players move on to the next image and switch roles. More details are explained in the video (you really should take the time to watch it!).

Human Computer Relations: Parasitic or Symbiotic?

Luis also notes how this transforms the current relationship between humans and computers from what he calls a parasitic relationship to a symbiotic one where:

"...humans solve some problems, computers solve others, and together we work to create a better world."

Sound far fetched? Well, in the less than two years that his limited experiment of the ESP Game has run, over 75,000 players have come up with over 15 million "agreements" (matched words). This rate would indicate that 5,000 players playing simultaneously could label all images on Google Images in about two months. Think about that...5,000 is NOT a very big number when you consider the numbers on many gaming sites. Therefore, it should be possible to label all the images on the Web in a few months. Again, I strongly recommend that you check out the video to get not only more details, but to see just how accurate, pragmatic, and promising this approach is. 

For example, it turns out that the results of a game such as PeekaBoom can in turn be used to help train computers to recognize objects and their location. Turns out that one of the reasons that computers are not yet very good at this type of object recognition and automated metadata generation is that there is very little data and examples to use to "train" the computers on how to do it. By capturing the results of all the human play in location identification of objects within images, this data can then be used to train computers to do the same thing"—allowing us move on to new challenges... and more fun.

Super Side Effects

I think you'll agree that this approach not only shows great promise in terms of solving some very large scale problems, but has some surprising and equally amazing "side effects", like how some people have used this to help them learn a language. This approach has spawned its own game called Babble, where two English-speaking players are shown a sentence in a foreign language that neither of them speak, and are presented with a list of possible meanings (in English) below each word. Players try to agree upon a set of English words that forms the most coherent sentence. The result is that this activity is surprisingly effective in translating foreign text into English without requiring anyone fluent in both languages. Think of the possibilities of this running at a larger scale!

Another "side effect" of this approach is how many players have noted that they end up finding other people who think very much like them, and thus they have a great sense of "intimacy" and closeness with their counterparts who play these games. Therefore, many  ask if they can find out who their anonymous competitors are to continue the conversation. At this point in time, all the game players are anonymous and no identities are revealed, but one could imagine this being used as a way to help discover other people "like you"—ones you'd want to meet and get to know better.

Common Sense Isn't that Common; yet!

And lastly from von Ahn's work, check out his new game Verbosity, which helps to generate what he calls "common sense facts" (again just more metadata really). One player is given a word and the other tries to guess what it is by completing fill-in-the-blank-type templates, such as "It is a type of ____" or "It contains ___".  The player who entered the original word can answer "true" or "false", but can't use the word itself. All this is very much like some party games that many of you have probably played, but the important difference here goes back to the original point of the summative network effect and how this can all be put to greater use. In the example that Luis shows in his presentation, the word "milk" would have some common sense facts such as;

• It is white
• It is a liquid
• It is often used to eat cereal
• It has lactose

Again, computers can not currently solve this kind of problem, and it is another an example of the need for massive amounts of metadata. Imagine if we started generating massive volumes of these "common sense facts" and they were readily available to all. 

More Competition = Less Carbon?

Lest you should think this is just a "one man show" from Luis von Ahn, I want to point out that there are many others who have been developing, adopting, and adapting similar models. For example, "Carbonrally: Carbon Challenge", which you can learn more about from the Nov. 20th, 2007 Webware post "Carbonrally: My carbon footprint's smaller than yours" by Martin LaMonica, is an application that is showing some great promise for improving the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or the "carbon footprint" of individuals and organizations alike. Carbonrally adds the dimension of some fun and healthy competition to do better than others. As Martin describes it, Carbonrally is "tapping into people's tribal competitive spirit".

Whew!  That's quite an introduction to what I believe is both a powerful and profound pattern emerging—where the natural pursuit of fun, healthy competition, and challenges are combined into a game-based model that has already shown some of the ways we can solve large-scale present and future problems. It also creates a whole new relationship between us and technology. This model is not only interesting and fun, but it is a fascinating example of "user generated metadata", which I mentioned in my previous "Moving aLOM" posting.

Your Turn to Play!

Besides raising your awareness about "human computation" and the power of this approach, I also want to encourage all of us to put more time and energy into figuring out how we can inject more fun into work and other problem-solving situations. As you do so, I think you'll see an important job or task or problem  can be more fun if it's solved with some kind of game play, and where the solution remains very much a human one.

