How to Improve E-Voting? Take It to the Cloud

State governments in the United States must maintain servers year round for tallying votes during a matter of hours on election day, and many have a mixed record accomplishing even that task. A CNET article published today suggests that cloud computing provides a better alternative, and I agree.

For starters, I am more confident in cloud providers hosting sensitive election data than I am in a governmental IT department doing so. Data centers are built to be redundant and physically secure, and some are staffed with personnel trained in industry security standards. It would be impractical and cost prohibitive for a state to take those steps.

More importantly, virtualized server images that run on cloud services like those offered by Amazon.com are most  likely to be configured correctly; more servers that meet the same rigor can be spun up as demand peaks. There are companies that make a living out of selling certified images for that lock down access in virtualized environments hosted in the cloud.

Independent audits have uncovered security holes when local governments have set up their own servers. That is unacceptably risky.

Cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon make it possible for states to use the exact same databases and servers that they would use if they were tallying the results themselves, so the data remains interoperable with their existing voting systems. Even though the data is not physically controlled by a state when it’s hosted by someone else, it remains the property, of the state as cloud providers do not customarily control customers’ intellectual property.

So what does this all mean? If vote counting goes to the cloud, the state departments responsible for elections are then free to focus their efforts on providing accurate, accessible and reliable voting machines on election day. States can save taxpayers money and allay fears about stolen elections by using cloud computing to provide capacity on demand for tallying votes on election night, and do so with confidence. The time to make the switch is now.

Also New in Google Labs: Google News Timeline

Software legend Andy Hertzfeld–one of the architects of the original Mac OS–works at Google now, and today the company unveiled one of his efforts: Google News Timeline, a Google Labs service for searching news and other information sources by timeframe. It’s still clearly an experimental work in progress, not a core Google service.  But being able to search the Web in a chronological fashion ranks high on the list of useful ideas that haven’t been fully implemented yet, and Hertzfeld’s work is a tantalizing step forward.

Timeline Search’s sources include the Google News Archive, newspapers such as the St. Petersburg Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; magazines such as  TIME (covers only), Popular Science, Vegetarian Times, and Baseball Digest; blogs, Wikipedia, sports scores, and more.  As the service’s name tells you, results are displayed in a timeline format, and you can scroll back and forth in time and view information by day, year, week, month, or decade. Here’s a search I did by decade for Iran, which gave me a revealing 10,000-foot view of news coverage of that country in ten-year chunks:

Timeline Search also works for more specialized research. Here are results that show the Beatles’ music in the 1960s year-by-year, and some Red Sox scores from one particular week in 1980:

In this first version, Timeline Search feels a bit like a search engine that requires you to use advanced mode to get much out of it–it’s taken me some fiddling and experimenting to make it work. For instance, the search field at the top is used for search keywords in some instances, and to specify news sources in others, and you can’t figure out what newspapers and magazines are available without searching for them by name. I hope that Google forges ahead both on refining the interface and adding more sources–all those books, magazines, and newspapers that the company is scanning are ideal fodder for time-oriented search. And I’m glad they have Andy Hertzfeld on the job. Here’s his own blog post on his brainchild.

New in Google Labs: “Similar Images” Search

Google’s Google Labs experimental playground has added a service I know I’ll use quite a bit: Google Similar Images, which lets you drill down into image search results to find images that resemble each other.

The service looks a lot like standard Google Image Search, except that results have a “Similar Images” link below them.

Click on any of those links, and you get more images that resemble the one in question. Here, for instance, are results for three distinctlly different plane images: a childlike black-and-white line drawing, a photo of a big plane, and a photo of a little one:

Google says that it hasn’t created the similar-image connections for all the photos in its index, so they won’t show up for all searches. And it’s going to refine this capability more before it rolls it into standard Image Search. But it looks pretty darn cool to me already. Here’s an official Google blog post with some more info.

Windows Expensive to Put on Netbooks? Not Really

In what is definitely a defensive move, sources for the Wall Street Journal indicate that the company has only been asking for $15 per copy of XP intended to be installed on netbook computers. That is as little as 25% of its typical fee for notebooks and desktops.

With Linux a popular choice for those looking to avoid Microsoft’s high royalty fees, Redmond apparently felt the window of opportunity closing. Thus it has begun an agressive push to remain dominant in this space as well, and it meant taking a hit on profit margins for its Windows software.

Netbooks may have conribute to the 8 percent decline in revenues in the division, although to be fair that may include customers deciding to pass over Vista and deciding to wait it out for Windows 7.

