Predicting the Future in 1964

In addition to his writing ability, he had a talent for predicting the future. The video clip below shows him predicting what the future may hold 50 years later. This is from a BBC programme called Horizon made in 1964. At the time, there was no Internet and its forerunner, ARPANET, wouldn’t go online until 1969. He predicted what is becoming more and more common today: people working from home and making money online. Instead of going to a physical location to work, they would be able to work anywhere and communicate with clients/co-workers through the Internet.

Highlights of the Video

“A world in which we can be instant contact with each other, wherever we may be, we can contact our friends anywhere on earth even if we don’t know their actual physical locations. It will be possible in that age, perhaps only 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Haiti or Bali just as well as he could from London. In fact, if it would prove worthwhile, almost any executive skill, any administrative skill, even many physical skills could be made independent of distance. I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand. When that time comes, the whole world would have shrunk to a point and the traditional role of a city as a meeting place for man would have ceased to make any sense. In fact, men will no longer commute, they will communicate. They won’t have to travel distance any more, they’d only travel for pleasure.”

The Dot Com Lifestyle for Everyone

We’re not quite at the point which Clarke describes and it will probably be another decade or two for it to happen. Canada and the US are increasingly becoming information and services based which is ideal for working online. The only real challenge is the acceptance of working this way and if the growth of social networking is any indication, we’re well on our way there.

Improving the Blogging Experience

Version 2.6 added version control (finally!) to your posts, so you can track who made changes to them and go back to an earlier post if the current one isn’t satisfactory. Another useful feature is Press This. If you find a web page that you would like to blog about, you can hit the Press This button on your web browser and it will start a WordPress post. From there, you can quote text or embed a photo or video.

WordPress also uses the Gears application which allows you to cache JavaScript and CSS files from your blog locally on your computer. This will allow you view your blog faster. Its an interesting feature, but if your on a high speed DSL/Cable connection, it probably won’t make that much difference for you.

You now have the option of previewing a theme before you make it active on your blog. This is a useful time saving feature that won’t leave your users wondering what’s going on with your blog while your trying to decide which theme to use.

Many New Features

The WordPress team added many other useful features, such as displaying a word count while writing a post, adding captions to images, better image control that’s integrated with the WYSIWIG, improved management of plugins, and many other features.

Apart from all of that, its a good idea upgrading your blog to 2.6 because 194 bugs were fixed in the software. These bugs may compromise security so its wise to keep WordPress up to date.

This video gives a good overview of the new features in WordPress 2.6.

The search works surprisingly well. Its not as fast to use as searching on a computer, but it is a good alternative when you don’t have a computer nearby for searching.

If you click on the photo, you can view it in its original size.

OLPC Is Not Enough

When I first heard of the OLPC (a tiny computer designed for children in emerging nations), I like many people wanted one. A machine like that would be much more useful than a PDA for doing work away from your main desktop computer. It, however, loses its appeal with it being filled with software that would be useful only to a school age child.

It would be great if someone made a low cost computer running Windows at that size …

The Little Engine That Does

The Eee PC has 256 MB to 1 GB of RAM and a 2-16 GB solid state drive for storage, depending on the model. The solid state drive isn’t very much large and it should be at least 20 GB to comfortably run Windows and for running applications. There are 3 USB 2.0 ports which can take a hard drive through it and there is a Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard media slot which is useful for downloading digital photos.

It uses an Intel chipset with a 900 MHz Celeron M processor.

The multimedia side of Eee gives you a 7″ WVGA TFT-LCD widescreen monitor with a resolution of 800×400 pixels, high definition audio, a speaker, and a microphone. The higher end models have 300K pixel web cams.

The machine is very durable and shock resistant which is a must for outdoor use. I’m not sure if its water proof, however. The battery from its 4 cells ranges from 2.8 to 3.5 hours, again this depends on the model purchased.

All machines have wireless LAN (WiFi 802.11 B/G) and Ethernet (10/100 Mbps with an RJ-45 connector) capabilities. You can surf the net while sipping coffee at Starbucks. There’s even a 56K modem with it but its unknown if its fax capable.

The Price Is Right

Most computers this size cost a couple of thousand dollars. The Eee PC retails for $399.99 USD, which is the price of a good PDA. Palm almost released a machine similar to this called the Folio, but they dropped it soon before its release date. This was likely a mistake since when the Linux Eee was sold on ETTV Shopping (Taiwan’s shopping channel), a computer was sold every 6 seconds.

The Eee PC is a low cost alternative to notebook computers for people who need computing on the go. It should be a big seller this Christmas season.

The video is good for people learning JavaScript and also for experienced developers who would like a greater insight in this language.

What’s interesting here is that Crawford claims that JavaScript is one of the most misunderstood languages and that all books on it are bad, except for one that he recommends that is the “least bad” of the JavaScript books.

The presentation is in 4 parts and lasts about 2 hours.

Part 1 (30:58)

Part 2 (29:08)

Part 3 (19:47)

Part 4 (31:08)