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It was frustrating enough to see TransLink waste 1 million dollars on iMove, but it makes it ten times worse seeing them refuse to improve the site, especially after promising improvements down the line. I’ve known about iMove for nearly half a year now, with absolutely no major fixes to the site in that time.

I’ve checked into the site every once in a while, and from what I can tell, it’s never updated with any real time crashes or incidents (it’s main purpose). Looking at it right now, it shows a bunch of “incidents” from November or early December. The site also refuses to make the proper distinction between “construction” and an “incident” - most have a triangle, but one uses a cone…

I’m also interested in seeing if that real time traffic overlay actually works. And why do they have it for the Massey Tunnel and Highway 1 near the Second Narrows, but not for the Lion’s Gate (especially when that bridge has the technology in place, viewable on this site)?

That’s without mentioning the ugly interface, an area where absolutely no fixes have been seen. What’s going on with iMove?

The other day, I ran across my first ever express bus. I was travelling from Surrey City Hall to King George Station, around rush hour, and luckily the 394 was headed down my route. I just have to say, “Where, oh, where, express bus, have you been all my life?”

Despite it being about 10 minutes late, the bus ride was absolutely lovely. It wasn’t filled to the brim like the typical buses on King George, it only had a couple stops, and made my 9 km trip in about 15 minutes. It typically takes me 15 minutes to get from my school at 76 Ave to King George (about 4.5 km) on the 321 during the afternoon (and that’s in a squished bus)!

I can’t say enough good stuff about my experience on that bus ride. It made me realize why BRT is so successful around the world. Sure, it’s not a billion dollar rail line with fancy stations and sleek cars, but it took me where I wanted to go, speedy, with few stops, and it wasn’t crowded. And I’m a happy customer.

So I did some more research on these magical buses. Seems like most express routes just use regular buses, and usually only run at rush hour. TransLink also apparently has specific Express Coaches, but they are only used on highway travel. These buses have A/C, comfy bucket seats, overhead compartments, and individual controlled lights (they are basically mini Greyhounds).

From my perspective, TransLink could dramatically improve the transit user’s experience, and also attract a lot more people if they either create a whole new express brand, or expand the Express Coaches. It could be a companion to the B-Lines, which actually have a lot of stops. Just like the SkyTrain - even though it’s rapid transit, it still makes a lot of stops. Just imagine having an express SkyTrain, stopping only at Surrey Central, Columbia, Metrotown, Broadway, and the Downtown stops!

Let’s take that express model and apply it with buses. To take it to the next level, we’d just have to build a few HOV lanes. All huge improvements for minimal capital investments.

I can imagine having a whole series of Express Coaches running between the regional town centres (kind of like the Express Bus the Province and TransLink are funding for the twinned Port Mann). You could also have a handful of local Express Coach routes connecting major points in municipalities. These would work great in places that don’t already have a form of rapid transit - like the South of Fraser area!

Gord Price linked to a recent hidden post on Google Earth’s official forums by Graeme Brown, a staff member at the famous TransLink. Graeme recently created a very cool visualization, merging the mapping data of Google Earth with TransLink’s new automatic passenger count systems. This transforms the static passenger load data into a new visual experience, giving this whole new spatial sense when viewing the stats.

It’s very cool to see that there are some innovative staff at TransLink like Graeme working on these types of projects. If anymore of this kind of stuff is being worked on behind the scenes, it would be a huge boost to TransLink’s rep to making it all public. I’d also love to see these visuals being made for many of the popular routes, or at least the passenger info being available for independent developers to create and expand on projects like this. Good job Graeme!

This is part 2 in a series discussing how the digital revolution is currently reshaping society. Don’t know what’s going on? Go back: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

This is the post I’ve been building up to all series and the only one that actually relates to the title. I’ve spoken about the Internet as software, Computers as hardware, economies of scale and barriers to entry, the OLPC project, and more. Well, we’re finally going to delve into digital kids.

