Tripit To Me

Via the TripIt Blog comes the announcement of their mobile (email, really) offering called Tripit To Me.

(Not that I’m old enough to have watched Laugh In, but I keep seeing (in my head) the video of Richard Nixon’s deadpan “sock it to me” in the name of this feature)

This is genius - simple, clean access to the info I need without having to launch a web browser, navigate, etc:

TripIt To Me is an email interface to the trip information in TripIt. (This is better known in the tech world as a “command line interface.”) When you email simple commands like “get flight tomorrow” or “get trip 10/15/07” to plans [at] tripit.com, TripIt will email you the information you need whenever you need it. For the absent minded like me, TripIt To Me will be a lifesaver as I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve dashed off to the airport without my itinerary and had to call someone to remember the airline I’m flying on, or the hotel I’m staying at. Also, it will be great when picking someone up at the airport to be able to email “get flight” and see which flight they’re on.

They also took the time to create a “Tripit to me Wallet card” (PDF) so that you don’t have to remember all the potential commands.

If you don’t travel a lot for business, it might seem strange that you could arrive at the airport and not know which airline you’re on, but the reality is I’ve had that experience myself.

Tripit just keeps getting better.

Windows Mobile From the Future

My Cingular BlackJack, which runs Windows Mobile, occasionally resets itself to dates in the future. Here’s a screenshot from this morning, which should be October of 2007, but thinks it is November of 2008:

Anyone else see this happening on their Windows Mobile device?

One theory is that I’m hitting a rogue cell tower somewhere in my commute which tells the device it is a later date. But I’ve got “auto update” of date/time disabled, and I’m pretty sure I’ve had this happen even while travelling in other cities and states, so it isn’t specific to one cell tower.

It causes all the event notifications to fire, since they are now overdue, and causes all kinds of other general weirdness, like emails coming from the future.

If only Windows Mobile were open source . . . Guess my next phone will be an OpenMoko.

Free as in Libraries

An interesting front page article in yesterday’s NY times: “Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web.” The headline is a bit disingenious, since it implies that libraries are trying to prevent access, when in reality they are trying to preserve it.

The situation is really that the libraries are beginning to recognize the tradeoff Google offers in scanning:

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

So Google doesn’t charge for scanning the books, which is a huge benefit to libraries (who are not exactly known as the land where money runs free), but in exchange imposes restrictions on what libraries can do with the resulting digital assets.

The Open Content Alliance (founded by Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive fame), on the other hand, charges a fee for digitizing (though that can be supported by grants) but makes the content available to all. (See the principles outlined in their call for participation).

On a serendipitously related note, there’s a Webinar / Live event at the Berkman Center today with Aaron Swartz, who is the tech lead for the Open Library project.

Berkman events are webcast, have an associated IRC channel, can be attended in Second Life, and are archived at Media Berkman, in case (like me) you can’t get to Harvard Square today.

There is no shelf

Via David Weinberger’s blog comes this video, by Mike Wesch (he of The Machine is Us/ing Us), which explains the same point Weinberger’s making in Everything is Miscellaneous:

It’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, so spread it freely. I didn’t care for the fit of the music to the video in this case, but it communicates equally well without sound.

Social Network Just for Two

Best thing I’ve seen this week: Ze Frank’s Social Network song (mp3 format direct link) set to animation: Social Network Just for Two by Shaun Moriarty

No embed code, so you’ll have to go there to see it.