Speaking of Win 7, how will that handle netbooks? Microsoft is considering a policy of only allowing three concurrent applications. While it may seem unreasonable for them to do so, consider the fact that these devices for the most part do not contain top-of-the-line hardware.

Last Call: Please Take a Quick Survey

Mind if ask for a favor? Federated Media, Technologizer’s advertising partner, is conducting a survey to learn more about the demographics of Technologizer’s community. The information we collect won’t be used in any personally-identifiable manner–just to do a better job of targeting ads to the type of folks who visit the site, and therefore making them more relevant and useful. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, could you take a few minutes to do so? Thanks!

Click here to begin the survey.

Is the Next iPhone Also the Next Apple TV? Will It Get an HD Screen?

A site called PhoneNews.com is reporting that Apple intends to give the next-generation iPhone Apple TV-like capabilities for playing back content on HDTVs. The notion is that they’ll support HD and that there will be a cable and dock that let you connect your phone to a TV and then use an Apple remote to control it, playing back video and audio stored on the phone or on computers on your wireless network. I have no idea whether any of this is legit. (Actually, I see one major flaw in the idea: After you stick your phone in the dock and kick back to watch a movie, what happens when you get an incoming phone call?) But it’s an intriguing idea, at least.

PhoneNews.com also says that it’s “likely” that there will be an iPhone with a higher-resolution screen for HD playback. Sounds like pure speculation. But I hope that the company comes up with a new iPhone model that’s significantly better from a hardware standpoint than current ones. And an iPhone HD with a high-res screen and a camera that’s capable of taking better still photos and capturing video would be a tempting upgrade. The current iPhone display, which was impressively packed with pixels two years ago, no longer counts as a truly high-res screen–several companies are rolling out models with 2.5 times the pixels.

5Words for April 20th, 2009

Wow, Oracle will own Java…

Larry Ellison is buying Sun.

Adobe puts Flash on TVs.

The post-Windows era begins.

TiVo to sell user data.

YouTube’s new comment filtering system.

Toshiba’s netbook starts at $600.

iPhone refurbs: a good deal.

Apple leads in customer experience.

A review of iPhone Quickoffice.

Microsoft gets $15 per netbook.

The Return of Jeeves

I’ve written before that Ask.com has been a search engine that’s skittered from one advertising message to another for years. Now it’s trying yet another approach: Its original one! Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land brought to my attention the entertaining fact that Ask’s UK version has gone back to its first name, Ask Jeeves, and has brought back P.G. Wodehouse’s famous manservant (or a rough approximation thereof) as its spokesmascot.

Here’s what you now get at uk.Ask.com:

Schwartz’s story quotes Ask.com as saying the sort of things you’d expect it to say: that this is a new-and-improved Jeeves (he’s computer-rendered!) representing a new-and-improved search engine, that Jeeves’ name recognition is extremely high in the UK, and that it has no plans to to bring him back in the states. All of which makes sense. But I kind of hope that he makes his return here, too–the original positioning of the site was the only one that was memorable and made intuitive sense, and I remain steadfast in the belief that it’s almost always a mistake to try and rename anything. If VW can bring back the Rabbit after all these years, there would be no shame in Jeeves getting his old gig back.

(Ask spokesman Nicholas Graham did tell Schwartz that going to AskJeeves.com gets you Ask.com with Jeeves hanging out on the home page–if I’d known that, I’d forgotten about it. Betcha the number of people who do that every day is much higher than zero.)

Also, is it just me, or does this latest version of Jeeves bear an uncanny resemblance to his ultimate boss, IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller?

Four More “Get a Mac” Ads, No Direct “Laptop Hunters” Rejoinders

Back on Friday, I wondered if we’d ever see Apple’s “Get a Mac” guys again, and speculated that they’d either come back with a direct response to Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters spots or stay away for good. Which just goes to show that even the most innocuous speculating about Apple is likely to be wrong. The company’s released four new “Get a Mac” spots, and none of them take on “Laptop Hunters” directly.

Here they be:

The only one that feels like it tiptoes into “Laptop Hunters” territory is the third one, “Stacks,” since it points out a feature of iLife 09 which PC says sounds expensive, then explains that iLife comes with all Macs. Maybe that’s a subtle response to the Microsoft ads’ painting of the cost of Macs as including a large premium for meaningless cool factor. Or maybe not–a pretty high percentage of all “Get a Mac” commercials have touted iLife as a principal reason to buy an Apple computer.

