Yes, we were married one year ago today.
Nokia: Four new handsets for developing world, bike charger
So it’s a holiday here in Germany, it’s a beautiful day outside and I’m still in my PJs, scrolling through my RSS reader, and two Reuters headlines scream out at me: “Nokia unveils 4 cheap phones” and “Nokia unveils bicycle mobile charger“.
Sadly, Reuters doesn’t provide any details, but CNET’s Crave blog does:
C1 phone (far left): Two SIM slots, only one line active at a time, six-week standby time (longest by far of any Nokia handset). Built-in LED flashlight! Available Q3 for €30.
C2 (far right): Two SIM slots (hot-swappable), both lines can be active simultaneously, microSD card slot (up to 32GB). Available Q4 for €45.
Nokia’s got more details on the other two models on its blog.
As for the bicycle charging device, CNET reports that “the dynamo starts charging when the speed of the bicycle reaches 6 kph and stops when it hits 50 kph”. Reuters adds that it’ll cost €15 and will be available “later this year.”
I think what’s really interesting about these new products is that they seem to be designed for the developing world but I think would actually be quite popular in the developed world too. I know lots of people that would love a cheap phone that includes six-week standby time, a built-in flashlight (who doesn’t use their phone as a flashlight?). Plus, for those of us who are globetrotters, dual-SIM slots is pretty sweet.
Now here’s my only question: why not combine the functions of the C1 and C2? Or does the simultaneous dual-SIM use suck up a lot of battery?
How to get free 3G mobile Internet in Germany
Step one: Order a new free SIM card from NetzClub, a new MVNO from O2. Select the “Handy Internet Flat” option. The catch is they provide you with free Internet in exchange for text advertising.
Step two: Buy an O2 Surfstick. I bought mine directly from their website for €34 shipped. It’s unlocked. It comes with an O2 SIM card, and five free days of 3G access — otherwise it’s prepaid €3.50 per day (midnight to midnight).
Step three: Download the O2 Surfstick software.
Step four: Put the NetzClub SIM into the Surfstick. When you launch the Mobile Partner Manager software, leave the O2 default configuration there and click “Connect.” Boom. You’re online at 3G speeds. Based on a Speedtest.net test from my apartment here in Bonn, I get 2.5 Mbps download speed.
Bonus step: Use your Mac to share the WiFi connection with your friends using these instructions.
NB: According to Phone Guide Germany, NetzClub has a monthly limit of 200MB per month, although on the website I can’t find where that limit actually is. But I haven’t given NetzClub any credit card info so far. That said, I’ve only downloaded about 30MB.
Cyrus on: CBC’s Spark (May 23, 2010)
Dear Friends,
I’ve been informed that my piece on getting my 88-year-old grandmother her first cell phone is on Spark this week!
It will be available on CBC Radio 1 at the following times:
Sunday afternoons on CBC Radio One at 1:05/1:35 NT (4:05 PT)
Tuesday afternoons on CBC Radio One at 3:05/3:35 NT
If you find yourself outside the reach of the CBC’s antennae, feel free to listen to it online, here, or of course, via podcast.
[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/plus-spark_20100523_spark114d.mp3]Lost: Um, what?
[The following post is about the final episode of Lost, so if you haven’t seen it yet, consider yourself warned.]
Rebecca and I got home from our weekend trip to Hamburg around midnight, and then we stayed up to watch the finale on Hulu. And we were both disappointed. Ok, so the island may not be the afterlife (unless you’re Michael), but the flash-sideways timeline is? What a cop-out.