The Internet is already cheap enough for most to afford it and prices will continue to go down, even as speeds go up. There’s also some innovation going around in the field, from mesh Wi-Fi to WiMax, as the industry attempts to provide connection for the last mile (aka: people out in the boonies). And as I mentioned in Part 4, the OLPC has created a whole new market of hundred dollar computers, finally breaking any barriers to entry for hardware. It has also enabled computer access for millions of children in developing nations, and has the possibility to provide all children in the 6 to 12 market with their own personal computers, something new for the Western World. Up until now, personal computers are generally obtained in the teenage years.

But, obviously, there’s more to technology and the digital world then just computers.

And this is where it begins to get very interesting, beyond the question “what would happen if every child in the world had a personal computer?”

I was doing some research on children’s gifts earlier this month, and found two lists, both of which outlined a number of tech toys designed for the children’s market. Here’s some that caught my eye:

• Digital Cameras: Fisher Price, National Geographic, Polaroid, and VTech are all producing kid friendly digital cameras with simplified controls but surprisingly good quality, with up to 3 megapixels! Pricing is between $50 and $70 dollars, cheap enough to replace if the camera gets wrecked.
• Cell Phones: There’s two main options up here in Canada - Migo, by Telus (and Verizon down south) and Firefly, by Rogers (and Cingular down south). In the States, there’s also the Tictalk by Leapfrog, and Disney has been venturing in this space. Basically, it’s a very simplified phone with the ability to call a handful of programmable numbers, along with a 911 direct button. Some are even GPS capable!
• AI Robots: These have existed for a bit now, starting with that darned Furby and the Poo-Chi robot dog. The toys available today, such as the Pleo, are more advanced than the animatronics at Disneyland! It features “organic movements and adaptable behaviours”, making it seem way more lifelike than your grandpa’s robot. In fact, the Pleo is said to learn from it’s experiences…
• Virtual Worlds: *You* may know Second Life, but children today live and play in two extremely popular virtual worlds: Webkinz and Club Penguin. Webkinz has the child purchase a real life plush animal, which features a code enabling them to create a whole house for this pet online and participate in a larger world filled with games. Similarly, but without the plush component, Club Penguin, recently purchased by Disney, is your kids MMO. For a cheap fee, kids can have their own penguin and roam around this online world playing games and talking (with minor restrictions) to other players.
  
• Digital Video Cameras: Polaroid has released a video companion to it’s kids digital camera, the Pixie. It features 640×800 resolution, a 1.5″ pop-out screen, and expandable SD memory. All for $80!
• MP3 Players: SanDisk is the first to enter this market with a digital music player designed from the ground up for children: the Shaker! It has a built-in speaker, two headphones jacks, and is as small as a salt shaker. Just load an SD card with MP3s, and pop it into the player. Price? Only $30!

Aren’t you amazed at the cool tech gadgets that are being created for this emerging market? I mean, this technology is barely five years old and is not only available for so bloody cheap, but is also being designed specifically for children.

There is bound to be *huge* aftereffects of giving kids these technologies at such a young age, most of which I see as being good. The worst part is the gadgets might get lost or wrecked, but then they are so cheap anyways it’s not really a big deal.

These are pretty big things: digital cameras, virtual MMOs, intelligent robots, cell phones… All available from age six! I can only imagine the cool things I could’ve created if I had this type of technological access from such an early age.

Just envision giving a kid a digital camera at 7. This child can just go around taking thousands of pictures of everything around him. Over the years he can improve and perfect his photographic skills. I wonder how advanced he will be by 11… by 20…

What about the communication and web skills kids are learning at this young age by participating in these virtual worlds? No longer are they jumping in at 13 or 14, in the prime of their teens, wanting to rage against the machine. These are children just beginning to learn respect, manners, and reasonable limits. Does this mean that, now that they have prior experience with the Internet before the tumultuous teen years, the web will be a nicer place? Maybe, thanks to the resources on the web and having the skills to access them, these kids will know where to turn when something is getting them down…

The Millennials are kids that were born after 2000 into a digital world. Today, there are absolutely no barriers of entry to the digital market, even at age 5, no matter what your income bracket! Will our brains rewire into multitasking, super networking organic machines? The effects are boundless, and I for one am genuinely exciting at finding out how it all unravels.