We can not, for now at least, expect computers to come up with such fun and game-based solutions by themselves! 

For starters, if you have websites or other applications where you have problems preventing spam or other misuses, consider taking advantage of some of the freely available plugins and nullities, such as those from the ReCaptcha site. Longer term though, please put some thought into which problems you could address with this model, and the ways you could do so by injecting the fun and challenge of a game-based approach into the more serious problems you need to solve...then share them with us here at Off Course - On Target.

I'm reminded of the great quote from Brian Suton-Smith who said:

"The opposite of play is not work; its depression!"

And I look forward to hearing all the innovative and creative ways you will come up with to solve problems—large and small—and replace depression with play. Have fun!

Moving aLOM

If you are a regular visitor here at Off Course - On Target, (OCOT) you know that metadata—characteristics that describe anything and everything—has been a major part of my life and a major focus for many years. If you'd like the full story of my initial recognition of metadata and its value, you can listen to or read my previous posting "Wayne's Wine Epiphany".

What is metadata?

Sometimes metadata is more commonly called "tags", such as the information you provide for things like photos that you upload or blog entries you create and search for. At a simple and personal level, metadata would include your name, phone number, address, family members, your likes and dislikes, skills, knowledge, etc. These are all of the literally millions of characteristics that describe, and to some extent, define you and the world around you.

Among many other benefits and uses, metadata is critical for improved "findabilty" and discovery, as opposed to searching. It is largely via metadata that we are able to find the "right"  people, places, and things (with "right" referring to our individual situations, context, and needs). This also works in reverse by enabling other people, places and things to find us, where appropriate and wanted.

What's been my involvement?

One of my more significant commitments to metadata started back in 1997 with the creation of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee or LTSC, and within this committee, the formation of the Learning Object Metadata Working Group or LOM. LTSC is a group of volunteers who are devoted to development and implementation of standards for interoperability for use within the worlds of Learning, Education and Training (LET). LOM is a set of standards focused on the metadata required for more effective learning and performance.

I've had the honor of being the Chair of the LOM Working Group for over ten years, and this has afforded me the privilege of working with some of the most dedicated people I know. They have worked tirelessly, and often thanklessly, to produce several fully completed standards for metadata such as the IEEE 1484.12.1 standard for the LOM data model and the IEEE 1484.12.3 standard for the XML binding of LOM to enable the exchange of LOM instances (metadata records).

You may not understand or even be interested in these specifics, which is as it should be for most standards. How much do any of us care or know about such things as TCP/IP, HTTP, or the other standards which make the Internet possible? In a similar way, standards for metadata—of which LOM is but one—are part of what has enabled the improvement  of the creation and interoperability of metadata (though much is still needed).

To our surprise, LOM standards have been implemented broadly, both within the context of learning, education, and training, as well as within an eclectic and extensive list of other domains, including art, history, archives, and human relations. I know of no way to count the amount of such LOM-based metadata nor the number of implementations of LOM, but the numbers are globally dispersed and easily numbered in the millions and beyond.

What's Next?

Now it's time for both LOM and I to move on into our respective next stages and hence the title of this posting. As of January 1, 2008, I will be stepping down as Chair for the IEEE LOM Working Group, and I'm delighted to publicly congratulate Erik Duval for being appointed as the new Chair of LOM. I am about to make some significant changes in my roles and responsibilities, both personally and professionally (more on this in a future posting), and it is time for LOM and metadata overall to evolve to best fit the "Brave New World" we now live in. In spite of his relatively young age, Erik Duval has been one of the longest serving individual experts focused on metadata for learning, education, and training. Based on his work in metadata since the early 1990's, such as the creation of the ARIADNE project which is a large European based consortium focused on knowledge sharing and reuse, Erik was instrumental in the creation of the IEEE LOM WG from its very beginning.  Officially, Erik has served all this time as the Technical Editor of LOM and, along with Tom Wason, they created the initial kernel that grew into the full LOM standard. I could not be happier or more optimistic about the future of LOM and of the advancement of metadata than I am with turning over the leadership to such a capable individual and someone who has become one of my closest professional colleagues.

