I enjoy writing about electronic  accessories. It started because I had to carve a niche for myself while fighting for ink against the likes of John Markoff. I started writing what I called “tire stories”. These were stories that weren’t sexy or provocative but solid enough to get in the paper.  What are tires, after all, but a couple inches of inflated rubber? But consider how important that thin layer rubber and compressed air becomes when it blows out at 65 mph? Your life and the life of your passengers come down to you not spending a few hundred dollars for steel belted radial.

Hyperbole aside, a lot of our digital life can go blooey because of something seemingly minor. Here are some personal horror stories because I didn’t pay attention to my “digital tires”.

During the 1994 Northridge earthquake, I helped coördinate coverage for The New York Times. The amount of electronic gear I took with me to get around the anticipated infrastructure collapse is still mind-boggling to me these many years later. I took walkie-talkies and a portable repeater to extend the range to 50 miles and a dozen cell phones during a time when nationwide plans barely existed. I carried extra laptops for those reporters, who left from home and didn’t come by the office to pick one up. This was also in the days when not every reporter at the paper was issued a laptop. This was where my tires blew. I left the AC adapters back in New York.

I once co-authored a book, Computers in the Classroom. The reason no one ever read it was because of a power surge that fried my computer and every bit and byte on it. Of course, I had no backup.

I started using a PDA back when the Palm Pilot still existed. I still have a functioning Palm TX. I don’t take it with me very often these days but I did take it to a seminar in Changsha, China a few years ago. My Smartphone carrier and China Mobile weren’t partners then. The TX worked like a charm and kept me on schedule until I realized that I hadn’t packed the sync cable and couldn’t backup to my laptop.

To avoid some of these disasters, here are the top 5 must have accessory upgrades:

1. Keyboard
2. Mouse
3. Surge Protector
4. External Backup
5. USB Hub

For frequent travelers:

1. Keyboard—a good keyboard is even more important on a laptop
2. Mouse
3. Surge Protector
4. External Backup
5. USB Hub
6. Universal AC adapter
7. Travel outlets

I’ll go into greater detail in upcoming articles with suggested products and services.

After several adult beverages and a Farscape marathon, I finally got the cognitive functions of my brain from cowering in the corner, overwhelmed by the images from Haiti. As a journalist, I’ve seen my share of disasters but I’m really glad I didn’t have to cover this one. I haven’t even been able to call or write a friend who lost family in the tragedy. “Sorry for your loss,” seems inadequate. But I can’t come up with anything else that might offer some comfort to him or me. So I’ve gone to the place where I’ve always felt safe. Looking down the road and getting the first glimpse of what’s around the technological bend.The Future Was Yesterday

Technology can’t solve the problems of governance, politics and providing for the immediate needs of Haiti’s people. What it can do is short-circuit some of the thinking about what it takes of build an infrastructure from scratch. About 15 years ago, I was invited to participate in a UN sponsored working group on technology in developing nations. I was in a room with the heads of IT from several Fortune 500 countries, a couple of ministers of information and several IT consultants. The topic was how to speed up implementation of telecommunications in Africa. After about an hour of listening to people wrangling over the difficulty of laying copper wire in some very dangerous places, I finally piped up and asked, “Why are we talking about laying cable? Why don’t we just leapfrog it and use satellites.”

After an uncomfortably long silence, a fog of excuses filled the room. It boiled down to “we’re not sure those people are ready to handle that level of technological sophistication.”  My anger management training kicked in and I was able to get through the rest of the day without resorting to violence.

This is what I’m afraid is going to happen to the digital future of Haiti. Who’s going to make the decisions about rebuilding? Some of the people in that room had never been to Arica. This was pre Sarah Palin but I think some of those people thought Africa was a country. My late friend and mentor Roy Allen and I once worked as consultants to the 40 televisions stations of the Nigerian Television Authority. We were having after dinner drinks on the balcony of our building in Lagos’ Victoria Island. “You know,” he said, “there are people back home who think we’re fighting off lions.”

I’ve never been to Haiti but I’ve spent enough time in places like Haiti where outsiders make decisions without any regard or knowledge of the people or the culture. I don’t exempt myself. I’ve seen myself react too  often as a know-it-all American.

I believe that I’ve learned my lessons, but have others? Are the redevelopment funds going to be used to just put things back together though a little stronger to withstand the seasonal hurricanes and expected earthquakes? Or will someone look down the road and plan for an infrastructure that will create a sustainable environment while building an economy that supports it?

Will the promise of “green jobs” be fulfilled in Haiti and used as a model for other countries trying to move past fossil fuels and the old way of doing business? I’ll be writing more on this topic. It’s part of the mission of this blog to constantly look at the technology through Global Colored Glasses.

One of the reasons, I spend most of my time walking the back walls of major trade shows like CES is the hidden gems found there. Startups or international suppliers can’t afford the mega-booths of the major players. My favorite find this year was U Power generators.

poto by Robert S. Anthony

I’m strolling along and see a large replica of “Hello Kitty” with a guy pumping away on a dual hand crank. It’s Danny Hu of Porng da – Enterprise Co., Ltd., In Taiwan. The hand generator can store enough battery power to charge most small electronic devices such as cell phones, game consoles and laptops. Next to the kitty were several  exercise bikes. But what looked like high-tech gym equipment was, in fact, a device to power up a much larger generator.

