Inside the Mind of a Nerd

Goodbye Pre, Hello Galaxy (S2)!

2012-01-30T23:01:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's been a while. I'm not even going to try to make any excuses, life has just been busy. However, I did get a new phone! So I thought I'd write a little something about that experience.Anyone who's known me for the past couple of years knows that I've been a pretty unapologetic fan of webOS and the Palm Pre. My cell phone history is shorter than I'm sure most people my age - I went from a non-color Sanyo clamshell, to a color Smasung clamshell, to a slightly better LG clamshell, to a Palm Treo 650 (2007), to a Palm Pre (2009), and finally a Samsung Galaxy S2. For someone who loves technology so much, you'd think I'd be a little more eager with my gadgets, but I'm nothing if not a passionate person, and I act on that passion. So unless you can get me really passionate about your next big thing, I'm too pragmatic to jump ship. Once I got the Pre, I finally felt like I had a phone that matched my lifestyle. It multitasked (much like I do), it had a qwerty keyboard (that I could get up to 40 WPM on), and the UI was simple and elegant. Back then, Android was pretty ugly, Blackberry was starting to decline, and the iPhone was still an unstoppable juggernaut. The tide has really turned now. Palm has gone under, Blackberry has one foot in the grave, the iPhone is as commonplace as a clamshell phone was about 5 years ago, and Android is finally a major player in the race (sorry Microsoft, Windows Phones still haven't gotten much traction despite an excellent redesign). I'd actually posit something pretty, controversial: Android has overtaken the iPhone.

Let's pull back a bit though so I can talk a little bit about my decision to leave the Pre and why I chose the Galaxy S2. The funniest thing turned me from a webOS fan to a deserter: HP replaced Google Maps with Bing Maps. It seems pretty minor, right? I had endured Palm being bought out, I endured the lack of developer support, I endured the fact that using the headphone jack would totally hork the phone's audio, I endured having to trade in my phone about 4 times due to hardware issues, and I had endured practically total abandonment from HP, but I was annoyed beyond repair that they'd take an app that I actually liked overall and forced me to use an app that just didn't work as well and I had no choice in the matter. Soon after that, I noticed that my battery life was getting much worse as were speeds in general on my device. I stopped overclocking to deal with battery life, but now it was too slow. I hated to say it, but I was going to have to give up on phones with physical keyboards. Much like a Joss Whedon television show, they've been going extinct. Cut down in their prime (ok, maybe not, but I still liked them).

I walked into my friendly neighborhood Sprint store (the one on Union seriously is pretty friendly) in November to browse what they had and the only phones that piqued my interest were the Motorola Photon 4G, the iPhone, and the Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch (clearly they were high when they decided on that name). Pretty much all the other phones sucked. There was one Android candybar phone with a keyboard that was ok, but not thrilling. The iPhone was at the bottom of my list for a couple of simple reasons: I really dislike the UI and the keyboard. The Android UI may not have been intuitive at first when I played with it, but I liked what I saw online of Ice Cream Sandwich and I was blown away by the keyboard for the Photon 4G and the Galaxy S2. Swype is the coolest thing since sliced bread. I was aware of it before and thought it was gimmicky, but when I played with it in the store it worked immediately for me - I was shocked how intuitive it was. I could type on par with a physical keyboard, and the phones are big enough that turning it to landscape mode gives you a usable keyboard with two thumbs. I gave an edge to the Galaxy S2 because it was a little thinner and the screen seemed a little prettier than the Photon 4G, and comparing speeds to the iPhone I was sure that the Galaxy S2 was on par. I was hoping to wait a bit longer before jumping ship, but the Pre speeds were really getting to me and I lost my Zune HD at the end of December so I had no mp3 player. In the end, I decided on the Galaxy S2 3 weeks ago because Motorola announced that the Photon 4G would not see Ice Cream Sandwich but leaked ROMs confirmed that Samsung was working on it for the Galaxy S2.

So how was the switch from webOS to Android? I have to admit, a little rocky. I was happy as soon as I had the Galaxy S2 in my hot little hands because the screen was so impressive, the phone was running at speeds I didn't realize were possible on phones, and it was so thin that I could keep it in my pocket rather than getting a hip holster. The webOS UI took me maybe 30 minutes to figure out everything for - Android took me a few days to really sort out. The learning curve is pretty steep. As much as I love the Swype keyboard, you do have to learn some of the tricks to be really proficient at it. The stock launcher (even with TouchWiz) is meh - you get a lot more usability out of something like GO Launcher EX. That was only the tip of the iceberg of tips and tricks to using Android. Whereas webOS just worked right out of the box, Android Gingerbread only worked at a very nominal experience. The synergy that I came to love on webOS wasn't available on Android - I had to hand manage merging duplicate contacts. App backup was all on me to deal with, as well. Most of all, it took me a few days to get used to not multi-tasking. What's funny is that I can operate faster because of the fact that I can context switch even faster on this hardware versus the Pre hardware, especially by holding the home button to get to recently used apps. What I learned through it all was one key thing: Android is really only for people who are tinkerers or technologists. If you want something that just works, you really don't want Android. I've come to really enjoy it and it provides an awesomely customizable experience, but I'm shocked at how many normal people are using it. I'm sure a lot of them aren't happy with it either and that's where the iPhone succeeds.

People I know who have gone from Android to the iPhone have really hated it and it's because the experience is so curated. There's no swype, there's no JuiceDefender (this thing seriously doubles my battery life - it's ridiculous), no Dolphin Browser HD, no widgets, no lock screen customizations, and the list goes on. Meanwhile, Android has pretty much everything on the iPhone, and then some - the upcoming version even has more attractive multi-tasking, face recognition unlock, NFC support, and a few other fun things that you previously needed apps for (like panoramic pictures and lock screen customization). I should adjust my statement earlier: Android has overtaken the iPhone in technology. I think the iPhone rightfully should have more market share because it's such a simpler experience. You don't have a fragmented platform where certain things only work on certain phones - there's a few iPhones and it's pretty clear which features are new and not available for older models. It's kind of interesting that we're now pretty much in a two party system when it comes to phones and I think both platforms are great competition for one another - 5 years ago I would've said that cell phones really haven't been going anywhere but now I can say that I think we're really going to continue to see a lot of innovation.

Personally, I'm glad to be on the Android bandwagon. I've been able to use it for podcasts and music effectively (unlike the Pre), the browser is surprisingly usable, the games are surprisingly engaging, and there's so many fun productivity apps (like depositing checks and HeyTell and many more). I hope to see Samsung (who I think has really been doing the best job of producing high quality phones across all carriers) and Google continue to deliver high quality products continue to raise the bar set by Apple.

Kindle Touch

2011-11-30T23:40:00.001-08:00

Standard disclosure: I work for Amazon but I do not have any non-public, relevant information about the Kindle in any capacity. In fact, I purposely try to avoid learning any such information. I don't have any special insights into product directions, decisions made regarding Kindle devices, etc. This is merely a collection of my thoughts as a technology enthusiast/consumer.

Sorry it's been so quiet here. I think about this blog regularly, but whenever I come up with a good topic I realize that I have to recuse myself because I don't know if my thoughts on certain subjects would accidentally count as yielding secrets. I've also been a little behind on news so I figure that very untimely commentary wouldn't be valuable. I'm hoping to have more time in the next couple of months though to come up with fresh topics for blog posts on a somewhat regular basis. Anyway, on to the topic at hand...

Kindle Touch Review

I'd ideally start off with my backstory about the Kindle and how I thought it was initially a silly idea and all that jazz, but I've already spoken about all that in my review of the Kindle 3. My opinions on the Kindle and e-Ink in general remain the same. I probably read 2, maybe 3 books in all of last year (I'm not counting reference material I flipped through at work). In the past 11 months (since I got my Kindle 3) I've read six novels, half of another novel, four travel books for a vacation, a short book that's really a collection of essays, more than a fourth of the Bible, and a few white papers (not to mention several samples of books I intend to read). It's definitely made a big difference. What I'd like to talk about in this review is my experience with the Kindle Touch compared to the Kindle 3 (I'll refer to it as the Kindle Keyboard to be more consistent with the slightly confusing re-branding).

I got a Touch because as much as I loved my Kindle Keyboard, I also had a few nagging frustrations with it. Namely, I didn't like using the d-pad. I called this out in my initial review and I stand by it - it's too easy to hit other buttons and takes a while when you use it to navigate around a page for things like looking up words, highlighting, or referencing footnotes, all of which I did regularly. Even navigating a large collection of documents was a bit of a chore. Additionally, it was a bit sluggish when reading some PDFs and could even be unstable if I flipped around too much. Plus, the keyboard wasn't all that easy to use - it just felt awkward. Anyone I know can vouch for my love of physical keyboards - I've been hanging on to my Palm Pre for dear life and may soon have to part with it because I'm getting sick of HP's abandonment of it (but that's a story for another post). Reading on the Kindle Keyboard was still great overall, but I moved to the Kindle Touch in the hopes that it would polish some pieces that I felt needed polish. Did it? Let's explore.

We'll start with the hardware: it's a very attractive device. I thought the Kindle Keyboard looked nice, but the Kindle Touch makes it look like yesterday's news. I was initially concerned that the silver color would be unattractive because I really liked the graphite of the Kindle Keyboard as it just looked nice and made it harder to retain natural wear and tear, but I actually like the body of the Kindle Touch even better. Not to be vain, but it looks like a more expensive device than it is - it's not gaudy, just polished. The bezel is smooth, slightly metallic (not enough so to weigh it down), and mildly reflective but not shiny enough to produce excessive glare. The back matches the color on the front except for being more rubbery for an easier grip and having a darker silver border. At the bottom of the front you've probably seen what looks like a speaker grill in pictures, which seems silly in a device primarily targeted at reading. Well, it's actually a home button. I actually think it's a neat home button - it's different from most devices in this form factor and it's at the perfect stiffness to press. I know that sounds weird, but I mean that you can rest your thumb on it for while you're reading without accidentally pressing it, but it's not necessarily hard to press when you need to press it - it's just right. At the bottom side there's the standard micro USB port, headphone jack, a very tiny light, and the power button. I don't actually like the new power button. They designed it small to save space, but it's easier to press as opposed to the Kindle Keyboard where you had to slide it and it hid a cleverly placed light. I don't find myself accidentally hitting it much, but it seems quite easy to do so. At the bottom of the back are the speakers - not all cases have holes cut out for these, but I rarely use them myself. There's also two connectors for the leather lighted cases (which are still on backorder *grumble*). Overall, I love the way it feels in my hands - the weight and size are just perfect. It's slightly lighter than the Kindle Keyboard (trivially so) and not really thinner, but I do appreciate that it's shorter since it's no longer supporting a physical keyboard.

The big question when you start talking about the software is the touch sensitivity. This was my biggest reservation as this is not your standard touchscreen technology. Back in the old days, we started with inductive, or resistive, touchscreens (think back in the days of using a stylus). Pressing down on a screen wasn't elegant, but it worked. The iPhone popularized capacitive touch in consumer electronics and it's become an industry standard ever since. The problem with capacitive touch, as I understand it, is that it requires glass, which sucks if you want to eliminate glare (as any of you with a modern smartphone is well aware). Hence, the Kindle Touch uses infared technology, much like its Barnes and Noble competitor. The screen is sunk in just a tad more than the Kindle Keyboard, and on closer inspection one may notice a really thin line cut into the edges of this framing where the IR field is created. The good news is that this means you don't need human hands or sausages to interact with the screen - you can have gloves on and it'll still work (great news for those of us in colder climates). The bad news is that it's not as reliable as most modern smartphones. It can be a bit temperamental. It's actually much more accurate than I had predicted it'd be, but you do have to be fairly deliberate in what you do. You can't be as liberal as with capacitive touch - even though you don't have to press down on the screen like inductive touch, you do have to make sure you get enough surface area contact to register touches. Also frustrating: there's no feedback that a touch was registered. At times, there's enough lag in specific operations that you may accidentally do something twice and cause yourself frustration. It's not a common issue, but it can happen. I don't know why they couldn't have button presses black out the button to show that it was touched - maybe that'll be in a future update.

That all being said, I still prefer the touch interface to using the buttons on the Kindle Keyboard, overall. While I never minded previous page and next page much, it's so much more intuitive to tap things than to use the d-pad. And small touches were added to the UI to account for this, which I love. The keyboard is way better than the physical keyboard - while there's a bit of a delay in showing what you typed if you're a touch typist like me who's used to cranking out 80-100 WPM (or 40 WPM on my Pre's physical keyboard), the accuracy is impressive. Nothing fancy like swype on Android or anything, but you really shouldn't need that stuff anyway when you're taking notes or searching. Gestures are really intuitive - page forward and page back are swiping left and right, respectively, and next/previous chapter are swipe up/down, respectively. Looking up words, checking footnotes, and highlighting text is faster and easier before (there was actually random delays sometimes in highlighting with the Kindle Keyboard that I no longer experience on the Touch). Tapping for previous page and next page work great, too, and one handed reading is overall just as easy or perhaps easier than before. Getting to the context menu is easy, too, just tap at the top of the screen. That will also show you what page number you're on in the book, which reminds me of another note: the screen real estate is used a lot smarter. Aside from just where you tap, I feel like the top and bottom of the screen are used more efficiently to maximize space for reading - reminiscent of the experience of using an iPad and having Apple maximize the available screen space. Very smart.

There are a few other bonuses, too. Pinch to zoom works - it will increase or reduce text size by 1 in normal books and will actually perform zooming in PDFs. This makes reading PDFs much easier. Given the restrictions of e-Ink technology, there's still a delay as before, but I feel like it's still a slight bit faster. Plus, PDFs fit on the screen better now, aside from the improvements with zooming. Unfortunately, you can't change screen orientation, but I'm hoping that enough people are providing feedback on this that they'll fix this oversight (the Kindle org has been good about this in the past with customer feedback). The screen savers are significantly better than the Kindle Keyboard. Not only are they not ugly renderings of famous writers, but they're, dare I say, cool. They actually kind of make you excited to turn on your Kindle because they represent the Kindle brand well in clever ways (like pencils up close or wooden blocks with Kindle letters prominent or ink) and they're super sharp. Unlike with the Kindle Keyboard, I don't see myself getting sick of them. As far as device performance compared to the Kindle Keyboard, it's slightly faster. It's not enough of a difference for them to have marketed it on the product page, but it's noticeable to me. It's not just the fact that you can choose to have it only black out the screen for page loads once every four screens (which, amazingly, doesn't leave artifacts of the previous page like the Kindle Keyboard would), but I feel like boot up/shut down is slightly faster, opening books are faster, definitions lookups are way faster, etc. It's little things that I notice that I'm pleased with with performance, but it's nothing dramatic. The Kindle Store works a lot better on this device - it's just a better interface overall. It makes more sense and it's prettier. I'm really happy with it.

The biggest bonus, aside from touch, is X-ray. I love this feature. I can't believe how awesome it is. I have it on a few of my books (including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, if you want to try it on a free one), and it's coming in quite handy with The Girl Who Played with Fire, which I'm reading right now. I find myself turning to it quite a bit to recall characters that haven't come up in several chapters or Swedish places/terms I'm not familiar with. It loads excerpts from Wikipedia for terms and short bits from Shelfari for some characters. It also shows you a blueprint of where mentions of the character or term occur in the book and you can easily browse these selections. It's quite fast and quite accurate as far as figuring out what people and terms are relevant. You can show these lists for the current page, chapter, or whole book so it's easy to find what you're looking for. It's not available for all books, but all my purchased novels seem to have it so it's not that uncommon on popular novels.

I have a couple of quick negatives that haven't fit in any of the categories above. Not all games ("active content") work on the Touch that worked on the Keyboard. If this is a dealbreaker for you, check your games' detail pages to see the "Available on these devices" text that has an arrow you can hover over to list the supported Kindles. I'm hoping that publishers can modify their games to work on the Touch, but I haven't seen official word on this. If someone has an answer on this, please leave a comment because I'm curious. Additionally, when upgrading to a new Kindle you have to download all your items one-by-one and re-create your collections. That's super annoying. Hopefully, the Kindle folks will fix this in the future since they already made a change to back up your personal documents to the cloud just before the announcement of the new Kindles, which makes downloading those to new devices easier, at least. (By the way, there's a sale until Jan 2 where top selling games are $1, several of which are Touch compatible - I'm not big on the Kindle games, but some of them are rather entertaining)

Alright, I've said enough - time for a verdict. Should you get a Kindle Touch? If you don't have a Kindle Keyboard, it's a no-brainer, in my opinion, that you should. If you have an older Kindle, you're due for an upgrade anyhow. If you don't have one, then you should embrace e-Ink. If you're really scared, pick up the cheapest Kindle and try it out - I really don't think you'll be disappointed. I've played with that one and while I prefer Touch, it's still an improvement over the Kindle Keyboard (though it doesn't have X-ray or speech-to-text). The ads aren't very intrusive and you can easily pay later to turn them off if you hate them so that it'd end up being the price of the ad-free version. If you have a Kindle Keyboard, it's really a judgement call. Are you sick of the d-pad? Do you want one of the new leather cases where the Kindle fits nicely rather than having to fit it into two hooks? Do you want a smaller device? Do you wish reading PDFs was easier? If these things really bother you, like they did for me, go for it. I think for many people, the answer will be no. In fact, I'd recommend for gadgets with annual releases to buy every other iteration. It's the holiday season though so you may consider gifting your Kindle Keyboard (de-registering and wiping is easy) and upgrading to the Touch. I don't at all regret my decision - the more I use it the more I love it. Opinions out there are somewhat mixed, but seem to be leaning positive. Feel free to go to a Staples, Best Buy, etc. and try it out for yourself. I really feel like they kept all the stuff about the Kindle Keyboard that was great (like the ease of use, display, form factor, battery life, etc) and evolved in fixing some of the key misses with the user experience. While I still think there's some touch ups that can be left for future iterations, I'm really happy with the direction that it has moved in.

Addendum: I spoke to a Kindle rep about my frustrations with regard to active content and I was told that Amazon is actually working with publishers to make their games Touch compatible. You won't need to re-buy your games for the Touch (unless you're using the games on 6 Kindles already), they'll just get fixed to work and you'll be able to download them from your archived items.

The End of an Era

2011-08-27T00:41:00.000-07:00

I brainstormed several titles for this post and nothing I come up with seems to be substantial enough. I have to admit that when I heard the news a couple of days ago that Steve Jobs was stepping down from being CEO, I got a little emotional. Part of it was the way he worded it:

"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."

Given his medical complications in recent years, there's something really haunting about those words. What really got to me though was the sudden thought that two of my childhood idols were no longer sitting in the seats of power they once held: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are now both down for the count. Even typing those words scares me a bit - aside from the fact that it makes me feel old, it's really the end of an era.

I think my posts make it pretty clear that I'm not a fan of Apple products - I believe that they're high quality, I just don't agree with their some of their key philosophies and I think most Apple products are overpriced. As a person, I don't care much for Steve Jobs either. There are plenty of good stories about him but I'm more familiar with the ones where he manages his employees with praise and fear (moreso than sounds healthy). However, as Elle Driver would say, that shouldn't suggest that I don't respect him. His impact on technology is incontrovertible - he really made making technology beautiful stick. When you look at the history of gadgetry, Apple was the first major player to successfully focus on external design just as much as internal design. Even Mac OS was known for being one of the first pieces of a software with a usable GUI. I even first learned how to type in grade school on Apple Macintosh IIs (and fondly remember playing the Oregon Trail - if I was lucky I got to play on the one computer with a CD-ROM drive). A world without the innovations and risks taken by Apple with Steve Jobs at its helm would be a scary place (much like the one depicted in their 1984 ad). A lot of moves that Jobs has made over the years have been really ballsy, and while I know a lot of people make that possible past just the CEO, I would not underestimate the importance of a CEO with strong vision.

With someone like Steve Jobs, you take the good with the bad. His biggest flaw, in my opinion, is his hubris. You don't have to watch Pirates of the Silicon Valley to observe this (fair warning: that movie is very much a caricature of all its characters). His 2005 Stanford commencement address is pretty famous and definitely an incredible speech, and yet it still reflects that he can really be a jerk sometimes. He lets loose a bit at a few points in his speech and leaves out pivotal details in his speech that paint him out to be a hero in situations that weren't so black and white. He's green lit ads that have held no punches in obviously attacking competitors, a practice that I remember not being so common once upon a time. He runs press events that extol the virtues of perfectly mundane evolutions to existing products. However, it's for all these things that people love Steve Jobs. All these things have made him a fascinating CEO and a generational icon.

The era I'm referring to as ending is not that of Apple - the Board is leaving the company in good hands with Tim Cook, now former COO, at the helm. Plus, Steve Jobs has set things in motion for at least a year or two, so we won't see Cook's direct impact for a while yet. The era I'm referring to also involves Bill Gates. I find it tremendously ironic that Gates is often marred for the antitrust issues with Microsoft and forgotten for his philanthropic efforts whereas Jobs is lauded for his sometimes questionable tactics with Apple and forgotten for his lack of philanthropy. At the end of the day, both men have done some incredible things and basically built personal computing. Gates had just as much vision as Jobs, but he handled it totally differently. He's not the pretty face of a company, he's the understated nerd that turns wheels in the background. Maybe the things he's led at Microsoft aren't as sexy as what Apple has done, but definitely equally important. I mean come on, the man invented bold text! Let's face it, the world would be a very strange place without Office and Windows. Apple would have you believe that Windows is a complete knock off of what they've produced over the years, but the truth is that Windows has made significant innovations, as well. If you need a more recent, obvious example: how about the Kinect?

I feel like with Gates and Jobs out of the picture, the model of technology that's worked for decades really is dead. Shrink wrap software has been gradually losing ground to digital distribution and web applications. The most talked about tech companies these days are now Google and Facebook. The world is a very different place. People don't care about the next Windows or the next OS X - they care about the next smartphone they can get. The era that Gates and Jobs eschewed is over, and I feel like we're now fully underway in a whole new phase in the history of technology. Needless to say, I'm excited to be at a company that's a big part of that timeline, as well, but we can never forget our roots. For all the above reasons and more, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates, I salute you. We'll do our best to take good care of what you started.