While those of us who first began to put this focus on metadata knew it was important for the future, I'm not sure that any of us could have imagined the degree to which this would be true or the scale of use and generation of metadata. To meet these new needs and scale will require both the evolution of metadata as we know it, as well as a complete rethinking. Some new leadership and energy will be of great assistance in making this happen. As such, the other main purpose for this posting is to bring your attention to some important and recent developments in the area of metadata; the first is a series of new activities within and related to the current LOM standards, and the second is addressing the longer term future of metadata developments—it's worth keeping your eyes on.

Where is LOM heading?

Here's a short overview of the new activities related to LOM:

• Reaffirmation of the 1484.12.1 LOM standard, which is largely an administrative action required by IEEE for all active standards every five years.  As the name applies this is merely a check that an existing standard is still in active use and will continue to be so. As the millions implementing LOM can attest, this is very much the case.
• Corrigenda for the 1484.12.1 LOM standard, which will provide a list of all the minor (but important) technical corrections and edits to the original LOM standard, which have been discovered by those previously implementing LOM.
• Two New Parts for LOM:  After several years of work led by Mikael Nillson, the Joint DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) / IEEE LTSC Taskforce has just initiated work on two new IEEE standards.  The previous link will provide you with access to all details of the work to date, previous meeting notes, and ways to contribute to these efforts.  As briefly and coherently as I can put it, these two standards are for:
  • Developing a Recommended Practice for Expressing IEEE Learning Object Metadata Instances Using the Dublin Core Abstract Model to meet the growing demand for interoperable definitions of Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) metadata terms and IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) data elements, which allow these to be used together in metadata instances.
  • Developing a Standard for Resource Description Framework (RDF) Vocabulary for IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Data Elements. In simpler terms, this standard will  address the increasing demand for definitions of IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) data element semantics, which allow the expression of IEEE LOM instances in applications using Semantic Web technologies such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF). For some data elements, this expression can be achieved using existing, stable RDF vocabularies. The purpose of this standard is to define the semantics of data elements not covered by such vocabularies. This standard forms an important basis for making IEEE LOM useful in this larger metadata context.
• LOM next:  Over the last year or so, we've discussed how we want to make LOM evolve over the longer term. The time has come to consolidate that discussion, gather requirements, and start thinking about how to meet those. Erik and the LOM Working Group have begun a series of open, regular, synchronous discussions in order to first bring everybody up-to-date on these activities, develop a plan of action, and then to begin the necessary new work.
  • These meetings are open to ALL and will be virtual meetings accessible both online and via phone.
  • If you are interested in participating, please either contact Erik Duval directly via e-mail (Erik.Duval@cs.kuleuven.ac.be ) or subscribe to the LOM mail list on the LOM web site. 
  • While those with metadata expertise would be especially welcome, it is equally valuable to get input from a diverse range of others who want to use and benefit from significant improvements in metadata for LET in the future. Please consider adding your input to this important effort.

Trends in Metadata

Metadata is often unnecessarily limited by the popular "data about data" description, but it is so much more than this.  Metadata is perhaps most often applied to "nouns", and my simple minded recollection of the definition of a noun is a person, place, or thing. To date, most of the focus has been on metadata for content (which has been very beneficial and for which much more work is still needed), but the future will include much more attention on the other "nouns"—people, places and things. This post would go on for much too long were I to do justice to any one of these or countless other areas that would benefit enormously from improvements in their related metadata aspects, so I will only list a few areas and provide you with a glimpse of the future potential within. Watch for future developments in metadata for some of the following:

Metadata about PEOPLE

This kind of metadata, especially pertains to our skills, knowledge, abilities, experience, attitudes and competencies.

In one small example, the IEEE LTSC Working Group 20 recently completed a standard for "Reusable Competency Definitions" or RCD, and this Working Group is now looking at other aspects of competencies that would benefit from standards. 

Metadata about PLACES

For example, we are seeing the recent surge of metadata in the use of maps, and GPS metadata is being added to things like Google Earth", which will enable us to answer questions such as:

• "Where are you now?"
• "Where was this photo taken?" 
• "What does this location look like?" 
• "What happened here in 1782?"

Imagine the possibilities as more locations become "smart" with metadata about them and related to them. Photos and video might show what they look like now and in the past. Metadata will be increasingly available for every building, its contents, furniture, features, hazardous materials, fire extinguisher and escape information to name but a very few metadata elements.

Metadata about THINGS

Metadata about things provides the characteristics of all the physical objects in the world, such as machines, parts, equipment, food, furniture, music...well you get the idea. 

