bkdelong

So I'm starting this at approx. 9:45pm ET about 15min after arriving home from tonight's BeanSec. I'm going to do my darnedest to capture in keywords the conversation of the night with pertinent links.

The key test here is, sans any ADHD meds in my system, trying to get a single stream of thought into this journal and then follow up with the links that will actually make the post interesting - and not getting sidetracked on any number of actual activities throughout my machine's desktop or the physical distractions now vying for my body's attention.

I owe a huge amount of this to Michael Katsevman aka Anateus, much to the disappointment of fellow BeanSec-ers and SecurityTwits Paul Davis, Zach Lanier, Jack Daniels, and a new attendee. Oliver Day left early to "go to class" but I'm sure he was scared off.

• Futurist


• Transhumanism


• Seasteading


• Undersea habitation


• Coastal Cooperatives


• Modern-Day Pirates


• InTrade


• Hedge funds


• futures


• predicative markets


• economic terrorism


• biotech


• DNA extraction


• nanotech


• biotechnical nanofabrication


• open source hardware


• community fabrication collaboratives (FabLab)


• Willoughby and Baltic
  
• Technologically-aided Social Justice Hactivism


• Central Asian Politico-disruptiveware


• Aurally augmented reality


• Heads-Up Displays


• GetSatisfaction


• Autonomous, Asynchronous, Virtual-locative P2P CD-Image Abandonware Archival Repository (I may not have correctly captured this one - basically an archive of Abandonware CD ISOs that is, in theory, hard to shut down to do it using some sort of conceptual self-contained asynchronous peer-to-peer network environment making it very hard to find any major weak points at which to stop it.)


• Net-based self-supportive antimalware response communities

There was probably more but the problem was I had to get from the Middlesex Lounge to my car at MIT and home to Salem. Due to a lack of my most-wished for futuristic communications lazyware (subvocal recognition) plus a continued increase in brainstream noise lead to a near impossible ability to focus.

Made it though....enjoy.

I've been waiting to write about this all morning (via BoingBoing). It seems a bunch of intrepid researchers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago have taken work done on subvocal recognition (SVR) and applied it in such a fashion that one can drive/control a wheelchair through "thinking" about where they want it to move.

(NB: I've contributed heavily to the SVR wikipedia entry and liberally link to said service below. I acknowledge that most entries are not that of expert research so YMMV.)

I first got excited about SVR after reading Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" in which the protagonist makes phone calls and interacts with his PDA subvocally. That is to say, the device detects electric signals sent from his brain to his larynx which would normally be translated into speech in the vocal tract. NASA and DARPA both had done some work in the past few years through the subject wearing a collar which detects the signals.

I think my endgame with SVR is really what Cory had in mind in "Down and Out" - be able to not only talk silently on the phone but to control a PDA, surf the web etc.

The phone hardware or service would convert the signals to speech - think of it; ring-tones now and in the future voice profiles - make your voice sound like anyone in any language. Somehow I don't think the Intelligence Community would appreciate that. It makes it difficult to determine who is who on the phone and would kill Voice Stress Analysis. I'm guessing the FCC and/or the ITU would want to have some say in how that works. Other issues include protecting ones own voice profile and the damage this could do to voice-based biometrics.

I wouldn't worry - voice recognition as it stands today is still complete rubbish (kestrell any thoughts on that from the accessibility side of things?). I still think the need to continually train any new piece of voice recognition software is a waste of time and they should all be required to adhere to a voice profile standard. Said standard would, in theory, allow you to train something once and export to an open format importing it into the same software (got to love the lack of portability of licenses!) or any other similar products. At a minimum, it should at least bring the user half-way to training the program to work well. The big risk again is someone stealing this profile to break voice-based biometrics. Surely that can be mitigated with some nifty encrypted token of some-sort with decent key recovery.

There has been some interesting work done on voice translation technology for the soldiers in the streets of Iraq that would have commercial applications in the future. Think of babelfish meets voice recognition and be able to speak with anyone regardless of their native language. Can you say "Universal Translator" ?

But back to the sci-fi. Combine subvocal recognition with augmented reality, GPS and gesture recognition (think Tom Cruise's manipulation of a multi-input virtual screen in "Minority Report") tied into a Net-connected PDA with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). Hot damn.