Google +

2011-07-28T23:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I've posted, but I promise I've been thinking of the blog! I listfully look at my computer every night before I inevitably crawl into bed because life has been so busy. Today I finally got some time to jot down my thoughts about Google Plus! If you haven't checked it out at all yet, now's as good a time as any to spend a couple of minutes with the demo.

If you had two scoops of ice cream, let's call the flavors Facebook and Twitter, and you smashed them together but then you decided to share your concoction with that oddball at work you don't like for whatever reason, you'd have Google Plus. It takes the best from both worlds, but then it integrates with other services, even if they are competitors, via our old friend Google Buzz. Google Buzz was a half-baked Twitter-like experience from Google that all but the most devout Google fans were quickly turned off of because of the several issues Google simply didn't think through. What's different between Google and some other tech companies is that a lot of people there tend to think the same over time. I'm not saying they're not smart people, but without natural discord you can't develop the ideas that appeal to a mass audience, and that's what I feel like went wrong with Buzz. With Google Plus, they took a different approach - they started it out as a very limited release (like back with Gmail and Google Voice) and are opening the floodgates over time so that they can iron out the kinks. This strategy, I feel, is working much better for them. It feels like not only did they learn from Google Buzz what people were really looking for, but they managed to fix user concerns very quickly before everyone and their mom started hearing about Google Plus.

So anyway, you might be wondering - why should you care about Google Plus? You've stuck with Facebook, in spite of Twitter and Google Buzz and whatever else - why jump ship? A friend of mine shared this (on Google Plus, no less), so I'm going to share it with you:

Pretty elegant way of putting it, isn't it? Google should definitely hire those people to help them pimp their products. At first, I totally agreed with what I think is the reaction of most people: why do we need another Facebook? The interface was a pretty big change from Facebook and there wasn't an app for it on my phone. To be honest, I really hated it. I was surprised at how quickly my opinion turned around of it though. The main things I liked is that it's the first social networking site I've seen that has really put privacy at the forefront and it has a clean UI. It's a well known fact in the security world that convenience comes at the cost of security and privacy, so it is an issue that whenever you share anything on Google Plus, you have to choose exactly what circles you want to share it with - but if you keep your list of circles small it's not such a big deal. Granted, it'd be better if there was a circle hierarchy but that's not hard to add in. I say that the UI is clean because, let's face it, Facebook has gotten too busy. It almost hurts my eyes now to go to the PC site - it's just too much. With Google Plus, as weird as it sounds, I just feel like it's a more laid back experience. Maybe it's just because I have less friends on Google Plus, but I'd like to think that Google had something to do with it.

Before I move on - there are a couple of other things I think Google Plus really got right. I love how you can share with people who aren't on Google Plus by just using their contact profile in your Gmail (i.e. just their e-mail address). I think it's smart that they just rely on e-mail for messages rather than creating a stupid hobbled way to send private messages. Another thing I like, which most people may not like, is that you don't have a wall for people to post on - they can only comment on what you post. This means people can't post immature things on your wall that you have to monitor so that your mom doesn't see them or something - you have full control over what people see (people can re-share what you've said, granted - but that's a risk in real life, too).

Press-wise, I've seen mixed things. I think the technorati (that's what I like to call the tech journalism celebrities, at least) are skeptical but appreciate the chance to start fresh since their Facebook friends list has really gotten out of control. There's still a few things to complain about though. There have been some stories about people having their Google Accounts totally deleted because of the name they're using on Google Plus. It sounds like there's a glitch in Google's algorithm for this, and it really sucks that there's not a good appeals process in place. Google has always had awful customer service, and that doesn't stop here, I'm afraid. ZD Net has a really good editorial about this. Google Plus still isn't ready for businesses to jump in and make their mark. I don't shed a tear for companies like Pepsi or McDonalds, but social networking sites are really great for helping promote local businesses and artists, and I do hope Google Plus makes way for them someday soon. Though they do have 20 million accounts so far, so it's a pretty strong start anyhow.

So Google Plus has an energized initial user base but also has had a few black eyes from the press - do they have what it takes to become a major player? I think they definitely do. The older I get the more pessimistic I become about technology (I'm not the wide-eyed optimist I was back in my older posts when I was in college), but something rubs be right about Google Plus. Google has had a number of misfires over the past few years, but I think this one just may stick. If anyone can compete with Facebook, it'll be Google Plus. I don't think they'll be able to overtake Facebook like Facebook overtook MySpace or MySpace overtook Friendster simply because Facebook has really hit critical mass now. However, I think Facebook has alienated its users enough over the years that Google Plus can really gain some ground, even if it ends up catering to more of a niche audience like Gmail. I think it's a really smart move for Google and I hope they really invest fully in making it a solid product. It clearly has a lot left that they can do with it (why can people on Picasa but not Google Plus not see the pictures I shared with them?), but I'm definitely impressed that they've managed to innovate so much so far. At the very least, it's nice to see someone rattle Facebook's cage a big, isn't it?

PS This is my 900th post. Happy 900th to me! :)

Super 8

2011-06-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

Super 8 Review

I think putting spoilers in a movie review are stupid - they defeat the point of a review for most readers. So you won't find any here.

J.J. Abrams is a really interesting guy. I think he's one of the more divisive figures in filmmaking and television for a very good reason: he's daring. One of the things that Jeff Bezos is often as quoted as saying and bleeds through into the culture at Amazon is the idea that you shouldn't be afraid to be misunderstood. Abrams clearly has that in his mind because, depending on who you ask, Lost, Alias, and Star Trek are brilliant or awful. He gives everything he does his all and even though his bets don't always pan out (*cough*Cloverfield*cough*) you have to respect his innovative spirit.

Super 8 isn't necessarily the most novel idea in the world, but there's something to be said for taking a genre that's basically been dead for years and using it to tell a really engaging story. The genre isn't disaster movies - God knows we've had way too many of those in the past few years. It's the movies that I recall from when I was little that were probably slightly before my time where it was a mysterious thriller that put flashy special effects in the backseat of a movie you couldn't help but have fun watching. It may not have been up for any Oscars, but you really enjoyed it. I'm afraid of giving examples of this sort of film because I think I risk spoiling the movie, but the point I'm trying to get across is that it's actually great cinema. Even though there are some cheap shots at making you jump in your seat, the thriller aspect takes a backseat to storytelling, suspense, and mystery.

The plot is a very simple concept: a group of kids (presumably in late middle school or early high school) are making a horror film and get caught in the middle of a huge train accident while shooting one particular scene. Strange things start happening around town right after the accident. On paper, it sounds pretty silly, and the main characters are mostly no-names. However, I could really identify with these kids. Even though they're living in a time years before I was even born, their interactions with each other felt so genuine. There was even a part where they were filming a scene and one of them was being an awful actor and I thought it was really meta how good he was at pretending to be a bad actor. I cringe sometimes to watch movies centered around young kids because they often treat them in an almost cartoonish way and I think this movie gave them some dignity and real character development and I really appreciated that.

The main drawback the film had was probably the pacing. It felt a little uneven, and I imagine that will turn off some audiences. It's not an action packed two hours - it's a mystery movie at the heart of it. In fact, I almost was disappointed in its cheap shots at the audience with the moments that made you jump in your seat. It wasn't a horror movie so I thought it was odd to have those moments in there.

All in all though, it's definitely worth seeing. The big reveal is not lame like in most of M Night Shayamalan's movies and they really keep you guessing as to which of the possibilities in your head is the right one. Don't go and see it expecting lots of action and special effects, but go and see it because you appreciate heartfelt filmmaking. It earns an A- rating from me.

Oh, and sorry about being MIA. Time has flown by and I've been surprisingly busy. I will do my best to get out an original post I've been toying with later this week.

Euro Trip 2011

2011-04-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a while since my last post but I've been busy vacationing! I thought I would blog my favorite photos from the trip since sharing is caring. I picked just 42 of my 400+ snapshots, but I hope you'll enjoy them! By the way, you can click on any picture to enlarge it. I just made them smaller so this page is easier to load.

Dublin

We began our trip in Dublin, which is a charming little city with very nice people. We were pretty jet lagged on the first day, but we found the strength to drink some beer at the Guiness factory. Here's the ingredient that gives Guiness its trademark color and flavor: malted barley.

It was hard getting good pictures from the Gravity Bar at the top, which offered 360 degree views of Dublin, but I did my best.

We were very amused by this T-shirt in the gift shop and were tempted to buy it.

We were able to draw several parallels between Seattle and Dublin, one of which being the oddities of public transit. It looks like Dubliners are as happy with their public transit as we are.

I was advised on the plane ride into Dublin by a nice Irish girl to see the Leprechaun Museum. I thought that this clearly must've been a joke, until we found a pamphlet on the ground outside Dublin Castle as well as this sign on the street (which was pointing the wrong way because a guy turned it, dressed as a leprechaun, and decided to make some money off tourists).

The Liffey!

London

Next up on our trip was London, and our first night I finally had some proper cod and chips at a true neighborhood pub (we were the only tourists there).

The street we stayed on was lined with hotels, but was still very pretty.

We saw the traditional sights (Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, etc), but those are all pretty pedestrian. How about a really pimp hotel instead? (we didn't go inside, but it looked awesome)

The British Library didn't allow pictures inside (though it was a really awesome little museum), but the British Museum did and it was pretty incredible. I loved the entrance design.

Aside from the Rosetta freaking Stone and some really great mummies and stuff, there was plenty of other cool artifacts there.

Tower of London from the Tube station:

Brussels

I'd been to Brussels before (more pictures from Belgium from my last trip here) so I knew there wasn't a ton to do there, but you can't visit Brussels and not get a Belgian Waffle:

We managed to stay pretty close to the main plaza, which had pretty nice views at night.

Paris

I've been to Paris before, as well, and I have pictures from that trip posted here if you're interested. It was still fun going back there though and I saw several things I hadn't seen before, including this tree that I just thought was really beautiful (at the Tuilleries Garden).

We followed the Garden up to the Louvre.

I saw this when we were crossing the Seine and I thought it was really cool because it sounded exactly like the proper Sphinx described in the mythology regarding Oedipus.

We went to the Hotel des Invalides (a Hotel Napolean built for injured soldiers that's now a war museum) and they had a room of really cool models of various towns and cities and such built for military strategy, including a model of the place you may recognize from The Count of Monte Cristo film.

Though I have plenty of Eiffel Tower shots, it was too nice of a day out to not take one more from a different side.

My friends endured my pleas to swing by the Dali Espace in Montmartre and I really enjoyed it - this was my favorite piece that they had on display.

The last time I was at the Arc de Triomphe, they were doing a ceremony so I couldn't get too close to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but I got closer this time.

We saw a pretty decent sized orchestra in the subway one afternoon, and they were really talented. Just not something you see every day!

The last thing we saw in Paris before we left was Notre Dame and it was my first trip to the crypt underneath where they had ruins from Paris that once was, and it was just really neat to see.

Rome

Rome was the last city on our tour, and you can see many pictures from my last trip there highlighting some the big stuff to see there here. We stayed at a pretty good bed and breakfast right in the heart of the area around Vatican City, which gave us a chance to really live like a Roman, and I really took a shine to this particular piece of grafiti because there are so many funny things about it (not the least of which being that he didn't say 'love').

This is the organ at Santa Maria del Popolo, and I just thought it was really pretty how it was designed to look like angels are holding it up.

That church is on one side of the busy Piazza del Popolo, with this being the view from the middle - very symmetrical.

The Borghese Gardens were another new thing I hadn't ventured out to at all on my last trip, and it's basically a smaller version of Central Park. I was really taken aback by the massive trees they had there.

This is just a picture I happened to like that I took at St. Peter's Basilica in the piazza. The lamp posts there were very unique.

We happened to be staying down the street from a great Irish pub (I believe we visited a pub in every city we stayed in) where my friend's Guinness had a child.

Also at that pub we noticed some pretty young kids there. Here's a picture we tried taking without being too conspicuous.

I took this picture from our balcony one morning - it was just a very nice, homely neighborhood.

The most incredible part of our trip was getting a semi-private tour of the Vatican Gardens, which were an incredible preservation of a piece of God's beautiful creation. Nothing terrible extravagant about them, just their natural beauty. By the way, this is the way to go if you want to see the Vatican Museums - you pay a little extra for the tour of the gardens, but you skip the massive line for the Vatican Museums in the process. You just need to go to their website and book at least a month in advance (you can book up to 60 days early).

The castle-like structure in the back of this shot is basically the Pope's guest house for foreign dignitaries.

There's nothing super special in this last garden shot, I just like taking pictures of pathways like these. I think it's a place for gardening to tools at the end there.

This is an unfinished sculpture from the Vatican Museums that I believe was made by Bernini. I just found it very striking - I couldn't tell you why, but something is very beautiful about her.

We saw this horse outside the Colosseum trying to eat the grass in between the stones in the ground. It was too cute/sad to not take a picture of.

This in incredible work of art is from the St. Peter-in-chains church (known for having the chains that bound St. Peter in both prisons he was famously held in) - it's Michelangelo's Moses. I'll let you guess why it's called that.

We paid a visit to the Scala Sancta - the steps Jesus carried the cross up at Pontius Pilate's crib, with 4 spots of trace amounts of Jesus's blood. Really incredible to be there and highly recommended for any Christians.

Back in Dublin

We ended our trip with one last night in Dublin, followed by probably our tastiest breakfast of the trip - a true Irish breakfast (we had that other mornings in Dublin as well, this one was just better).

Alright, that's all for now! I'll post many more photos on Facebook for those of you who actually know me in real life. I'm hoping to have another post up here in the next couple of weeks on actual tech news.

We Will Pump YOU Up!

2011-03-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

Gah - I can't believe it's already been 3 weeks since my last post! The time has been flying way too fast! I'm going on vacation next week so it'll be another 3 weeks until I can post again, but I should be able to put something fun together about my trip. Sorry for the lack of a techie post in a while, but here's something that's still nerdy: a speech I wrote up recently about working out. Enjoy!

Your average gym can be, and usually is, a very strange and intimidating place to a newbie. You've got bulky trainers whipping stringy guys and gals into shape, large men making high pitched grunting noises under unreasonable amounts of weight, and then you've got the vain folks who like seeing their muscles bulge as they lift. I've been working out regularly for over 6 years now but, like a lot of gym rats, my knowledge has been a mish mash of random online articles, locker room talk, and friends. So I did some research into good books on weight lifting and decided to pick up the Men's Health Book of Muscle by Ian King and I really got a lot out of it. So as Kevin Nealon and Dana Carvey as Hanz and Franz on SNL say, I'm here to pump *clap* *clap* you up! In the short time I have with you today I'd like to share the basics about the science of building muscle, proper nutrition, and tips on one's workout regimen.

As a card-carrying nerd I truly believe in understanding the science behind everything, and it can really go a long way when it comes to weight lifting for your own personal safety. Fun fact: you're born with all the muscle fibers you'll have your whole life - all you can do by working out is make them bigger (or smaller if you decide to stop exercising). Making your muscles bigger will in turn actually make your bones thicker and stronger, since skeletal muscles primarily exist to pull bones. There's two main types of muscle fiber: fast-twitch for maximum strength and slow-twitch for endurance. I found it fascinating that the breakdown of those two types are determined at birth and can never be changed. And did you know that the shape of your muscles is genetically coded? So there's not much you can do about that either. You have to be the best you can be with what you have. The way that you can reach that best is a process called hypertrophy, which is how muscles grow in response to a specific stimulus. In a nutshell, when you start working out your muscles get tighter to become ready for action more easily and then your muscles gradually grow by more protein filaments getting added to your muscle fibers so they can get bigger and generate more force. This only happens if all your motor units, or groups of muscle fibers, available for a specific task are in use, hence the saying "no pain no gain." Of course, our bodies are about efficiency so "use it or lose it" really comes into play given the amount of nutrients our muscles require.

Growing up, my mom used to always ask me if I eat to live or live to eat, to which I'd invariably respond the latter. Raise your hand if you love food. Obviously, it's fundamentally important to all of us, and I stand firmly opposed to any trendy diet plan, no matter what it promises. Ultimately, the best plan for gaining muscle or trimming fat is to eat several small meals during the day (every 3-4 hours, ideally, starting with as soon as you wake up). As far as what to eat: you should be ingesting one gram of protein for every pound you weigh and, despite popular belief, you need to eat carbohydrates so that you don't starve yourself of the energy your body will otherwise likely break down muscle tissue to extract. Of course, eating the right foods is also important: like sweet potatoes instead of normal potatoes, fresh fruits instead of dried fruits, or fish and lean cuts of meat instead of pork sausage and brisket. As a native Texan, that last one cut into me the hardest. Don't forget to have a snack high in protein and carbohydrates before and immediately after your workouts. I personally like mixing soy milk, egg white protein powder, and various other ingredients for my shakes as an easy, frugal source of these meals. Just remember that taking care of your body doesn't have to mean that you're carrying a burden with you at the dinner table; it's all about moderation and timing with your diet rather than sacrifice.

Workout regimens are subjects of near-religious fanaticism among gym rats. People swear by what they use because it works best for their body. Empirical evidence can be a powerful motivator, but Ian King has some sound advice for all of us. The book goes into great detail about exercises and his recommended programs, which are different for beginner, intermediate, and advanced lifters. They're catered toward your workout age, or how long you've been continuously working out for - which is an important concept because moving too fast too soon can lead to injury. Each program is a 4 stage progression that focuses on general conditioning, increased muscle size, strength, and finally maximal strength and power, in that order. Each stage is 6 weeks and you're supposed to take a week off either midway through and/or between stages, which is an important idea that I had never considered. These are called recovery weeks and they are the periods in which your body actually grows, but only if you keep your physical exertion to no more than very light weights or less intense sports. Another piece of very sound advice he offers is that you not do strenuous aerobic exercise, like running or bicycling, on the same days of your strength training or you won't grow effectively due to the so-called interference effect they cause since they do opposite things to your muscles. You'll have to get the book from your favorite online retailer or your favorite eBook reader to read his easy-to-understand charts on the programs prescribed.

I hope you've learned a little something today about weight training. What I learned from The Book of Muscle were the details of how muscles are composed, what one can and cannot do for one's body's growth, what the proper diet should entail, and the proven best ways to go about structuring one's workout schedule. Feel free to talk to me after the meeting if you have more questions, but I encourage you to do your part to keep Seattle on that hot list of the nation's fittest cities. I know I started because I was a chubby kid in high school who was looking to be slightly less awkward. After all these years though I've found it to be very rewarding and fun, and really look forward to incorporating Ian King's advice into my life. Mr. Toastmaster.

2011: The Year of the Tablet

2011-02-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

This post is kind of two weeks overdue, but life's been busy and it's been hard to find time to finish this post. Better late than never though!

Do you hear that sound? Listen closer - it's the beating of the drums of war. It's coming! I used to think it was all hype, but it really is brewing. Apple once again has set the stage for a new product category through the iPad, and it's a market that it looks like they don't quite have completely cornered. There's plenty of room for competitors to edge their way in, of which there are three: the Blackberry Playbook, the rabble of Android tablets, and the Palm TouchPad. Surprisingly enough, they're all pretty worthy competitors.

Over 14 million iPads were sold last year, and given that that's all early adopters there's clearly much more under the surface there, so the market has plenty of room for anyone who can differentiate from the iPad and/or beat the hefty price tag. Personally, I have no desire to get a tablet, but when I think about it I can easily see the appeal for everyone else. Every computer breakthrough in the past 30 years has seemed to involve portability - convenience is key to people. Gone are the days of trying to type on a keyboard in a cramped airplane seat - here are the days of Kindles and iPads and iPhones when you're on-the-go. It never ceases to amaze me how much sex appeal matters in gadgetry. While many people are content with what they have, there's a large contingent who will drop what they have in a hot minute for something that's more fun to play with or easier to use even if they don't actually need to upgrade. Back to tablets versus computers though - I'm fairly tech savvy and yet I really only use my home computer for a few things: browsing the web for news and information, e-mail, listening to music, storing pictures, writing speeches, and playing games with friends. When you boil down your computer to a set of items like that and consider that you can get all that and more in a smaller form factor for less money, why wouldn't you want a tablet instead? I mean the hardcore PC games will stay on PCs, but we're seeing pretty compelling stuff on mobile devices now. And granted, typing is much easier on a physical keyboard, but you can accessorize your tablet if you're like me and really hate typing on a touch screen. These are all pretty small arguments compared to the general interest that has grown around tablets and the place they can fill in our lives if we chuck our desktop or laptop computers.

Let's start with the little guy: the HP TouchPad. I'm an outspoken fan of webOS and it's only getting better in version 2.0. The TouchPad was announced earlier this month, but you can see a more recent hands-on video here. It's starting off with a steep disadvantage of not coming out until the summer, but it has a sexy 1.2 GHz Snapdragon processor, a 9.7" display, and a front-facing camera. Anything that you had on the Pre is there also (Synergy, the multitasking interface, etc.), minus the gesture area (since you'll be alternating between landscape and portrait orientations a lot). Aside from the front facing camera, what sets it apart from the competition is its tight integration with the Pre 3. Notifications and texts can be shared and I'm sure a lot more. I think this is pretty much the last hurrah for webOS - if this launch fails then it's all over. I think that given how small HP's mindshare is for mobile device owners, the chips are definitely stacked against them. With an inventive marketing campaign and competitive pricing, I think it definitely stands a chance. They also need to really reach out to the developer community and get aggressive about upping the ante on the app store. There's some great stuff out there, but it's a far cry from what Android and the iPad have.

The Blackberry Playbook is set to ship in the next 1-2 months and has gotten a lot of good press. I'd consider a media darling, in fact, because the tech press seems to be really excited about it. The only pricing I've seen so far is under $500 for the 4G model, which is indeed quite competitive (there are a few different models with different connectivity options though). It's also pretty beefy under the hood with a dual core 1 GHz ARM processor - lending itself quite well to its marketing as being very much a multitasking computer. They even have demos where they look at pictures, play HD video, and listen to music all at once (although it appears that this is an optional feature as you can configure it to only keep focus on one item at a time if you'd like). Another strength is the extremely high clarity of 170 pixels per inch (even sharper than the iPad). Despite how fast and shiny the PlayBook is though, I think it's going to have serious problems standing up to the competition because Blackberry's brand is not near what it used to be even 3 years ago and the app store is going to be worlds behind every other tablet coming out this year. With competitive pricing and strong incentives to developers, I think they may be in the running, but their uphill battle could be even steeper than HP's. While it's cool that they're trying to be appealing to the enterprise with their Torch integration, I don't know if that's going to be enough for them to build significant market share around it. Let's face it, a tablet is usually not for work, it's for play.