Add to this all the non-physical things, such as objects created in virtual worlds. Now imagine if all these "things" were connected and could start to share this information and "talk" to each other.

You are already familiar with bar codes, which contain the metadata for everyday things, as well as the more recent use of RFID tags to electronically capture and broadcast all of this metadata. This is sometimes referred to as "the Internet of things". See the 2005 executive summary of the Internet of Things for one perspective and more detail on this concept.

For example, imagine if all the ingredients in your kitchen made all their metadata available, such as how full or empty they are, when they are about to expire, which combinations might let you make a dinner along the lines of what you desire, and without a trip to the store.  It's all just metadata!

To learn more:

• Wikipedia provides this brief overview on the related topic of object hyperlinking.
• This short BBC article from 2005 discusses how the United Nations was predicting such a "network of everyday objects".

AUTOMATED metadata generation (AMG)

Once you start to consider the massive amount of metadata that is required and possible for each and every person, place, and thing, you quickly "do the math" and realize the overwhelming problem of "How will all this metadata ever be created?" Our initial tendency has been to assume that metadata is all human generated—literally "typed in" to forms. If this were true, there would not be much of a future for metadata, since there is most likely more metadata than data and certainly more metadata than there are people, places, or things! 

While human generated metadata, especially the more "subjective" metadata elements, will always play an ever more critical role in the future, it will become the minority of the overall volume of metadata. Increasingly, metadata will be generated automatically.

To learn more:

• See this article on AMG which comes from one of the many groups that Professor Erik Duval leads at KU Leuven, a prestigious Belgian university.

USER GENERATED metadata

Did you know that literally all the metadata for all the CD's and music you see displayed on your MP3 players, iPods and computers, artist name, title, album name, etc. is generated by other listeners, such as yourself and NOT by the record companies or publishers? What if we could tap into the metadata that each one of us (eventually all 6.6 billion of us) are probably generating every day, such as the tags and captions we add to photos, the PowerPoint slides we create, and search terms we use, to name but a few?  Such is the power of user generated metadata and there will be much work in the future to increase the generation of, capturing, and putting to effective use the flood of metadata that will result.

ATTENTION metadata

Attention metadata is a common term for all the metadata that captures your likes and dislikes, and which can help you find everything from great music to listen to, people to get together with, TV shows and video to watch, etc. We can think of it as the things we "pay attention to"...hence the name.

Attention metadata is what recommender systems are based on. One such effort to address some of the needs for better capturing and interoperability of this type of metadata is that of the attention.xml group. You can listen to this 2004 podcast with some of the originators of attention.xml and this podcast and blog from Alex Barnett discussing attention related topics.

Why would you need this? Consider shopping sites that track your buying patterns, and your opinions and preferences after such purchases, and use these to help you find additional items that you may want (if you let them). How does the system know if you are buying the item for yourself or as a gift for someone special? Currently they do not, and therefore the recommendations become less relevant and you likely stop using them. However as these issues begin to be addressed, there will be more and more "decision support" to help us deal with the growing problem of an economy of abundance and too much choice for those of us privileged enough to live in such situations.

Metadata UNIQUE and SPECIFIC to LET

While some of the metadata standards, such as LOM, are intended to cover the application to LET, most of the initial work to date has been much more general and largely applied to content. There is an enormous need for much greater focus on metadata that is unique and specific to learning, education, and training. This would include metadata to assist with evaluation and assessment—matching learning styles with teaching styles, and helping each of us as unique individuals to have LET options that are just right for us at just the right time and in just the right way.

And trust me, this is but a minor scratch on the vast surface of but one slice of metadata and its very exciting future! 

So LOM, for now....

I certainly have mixed emotions about reducing my direct involvement in LOM and the development of some of these future metadata related topics. However, I can't imagine leaving LOM in better hands than those of Erik Duval and the many, many other dedicated individuals, old and new, who have such dedication and passion for improving learning, education, training, and performance and indeed the world in general, through better use and generation of metadata.

Whether or not you consider taking an active role in this future development of LOM and metadata standards and specifications, I certainly encourage you to pay more attention to the role of metadata and how it serves as a fundamental principle in the future of your life, both personal and professional, and the future of the world around us.