Hunman powered Generator

These batteries could run power tools and electricity in a small house. I do a lot of technology consulting in developing nations and a major problem is infrastructure. It’s no good to donate a tractor to a rural community if there are no spare parts to repair it when it breaks down. I pointed this out to Mr. Huhe who said that any old bicycle could run the generator. The models on display had readouts to indicate how much power was in the generator and how much more pedaling it would take to bring the unit to full power. Since the batteries can snap in and out, the purchase of additional batteries could guarantee power as long as someone was around to keep pedaling. Infrastructure simplified. Unfortunately, as of CES, there were no US distributors for U Power. Just a reminder, there are rural communities in the US which are just as disconnected from the grid as communities in  rural Tanzania.

ebook readers are flying off the shelves faster than Number  Five can  get input. I’m writing about the products I saw at CES but they are based on demos and not my having actually tested them independently. There will be follow ups but now, these are first impressions.

Alex from Spring Design is one of the 2nd generation readers. It goes way beyond being just an e-reader. The dual screen format helps in navigating the main screen. The bottom screen is a color LCD running the Android operating system. The unit is wireless making use of many of the wireless services such as WiFi, 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM.  While reading a book, you can also be listening to music from downloaded MP3 files. The advantage of the dual screen is that it speeds up navigation  and easily controls   what’s on the main screen. It lets you go get email and surf the Web and move that information in the larger e-ink screen for easier reading. It has an SD card slot that can go up to 32GB but might handle some of the larger capacity drives in the pipeline.

There is controversy with the Barnes and Noble nook. Spring Design is suing the book retailer contending that it violated an agreement to work together. While the merits of the suit are up to the courts, there is no doubt that the two units look and operate similarly. Having spent no independent time with either machine I can’t tell you which works better. Alex did manage to sign up with Barnes and Noble competitor Borders.

Samsung has entered the e-reader market with two models, the E^ and the E101.The added value Samsung brings to the table is the ability to write on the screen. This allows you to annotate books or just take notes. The E6 is the six-inch version.  For those of us with aging eyes, the 10-inch E101 has the extra screen space but with  less weight than some netbooks and certainly Tablet PC’s.  At this point, however, the cost of the units without a major book retailer signed at the time of the announcement seemed strange. The company did announce that it was offering Google Books as part of the package. One cannot downplay the impact of Google Book which has a million public domain titles. But without the ability to purchase current releasesthis lessens the value of Samsung’s offering. There may be a book deal in the offing but no one would confirm it.

eSlick Reader

The other interesting reader at the show was Foxit Software’s eSlick. It has the standard features, WiFi, MP3 player and SD slot to increase storage. The company just released firmware updates for earlier models that will support 32 and 64 MB SD cards.  Foxit has a book deal with Barnes and Noble for new releases. The thing that sets eSlick apart from  the other competitors is its focus on PDF files. Since the company made its reputation by selling an inexpensive Adobe Acrobat clone making it easy to convert any printable document to the PDF forma. It bundles PDF Creator with the unit. There is a new model in the works for the 2nd quarter of this year.

I’ve always been a lover of books. Nothing will replace the pleasure of a printed book but I’m becoming a fan of ebook readers  for the potential  in making some significant changes in the real world. More on that later.

Cella,

I was talking to my friend Tiffi on my phone. I was riding on a bus, ya know the one with the cute doggie on the outside, when the driver kept interrupting me with “would the person on the cell phone please lower your voice or end the conversation.” How rude was that?

Chatty Kathy

Kathy,

Some people are just self-involved. Maybe he thought that maneuvering a 5-ton vehicle at 65 mph with 60 or 70 people on board was more important than hearing about Tiffi’s trip to the mall. Some people just can’t multitask.

Cella

Dear Cella,

Like a lot of New Yorkers, I’m used to would be Lance Armstrongs weaving through traffic and blowing through red lights. Recently, I was almost run down by a cyclist going the wrong way on a one way street, running the red light, and was TALKING on his  cell phone. I wanted to clothesline the SOB. Would that have been wrong?

Mad in Manhattan

Dear Mad,

It would be wrong because clotheslining is a 15-yard penalty.

Cella

Dear Cella,

My parents believe that it is bad manners to text during dinner. Are they right?

I’m divided on this issue. It is rude to be texting during dinner. But as a parent, I’d be thrilled that you’re home for dinner.

Cella

Welcome to The Future Was Yesterday. While we will cover tech news and new products, we’ll also be focusing on how technology affects society for good or ill.

What will make this blog different is that I’ve not only spent 30 years covering technology, but I also had to make it work for reporters in the mountains of Afghanistan to rural areas in Zimbabwe.

I bring a skeptical but not cynical eye to technology. I love gadgets and love to geek out with them but experience has taught me that not everything works as advertised. Even more pleasing to me is that real users often find startling and innovative ways to use products that designers never conceived.

As with technology, TFWY is evolving. Change  happens,

Join in and make this your home for lively and stimulating discussion of technology in the real world.

Stephen C. Miller

Editor

more→

I like to wait until a product or service is released and I’ve had a chance to bang on it. But the announcement of Google’s Chrome OS (Operating System) is causing me to bend my rules. It’s the concept behind Chrome OS that has me intrigued.

Not too long ago, I was lecturing a group of college students about adapting writing styles for different media. The discussion morphed into whether the writing instrument had an additional effect. I write differently when using pen and paper or a typewriter or which word processor I use.  I tried to make a joke about how my muscle memory occasionally tried to move the cursor using WordStar commands. The silence that followed made it clear that most of the kids had grown up knowing no other program except Microsoft Word. There was a time when there was real competition for the hearts and fingers of writers as to which was the best word processor.

Just a phone

Hi, I’m Stephen and I’m an infohollic. I started a chapter of BA – Blackberry Anonymous. The Treo makes me twitch. I had a severe case of QDS – Quick Draw Syndrome, the pain caused by reaching for your hip and whipping the phone to your ear. The Mobile is now the shortest measure of time. It’s the interval between the first ring and you saying “Hello?”