Category: BCI Blog

A few odds and ends this week. My wife has a project that she asked my help with; I told her it was not possible (as presented) so she went out and looked through the tools I suggested and found a product (service as it turned out) that made it possible. Sometimes how you view a project can make it unnecessarily difficult and sometimes you just need the right tool to make it, not only possible, but easy. It is my general approach to favor using Windows PC’s for projects for a great many reasons; however, I try not to lose sight of Unix products, Apple products, and Android products and the wonderful tools they can be for the “right” project.

In this particular case, the service was Google Apps and specifically the “sheets” app which allowed us to take an outline and turn it into a series of ORG charts. It, like so many other tools, required a bit of a learning curve so that we could import the existing information into a sheet and have the app convert it to a visual representation that would be easy for others to grasp or understand. Turning lists and tables into easily understood graphics has long been a primary function of spreadsheets.

Another part of the puzzle was resolved by another feature of Google Apps; the collaborative features allow two people (or more) to simultaneously share and work on a project. Similarly, any project saved onto a google work space (google drive) is available to share with whomever the author specifies.

One of the obvious advantages to hosted solutions (like Google Apps) is that all the heavy lifting (the processing, calculating, etc.) is done by the server hosting the service instead of the computer you are using to view and manipulate the project. The user can be using their choice of tablet, phone, computer of most any type to participate in the project and neither special equipment nor special software is required. Restated, this type of solution is inter-operable on any platform (device) which is capable of browsing the internet.

As someone who watches television and movies from a wide variety of origins (films in English, French, Korean, and occasionally Swedish or Norwegian) I have come to think of American TV and Movies as fast-paced, intended to be engaging and keep the viewer’s attention. It appears I am somewhat alone in this as approximately 50% of current viewership in the US utilizes a second screen; that is, follows associated media on a phone or tablet while watching American TV or movies. A few companies have appeared and are growing which specialize in providing this kind of content. I know there is also a large volume of viewers who use the “second screen” to do something totally unrelated to what they are watching on TV.

I have started seeing services that provide background for episodes or cast trivia and many other types of associated material that the viewer can use to follow their interests related to what they are watching. I first saw this on streaming services and have seen some “links” on live or broadcast TV lately. Reminds me of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers where media links were provided with news items and entertainment items alike. I don’t know if that idea was Robert’s or not but it has come to pass.

It appears that the ways in which we consume media change almost daily as providers adjust to demand and demand responds to new and innovative offerings. How long will it be before standard televisions include 20% of the screen’s viewing area to provide text explaining and enhancing the experience of watching a show (this in addition to aids for the hearing impaired); certainly the 4k TV’s have plenty of resolution to provide this service without any change or enhancement to the technology.

Now that services like descriptive audio are becoming common place, a whole plethora of information services that can follow on the same display or on a linked display to enhance the experience are surely just around the corner or already with us and just waiting to be tapped. 
Which services providing what kind of information in what form will become prevalent? Time and audience demand will tell; along with which ones will generate income for the service providers and those who license the information. One thing is certain, all of this will demand more and more bandwidth both of the broadcasters and the internet service providers.

The Expectation of Privacy.  In my own home, with the doors locked, curtains pulled, and windows closed I have a reasonable expectation of privacy; a concept bandied about in legal venues to distinguish when material or activities may be scrutinized by legal authorities.  When I publish material of any kind to the internet, I make it public (not private) with that act; that is what the word publish means and it is no accident that I use “post” and “publish” almost synonymously.   I know that many websites and services (facebook, twitter, etc.) have privacy settings and privacy policies; but, those policies apply to material that has been published to their service.  It is this nature of activity that leads me to assert that we should have no reasonable expectation of privacy for all materials we publish to the internet via any of these public services.