Wayne

Oh Really? - Computational Photography

One of the most significant trends shaping our future is the redefining of what is "real" and specifically, bringing everything and anything into heightened and full three-dimensionality (or more), definition, and fidelity. I refer to "real" in the sense that we believe it "exists", and that we are increasingly:

• Losing the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is unreal.
• Losing the ability to distinguish between originals and copies, real and synthetic, real and unreal, real and virtual, here and not here.

This trend includes such things as the so-called 3D web, virtual worlds, the Internet of Things, 3D scanning and printing, and 3D human/computer interactions and interfaces, to name but a few. Will there be any such thing as "unreal" in the future? 

Since I am fascinated with and fixated on this topic, I'm going to develop it as a theme. Perhaps we'll call it "Oh Really?" and pursue it much further over a long period of time here at Off Course - On Target (OCOT). I've previously written a few articles on this subject, such as Coming Soon to a Desktop Near you:  Massive Amounts of 3D for the Masses and will cover this area more, but we'll also get into some of the many other aspects of the changing (let's hope!) ways we interface and interact with technology and are making these much more "natural" and "real".

For today, I want to briefly bring your attention to some exciting new developments coming out of Adobe Systems R&D work on new 3D camera lenses and some software they've developed for processing the resultant images. As you'll see, this technology opens up whole new possibilities, not just for photography, but for some amazing new ways of "playing with reality" by enabling you to go back into previously photographed scenes and change the images. Adobe is referring to this "computational photography" and as with many of the stories we cover here at OCOT, this one is interesting not only for the specific example, but especially for the larger topics and issues it reveals. 

Here's the story and it comes most appropriately from Dave Story, Vice President of Digital Imaging Product Development at Adobe, pictured here (thanks to Audioblog.fr) holding the original lens.

For a quick overview of Adobe's research, you may want to start by checking out "Adobe shows off 3D camera tech" on Crave. This topic originates from a recent demo Adobe did in France showing their initial R&D work with a prototype camera lens consisting of 19 different lens elements that provided multiple views at slightly different angles and what Dave described as being a bit like what a multi-faceted insect's eye would see. 

Fortunately for us, Luc from Audioblog.fr was at the demo with his video camera and has put up this 10-minute video clip.  When you first get to this site, you will also see that we still have a way to go with machine translation (in this case by Google), but bear with it and be sure to check out the video at the end to get the best understanding of what "computational photography" might lead to.

Of course, the serious fun begins once the hardware and software can take over and use these multiple images and angles to enable some very new and different possibilities. For example, they are now able to dramatically extend the concept and functionality of a "brush" in terms of what you can do with a "virtual brush" when working on photo images. In the video (and this screenshot from it) you can see Dave Story use what he calls a "focus/unfocus brush" to go into a photo and shift the focus from one statue to another in the photo. He goes on to suggest that they can also create a "3D healing brush" that would enable you to, for example, get rid of an obstruction in the original photo.

You will also see how they are able to move the "camera" after the photo has been taken. The movement in this case is very slight, but this idea of being able to capture moments and then go back and manipulate them AFTER the FACT is one of those possibilities which are equally and concurrently frightening and exciting. Something very powerful is going on here. 

Imagine If

Take this out quite a bit further and consider the potential when we have a full set of 3D data for every single pixel in digital images!  Imagine the manipulation you could do to both still and moving images; think about how you could go back into a scene or a "captured moment" and look at things from different angles, perspectives and focus. We've already been seeing advances in video camera work on movies and in televised sporting events, where they are able to move the camera through a full 360 degrees and all six degrees of motion, but now imagine YOU being able to move and manipulate the imagery on your own AND AFTER the fact!

The Future is Already Here

Or consider the uproar that has already been happening around the 3D "maps" that Google, Microsoft, and others are creating by having 3D mapping trucks drive through an area (large cities for now), taking a complete set of digital and laser images of the entire area. These images are then stitched together, so you can go from a spot on a map to "being there", enabling you to look around from that spot and see a full 360 degree surround of what you'd see if you were "really" there. The concern, by the way, is over privacy (or lack thereof) , and of what would be captured by all these images, which are constantly being updated.

This is another one of those things you can really only learn and appreciate by experiencing it, so if you have not already done so try this(I'll use Google for this example, Microsoft and Yahoo offer similar features):

• Go to Google Maps.
• Click on the "10 Market Street" listed in the left window (or anywhere in San Francisco for that matter).
• click on the "Street View" button on the top of the map area.
• Move the "little orange person" icon that shows up on the map to some intersection on the map.
• Move your cursor around in the street level photo image that appears to look around.
• Move your orange person icon up or down the street to look around there.

