2007 July

Social Security number for iPhone activitation

July 5, 2007 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

After reading this article, "Before you activate your iPhone, read this!", I feel like I violated my age-old, number one caveat for myself: never give out my Social Security number. It’s the key to my identity, my financial and my governmental life.

CNet’s Michael Tiemann said in that article, "Which is why the iPhone activation mechanism is so troubling, because it compels people in the heat of the moment to do something they should never do if given a moment’s thought." Yikes…that was exactly my predicament (the heat of the moment) since I got to the Apple Store just before they ran out of a new shipment, I bought one for my daughter as well and we had limited time, so I quickly put both of our SSN#’s in anyway.

Mobile telephony providers ask for either a SSN# or a Tax ID# (for a business) and I’ve always abhored both practices. With AT&T’s collaboration with the NSA over domestic spying, I’ve now handed myself over willingly to some database of theirs (though how trivial would it be to be on one anyway?).

Here’s what’s different: an unprecedented level of tracking that’s possible with today’s technologies. The justification for triangulation of your mobile signal to cellular telephone towers; Global Positioning system; hardware and chip unique identifiers so your actual device can be tracked; are just a few of the reasons why this is disconcerting.

The argument from the uninformed is, "Well….if you don’t have anything to hide there shouldn’t be a problem, heh?" falls on my deaf ears. The reason is that I’m an intellectually curious guy and read stuff online that may be construed as subversive (one example is Cryptome) and who knows if I went to that site, surfed to conspiracy, bomb making and Aryan Brotherhood sites if I somehow wouldn’t end up on a watch list. It would be trivial to track me.

If I trusted AT&T, Apple, our own government or the frickin’ boneheads who allow people to download and take with them millions of identities I’d be less concerned….but I don’t and I am concerned.

Filed Under: Technology

Long Now Foundation membership…

July 4, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Since I first heard about the Long Now Foundation and its mission I’ve been delightfully intrigued by it. It’s mission: "The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years."

* The Long Now Foundation uses five digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years."

Yesterday’s mail brought my charter membership card for the Long Now Foundation. It’s made out of metal (hmmm….guess it will last awhile) and I haven’t been paying attention as they began taking memberships and, as it turns out, there were 995 people already as members! I quickly signed up (I’m number 996) and they’re at 1,084 members as of 5pm CDT (GMT -6) on July 4th.

One reason I’m intrigued is how they’ll make a clock that will last 10,000 years and be positioned in a geologically constant place that will potentially be unaltered for that length of time. I like thinking we may be around that long and not be forced to flee the planet as we use it up, pave it over or excrete enough carbon so that all the world is like Phoenix in the summer.

Besides being challenged to look forward for 10,000 years, I can’t imagine 10,000 years back when humans were hunter/gatherers and civilizations like Egypt were thousands of years in to the future. The difference now, of course, is that humans could lay waste to this entire planet in the blink of an eye and destroy ourselves and everything upon it. We also might breed ourselves into destruction (the world population is expected to hit over 9 billion by 2050!). It’s imperative that we all think about how we’re all connected, how what we do impacts our own lives and those of our childrens — and instead focus on the next several hundred or thousand generations. To net-it-out, that’s the goal of creating a foundation with projects like this one…get people to think really long-term.

This is a very serious project and the minds, money and effort going into its creation and deployment is impressive. Poke around the site awhile and consider becoming a member.

Filed Under: Earth, Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

iPhone: Perhaps a unique perspective…but maybe not

July 3, 2007 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

Picked up two iPhones over the lunch hour today: one for my daughter and one for me (I’m guessing we’ll convert my bride too). There has been so much written about this device, I won’t go on and on about it but instead, perhaps I’ll bring forth a new perspective worth a few more bits of text into the Internets.

Anyone lobbing anything negative at Apple right now is nuts. This device is such a huge leap forward in usability and packed with so much technology that just shutting up and marveling at it for awhile is what’s warranted.

OK…enough marveling.

Instead of talking about the iPhone’s shortcomings, however, I’m going to point out what might come to fruition and pretty quickly.

I think we’ll see tighter integration between Google web services and Apple (both computer and iPhone based). New form factors (tablets?) that use this new user interface paradigm. The use of iWeb to create iPhone-centric apps (similar to what Rapidweaver has done here).

Though this device absolutely needs third party application development and delivery, you can see how it’s already positioned to be a user generated content machine that’s with people at all times.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been as blown away with a product as I am with this one. I see so much and get early peeks, I’m usually jaded…but not this time. This is — as Dave Winer said — "Basically I like all Apple products. To me, it’s a way to buy a BMW every month, without having to pay $60,000." There are certain products that you get into and say "Whoa!" and then "Ahhhh" as you get into the experience. It’s that way with the iPhone after you get over the initial shock that it costs $600 for the 8GB model!

UPDATE on July 4th: After setting up the iPhone at Noon, it took until 10:30am this morning — 22.5 hours later — for incoming calls to be routed to and accepted by the new iPhone. Until this morning, I was carrying around two phones.

But here’s the kicker: several people I talked to today were surprised and stunned when I told them we were talking on my new iPhone. Comments like this one from my sister, "Oh my gosh…I thought you were on a landline" were common. Besides all the aspects of the iPhone that everyone is writing about, this is simply a great phone.

Filed Under: Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Web 2.0