Yes, I understand that you can set a post (published media) to friends only, or to only yourself and one other specific individual, and having done so you might feel that you should be able to expect that to be private; but, consider for a moment that you have transmitted that media (a picture, a video, a graphic, or just some text) to a remote computer (server farm or storage facility) out of your personal protection and grasp, into an electronic facility specifically designed to provide that same service to millions of other people.  The term “shared storage” comes to my mind along with many of the connotations of the term shared and I see no reason to expect privacy to be included.

With our government and law enforcement both having admitted to asking for and receiving access to information stored in a variety of these services, I feel we, as users of these services, should take seriously the notion that law enforcement expects to be able to use that information in court to convict or assist in the conviction of crimes; this means that they do not recognize any of this information as being private.  Any expectation of privacy we have regarding information that we publish is therefore mistaken.  This is a separate issue from what happens when hackers expose information on a server; but the result is the same.  While it is true that the act of hacking (gaining unintended access to information) may be a crime in itself; once the information thusly obtained is published in the open, it is there for any and all to experience regardless of how it was originally stored.

Does this mean we should stop using internet based services to hold our photos and videos?  I suggest that, no it means we should be thoughtful about what we publish with an eye to only publishing material that we consider appropriate for public exposure.  As I write this letter, I do so with the expectation that it will be publicly shared and, as such, have little reservation in having it published.  There is already a history of embarrassing photos being accessed and made public and I am sure there are similarly embarrassing videos that have been made public without the owner’s (publisher’s) permission; and I would suggest that this is the result of those publisher’s not understanding how public all of the internet is, or of the potential for any given material that has been published to become public.

As one final topic, I want to discuss IM and PM; messages sent via Internet messenger services.  These should represent a higher level of privacy expectation and at one time may have; they no longer do so.  Regardless of which of the private message services you use (I refer to the publicly available ones like Yahoo messenger, google message services, Skype, and other similar services), they provide a host where the messages are stored and immediately forwarded to the assigned destination; it is this storage which represents the potential breakdown in security.  Law enforcement (with court assistance) can request transcripts of the sessions which means that hackers can also gain access to those transcripts or logs of the conversations.

No matter how you communicate; if you do so over cell phone, wired phone, internet, or radio, there is potential for someone to intercept your communication; with most methods the likelihood of unintended access to the material you communicate is quite small, yet very real.  The big issue I see is that many folks expect privacy where they should not; anything you publish to the internet is subject to public exposure.

Communication, successful communication, is important in so many interactions but it became painfully obvious to me last week when I was trying to assist a customer over the phone. We were both speaking english but we weren’t communicating.  This wasn’t the first time I have experienced this issue; but it was a severe case and one that finally pushed me to action.
The problem, as it appears to me now, is that a lot of vocabulary has been built up surrounding modern computing and the tech industries.  To be clear, I am not talking about the highly technical language of designers, programmers, security specialists and the like; I am talking about the day to day language that our children have grown up with, and those of us in the industry or supporting the industry have struggled to keep up with.  What appears to have happened is that the majority of our population has never been exposed to this vocabulary; until recently they had no reason to know of its existence, let alone understand the words or their application.
A few examples of the vocabulary I am talking about are the words Desktop, Icon, or App.  For persons of my father’s generation Desktop is understood as the surface of their desk; my daughter would recognize the same word as identifying the work surface on her tablet, where the Icons for Apps can be quickly located.  It turns out that it doesn’t matter which Operating System (another bit of vocabulary) you have or which User Interface you use, most modern electronic devices have a Desktop, with Icons, for Apps.  Being able to recognize what they are and which is which is really helpful when someone is providing assistance but cannot see the screen.  Numerous times I have asked a client to “go to the desktop” and find a specific icon, only to have the client tell me there is no such thing; I will usually then describe the desired icon only to be told no, it isn’t anywhere.  My mistake was at the beginning; we didn’t understand Desktop the same and they weren’t seeing what I expected them to see.
So, I offer a few definitions in the hope that they will assist in the beginnings of a shared understanding.  From this shared understanding I hope to build the basis for more successful communication.

