Author: Steven Garrity

Is that a web-server in your pocket?

by Steven Garrity

Imagine we eventually have sufficient wireless bandwidth everywhere. What do we do with it?

I heard the idea that everyone’s palm-pilot/pocket-pc would be a web server. This is not unreasonable. Some current handheld PCs are running at 400MHz with 128 MB of RAM or more. I’ve seen PCs with less power run popular websites (with Apache/Linux). By the time the bandwidth catches up, the hardware will be a non-issue (hopefully battery-life will be a non-issue by then as well).

Why would Johnny-business want a web server in his pocket? Well, for some of us, it would store all of our personal and work files and host our own weblogs and websites. Perhaps we will all be hosting our own IM and email servers.

Add web-services into the mix and things get interesting. Need my contact information or access to my calendar? Query my personal info web service. The amount of detail my web services sends back will depend on my relationship to you. If I know you well enough, and I’m in a good mood, I might even let you query my physical location via GPS (with a limited accuracy — so you can’t detect… gyrations).

Why bother carrying this around with you? Couldn’t this work just as well if everyone had equivalent hosted services? Maybe — especially with a lighter client in our pocket that handles anything that needs to be in our pocket (GPS, voice-com, IM, etc.). Still — I wonder if, when battery life and wireless bandwidth are sufficient, will the concept of a “lighter client” become obsolete (because your cellphone/handheld can do it all anyhow).

What other applications can you imagine for a web-service enabled web-server in your pocket?

 

Deplaning – a short story

by Steven Garrity

I was invited to read a piece of fiction on a segment called “The Write Lane” on the CBC Radio PEI show, Mainstreet with host Mitch Courmier.

We spoke a bit about how writing for a weblog differs from tradition creative writing. I chose to read from a work-in-progress short-story (that I secretly hope will turn into a novel) called Deplaning.

For your listening and reading pleasure:

 

Reading on the (real world) Radio

by Steven Garrity

I’ll be reading from a short-story on CBC Radio PEI tomorrow. The reading is part of “The Write Lane”, a weekly piece featuring local writers. I should be on around 5:30PM Thursday, July 10.

If I can get my act together, I hope to post both the audio from the interview/reading and the text of the short-story.

 

A new word order: digital wuffie

by Steven Garrity

A friend of mine has put a new spin on the word “WiFi”. From this day forth, wifi shall be known as “wuffie” (hear it pronounced – WAV). It can rhyme with party, which is convenient.

Also, harkening back to the old classic “gif” vs. “jif” debate, this same friend has started pronouncing the “g” in digital as a hard “g” (hear it pronounced “digital wuffie” WAV).

Spread the word. I’m living in the wellspring of language.

 

Proposal: An Album File Format

by Steven Garrity

While I don’t have the talent or motivation to follow through on this idea, I thought it was worth sharing. Would it make sense to have an album file format that served as a container for individual songs?

I imagine some of the following features:

  • A container file, similar to ZIP or TAR (compression probably not necessary, since most music files are compressed)
  • Contains album metadata
    • Artist
    • Liner notes
    • Web links
    • Cover art (in a standard format accessible to player apps)
    • Song order listing
  • Contains the songs files (perhaps format agnostic? Could contains MP3s, Ogg, ACC, etc.) rather than just linking to a song, as a playlist does

This would purely be a matter of convenience, as all of this functionality is technically available now through playlists and folders. I might also comfort some artists who are concerned about the single-based bias (as opposed to full albums) of music online.