My QR Code- Scan It and See!

QR (Quick Response) Codes are a two-dimensional matrix barcode format that were first developed by the Japanese Corporation Denso-Wave for manufacturing. However, because of the speed of reading these types of codes by convential devices, especially cameras, they have come into widespread use in Japan as a way to quickly exchange information. Thanks to the growing popularity of the iPhone and Android phones in the U.S. they are becoming more widespread for use in the west as well!

There are a number of apps both in iTunes and in the Android market that enable the camera to read barcodes. What you may not know is that QR codes are a quickly developing mobile standard that are specifically being taken over for use by mobile smart phones. I know some of my family have already begun using mobile boarding passes for air travel, which incorporate QR Codes. Additionally you can pass contact information, URLs, calendar information, even secure WiFi network access with a QR Code! QR Code reading is even built into many Android devices, allowing for instant browser redirection, instantly calling or emailing a contact, or instantly connecting to a wireless network!

Today, I discovered QR codes, and when I realized their scope, I was astounded. Put a QR Code on business cards so people can import your contact info directly? Absolutely! Get some stickers with your wireless access info and place them on routers? What a great way to securely ensure that everyone can easily get your wireless details without having to look for a post-it somewhere! How about in the real world? Well, this is already being used for coupons, virtual augmentation in magazines, even on outdoor advertisements and store fronts! All you need is a camera and some software to read these things!

Imagine a game that used these codes in real life. Talk about a really great scavenger hunt! Just encode position location information into the QR codes, and when people scan it they can find the next way point. Otherwise they can “collect” goods in a larger role playing game. Because these codes can be read off of screens, they can be generated by computers on the go, no need for stickers!

I just discovered that I can in fact share any contact or calendar information on my phone with my Barcode Scanner app because it will automatically generate a QR code for me. If you do want stickers, though- Moo will make a pack of 90 for you for only $9.99. What an awesome thing!

Looking for my contact information? Find it here: http://bengfort.com/scan/

Want to generate your own QR Codes? Go here: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

Want to print some stickers? Use Moo: http://uk.moo.com/en/products/stickers.php

Android App: use Barcode Scanner by Zxing http://code.google.com/p/zxing/wiki/GetTheReader

iPhone App: use Barcodes by Zxing http://itunes.apple.com/app/barcodes/id292197557?mt=8

Use the BCI, Ben!

Well, it may have been late, but Jaci got me an amazing Christmas gift this year- an Emotiv EPOC Headset! Although it failed to arrive in time for Christmas- it did not fail to impress! Emotiv is a small company and preferred to save money by manufacturing all orders as close to Christmas as possible (and I think it got held up at customs due to the Christmas terrorism plot) .  Jaci had remembered that during a research paper on Brain Computer Interface devices I wrote for an eCommerce class, I had discovered the EPOC and had declared its coolness- so she made a mental note and wallah- a Christmas miracle!

So what is it you might ask? Well I could go into detail about EEG patterns and the “intent impulse” that can be detected by electrodes  and translated into computer events, and the potential for machine learning algorithms to divine differences between different impulses and map them to specific events- but wouldn’t you rather just have me tell you that I can now control my computer with my brain!

The Emotiv EPOC Headset is basically a simple wireless EEG machine that takes readings from specific points around your head. More complicated than that- it translates the data back to your computer and a cognitive control panel tries to determine what you’re thinking- or more specifically, it tries to determine what you are thinking you intend to do. By a training process, the software maps specific EEG readings to specific actions (the basics were push, pull, lift, drop) and then other applications can “listen” for these events much like they “listen” for mouse events when the mouse is moved. The result is that you can control the computer with your brain!

Additionally, the software also maps facial expressions, and has an gyroscope to determine where you are looking at any given time. It can even determine your emotions much the same way a lie detector can! All of these applications together provide a very interesting basis for interacting with the computer in the near future. Even now, Microsoft is developing Natal- controlling a gaming device via gesticulation, so it may not be too far off!