The SVR would allow you to interact with the PDA silently. The GPS combined with augmented reality as visualized through the PDA's HMD would allow the user to view the entire physical world as annotated by Semantic Web, metadata addicts similar to some of the art installations touched upon in William Gibson's "Spook Country" (current reading). The gesture recognition which would be determined through sensors on clothes as well as the HMD would allow one to interact with the augmented reality to manipulate the objects only existent in the geotagged cyberspace environment. Absolutely mind-blowing.

Ye gods I love taking lunch to paddle down a brain-stream.

Well, I emailed Dennis Crowley from dodgeball.google my idea for using mobile phones for social applications while stuck on various forms of mass transit. No response, but I'm sure he's a busy bee.

I've been thinking further about it, even expanding it pretty largely. I see a few applications:

1. Live Transit Data - since I've been riding the MBTA Commuter Rail on a regular basis, I've noticed the train is predictibly late; especially the 7:29am Newburyport/Rockport line into North Station. So why not create a service that allows various commuters to text/SMS/IM/email in, (or use a mobile web-based inteface), when they arrive at a station and when they leave a station?

   Several things could be done with that data. Update a Google Map live with a train's location. At the "estimated" live location point, have a small icon with the train's number, (in the case of the Inbound 7:29am train from Salem, 108) and show a train with timed waypoints.

   I gave it a shot with my horrible, second-hand, beaten-up Verizon Wireless LG phone and sent myself emails everytime we arrived at a stop. My thumb was sore from lack of experience and it would have helped more if I was able to send something both when we arrived & left but it was a small experiment proving that this is a feasible idea.

   Keep a history of all these times for referring back to and even mark them up with XML so one can reference a particular date, time, and period between stations. Also, include a means of reporting accidents such as the one in Franklin this week or other such delays with various categories. Users could also leave messages forum-style on a particular trip in commenting on the train's lateness, demeanor of the conductors, report incidents and request witnesses, post a lost or found....etc

   In addition to the "contribute" side, also allow users to sign up their phone or an email address at which to be notified for a particular train, line etc. Create a series of quick SMS codes allowing ad hoc queries as well as a profile on the Web site at which to set defaults.

   This solves a myriad of issues including "where the hell is the train" instead of waiting 15-20 minutes after an incident for it to show up on the MBTA marquee. It also could be used similar to plane tracking to allow spouses, significant others, and friends to know when to ACTUALLY leave for the station to pick you up.

   <sarcasm>And oooh - look! There's Google Transit on which data can be displayed and integrated!</sarcasm%gt;

2. Social Networking - My train ride really isn't that long but it would be nice to be able to know who of my neighbors and friends along the entire Newburyport / Rockport line is taking the same train I am. Allow contributors and participants to state what train they are on, which car they are in and approx. which seat. Information can be set to "friends only" or based on some other trust relationship to allow for privacy.

   Determining train car numbers for such a short period of time may be difficult but I'd venture to guess that they don't change them at all during the day and if one can determine the pattern of which engine/car setup ends up with which train (i.e. my 7:29am 108 train). This would be helpful when arriving at North Station, (South Station etc). I see the 5:55pm/069 train on the board with no track number. However if I know the engine/car numbers for the day, I can simply look at the last car. This could be risky as sometimes the train master may arbitrarily choose trains based on their availability. I think the avid users of Railroad.netcould make a big contribution here.

   This degree of awareness could allow for localized IMing, ad hoc peer-to-peer laptop-based wireless networks and all sorts of experiments in mobile computing. I already see tons of people on their Blackberries, laptops and other devices working away. Why not enhance their value when commuting?

   I forsee a function of my Tivo being a "trusted friend" on my Commutning network so it will always know what train I am on and popup a window allowing any viewers to know when my train reaches the stop before Salem....or something.

As always, I fully admit my ideas are to the extreme of technology implementation and usage but while I strive to be an innovative fururist I am always seeking ways to maximize what little time I have. The more educated with contextualized data I am, the more in control I feel - much more conducive to getting things done.

Please - all comments welcome.

Though I oft begrudge pulling my slothic body away from my Net Addiction to walk the dog, (gods forbid that I get fresh air or do something that contributes to the household for a change), it's an exercise that provides me with enough stimuli to keep my normally racing brain busy allowing me to brain storm. Similar to the massive amounts of multitasking I do on the computer except it involves walking, feeling the air, smelling the smells, listening to a cacaphony of noise etc instead of flitting between virtual Windows.