This last season has been frustrating to say the least. After the third-to-last episode this season, here’s what I wrote:
Since I’ve watched Lost from the beginning, I had faith that there had to be at least some semblance of where the story was going, some architecture to the narrative arc of the show. Sure, maybe not every character was fleshed out, and maybe not every episode was totally storyboarded, but still. But in a show that’s kept its ever-growing audience watching through the use of ridiculously complicated, serial storytelling with astonishing details and countless self-referentialism, you had to believe that there was some
I’ve watched every single episode faithfully, poured over Lostpedia and discussed with friends and family alike. I’ve liked the show so far, even when it got a bit weird (time travel?) and kept going, confident that there was going to be some sort of satisfying arc to the larger five-season narrative. But this week’s episode, “Across the Sea,” (the third to last!) was wholly unsatisfying. And it makes me sad that after having loved the complexity of the entire story, that each time something gets explained, there are five more questions that come after it.
In fact that line in the first minute of this week’s episode: “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.” might as well be a tagline for the entire show, which to me, is massively disappointing.
Still, two obvious remaining questions (of a thousand):
– The Numbers, in the context of the show, remain random? They seemed almost arbitrary. Ok, yes, they were associated with particular people on Jacob’s cave — but then how/why did they turn up everywhere else in the show?
– Walt?
Many smarter people have written a lot smarter things about Lost, but here’s my favorite lines:
Jack Shafer (Slate): “Finally, did not Lost’s creators promise again and again that the survivors of Oceanic 815 were not in purgatory? They did. So where do they get off making the whole sideways world of Season Six a purgatory in which the inhabitants must come to grips with their lives and deaths before they move on? I call this cheating!”
Seth Stevenson (Slate): “But how does this connect to the intricate plot we’ve been following for six long seasons? Ultimately, the sideways universe is a world completely apart from the saga of the island, and it illuminates nothing about the island’s mythology. It’s simply a place where people who’ve shared a meaningful experience—could be a band of plane crash survivors or could just be some folks who did Outward Bound together—can gather for a final, ethereal hurrah. Presumably, anyone who dies with some issues left to work out enters this dream world along with their friends and loved ones, living a shadow life until it’s time to walk into the white light.
That spooky island that so much blood and treasure were spilled over—the one that holds the key to life and transfixed 20 million viewers each week at its peak? Oh, it’s still out there. Don’t trouble yourself about it. Just join us in this cheesily nondenominational church and let the good times roll. In lieu of a truly clever conclusion, please enjoy watching a minute of slow-motion hugging between the characters. Is that Penny we caught a glimpse of? She doesn’t get any lines, and we have no idea what became of her in the timeline we actually care about, but she’s smiling and her hair looks great, so that’s cool.”
Chadwick Matlin (Slate): “Jack, for the last two years you and I have been engaged in our own struggle of reason vs. faith. At nearly every turn, you told me that the show had written itself into a corner, and the only way out was through a hackneyed trick-door. I didn’t believe you—Lost had righted itself so many times that I was convinced it could do it again.
Now I say to you the same thing Locke said to Eko in Season 2: “I was wrong.” Last night Lost crashed, and crashed hard.”
Mike Hale (The New York Times): “So that was the answer: the island was college, or home, or Outward Bound. The sideways reality was the former passengers of Oceanic 815, plus selected guests like Desmond and Penny, gathering for a self-affirming reunion before heading off into whatever sort of afterlife the swelling white light symbolized. (The producers hedged their bets by placing symbols of various religions inside the church.)
Rendered insignificant, in this scenario, were the particulars of what they had done on the island. Pushing buttons, building rafts, blowing up hatches, living, dying — all the churning action and melodrama that made “Lost” so addictive in its early seasons — none of it was directly connected to this final outcome, beyond that it constituted “the most important part” of all their lives.”
Mary McNamara (Los Angeles Times): “Instead, it turns out the passengers of Oceanic 815 are all dead, victims, if the end-credit imagery is to believed, of the same tragic plane accident that started the whole thing. Six seasons of polar bears, bachelor pad hatches, landlocked ships, personal submarines and a fleet of fallen airplanes, and it was all apparently some sort of shared afterlife experience. Excuse me, but what are we supposed to do with those religious statues full of heroin, with Fionnula Flanagan’s pendulums, with the crazy Frenchwoman and the time shifts and the whole glorious Richard Alpert back story? And what on Earth are we supposed to do with the Dharma Initiative?”