Scary?  Exciting?  Make you think about more possibilities if this is just rev 1.0?? YES!

And we think we have problems now (and we do) with not being able to tell the difference between an "original" photo, and one that has been altered!  Just imagine the degree to which this technology scales those problems exponentially!  Apropos to our larger theme here of full 3D reality and blurring the distinction between what is real and what is not, you can easily see how this recent example of "computational photography" is taking us in that direction and dramatically transforming what were previously just 2D photos, maps, and images.

"Computational photography is the future of photography," Story said. "The more things we can do that are impossible to do in a camera, the more powerful people's ability to express themselves becomes."

Quite true, and so once again, the great question that arises from such exciting new technology developments is what will you, and we collectively, DO with such newfound capabilities?  And what might we want to agree NOT to do?  What uses can you think of applying this to?  What problems can you now resolve with this?

I hope you will enjoy our foray into the world of 3D and the new reality, which of course is really just a matter of us finally having technology and ourselves catching up to the world as it's always been; VERY real and very multidimensional.  Oh Really?

del.icio.us tags: computational photography, Adobe, Dave Story, reality, real, unreal, photography, 3D mapping, 3D, 3D lenses, Oh Really?

Technorati tags: computational photography, Adobe, Dave Story, reality, real, unreal, photography, 3D mapping, 3D, 3D lenses, Oh Really?

Readiness for the Unexpected

Online vs. Offline

Am I the only one who can’t get a good online connection all the time?  Specifically, are any of you, especially those who travel a lot like I do, having problems using some of the online or  Web-based applications that are popping up faster than flowers in spring?

Don’t get me wrong, I love this trend, and I predict that it will continue to accelerate until it becomes the predominant model. However, let’s remind ourselves of the purpose and the goal—having what you need, when and where you need it. Having to think about offline vs. online, desktop versus Web, and Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0 is NOT the point. These aspects are just distractions. We simply want to get things done wherever and whenever we have the time or need!

Most online applications present two versions of the problem:

1. You can’t run the application unless you are connected to the Web.
2. If the connection drops while you are working, all your data is lost.

Murphy

To this discussion, let’s add  “Murphy’s Law” (as it is called in many Western societies), which simply states, “if anything can go wrong it will, and at the most inopportune time.”  In the case of online connections, I’d suggest that there is an inverse correlation between the importance of your need and the quality of your connection. The more you need it, the less likely you will have it! Or (as you discover when you have Wi-Fi enabled on your laptop or PDA and are moving around), when you least want a connection, you will have them the most (popping up as annoying “new connection found” messages while you are trying to work or read).

And with Web-based applications, the issue isn’t just that you can get an online connection, it is that you can KEEP it for the full session!

Never Never Land

I’m also concerned about how those of us who have ready access to the Web are making unconscious assumptions that “everyone is online”.  BTW, if you are reading this you are one of the privileged few. Let’s remember that about 90% of the world’s population still has NO online access!

According to Internet World Statistics, as of March 10, 2007 the total worldwide online population is 6.574 million. According to the world population clock the world’s population is 6.593 million. So by my math, this means that LESS THAN 10% of the planet’s people have ANY online access! Privileged and few we are indeed.

Now, I’m about as wired and unwired as you can get with my full complement of cable modems, wireless, cell phone, data cards, etc., but my point is that there are still many times and locations where online access is simply not available or at least not working—inside secure or “non-conductive” buildings, onboard airlines, in locations that are out of range of cellular and Wi-Fi zones, and in situations where the network connection is “supposed to work” but it doesn’t, such as at many conferences and meetings!

So, since even those of us who have access cannot always get online, it means that right now, NO ONE has true anytime, anywhere access.

Please note that there are lots of times when we don’t WANT to have access or be accessed, but that requires us to have the choice, and right now none of us have this choice all the time. Don’t even get me started on the opposite end of this argument, where people who were apparently raised by wolves access their connections at some of the most inappropriate times and places!

Persistent Persistence

So what’s my point? Collectively, these problems will be around for a long time. But let’s make sure we are addressing the right problems the right way. The overall solution is to make online/offline a “non-problem” by making it irrelevant or transparent to us. How?