I’m not sure if the second ad, “Legal Copy,” is referring to something specific with its conceit that an ad claiming that Windows PCs are more simple and intuitive than Macs must carry a lot of fine print. As I’ve written, one of the striking things about the “Laptop Hunters” series is that it makes no claims about Windows. The message is all about the specs and features you can get at a particular price point, and anything relating to software seems to beside the point.

(Side note: I’m not a fan of fine print, but it’s better than not using it when an advertising claim badly needs clarification–as I wrote in this post about Apple’s iPhone 3G advertising.)

Then again, maybe ignoring “Laptop Hunters” is Apple’s way of responding to it. While Microsoft keeps doing its price comparisons and saying that Macs provide no added value for the price you pay, Apple is returning to the basic mantra that “Get a Mac” has repeated all along–that Macs deliver fewer hassles and more powerful included software than Windows PCs.  The implied message is that you should be including those factors when you do the math on a computer purchase. It’s a far more reasonable point than the one that Microsoft has busily hammered away.

And maybe the fact that Mac and PC are back at all is an oblique acknowledgment that Microsoft’s ads are attracting attention, and Apple needs to reinforce the pro-Mac, anti-PC case it had already been making.

One other thought about the new commercials: Poor PC seems to have drunk the Mac Kool-Aid himself somewhere along the way–in “Time Traveler” he actively argues that PCs don’t work the way they should and are inferior to Macs. The early ads in which he touted his own virtues and disparaged the Mac were at least as effective, and a lot funnier…

Hulu: Coming Soon to the iPhone. I Hope, I Hope, I Hope…

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Hulu is coming to the iPhone within the next few months. Having used the okay-but-just-okay Joost and TV.com iPhone apps, I sure hope that Hulu is indeed on its way–and that it’s as well-designed as Hulu’s Web incarnation, includes all of the stuff that the service offers on the Web, and is viewable over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections. Especially since it remains unclear when–and even if–the SlingPlayer app that will let me stream all the stuff on my TiVo to my iPhone via SlingBox will show up in the iPhone App Store…

Polaroid: A Great Name Taken in Vain

Maybe it’s because I consider the SX-70 one of the very greatest gadgets ever invented. Or perhaps it’s because I grew up a few miles from the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. Whatever the reason, I feel protective about the Polaroid brand–and boy, am I sorry to see what’s happened to it over the past few years.

To recap: In 2001 Polaroid went bankrupt. In 2002, the brand was acquired by a company called the Petters Group, which proceeded to slap it on DVD players, TVs, and other products that had nothing to do with the company’s proud heritage in instant photography (as well as a few that did, such as digital cameras). Petters later bought Polaroid outright for $426 million. In 2007, Polaroid stopped making instant cameras, and in 2008 it announced plans to stop making film for its old cameras in 2009. In 2008, it became known that Petters founder Tom Petters was the subject of a federal investigation for massive financial fraud. Then Polaroid went bankrupt again.

And yesterday, Polaroid was sold again, this time for a measly $88 million to a joint venture that owns other distressed brands such as the Sharper Image and Linens ‘n Things. One of the partners said this about Polaroid:

Polaroid is an iconic brand known globally for their technical innovation and high-quality products that deliver on its reputation of ease-of-use.

Very true. But another exec added:

The Polaroid brand has immense global appeal that translates into almost all categories,…This is a terrific opportunity to unlock Polaroid’s brand value and transform its multi-channel platform of diverse and unique consumer products using leading technologies and trend-setting innovations.

Which I fear is corporate doublespeak for “We’re going to continue to license the name out for use on all sorts of consumer electronics products, most of which are commodity items which have nothing to do with the qualities that made this a great company decades ago.”

You gotta think that the late Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder, is deeply sad if he’s out there somewhere, watching what’s become of his brainchild. (He died in 1991, after Polaroid’s golden age but before it became absolutely clear that chemistry-based instant photography didn’t have a future, and neither did Polaroid as an independent, inventive entity.) Here’s a great story from a 1972 issue of TIME that makes clear that Land was one of the greatest tech CEOs ever–a sort of combination of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who thrived for decades and was also a philanthropist of note.

There is one exception to the generally dismal fate of the Polaroid name: It’s being used on photo printers and digital cameras that incorporate the printing technology developed by Zink, a Boston-area startup that’s full of Polaroid veterans. At least it’s a genuinely innovative idea that brings the original idea behind Polaroid photography into the 21st century. But I wonder if there’s an alternate universe somewhere in which digital photography was invented at Polaroid, and the company is doing better than ever?