This is part 2 in a series discussing how the digital revolution is currently reshaping society. Don’t know what’s going on? Go back: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Have you heard of the One Laptop Per Child project? If not, it’s probably because you don’t live in America, and the international media is doing a half-assed job of reporting about it (see: social media revolution) despite it’s huge effects it will have on the whole world.

The OLPC was a non-profit project launched by Nicholas Negroponte from the MIT Media Lab. It’s goal was to create a hundred dollar laptop and put it in the hands of children in developing nations. It was supposed to sign up multiple national governments to purchase hundreds of thousands of these laptops, which would allow it to achieve it’s goal price through the economies of scale.

After many meetings and prototypes, the laptop has now been shipped off to several countries and is now in the hands of these children, many of whom have never seen a computer before; who have absolutely no idea of how powerful the machine they are holding truly is.

You see, there were two simple arguments about the OLPC. The naysayers made a clear point of asking what need a child has for a laptop without sanitary conditions, clean water, food, and basic shelter. Those who supported the project, like me, made the case that that laptop has more potential for ingenuity than the combined international aid money that’s been sent around the world for the past decades.

Say a poor child living in the shanty towns of Argentina received a laptop at school. The shack he lives in with his family doesn’t have power, and their only light source is a few candles. With this laptop, and an internet connection, he can instantly find instructions on how to build a simple windmill. After a few weeks of the family saving money, and purchasing materials down in the city, he can create and install a windmill, which could then easily power a lightbulb.

Or, let’s take a less ingenius solution, and something just a bit more common. Let’s say there’s a young teen in sub-sahara Africa who just got this laptop. Her first Google search is “Africa”. She clicks through the links, with one of them talking about HIV. Although she lives in the most infected continent in the world, her teachers don’t speak of it, and her parents don’t understand it. She begins some simple research of the virus. Through this basic understanding of what HIV is, and how to protect yourself from infection, she has now dramatically reduced the likelihood of her catching the disease. She can now explain this information to her family, and although her school may not cover it, she can raise the conciousness of her fellow peers.

Almost thankfully, the OLPC XO isn’t your typical laptop. It’s minimal processor, and small screen are what enable it’s cheap price. Besides, the machine isn’t supposed to be a workstation. But regardless, the XO features some very cool design, specifically made for developing nations, where the machine truly shines:

• the small screen can be read clearly during the day, even in direct sunlight
• it has mesh networking built-in, allowing the OLPCs to allow connect to one another within a certain radius. This networking enables a simple internet connection to vastly expand it’s reach.
• battery life is excellent (I’ve heard of it lasting a good 24 hours)
• with simple power attachments, one can recharge with a hand crank, a pull string, or even a small solar panel
• it’s incredibly sturdy

The amazing thing about this device is that we are giving the children in these developing nations the tools they need to alleviate themselves from poverty. Large scale international aid and charity has never worked as good as we all hoped for 3 reasons:

1. Corrupt governments diverting the money
2. Approaching the problem from a top-down perspective, versus from the bottom-up
3. There’s no incentive for the people to use the money wisely

The microaid programs have been so successful because they eliminate numbers 2 and 3. However, those programs rely on people understanding or learning about investing and social entrepreneurship.

The strengths of the OLPC are similar. They give people something useful, a real tool, directly. And because the governments are paying directly for these laptops, you can be sure that the machines are going to schools.

As the old proverb goes, “Catch a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.” Well, all a child has to do is some simple research online about fishing and he’s good to go.