• Develop a default setting of “do the best you can” in our hardware and software that will let us get back to what we were doing— working, playing, and learning.
• If I’m doing something with one of my digital devices and there is no connection, then just keep track of what I’m doing, save my work, and synchronize it all as soon as there is a connection.
• Make “switching” between online and offline automatic, and have it take place in the background and make it work inside any browser.

One small example is the recent addition to most IM (instant messaging) clients that makes your messages persist, even when one of the people involved is offline or loses the connection. The IM client simply remembers what you entered and it shows up the next time the person connects. Smart, simple, automatic!

Pre AND Post

Along with work being done post-connection, we need systems that anticipate our needs by taking more predictive actions on our behalf. Why can’t we have a system that tracks our usage patterns, and then takes some good guesses about what we will likely need tomorrow, and then automatically downloads this data in advance when there is a good connection and the devices are not being used, such as late evening and early morning hours?

Storage capacity is becoming almost limitless and using the increasingly effective pattern recognition capabilities and “recommender systems”, the capability for predictive data saving is increasing dramatically. Predictive data saving is already happening with television content on devices like TiVo and Windows Media Center PCs that take your “attention metadata” in the form of your thumbs up/down feedback and use it to download programs that match the preference patterns for shows you’ve previously watched.

It does all this in the background. When you are not otherwise using the devices, it creates a listing of content you didn’t explicitly ask for, but most likely will enjoy. Furthermore, as you rate these new programs, the system gets continuously better at predicting what programs you like and records them to your local hard drive.

What we need is the same ability for predictive downloading of data and applications on our computing devices, so they are ready for us before we ask for them, whether we have a web connection at the time or not.

There IS hope!

I’m also raising this issue today because of some recent news about significant solutions to the online/offline problem.

Solution #1 – Zimbra

You can read a good overview of Zimbra in David Berlind’s recent article “Solving the  Web app’s ‘offline problem’: How Zimbra did it (and others will follow)”. In short, Zimbra eliminates this online/offline problem by doing just as I’ve outlined above. It enables you to work whether you have a connection or not. Zimbra uses Apache Derby, a Java database that enables developers of Web apps to design their applications “in a way that those apps can save their information (records, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) to the local Derby-based database when no connection to the Internet is available” and then looks after synchronizing this data when the connection is re-established.

In a related Zimbra news article "Comcast goes with Zimbra for new collaboration suite", several of the largest US cable service providers (TV, telephone, ISP), such as Comcast, have recently announced that they are going to use Zimbra desktop applications to offer a very comprehensive collaboration suite that includes e-mail, instant messaging, voice mail access, etc. Of course, they are doing this to compete with the growing offerings from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo for the increasingly competitive space of Web-based communications or “Office” suites.

Solution #2 – Mind the gap

During this transition, many of us need to use both “traditional” desktop applications (such as MS Office, AutoCAD, Photoshop, etc.) and Web-based applications (such as Salesforce.com, Google docs, BaseCamp, etc.). So what we’ll need during this time is a BRIDGE between these two worlds and there is news on this front as well. Check out "Google Apps To-Do Item #72: Make OpenOffice.org into a Google Apps’ offline client" to get a more detailed explanation of how such a bridge can be formed between Google Apps and Microsoft Office applications. Similarly, read "Using Google to replace SharePoint, LimitNone’s gShare bridges MS-Office/Google Apps divide" to see how LimitNone gSHARE technology creates just such a bridge.

Solution #3:  WiFi – cellular switching too, please!

Currently, the “wireless” world makes an unnecessary distinction between connecting via cellular and WiFi.  As if online vs offline isn’t bad enough, this distinction adds the issue of online via Wi-Fi versus online via cellular. Somebody stop the madness….PLEASE! This distinction gets very annoying, especially as we see increased convergence of voice, data and music on mobile phones, PDAs, MP3 players, etc. that have both Wi-Fi and cellular capability.

But there is hope!  Last week (May 3, 2007), Crave pointed out the potential for an upcoming announcement: “T-Mobile to allow Wi-Fi calls”. Let’s just hope that this is true and that:

“According to reports, when a caller approaches a hot spot while on the phone, his or her call will transfer automatically to Wi-Fi from the carrier's regular network. The change is supposed to be instantaneous, with no noticeable difference to the caller.”