Before I get to my BrainStream of the evening, I wanted to note something my brother Nate, (necr03), was thinking about. Until he truly starts posting to his own LiveJournal, I want to store his ideas somewhere. He was discussing design of future vehicles. Not sure if he was referring to automobiles, airplanes or spacecraft as it was a few days ago. But he was pondering a day when transmitters and microprocessors were so small and inexpensive, a vehicle could be absolutely covered with them and instead of absorbing or tricking radar, simply retransmit the signal right through itself. and back to the sender once it had bounced back to them.

Taking that a step further, I could see hundreds of microcameras being mounted on a vehicle while at the same time, the external body of the vehicle is one giant computer monitor. The image on the other side of the vehicle is displayed on the opposite side of said vehicle as if it were not there. Difficult to do with tire and the undercarriage though perhaps a bit easier to handle the windows and windshield.

Anyway, back to my idea. I had my little light bulb earlier today while walking the dog. But while completing the final jaunt for the night, I started thinking about holography and the Star Wars scene where R2D2 projects a 3D image of Princess Leia giving a message. I still think holography of that sort is a ways off. We have seen people display similar images on a screen of moving fog but unless scientists get much better control over light in a space, (I don't know- perhaps projecting dust or some sort of matter in the shape of the holograph and the light around it helps make the 3D effect or something), it'll be a long time before we see truly realistic, interactive holograms. Damn - and I wanted to play a magic user and cast Major Image and other Illusory spells.

However with all my ramblings on Augmented Reality, I think that technology is the median between normal-space and holography. As HMDs and wearable HUDs get more and more simple, non-intrusive and inexpensive, using wearable computers combined with these devices along with mounted location-aware hardware one could completely create the fact of an interactive, quite realistic hologram.

I was thinking how much of a PITA hand-mounted keyboards or even dealing with voice/subvocal recognition to navigate a GUI would be. Then I remembered all the research I did into current efforts of "gesture recognition" - that is, detecting hand/body movement and causing a GUI to react as a result. So on a screen in front of you, you would see a series of windows. Hold up our hands and make a grabing movement. The "hand" cursor on the screen would close on the window and allow you to move it where you wish. Hold up a single finger and point in the general direction of the scroll bar, crook your finger and make a scrolling motion - voila, you're moving down the screen.

My idea would become a part of my previously mentioned wearable computing environment - a multi-beam laser scanner mounted on the HMD, (along with the GPS device), that would cascade several hundred to a tousand beams of light parallel to the front of your body. Your hands would then become the input device and you can either bring up a keyboard to type on or simply use your hands to navigate windows combined with your voice as input....or even alternate GUI navigation features. Activating the device would take a voice command or button somewhere on your wearable but once activated, it immediately calibrates and allows you full control.

Examples of gesture recognition navigation of a GUI environment can be seen in the movie "Minority Report" as well as the television show "Earth: Final Conflict" where the technology was used to pilot the Taelon shuttles.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I need to get better at writing down what's in my head.

When I go out to walk the dogs, am driving somewhere, trying to get off to sleep, I'm usually inside my head brainstorming. I'm pretty good with mind visualization and I swear I could live in there. It's be better than TV if I could connect it to my.....what is it.....visual and aural cortex?

Anyway, in the past year on one of my walks, I spent a lot of time looking at the stars. It was definitely late spring or summer and quite nice out. I was looking up and trying to identify constellations and stars with little success. Being a Scifi geek and always pondering the stars, space and other "star systems" and being a technologist, futurist and pseudo-transhumanist, I'm always thinking of ways to make life easier. The spiritual side of me is constantly fascinated by coorespondences in more Earth and astrological-based religiousness.

So I started dreaming.

( Read more... )

Ah, the future. One can hardly wait.

So one of my previous BrainStreams has been realized and even has had a conference around it - Vehicle-2-Vehicle communications or V2V.

However with big companies like DaimlerChrysler & GM working on products and research, it seems to me the Web 2.0 community needs to keep close watch on the development of this technology and make sure there's allowances made for people to be able tap directly into the data themselves.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. In a report on a V2V Framework, GM's Bill Ball does say an open infrastrucutre is key to success. Ball is a VP at OnStar.

I haven't read through all the documents from the conference or contacted the presenters yet but I'd really like to see an XML DTD or handful of RDF schemas specific to marking up data gleaned from V2V neworks. I think in order to ensure it won't get locked up in some proprietary or industry-only standard, the Web 2.0/Semantic Web community needs to take ownership and leadership in developing such standards.