There's a lot of Android tablets coming out soon so I won't go into hardware details, but Honeycomb is a pretty slick OS. It just oozes the kind of class that we've come to expect from Android over the years. The launcher is in essence what you normally see from Android phones but just scaled up a bit for a tablet (like a GMail widget that keeps up with live e-mail) and with a spoonful of sugar on top as the transitions are cleaner and a way to zoom out and get an eXpose-like view of things (as pictured above). A few more noteworthy items: Google Maps looks a lot more like Google Earth now that you can see 3-D models in it, the browser appears to be just a tablety version of Chrome, and the GMail UI weaves pretty well with what you've come to know and love in your browser. I think the odds that Android tablets won't survive the year are slim to nil. Aside from the momentum Android has and the number of tablets that will be out there this year running Android, it has an extremely competitive app store. The only things holding it back are pricing (the Motorola Xoom is $800 - I hope others don't follow suit) and the risk of over-saturating the market with selection.

There's not much I can say about the iPad that you don't already know, except for the fact that there's almost certainly a new iPad coming out this summer that hasn't been announced yet. Hence, the iPad could either strengthen its lead or lose a decent amount of market share to the competition. Regardless of what happens, it'll definitely still be in this game after this year - the question is really whether their majority share of the market will be staggering or just a simple one. They've got excellent market share, an enormous app store, and a leg up on the competition in having had a year head start to iron out the kinks for the 2nd generation. Their biggest downfalls are pricing, weight, the lack of multitasking, and the standard fact that the iPad plays in a somewhat walled garden since the app store is more heavily controlled than any of the others are/will be. Even with all these issues, it's still the iPad. The brand name is the trump card, even in the face of all the cool stuff the other guys have to offer (not to say that the iPad is a bad device by any means, but the competitors are no less slick).

We have four tablet OSes entering this year and I predict only three will survive, possibly even only two. By "survive" I mean by a reasonableness standard - none of these guys will quickly give up the battle, but anyone who can't get their foothold in this year firmly into the market is done for. I expect for it to be a very interesting year for tablets, and I look forward to watching from the sideline as I clutch my 16.3" Asus laptop in the face of this anti-keyboard revolution.

Kindle the 3rd

2011-01-31T23:51:00.000-08:00

I'm finally back! I'm hoping that I can end this hiatus now and get back to regular blogging. It'll be a bit of a challenge to get back in the swing of things, but I'm hoping to be able to post at least once every two weeks and maybe I'll be able to ramp up that rate as time goes by.

It's been almost a month now since I got the Kindle 3 - my first Kindle ever - which is plenty of time for me to form some pretty solid impressions. I have to confess that when I first found about the Kindle, I thought it wasn't a very good idea, especially since the Sony eReader had crashed and burned already. I thought it was too ahead of its time and it was going to be really hard creating a market for it with people so married to the idea of paper books. When you think about it, more so than any other medium it's the most resistant to change. People are really attached to their books. Of course, Amazon pioneered the idea of ordering books online, so I shouldn't have been surprised that it would be the best candidate to put out an electronic device. So why did I decide to buy something I thought was a dumb idea? Aside from the fact that the price was right (I got the WiFi model, so only $139), it was because of a screaming toddler. On the second leg of my trip back to my hometown for the holidays there was a toddler within 10-20 feet of me that literally screamed whether he was happy, sad, or just chilling out. I'm not exaggerating, I do not know what was wrong with this kid - you'd think his parents were abusing him. I finished the graphic novel I brought for the flight (I was hoping to sleep the whole flight) and the legroom in front of me was not enough to pull out my laptop and indulge in some Battlestar Cracklactica, so I closed my eyes and slept for two minute intervals between screams thinking about how much I wish I had room in my carry-on to bring more books. Needless to say, a Kindle was on its merry little way to my parents' place within 24 hours of my arrival.

I'm pretty amazed at how much I love the Kindle. People told me things like that it was the best thing they've bought in their life and that seeing is believing and all that jazz. I'd heard this sort of talk before when a little device came out called the iPad. I played with an iPad and I still don't believe it's worth $500. It's a very nice toy, but it's heavy and I have no desire to lug it around. The Kindle though is an entirely different story. It's remarkable how light it is. Holding it feels right - like it yearns for the warm touch of your fingers. I don't say this that much when it comes to electronics, but it's a thing of beauty - I'm impressed by how nice it looks and feels. The WiFi one only comes in graphite so your fingerprints don't stay visible for long and it just feels soft and elegant - especially the back which feels like thin silicone.

The first thing I love about the Kindle is a result of its sexy body: you can hold it in one hand comfortably. I always hated that with paperbacks you have to angle your hand in a special way to hold it with one hand, and even then you need you other hand to turn pages, which isn't convenient if you're standing on a bus or in numerous other situations. The first thing I hate also is related to its body though: the d-pad placement is silly. I hit the "Back" and "Menu" buttons on accident far too frequently when I try navigating up/down on the screen. To be fair, I have nails on my right hand (for playing guitar) so it'd probably be less of a problem if I didn't, but anyone with bigger hands is going to experience that irritation. Additionally, the bottom row of the qwerty keyboard is shifted one key to the left, which is frustrating for a touch typist like me who is used to a normal qwerty on his mobile phone. Aside from that though, the other keys are superb, especially next/previous page, which are wonderfully placed on either side of the device. I think it's really neat that the power button is on a light that appears as if from nowhere and indicates when you turn it on or when it's charging - very cool.

I have to hand it to the Kindle team, they know how to ship a product. As soon as it was on its way to me, I got an e-mail saying it was registered to me already and I could start buying stuff immediately to download on it when I switch it on. I was already blown away because I'd never had a product shipped to me that was already personalized without my request. When I pulled it out of the box, the screen had instructions on it when I un-boxed it, which I thought were on the screen protector until I followed the directions and the screen changed and I literally gasped because I was so shocked. This was my first experience with the text sharpness on the Kindle 3. The first two generations were cool and all, but this one really takes the cake in terms of contrast and the fact that it's literally sharper than words printed on paper. It's like when the iPhone came out that had a higher resolution than your eyes knew what to do with - the difference is that drastic. I cannot sing enough praises for the display - it makes me want to read more because I don't have to strain my eyes at all and that makes it fun to read again.

Oh, and it's quite snappy. Turning pages is very responsive, and waking it up from sleep is less than 5 seconds (less than 2 seconds if you left your book open when you put it to sleep and don't need to navigate to it). The overall interface is just logical. It comes with a huge user manual if you ever have questions (on the device, of course - not printed out), but you really only need the first chapter or two (that's not much reading) to get the basics. From there, you can figure it all out. The "Back" button always does what you think it will do. You can start typing text whenever to search or lookup words. There are just numerous examples of good UI design, especially the fact that the screen real estate is never cluttered and organizing your books into collections is super easy. Buying books is also easy - it's easy enough to buy on the device itself, but if you go online and do so then it'll start downloading to your device in literally seconds if you're on the home screen and your wireless is turned on. To conserve battery life, the WiFi/3G is never on when the Kindle is asleep - it's worth it, the battery life is incredible. I only charged it once since I got it, but only to be cautionary for another flight - I don't think I needed to have charged it since my first charge. Some other noteworthy features: taking notes/highlighting/bookmarking is super easy and syncs to the cloud, you can see passages highlighted by a lot of other users, you can share passages on Facebook/Twitter, your last read page syncs to the cloud whenever you turn on wireless, you can change the text size, approved books (by the book publisher) can be read to you, and you can send lots of stuff to your Kindle for free over WiFi (pictures, word docs, PDFs, Mobi). One feature that doesn't work so great is the web browser - it's adequate for things like logging on to WiFi networks with a gateway or browsing news articles, but the screen simply isn't designed for rich web content. A friend said something very true the other day to this point. It was something to the tune of "I already have a laptop and a mobile phone to browse the web, I just want to read books on my Kindle!" That's very true, and the Kindle does that very well.

I have a couple of side notes before I wrap up here. I got the lighted leather case (as pictured up above), and I love it. It's definitely pricey, but I personally felt it was worth it. It looks and feels nice, it keeps the Kindle nice and safe, and that light is a Godsend. I use it at the most random times. It bathes the screen in light perfectly without being distracting to people around you, and it's powered by the Kindle itself. The elastic band is quite sturdy, too. The other side note I have is that I find it fascinating that each technological advancement in media makes us more ADD, and the Kindle is no exception. When TV first started, you watched TV on a set schedule and you could only watch one thing at a time. Now you can watch multiple programs at once through DVRs and whenever you want. With music you could only listen to one record at a time, then cassettes brought about the mix tape breakthrough (for better or worse) and now mp3s have blown out the ceiling with podcasts and playlists and personalized online radio. Again and again, we're getting inundated with options and taking all of them. With the Kindle, I'm literally reading three books at once. I've discovered that I'm not the only person with this affliction. I think it's actually a cool thing though - one book is only good for reading in large chunks, one book I like to take pauses in just to think about it before I move on to the next piece, and one book is a collection of short essays that I can easily read on-the-go. Aside from schoolwork, this was a much rarer occurrence before eBooks, and I find it to be a fascinating advancement.

I think I've rambled on long enough. The bottom line is that the Kindle is a ridiculously capable e-reader. The idea that all your books are backed up in the cloud and you can still read them no matter how many Kindles or mobile phones you go through (or reset since resetting the Kindle clears its memory out) is a truly powerful concept. Aside from the initial oddity of saying to someone that you're going to plug your book into a wall to charge it, it feels so natural that once you get one in your hot little hands you'll wonder how you lived with that one. I'm not exaggerating - for me it was that drastic of a change. I had a few nit-picks with it, but I'm really happy with my purchase and am still very happy when I curl up to it at night. In fact, I think I'll do that right now.

It's Not Over...

2010-11-28T01:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been away for so long. I haven't given up on this blog, life has just made having time for it a challenge. It has taken me longer and longer to put together these posts and I think it's time to reboot how I do this blog. I want to try posting on a less regular schedule (i.e. not every Sunday, maybe Wednesday or Thursday or something sometimes) and focus on specific issues . Covering all the news that interests me is just too much and I think not providing a lot of value - I much prefer giving developed commentary on the big things.

Stay tuned - I want to start posting again very soon. It may start out bi-weekly and improve over time.

Lots of Cell Phones

2010-10-03T23:51:00.000-07:00

Cell Phone News Galore

Sorry I haven't been around the past couple of weeks - life has been busy! I was out of town on business a couple of weekends ago and had a wedding to go to last weekend. Should be back in action for a while now though!

I've seen a ridiculous amount of cell phone news in the past couple of weeks, hence the headline. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is because we're nearing the holiday season that so many phones are coming out of the woodwork.

Verizon has added a feature to its Android devices much in the vein of what Apple gives iPhone users with Mobile Me. If you lose your phone you can have it play a really loud noise (even if its volume is down) or turn on GPS and track. Like many other phones, it also supports remote wipe. Unlike Apple's Mobile Me, this service is free. Gotta love competition!

HTC has officially unveiled the Desire HD, which was hotly anticipated by some Android fans and looks pretty damn slick. It has a 4.3" screen and an 8MB camera, and the specs are pretty tricked out with a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, and 768 GB of RAM. Plus, it supports microSD.

When you instead look at the Nokia E7, you can see why Nokia still doesn't have a foothold in America. I feel like their designers are living in 2006 or something. Sure, it has a 4" screen and 8 MP camera, but a phone with an angled slideout keyboard is something you'd see in a movie and seems like it would be cool but practically probably sucks. Also, the software doesn't seem very impressive. If you can't beat Android then why even try? Maybe I'm biased because I've never understood Nokia UIs.

That right there is the rumored Samsung Continuum phone. What's super fascinating about this phone is that it sports not one, but two OLED screens. Why would a phone need two screens? It's actually rather clever - the bottom one is like a news ticker for updates and notifications you can subscribe to and would show up when you put your hand on the device. Aside from being nifty, it'd save you battery life on checking that kind of stuff without firing up the whole main screen.

Last, but not least, two mystery webOS 2.0 devices are rumored to be getting announced this month. I may be the only person who cares about this, but I still love the webOS software and just need better hardware.

Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9 is on the horizon (like every other Microsoft product, they have to put in 3 years of development time), and some of the upcoming features truly are noteworthy. Apparently, the integration with Windows 7 will be tighter than in IE 8 including the ability to pin websites to your taskbar. What's really cool though is a performance advisor that tells you how much load time each add-on you have tacks on to your clicks. The other features are improvements from Chrome or Firefox: searching within the address bar, new tabs showing you most frequently viewed sites (color coded though), and a more compact interface. In a lot of ways, it looks like a Chrome clone to me; I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Must be surreal for Google since Internet Explorer is the top dog for browsers.

Apple TV is Out

The Apple TV is now available and PC Mag put up a review with plenty of footage of the UI. As you would expect, it's slick and simple like the first generation. In fact, just think of the UI as that one with just some added features. I acknowledge that this is a cool device at $99, but it bothers me that it doesn't have a hard disk. It would be so cool (though I know, impossible) if you could rip Blu-rays and DVDs to it so that it'd be like your traveling media hub. I wonder if the Boxee Box is dead in the water at $200 though it supports 1080p and is more open.

Digg Traffic Down

Anecdotally, the Digg redesign wasn't very well-received, but now we have metrics that traffic has dropped 26%. Despite popular belief, most of that traffic did not go to Reddit. That's a really significant drop and I think there are a couple of really important lessons to learn here. The first lesson is that they didn't have their biggest users test this out. That was stupid - they would've caught the problems in the redesign immediately. Secondly, they added the functionality of following people without including the old Digg - there was no good reason to do that. The experiment alone would've been valuable and it may have even succeeded comparing the two. Instead, they alienated a very loyal user base.

Additionally, it sounds like Kevin Rose may be leaving Digg due to burnout. He said they could've been bought out for $80 million but the board turned it down. Too bad, because they're in a rather precarious position now.

Galaxy Tab and Blackberry Playbook

In tablet news, Digital Trends got some hands on time with the Samsung Galaxy Tab and it looks cool. It's funny that the Desire HD is actually more powerful, but the specs aren't bad. I haven't seen pricing information, but I wonder how it'll fare against the iPad now that a lot of tablet enthusiasts have already picked that up.

Meanwhile, Blackberry has announced the Playbook, a QNX-based tablet to be released next year. They're developing QNX with full support for Javascript, HTML 5, CSS 3, and Adobe Air. I'm going to guess that they're going to push hard on video conferencing and other business-oriented features here, but it may be too little too late depending on how late into next year it's going to come out.

Quickies

Music download sales are flat right now, which doesn't seem all that odd to me. It's a pretty mature industry now, how much should it be growing, especially given that the holidays are just around the corner?

Netflix is going to start streaming a bunch of NBC content, including every season of SNL. Given that SNL used to be so much better than it is now, that's pretty big news.

Google wants to replace JPEG with a more efficient format: WebP. If anyone can force a new image standard, it'd probably be Google.

The Super Mario Brothers anniversary was a couple of weeks, so please enjoy this belated bit of anniversary nostalgia. So many memories of being a preteen.

Have a fantastic week!

Censorship in the US

2010-09-12T23:24:00.000-07:00

What do Rackspace and Medal of Honor have in common?

These are big enough stories that you probably do know what they have in common. While this topic is a bit more political than I like to get, they're probably the biggest things to get noticed last week.

Medal of Honor, which I played at PAX and was quite fun, has been getting a lot of attention for the ability to play as the Taliban. This is only in multiplayer so it's not like you play a single player campaign trying to bomb an American landmark or something, but has ruffled quite a few feathers. It's been banned from American military bases, in fact. This strikes me as especially ironic because these guys go out and fight to preserve our freedom and for the freedom of others - whether you politically agree with what they've been sent to do or not, they serve their country with honor and believe in this freedom. Yet, they don't get the freedom to play this game. I know you give up some rights when you're on a military base, I totally understand that, but they might as well start outlawing war movies, right? How is that different from a game? An immersive movie can be just as powerful as a video game. Video games are an artform and should not be considered a second class citizen in today's media, it's not fair. I applaud EA for sticking to their guns. You can play as the Axis Powers in World War 2 games and you see things from Hitler's side in the movie Downfall, so why is it so wrong to play a game with the Taliban? It's not my cup of tea, but this clamoring for stores to not sell it is effectively censoring freedom of speech for EA, and it's not right.

In a totally different arena, Rackspace has denied service to a church that was planning to burn copies for the Koran. At first reaction, I'm totally with you: burning Korans is hateful and terrible. And yet, the right to peacefully assembly is what America is all about. Who is Rackspace to judge this church? I can appreciate the right of a business to refuse service to anyone, but being a service provider as Rackspace is, they're in a unique position. They may not be the only game in town, but they shut off this church's primary voice to the world. Imagine if Wal-marts started refusing service to Catholics because they don't believe in the death penalty. How different is that from this situation? In some places, Wal-mart is the primary source of a lot of random stuff, much like service providers like Rackspace. Their power is larger than that of a lot of companies because of this.

Maybe I've opened up a can of worms here, but I just believe in freedom of speech. Call me a wide-eyed optimist if you want, but I love this country and stories like this kind of suck.

G2 and Milestone 2 Announced

The cell phone is taking a cue from the movie industry with all these sequels they're coming out with. Motorola's Milestone 2 is a slick-looking slider phone that looks to be targeted more towards Europe and will be released there this fall. Of more interest to us is probably the T-Mobile G2, which is the first HSPA+ (basically, T-Mobile's 4G). Apparently, it has an unusual flip keyboard of sorts. The hardware under the hood sounds pretty similar to the Milestone 2. Aren't there processors other than the Snapdragon?

In more interesting mobile news, Nokia has replaced their CEO with a Microsoft exec. I do not know why they think he'll do any better, but I guess anyone else is better with the rut that Nokia has been in. To be honest though, Nokia needs something pretty drastic to get back in the game, at this point they need to take some pretty large risks. To go from having more than half the market cornered to 34% in 4 years is pretty bleak.

Apple Changes App Store Rules

I don't fully understand this, but Apple has decided to lax their app store rules a bit by not restricting the development tools used to create iPhone apps. This has prompted Adobe to go back to work on Flash for the iPhone. This doesn't mean the browser will display Flash, only that Flash-based applications will start appearing in the app store. There's speculation that the about face was from the antitrust investigation that Adobe is said to have instigated, but the investigation hasn't stopped as a result. I'm really curious to see if this will really create many more quality iPhone apps - Flash just doesn't seem as big of a development tool as it did even 5 years ago, but it's hard to predict where developers will hang their hat. It's a very fast-changing industry.

The Rest

Alright, I have to work on a speech so it's time to wind down.

Kevin Rose spoke a bit about the Digg issues on Diggnation and it didn't help their case tremendously because it made their engineers look like they didn't prep well for the v4 upgrade. If Digg were to add a tab to also show the old Digg they'd be doing just fine right now with their users.

If you're confused between Apple TV and Google TV, this is a pretty good article breaking down how they're conceptually different products altogether. Personally, I pictured what Google TV is purported to be to be where TV was going, but I like the idea of renting shows (especially if there are marathon sales).

This seems like old news now, but GMail released Priority Inbox to all users last week (not just Google Apps users as the week before) and it's pretty sweet. I've been using it and it's the biggest improvement GMail has had probably since Google Chat.

Google also released Google Scribe to help auto-complete everything.

This is old but I forgot to cover it last week: Google posted resources online to help with teaching computer science. Very cool stuff.

Have a great week, everyone!

PAX 2010

2010-09-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

My PAX 5

This was my third year going to PAX and it was a blast, as always, albeit exhausted (I counted having played over 30 games on the show floor). I feel like last year was a little better because there were more games I was pumped to see and less people there, but this year was bigger (the main theater was moved out of the convention center to Benaroya Hall - maybe it'll be the Paramount next year). Anyway, per tradition, I'd like to list out the top 5 games that I saw. I obviously didn't play everything and I'm not a journalist so I just did what I could with the schedule of stuff I wanted to see.

5. Infamous 2 - I was a little surprised how much fun this was to play. It was just a very satisfying experience overall and the controls just seemed to click with me, possibly better than with other people. The demo showed off how the camera does some automatic camera zooms for stylistic fighting, which I could see getting annoying after all, and it showed off a fair bit of rampant destruction of the city at your hands. I didn't really play the original, but I'll have to keep my eye on this.

4. Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 - My friend doesn't agree with me on this, but I think Lucasarts made an enormous improvement over the original here. The demo of the original was so bad that I didn't even finish it - I just couldn't get force grip to go my way. Ultimately, force grip is very hard to nail down with a normal game controller and may be better for something more like the PS Move controller where you can gesture in 3-D space. Anyway, the demo they had was pretty long and I had a ton of fun tossing around storm troopers and just being a Jedi (or is it Sith?) badass. Give this one a try before you knock it.

3. Epic Mickey - I think fanfare was low for this one because it's a Disney game rather than a big video game property. Still, I thought it was pretty creative. The graphics weren't that great (better than I expected for the Wii), but the gameplay was something different and I, for one, appreciated that. I don't think Disney games appealing to an older audience are so common that this game is a write-off. The visual style is superb and it brought back so much nostalgia of playing Mickey Mania back in day, even though it has nothing to do with it. Anyway, the game hinges on you using a paint brush to thin out (i.e. remove) pieces of the world or painted in parts that are missing. It lends itself to some great puzzle elements so I'd probably call it an adventure game more than anything else.

2. Donkey Kong Country Returns - If there's one game that Wii owners need to look forward to, it's this one. I adored this series growing up. I didn't own any of them, but I rented and beat each of them (actually rented from Phar-mor, remember when they existed?). My heart grew three sizes seeing the love they put into bringing this franchise back. It's so great that they preserved the 2-D nature of the game while upgrading the graphics (very well, I might add, despite being on the Wii). The gameplay felt just as cute, clever, and fun as it did growing up, and I definitely see it being a great party game (well, a party for nerds, that is).