But everyone don’t run out and order the headset first thing after you finish reading- it still has a long way to go. Training myself to think correctly was just as hard as training the computer. This certainly wasn’t a speed of thought interaction! In addition the headset can only determine intent to action- it cannot read your mind, so if you were hoping to unlock that novel you know is up there- it won’t be too good for that! It took a long while for Jaci and I to get it on the first time, there are lots of removable electrodes that have to be wet with saline solution (which is why I’m such a mess in these pictures) and they have to be placed in exactly the right spot, unimpeded  by things like Mohunlall hair! It is still a geek toy- and man what a cool one! (Poor Chumby is jealous!)

Ben controls the computer with his brain!

Keywords Visualization v2

See the live visualization at: http://www.bengfort.com/keywords/

Version 2 of the Bengfort.com Keywords Visualization is now complete. This new update includes tool tips (hover the mouse over a node and the tool tip appears) that describe the data in plain language- in this case, how many times the keyword appears in Bengfort.com (note that multiple appearances in a single post are all counted, as opposed to the number of posts that include the keyword, I hope my grammar was clear enough to explicate this). In addition, now the strength of the links is now visually shown via color and thickness. This actually expanded the graph, so I may have to refactor so it all fits on the screen. Finally, if you click on a node, it searches Bengfort.com for the last 7 posts that include the keyword and present those posts to you!

Additionally, the graph has now been made clearer. Link strength is identified on a 5 point scale, however I have excluded strengths of 1 or 2, this immensely cleans up the graph and only shows the most relevant links. While this means some links no longer appear, other connections have suddenly become more apparent. (I’m especially fond of the link between our disciplines and technology!)

This version finalizes the tutorial on SitePoint.com with modifications made to make it work for Bengfort.com. I know this graph is still far from perfect, and I intend to continue to explore making this application more usable. To that end, any feedback from you guys would be much appreciated! For instance, tell me what you see, and if there is anything I could do to make it better. (Remember, I don’t know what you see, I only see what is on my browser). If there is any functionality you think should be included, if there are any keywords you want added, please let me know! I know that it is easy to read the post and to forget about it, but the more you think about it, the better I can make it!

Once again, the link to the visualization is: http://www.bengfort.com/keywords/ check it out!

Data visualization of frequence of Bengfort.com keywords

See the live visualization and play with the Spring-Graph structure at: http://www.bengfort.com/keywords/

I’m constantly amazed about how people can manipulate data and statistics any way they see fit to make their own point. I don’t know about you, but whenever someone gives me the “numbers” I’m very skeptical of where they came from. Just consider the fodder from our so called major news networks that John Stewart has to make fun of! I think I’m right in saying that people are all too willing to believe “numbers” just because they look science-y or there is a pretty bar graph. Even simple inspection will reveal flaws- percentages that don’t add up to 100 or whose summation far exceeds 100. Graphs that use highlighting and weighted fonts that don’t necessarily apply to a distribution, or the simple omission of keys (legends) that would prove an opposite point.

That’s why the science (and art) of data visualization so appeals to me. We have learned bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts since we were in elementary school, but these are the tools that are so often used to mislead us: simply because they are too simple to hold the complex data that we are now used to analyzing on a daily basis. Data visualization attempts to take complex data sets and graphically represent them in a way that humans can instantly comprehend their meaning. Visual cues including size, color, shape, and difference are all used to represent some form of data. With the growth of web technologies and web databases, an ever increasing number of amazing and interesting data visualizations has appeared, and soon I believe that elementary school kids will be taught even more complex data structures.

So, when I got a tweet from Sitepoint.com concerning building a keyword visualizer with Flex- I knew that this would be perfect for our website. So I read the article and built a version of what they used for our website! (Note that at this point, I’m still awaiting the third part of this three part series, and then I will continue to make my own customizations, so stay tuned for more updates with the visualization!) Essentially what is happening is that a script goes through our blog database and picks out keywords in all the posts. Keywords that appear in the same post are considered linked. For instance, by writing science and technology in this post together, those two words will now have a link between them. In addition the script counts the occurrences of the keyword as well as the occurrences of the links. (If you’re keeping score- this is a server side PHP script that outputs the results in a JSON file format).