Despite slightly missing it’s goal price, the OLPC has been an immediate success on another front. It has created a whole new type of machine, completely changing the marketplace.

Thanks to simple competition, Intel has developed it’s own mini-laptop, called the ClassmatePC, for developing nations. Asus, being a smart and nimble beast, took the developing nations out of the requirements, and built a cheap, small laptop for developed nations - the eeePC - which has proven to be a humongous success. There’s already rumours that several other manufacturers will enter this new market very soon.

Which begs the question, why don’t children in developed nations get access to these computers? Sure, they may not be building windmills with them, but giving children access at an even younger age would continue to revolutionize the Western world.

As I mentioned in Part 3, the age at which people in the First World at owning their own personal computers continues to drop. Right now, it’s a the point where a teenager typically has his of her own computer. Heck, even a number of schools are providing them with one.

But, let’s go even younger. Why not give the 6-12 market an OLPC type machine? If it breaks, it’s cheap enough to replace.

Doing so would dramatically increase our children’s digital literacy, at a much younger age. This in turn would spur technological innovations at a much younger age. You think a 20 something running a multi-million dollar web startup is crazy, wait till his child gets his own personal computer at age five!

The OLPC will not only bring developed nations out of the poverty cycle, which in turns helps balance out the world economy, but will also bring the next billion online into this whole new social global community. Take it one step further into the developed nations, and ingenuity will take another leap forward.

In the last article, I will discuss some more digital tools that are now available to children, and what effects this will have on society as a whole.

This is part 2 in a series discussing how the digital revolution is currently reshaping society. Don’t know what’s going on? Go back: Part 1, Part 2.

As I discussed in Part 2, the Internet is the software side of this digital revolution. As a commodity, it’s relatively cheap to come across, or even available for free in certain areas. This low barrier of entry for the Internet has always been hindered, to a degree, by the hardware side of things. Obviously, if you couldn’t afford a computer, you weren’t about to get online for a serious amount of time. There’s a whole other conversation to be had about internet access at libraries and such, but the strength of the computer is that it has always been *personal*.

Unfortunately, the economics of scale haven’t exactly worked out their magic just yet on computer hardware. That’s not to say that prices have not come down dramatically over the decades - because they most certainly have - but the entry level, up until recently, was still too high for a whole new segment to jump into the market of owning their own computers.

See, whereas the Internet only took into account monthly cost, and speed/bandwidth capabilities, the development of the computer has faced a few more hardships that don’t factor into the Internet’s calculations. Sure, computers decreased in cost, and increased in power and functionality, but along with this new potential, users created whole new applications for their robust PCs.

At one time, a person would only partake in making spreadsheets and word documents on their personal computer - the heavy lifting was taken care of by an enterprise machine (aka: workstation). As computers developed, the lines began to blur, and people began using the machine for graphic design, education, gaming, and, of course, internet access. Then there was the huge jump into the digital age where computers, as Apple put it, were now the certain of your digital hub: a place to store and interact with your movies, music, pictures, and more.

So you see, the advances in processing speeds and storage capacities have been met equally with increased usage of these new capabilities. The downside of this is that nobody wanted or would use an old computer: it just wasn’t capable of doing modern computer tasks on an older machine. This is why computers have remained quite steadily in the thousand-dollar market (yes, there’s cheaper ones nowadays. That’s what I’m coming to!)

A number of years ago, with the advent of Dell and Gateway, computers were made available for under a thousand dollars. However, and this still must be taken into account, computers from these companies are still considered low end simply because their business model is based around quantity and not quality. The upside of this however was the availability of a *personal* computer to whole new markets. In the past, a family would typically share a computer. With the advent of the sub-thousand dollar PC, you could now expect to see multiple PCs in a household, with one for each family member.

And we can’t underestimate the leveling factors this has on the digital divide between citizen’s of lower socio-economic statuses. Many middle class families, who couldn’t previously afford a machine, could now afford to buy one on Boxing Day or at Wal-Mart.