Something to keep an eye on is the IEEE DSRC standard - Dedicated Short-Range Communications meant to augment cellular with high-bandwith connectivity for vehicle-to-roadside and vehicle-to-vehicle applications.

Chris (crschmidt) - this takes MeNow, FOAF and other SemWeb apps to a whole new level

I've taken some time yesterday to further organize my thoughts from this post. We needed such an application on 9/11, we need one for Katrina and no doubt as the hurricane seasons get worse and worse and the potential for other natural disasters like blizzards and earthquakes, we need to create such an applications.

I passed some of these ideas onto MoveOn.org, perhaps they'll take the lead but they're a political organization. The US Goverment has already proven that they're to mired in politics and turf wars to execute a successful aid operation and they're always behind in technology. NGOs and other aid organizations don't really have the resources to create such a system so it's up to the technology community.

Not only is this an app that could be used in the US but with open mapping data initiatives springing up around the globe, and platforms like Google Earth to make use of them, this could be used for any number of worldwide natural disasters.

<Open BrainStream>

1) Trust Issues - It may be too late to implement this in a fast matter but between Katrina and 9/11 it may be wise for a massive organized effort to support such a thing - take the "friend of" concept of Orkut or LiveJournal which gives a level of trust to the friend-of-a-friend level. You see, how many people really want to open their home to a stranger with absolutely no context to who they are? Far fewer than if there was some sort of trust system in place.

I've been builging up my contact list on LinkedIn as I personally see it as one of the most successful applications for Social Networks to date. There's about 5 people I haven't directly interacted with online or in person who are on my contact list but all the rest I have some degree of trust with them. So take 78 contacts with their total 5,900+ contacts, and those contacts' contacts equals 367,400+ according to LinkedIn.

Combine that with Orkut's "levels" of trust: friend but 1) haven't met, 2) acquaintence, 3) friend 4) good friend, 5) best friend. I'd almost add a similar level for family: 1) Immediate family 2) Sibling's family 3) Parent's family etc. Honestly, I'd like to see a flexible filter-like system of LiveJournal where perhaps we have a large set of defaults, (like above), add a few more relationship types and allow people to create their own and set trust levels that are translated into "English" for them to verify.

2) Ridesharing - Both due to a friend's need to get a relative from TX to BOS and since many of the homes appearing on hurricanehousing.org are way further out than 100 miles, people either need to get to friends or family or even these hurricanehousing sites.

I see the ridesharing almost like bus/train connections. W can get X to point A and Y can take X to point B and Z can take X to their final destination at point C. Almost like a massive socialist communing network ala Zipcar.

Interesting....who needs gas and oil? Set up rideshares across the country! ;)

3) Google Maps/Earth mashups - Take all the basic location data for both rideshares and hurricanehousing and stick it in a google maps setup for people to see and have access to. This will be very helpful when trying to determine how to get from one Rideshare location to another. Perhaps hack the Google Directions to say ....."to get to Boston, take rideshare A555 from Baton Rouge to rideshare D453 in Kentucky. Take rideshare D453 to Pennsylvania rideshare T887. Take T887 to Boston's South Station.....or whatever.

<Close BrainStream>

We have the tools - I passed these ideas on to the rdfweb group instrumental in developing FOAF and the Google Maps ideas to a geowanking list.....we just need to reach more geek types. They're out there and we can do this.

Alright - another brain dump. I'm not sure what's up with me but the ideas keep a-flowin. Bear with me because some of these ideas may have already been done while others are just....weird.

So I've been getting more into my TiVo of late when I realize just how much data there is inside it. Unfortunately, I have a Series 2 TiVo which isn't hack-friendly nor running Open Source. I love my TiVo - not sure what I'd do without it but it's the little things that irritate me:

• Why is there only the ability to rate movies/shows with 3 thumbs up or 3 thumbs down? Why not a simple rating of 1-10. Anything from 1-4 sucks, 5 is "no opinion" and 6-10 is pretty good to great. I want my TiVo to be able to make good recommendations and I want to give good data to TiVo but I can't with such a limiting rating system.



• Why can't we rate individual episodes. There are some shows that have a completely different subject each episode, let me decide whether I liked the subject, episode, how it was presented etc. Maybe even have a database of multiple-choice contextual questions based on the show's subject/metadata that helps tell WHY I didn't or did like the show.