1. Portal 2 - Even though it wasn't playable, this game looks like it's what we've been patiently waiting for since Portal came out what seems like forever ago. Aside from being more of what we came to know and love, it has co-op (including the ability to hug - chest bump will probably be in Portal 3) and newer guns (actual I think from Tag, which I covered last year) for painting surfaces to make you faster or bounce around, etc. The only problem was that the puzzles seemed very difficult, but I imagine it'll be back next year since they have over a year to go on it. That'll give them a chance to make it even longer and see people struggle with how difficult the puzzles are (or, hopefully, to make it easier to chew for more gamers).

I do have a few honorable mentions that didn't make the list:

Duke Nukem Forever was the biggest news of PAX, by far. That's right, after 10+ years, they really are doing a sequel to the iconic FPS Duke Nukem 3D. It didn't make my list because I didn't wait in the 2-4 hour line to play it. I decided that my priorities lied in other stuff going on during PAX. My friend played it and it convinced him to pre-order it as soon as he can. It's apparently just as fun as it used to be with the humor intact and much longer. This game stands to be pretty huge though, especially judging from the great lengths people went through to play it at PAX. I managed to find some probably illicit videos of it online and it definitely looks awesome, but I can only imagine the outcries against it when it comes out given how crude it is. They should be releasing videos soon for the rest of us to see it - it doesn't seem to be vaporware this time around though. By the way, I think this was the first major game to be announced at PAX, which is a pretty awesome achievement for what started as a tiny indie games expo in Bellevue.
LittleBigPlanet 2 was fun, but my playtime with it didn't involve much of the super new stuff, I'm afraid. The level we played was trying to protect these Sackbots and it was very cute. The new costumes were also really neat. I can't say I'm amped for this game since it's nothing revolutionary, but I will be getting it at some point because it's looking very good.
Killzone 3 deserves a shout-out because (aside from them giving out the best quality shirts) it was so fun we played it twice. The graphics were some of the best on the show floor. I wasn't sure whether to put it on my list at #5 or not, but ultimately it was just another FPS. It was neat how you chose a class and had abilities based on that class, like cloaking and stuff, and the gameplay modes were cool, but nothing really new. Just a triple A FPS. They did have it in 3-D and with the Move controller, but I played some third person shooter in 3-D and it hurt my head - I didn't bother trying with the Move controller.

NBA Jam is back, and playing it very much took me back to middle school where I used to play it all the time when guests my age came over. It's as fun an arcade basketball game as ever, and actually transferred pretty well, visually, to the Wii.
I'm not big on action games, but I thoroughly enjoyed Marvel vs. Capcom 3, even if I did get owned. The character models and gameplay are the high quality you'd expect from this series.
Similarly, Mortal Kombat was a return to form. You can see some footage of it here - fatalities are back and bloodier than ever. A couple of them were so disturbing I shudder to describe them - no one under the age of 17 should be in the same room as this game's disc, but it will be a great ride for the rest of us.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was playable in multiplayer and, while the graphics didn't impress me, it was fun. I think it would get repetitive after a while because it's just about trying to stay hidden until you find your target and kill them, but it seems like something that would be fun once in a while. You get a new target once you kill yours, but of course you're also someone else's target and have to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious since there are clones of all the players walking around under AI control that are not actually assassins.
I didn't get any time with the Kinetic, but I tried out the Playstation Move a bit and it seemed fun. Not really a game changer, but I noticed better accuracy than with the Wiimote. Supposedly, it's hit or miss and I only played one game with it, but we'll see what happens with it.

And a few dishonorable mentions, real quick:

Bethesda really missed with Hunted. It's a medieval take on Army of Two with very clumsy controls. Nothing at all was compelling about this game, and it actually froze before we could finish the demo. I was actually glad it froze so I could leave.
I don't know why Sega was showing off Conduit 2. If anything, they should lock it away in a box so no one knows it exists. Aside from being by far the ugliest game I saw all weekend, the controls were really bad and the AI was even worse. Nothing redeemed this Wii FPS, except that you could relax your frustrations by moving three steps to the left to try out Sonic Colors, which is classic Sonic in 3-D and on speed.

PAX Keynote

Warren Spector, associated with many great classic games including Deus Ex and Wing Commander, gave the keynote this year and it was the best PAX keynote I've seen (I never saw the Wheaton one). Unfortunately, there's not a video online yet with the most poignant part of his speech, but he basically made the claim some considered quite bold that video games are the medium of the century much like books were ages ago and movies were last century. Every new form of media faces resistance before it makes it big, and video games are growing to the point that they're becoming the ultimate multimedia experience. I've always considered them to be that way because of the ridiculous music quality and, often, voice acting nowadays, but the growth of PAX and the revenues of the industry as a whole are proof that it's becoming more and more mainstream.

He also went into a diatribe, and rightly so, about a case that has reached the Supreme Court on whether video games can be censored by the government (i.e. what games can and can't be sold). It will effectively revoke the right of free speech to video games if the governator wins, and single-handedly bring the industry to its knees. Please join the fight for rights for video games - it's not fair for the government to tell us what we can and can't create if it doesn't have a net negative effect on society.

Real Tech News

Ok, so quite a bit of stuff happened last week, and yet I'm out of time here. I had a bigger to do list today than I was hoping for and I already have spent way too much time on this post, so I'm going to quickly touch on what I thought was the biggest stories from last week before I wrap this puppy up.

Apple had a big press event where the main thing announced was a new Apple TV at a $99 price point and integrated with Netflix and TV show rentals (just $1), as well as YouTube and Flickr. It seems like a device that would've saved Blockbuster if they thought of it two years ago. There's also a new shuffle (with buttons) at $50 for 2 GB, a stupidly small iPod nano with touchscreen starting at $150 for 8 GB, and a new iPod Touch in line with the new iPhone starting at $230. You can drill into these things in more detail here, but I personally am impressed by the Apple TV offering and I think it totally stands a fighting chance against Roku (that's the only direct competitor it really has, to be honest). There's also some silly social networking music thing they're trying to do and a new iTunes with somewhat strange UI choices.

Palm is working on version 2.0 of webOS and the biggest improvements are card grouping (kind of like on Windows 7 task bar does with windows) and a display when docked that passively shows information (I assume stuff like stock tickers and news headlines). Other cool features under-the-hood: outside developers can extend Synergy for better integration with your address book, background services can be written in Javascript (leads to performance improvements over Java and easier to write for many mobile developers versus C), and applications can provide information to make their data searchable from global search. I really hope it's not too little too late because I love webOS from a user experience standpoint.

Say goodbye to national broadband - it's just not feasible.

Gmail has launched the coolest feature it has released in a while: Priority Inbox. It has an algorithm for figuring out what mail is most important to you and bubbling that up to the top above your mailing lists and other junk based on your behaviors and what it knows are sites just selling you stuff, but you can also add in your input to help the algorithm out. I've been using it and have been very impressed - it's really helping me manage my unread items better because you can create subsections within your inbox view and stack them however you want.

I'll leave you with this awesome video from PAX. If you liked it, please support Paul & Storm (you'll have to click through it to YouTube to play in HD - it won't fit in my layout at that size):

Traitorware From Apple

2010-08-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

Apple's Odd Patent

It was kind of a slow news week, and when that happens there's always some interesting incendiary anti-Apple article to talk about. I'm going to start out by saying that the EFF calling a patent Apple filed "traitorware" is going a bit far - after all, it's not even a real product yet. Still, it's an interesting solution to the problem of theft.

In a nutshell, the patent is to use things like taking a picture, measuring various biometrics, GPS coordinates, voice recognition, whether your phone is jailbroken, and/or keystrokes to determine if you're the one using your device. The article from Computer World focuses a lot on jailbreaking for some reason - Apple can already technically remote wipe your device if they know it's jailbroken - not even they're crazy enough to do something like that though. The real issue is that giving them that level of information about you is scary. Your heart rhythm is pretty private health information - can you trust Apple with something like that? What's even scarier is the prospect of them collecting this information without you knowing about it. Doesn't this all seem to be going a bit far in the name of identifying unauthorized users of your device? Not if you think of it as their device that you're borrowing instead of your device, which may be their mindset.

The point that I'm trying to make in a somewhat roundabout way is that technology is a wonderful, magical thing, but it's up to us to keep advancements in technology in check. The EFF is just trying to sound the alarm on this issue early. If we don't speak up when scary stuff like this happens, we get on a slippery slope of trading away our privacy for less important advancement in software. Apple has not implemented this yet and it's very possible that they never will, but if they do then how will you react? Will you continue to support them?

Net Neutrality Worst Case Scenarios

In the wake of all this Verizon/Google net neutrality stuff, Mashable put together a few frightening and (mostly) believable scenarios of a world without net neutrality. It's funny that the first two relate to the progression of TV, which has clearly evolved into a far from a consumer-friendly industry ripe with petty fighting and unreasonable pricing.

A couple of the situations are on the other side. The government could go power crazy and over-regulate the Internet, but I think that there are too many Internet lobbyists to alow something like that to happen. There is an argument to be made for the fact that the amount of wireless spectrum available is limited, but I don't think that rules out a net neutral WiMax network if built correctly (not an expert in wireless communication though). I know that Verizon disagrees, but I don't understand how constrained capacity means that you can't send bits faster instead of just more bits at once.

In any case, I think people would have less problems with nominal wireless network management from Verizon if it was more clearly defined as really benefiting the greater good and being abundantly transparent. When you throw in clauses to add tiered services, you lose a lot of points even if there can be some argument made for wireless network management.

Galaxy S

That's the line of Samsung Galaxy S phones, and it looks like every major network gets one, though there are tiny differences between them, like 4G on the Sprint one or better battery life on the T-Mobile one. I personally think that the keyboard on the Sprint Captivate model is really cool because most Android phones lack a physical keyboard, but all 4 are probably the sexiest phones Samsung has come out with in a while. What's interesting is that these are much more multimedia focused than other models, which makes sense since Samsung is known for superior video and audio quality. Maybe they'll be able to attract more 3-D games to Android. In any case, they're definitely devices to keep on the radar.

Netflix for the iPhone

This is one of those things that I think really helps sell iPhones: Netflix has made an app for streaming some of their movies directly to your iPhone. It's apparently not quite optimized yet, but I think this is a pretty big deal since it's yet another way to consume movies aside from their ideal venue (a move theater). It just goes to show how much that industry is evolving as much as the MPAA has tried to resist it (obviously certain studios do get it for this app to exist at all). Of course, you could have probably also guessed that from Blockbuster's current problems.

Digg v4

Digg got a face lift last week, and I personally really like it. Public opinion has been mixed, but I think change is always like that on the Internet. I think they've done a really great job trying to innovate in the news aggregation space by taking into account the people that you actually care about. It applies the technology you use to get from useless information from your Facebook feed to information that you should care about: actual news. It's still a little rough around the edges, but I do hope that it works out in the end for Digg.

Quickies

Just a few one-liners:

Beware of HDMI cables upselling you on their refresh rate - it's all marketing lies.

This is a pretty interesting article on what fields of study Computer World thinks will be useful for getting a job in the future.

For a bit of cell phone nostalgia, you'll appreciate these old school ads.

This year was the biggest price hike yet for movie theater tickets, mostly because of 3-D. Ouch. When I was growing up, a movie was just $6!

Last but not least, the new Kindle is out!

Have a fantastic week!

Google and Verizon Sold Out the Internet

2010-08-24T00:34:00.000-07:00

Net Neutrality Under Fire

I don't know what's more sickening, the proposal I have to talk about here or the fact that it's not likely that enough people are going to care about it to stop it. Google and Verizon have made a joint policy proposal that dresses itself as supporting net neutrality though it really smacks it in the face. It supports great ideas like transparency, protection of customers' right to send what they want over the wire, granting the FCC power to regulate the broadband access (but not its content), a commitment to using the fee on consumers' phone bills to help build a nationwide broadband network, and non-discrimination of traffic that would hurt competition. However, it only supports these things for wired networks, and given the pervasive nature of mobile Internet access and the hopeful future of 4G, this is a pretty enormous loophole. It's also conceptually silly to divide the Internet into wired and wireless where one of the two becomes a second class citizen. They claim this is because of the way that wireless works, but that's a total cop out. There's also other not-so-exciting provisions including the ability to create a separate network that an ISP can charge extra for if it's different from regular Internet access (whatever the Hell that means) and the power of network management to improve service quality. Network management assumes a lot of trust in companies that have traditionally only screwed their customers. In any case, isn't network management just a back door out of actually improving their networks to not need such management?

Senator Al Franken has rightly lambasted the agreement and called out how laughable some of the details are. I think his most potent argument is that it doesn't make sense that the major players in an industry get to write the rules on how they operate. Another really going point he brought up is regarding the future of what can happen if we let these companies do what they want.

Make no mistake, Google and Verizon have sold us out to ensure their success - they've shown that they don't care what's best for the continuation of innovation on the Internet. They're carving up the rules in a way that favors what's sure to be most profitable in the coming decades while making concessions to simply wired Internet. An Internet that's not neutral puts in danger free competition on the Internet by creating tiers to protect the websites that are already doing well without giving competitors a fighting chance. Write to your congressmen and tell them that this policy does not make any sense.

Xbox Live vs. Android Mobile Gaming

Engadget got the scoop on the set of launch titles for Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 and it's not a bad list, but definitely nothing to stop the presses for. To be fair, we still haven't seen footage of Halo: Waypoint, Star Wars, or Castlevania, so Microsoft hasn't shown all their cards yet. Supposedly, performance is pretty solid, but I didn't see anything showing off what separates it from the iPhone, Android, or Palm Pre (which has a surprising number of 3-D games). What happened to the Xbox 360 integration that was demoed months ago?

Comparatively, there's very strong rumors of a Sony Ericsson phone that crosses a touchscreen Android phone with a PSP Go sliding controller. Heavy hitter franchises seem to be part of the equation including LittleBigPlanet and God of War. Given that the PSP already integrates with the PS3, if Sony can pull off an Android device that integrates with the PS3 with really strong titles, they could beat Microsoft to the punch and really put together a compelling product for casual gamers and hardcore gamers.

I don't think video games are something that should be underestimated when it comes to mobile platforms - when you look around in meetings and on buses, you see people playing games on their phones a lot. It's a burgeoning industry and that's why the iPhone got on the bandwagon with partners like EA very early on.

More Droids

After about a year now, the Droid 2 is finally here, which is the true successor to the original Motorola Droid phone since it has an improved physical keyboard. It seems to improve upon the Droid, which was already a pretty highly celebrated phone, in every way including the screen and camera.

Meanwhile, the R2-D2 Droid was announced. It will be available next month only and only online, so it'll be a true collector's edition type of phone. I think this is kind of weird - as cool as it is to have a unique phone, I'd be afraid of buying a phone that there's so few out there for Verizon to care about supporting. Of course, there's enough Star Wars geeks out there that this thing will almost surely sell out.

Facebook Places

After much talk and speculation, Facebook's Places API for geolocation check-ins has been announced and is now available to play with. It's supposed to play nice with Gowalla and Foursquare, but I can't imagine that those two companies don't feel threatened. Foursquare believes that it's a different enough product to co-exist with Facebook Places, but given how much more pervasive Facebook is, it'll be interesting to see what really happens. As silly as it may seem, these services have a lot of potential in that it's something that small businesses can really sink their teeth into, but their profitability is still yet to be fully mined.

Google TV Struggles

Google TV was announced not too long ago as a product that basically mashed up Chrome, Google, YouTube, and your TV to provide a rich television watching experience. Apparently I was one of only a few who thought this was a compelling concept if done right. So far not so good for Google as they struggle to sign on partners. They'd like to have content owners share information to help Google link live television with offerings on these content owners' websites, but traditional media still isn't sold on the profitability of what Google is setting out to provide.

Maybe Google needs better TPMs - how do you get this far in a product (i.e. as far as telling the public about it) without having dug into the feasibility of support from the people whose support you'd need? It may be that this is ahead of its time, but I think Google may have known it was kind of pie in the sky and that it could take years to really get off the ground - Google is the sort of company with the resources to be in it for the long haul. I really do hope they pursue it - I think getting video on demand to work well in the living room has been a struggle for everyone, including Apple, but each company to try makes a small dent in it.

The Small Stuff

Just a few quick articles in closing:

Gizmodo has an awesome article explaining common symbols, like USB and Bluetooth and other such techie things. They're not at all things you'd guess unless you really knew the inside story.

This is an awesome parody trailer of The Social Network substituting Twitter for Facebook. Even though I think The Social Network will be terrible (not even David Fincher can salvage that idea), I have to give props for its trailer being pretty good.

Speaking of Facebook, Giga Om has an interesting piece talking about why so many Facebook employees who have been there from the beginning are leaving now. It's mostly normal stuff when a new company starts to age, I don't think it's particularly telling.

If you know of any kids who show an interest in computers then please direct them to one of these tools to help teach kids the fundamentals of programming. It's like giving a kid lego blocks - they're the tools to build what's in their heads.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

2010-08-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

I really was hoping to get to a full post this week, but a number of things have come up that I'm not at liberty to talk about and so I'm at the point now that I'm past the point of exhaustion. Still, I do have some words in my head that I feel are worth giving up sleep to share, so I hope you'll enjoy my review of Scott Pilgrim.

Best Comic Movie Ever

It was with very little fanfare that I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on opening night. The ads were never really appealing to me and I felt like Michael Cera was being typecast so I figured this movie would be a flop. Still, there was enough positive buzz that I agreed to come along when a friend wanted to go and I'm floored at how opposite of a reaction I had to this film. Not only is it probably the biggest surprises of my life as far as movies go (not plot-wise, just in my feelings about it), but it's hands down one of the most fun experiences I've ever had in a movie theater.

The plot of Scott Pilgrim is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from the trailers: Michael Cera is Scott Pilgrim, who has fallen in love with a very alluring girl who, as it so happens, has 7 evil exes who have banded together to ensure that no one dates her if they can't. You really have to go into the movie accepting that this is the plot because it's not anything deeper than that, and that's a big part of what I love about it. This is one of the few movies I've seen in a long while that understands exactly what it needs to do and really nails it. It focuses on a few things and blows them out of the park. So even though the romance story is never fully fleshed out, it's the first movie I've seen that has felt like a comic book and a video game have come to life, slept together, and produced a child on the big screen.

I don't know how true it is to the comic book, but that's irrelevant because it stands on its own as something really smart if you can appreciate the references and things it tries to parody. You don't have to be a gamer or a comic book fan to enjoy the film, you're just guaranteed to love it if you are either. I never thought I'd see a movie that got so many things right about video games - everything from nonsensical fights to collecting coins where it doesn't make sense to a ton of subtle things that are just elegantly done. It's either subtle or obviously over-the-top, it never beats a joke to death. I laughed a lot - from even before the movie formally started - but I also saw very few promotional materials.

Aside from those facets, the music is perfect for the movie. I almost felt like it had as much music as a musical without the baggage that would entail. The cast really contributing to pulling off the music though. I believed in them in their roles, as crazy as the world they lived in ended up being. I believed their passion for their music, and that was a cool feeling. The way they weaved music into the storyline was truly clever.

I can't leave out how much heart this movie had either. I don't mean gushy have-a-good-cry heart, I just mean that it actually makes you feel good to be a nerd if you're a nerd. It makes you want to go out and jam out on your guitar or play Street Fighter or something - I just felt pumped and enamored with how much the director seemed to love music and video games and comics.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a movie everyone will love. I can't imagine anyone hating it because it just makes you feel so good walking out of it, but I can see parts of it being harder to appreciate without being in your 20s or early 30s. It is somewhat of a niche movie, but I wouldn't be ashamed to show it to anyone (assuming they're at least a teenager). I will say that the writing is weak at times. Even though I did identify somewhat with the romance, it was still at times handled a little strangely. I can see people taking issue with the characters, but I actually liked how non-traditional they were. They weren't people you could totally peg down, but in a good way. One minor gripe I had was that the ending was possibly a little more drawn out than it needed to be, but I didn't really mind that much.

This movie is easily an A+ to me, and I urge you to please go and see it. It's only done like $10 million and I think it'll make it up over the course of its run in theaters and on home video, but I feel bad that the makers may not feel the love from the box office that I felt for this movie. I feel silly having had such a strong positive reaction to a romantic comedy action movie that appeals to the 12-year-old inside of me, but I can't lie: I enjoyed this film and can't wait to get it on Blu-ray.

Inception

I also saw Inception over the weekend and I know it's been talked about to death, but I just wanted to quickly say that I agree about it being a must-watch. You may want to see it before Scott Pilgrim because it's definitely not as light overall as Scott Pilgrim, but it's an experience on par with Memento. I really didn't think it was as complicated as people said it was - I mean unlike Donnie Darko, they actually explicitly explained ideas to you. Albeit, often in more words than necessary, but they did. Go see it in theaters because the visuals are truly stunning - not in the way that Avatar was, but more just from a creativity standpoint. If you want my score: easily an A.

A Prohibition on Software Patents

2010-08-10T01:06:00.000-07:00

The Software Patents Situation

This article calls for the abolishing patents, but I don't think I fully agree so I'm going to stack them up with those in support of the prohibition of alcohol. As I'm sure we can all agree, Prohibition sucked.

The US patent system is by no means perfect, but I don't think I agree that companies shouldn't be allowed to protect their products. Just because it's being abused so badly in technology doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. When it boils down to it, the real problem with patents seems to be patent trolls. Granted, there's also a problem of patents being granted for silly things, but I think patent trolls are really what has created an patent arms race.

What's wrong with having patents for products you actually create though? Rather than squatting on an idea, I think you have the right to protect a genuinely good idea that you develop a product based on. I don't think you should be allowed to own ideas that never materialized or that you have no vested interest in other than to sue people because that's contrary to the basis of patents.

Blackberry Torch

A survey came out last week showing that less than half of all Blackberry users want to stick with RIM, but I think smartphones are a market where it's hard to predict what brand of phone you're getting next unless you're a month or two (or less) out from the decision.