E74 and Red Ring of Death: Same But Different

They go by different names, but sometimes it’s the same hardware failure that causes the Xbox 360′s “Red Ring of Death” and the newer “E74.”

In an interview with Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, an unnamed Microsoft representative discussed the latest console-killing error, which on Tuesday became covered under the same three-year warranty Microsoft issued to fix the Red Ring of Death.

Crecente was trying to figure out if the “three flashing red lights” and E74 are the same problem with different indicators. Microsoft denied that claim, but said that in some cases the error messages are referring to the same hardware failure. “However, it is not the same failure mode in all cases and there is no single root cause for these malfunctions,” the representative said.

Microsoft didn’t elaborate much further than that; as I said last time, the company has nothing to lose by playing this close to the vest. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Xbox personalities can claim that the worst has come to pass.

Here’s another interesting tidbit from the short interview: Microsoft said the Red Ring of Death is not out of the picture, even though hardware improvements have reduced the likelihood of the problem.

In that light, I wish Microsoft would reset the clock on its warranty coverage for customers whose consoles have bricked. A set time limit of three years is unsettling when customers can’t rest assured that their console won’t break again, even with the latest hardware.

Eight Reasons I’m Going to Miss Books

[NOTE: Here's a post that first appeared in our free T-Week newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.]

So help me, I’m in favor of progress. I grew up loving magazines and feel blessed to have spent a large chunk of my life to date working on them, but when they go away, I’ll be okay with it. Most of the things that magazines do well, the Web does even better, and the inherently interactive nature of the Internet lets it do an array of things that are simply impossible for paper magazines. As for newspapers–well, they’re already dead to me.

Books, however, are different. Them, I don’t want to disappear–ever. I own and like Amazon’s Kindle, but if I had to choose between it and printed books, I’d opt for the latter in a nanosecond. Even so, the Kindle is already good enough to leave me thinking that it’s pretty much inevitable that printed books will begin to look archaic within the next decade. Once something starts to look archaic, it usually becomes archaic. So I’m thinking that by the time 2019 rolls around there will be a lot fewer books and a lot fewer bookstores, and, perhaps, a lot fewer book authors.

Continue reading this story…

5Words for April 17th, 2009

I want a million followers!

Pirate Bay: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

Annoy Amazon, lose Kindle books.

Report: Best Buy plans downloads.

Voting on Facebook policies begins.

Slim new Sidekick does Twitter.

Office 2010 gets public beta.

Kutcher’s a Twitter follower millionaire.

This e-paper display does color.

Google CEO Thinks 2009 is Android’s Year

During the quarterly financial results conference call on Thursday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sounded very confident about Android’s prospects for the coming year. He called the number of maufacturer and carrier partnerships expected to be announced “significant,” and seemed to allude to the fact that device announcements could be equally so. One area where Android will turn its focus to in 2009 is netbooks, indicating a desire by Google to move away from a purely phone-based platform.

Apple Responds–Briefly–to Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters Ads

Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek has weighed in on Microsoft’s “Lauren” commercial, the first of its Laptop Hunters ads. All of them involve shoppers rejecting Macs in favor of Windows PCs, and the implication in each case is that Macs offer overpriced glitz rather than substance. Like other observers, Hesseldahl points out that Lauren’s HP laptop has a lower-resolution screen than Apple’s MacBook Pro, much poorer battery life, and more bulk. He also notes that she’ll have to pay for anti-virus software, won’t get Apple’s iLife (which is bundled with all Macs), and won’t qualify for free troubleshooting at Apple’s Genius Bar. Good points all.

He also managed to get a quote from Apple about the Laptop Hunters campaign–the first ackowledgment of it by the company I’ve seen:

Usually silent on such things, Apple did give me a comment on the Microsoft ads. “A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans says. “The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.” Microsoft declined to comment.

That’s pretty straightforward and dignified, making for an interesting contrast with the snarky tone of Microsoft’s recent anti-Apple salvos. It’s an interesting role reversal, given that in the past it was usually Apple who snarked at Microsoft, and Microsoft who replied either calmly or not at all.

But I wonder if we’ll ever get a response to Laptop Hunters from these guys:

Actually, I wonder if we’ll ever see PC and Mac again at all. Except for a couple of animated holiday spots, I don’t believe they’ve shown up on TV since last October, before Microsoft  had really ramped up its Apple-bashing. Back then, they were trashing Vista, and I said that it felt like inside baseball. My guess: Either they will respond to Laptop Hunters…or they’re gone for good.