The visualization is handled by Adobe’s Flex framework combined with the SpringGraph API. The more a keyword appears, the larger its nodes will be- in addition, the higher the count of links between keywords, the larger the link will be. Distance is also a factor- the larger keywords are on the outside, with the lesser keywords on the inside- they “repulse” each other by the strength of their links. Now, by simple inspection we can see that Guyana linked with Recipes and Cookbook- is by far the largest part of our website. Benjamin is connected to China and Ballet (don’t know why) while cat and dog are so closely connected that they are almost touching! You can see how this provides basically a topical analysis of our blog!

I know you guys may not find this particularly interesting, but I hope you can grasp how much data has been distilled into an easily viewable graph- we have over 600 posts in our blog, each with about 700 words in them- all distilled into an easily comprehensible visual medium. As our blog changes, so will the graph. I think that in all our fields- International Relations, Political Science, Anthropology, Business, International Education, and Computer Science- this is extremely relevant, and I hope that you guys will make use of the tools that I have shown you. (speaking of those fields, I should probably add them as key words!). If you are interested in doing any sort of complex visualization- trust me, I’m your guy to develop an application for you that will do it!

See the live visualization and play with the Spring-Graph structure at: http://www.bengfort.com/keywords/

Well, with WordPress, you can in fact do this! Publishing posts as private means that you must be logged into the site to see the post and that the post has been published. In order to publish a private post- go to the “Add New” post screen in the site admin. Next to the text editor is a Publish widget (which contains the Publish button)- in this widget is the Visibility attribute of the post. Note, it probably says Public, which is the default. Click the Edit link, and simply change the post to Private!

Note the Visibility edit options

There is also a password protected option.  When you select this option you can add a password to the post, which is required to view the post, whether you are logged in or not. Anyone you give the password to can view the post (even non-registered users), and everyone can view that the post exists becasue they will be able to see the title. This option is great if you don’t want to make the post completely private, but allow more than just registered users to have access- however, you will have to email the password to everyone you want to read the post!

I’m hoping that with the use of private posts, you will feel more comfortable sharing information on our blog with the family. Some things to keep in mind: When adding a private post, make sure you tweet that you put the post up, or we will not know! Also, when you come to the site log on, or make sure you always remain logged on so you can see any private posts that are put up.

If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them!

Mom says madmen yourself- so I have!

Mom sent me the link to Madmen Yourself- a site AMC has set up for the launch of the Madmen premier. I thought it was funny- so I did one, and thought I would share. Then I changed my profile picture, and everyone wanted one. So since you have all been asking me where I did it- here is the link. Go get yourself styled like one of the madmen! (Feel free to add comments with links to your photos!)

And in other news… the Forecast for Arlington this week includes a picture of an exploding thermostat that is on fire… it is really, really hot here, and we have no air conditioning! Winston and I are melting- right now it is 96 degrees, inside the house! Jaci, of course, works in Air Conditioning…

I have been a Flickr user for some time now, but a couple months ago I finally ran up against Flickr’s photo limits (200 pictures) and had to decide whether or not to upgrade to a Flickr Pro account for $24,99 a year. I had initially decided to use Flickr to share family photos and use plug-ins from our blog to manage them- rather than its more common usage as a photo sharing social networking site. Unfortunately, the regular account’s restrictions- only 2 sets (albums) and 200 photos was not substantial enough for our website. I was still planning on sticking with Flickr, however, because the Flickr API was easy and Flickr’s batch photo management system was superb and I had also built up a pretty good network of contacts on Flickr.

Meanwhile, I had been receiving shared album links from other friends and family via Picasa. At first (and with previous versions of Picasa), I was not impressed. I had other software that did what the desktop version of Picasa did, and it was nothing exciting. The web albums side was also just a means to share pictures privately, there was no social networking aspect, so generally I just downloaded the pictures from Picasa or embedded a slide show in another page I was working. However, I could not ignore the fact that most of my friends and family have GMail accounts (including me), so I decided to check it out.

Picasa 3 (the desktop software) is much improved from older versions, and has a connection with the web albums side of Picasa that is much better and cleaner than the batch photo organization tools from Yahoo. Plus, because I already had a GMail account- the social network on Picasa was already developed, and with a few minor tweaks I managed to build a network that rivaled my Flickr account. Picasa is now my default photo viewer and has some awesome details that improve web photo orgnaization, including watermarking and copyright management- as well as a desktop organization system that ties in with Windows Explorer. I still use Adobe CS4 to do all my photo editing and image work, but Picasa is a great image manager because it organizes both web and desktop (and external harddrive) images.