Their newest phone is coming out in a couple of days and it's a doozy. It's a slider with a full physical keyboard, though a little thinner than typical Blackberry fare. Engadget has a full review. The OS is a pretty big shift here as it borrows elements from the iPhone, including a mobile browser worthy of the year it's being used in. It seems like the UI is a true evolution of the standard Blackberry OS, but there's nothing it has under the hood that 1ups any other current phone - it just joins the table they're already sitting at. One of the commenters said it best: it would be a great phone if it came out in 2008.

Wave is Dead

Google finally killed Wave, the little product that never could. Google went to great lengths to generate buzz for Wave before it came out, so what went wrong? Marketing to nerds is a tricky thing, and if you can't make a compelling case for it then they move on to the next shiny new thing. It's not enough to be a novelty, your product has to serve a definable purpose or set of purposes. I think wave was a great idea that didn't have enough practicality behind it. The curse of a great engineer can be not having the right direction. Still, I think it's cool that Google took the risk anyway. No risk, no reward - that's the story of any great CEO.

Other Stuff

A page derailed my night, so I have to wrap up early here.

Amazon launched the Kindle store in the UK.

Barnes and Noble is trying out new and used textbook purchases as well as rentals.

Android now has the largest smartphone market share in the US.

Make sure you keep your Windows machine protected - here's some great free antivirus choices.

This is a list of some Google services that don't get much attention despite being pretty nifty.

New Kindles

2010-08-02T00:22:00.000-07:00

Black Graphite is the New White Plastic

The coolest thing to happen last week is probably the one thing I shouldn't talk terribly much about: the new Kindles. I'm just going to go on record that I work no where near anyone on the Kindle team and I have no knowledge of how that business operates or its strategy. Independent of being an Amazonian, I'm finally really excited about the Kindle now. I was definitely very skeptical when it first came out and was concerned when the iPad came out at its competitive price point. Though it's a totally different device, the comparisons are inevitable because of the form factor. Anyone who says reading a book is better on the iPad than the Kindle is definitely an Apple fanboy - it's technologically superior for reading plain text. At $139 for the entry WiFi model, it's finally at a price point fitting of a standalone book reader, and features better battery life (up to a month now), faster page turns, and better contrast ratio than the previous generation. I believe the reason for the switch to black graphite is probably because that makes it easier to read in sunlight, but you can still get it in white for the 3G model at $189.

I'm really curious now to see how Barnes and Noble will respond. Now that the Kindle has a model at $60 less and also available in-person at Target stores, the Nook is quickly losing what competitive advantage it had. Still, with e-Book sales outpacing physical book sales, there's gotta be enough to go around, but how big a piece of the pie will Apple and Barnes and Noble get compared to Amazon?

Ballmer is an Idiot

Steve Ballmer is really pissing me off nowadays. Ever since he's taken over, he's made many terrible decisions, including killing the Courier. This was the super creative tablet that Microsoft was working on that Ballmer decided to cut. Now he admits that the iPad is their number one threat and they need to compete with it. It's frustrating that he had a product that stood a chance against the iPad and threw it away, and now they have little hope of taking on the iPad. Microsoft has gone from being known for innovation to being way behind on market trends. Instead of trying to create another iPad now, why don't they either resurrect the Courier or invest in something totally different?

Windows Phone 7 and Free Bumpers

A lot of interesting stuff has been going on in cell phones. Ars Technica has a really good preview of Windows Phone 7 going in great depth into some nice UI touches and little nuggets of their impressions, like the keyboard being on par with the iPhone keyboard. Still, it's clear that there are a lot of question marks to be filled in. How well will the Xbox Live integration work? Will developers give the platform a shot? Given that someone leaked Microsoft's internal announcement to give all employees a Windows Phone 7 device, it's clear that Microsoft is definitely serious about the platform, so we just have to hope that it will all come together in the end.

I'm a little late on this since I missed last week's post, but Apple finally decided to respond to all the negative coverage of its iPhone antenna woes by giving away the bumpers that pretty much solve the issue. I have to bring up something that Molly Wood and others were predicting at CNet before this event happened: Apple never owned up to a problem and instead spoke at great length about how the problem had been overblown. It's definitely a smart strategy because it makes them look like they've been bullied into having to do this free bumper thing even though it's clear they had to know about the issue to create this case, which they hadn't done for any previous iPhone. In any case, it's great that they're doing the right thing now, but if they're only doing so until September 30 I wonder if they've figured out a hardware fix for the issue so that future batches won't have the issue?

Google has finally killed the Nexus One. Google has proved that people don't want a phone they can't play with at a store, even if it is a somewhat compelling product. It will still be sold abroad, but no more for US consumers.

Ars Technica has a ridiculously detailed review of the Droid X, and it seems like probably the best phone Motorola has put out in a while. Still, the UI seems to fall short of the Droid Incredible in visual flare. Plus, at a screen size rivaling the Dell Streak you have to wonder if anyone wants something that big in their pocket. There is such a thing as too big for a smartphone.

WPA2 Hole Discovered

WPA2 has finally been cracked - kinda. It was only a matter of time before a hole was discovered, and it doesn't render the standard useless but does damage it for enterprise use. It turns out that the standard's language allows for an authorized user on the network to send malicious packets to others on the network as well as sniff the packets of others. For most people, this probably isn't such a big deal, but could be worse for business use. The problem with fixing it is that all implementers would have to fix it, and it's unlikely to organize something like that. The next best bet would be a revision to WPA2, but there doesn't appear to be language in the standard to support something like that. It's a rather interesting conundrum.

Also in security news recently, Apple was deemed the company with the most security vulnerabilities in its software. So much for their claims of having the safest platform. The issues weren't in OS X, but rather in other ancillary products. Still, it helps debunk the claim that you can ignore security just because you have a Mac.

Funny Videos

I missed this a while back, but the guy who posted his customer service cartoon ranting about iPhone fanboys also posted one sticking it to Android fanboys. It's almost as hilarious.

In an example of social media marketing gone right, the Old Spice marketing guys decided to create a bunch of videos with Isaiah Mustafa responding to people on Twitter with short videos, including Alyssa Milano. They did a pretty awesome job.

Final Notes

I'm out of time, but here are a few other stories I found worthwhile.

Gawker has a funny post on the stupidest things caught on video that people said about the Internet, including the infamous Al Gore quote on his greatest invention. You may recognize certain terminology sourced from some of the videos.

I've seen reports off and on recently about issues with cell phone manufacturers and building screens, and it looks like HTC has had enough issues with AMOLED that they've decided to move to Super LCD for these devices. AMOLED hit the market a few years back and was quite impressive, but apparently still not easy to make.

If you're wondering what to load on your Android phone, PC Mag has you covered. Makes me a little envious on a few of those, I have to admit.

YouTube has increased their upload limit to 15 minutes, so now you can post longer useless videos.

If you want to see a real ninja badge, you have to check this out.

iPhone jailbreaking is now legal!

Hope everyone has an excellent start to their August.

Can Digg Come Back?

2010-07-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

Digg v4

Turns out that I'm doing well enough after the surgery to blog, so thought I'd put together a little post since last week was a bit light on the news.

I didn't want to talk about it until it was actually in production, but several people have gotten their eyes on the next iteration of Digg, and it's definitely a bigger change than previous upgrades. The question is, is it enough to reinvigorate Digg? Unlike a lot of other folks, I really don't think Digg is dying - not by a long shot. They still get a lot of traffic, they've just been on a decline. Despite the fact that the new Digg looks way too much like Facebook, I think it has a ton of potential and is the best direction to take the social news site in.

Currently, Digg works by just having stories voted up by its users within various categories so that you read the news that the masses deem most interesting. However, this process has proven to be flawed as the wisdom of the masses isn't always so wise and often skewed by people who you don't agree with (i.e. fanboyism is rampant). The new paradigm unashamedly takes a little from Facebook and more from Twitter in that you follow individual sites and users to get the stories that they think are valuable instead of the general rabble. This is one of the few application of social networking these days that actually makes sense. I think most of us talk to our friends about some story they saw or read about and want to share on almost a daily basis, so Digg would be ideal for that.

Another cool feature is that websites can automatically submit their newest stories to Digg. I think this can add up to a winning combination for Digg. By getting the content providers more involved and empowering the little guy, I think they can bring back a lot of people that have probably left Digg in recent years. All they have to do is make sure it gets publicized well enough. If this doesn't work though, it could potentially be the beginning of the end for Digg, but I think Digg would have a pretty long tail even then.

Twitter and e-Commerce

Twitter is trying a new way to make money, but it's a rather unoriginal idea: twitter feeds for retail deals. This has been done by Amazon and several other sites as well as a ton of small businesses already. It's not that it's a bad idea, but I think it's bad that it took them this long to put something like this together. It's not the best sign of Twitter's future if they're this behind the curve.

YouTube Leanback and 2304p

I like how often YouTube experiments with new things. Last week two cool features were revealed. One of them is called Leanback, which feels an awful lot like a precursor to Google TV. It basically lets you experience YouTube on a bigger screen, or even just on your computer screen but with minimal user interaction unlikely typical YouTube browsing. It provides better flow between videos you'd be interested in given your subscriptions and viewing history, and you can search and immediately consume videos from your search results.

Less cool, because it's less useful, is the ability for YouTube to support more than 1080p resolution: 2304p (4096 x 2304). Very few people have displays that support this and is probably more ideal for a small theater than your living room, but I do like that YouTube is thinking big.

iPad Ad Second Look

For the record: I think the iPad is really cool for what it is. I have no desire to get one because I know I'd play with it for a while and then never touch it, but it is compelling. Still, I can't resist pointing out this analysis of an ad showing a scene from Star Trek on the device in a better format than you'd see in real life. Apple did this also with Flash on the iPad - why do they keep fudging their ads like this if they already have a product that makes people piss their pants? It's just in poor taste, and it's disappointing. The one thing I've always come to expect from Apple is quality, even in their advertising. The antenna scandal with the newest iPhone and iPad chicanery like this is just unfortunate.

Other Stuff

There are a couple of stories I noted that I found interesting but have nothing to say about, really.

Java developer is now one of the most difficult positions to fill in IT. It's ironic how many more people know C/C++ than Java given how much more confusing they are, in my opinion.

Facebook has bought Nextstop, which is in the business of user-generated destination guides.

Have a sunny week, everyone!

Apple's iPhone Launch Under Fire

2010-07-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

You're Holding it Wrong

Believe it or not, I'm tired of doing derogatory Apple stories. Still, this has been too big a story to pass up, so I'm going to speak my piece about the iPhone 4 launch and keep it brief.

As is now pretty famous, it turns out that holding the iPhone 4 naturally affects the antenna such that you lose some signal and may be more prone to drop calls. AT&T is notorious in many parts of the country for dropped calls, so this is a pretty big drawback to a release that a lot of users seemed pretty pumped for, especially since a lot of folks skipped out on the 3GS in anticipation of it. This is a company that has built its entire brand on great design, so something like this is really an unacceptable blow to their brand.

If they just dealt with it responsibly, I don't think it'd be such a big story because I'm sure that for many people it isn't actively a huge problem. Instead though, they're claiming that a software glitch is to blame and, literally, that people shouldn't put their palm on the bottom part of the phone. What's truly outrageous is that they're selling a bumper that fixes the problem. So they knew far in advance that this was going to be a problem and decided to sell a way overpriced solution instead of giving it away for free. It's amazing how many people are ok with buying this thing. I personally wouldn't get one just out of principle until they gave a free solution. I know not all iPhone users are that silly, but I'm a fan of this really funny video criticizing an iPhone buyer. Too bad the guy who made it was fired from Best Buy, but Best Buy's terrible customer experience and management is a story for another day.

I'm not usually a big fan of class action lawsuits because they're often stupid, but I'm glad people are filing them against Apple for this. It's terrible to think that they can get away with selling an obviously flawed product. It's just unethical. It's like selling a car that explodes at the slightest touch knowing how unsafe it is *cough*Ford*cough*.

Aside from this flaw, the new iPhone seems like a cool product. Face Time is surely going to bring about many more phones with video chat, and the improved screen is going to lead to more competition in screen quality, as well. It's a bigger evolution than the 3GS was.

Hello Samsung Epic, Goodbye Kin

It looks like Sprint may finally be getting a cool Android phone with a physical keyboard soon: the Samsung Epic 4G. I'm sad to say that it may end up being my next phone if Palm doesn't come up with an improved Pre (I just need it faster and with better battery life). Engadget got their hands on it and it seems pretty damn snappy. I don't know if Samsung has the best track record, but I think Samsung has enough really solid products on the market in general (especially TVs) that they can still recover.

Sadly, it looks like Kin is a different story. Well, maybe it's not so sad since the Kin was an odd little device. Microsoft has finally axed the little feature phone that couldn't. While that article from Ars is a pretty great summary of the situation, my own take on the situation is that Microsoft was building for a market that didn't really exist anymore, partially because their product cycles are so long and they started work on it back when a successor to the Sidekick made sense. Microsoft has so many great engineers, they're just being mis-managed as a whole with these long product cycles and silly strategic decisions. I think it'd do a lot better to split up into a few key pieces that operate independently and try and drive down some of the politics.

YouTube and iTunes Hacked

The YouTube "hack" is actually pretty simple, but still an interesting story. They were susceptible to an injection attack, which just means that YouTube didn't sanitize comments well enough to check for people writing scripts in the comments and have them execute each time the page is loaded. This could mean a pop-up alert box telling you that Justin Bieber is dead. I'm pretty surprised it wasn't discovered sooner since that's a pretty obvious problem, but it could be that people knew and didn't make it publicly known.

What's much worse though is a still-developing story on reviews being doctored in iTunes by accounts getting hacked to buy hundreds of dollars worth of apps and write one-word reviews. What was once believed to be a single person turns out to be somewhat of a conspiracy as multiple people are apparently doing this. It's likely that Apple has known about this and kept it quiet, but whatever the case may be it definitely casts doubts on how controlled iTunes really is. Don't be too hard on Apple though: it's inevitable that the biggest app store would get targetted by disingenuous people like this.

There's actually one more security story, but admittedly less interesting. Foursquare had a security hole allowing people's private check-ins to be seen publicly. It was later dealt with, but the response time was definitely disturbing. Just another example showing that no matter what you set your privacy at online websites, you can't be 100% sure that it's protected.

Big Decision for YouTube

This story is a bit old, but didn't get a whole lot of coverage despite how big of a deal it is. A district court ruled that YouTube is immunity from being sued by Viacom for copyright infringement because they remove infringing material as soon as they're notified it. Basically, the fact that infringing content can be posted to YouTube is legal as long as YouTube takes down infringing content, but this is not enough for Viacom or the RIAA, who really want blood.

How do these people sleep at night? I can't believe that there are people out there who subscribe to this nonsense that the Internet should be on lockdown so that the rich can get richer.

Quickies

Ok, it's been a long week so I'm exhausted and need to get to bed soon, but there are a bunch of stories I don't have time to really discuss from the past couple of weeks that I think are still worthwhile.

CNN Money interviewed Jeff Bezos and I just loved his answer to what revs him up. He's really one of the greatest CEOs of our time.

Another low-key story that I think is really important is that some are pushing for HDBaseT to replace HDMI, which adds Internet connectivity to the audiovisual equation and looks very similar to Cat 5 cables.

Amazon has acquired deals site Woot, and their internal memo regarding it is really priceless. When I first read it at the office I was literally laughing out loud and distracting some co-workers.

It's been rumored for a while and is now official: Hulu is rolling out Hulu Plus for people who want Hulu as it is now, plus back-episodes from shows' entire runs. If they had more shows, I don't think that'd be such a bad deal, but I don't know what'd keep you from just getting it for a month and watching the entirety of whatever show you're interested in. Anyway, it's $10 a month, and ads are still going to roll.

Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to $189 and has released a new Kindle DX in black graphite at a new price of $379. From what I hear from current DX users, the new case is going to help with making it even more readable in bright light. Oh, and the old one is $20 cheaper.

If you're shopping for a new ISP, PC World has a great study of ISP speeds across the country based on people's broadband speed tests. Looks like Verizon FiOS is the winner in many areas - too bad they have atrocious customer service.

If you're shopping for an HD TV, Maximum PC has some excellent tips for you.

If you're a Java developer, you pretty much have to watch this trailer for "Java 4-Ever". It's not what you may think it is, it's much funnier. Not entirely NSFW, but mostly is.

Ok, I'm having my wisdom teeth removed this weekend so I anticipate being in too much pain to blog next week, but will try to post the following week. Peace out!

Homebuying for Dummies

2010-06-22T01:12:00.000-07:00

It's really killing me that I can't scrounge up the time for a full post because E3 had plenty to talk about. However, juggling unpacking with my normal life has been more time-consuming than I envisioned. I should be back in action soon, but this week my time was taken partially by a speech I had to write for Toastmasters. So instead of a true post, I thought I'd just paste the entirety.

It's been a little while since I've delivered a speech because I made the bold decision back in late March that I was ready to buy my first home. Now that I've moved in, I feel a bit like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix when he was being programmed to fight: instead of kung fu though, I've learned a lot about the process of buying a home. It's not uncommon in Seattle for people to rent a place much longer than in other cities. Hence, I felt like it would be appropriate to talk about the part of my journey leading up to negotiating an offer, starting with deciding if you should buy.

Deciding whether buying a home is right for you is a very difficult question that there's not an exact method to. If there's one thing you take away from this speech, I hope it's that buying a home is a choice that only you, and possible your significant other, can control. Do not let peer pressure get to you like a bad after school special. To be precise, the right reasons to buy include that you're looking to settle down somewhere for at least 5 years, you have the job security to afford a mortgage, you want nicer amenities than a rental can offer, you want more room than you can get in a rental, or you want a place you can freely make changes to. The wrong reasons to buy are for a tax break, to make a quick buck in flipping the home, or simply for prestige. This is a major financial decision. Don't take it lightly and don't be afraid to rent a little longer to help you build up some cash.

Before you embark on searching for your home, you need to decide a budget. Ideally, you do not want to spend more than 28% of your gross income in monthly payments for your home, including taxes and homeowners' dues. Let that be a hard upper ceiling and then modify that ceiling to what you would be comfortable with given your usual budget. Take a firm stand here and stick with it. Wavering above your limit is a financial minefield. It's a very good idea at this point to get pre-qualified by at least one lender. This legally means very little, but an honest lender can encourage or scold your price range at this point. I had a great experience with Cornerstone and would be happy to speak with anyone afterwards in more detail about them. You can change your lender before you offer, so you're not committed yet.

You're still not ready to set sail on the high seas of house hunting though: you need to set your criteria first. Decide on your must-haves, and then pick a location with homes fitting your restrictions. Some buyers need to bask in the glow of natural sunlight while others can't live without a quiet patio for their morning cup of coffee. You will not find the perfect home. Before you even set foot in a potential home, understand that compromise is key. You would be surprised how cheap major changes can be, like painting walls or changing carpet. So keep only a short list of must-haves. Don't forget to make sure that the location you pick fits your price range: Redfin.com is a great resource to research this.

If you've made it this far, then you're ready to enlist the help of a realtor. While all realtors are mainly interested in making a sale, their advice can be invaluable. It's not a good idea to see a bunch of places without representation. It can be especially messy for your agent getting paid on closing if the seller thinks you found the place on your own. I used Redfin and had a great experience all around. I enjoyed taking charge of the search though. You'll need to turn to a traditional agent for a more controlled experience. My agent was mainly an advisor and kept all the paperwork in order. I had what's called a Redfin field agent to show me condos. Good questions to ask a traditional realtor include "how many clients do they have right now" and "how many sales have they made in your desired area in the past year".

Once you have your realtor, the fun really begins. You get to tour potential homes. Be sure to take notes at each place on things you liked and disliked. Take note of things like how much HOA dues are and what they cover, what appliances stay, whether or not there's parking, and don't be afraid to talk to residents to get their honest opinions. I recommend taking video tours of each place for reference later. The Flip Mino camcorders on Amazon are affordable and produce crisp picture and sound.

Trying to explain how you know you've found the one is like trying to explain how you fell in love: all you know is that it happened. One indication for me was that any place I saw afterwards paled in comparison, even though they were actually quite nice. You'll also be able to smell the aromas of a dinner party with friends and feel the joy of relaxing evenings on your couch. Even after you reach this point, I'd encourage you to see at least four more places and sleep on it. This is risky advice in a strong market, but I urge you to not rush this decision.

When you're ready to make an offer, the negotiations begin. I could give a whole speech on negotiations, but the one tip I'd like to offer for now is to be reasonable. Don't offer an offensively low price on a property you know is worth more - your agent can best guide on you on this.

Getting to the point of making an offer on a home is a long process. You have to decide whether to buy, set criteria, pick a location, get pre-qualified, and find a realtor before you can even start touring. However, you stand to reap many fruits in the purchase of a suitable house or condo. Last night, I walked out of the shower into my living room bathed in the orange light of sunset. I can't put a price on that, and I'm sure that you'll feel the same when you get the keys to your dream home.

No Post This Week

2010-06-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

Between moving and other unexpected events over the weekend, no time for a post this week. I should be back in full force next week though.

Apple Under Investigation

2010-06-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

The DOJ Investigates Apple

Once again, we have a slow news week. And, once again, I'm slightly relieved because I've been busy getting ready to move to my new place.

The biggest story happens to be an Apple story: the US Department of Justice is investigating Apple for suspicion of anti-competitive activities. It has come out since that the initial impetus for thee investigation was Apple disallowing Flash on the iPhone, but it has since shifted to center around Apple's agreements with music publishers to deny music to Amazon MP3. One thing I know is true (this isn't insider information, I heard this outside of Amazon) is that Apple has leveraged iTunes to threaten some publishers out of being a part of Amazon's $5 album deals and other promotions. I'm not sure that all these things are illegal, but I certainly consider them somewhat unethical. Regardless, I'm anxious to learn what goes on behind the scenes. iTunes has retained fairly large market share in the face of Amazon MP3, which has a pretty large selection and is on several mobile platforms, including Android, and has been pretty aggressive with cross-product promotions to drive traffic to Amazon MP3.

It definitely looks like Adobe may have initially filed the complaint. If that's true, it seems really childish. I think Adobe is really fighting a losing battle with Apple - the more they antagonize Apple the more they're hurting their relationship. There's nothing anti-competitive about disallowing Flash on the iPhone because it's freely available on Macs and PCs - I don't know that Apple actually has a majority share in smartphones in the U.S., but definitely not worldwide.