Compare all of these reviews to this concluding line from the NYT’s review of the ’24’ finale: “After eight seasons, it was high time for Jack Bauer to go away. But the series ended in just the right way — leaving viewers wanting just a little bit more.”
No, the Internet does not help build democracies
I don’t know if Barrett Sheridan wrote his Newsweek piece, “The Internet Helps Build Democracies” in response to or independent of Evgeny Morozov’s recent piece in Foreign Policy (Think Again: The Internet ; May/June 2010).
Still, it sort of amazes me that this techno-utopianism (or as Evgeny puts it, “iPod liberalism“) still persists, at least amongst smart, internationally-minded journalists like Barrett Sheridan. I mean, I get why popular opinion might come to this conclusion, and maybe even some well-intentioned policymakers. But seriously, Barrett, is this what you’re arguing? I’m sure Barrett is a good guy, and based on his LinkedIn profile he also seems like an intelligent guy (even if he did go to Stanford ; Go Bears!). But I can’t understand how he can seriously believe that the Internet can “build” democracies.
Let’s take this point by point, shall we?
Obama, meanwhile, has made Internet freedom a centerpiece of his foreign policy, and in a speech in Beijing late last year hailed “access to information” as a “universal right.”
While it is true that the State Department is making quite a splash with its 21st Century Statecraft initiative, I’m not sure that their approach is quite as simple as it might appear.
Alec Ross, one of the architects of the 21st Century Statecraft initiative himself has said:
While these examples from Iran are compelling to many around the globe, it’s important to make clear that just as these networks were used to organize — as well as to galvanize the outside world — they were also monitored and manipulated by government forces. The same openness that allowed sympathizers in, also let in those that sought to end the dissent and punish the dissenters.
So we clearly can’t take a sort of kumbaya approach to connection technologies. They can and are being used by our enemies, like al-Qaeda, and by authoritarian regimes. But I think that this, more than anything else, makes the case for our own aggressive engagement on global networks. We need to raise our own game. We can’t curl into the fetal position because bad guys are becoming smarter about how to use technology. It just creates an imperative for us to be smarter ourselves.
In other words, they’re well aware of the potential dangers that these tools create for dissidents and that they don’t believe that they suddenly can create “revolution” in places where we might want there to be. What Barrett is arguing strikes me as pretty freakin’ kumbaya.
He goes on: For instance, the use of Twitter by protesting youths in Moldova last year to create a flash mob in the capital city of Chisinau illustrated just how powerful an organizing and communicating tool the Internet is, even when limits are placed on it.
It’s been fairly well documented that this “Twitter Revolution” was a myth.
The short version, as Ethan Zuckerman put it: “My take on it at this point is that Twitter probably wasn’t all that important in organizing the demonstrations. Where I think they were enormously important is helping people, particularly people in the Moldovan Diaspora, keep up with the events in real time.”
Same logic goes for Iran, by the way.
To the techno–utopians, [cutting off the Internet in Burma] was a splash of ice-cold water to the face, suggesting that the government in power virtually always holds the trump card. But in one way the junta’s extreme reaction actually revealed the futility of its censorship. Their choice was a binary one: accept that the Web cannot be controlled, or eliminate it altogether.
First off, Burma is a country of 48 million people that has only about 100,000 Internet users, according to the CIA Factbook. That’s about 0.25 percent of the population. Presumably those that do have access to the Internet are mostly within the cadre of the junta anyway. Regardless, Burma hasn’t been offline since 2007. In fact, two weeks after it cut off the Internet — that same junta restored the existing limited access.