Google does not limit you on the number of photos you post, but rather on the amount of disk space- for free you get 1GB. However, upgraded storage is offered at very reasonable prices (comparative to Flickr), but here is the gravy- with Google, your upgraded storage goes across all your accounts- Gmail, Picasa, etc. So I purchased 10GB for $20 and vastly improved my Google experience. Photo management also has tie-ins with other Google applications- including geotagging from Google Earth. The public photos page also now rivals Flickr’s photostream as a place to put up your public albums.

I guess the bottom line is this: if you are a Google user (and most of my family is) then you should be using Picasa- you’ll find that your Google expereience improved dramatically. However, if you are a Yahoo user, then Flickr is still a very good web application, and you probably don’t care about all the tie ins that I mentioned above.

Just as a note- you will now see that the pictures on this blog (in the sidebar) are now from Picasa and not the Flickr photostream. If you would like to see my public photos page it is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/bbengfort.

Winston is the smartest person in our family!

Facebook is monetizing “web 2.0″ by selling targeted ads- i.e. ads that use the data on Facebook to create custom tailored ads for each person. Google does similar things with Adwords and even the ads they place in Gmail. This kind of advertising has the potential to be extremely rotten (i.e. previous Facebook scandels where your friend’s Amazon purchases might be shared with you), or they can be an effective and lightweight way to advertise (no more annoying pop-ups).

In typical Facebook tradition, for my Birthday my wall was plastered with best wishes from friends and family- and I can only assume this is why I received the banner ad that was at the top of the facebook page. The ad features my family members- and lists their IQs (which I’m 100% sure are fake), then ranks them accordingly. The target of the ad is at the end where my name and picture are listed with question marks for my IQ- obviously trying to get me to install the Facebook app and do better than my family (impossible).

What really made this a flop, and quite amusing, is that they ranked Winston, my pet dog, number 1, above Bethany, who is finishing a Master’s degree at the University of Maryland in the time it takes most people to get an Undergraduate degree, Devi who is fluent in Chinese, and my mother who is CEO/President of a company! Now, I realize that Winston went to Oxford, and has a snooty English accent, but he is only 3!

Nice work Facebook- a classic Facebook ad for my birthday!

Note: Click on the picture to see it in it’s orginal size in a lightbox!

Protect yourself on Facebook with the following steps:

Step one: on the top of Facebook, go to the settings tab, and a drop down menu should appear, select “Privacy Settings”. Under profile you can control exactly what other people see when they visit your profile. Make sure that you have some basic stuff available to all friends (but not friends of friends), but here is an interesting tool. Select customize, and you can set groups who can only see your status updates, and some other features.

Step two: Create groups! Categorize your friends, here are some basic ones: work, family, close friends. Allow family and close friends access to all of your things: profile, pictures, applications, status, etc. Don’t let your work group access anything- especially not pictures- except for things that you are happy to have public. If you don’t want to create groups, use the Limited Profile group- which is a default Facebook group that only lets the folks in that group see a limited amount of your profile. Until I set specific permissions, I stuck most folks into this group.

Step three: Control your newsfeed: Again under privacy settings you can tell Facebook which “stories” you want published to your news feed. Customize this to your comfort level, but note, only your friends can see your newsfeed.

Step four: Sick of seeing stuff on the newsfeed from people you don’t even know? Well customize the settings of your news feed. Scroll down to the bottom of the newsfeed (that’s the main page list of everything that your friends have done recently, and click on “Options for News Feed”. Its hard to find because Facebook uses the newsfeed for advertising. You can then scroll down or up the frequency of various stories, or add friends you want to hear more about, or friends you want to hear less about. Have someone who is annoying because they are constantly on Facebook and therefore on your newsfeed? Add them to the hear less about list, and they will stop bothering you.