You have to love the irony that Apple is basically following the Microsoft life cycle. They've been getting bigger and bigger with success that seems to have no end and massive market shares in their strong sectors, and are now likely to be embroiled in antitrust litigation.

Flash on Android

Meanwhile, what is Adobe really doing with Flash on mobile platforms? There's finally a beta for Android, but it doesn't even support Hulu still and only works on Froyo (Android 2.2) due to API requirements. It looks like the issue with Hulu is legal, but if you're going to release a mobile version of Flash that's only of partial use, then what's the point? The hype for mobile Flash is so old that I don't know who's going to care when (and if) it finally does come out. So far, the speed tests aren't impressive.

Dell Launches Streak

Why does Dell keep trying to making portable consumer electronics that aren't laptops? Their latest creation is the Streak tablet, which is the analog of the iPod touch for Android: it's slightly bigger than a cell phone (5" wide) and is geared towards everything but making calls. This is by far one of the stupidest gadgets I've seen in a while. I didn't care for the iPad, but it was a beautiful device that had some niche use cases - this thing is useless. There are already great Android smart phones out there that can fit in your pocket, and if you want a bigger screen then you can get a full-on tablet like the iPad. This thing seems like it's for indecisive people: people who want a bigger screen but not too big. If this thing doesn't flop I'll be totally astounded.

The Next Apple TV?

I usually don't report Apple rumors since they're a dime a dozen, but Engadget has pretty reliable and believable word on the new Apple TV and it sounds like it could whoop Google TV, if true. It's supposedly based on iPhone 4, though with support for 1080p and at a $99 price point. It would focus on cloud storage, as well - which may explain the price point (less onboard storage). It would be cool if they leveraged Lala in this product, as well. Unfortunately, they're not likely to announce it until after WWDC so we'll have to wait a while longer to find out more. It sounds like it could be a pretty killer product if they pull it off right.

Tabnapping

This is a somewhat interesting malware possibility, although it may be tricky to implement. It's called tapnapping and relies on people opening a bunch of tabs (like me) and then forgetting which tabs they had open on what page. That way, it can redirect within a tab to the login page for your bank when you're not looking and you'll think you just got automatically logged off and need to log back in for whatever you were doing. Of course, it relies on your having been logged in on another tab to some sensitive website in order to successfully trick you, but if it tricks one people out of 10,000 then it could definitely become profitable. I don't think there are any major outbreaks of this sort of malware yet, but it could happen.

Final Notes

There are a few more quick stories left.

Verizon got a gym employee fired because his stupid friend posted pictures of a secret Verizon phone that he recoveredfrom a member who lost it, even after returning the phone. Kind of silly - if I worked out there I'd be pissed for the employee (though he was planning on quitting anyhow).

This article shows a really funny trend: Android has a much bigger edge against the iPhone in North America than the rest of the world. I would've thought the individual device manufacturers would have stronger distribution channels collectively than Apple around the world, but I guess not.

If you want to know what lurks inside the Windows Phone 7 architecture, check this out.

Chrome 5 is out and is really only a remarkable improvement for Mac and Linux from what everyone is saying.

Have a great week with more sleep than I'm sure to get!

Goodbye, Lost and 24

2010-05-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

The End of an Era

There was surprisingly little news last week that was interesting at all, which is fine by me because I'm exhausted from the past week of my life and I just got paged a little while ago so I'm looking ahead at more exhaustion. Still, since I saw the finales of Lost and 24 I thought I'd give some spoiler-free thoughts and then talk a bit about the few stories I thought were worthwhile from last week.

I'm exaggerating a bit in the heading here: my life does not revolve around television. I'm not one of the Lost fans who live to watch it - I simply enjoyed watching it. For me though, these shows kind of do represent the end of an era for me - mainly 24 though. It was the first show I started watching with solid acting behind an awesome cast that always had me engaged. Of course, it dwindled in recent years but it was my first ensemble cast show that I couldn't get enough of. Lost was the first sci-fi show I really took a strong interest to. So it's weird thinking back to when I started watching these shows, it seems like forever ago.

As I figured, the series finale of Lost was as divisive as it could be. Let's face it: there was no possible way for it to satisfy everyone. It's kind of sad how mad some people got when the finale didn't force feed them the answers to all the show's mysteries. That's one thing I respected about Veronica Mars and that I came to respect from Lost: it catered to viewers who wanted to figure things out, not to people who only want a passive experience. If fans of the show re-watch the last 5-10 episodes, I think you'll find that most of the big questions were answered. The finale just put a bow on everything so we can all have closure on the show - that's it. That's what a finale is supposed to do, in my opinion. Explaining 6 years of information in two and a half hours would be silly. I personally really loved it. I was so worried that the ending would go for a lame or far-fetched conclusion to things, but instead it went for a more logical one when you think back on the past season. Of course, I'm a sucker for character-based stories and care more about those interactions than just plot, but I digress. If you were waiting out Lost to see if the ending was good, I say watch it if you're willing to accept that you'll be confused a lot and will have to piece a lot of little things together. Sure, we never found out what the deal was with Dharma or little things like that, but the main plot line was ultimately resolved despite how much some people argue it wasn't. If you're one of the ones who disagree, then I'm going to direct you to this explanation. If that doesn't satisfy you then surely the writers couldn't have.

As for 24: I was a bit let down with this season. It was enjoyable, but it felt very mediocre compared to season 5, which is now a gold standard for action dramas. So if you missed this season, then you didn't miss much. I think it's still worth seeing, but don't go out of your way for it. I think the show ended the only way that it made sense to end it given the nature of 24, and I was glad for that. I was afraid that they'd go for something really crazy to end the show, but I'm glad they instead went with a more sensible approach. Excellent acting across the board. Not the most intense 24 season finale by far, and definitely not the most tragic, but I was glad that it wasn't a cop out.

Google TV

This is pretty big: Google has announced Google TV. It's one of those things that you have to say "it's about time" when you hear what it is. It's essentially a product that tries to bridge the gap between our computers and our TVs that the Internet has created. It's a bit short of what I expected out of what had been called IP TV, but given the fact that Google will have open APIs I think that it has plenty of room to evolve. If the principles behind Google TV were to merge with TiVo I think I'd piss my pants. It's really just a way to consume web media and interact with rich content on your TV, but it doesn't bring together dealing with your traditional television content. Apparently we'll see hardware this fall and we'll know more then.

Google Wave Now Public

Google Wave is now available for public consumption! If you don't know what that means, you'll want to start here. I'm interested to see where this will go now that the hype surrounding its initial announcement has died down. It's a really cool product, but it feels like a solution looking for a problem. It would be cool if integrated with Google TV though for better interaction with remote friends and family during TV shows.

Diane Birch

I'm fading fast here so I'm going to leave you with a video I took from a Diane Birch concert I took last week. It's a cover of a 90s classic:

The concert was really awesome, by the way. I posted another video here if you liked that one. I highly recommend supporting her if you liked that video, too.

The Facebook Uprising

2010-05-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

Bring Your Pitchforks on June 6

I'm really tired. I'm not sure why exactly, but I'm tired and I have a lot to do this week so I'm going to have to shorten this post a bit if I want to get it out at all. So I'm going to focus in on just a few really big stories and briefly highlight a few others. I've cut quite a few stories I would've talked about if I had more time, but oh well.

Clearly, the biggest story last week was Facebook. I have to admit that I'm surprised at the reaction the tech media has had to Facebook's recent changes with turning your profile information into links to pages that expose you and other privacy changes Facebook has made recently. We let this happen gradually over time by not reacting enough to Facebook's previous changes, and now that they've really jumped the shark it looks like people are finally ready to step up and say something. I expected a reaction similar to previous changes, but it looks like we're getting really passionate posts from blogs and respected news publications every other day crying out against the changes, some of which are nicely summarized in this picture. It's a bit misleading, but it's not really exaggerating things when you boil down the facts. It's not likely going into great details about those points make the situation better.

The Huffington Report reported on a group of individuals who have decided to send as clear a message as possible to Facebook: an organized boycott of Facebook. They're planning to all delete their accounts on May 31 and are encouraging everyone to do the same. Of course, even after you delete your account Facebook will still have access to your data, but it may put a heavy enough dent in their numbers to wake them up and realize that this isn't like when people got a little annoyed by Facebook's past indiscretions. It's going to be hard to get everyone to quit Facebook though (myself included) so I'm actually in support of their second idea: don't use Facebook at all on June 6. It'll probably be much easier to convince people to do that. It may not be as powerful, but it may actually hurt Facebook's wallet.

After reading this interview with an anonymous Facebook employee, you may not find their movement so extreme. Like many startups, it looks like Facebook began without much long-term vision. It was all about getting a product to market, which is reasonable except that it ended up breeding a culture where privacy isn't a top priority. Half of the interview sounds nuts, but then the other half sounds more reasonable. A group of NYU students are actually trying to build their own Facebook called Disapora that actually respects privacy. Sadly, there's no word on when it'll actually be out whereas now is exactly the best time for them to ship and capitalize on Facebook's bad press. It's an interesting concept, but you've got to wonder if they can really stick to their morals in the face of investors wanting them to satiate advertisers, if it ever takes off. These guys seem smart though so I hope it works out.

The Flash Dilemma

I wonder if Apple predicted that the controversy regarding their disapproval of Flash on the iPhone/iPad would go on for this long? In a ZDNet article that almost seems to have been swept under the rug in everyone's mind since it was posted, it was revealed that a Flash demo on a Nexus One crashed twice. Granted, the rule of thumb for demos is that things will never go exactly as you plan, but you have to admit that, even in that philosophy, two crashes looks pretty bad. It's worth noting that he was using an outdated version ofFlash in the demo, but it's not like the build was months old or something.

Some people have noticed a technology called "Gianduia" popping up in random places that looks to be Apple's competitor to Flash. The reading I did on it was kind of boring and went over even my head, but if Apple were to make that an externally facing technology then I hope people would be a little insulted by the hypocrisy given their repeated argument that Adobe Flash is flying in the face of open web standards.

Part of why this story dragged on another week is that Gawker's Ryan Tate engaged in an e-mail exchange directly with Steve Jobs regarding Flash and porn on the iPhone and Steve's responses were well crafted and interesting. I don't buy his we-want-to-do-the-right-thing argument one bit, but I do believe that they just want to promote the user experience their envision. Whether you agree with that or not is for you to vote for with your dollars - there's no need to whine about it. There's nothing wrong with being willfully ignorant of what Apple's doing if you're happy with their products. They're not torturing anybody, they're just conducting business.

Let me cram in two more quick Apple stories. In the saga over the "stolen" next-generation iPhone, it has been revealed that Steve Jobs contacted Gizmodo directly to get a response that was an e-mail almost in the realm of extortion. They wrote it in a very clever way, but if you read between the lines you may come to my conclusion that Gizmodo was being sleazy. Lastly, Mac Rumors noticed that the new iPad ads are almost a sequel to the ad campaign for the hapless Apple Newton. I'm sure Apple is hoping for very different results this time.

Android Outsells the iPhone

I wish this was the biggest story of last week because it's such a cool one. Google Android, when you look at all the phones running the operating system, outsold the iPhone last quarter for the first time. Some analysts believe it's due in large part to Verizon's buy-one-get-one-free promotion, but I think it's more than just that. Android phones are just finally cool and the iPhone hasn't been new in a while.

If you're really excited about Android though, you should check out Froyo (Android 2.2), or at least AndroidPolice's impressions from trying it out on the Nexus One. It turns out to be quite a bit more performant.

Speaking of the Nexus One though: Google will no longer be selling it directly and will instead work with partners to actually sell it in stores. It may be too late for this to turn the phone into a financial success, but it's their only hope of salvaging the situation. The phone received much critical acclaim despite, unsurprisingly, not getting a lot of sales (since you can't play with it in a store).

The Rest

I'm going to go through these even faster then normal.

Steam (probably the best service for downloading and managing quality games) is now available for Macs and Valve is giving away Portal for free. Act now because that game is ridiculously fun for all ages.

Billshrink has a great infographic on wireless dissatisfaction in America and pricing comparisons.

Sprint will start selling the HTC Evo 4G, the first 4G phone ever, on June 4 for $199 (subsidized). That's a pretty standard price for a new high-end smartphone, but Sprint is obviously a small player so we'll see how the release goes.

If you have Windows 7 then you really need to check out this article on how to speed it up. It's already fairly fast for me and some of these tips make it even better.

YouTube finally fixed how private videos work to make more sense.

The FCC is allowing the MPAA to activate set top box controls to deactivate pieces of your home theater system if they think you're breaking the law. Definitely scar stuff.

Ars Technica has a great article on the government plan to bring 4 Mbps Internet to the whole country. It's a very steep bill for taxpayers.

Iron Man 2

2010-05-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

Let the Summer Blockbuster Season Begin

Since I saw Iron Man 2 on Friday I figure I might as well share my thoughts before we get into the normal stuff.

The original Iron Man is without equivocation considered one of the best comic book superhero movies ever by any comic book geek. Definitely top 5 if not top 3. Given that Iron Man was never a blockbuster franchise like Batman or Superman, I thought it was definitely special what Jon Favreau was able to accomplish with Robert Downey, Jr. and the Iron Man universe. It was a better origin story than Batman Begins in terms of pacing and probably a few other things and just a fun all-around summer movie. That's really huge shoes for a sequel to fill. Did it get it right? That's hard to say, to be honest. I think when people's expectations are high like they were for this movie you've gotta be perfect to really blow them away, and this movie didn't do that. Nonetheless, I thought it was a more than acceptable sequel and definitely well worth seeing.

Plot-wise, this movie takes over literally right where the first one left off and shows how the ending (which I don't want to spoil) gave rise to physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) as a villain using Stark's own arc reactor technology. Meanwhile, Tony Stark is dealing with the adverse health effects of the arc reactor in his chest while being watched closely by Nick Fury (Sam Jackson). I don't want to spoil anything by revealing any more than that, but suffice to say it's an interesting, though comic book far-fetched, storyline that diverts somewhat from the Iron Man comic book storyline to tell its own story. I thought it was actually a pretty well-written story. You have to really forgive the hand-waving with regard to the technological expertise of some of the main characters, but I personally watch 24 and am already well-seasoned in that.

I thought the acting was superb across the board. Robert Downing, Jr was possibly even better in this movie, Scarlett Johansson was the perfect casting for Black Widow (so glad that they didn't go with Emily Blunt), and Gwenyth Paltrow was still as sexy and sophisticated as ever. Johansson's role was a pretty decent female empowerment character (sans a couple of her outfits) and I was glad to see that they didn't really overdo it. I think some hardcore fans will be a little disappointed with her portrayal, but I thought it worked in the context of the movie. I think the re-casting of Rhodes was noticeably weird. I think Don Cheadle would've been fine if he was in the original as well, but whenever I saw him I just kept picturing Terrence Howard. I was happy overall with Mickey Rourke, he did his hokey Russian accent well.

The problem is that Iron Man 2 didn't bring to the table what Iron Man did because it didn't break the formula of superhero movies like that one did. It felt more like a continuation of the previous movie instead of something totally new. So less like The Dark Knight, which was a huge breath of fresh air, and more like X-men 2. The action scenes were great and the movie was so much fun to watch - especially the well-timed humor. However, it felt like a comic book movie. There's nothing wrong with that, it just means that it can't be extraordinary. I still give it an A- and strongly recommend seeing it yourself while it's on the big screen. Just don't bolt after the credits - they snuck in an extra scene like in the first one. It's not life-changing or anything, but it's something that will give you goosebumps if you're a comic book geek.

Kin Available this week

I know you've been waiting with bated breath so here it is: the new Kin will be available in Verizon stores on May 13 and is already available online. The creatively named Kin One and Kin Two are priced at $50 and $100, respectively, but apparently will have interesting data plan like the Sidekick.

However, Pre Central aggregated some of the reviews and they don't seem to be very positive. It seems like the phone was pretty half-baked overall and an uneven experience. The ideas from the original presentation that I originally raved about were apparently poorly executed. It looks like Kin Studio, the online timeline of your phone, is pretty decent, but the Kin Spot and a number of other features are disastrous user experiences. Despite the pricing being good, I'd be surprised if these flew off the shelves and insulted if people chose them over the Palm Pre or Palm Pixi, which are usually easy to find at those price points and have a lot more features, like pretty good call quality.

Treasury Site and Google Chat Hacks

There were a few security breaches last week, the most flagrant of which I felt was the U.S. Treasury websites being compromised and giving malware to its visitors. Well, technically they redirected to a Ukrainian site that gave out the malware, but what an embarrassment to that IT department that these guys injected HTML code. I'm guessing it was some sort of XSS variant, but they're being hush on the details. They already look bad - hiding the truth from the people who pay these idiots' salaries isn't going to make them look any better.

I thought I'd throw in this AP story about a vulnerability in how your web site requests are routed that could be disastrous if exploited. The bottom line is that TCP/IP, the protocol that the Internet operates on, was not built with security in mind because it was not designed for massive public use. I think this is something the U.S. government should step into to motivate a fix. The private companies apparently don't have a strong interest in fixing things but an attack on how Internet packets are routed could be really bad for our infrastructure.

Techcrunch was tipped off on a pretty big vulnerability last week regarding Facebook. It turns out that in where in your Privacy Settings you can see how other people view your profile, you can also see who they're chatting with. Rather than applying their restriction to how you view your profile, they basically gave you a window into their Facebook, more or less. You could even mess with their friend requests. Who knows how many people have exploited this without reporting it. It really calls into question Facebook's quality assurance principles. It's fixed now, but disturbing that it was out there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Facebook Under Fire

Riding off the coattails of that story, let's talk about the rabble growing against Facebook. It used to be that Facebook's changes were an annoyance that people just got used to. Now though, multiple people are being very vocal about their problems with Facebook and these editorials are getting a lot of eyeballs.

One blogger gave his ten reasons why you should quit Facebook while Wired calls for an open alternative where things make sense instead of following the whims of Facebook. This was mostly prompted by how Facebook is now sharing a lot of information about you to developers taking advantage of its new APIs and how the fact that Facebook encourages you to turn your text in your profile to "Pages" means that you're exposed through these "Pages" as being a fan of that thing to the world. Of course, there have been plenty of offenses leading up to this (how you can never really remove yourself, how your information is being passed along to third-party application developers, etc.), but ultimately their misleading policies have really become cause for some concern.

If you're stubborn like me and are hesitant to quit Facebook cold turkey, at least consider abating the amount of information you feed to it.

Final Notes

Ok, I'm running way behind on what I wanted to get done tonight because of a nap I took earlier. I'm going to have to cut out sooner on this post than originally planned. Here's what else I had for you:

Apple is now in the middle of an antitrust suit for anti-competitive practices. It's not clear if this is because of their ban on Flash or their patent lawsuits against HTC, but it'll be interested to see what happens. Some of their practices are unconscionable, but I'm not sure that they're illegal.

The FCC is still pushing forward on net neutrality trying to find a way around the court decision ruling that they can't regulate the ISPs.

The U.S. ranks 30th in the world in Internet speed. Even Andorra is beating us. Ouch.

Netflix is moving more of its computational power into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Smart move. Much more efficient than buying and maintaining your own hardware for solving those big problems.

This is a pretty eye-opening breakdown of the cell phone providers in America by customer satisfaction and dropped calls.

Check out all the new features coming in the forthcoming Kindle firmware upgrade including password protection and better sharing capabilities.

It looks like Amazon has one of the biggest databases in the world, and it's pretty exciting that I help process some of that data every day. Anyway, check out who has the other enormous databases.

If you want to know what's on TV the Interweb, check out Clicker.

If you're on Windows and didn't know about Microsoft's Fix It tool, then go check it out now.

Last but not least, Google made a really awesome video advertising how fast Chrome is compared to things like sound and a potato gun. It's a lot of fun to watch.

HP Takes Over Palm

2010-05-03T00:41:00.000-07:00

HP Buys Palm

For the past 18 years, Palm has been the little company that could. Despite having been a frontrunner of innovation in PDAs starting with the Palm Pilot and creating the first true mainstream smartphone in the Treo 650, Palm lost its way in the past few years and now finds itself in the hands of HP in a $1.2 billion deal. It's not technically a done deal yet, but it's pretty much sure to complete. You can see Rubinstein's letter to the company here. It sounds like HP is not only interested in Palm's huge patent portfolio but also keeping webOS alive with more smartphones and possibly tablets. Given the strong indications that the HP Slate tablet based on Windows 7 has been killed, it makes it more clear why HP would want Palm. The iPad's sales are, ostensibly, exposing a market for tablets not concerned with the power of a full computer but rather interested in the easy UI, something that webOS could definitely provide.

While I'm not sold on there being a very big market for tablets in general, I do think it's a good thing that HP bought Palm. HP hasn't made the best hardware decisions in the world, but they do have a lot of cash. Assuming that they don't fire a bunch of people from Palm, which I think is unlikely given that their interest in webOS, I believe they're ultimately going to re-think how they market the next webOS-based phone and pump a lot more into R&D for future iterations than Palm could afford to. Ultimately, if HP can't make webOS viable than no one can. I still believe that webOS has a decent base of developer support and a pretty stable platform - we just need new hardware to get people excited about and it needs to be available on multiple carriers.

Apple's War on Flash Continues

Once again, the media has really overblown Apple's dismissal of Flash on the iPhone. As a result, Steve Jobs has actually written an open letter explaining why there are are no plans to support Flash on the iPhone or iPad, and this has made the debate even more heated between those who agree with Jobs and those who think that Apple is being an evil purveyor of their closed garden. The letter actually has a number of good points, the best in my opinion being that Flash wasn't designed with touch interfaces in mind. There is no rollover event with touch like there is with a mouse, and that's actually a commonly used event in Flash. However, as good as those points are, the letter is ultimately just a MacGuffin. The real reason that the iPhone won't support Flash is the same reason Apple removed arrow keys from the Macintosh keyboard: Apple wants people to re-write their applications better to provide a quality experience for their customers. Plus, it gives them more control over the platform if they dictate the rules than if they allow Flash to dictate rules, as well.

