Geek Gestalt

CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman sits at the very top of Colorado's Mount Evans on Sunday, just a couple hundred feet above the highest paved road in North America.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

MOUNT EVANS, Colo.--It's the first day of summer, and I'm driving through a snowstorm.

I'm here, on the highest paved road in North America, and my fingers are numb from the cold. But I'm online, and I have to say, that's pretty cool.

This was supposed to be a live-blog, but circumstances got in the way. More on that later.

As part of Road Trip 2009, Terdiman is road-testing an Audi Q7 TDI, which has a so-called 'clean diesel' engine.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

I drove to just below the summit of 14,264-foot Mount Evans (see video below, with audio affected by heavy wind) on Sunday, the first official day of Road Trip 2009, my journey through the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains of the United States.

I got online via Inmarsat's BGAN mobile satellite modem, which, when pointed in the right direction, gets a pretty good signal. Good enough, in fact, that I was able to video chat with my wife and a friend. They said it was the "coolest thing ever." I don't know about that, but it is pretty sweet.

I tweeted from the top, as well, but I wasn't able to live-blog. It was quite cold, the wind was fierce, and I was sitting precariously on some rather uncomfortable rocks at the very top. I'd also hoped to take the Internet signal from the BGAN and share it via the MacBook Pro I'm using with the iPod Touch I've got with me. But for some reason, the Touch couldn't get online, even though it could see the signal coming from the Mac. I blame the rather extreme conditions.

Regardless of a few technical snafus, however, this was a pretty successful venture. As I perched atop North America, live-chatting with my wife and my friend, several people scrambled up to the top, saw me sitting there with my computer and the BGAN, and asked what I was doing. And that felt good.

But what felt even better was being able to pick up the computer while on the video link with my wife and moving it around so that she could see where I was. She can't be with me right now, but in this small way, I was able to bring her along.

And I'll do my best to bring you along as well. For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation, and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

Corrected at 3:55 p.m. PDT: This post was updated to correct the elevation of Mount Evans' summit. The correct height is 14,264 feet.

The ability, with iPhone OS 3.0, to cut and paste content across applications will mean a huge boost in traffic for Twitter.

(Credit: Apple)

The iPhone world is rejoicing over the "it's about time" cut-and-paste feature in the just-released 3.0 version of the device's operating system. But I'm willing to bet that another group breaking open the champagne right now is the team at Twitter.

Not to mention the makers of Twitter iPhone apps.

And why?

Everyone knows that the reason that cut-and-paste was the most-heralded new feature in iPhone OS 3.0 was that for the first time, it would allow people to move content around between applications, be it between a browser and a note, or from a weather app to a text message and so on. Clearly, then, being able to paste content into Twitter means that for the first time, using the service on an iPhone will approximate the depth of using it on a computer.

(Credit: Twitter)

And that means that just as global Twitter awareness is going through the roof because of its role as the primary communications platform for rapid fire news developments from and related to post-election Iran, the service is going to get another massive boost from what I'm predicting will be a new huge influx of iPhone users.

Think about the tens of millions of first-gen or iPhone 3G owners, not to mention iPod Touch users, who are going to migrate to OS 3.0. And then add all the iPhone virgins whose first experiences with the device will be on a $99 iPhone 3G with OS 3.0. Or who will go straight to the 3G S.

I would argue that many of those people either have never used Twitter before or have had limited exposure to it, either on their existing iPhones or other mobile devices, or online. Now, with what is sure to be a rush of attention to the fact that it will offer never-before-seen possibilities to someone using an iPhone to participate fully on Twitter--meaning sharing ideas, copying URLs and so forth--I think Twitter is about to see a giant spike in usage.

To be sure, many people will move their already significant Twitter use from their computers to their iPhones. And already, many people are using Twitter on their iPhones every day. But adding the element of being able to paste content into your average Twitter app from elsewhere on the iPhone is going to make the service one of the biggest winners of all.

People may argue that Twitter has yet to reveal a business model, but they certainly can't argue its growth. No one knows how many new users the Iran election has brought, or will bring, Twitter. But with OS 3.0 coming hard on the heels of the turmoil in the Middle East, it's hard to imagine any one service going through two such potentially game-changing events in such a short period time.

No one, of course, could have predicted the situation in Iran. But the release on Wednesday of iPhone OS 3.0 was on everyone's radar. So I wonder if, when the Twitter team blogged about the "significantly increased" network capacity that came as a result of Tuesday's now famous server maintenance-related downtime--famous because the U.S. State Department asked Twitter to postpone the downtime in order to facilitate continued #IranElection posts--they were really hinting at the service's ability to handle any iPhone 3.0-related rush of traffic and new users.