Step five: Edit the notifications you receive from Facebook. Turn off the emails: this is again in the Facebook settings section- if you don’t want to get emails constantly, tell Facebook what emails you want to get. Beware though, it is easy to miss things like comments on photos if you aren’t alerted to them via email.

Other Suggestions:

At this point you should have the basic privacy settings set to a level that should decrease your FAD symptoms. But there are some other things you can do:

Use Facebook on your mobile or Blackberry. There are specific Facebook applications, or you can just use your browser to go to m.facebook.com. Because of limited bandwidth issues, Facebook mobile is much more lightweight than the web version.

Search for applications that are specific to what you want to do on Facebook, remove all others- if you don’t want it, don’t join the group or accept the group invitations.

Add twitter to Facebook and then you don’t have to be on Facebook all the time, you can use other Social Networking sites just as effectively. Also, see a future post on Flickr. Facebook can be used as a portal for all these sites.

Get a chumby! This is basically the same thing as using Facebook on your mobile. It makes Facebook more lightweight and less intense.

Finally, always do the following:

If you don’t know the person, don’t friend them. There is no consequence of ignoring a friend request, the person isn’t notified that you ignored them, in fact they won’t even realize unless they are truly trying to friend you for some reason.

Ignore application/group/event requests that don’t apply to you. Don’t pile on your Facebook by just accepting everything. Many times applications ask people to select 20 people to send an application invitation to, and people just select the first 20. If your name starts with B, that can be particularly annoying…  But they don’t care, they just wanted the app, and they didn’t want to ignore the friend invite portion. Don’t worry about ignoring it.

Don’t ignore messages! Messages on Facebook are like emails- treat them as such.

Hopefully with these tips you will be able to minimize the effects of FAD on your internet lifestyle! Of course, I am available for personal counseling and FAD treatments if you need me- just friend me on Facebook, but don’t be surprised if I ignore you because I don’t know you!

FAD, simply put is the anxiety related to Facebook. You know that you are exhibiting the symptoms of FAD when you start to ask yourself questions like the following. Why do I care what the heck my high school friends who I haven’t spoken with in 20 years are doing every second of the day? Is everyone else on Facebook at least once an hour except me? Who is this person that just friended me, should I accept their friend request? When did friended become a verb? Will my boss see those drunk pictures from my birthday party? Should I put contact information on my profile? And finally, is there any way to gag myself with this f****** news feed?

If you exhibit any of these symptoms then you have FAD. The root cause of FAD is a genetic resistance to a new definition of the word “privacy”. Privacy has a slowly evolving definition (exhibited by changing contexts in the OED). In recent studies it has been shown that the initial users of Facebook- internet savvy college undergraduates have a different idea of privacy than the social/legal definitions that are currently in the vocabulary of basically everyone else. Those internet savvy college undergraduates participated in “network socialization” meaning that they had a regional view of their Facebook network- their college campus. Indeed, in the initial versions of Facebook only allowed you to be in one network and to join that network you were required to have a campus (.edu) email address. These college students were interested in meeting new friends, finding connections between their existing friends, and figuring out what any one person or group was doing at that specific time to facilitate the interactions of the network. Basically every default application that comes with Facebook is meant to lubricate the social networking of a college campus.

But you, with FAD, are not in a college campus. In fact you are not in a regional network either via geography or time. The result is that your Facebook friends span both time and space and all the social facilitation that was once applicable in a regional setting don’t translate to a global one, and that causes anxiety. While there is no cure, there is a treatment. For college students it was to change their definition of privacy. For you, it needs to be a change in the way you use the privacy settings of Facebook.

Here are two typical responses: friend no one, friend everyone but avoid contact. Here is the thing with Facebook it is a non-intimate social setting. Email, phone, SMS these are all intimate network technologies. Facebook should not be. The first response, friend only those you want to use Facebook is a very good response- but it eliminates the ability for you to contact people you are acquainted with in a non-intimate manner (intimate meaning that you have communication obligations). The second response eliminates all other applications of Facebook. The middle ground is to use privacy settings, groups, and management of applications to make Facebook work for you and therefore eliminate FAD.

This blog is getting long, so I will get into specifics in a later blog. Just know, there is hope for FAD, and I will give you the tools to treat it!