Personally, I thought it was silly for Jobs to write this letter. Whatever the reason is for Apple not wanting Flash on the iPhone, they can do whatever they want. This shouldn't be a shock to anyone. The iPhone has always been a walled garden. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, especially given how strong sales are for the iPhone, but the fact of the matter is that it has always given Apple the precedent to do what they want.

Adobe countered quickly via an interview with the Wall Street Journal and seem to be taking things rather personal. Ultimately, they believe that the letter spreads lies and that Adobe's vision is a multi-platform technology whereas Jobs wants applications to only be developed for their walled garden. Take it with a grain of salt, but Adobe has a video on Vimeo claiming that Flash has better performance than HTML 5, even on mobile phones. We should be able to see for ourselves once Flash hits webOS, Blackberry, and Android 2.2 later this year. This is really going to be a make or break year for Adobe. If this Flash release flops, as I'm afraid it may given its push backs, Flash may begin a downward spiral as HTML 5 becomes the only viable game in town for mobile devices.

Google's Foray into TV

Google was linked to a couple of interesting television stories last week. First, it was discovered that Google has added TV episode search. Then, Wall Street Jounal's sources revealed that Google is going to be announcing TV set-top box software this month. It doesn't seem to provide anything new compared to what TiVo or Boxee offers right now, but the announcement has yet to be officially made.

Possibly more interesting: Verizon FiOS will now offer YouTube and Internet radio right on its users' TV screens. They're first cable provider that's actually embracing YouTube instead of fearing it. Then again, their huge push for laying fiber in the past few years has been more progressive than most of its competitors.

Broadband Access

Sometimes Slate can really hit it out of the park. They responded to a quote from the Verizon CEO claiming that U.S. broadband is #1 in the world with an article explaining that the US is ranked 15th in broadband penetration, has some of the highest prices per bandwidth, and competition is often a duopoly. To make matters worse, broadband rates are often mis-advertised. It's a good sobering read and a reminder that we need to encourage the FCC to take action.

Final Notes

Alright, I've been distracted all night but I really need to get to bed now so it's time to wrap up.

Microsoft's security intelligence report last week revealed that most attacks on Vista and Windows 7 systems are against third-party applications rather than Windows itself.

By this time next month, Lala will be dead. It's a travesty, but not totally unsurprising since Lala has never been profitable and Apple really bought Lala for the talent.

Microsoft has confirmed the Courier, their secret folding tablet, and announced that they have nipped it. It looked cool but must not have been feasible.

The guy who sold the iPhone HD that was found has been discovered and claims he wishes he turned in the phone to the bar owners now instead of being a jerk and selling it to Gizmodo. Even though he's probably not technically a thief, I think he was way unethical.

Apparently Microsoft has had a running comic on people's real life IT stories.

Comcast has won Consmerists' infamous "Worst Company in America" award. Congrats, you've earned it.

This is a great resource for helping develop cross-browser compatible websites.

Have a great week!

iPhone-Gate

2010-04-26T23:46:00.000-07:00

The Biggest Apple Leak Ever

A part of me hates giving this story more press than it already has because it's kind of blown out of proportion at this point, but the fact remains that this is a pretty historical event. Apple is an extremely secretive company and this is probably the biggest leak in its history. This is one of the biggest leaks in technology in a very long time (possibly ever) precisely because of Apple's often criticized techniques for keeping things under wraps.

What am I talking about? In a nutshell, a guy found the next iPhone in a bar and sold it to Gizmodo for $15,000. It's highly reliable given that Apple has asked for it back. Some people think this was cleverly orchestrated, but this is not the time Apple wants people to know about the new iPhone. Aside from cannibalizing sales in the short term, it deprives them of being able to jump start Apple interest at a time when it's likely to be low in the middle of the summer when the honeymoon with the iPad is over.

Briefly: much like the last iPhone update, there's not a whole lot here to get excited about. It follows in the footsteps of some ideas from the Nexus One, like a secondary mic, it has flash on the camera, probably better battery life (bigger battery), and it has a front facing camera. Any updates to the OS are still a mystery since Apple bricked it once they found out it was missing, but there's probably some interesting software there for at least video conferencing.

Given that Apple fired a guy for showing Steve Wozniak the iPad for 2 minutes before its release, it's surprising that they let this guy walk off the campus with this device. At the center of all this is a big debate about if Gizmodo is in the wrong here. They purchased a device that they knew didn't belong to the guy selling it and then offered to return it after posting all its details. To top it off, they exposed the guy who lost the phone and he's literally become infamous overnight shooting up on Google's most searched terms. Should they have exposed him?

I'm pretty sure that Gizmodo is actually in the clear here. I believe they're protected from being responsible for buying stolen merchandise and they did eventually try to find its rightful owner (Apple). Should they have broken the story? They feel that they had a journalistic responsibility to do so. As dirty as the situation seems, I think I kind of agree with them. Much like a corporation has to do what's in the best interests of shareholders, even if it's unpopular, a news organization must not withhold valuable information from its audiences. Of course, they've destroyed their relationship with Apple and may have ruined the career of the guy who leaked the phone. Even though it looks like Apple hasn't fired him given that Gizmodo has exposed who he is, any time he goes to apply for another job he'll always be known as the guy who lost a giant trade secret. I personally don't think they had the right to make the decision to reveal who he was. If the guy asked them to to protect him, then I think that'd be fine. They took it upon themselves though to make that call and really squeezed everything they could out of the story, so I thought that was kind of sleazy. Given that Gizmodo was banned from CES for using a TV blaster remote on the show floor, I don't know that this really does wonders for their reputation.

Things took a really interesting turn on Friday when one of Gizmodo's reporters had his house searched by the cops. According to Gawker's COO, this was an invalid search warrant, but no update on whether he got the stuff back that was confiscated during the search. I'm still unclear on what they thought they'd find by doing the search, but I'm sure we'll hear more than we need to hear about this as the week wears on.

Hitler Parody Videos Taken Down

They actually weren't taken down for why you may think - they were taken down for copyright violation. There was a pretty big meme on YouTube where people took a climactic scene from Downfall, the foreign film depicting the final days of the Third Reich, and added their own subtitles. Someone from the EFF actually made their own parody video portraying the producer of the movie as Hitler. It is kind of funny and tragic since they're being oppressive about fair use regarding a movie telling the story of the world's most infamous oppressor. It's definitely worth checking out and is another gentle reminder that fair use is still an implicit right granted in spite of the DMCA.

Paid Hulu Service

Amidst modest revenues compared to what NBC, News Corp, and Disney would like, Hulu is giving a paid model a shot. For $10 a month they're going to add the ability for you to watch episodes older than the last 5 for its shows for $10 a month. I think this would be a great idea if they were to also get more television shows in the process. With its current lineup though, I just don't see them making any money. Especially given that Netflix already has plenty of shows on DVD plus movies that you can rent from them for the same price (but obviously not all of that is available for streaming). I think it'll be a great experiment since they're not going to be taking away from what people get for free right now. If it'll get more companies to come to the table and let Hulu serve their content then I hope it works out.

Palm Loses Another Exec

I still feel bad for Palm. Even though they developed a great product in the Pre and botched its launch, they're still a worthy adversary to Apple and it's too bad that they're still lagging so far behind. They lost another executive last week (their VP of carrier marketing) and investor confidence continues to dwindle. The CEO made an appearance at the developer's conference Palm was running last week to combat rumors that he was going to step down. Good to see that someone is still sticking through things in senior leadership.

ACTA Made Partially Public

I haven't spoken nearly enough about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), but it's a very important issue to be aware of. In a nutshell, it's an agreement being negotiated amongst multiple countries in secret with the purpose of creating international standards for conterfeiting. The problem is that it's negotiated in secret and has had leaks of very predatory clauses, like 3 strikes where 3 accusations of digital theft, whether founded or not, could result in you not being able to ever get Internet access again. Fortunately, it has backed away from this provision.

In being made public we've discovered that it threatens to remove ISPs' safe harbor protection (i.e. protection from liability from illegal activity they're not aware of) if they don't actively police their customers. The EFF has posted their preliminary analysis and it's actually a pretty thorough breakdown of exactly what's wrong with it. It's definitely not good that it contradicts American laws and strengthens the DMCA. This is definitely the kind of issue to write to your congressman about - it could really hurt people that don't intentionally break copyright law or even people that are totally innocent. It's gestapo justice for content creators.

Microsoft Losing Money on Bing

Microsoft revealed a pretty good Q1 because of Windows 7, but saw net losses at over $700 million in its online services division, which focuses on online advertising and Bing. Even though Bing has grown, it's taking market share from Yahoo instead of Google, which isn't quite what Microsoft wanted. I was recently in a short discussion with someone about whether Bing makes sense. They argued that Microsoft should innovate instead of trying to compete where there's already a good solution. The point of our economy is to challenge good solutions to get better and better through competition. Google is a very real threat to Microsoft's online future, which is going to be very important to Microsoft as the trend continues against shrink wrap software. They definitely need a strong online brand so I respect them sticking it out with Bing, but I'm also hoping they have a strategy to cut these huge losses in the long term.

Closing Stories

I was on pager duty last night so I'm now at the point of my eyes involuntarily closing on me. Last week happened to be a big news week, but there are some stories that I don't want to close without mentioning.

Apple filed a patent for what looks like a way to buy digital concert tickets via iTunes. Not tremendously creative, but definitely makes sense for Apple.

Engadget received a leak that Dell is developing a phone known as Lightning on Windows Phone 7 for release in Q4. It has a Snapdragon processor, a 4.1" OLED screen, full Flash support, all the standard iPhone gadgets (accelerometer, compass, GPS), and, oddly enough, FM radio. What's with Zunes and FM Radio (I know it's not a Zune, but similar UI). Oh, and it actually looks nice:

Why are more computer science students caught cheating than in other disciplines? Better technology. Theoretically, that means there are more honest software developers out there than most other industries. I kind of hope that isn't true though, especially with things like building airplanes or practicing medicine.

If you use Windows 7, you must read this article from Maximum PC listing really useful tips and easter eggs in Windows 7. I learned a few nifty things from it, my favorites being the magnifying glass and the multiple-monitor settings.

Office 2010 is finally RTM!

Mashable has a couple of really cool videos showing off Ford Sync's integration with Android and Blackberry applications. It gave me one of those "wow the future is now" moments, as corny as that sounds.

We're running out of IP addresses!

Amazon isn't selling out people to North Carolina tax collectors. Just a heart-warming story to end with.

Stay dry this week, everyone!

Kin: Microsoft's Side Pot

2010-04-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

The Phone Born from a Buzz Word

Yesterday had a few pretty big story, but the biggest one (and I thought most unexpected) was Microsoft's announcement of the Kin phone. Up until last week, it looked like Microsoft was putting all its mobile eggs in one basket with Windows Phone 7 Series (they direly need to shorten that), due out this winter. However, it appears that they have a side pot going on with a social networking phone known simply as "Kin" (a much better name). The handsets are made by Sharp (kind of an odd choice, but ok) and are due out this fall. Given that Palm announced the Pre last year so far in advance to less-than-stellar sales, I'm a little surprised by their early announcement. My guess is that they're trying to preempt the possibility of new iPhone hardware this summer.

Despite the skepticism I've already given you here, I think this phone really does have a lot going for it. The videos I've seen for it are wonderful. I really hope they go with that format of marketing moving forward. It seems to share a number of ideas from Windows Phone 7 Series, like Kin Loop, which is a live stream of all your social networking sites. The camera software also feels familiar from our impressions of Windows Phone 7 Series demos. What is new, and somewhat of a game changer, is Kin Studio. I think this is a pretty exciting feature and so obvious that it seems silly to not already exist. It's basically cloud storage for everything on your device (including pictures and other media, unlike Palm webOS) that you can access yourself from any web browser and do things you'd normally do on your phone, like share photos with friends and stuff. It even has a time line of snapshots of your phone. It reminds me a bit of when TiVo first came out with online scheduling and blew everyone away who had been chained to their living room. I don't think it'll be as revolutionary as that, but still very neat.

There's another added feature that's much more interesting to me called Kin Spot. If you remember seeing leaked videos of Microsoft Courier concepts you'll recall that it was like a booklet tablet where the middle of the two sides was an area for clipping items temporarily. The fact that the Kin features something almost identical but calls it "Kin Spot" provides a rather strong case for the reliability of the Courier leaks. It's basically copy/paste but really souped up and dynamic and it supports holding on to multiple items at a time.

There are some hurdles for Kin though. As I mentioned earlier, the time line for its release is a big concern. Putting your cards on the table like this in an industry that is now producing pretty big phones on a regular basis is a fairly big risk. The fact that they're marketing it totally independent of Windows Phone 7 and as a "feature phone" instead of a smartphone is really odd. What does this mean? Well, no app store for one thing. Think more like the Sidekick instead or the Motorola phones from way back when like the Razr. Putting Kin Studio only on these two phones and not on Windows Phone 7 just makes the confusion worse.

I want to be excited for Kin because it has so much going for it, but it definitely has a few big drawbacks and so we'll have to wait and see how things shake out.

Opera Mini Hits the App Store

This isn't a story I've talked about at all because I wrote it off like a lot of other people did. Apple has a pretty strict policy against allowing apps on the iPhone that duplicate existing functionality, hence there not being a Google Voice application available (which was a big fuss last year). So when Opera made an announcement about Opera Mini being submitted to the app store and was vocally confident about getting accepted, there was a collective snicker from the tech media. In the end though, they had the last laugh since it's now available to download from the app store. Not only that, but it was the number one free app download worldwide.

It looks like Apple was willing to forgive the fact that it kind of duplicates Safari's functionality in that it's another web browser. However, it supports tabbing, which may play into their strategy of muti-tasking in iPhone OS 4. It looks to be a pretty nice application with creative technologies at place for making web browsing faster and snappier than the already slick Safari browser that comes standard.

Stop the Madness, Steve

It wasn't all positive press for Apple last week (someone should graphically compare the balance of good and bad press for Apple now versus Microsoft like 10-20 years ago). An extremely controversial change was made last week to the iPhone OS Terms of Service to require applications to be written in Objective C, C++, C, or Javascript. This was such a huge blow to developers, especially those holding out hope for Flash on the iPhone, that a pretty big petition was started up urging Steve Jobs to reconsider. Jobs even responded to it.

When you dissect the decision, as John Gruber has, it actually seems pretty consistent with Apple's policies from the inception of the iPhone. Their competitive advantage isn't an open sandbox for everyone to play in like Android, but rather a carefully controlled environment where they believe they can guarantee a rich experience for all users and they completely own all technical aspects of that experience. Allowing middleware on top of the libraries they provide hurts their control and could allow a third party software company to have a frightening amount of control over the app ecosystem. Whether or not these concerns are valid or not, it's something that you have to accept with the iPhone platform. If you don't like it, go to Android of Palm webOS.

Please DO Change Your Password

I have to take a moment to respond to this article because it pissed me off a little bit. It's irresponsible for such a big news site to recommend that people not change your password because a stupid study says it's probably not going to help them. It warns of one particular type of attack, a replay attack (which is not viable for sites with SSL), and claims that changing your password doesn't protect you from this type of attack. News flash: you can never be 100% secure and so you have to employ a number of techniques to achieve the highest level of security. The article at least encourages people to come up with strong passwords that aren't derived from dictionary words, but I think they key is to understand that changing your password can help for your most important sites (like financial sites), but only if you pick good alternatives.

Closing Stories

I'm pretty drained so let's wrap things up.

Palm is officially up for sale. This is no surprise to most people, but I'm sad to see this since Palm effectively invented the smartphone and made a really good effort with the Palm Pre.

A really shocking report came out last week from the National Labor Committee going into detail about factory conditions in China for a factory used by Microsoft, HP, Logitech, LG, Acer, and others. Hopefully it will motivate more and more people to fight for the rights of these workers.

Twitter is trying to make money with promoted tweets.

Intel reported its best Q1 results ever despite seeing a drop in sales from Q4 (it was just a much lower one than usual).

Amazon has launched a shortened URL service, powered by bit.ly, to help people link to products.

This is a great list of open source programs for Windows from Test Freaks. I highly recommend reading over it.

If you're a Google fiend then you'll want to be sure to take stock of these tips.

Have a great week everyone!

Comcast Suckerpunches the FCC

2010-04-11T23:41:00.000-07:00

Federal Appeals Court Rules Against the FCC

In case you don't know anything about the net neutrality battle, there's a great video made by yours truly here that will give you a good background on it. Basically, it's the idea that the ISPs shouldn't prioritize data from one website over another - the Internet should be neutral so that all websites are on an even playing field. The FCC, whom I agree with, believe that violating this would really hurt people's ability to access the content of their choice, but they've been slugging it out with Comcast over this for a while now and now a federal appeals court has ruled in Comcast's favor claiming that the FCC is overreaching in trying to regulate the Internet. There are arguments to made for and against this, but I ultimately don't think we should give ISPs the key to the castle - whether the FCC is the one to intervene or someone else, I believe it's vital to the long-term future of the Internet that innovative websites can grow because their visitors experience the same speeds as big competitors.

I believe the next level of appeal is the Supreme Court, and I'm sure the FCC will want to appeal because this is a key sticking point for Chairman Genachowski. Of course, the Supreme Court could refuse, which would implicitly support the lower appeals court, or they could overturn it and essentially make it legal for the FCC to regulate an ISP's network management practices. It's a really sticky situation because it's definitely unclear whether the FCC has this power but if they don't then who does? Wouldn't it be anti-competitive if companies like Comcast could take advantage of this uneven playing field to drive competition out of the market? They could help foster monopolies on the Internet.

I know I'm just beating a dead horse here, but I'm just trying to make sure people don't forget about this issue, especially when it comes time to pick their congressmen. The future of the Internet really is in our hands, don't let a big corporation convince you otherwise.

iPhone OS 4.0

In a pretty sudden special event (a bit out of character for a company known for being meticulous with these events), Apple finally announced the next iteration of the highly lauded iPhone software. If you don't want to read all the gory details, you can get the short version here. There are a number of new features, but the biggest ones are "multitasking", improved notifications, a totally revamped mail app, the iBooks app from the iPad, an online multiplayer video game network, and support for Bluetooth keyboards.

This is a pretty awesome update for iPhone users, all told. I'm not sold on the multi-tasking one, but the others seem great, especially the improvements to mail and that video game network. They may end up killing Windows Phone 7 out of the gate with an early counter to Xbox Live going mobile. Regarding multi-tasking - I don't think you can have background processes running persistently, I think it's more that you can just save state while the user does something else. The Palm Pre has true multi-tasking where your open cards can do stuff while not in the foreground. You've gotta love the irony (this is common with Apple, so no surprise) that for the longest time they've been lambasting multi-tasking and how much it'll hurt battery life and now they're saying (literally) that it will "change the way you use the iPhone".

You have to appreciate that they're towering over the competition in the US market but they're still working on pretty significant improvements and staying very competitive. They also dedicated a small portion of the event to enterprise users, which is going to have to be a huge growth market to them because they've been losing the battle thus far to the corporate favorite: RIM.

One thing they mentioned that hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention is their mobile advertising platform: iAd. This is them really locking horns with Google and adds another element to their already complicated love/hate relationship with Google. Between this and the growth of Android though, things are definitely heating up between the two giants. The platform will allow iPhone app developers to let Apple vend ads on their apps directly and collect a tidy 60% of those revenues. I think it's definitely a fair bit of competition to Google, especially considering that Android doesn't have anything comparable in its platform.

HP Slate Leak

Poor HP. Poor, confused HP. Engadget got a leaked memo from inside HP comparing the forthcoming HP Slate to the iPad and comparing its strengths to the iPad's threats. The real takeaway here is that it only really compares hardware. That's the problem with pitting a hardware company against a company that focuses on software but happens to also make hardware. I'm not saying that HP doesn't build software, but it's certainly not their bread and butter. They don't have an iPhone OS. They're missing the intangibles in their comparison. They don't take into account things like brand or ease-of-use or the fact that they don't have a release date and have virtually no press coverage legitimizing their product. While the iPad had a lot of negative coverage, it got people talking about it and considering it, and that's what's been driving its sales. What's going to drive people to buy a Slate, especially at a higher price than the iPad? Windows 7 is great and has been improved for touchscreen devices, but it may be too late for the HP Slate by the time it hits the market. While I think a tablet that can do everything Windows 7 can do is preferable to just a souped up iPhone OS, the people buying the iPad seem to really care about the simple user experience the iPad provides. Will they feel the same about the Slate?

This Week in Open Source

Ok, there's not that much open source news, but there are a couple of things worth noting.

WebKit, Apple's open source mobile browser engine, is getting an upgrade to allow for a split process model and a non-blocking API. The former is kind of like with Google Chrome where one bad tab isn't a poison pill that crashes all your tabs. The latter is really just a performance tweak for web developers to take advantage of. It's so exciting when I think back to the days of Blazer on the Palm Treo being the best mobile browser to see evolution like this in the mobile web. I believe that mobile websites are going to become more and more a key component of the Internet, especially with smartphones becomes so prevalent and affordable (though, obviously, we still have a ways to go in market penetration).

Even more interesting: Songbird is no longer going to support Linux in future releases. This is kind of a shocker because it has probably become one of the most popular, if not the most popular, music manager on Linux since its inception just 4 years ago. Given that it's open source, the community could always come forward and work on it, but the official creators of Songbird are focusing on Mac and Windows because they just can't afford to move forward with their Linux version. It is kind of interesting that Linux has received such a beating between Sony nipping it on PS3s and Microsoft no longer supporting it in Enterprise Search, but I don't think this is the beginning of the end for Linux by any means. Linux is a great OS for data centers and software development, and I think it will continue to flourish at least for business uses even if it doesn't gain much headway in people's homes.

Yelp's Advertising Gets Bit

It pains me to speak ill of Yelp because I love the site overall. I use it all the time. However, as much as I try to forget about it, Yelp has had a good amount of press (at least online) for questionable marketing practices in threatening businesses to promote worse reviews if they don't pay Yelp for their services to promote better reviews (and delete bad ones) instead. Amazon does nothing of the source and sorts reviews with a complicated algorithm to better serve customers, but I guess Yelp decided to go a different direction. A Miami lawyer is bringing up a somewhat high-profile case against Yelp and probably really hurting their PR. In response, Yelp has decided to no longer choose hat reviews appear first in its listings, but I'm guessing the lawsuit will continue on to get punitive damages.

