I struggled with this for a category. Geek? Cycling? Geek cycling.

A dude in New York put an iBook and antennas on his ride. This takes "cycling computer" to a whole new level.

Yury Gitman, a self-described "wireless and emerging-media artist" in New York, has outfitted his bicycle with an iBook laptop and Wi-Fi antennas so that everywhere he goes, a cloud of free, high-speed wireless Internet access follows him.

"I'm interested in exploring the Internet physically, in motion," said Gitman, who calls his vehicle the Magicbike. "It's not on our radar screen, even though we're obsessed with mobility and wireless. But in the future, we're going to do that a lot."

Gitman's antennas tap open Wi-Fi networks whose signals are too weak for ordinary laptops to pick up. He essentially extends them through his Magicbike, and when those hot spots fade out, he relies on the cell phone network.

Demand for wireless Internet access in automobiles has been picking up, and plans are on the drawing board to offer it in airplanes.

Why a bicyclist would want Internet activity is a question Gitman called "a very fun proposition to think about." Navigation help and communication with other bicyclists--"bike-to-bike communication," in Magicbike parlance--are two possibilities, he said.

Posted by: hln at 12:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 240 words, total size 2 kb.

1 In my pre-cycling days, the first time I heard the term "bicycle computer" the image I had in mind was a laptop strapped the the handlebars.

Posted by: Nic at May 07, 2004 05:05 PM (16A49)

2 Imagine if your bike computer had full-time IP and GPS. Besides being able to keep an updated log on your home PC (or, say, here... "Heather is on her bike, and has ridden 32 miles today"), it could flash a little icon to tell you that a friend is also out riding, and is only 13 miles away. Maybe you could touch that icon and send your friend an alert that you'd like to meet at a nearby coffee shop. Perhaps you could receive an alert that you are about 30 minutes from home, and a storm is expected in about 40. There are very few experiences in life that I can't imagine being somehow enriched by pervasive networking. Now, why the computer wouldn't just do this by using bluetooth with the phone in your jersey pocket is another question altogether. But this guy isn't trying to prototype, he's trying to make us think about it.

Posted by: hans at May 07, 2004 09:45 PM (SSLGd)

3 Hans, I like the way you think (Heather could look for me and say, "Look! Victor's only 1100 miles away!" ) But the first time I see someone JRA while looking at pr0n--I'm sticking my frame pump in his spokes.

Posted by: Victor at May 10, 2004 08:03 AM (L3qPK)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Hey, someone want to whip this one up for me? I'd like a browser emulator. I've got some complaints that a charity site I did doesn't look right in Netscape 4.5 for Mac and Netscape 6.0 for Mac. Seeing as I have neither of these browsers and have no Mac, wouldn't it be grand to pop open this program and have it render a web page as though it were a certain browser? Every web developer would kiss you if you were to develop such a thing (not enough motivation for me to undertake it, though).

Here are some attempts:

• Dejavu.org
• WebTV Viewer

Posted by: hln at 06:11 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 140 words, total size 1 kb.

Kill Sasser. Here's what you need to know. Today's PSA. May you all remain uninfected.

hln

Posted by: hln at 05:38 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.

Well, okay, thankfully, this is not THAT long nor is it THAT obnoxious. And making fun of Steve Ballmer is just so...necessary.

Found via samaBlog.

Posted by: hln at 06:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

GPS - coming to a coke can near you!

But you get a Hummer if they find you. So...strange and disconcerting as a package.

hln

Posted by: hln at 04:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

Yikes! Please inform all of your non tech-savvy friends because this one could nab quite a few victims.

Disguised as an official e-mail from Microsoft, the file comes attached to a note asking the recipient to install a "September 2003, cumulative patch" to protect against vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser and Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs.

If installed, the program, known as Swen or Gibe.F, attempts to disable firewall and antivirus software, gather password information and replicate itself via e-mail, as well as the Kazaa peer-to-peer network and Internet Relay Chat instant-messaging.

The virus-laden e-mail looks like an authentic missive from the Redmond, Wash., software developer (aside from a few grammatical errors), but a spokeswoman for Microsoft said this week that it doesn't send security updates in e-mail. They're all distributed through Microsoft's Web site (windowsupdate.microsoft.com).

Posted by: hln at 04:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 145 words, total size 1 kb.

Kelley of Suburban Blight had a recent post about geeks, dorks, and nerds, oh, my. I didn't think her geeksplanation was quite good enough, so I commented thus, and several of her readers agreed.

You're missing a few things - where is the dweeb in all of this, or is he too proletariat?

The dork - usually says the wrong things in all situations. Using a sock metaphor - he is often to ADHD to figure out where the socks go and may only get one on each day.

The nerd - usually very good at one thing, and that one thing isn't anything social. He can match his socks one day per week.

The geek - the greatest being ever to live. Among his own kind, he is a social beast, often conversing with other geeks about geek culture, including techno, software, sciences, science fiction, cyberpunk, video games, etc. Geeks are multi-faceted individuals; for example, my company is full of software developers who are avid cyclists. Reconcile that. Geeks write software to organize their sock drawers. Just because.

hln

Posted by: hln at 09:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 185 words, total size 1 kb.

There's a website that wants to do just that.

Contrary to the 2600s (not Atari) lying about my house, I'm not part of the hacker culture, and I know little about it - my geekiness is pretty mainstream in the code perspective.

I read about Lamo turning himself in on CNN's website, and I had to know more.

Wired gives a better profile.

More than a year later, Lamo is becoming widely known in hacker circles for tiptoeing into the networks of companies like Yahoo and WorldCom -- and then telling the corporate guys how he got there.

Administrators at several of the companies he's hacked have called Lamo brilliant and "helpful" for helping fix these gaps in network defenses.

Critics blast Lamo as a charlatan who preens for the spotlight.

Lamo's latest move: using a back door in The New York Times' intranet to snag the home phone numbers of over 3,000 Op-Ed contributors, including Vint Cerf, Warren Beatty and Rush Limbaugh.

Although Lamo (pronounced LAHM-oh) did nothing more mischievous with the information than include himself in its roster of experts, the Times is considering pressing charges, according to spokeswoman Christine Mohan. Hacking is a federal crime, currently punishable by five years in jail.

"Strictly speaking, he is a criminal. The law doesn't take into account motivation," security consultant Winn Schwartau said.

Lamo answered, "If (the government) were to decide to indict (me), I'd rather everything be on the up and up -- inasmuch as you can be on the up and up when you're committing a federal crime."

Posted by: hln at 09:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 373 words, total size 3 kb.