And this is the point we are at now. It is quite common for a household to have several computers, all for separate family members: a laptop for Dad, a PC for Mom and the little sister, and a laptop for the older brother. There’s two interesting points here though:

• The parents, unless one is in business or techno-literate, will typically share a family PC and not request their own personal computers, unlike the typical teenager who would want their own
• There is a undefined age at the moment for children’s access to computers: there’s the age at which they first start using the family PC, and there’s the age at which they get their own personal computer

You used to hear a few years ago of parents buying laptops for their graduate sons or daughters, as a college/university gift. Now, it’s not rare to see a high schooler with a laptop, either bought by the parents or paid for by the teenager him or herself. While they are rarely used in K-12 schools, unlike the ubiquitous laptop in universities, it is still a huge symbol of freedom - something akin to a teenager’s first car several decades ago.

If we are to follow the trend, one could assume you’ll begin to see under 12 year olds with their own computers. I used to scoff at the idea, thinking they wouldn’t have the responsibility or the operational knowledge to handle such a device, but I’ve been slowly changing my mind on this front. Kids from 2000+ were born into a digital world - this stuff is all around them, everywhere and everyday. There’s no point in underestimating their potential for success.

In the next article, I will discuss how the OLPC project has completely destroyed any barriers to entry for computer hardware. We will also see how this ubiquity of hardware and software will effect the current generation of kids: the Millennials.

This is part 2 in a series discussing how the digital revolution is currently reshaping society. Don’t know what’s going on? Go back: Part 1.

Leo Laporte did a keynote speech at Blogworld ‘07, where he discusses his comparisons between old media and new media, what it means to be an internet content producer, and the effects this whole shift will have on our favourite institutions. It’s tremendously interesting, although it will take a bit of time, clocking in at 45 minutes (he starts 15 minutes in).

Leo’s main discussion point is about how the Internet has leveled the playing field, in media, in education, in creativity, etc. It has enabled over a billion people, so far, to connect simultaneously with one another and make their voices heard.We have to be clear about the Internet however, because there’s two parts to every solution: the software and the hardware. The Internet, obviously, is the software part of this. Luckily, access to the Internet, like many things these days, was handled quite well by the economies of scale, bringing us both an increase in speed, along with a decrease in price, as more people started subscribing.

This increase in speed was incredibly important, allowing people to share more than just static HTML pages: images, audio, video, etc. Again, the scaling effect takes hold, enabling not only higher quality content to be both uploaded and downloaded, but also way more of it. I can remember watching the Star Wars: Episode 1 trailer, an exclusive for Quicktime back in the day. The trailer was tiny, and took forever to load on dial-up, but hey, it sure was cool. Before the internet, trailers were relegated to movie theatres and videos. Nowadays, you can get these trailers, and far longer video content, streaming or downloaded, in HD!

You can just as easily compare this to images. We started off with small, low resolution images, and slowly the web became graphic intensive. Now we are at the point where photographers, or just families, can share *all* their photos online, either for free or a very low cost. This would not have happened without the speeds we now have.

Plus, that’s without mentioning the shift from film to digital cameras, something that happening a lot quicker than one would’ve presumed. I can still remember all the pros saying they’ll never switch (now look at them), or going to London Drugs and the salesguy telling us that the 3 megapixel digital was good for small prints but that it could never beat film. The economies of scale again took hold, and here we are.

So sure, people have access to faster speeds and a more diverse Internet than ever before. This is important, but the game changer is what people choose to do with it. This is where we get into social media, or web 2.0 - where what you once thought about the news, information, and networking gets completely thrown out the window. And for good reason.

Old media is a very bland format. It’s the lone teacher preaching editorialized information to a full classroom - except on a much larger scale. This is nothing more than limiting access to information.

Yes, when the Internet first started, people could create their own sites for the world to see. But that didn’t mean the world was watching.