Of course, even as Evan Williams and Biz Stone, et al., are toasting Twitter's latest good fortunes, one would imagine they're also praying to the god of server stability.

On June 21, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

The legacy telecommunications network at the San Francisco Giants' AT&T Park required an entire wall of switches and wires. New for 2009, the team has rolled out a VoIP system that will save it $355,000 a year, nearly enough to pay for a backup infielder.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

SAN FRANCISCO--Could changing phone systems pay a big-league baseball player's salary? To hear Bill Schlough, the CIO of the San Francisco Giants tell it, the answer is a definite yes.

Last winter, the team migrated to a new $1 million-plus VoIP telecommunications system from ShoreTel for its ballpark, AT&T Park, abandoning its legacy system, which--ironically--was provided by AT&T. According to Schlough, the old system cost $490,000 annually, while the new setup for the 457 phones at the ballpark run the team just $135,000 a year.

Given that the minimum salary for Major League Baseball players this year is $400,000, the resulting annual savings of $355,000 is almost enough to pay for a backup second baseman or a rookie relief pitcher.

San Francisco Giants CIO Bill Schlough explains that the team's new telecommunications system, a VoIP setup from ShoreTel, takes up just a single rack in the back of the its telecommunications hub.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

In all seriousness, though, the Giants implemented the new system at the behest of the team's former owner, Peter Magowan, who, in late 2007, sent a memo around wondering why the club was paying more for its telecommunications infrastructure than any other team in baseball. Now, it is in the final stages of implementing what it hopes will prove to be a cutting-edge system that will allow it to improve customer service, as well as customer tracking, and make it simpler to make changes within its internal network on the fly.

One visceral example of how the new ShoreTel setup is a generational step up from the Giants' old AT&T network is deep in the ballpark's bowels, in what is known as the MPO, or minimum point of entry, its telecommunications infrastructure hub. There, the old system's sets of switches and wiring take up an entire wall. But now, its VoIP setup is doing its job from a single rack in the back of the room.

And beyond the cost savings the new system provides, Schlough told a group of reporters gathered Monday night for a discussion of the ballpark's technology, its integrated software for the first time allows the team to do a much better job of proactively identifying callers to its season ticket customer support line and allowing service representatives to see, even before picking up such a call, a set of information about the customer, including whether they've used their tickets to recent games or whether they've sold them on StubHub.com. Previously, Schlough said, the reps would have no idea who a caller was until the conversation had commenced.

The system also provides benefits throughout the Giants' baseball organization, said team employee Lena Boswell. She explained that coaches in the Giants minor leagues are required to file a detailed report to the parent club after every game, and said that the ShoreTel system allows those coaches can now record a single message and distribute it automatically to everyone that needs to get it.

At more than $1 million, the Giants' new phone system is certainly pricey, but Schlough said that given the annual savings, he expects it to pay for itself in just three years.

The Giants Digital Dugout offers fans a series of features, including a food finder, and a quickly-updated collection of video replays.

(Credit: San Francisco Giants)

But the phone setup isn't the teams only major recent technology investment. The Giants have also coughed up big money for things like a state-of-the-art high-definition video scoreboard, as well as hundreds of HDTVs that were installed around the ballpark.

All together, Schlough told CNET News, when large capital expenditures are included, the Giants spend between 2.5 percent and 3 percent of the team's total annual budget on technology. He did not say what the dollar amount of that annual budget is, but its safe to say it is in the high eight figures or low nine figures, since its payroll alone is $82.6 million and it has an annual debt service of at least $20 million on the privately financed AT&T Park, which opened in 2000.

Wi-Fi and the iPhone factor
For years, meanwhile, the ballpark has offered its customers free Wi-Fi. In fact, it was among the very first to do so in all of professional sports. And for years, using it meant toting a laptop to the park, something which usually did not sit well with hard-core fans.

But Schlough said that the iPhone and iPod Touch era has changed things irrevocably for the ballpark's Wi-Fi system and has inspired the team to offer customers a set of services unlike that available in any other park.

He said that the iPhone debuted the same weekend as the Giants hosted the 2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and that since then, usage of the park's Wi-Fi network has gone up 537 percent.

At a game on April 21, in fact, he said, 1,289 fans connected to the network. And one thing that has changed dramatically since the advent of the iPhone and iPod Touch is when fans are using Wi-Fi. In the early days, Schlough said, usage was almost exclusively during weekday day games, a function of the many businesspeople who came to games with clients.