• Why not make the "Advanced Search" easy to access? Why do I have to do a hardware hack just so I can have a Wishlist with both a Director and Actor....or a keyword and actor?



• If I have some wishlists & season passes set to autorecordbased on preference, let me say "If a more preferred show is a rerun that I have recorded and fully watched once, and will be recorded instead of a less preferred show that is a first run, ASK me if I want to see that instead. More intelligent TV!



• I want to know why I cannot watch movie trailers on my TiVo. I can listen to music and share photos, but I so want to watch all these cool trailers on my TV - not my computer screen. Wake up TiVo!

So in my desire for all things data, I want to get my data from the source. Why should I have to copy data down? It's in format that's usable as-is or is transformable via XML....so why can't I access it?

My brother is playing with Freevo since he's the *nix wonk in the family and I hope he makes progress. With TiVo being so closed now, it seems building my own Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is the future. I hate to say it, but true. So I'll make the rest of my ideas PVR-generic.

Idea 1: Fun with GPS, RFIDs and Presence

With all this talk and thinking about MeNow, I've started getting more and more interested in GPS. My phone apparently has 911-accessible GPS as well as AGPS where I guess I need some service to assist me in accessing my GPS location. Annoying.

The future of mobile computing is going to be presence-based. Let's say I'm walking down some Main St. USA - could be Broadway in NYC, Newbury St in Boston, or even Essex St. in my town of Salem, MA. Each location I walk by may have some data I'm interested in. This is why I'm perfectly happy to give TiVo my TV-watching data, IMDB my movie watching data, Amazon my media shopping data and ranking, and Google my search data - heck, even my supermarket my shopping history. I want recommendations and special deals. I feel confident enough to handle spam sent my way and want to benefit from the data aggregated about me.

So ideally, I'd have my FOAF file combined with encryption-based "trust-relationships" saying who can and cannot have access to certain data. Ideally this would be linked to MeNow data with a GPS location of where I am at a given time and possibly an RFID/Wireless/Bluetooth identifier that says "I'm here waiting for queries" and may be pushing out all my various user data anonymously. If I walk past a store, I'd get a ping that says "Acme Groceries thinks they have some specials you might be interested in." I can either say.."ok spill it" or "no thanks". There's have to be some sort of robots.txt stating which types of shops I am OK with getting queries from, which ones can outright give me info and which ones are blacklisted.

I'm also annoyed by my favorite store never having large containers of Fat Free Sour Cream (only the small), being out of Green Chilie Enchilada Sauce, Rosemary and never having more than one flavor of Edy's Fat-Free, No Sugar Added Ice Cream. So I can have an "allow" that says let me know stores that have these things in stock.

If I walk past a restaurant, it would look for similar restaurant ratings I have done or dishes that are my favorite and let me know if they have them. A movie theatre may say it still has tickets left for a show I want to see and a music store may let me know they have a CD I've been seeking for ages.

Of course, in a dreamworld this information would be accessible from my home or in my car as well. If I am looking for any of the above I mentioned, my home digital agent can let me know when a favorite or local store has one in stock or if in my car, I can be alerted that there is a store on my route that has what I'm looking for - based on preferences that say I don't want to have to turn onto more than one street after taking an exit from a highway.

In most cases, the data is out there. Almost everything nowadays is done on computers and if people can be educated to save or ask for digital files from companies who produce printed material for them and then have some means of making it available, it would be amazing. Perhaps there's a market for local or regional aggregators who run a series of servers in neighborhoods and communities and have representatives who work with the stores & businesses in those locations to send data to the server where it gets transformed and served.

Ah, pipe dreams.

So where does that fit into PVRs, you might ask? Well, a few things. So I have my GPS coords being sent to my Web/Presence server. Say my wife wants to know when I'm within 15min of home. I can call her when I leave work or see can see my AIM connection go down or notice the "status" on the front page of BrainStream. But traffic in Boston can be unpredictible. Short of calling me every so often, how can she know where I am? That's impractical.

A little jiggering with my FOAF & MeNow plus telling some sort of application or script - if I am <> MeNow:isWith rel:spouseOf, and MeNow:status = "enroute home" then send a note to foaf:person kirkyr, using her MeNow:preferredcontact to let her know when my MeNow:isLocated is within 5 miles or 10-15min of the house. (Which reminds me, I want to add a preferred contact method toMeNow because there are many different ways to contact me at any given time....also, adding some sort of list of common locations to my FOAF would be great.).