Google made it easy to find stuff on the web. That was a huge shift. But the social shift occurred with Wikipedia: where anyone in the world, even people with no knowledge of HTML, could instantly improve or update a citizen’s encyclopedia. It’s obviously been a proven success, and despite some worries from the laggards, it’s actually been found to be more accurate than most other sites or certified encyclopedias. Just goes to show that we’re smarter when we pool our information together than going it alone.

With Wikipedia, it’s all about the community. It’s the thousands of diehards, constantly skimming pages for updates and verifying information, that makes it all work. And then of course, it’s the millions of people out there, who might want to add their own information on a lesser known topic, or perhaps reword certain phrases to improve readibility, or maybe add their own images to an entry. It’s the community that makes it work. This is the social web.

Let’s take a slightly different example. There’s always been producers and consumers of information and content. As I mentioned earlier, this role of producer used to be extremely limited to the rich and famous. Not so with web 2.0, where all you need is access to the web and you are off. You can blog, you can podcast, you can videocast - *you* are the content producer now. And people are listening.

This low barrier to entry is enabling hundreds of thousands of people to get their voices, opinions, and information out there, which is utterly overhauling the way old media works.

Facebook, flickr, digg, Google’s apps, YouTube, forums, etc.

It’s transforming the web, and society, because it’s taking the internet to the next step. It’s creating connections and networks between all the people online. As most should know, change starts with a discussion. Having these conversations, openly available to a worldwide audience, with the possibility for them to join in on a two way dialogue - it’s an incredible way to level the playing field, whether that’s location, age, gender, income, etc.

And all you need is an internet connection.

I’m beginning a five part series today, which a new post each day this week. The latest articles will each eclipse the one it proceeded, and will shift from providing interesting information to enabling discussion. The topic: how the digital information revolution we are currently living in will dramatically reshape the world in the coming years - perhaps far faster and remarkable than anyone can imagine.

Just to start us all off, here’s an 8 minute slideshow, “Shift Happens”. This video was originally produced for a school board in America, thus explaining the minor focus on education towards the end, and ended up going viral late last year. They recently updated the video with the latest stats and it’s truly some very fascinating data giving us all a sense of the huge societal shifts that are beginning to occur in this world, thanks to the internet.

Rafe Mair wrote an editorial for The Tyee, detailing the process by which TransLink has reverted back to provincial control. He also mentions several other projects whereby the Campbell government has superseded local interests. Interesting read.

This new TransLink board, all Campbell approved, without an elected person on it, will have the power to raise property taxes, buy and sell property, change property taxation classifications and run its own police force.

Here they are:

• Dale Parker, a businessman who’s business financially supports the Campbell crowd;
• Nancy Olewiler, an economist who serves as a Liberal appointee on BC Hydro’s board of directors;
• David Unrah, lawyer and businessman who serves on many boards of directors and, get this, is the corporate director of Canada Line Rapid Transit which is overseeing the construction of the RAV — oops! — Canada Line (A little conflict of interest here?);
• Jamie Bruce, an investment banker;
• Sarah Goodman, PR spokesperson for Weyerhouse;
• Robert Tribe, long time Executive Director of SNCF Lavalin, which makes buses and transit stuff (surely not another conflict of interest!);
• Cindy Chan Piper who has a consulting firm, is a member of Vancouver’s right wing Non-Partisan Association and is a vocal supporter of Sam Sullivan (Gosh! Not another conflict of interest!); and
• Skip Triplett, who has been an executive with BC Tel (now Telus), Xerox of Canada and the Steel Company of Canada.

There you have it folks. Nine members of the business community all approved in advance by Premier Campbell to represent the needs of two million Vancouverites…

… And what was the fundamental issue that triggered the American Revolution? Taxation without representation.

Well folks, George III is alive and well. He runs his fiefdom in a great big office in the parliament buildings in Victoria.