Now, however, he explained, the usage pattern has shifted dramatically, and the lion's share of the usage is during night games.

During the 2008 season, Schlough said, there were usually an average of no more than 600 people using the ballpark's Wi-Fi network on any given date. "This year, there were more than 1,000 right out of the box," he said.

"This year," he added, "everybody has a phone in their hand everywhere they go," including the bathrooms.

Customers who do log on to the Wi-Fi network at the park are now able to use an innovative and exclusive system called the Giants Digital Dugout. This offers fans two big benefits.

The first is a "food finder," which can direct fans to the closest concession location for the exact kind of food or beverage they want, and the second is a collection of video replay highlights that includes, within three minutes after it happens, any controversial call by an umpire.

Among the video replay highlights available from the Digital Dugout is this one, slugger Barry Bonds' 756th home run, which broke baseball's all-time career record.

(Credit: San Francisco Giants)

In Major League Baseball, unlike other sports, ballparks are not allowed to show replays of controversial calls on the scoreboard. So Schlough worried that too much attention to the video replay feature of the Digital Dugout might force the league to shut the Giants' system down. Short of that, though, it is an attractive feature, and well worth bringing an iPhone to the park.

It's features like that, however, that are inspiring fans by the hundreds, if not thousands, to get online at the ballpark. But in the early days of the Wi-Fi network at AT&T Park, it was mostly reporters and photographers logging on.

In fact, said Schlough, newspapers that were able to run photos in their morning editions the day after former Giants superstar slugger Barry Bonds hit his 660th career home run late in a night game on April 13, 2004, tying his godfather, Willie Mays, for third place on the all-time list, owed a debt of gratitude to the park's Wi-Fi.

"Without it," Schlough said, "they wouldn't have hit (their) deadlines."

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

Update 4:19 pm: This story has been modified to include reaction from the creator of the card-counting iPhone app.

Since the July 2008 launch of the App Store, Apple has maintained a sort of moral code--a PG-13-type standard, if you will--surrounding the thousands of iPhone and iPod Touch applications available via the service.

That's why, for example, there are no iPhone porn apps, though it is certainly possible to access adult content optimized for the device.

Given that, one would think that Apple wouldn't have given the thumbs-up to an app that, if used in the most logical manner, could get someone arrested, or worse. But with an app called "A Blackjack Card Counter," that's not, in fact, the case.

'A Blackjack Card Counter,' an iPhone application that helps people count cards in blackjack, was the subject of an alert to Nevada casinos by that state's Gaming Control Board.

(Credit: Webtopia)

We've all seen the movies where the hot-shot gambler slips up and finds himself hustled off to a back room where a genial but brutal casino manager calmly breaks a few fingers while issuing a stern warning never to come back. Films like The Cooler, 21, Rounders, Casino and many others have made this kind of scene, even if it's not always about card counting, a staple of our imagination.

Yet card counting--a complex practice that gives practitioners a way to determine the optimal times to bet in blackjack--prevails to this day. And it's not even illegal, though being caught at it is sure to lead to a hasty expulsion from a casino, at best, or even the kind of back-room visit discussed above. What is definitely illegal, however, is the employment of any kind of electronic device that aids players in counting cards.

And that's where "A Blackjack Card Counter," and perhaps a few other iPhone apps come into play.

Earlier this month, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, itself tipped off by the California Bureau of Gambling Control, issued an alert to "all non-restricted licensees and interested parties"--the state's casinos--warning of the emergence of iPhone card counting apps.

"This blackjack card-counting program can be utilized on either the Apple iPhone or the Apple iPod Touch...Once this program is installed on the phone through the iTunes Web site it can make counting cards easy," Nevada Gaming Control Board member Randall Sayre wrote in the alert. "This program can be used in the 'stealth mode.' When the program is used in the 'stealth mode' the screen of the phone will remain shut off, and as long as the user knows where the keys are located, the program can be run effortlessly without detection."

And, as Sayre pointed out, "use of this type of program or possession of a device with this type of program on it--with the intent to use it--in a licensed gaming establishment, is a violation" of the law.

For its part, the makers of "A Blackjack Card Counter," an Australian outfit called Webtopia, couldn't be happier about the attention being paid to its app as a result of its potentially illegal nature.

"Since the Nevada Gaming Control Board warned casinos about 'A Blackjack Card Counter' there's been an unprecedented demand for this app," Webtopia wrote in the tool's official App Store description. "Now you can see what all the fuss (is) about at a very reasonable price."