There isn’t a binary choice of accepting that the Web cannot be controlled, or eliminate it altogether. Lots of authoritarian regimes ranging from China to Cuba to Iran have done precisely that. While Iran has about 35 percent Internet penetration, it’s shown that it will use online tools to intimidate, arrest, and exile online dissidents and activists. Heck, Supreme Leader Khamenei is on Twitter. Millions of regular people in China and Iran are using the Internet every single day. They just experience a much more filtered, surveilled and censored Web than we do.
As Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith wrote in their book Who Controls The Internet? back in 2006:
What we have seen, time and time again, is that physical coercion by government – the hallmark of a traditional legal system – remains far more important than anyone expected. This may sound crude and ugly and even depressing. Yet at a fundamental level, it’s the most important thing missing from most predictions of where globalization will lead, and the most significant gap in predictions about the future shape of the Internet.
Barrett also writes that the Internet is, “in many places, less than 10 years old.” That’s just blantantly wrong, at least in many of the countries that he cites. The Internet first came to Russia in 1990, to China in 1994, to Cuba in 1991, and to Iran in 1993. To be fair, the Internet was introduced in Burma in 2000.
As much as I love the Internet, it is no more capable of causing revolution than the telegraph was, as Tom Standage showed in his great book, The Victorian Internet.
The fact of the matter is that for all the talk of Twitter Revolution in Iran — the status quo has been preserved. Khamenei is still doing his thing and Ahmedinejad is still doing his. There’s no evidence to suggest that the Islamic Republic is in danger of collapse anytime soon.
I generally agree with Evgeny, although I may not be as cynical as he is. The bottom line though, is that I feel like Fox Mulder on the X-Files: I want to believe that the Internet helps to build democracies, but as of now, I simply cannot.
Cyrus on: ABC’s Future Tense (Australia)
Meine FreundInnin,
I’m pleased to share with you my latest piece on the new WiFi-free Weekend policy at Actual Café in Oakland. This was one of the last pieces that I did before leaving the Bay Area.
It has just aired on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation — the first time I’ve been on the radio down under!
Or, you can just listen here:
[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/fte_20100415_0840.mp3]Cyrus on: PRI’s The World (April 13, 2010)
Dear Friends,
My piece on the release of Haystack, the new anti-filtering software for use in Iran will be on today’s show.
It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):
NYC – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 8 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 4 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 2 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org
You can also likely find it on your local public radio station, and The World’s site later in the day and also on my site if you miss the broadcast.
Also, don’t forget about The World’s Tech Podcast, hosted by my boss, Clark Boyd. It comes out every Friday.
Lemme know if you hear it!
[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/041320107.mp3]Hallo, welt. Mein name ist Cyrus.
“Hallo, mein name ist Cyrus. Ich komme aus den USA, aus Kalifornien. Ich spreche Englisch, Französisch und ein bisschen Persische.”
And so began our first day of German class yesterday at the Institut für Sprachvermittlung und internationalen Kulturaustausch, just next to the Deutsche Post Tower and Deutsche Welle.
Our class is small — just five students, including Rebecca and I. This is a very beginners German class, and is conducted 100 percent in German. The first lesson? Introductions. (“Mein name ist Utta. Ich komme aus Deutschland, aus Bonn.”)
For Rebecca and I, after having taken about 30 hours of coursework with Marion at the Gerlind Institute (Danke, Marion!), this was pretty basic stuff, but we played along.
After circling the small classroom and saying our names, we moved to our textbook. The first few pages, meant to drive home this structure, outlined in comic strip form, an introductory scenario of almost Ionesco-esque dimensions involving three characters. While we looked over this series of eight photographs, and listened along to the CD that Utta played for us, we were introduced to our language learning partners in our textbook.
First up: Timo. He’s our intrepid Finnish student coming to live, move, study, work (it’s unclear what his motivations are) at an undisclosed location in Germany. His German friend, companion, host, (again unexplained), is Anton. However, as soon as Anton brings Timo into the apartment, he gets a phone call, and excuses himself to the other room. Timo is then introduced to Koko, Anton’s German-speaking parrot (WTF?). Koko and Timo then proceed to have a conversation that goes something like:
“Hallo. Sprichst du Deutsch?”
