Category Technology

Dec 2 2012

Vodafone Phases Out Telephone Numbers

Vodafone has announced that phone numbers will no longer be necessary for mobile subscribers in New Zealand. New and existing subscribers who do not run POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) landlines will from next week have the option of not having a phone number, they will be able to use their own name or a pseudonym username.

7aselectorA spokesperson for Vodafone explained in a brief media Telephony 101 presentation that the concept of phone numbers has evolved from the early days when telephone exchange operators used to manually connect phones. Exchanges automated this process with rotary exchanges with technology such as in this image which is the technology that many New Zealand exchanges such as Wellesley Street in Auckland, where a relay tripped to select each number, then routed the call through to exchanges where typically the first two numbers represented the exchange area. For example Ponsonby numbers all started with 76 and Howick numbers with 83. Over the years this technology became computerised and with number portability the number no longer had to relate to a specific location in the country.

Over the last few years the majority of people communicate with VoIP and numbers have largely become irrelevant. Emergency numbers will remain indefinitely for a number of reasons, but with most people having Unified Communications across their various mobile devices and appliances there just is no reason to maintain an antiquated system. People may continue to use a number if they wish, according to a spokesperson from TUANZ, in support of the baby boomers who are still a large number of people who may no longer have copper wires fed into telephone exchanges, but are more comfortable with the analogue concept of a number.

Nov 10 2012

Crime Stats Are Tracking Way Down with GPS Anklets

Philip K Dick would be shouting warnings from the rooftops if he was still in the matrix, but you can’t argue with the numbers. Since GPS anklets became mandatory for all parolees national crime statistics in almost all sectors have reduced by over 25% and growing. Sure people tried covering the anklets in aluminium foil and other tricks, but as soon as the location signals stopped, the alarms were raised and the penalties for tampering are high.

Prison populations are decreasing and levels of offending from domestic violence to gang related crimes have reduced dramatically. Call centers have been established all over the country and as soon as it appears that people are not adhering to their parole conditions, action is taken.

If someone doesn’t turn up to their job in the morning, they will get a friendly call asking if they are ok. If people come within proximity of someone they have a non consorting order against, or someone are not allowed to be near, an alarm goes off on their anklet as a warning. Initially it is just a vibration, which also sends an alert to the call center and the CRM database monitoring them in case it is an accidental situation. If they do not back off, it becomes an audible alarm and security or emergency services are called in.

In addition to many success stories where parolees have been able to start a new life through the restrictions imposed on them, those that have tried to go back to old habits have inadvertently guided police to gang locations, meth labs, car theft enterprises and other places where crimes were being committed. The criminal landscape is being mapped in such a way that police are able to predict where criminal activity is about to take place and shut it down.

Some activists are saying that the GPS anklets deprive people of their civil rights, but most people are just happy that the streets are safer to walk on. I just wish I had invested in the company that developed the anklets and the knowledge based software behind them. Now if only I could go back in time to around 2014.

Oct 30 2012

Enhanced Human World Champs

The Enhanced Human World Champs are coming to New York next year and I’m wondering if it is going to change everything. Whilst the glamour sports of the Olympics like gymnastics will continue to draw a crowd, things are going to change dramatically for athletics in particular.

It started with the military with HULC as per the video above and with products from New Zealand from companies like Rex Bionics, which was of course about helping disabled people, but the obvious thought was “If disabled people can move and compete with able bodied people, what could strong and fit people do?”

The rest as they say is history, now we have people running the Super Marathon (126.6km) in under 4 hours. The question is whether people will continue to support the traditional sports or will just consider them as boring in future? The irony is that whilst much of this technology was developed for military use, most of the things that humans would have done in these exoskeletons are now done by robots.