However, what is immediate for me is solving the issue of online/offline. If the likes of Zimbra and LimitNone can do this, then they will be BIG winners in my book, and likely targets for acquisition by some of the big guns such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. What I expect and hope will happen is that these latest offerings to solve the online/offline problem and bridge the gap between the two will initiate some strong competition by others. Then perhaps we can stop worrying about whether we are on or off line and focus on doing what we need to do when and where we need and want to.

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High Resolution Imagery = High Definition Learning?

I am a HUGE fan of public radio, and I listen to it whenever I can. In the US, public radio comes in the form of National Public Radio (NPR) and most countries have a similar form, as well as access to Public Radio International (PRI). Typically these stations are broadcast just about everywhere, so as you’re driving, you can usually pick them up better than most other stations. I find their content to be one of the last sources of balanced and informative broadcasting.

The other day when I was driving in the US, I caught a news story on NPR about a fascinating new joint venture between Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) called “Crisis in Darfur”. NPR is very good about posting their content, so you can read more about it and also listen to the original broadcast called “Google Sets Out to Map the Crisis in Darfur”.

If you are a regular reader here at Off Course – On Target, you will recall some previous posts, such as “Mashed up Maps for the Masses” and “Snowflakes Galore at TechFest 2007”, where we looked at ways that maps are benefiting from new technology and techniques that make them highly customized and extremely rich with information. This new initiative between Google and USHMM adds another dimension and is a provocative application of mapping and high-resolution photographic imagery.

Reuters covered this story at “Google to Map Atrocities in Darfur”. As Holocaust Museum director Sara Bloomfield put it:

"The 'Crisis in Darfur' is the first of the museum's 'Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative' that is aimed at providing information on potential genocides early on in the hope that governments and others can act quickly to prevent them.”

I am interested in this not only for this specific situation but also as a chance to see if this form of “high definition learning” will be able to make more of a difference in moving people to action than previous efforts. Unfortunately, history has shown that simply making people aware of such atrocities has had almost no effect on stopping such acts.

This project will assemble photographs, high resolution satellite imagery, data, and eye witness testimony, and use Google Earth technology to make this accessible to over 200 million people around the world who have downloaded the Google Earth software*. They will be able to zoom in on high-resolution imagery to see the destroyed villages and other evidence of the destruction that, to date, the Sudanese government has denied exists.

* If you have not tried Google Earth or Microsoft’s Live Search (an implementation of their Virtual Earth technology) PLEASE do yourself and others around you a favor by trying it NOW! Google Earth does require a download, but this is truly one of those things you have to see and experience in order to believe and understand. Almost everyone I know who has done so has been completely amazed by its capabilities. And if it has been a while since you used it, you should try it as well, since new capabilities and more imagery and resolution is being added daily.

To check out the Darfur imagery, you just need to “fly” and “zoom” your way over to this region (a good lesson in itself for the many who never knew Darfur existed or where it was on the map). You’ll see how the project has put a colored border around the region to catch your attention. Zooming in from there and exploring the area is what this project is all about, so give it a try.

After these initial experiences, consider the profound impact that this readily available technology will have. We can expect to see a multiplier effect and an exponential increase in the volume of photographic data being produced by literally billions of lenses being aimed 24x7 at almost every place on earth.

Keep in mind that this mapping technology not only includes the photographic images steadily streaming out of orbiting satellites, but also the billions of photographs that individuals like you and me are taking. All of us can contribute images from our digital cameras via web galleries from the likes of Flickr, Google’s Picasa, Kodak EasyShare, SmugMug and hundreds of others. Putting this in the context of maps and using location as an underlying interface and structure is proving to be a VERY powerful way of connecting information and intellect— truly creating new knowledge and learning.

Of course, any powerful capability can be used for both good and bad purposes. However the point for us to remember is that the technology is “stupid” and can only be put to the uses and purposes that WE design and develop. So once again, we are both the problem and the solution. I am both hoping and asking that we make the right choice and take the action to ensure that this power is utilized and leveraged for very positive forward progress and benefits.

It remains to be seen if the “Crisis in Darfur” project and this new combination of content and technology will produce new levels of deep and behavior changing learning. But in my opinion, it is a great form of leadership by example. Let’s learn from this example and begin to design and develop other ways of putting this technology to use for increased effectiveness of learning and performance.

What other applications and projects can YOU think of for using this technology?

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