There's where the PVR comes in. Kirky's presence app looks at her MeNow and notices her contactPreference is set to "PVR". So the app looks to see if the PVR is actively being used AND if the TV is on - is that possible? Maybe the TV power would have to be plugged into the PVR ala a surge protector like thing. If both these factors are true, it sends a popup window in the bottom corner of the screen much like annoying Network TV ads have been doing during shows lately - and says "Ben is 10-15min from home".

Depending on trust-relationship definitions on my end and detail preferences on her end, it could give her the option to access my GPS coords on a map to see where I am. That way she COULD contact me to ask me to bring somethig home or just start prepping dinner or doing anything else she wanted to do before I got home.

I wonder if anyone's done any work on pulling data from a car's computer. Right now I'm guessing there's few standards and the only pople who can do it are mechanics. It would be cool, though, if once in-car wireless became more prevalent, you could easily pull all sorts of data from your car's computer like speed data, gas consumption, fluid levels etc. Is there an RDF schema for this data? You could factor in the GPS location, add in the restrictions to movement of maps, measure distance, and based on traffic patterns (I can just see an RDF schema for traffic - designate a traffic incident, what caused it, how long will it take to get clear, what is the delay and reduced speed etc) plus the speed the car is going, get the most accurate amount it would take for you to reach a location.

Details aren't too important but ideally a Linux-based PVR would have a small email client/server for sending and receiving notifications or some other means. This alert system could be used for almost anything - checking the weather for severe weather in the area, neighborhood watch alerts for the neighborhood, or some other alert that we've specified via preferences. If there is data, you could be alerted.

But what if the PVR is off? Then it would see the second means of contact is a phone. I'd love to have an application that "called" her phone number, and either played a pre-recorded message from me saying I'm 15min away or read in a text-to-speech voice something getting the message across.

Idea 2: PVR News feeds, other applications

It's getting to the point that the more powerful PVRs become, the more applications that can be built into them. Why not turn them into a terminal server of sorts? Grab my OPML file from my central server and keep my RSS/Atom news feeds up to date so between shows, I can see what the news is - better than any Live News Network Ticker - no need to change the channel. Allow me to set preferences in my PVR alert system so I'm alerted to certain feeds when they are updated. I'd love to get FoodTV or food-oriented feed updates while on FoodTV.

Heck, for that matter, why not let me terminal service into my laptop or IMAP my email account and check email so I don't have to be on a computer. It's only a mater of time before PVRs allow for wireless keyboard/mouse or some other interaction - like gesture-based (think Minority Report) or using one's eyes.

Idea 3: Closed-captioning data

I'm not sure this is even possible as I haven't had time to research. Is it possible to pull close-captioning data from a TV stream using a TV card? There's an incredible amount of potential if so.

For starters, you could get full transcripts for shows - helpful if you wanted to find something later but are not sure what was said or even cooler - use your browser and network access on your PVR to "blog" a show while watching it. You'd be able to quote and cite relevant materal based on text from closed-captions.

What about metadata? The more I get involved in the semantic web, the more I realize just how critical metadata is. Let advanced users go through the closed-captions to attach a series of keywords to shows and then tie that data to recommendations and ratings. If there was a particular thing about a show that interested you, you can rank keywords appropriately- maybe even use that metadata to easily search for stored shows.

The only problem is not everyone uses closed-captioning and speech-to-text that doesn't involve voice training is pretty poor. Something to think abot though - now THAT's interactive TV.

Idea 4: Sharing data

Just like I would REALLY, really like to share all of my "My Movies" lists from the IMDB, I'd love to share data from my TiVo - what movies have I seen recently, what shows do I have a season pass to, what are my top-ranked shows or episodes, what are the worst? Why not make Atom feeds of these lists and use an XSLT to create RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds that can be pulled. I want to find like-minded people who share my interests ala Audioscrobbler.

Someday, all this preference data aggregation will allow for customized commercials that people will actually watch, so all you network execs should listen.

So in conclusion, presence, presence, presence, metadata, metadata, sharing, sharing, aggregation. It's the future ladies & gents, hopefully it will be here sooner than later.

(Links to come)

[BrainStream]
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