“Hallo! Sprichst du Deutsch?”
“Ja, ich spreche Deutsch. Ich bin Timo.”
“Ich bin Timo! Hallo! Ich bin Timo!”
“Nein, ich bin Timo. Teee-mo.”
“Teee-mo! Teee-mo!”
As Maude Lebowski might say: “The story is ludicrous. You can imagine where it goes from here.”
I guess one could make some sort of analysis about post-colonial German guilt for that whole Namibia thing, or maybe something about the idea of foreign language learners parroting what they hear. Regardless, it was fairly amusing.
Within a few minutes, I’d learned the names of my classmates: Javier from Madrid, Divianshu from Delhi and Alarbi from Tripoli.
We discovered quickly that while this is a German class, and that our teacher, Utta, is only supposed to speak German to us, we all speak English — as I discovered during our 15 minute break outside. After chatting a few minutes with Divianshu (he’s trying to study immunology here), I called over to Javier:
“¡Señor Madrid!”
He was standing just a few feet away, in a patch of sunlight, wearing a black coat, sunglasses and starting up into the sun, smoking a cigarette.
“I don’t know why you are there in the darkness. The sun is better!”
I laughed. Indeed, we were in the shady part of the courtyard outside our classroom. That day was the warmest it’s been so far since we’ve been here and the afternoon sun (I hadn’t bothered to bring my jacket outside) did feel good. Javier explained to us that his German wife works at Deutsche Welle Swahili and that he’s here to find a new job in media production, television publicity and the like.
We told him that we’d spent a week in Madrid last year and were surprised that so far, we’d seen around 10 tapas places in Bonn. The Germans, or at least the Bonners, seem to love their tapas.
“Yeah, but it’s not the same!”
“I hope it’s not the same!”
Bex and I confirmed this later, where we were excited to order patatas bravas as the Alte Zoll café overlooking the Rhine — which turned out to be German potatoes sprinkled with paprika and served with a side of aioli mayo. Not quite the same, indeed.
Once he got off his cell phone, Alarbi came over and told us that he was a doctor of internal medicine back home and that he was here to pass his boards and presumably get licensed as a doctor in Germany. He also expressed frustration that Germans he meets on the street won’t speak English with him, “even if he can.”
We basically all figured out that we needed to learn German so that we could work/study here. Herzlich wilkommen in Deutschland!
* * *
Discovered so far in Bonn, the Hauptdorf, or capital village:
There’s a possibly crazy woman with a pink cowboy hat that hangs out by the Rhine.
Turkish bread is delicious and cheap! 0,60€ gets you a large round bread (“fladenbrot“).
Ice cream season is upon us. There are lots and lots of cafés that not only serve ice cream cones, but also elaborate ice cream dishes — including “Eis spaghetti.”
90 percent of Bonner bicyclists don’t have helmets. 90 percent of rollerbladers wear knee/elbow/wrist guards. Go figure.
Beer is plentiful, cheap and delicious! (Yay, Kölsch!) Even the Internet cafés sell beer.
WiFi, on the other hand, is not. Courtney told us that this is because apparently in Germany, if you have an open WiFi network and someone does something bad on that network, then you’re liable. Also, T-Mobile dominates the paid WiFi market. Boo.
Bonn is more international that I thought it would be. Walking around the city I’ve heard: Persian, Arabic, Turkish, French, English, Spanish and Russian. Within a 10 minute walk from our apartment, there’s a small Vietnamese grocer, and a block away, a little Persian shop.
Practically every café offers Sunday brunch: Sonntagbrunch. Some are “all-you-can-eat,” some not.
On the weekends, especially now in the springtime, everyone is hanging out in the Rheinaue, the big free park down by the river. Cyclists, walkers, joggers, rollerbladers — there’s even FOUR baseball fields. (Opening day of the Bonn Capitals is this Sunday!)