Desktop: (from Wiktionary) The main graphical user interface of an operating system, usually displaying icons, windows and background wallpaper.
Icon: a discreet picture or symbol which may be on a desktop or menu to provide direct access to some functionality, Application (app), or program.
App: an application or program to realize some simple or complex function.
User Interface: the collection of controls allowing a user access to the features of a computer, tablet, phone, or other electronic device; often used o provide simplified access to the operating system of a computer.
Operating System: the unified definitions and controls that provide a link between the user interface and components of a computational device.  MS Windows is an integrated Operating System and User Interface; while IOS is a User Interface.
Browser: an app or program designed to provide generalized access to the internet or internet style content.

These definitions are not exhaustive; but are specific to the topic of providing a basis for a shared understanding when working on or talking about modern computers.  I hope to provide more definitions next week in a follow up article to fill in some of the blanks left by this article.

More Communications assistance.  When you are trying to get assistance from a technical support specialist or your IT person, it is helpful if you and that person have some common ground; some words that you can agree upon the proper use just for this event.  Last week I started with a few words that I felt were basic necessities; this week a few more that are still very basic, that are necessary for good communication.

Email: Any electronically transmitted message with one or more specific destinations.  Smart phone texts are a special case where the recipient is identified by a phone number; more classic emails use an address made up of a mailbox name and server name separated by an at symbol “@”.  For example george@gmail.com; george is the name on the mailbox and gmail.com is the name of the server (sometimes also called the service).
Email client: This is the program or App that is used to access your mailbox or mailboxes; it usually allows you to order all your emails (electronic letters) conveniently, compose outgoing email to whomever you desire and read those sent to you.  It may also include a calendar and other handy functions.
Post: Post (verb), the act of sending material to the internet in electronic form; sending an email is one example, adding a comment or photo or video to a social media site are examples, tweeting is an example.
Post (noun), is the material, however simple or complex, sent to the internet.  It can be blank (containing nothing) or extremely complex (an entire novel, a feature movie, etc.).  Regardless of what it is, once it is a post, it no longer enjoys the privacy of your personal device, it now exists on the internet.
IM, or Instant Message: A form of information exchange which, in its simplest form, is an exchange between two persons over an electronic connection in which both are simultaneously active and sending each to the other.  The resulting immediate receipt by the intended destination and ability to immediately respond was what set IM apart from Email.  IM grew to include live messaging among groups with voice and live video or shared media previously prepared as a virtual meeting tool and much more.
Network: any group of devices connected for the purpose of information exchange; often with a single information transmission protocol.  Telephone systems are one of the biggest and a very complicated example of a network; the internet is a good example, your in house printer sharing system is another example.  Perhaps not too obvious is the tendency for networks to be inter-connected.
Modem: Technically a device which performs modulation and demodulation.  In a more specific way, the device which extracts and converts network signals from a common carrier (phone lines, cable tv lines, fiber optic cable) to ethernet signal (or wifi) and also injects and converts local network signals (ethernet, or wifi) back onto the common carrier; thus providing two way communication for a given location.  Sound confusing?  A simple example is two people attaching a can to a single string and then talking to each other through the cans (the cans are modems in this example, the string is the common carrier; it works best of the string is taut).
Router: a network device that provides an interface (junction) between two or more networks; most current retail routers also include a small switch (see below) and wifi (wireless networking) capabilities.  It is a common function for a router to take a single internet connection and provide access to that internet source to a local private network with the router managing local addresses for all the local network devices.  In doing so it provides a layer of privacy for the local network while still providing internet access to those same devices.
Switch: a hub, the physical device that connects devices via cable to the other devices in a network.  Commonly, the LAN (local area network) cable from a router plugs into one port on a switch and all the other wired devices in a network connect to other ports in the same switch thus connecting all of them together (physically); in this way the router can control communications between any and all devices in a network).

Next week I would like to expand on a topic that I believe is implied in several of these definitions and its impact on our day to day use of modern electronic devices; that is the topic of Privacy or Expectation of Privacy.