> I'm with you, Chris. I think this is a solution looking for a problem.
HOLD ON! This? From somebody who works with patents?
The application of technology rarely occurs to the purpose it was invented.
This is like telling Gutenberg that after printing up the Bible for a few
rich people, what else would he ever need the printing press for? Did
Alexander Graham Bell foresee 900 chat lines for guys with no life? Did Al
Gore envision that the Internet would someday result in Facebook? (Yes,
since Al Gore will be a millionaire again as a result). Would Edison have
invented the light bulb if he knew that Motel-6 was going to leave the
light on for you?
I'm pretty sure that in 1966 when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle created the
Super Bowl, he wasn't expecting a Madonna half-time show.
I can think of a bunch of applications of this technology based on my
experience with live video streaming, surveillance, bird photography and
keeping track of teenage daughters.
Some of you might recall my mentioning having a camera that is aware of its
location and direction it is pointed. The ability to trace the sun or
moon's route across the display so you can better plan how to place the
camera for sunrise/sunsets. Come to think of it, my Android phone/camera
already does this. Shame the camera isn't all that good. The apps are
already there to do all of the things I've mentioned with a cellphone or
iPAD2 or Samsung tablet. iOS and Android apps exist today. Shoot, I can
point my phone at the sky and it tells me what satellite that is flying
overhead.
It's not that I'm inventing any of these applications, yet. Others, yes,
these, no. Give me a bunch of black boxes and I'll give you something that
serves a purpose. Sometimes useful, sometimes not so useful.
Not to get too long-winded here (OK, I am, but you asked for it, so sit
down, buckle up and enjoy the ride)...
A few years back (probably 15 or so), the company I worked for a leading
company that made stuff for the radio broadcast industry. We had a digital
audio systems, mixers, transmitters and a myriad of other things--including
silence sensors. One day we got contacted by a mining company looking for a
solution to a rather unique problem. They wanted to play safety messages
over the 2-way radio systems at certain times of day to reduce accidents.
Things like "Use your brakes, not the berm to stop." Of course, to make
things even more unique, they had dozens of sites with dozens of channels
around the world with thousands of employees, but this system was to be
controlled out of an office building in Idaho. As the applications
engineer, I inherited this project. Within a couple of days I had a fully
working prototype system made out of two-way radios, silence sensors, a
digital audio machine with a playlist and a really cool program running on
it that would trigger the announcement at the planned time, unless the
radio was currently in use. It would then reset to wait 30 seconds to not
interrupt something important. If the radio was still in use after 30
seconds, it would delay again until eventually falling into a backup
program. The safety spots all were in a nice rotation so people wouldn't
get bored of them and tune them out. Everything was remotely programmed and
the audio files recorded in Idaho. We sold hundreds of these things. My
prototype system worked out of the box and needed little code adjustment,
BTW. Two other companies have since done the same thing through reverse
engineering this system. I worked in the exact same building as some of the
guys that literally invented some of the technology used and they would
just scratch their heads in amazement.
Then there were a couple companies that had the brilliant idea to
rebroadcast radio stations on a satellite which could be listened to with
subscription-based radio receivers. The head-end equipment would
automatically track the stations to turn to at the appropriate times,
control the audio switchers, and the rest of the day would either repeat
the broadcast for different time zones (Howard Stern 24 hours a day) and in
between times would play an original set of programming. This, of course,
was a variation of a system developed for AFRTS, BBC and NPR. Oh, wait. I
wonder who created that? All this was done with equipment originally
intended to just replace the venerable cart machine. Those of you in the
USA suffering through the homogenization of radio thanks to all the group
ownerships--they use an application of technology invented by, um, me in
1989 (when groups were limited to a dozen stations), that allowed for the
remote recording, scheduling, upload and playback of customized radio
channels from one location to multiple locations with unique adjustments
for each location. Oh, and the black-box that sat with the satellite
receiver to interrupt the national news broadcast with commercials in the
breaks which were sold by the national broadcaster but insert on a more
localized or regionalized basis? Commercials which were automatically
downloaded in the minutes before the top of the hour through a production
channel, but only to certain units. Mine.
Then there is the Olympus Rings Musical Fountain in Atlanta, Georgia. Ever
wonder how the audio and the fountains are synchronized? Yup. You guessed
it. SOMEBODY had to figure out how to take all those black boxes and
assemble them in a new and unique manner. I really doubt that the inventor
of SMPTE Time Code figured that it would be used in a vault 45 feet under
the street occasionally controlled by a secretary several blocks away on
the 12th floor of some non-descript office building over a phone line. Nah,
he was just trying to sync video and audio together in an editing suite of
a television studio.
More recently, SOMEBODY had to figure out how to build a new Layer-2
switching network to support all those LTE cell tower deployments. A
solution which in about 9 months has been adopted industry-wide by the four
largest carriers in the USA. A solution which the original inventor of the
technology had no clue would ever be used.
OK, so maybe I've gone over the top here, but what really overcooks my
grits is when somebody minimizes a new technology because they can't think
of any applications for it. These are just the things I can allude to
without breaking NDAs.
Hey, did you know that you can get surround sound out of two speakers? A
feature that we had to stop teaching people how to use because of the
problem with automobile accidents. Let's not go down the dark alley of
audio production tools... Somebody had to invent those editing techniques
which everybody uses today. Ever wonder who did the first multi-track
digital audio system for live theatre fully synced to the lighting and midi
gear? (actually the first three such systems). Or stacked some speakers on
the roof of the parked tour bus late at night and had his boss do dog in
heat sounds at 3 in the morning in St. Catherines, Ontario? The howling
could be heard from miles away. Several thousand watts of
"arrrooorrrooouuuoooo"
This is why I get a bit overheated when I see a camera manufacturer too
tightly define the application of the camera. Panasonic's attempting to
make the GH2 unhackable is a perfect example of this. If I was the product
manager of this new OM-D series of cameras, I'd make the SDK freely
available.
Trust me, if Olympus did that, they would sell millions of additional units
until the other manufacturers caught on.
AG "arrrooorrrooouuuoooo" Schnozz
--
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