The Quickies

Ok, it's been a long day so let's wrap this puppy up.

Unvarnished is a new site (in limited beta) that's akin to slam tables from college. It will allow you to write whatever you want about your co-workers to influence their reputation. I'm afraid that it could get dangerous (i.e. shills and slander), but it's a fascinating concept, to say the least.

Gmail has launched some really cool new labs including Sneak Peek to allow you to preview e-mails via right-click. There are some other features that have come out that I missed, like a preview of your Inobx while it's loading that I missed whenever they came out, so be sure to browse the the list of labs if you use Gmail.

This is a great roundup of the top videos that destroy iPads.

Anyone in IT will want to check out this survey to see how their salary compares to their local market. It's a somewhat biased survey and relies on self-reporting so it's not 100% accurate, but it's probably not a terrible ballpark - especially if you're considering a job in IT somewhere.

I love this Mashable article too much to pass it up - it's all about how Facebook influences how we date and I thought the timing was great given the recent Facebook Southpark episode.

This is a really nifty idea: surround vision. Imagine everyone in your living room having a personal device to look past the edges of your TV for more visual data in a scene. Seeing the little video is believing, but, of course, who knows if it'll end up being practical in the long run.

Perking it Up

2010-04-06T00:23:00.000-07:00

Be Wary of Tech Firm Perks
There wasn't a whole lot of news last week, which is good because I have a really full plate this week and need to get into the office early tomorrow. I thought I'd kick off things with this article about tech firms trying to outperk one another in the face of a job market where there's a limited supply of talented software engineers. There is a big difference between a software development engineer and someone who learns how to write code from a book. Even with some industry experience, depending on the company/companies they've worked for they're not necessarily going to be so talented and for these companies it's cheaper to beef up the perks to attract top talent than risk cheaper talent that may end up being harder to maintain in the end. It may seem exuberant in a down economy, but that's the way capitalism works. It's all about supply and demand. There is real value to these perks, too, in how people perceive going to the office. A lot of people seem to drudge through their weekdays whereas at a company where getting a quarterly award means a weekend with a Lamborghini is quite a difference.

However, I'm here to warn you about these jobs. I don't want to name names, but there were companies that were offering awesome perks (tempting to me, for sure) that laid off employees last year. Having perks doesn't indicate job security. The sexy jobs aren't necessarily the best horses to bet on. I don't want to discourage folks to take calculated risks in joining startups, but I think it can be misleading to be pitched on all these great benefits only to have them later taken away when the economy goes into another recession. It's important to ask yourself this question: if the only compensation I received at my job was my base salary (with any cash and stock bonuses) and health benefits (I'm including medical, dental, and vision here), would I be happy with what I do? Let's assume that the culture for the most part stayed the same also, you just didn't have free yoga twice a week. Do you do your job for the perks or for the work you actually do? I think if you pick with your heart what you'd really like to do then you're on more solid ground. I think it makes sense to also consider a workplace with job stability if you have a mortgage or a family, too, but I don't think all the recruiter-speak should be what sells you on a job. Now that the CS job market is heating up, caveat emptor is more or less in full effect for those of you looking for a job or looking to switch jobs.

The iPad is Out

The iPad has now been officially released. A few reviews came out last week with one of the most glowing ones coming from PC Magazine. Their review was so positive that it almost seemed like the reviewer was already really positively inclined for the iPad and was willing to belittle some of the big drawbacks. And, granted I'm biased for the Kindle, I thought they were a bit dismissive of the Kindle in the wake of the iPad when the two are completely different devices. I'm sure that it's a great device for what it is, but I think value should be a consideration in a review, as well as the lack of major things like Flash. Still, the mixed reception may indicate that it's not going to be the flop it was predicted to be.

Gizmodo has also been doing its best to review as many apps as it can and it looks like there's some really good stuff out there.

Google Blocked in China

Google's saga with China may have finally met its end. Google stopped censored off and on for the past couple of months in the wake of an attack from a Chinese computer that was at a university but the US government believes was a cover for an implicitly sanctioned cyber attack. Now, the Chinese government has blocked Google's Chinese site and damned Google in the media as being co-conspirators with the US government against China. This was in the wake of Google's announcement to move the site offshore and Google has said that they may have to close their sales offices in China. This is pretty serious for Google employees there who could be considered enemies of the state as a result of their relationship with Google. I wonder if the people there wonder that their government's sudden response to this seems odd like maybe Google isn't the one in the wrong, especially since it was such a strong brand in China. Google is giving up a lot of money and potential business if they don't fight back on this, and they may morally decide that it's not worth the money to get back into China. If they do decide this, then kudos to them for having the moral courage to do that.

4G is About Congestion

Ars Technica has a really great article about 4G being a response not to speeds being super slow on mobile devices, but rather the fact that congestion is killing data availability in areas with perfectly good coverage. It's an important point to be made because I've heard people dismiss 4G because they don't think the speed boost is necessary and may hurt battery life on current generation cell phone technology, but we're outgrowing our 3G networks. AT&T is a prime example of that in some of nation's bigger cities. I may be one of the few people who believe in the future of 4G, but I think there's good reason to hope for the best there. Depending on the implementation, 4G is usually more scalable than today's 3G networks, and that's ultimately what we need to sustain growth in our consumption of data. We shouldn't let infrastructure hold back innovation, especially if there's a need for it. It's hard to consider that when 20 years ago we didn't "need" e-mail on-the-go, but the world is ever-evolving. I'd like to think we're mostly evolving for the better.

Windows 7 Market Share Strong

Windows 7's numbers are out for March and it looks like the young OS already has more than 10% of the market. Though XP is still the biggest piece of the pie, Windows 7 is gaining share much more quickly than Vista did and there may not be an end to this growth for a while.

As great as 7 is for most people, it's not without its flaws. According to data compiled from Microsoft's security bulletins last year, 90% of known vulnerabilities in Windows 7 can be fixed by removing admin rights. Though, to be fair, I don't think any OS has admin rights down quite perfectly yet. It's a tough nut to crack in compromising convenience for security.

Windows 7 being the first solid OS release from Microsoft in quite a while may show a change in the times for Microsoft. They're even experimenting with putting Office Starter on new PCs where Microsoft would make money off of people then upgrading to a paid version. I'm not sure what's gained in the paid version from the Starter, but I think it'll be great for lower income families.

Final Notes

Ok, I dragged on a bit longer than I meant to tonight, so time to wrap up.

CNN has a great article explaining why Internet is faster in South Korea than here. It's partially because of their land being less spread out but it's also a result of intense competition, which doesn't exist so much here since we have so many local monopolies (or small oligopolies).

If you're not concerned about your passwords, then read this explanation from LifeHacker on common cracking techniques and maybe you'll re-think your passwords. The key is to seed them all in a way you can remember them but then add things to them to make them unique in a way that wouldn't be too easy to guess.

Google Chat may soon get file transfer!

PC Mag has a really nice roundup of free software in several categories - it's worth taking a quick look for any needs you don't have met.

Last week, I saw John Mayer and Michael Buble in concert. John Mayer was good, but Michael Buble was incredible and well worth the price of admission. I thought I'd close off by sharing one of my favorite parts of the show: his cover of Billie Jean in homage to one of his main inspirations, Michael Jackson:

Hot Tub Time Machine

2010-03-29T00:09:00.000-07:00

Since I was unable to post last week I stuffed in a few articles from the week before last. So if a couple of the things seem old, that's because they are. You can scroll through them if you're past them, but I marked them because I still wanted to talk about them. Even though CTIA was last week, I'd like to kick things off with a bit of a nice digression...

Hot Tub Time Machine Review

I haven't reviewed a movie in a while because I haven't seen a movie on/before opening weekend in quite a while. Today I did spend my afternoon cooking and subsequently watching Hot Tub Time Machine. I walked into this movie knowing nothing other than what was in the trailers and commercials, which never really enticed me. The movie looked like it would just be bad rather than hilariously bad, but my friends wanted to go and I wasn't actually opposed to see it and make fun of it if nothing else. To my great surprise, this film actually worked.

I don't think I have to say anything about the plot that the title doesn't tell you already. It's three guy friends and the nephew of one of them who go to a run down ski resort for a weekend and end their first night in a hot tub that turns out to also be a time machine. Up to this point in the movie, I was a bit worried because there were only a couple of decent jokes and and a few lame ones, but I'm glad it wasn't long into the movie until they got in that hot tub. To put it concisely, the casting for this movie was absolutely perfect. I don't know if any other cast could've possible pulled this off. It's almost like these parts were written for these guys. I'll admit that at times I was little thrown off by John Cusack's character because it didn't seem like John Cusack, but other than that the dialogue worked. Rob Corddry definitely stole the show. I hope this movie ends up really igniting a good career in comedy movies for him because it shows that he can really nail the delivery.

The movie ends in a rather predictable way and you can see a lot of the lessons to be learned and such coming a mile away. It's a pretty formulaic comedy. Still, the movie never takes itself too seriously and I think that's what's important. It doesn't try to tug at your heart strings because it's not that kind of comedy - it accepts that it's a down and dirty comedy and holds its chin high in the face of some jokes that you have to just shake your head at. The delivery of the dialogue in this film overall makes it hilarious and makes up for shortcomings in plot and other areas. Though it's probably a C movie, I easily give it a B+ purely for how much I enjoyed the ride. If you can get past a couple of gross jokes and a couple of really raunchy jokes, I highly recommend that you go check this movie out. Go see it in a theater for the experience of laughing it out with a lot of strangers. It's worth it.

HTC Supersonic

If you don't think that's extremely sexy, then you're not as dorky as me. Don't worry, you'll get there. It takes practice. Anyway, that is the HTC Supersonic, which is being marketed in America as the HTC EVO 4G. It got a lot of buzz last week as being the Android phone to have, like the Droid has been up til now (you can argue for the Nexus One but let's face it, few people who aren't tech savvy are buying their cell phone from Google sight unseen). This phone may have the best specs I've ever seen on a smartphone - the internals of this thing are truly a work of art. Keep in mind that for all the speed of the iPhone 3GS, it's actually not super beefed up on hardware like the EVO 4G is. I'm almost positive this phone is more powerful than the computer we had in my household about 11 years ago, and we only bought computers that were pretty advanced since my brother and I are such huge nerds. Aside from a 1GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM, it has an 8 MP camera (that's probably going a little far on the MPs there) capable of 720p video, HDMI out, and may be the first CDMA phone to support simultaneous voice and data.

The videos of this thing are really impressive. It looks to have pretty advanced camera controls and it looks like it's very capable of processing HD video, which is quite a feat in and of itself. Supporting 4G not only means having the hardware to process 4G signal, but having the processing bandwidth to handle the added network bandwidth, and it looks like they're hoping this phone can do that.

Of course, not everyone is as impressed with 4G as I am. In the context of the HTC EVO 4G and my own personal experiences with 4G, I'm referring only to the Sprint 4G network, by the way. There are several other protocols vying to be the de facto 4G protocol and that article rightfully is frustrated with this. Additionally, power consumption may be an issue for 4G. My knowledge of the underlying technology is limited but it could definitely kill its usefulness in cell phones if it ends up being much worse than for 3G signal. Still, I don't think 4G is dead in the water. 3G clearly has its limits and we're not too far off from a point where we need a wireless data network that scales better for our increased data consumption rates.

If you want to see more phones from CTIA, PC Mag has a great round up of the most prominent devices that were shown off. I don't have time to talk about all of them, but I found the Docomo phone with the removable keyboard to be the most curious. Didn't we learn from the days of the stylus pen that easily removable parts are also easily losable?

Palm Survival Guide

In the wake of the news of yet another exciting Android handset, Palm is clearly getting left in the dust. It really is sad because I love my Pre. It has some shortcomings, but I'm so used to it now that I'd honestly prefer to stay on it than switch gears to Android because it's still an enjoyable user experience overall. At this point though, it's hard to see Palm coming out of this without another webOS device. With another iPhone speculated to be coming out this summer (the timeline just fits, not sure if anything was leaked to suggest what a new iPhone would have), Palm almost has to come out with another phone this summer to survive another year, and Palm is a fighter so I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled it off. Hopefully, they're learning from the Pre and announcing their next device closer to its release date instead of 6 months in advance.

There are other lessons to be learned though and Engadget put together a handy survival guide for Palm. Ultimately, Palm had a great platform and a hotly anticipated device and just executed things all wrong. It was almost amateurish when you look back on it - surprising for a company that invented what a smartphone should truly be back in 2004 with the Treo 650. The biggest mistake they made was with their marketing campaign. I'm not sure if it's too late to fix this or not, but none of their ads gives you any indication of how simple and intuitive the UI is, or all the great apps available on it now. I saw an ad at the gym the other day that cut more to that, but they essentially need to reboot their marketing. Of course, they also had several timing problems including the release date, when the SDK was available, and the gap between launching on Sprint and launching on Verizon, which should've happened way before the Droid instead of in the wake of Droid's strong marketing campaign. The only gripe I disagree with is cutting the Pixi. I actually know a few people with a Pixi who really love it. The Centro was not a silly device and neither is the Pixi: it's a nice lightweight smartphone for people who only need a couple of of core smartphone features and like the candy bar form factor.

I'm really impressed by what some developers have been able to do with webOS, including the traditional port of Duke Nukem. So while a lot of people have already counted Palm out, my heart is still rooting for them. As Pre Central has shown on numerous occasions, there's a pretty strong community of users and developers who really like webOS and don't want to see it die.

Windows Phone 7 Will Be Locked Down

This is kind of old news now, but it's important enough that it bears repeating in case you already did hear about it: Microsoft is following in the footsteps of Apple and fostering an app store for Windows Phone 7 that is controlled and moderated by Microsoft. What's interesting about their business model here is that they're 2 years late to the party. They basically want to right the wrongs of Apple, and I just don't know if it's going to work. They're going to charge $100 a year for developers to be in their "Marketplace" and they will have set guidelines for what is allowed in and what isn't. I can see the argument that they want to maintain a nice clean platform like Apple has, but it's too late to launch a mobile platform that isn't open, in my opinion. Any developers paying an annual fee to use a platform is going to give their money to Apple. Of course, the big guys (like EA) will pay, but not the little guys, in my opinion.

There is some good news though: Netflix was prototyped for Windows Phone 7. All you need is a device with HDMI out and some popcorn and you have a mobile party.

8 Layers of Security

I have two quick pieces of hacking news for you. The first thing is that a Russian hacker has been accused of manipulating the price of several Nasdaq stocks using several hacked Scottrade accounts. I'm not quite clear on the details, but definitely one of the more interesting evils of this age of electronic stock trading.

The other piece of news is that a Frenchman was arrested by French police for breaking into several Twitter and Google accounts, include tat of the official Obama twitter feed. He got into the accounts with a technique that is more popular nowadays: using the "forgot password" prompt and correctly guessing the answer to the security question. Though he didn't profit from it, the act of hacking a database is a two-year jail sentence in France.

Aside from picking a good security question though for your online accounts, you should also build up these 8 layers of security for your computer and data. I agree with all the tips and would even suggest adding an additional, more human-based, layer of Firefox extensions like WOT and NoScript that kill the entry point for a lot of attacks triggered from clicking a wrong link.

Quickies

Ok, this post has gone on long enough and I'm now pretty exhausted. Time for the lightning round.

Google has integrated Flickr and Picasa photos in Google Maps Street View.

As a response to the recession, Verizon is pausing its FiOS expansion. Their delivery of fiber to the home has really put a damper on a lot of cable companies and this may actually improve the balance sheets of folks like Comcast that no longer have to compete with Verizon in more and more markets.

I was impressed by this list of YouTube tips and hacks, like how to download videos and linking to the middle of videos. It's a really comprehensive list that probably covers everything you've ever wanted with YouTube.

If I'm not mistaken, Samsung is the first company to officially launch a series of 3-D television sets with release dates and pricing (which start at $2,599 for a 46-inch panel). Of course, the jury is still out on the viability of 3-D taking off in the home.

These are some great Firefox add-ons for saving money, and here's one more add-on for good measure to kill those pesky memory leaks.

Have a great Holy Week, everyone!

Apple Patent Lawyers vs. the World

2010-03-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

Apple Sues HTC

It's unfortunate that all these big negatives stories keep coming out about Apple because I'd much rather talk about other stuff. The news is what it is though.

In a way, this was bound to happen, but I guess it's been so long since Apple threatened to enforce its patents that everyone had forgotten. Apple has filed a lawsuit against HTC for 20 patent infringements. The list of patents include things like swiping on a touch screen to unlock, turning off the phone screen when held near your face, and the idea that a foreground app can send off a background process to do work while the foreground remains responsive to user input. These patents would kill a lot of modern touchscreen phones, if upheld, but some of them are OS-level ideas that I'm pretty sure had prior art before being filed. Even though the lawsuit is against HTC, Google is verbally supporting HTC and some are speculating that legal advice is being provided behind closed doors. Apparently, lawsuits aren't so uncommon in the mobile phone space where it ends up in patent trading so that people can build on each other's ideas, but I think it's kind of sleazy either way.

Apple is not hard up for money and is not by any means getting killed competitively by HTC. HTC has surely cut into Apple's market share, but probably not by enough to warrant a lawsuit. Apple makes plenty of money, so they're not hard up for money. I see 3 possible motivations here (and they're not necessarily mutually exclusive): Apple wants to bankrupt HTC to eliminate them from the market, HTC has patents that Apple wants to take advantage of, or Apple wants to scare off other competitors from building on concepts that Apple has pioneered. Except for blatant ripoffs, most other big companies in tech, like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, don't file lawsuits like this. Most patents filed are for purely defensive purposes. It's a little crazy to say that you can't act on an idea you have just because Apple had the same idea before you did. Not all of these patents are like that, but I think several are. If you have a touchscreen phone, it only makes sense that you need to gesture to unlock it because you have no physical buttons to do it with - why should everyone pay royalties to Apple for that? I'm all for Apple protecting themselves against people making exact iPhone copies, but I don't think HTC has done that at all. I think they've been doing their best to innovate, and lawsuits like this only hurt innovation and competition.

TiVo Premiere Announced

It's been well over two years since the TiVo HD came out and TiVo hasn't financially been doing all that hot. As I've said before, I have a TiVo HD and think that the user experience is unparalleled. My brother has AT&T Uverse and his DVR setup is the closest I've seen in quality compared to the TiVo, but it doesn't have the connectivity with external services (like Amazon VOD and Netflix) that TiVo does.

TiVo has finally revealed to the world the TiVo Premiere, which is a 320 GB HD TiVo with an all new, improved interface. What's really cool, and I was hoping would be included but will actually be extra, is the qwerty peanut remote:

I've always wanted a keyboard on my TV remote for searching, so that's a pretty killer feature. Still, there's not a lot of reason to upgrade for existing TiVo users. It's only $300 so it makes sense for new buyers to pounce on it, but it doesn't sound like the guts have changed much. I wish it would support Tru2way, but at least it supports Verizon FiOS. The new Flash interface (which will finally include a storage capacity meter) is getting rave reviews from reporters who saw it at the announcement, and it's probably the TiVo search beta currently available. Hopefully it's snappier than on the current hardware though.

Of course, I say it's not worth upgrading and I really want one. It hits a sweet spot, in my opinion, with storage capacity (at least for a single person) and I really want that new remote. It'll be interesting to see how the market responds to it.

Windows Phone 7 Game Demo

Microsoft showed off something at TechEd that has created a lot of positive buzz since about Windows Phone 7. They demoed Indiana Jones being played on the PC, then on a Windows Phone 7 device, and finally on the Xbox 360. What's unique here is that the game state is being shared between all 3 to provide a seamless gaming experience. Well, seamless except for that the graphics are drastically worse on your phone than on your Xbox 360, of course. Still, I'd be impressed with your phone having a mini-game that ties into your game progress instead of tying into exactly where you are in the main game. It's exciting that for the first time in God only knows how long, Microsoft is trying to innovate with their mobile platform instead of just replicating stuff that's already out on the market. The question now is whether or not December can come soon enough in a market as hot as the mobile OS market even with as unique a feature as this gaming experience.

Lifelock on Lockdown

You have probably by now seen an ad for Lifelock at some point. They claim that they proactively guarantee the safety of your identity for a monthly fee and even challenged that you'd get a million bucks if you could steal the identity of their CEO, given his social security number. Of course, someone did eventually withdraw money in his name but not sure if he ended up getting that reward money. Well, the FTC is investigating them for deceptive business practices and being too forceful in trying to gain new customers. Lifelock was unable to deliver on its promises because it didn't protect customers from the most common forms of identity theft, and they had almost no security for customer's private information on Lifelock's corporate network. It's ironic that their slogan is that no one else guarantees your good name because no one else can. It looks like Lifelock couldn't either.

Less interesting but more importantly, the US government has declassified part of its
cybersecurity plan, which excludes monitoring private traffic but does include deploying intrusion detection systems on federal networks, which I'm pretty happy about because that was my short-lived research interest in college. The basis of an IDS is that it tries to detect behavior that's uncharacteristic for a system and raise an alert for such behavior - it's preemptive rather than reactionary like most mainstream security software is. The plan also calls for improving the security of private critical infrastructures. With China threatening the likes of Google, we can use all the precautionary network security measures we can get.

AT&T Claims Tiered Pricing Inevitable

In the world of cell phones, we've always had tiered pricing on voice but almost always have had unlimited plans for data usage (not including text messaging, of course). Well, AT&T has already started rhetoric preparing people for tiered pricing, and it's a bunch of bologna. It shouldn't be possible for a mobile phone to use enough data to really put a heavy dent in AT&T's network, so I'm really skeptical that 3% of smartphone users could be using 40% of AT&T's network capacity. Maybe they should work on a better network - they have plenty of cash from all their iPhone users. The claim that they're in no rush to push out a 4G network, which means they want to charge people more to stay on a slower network than competitors like Sprint. It just doesn't make sense. To their credit, they claim no short-term plans of tiered pricing, but it's clear that they're not dealing well with the burden of so many iPhone users. It's just astounding that they don't believe the bigger bandwidth and reduced latency offered by 4G isn't going to help them out as much as sticking with their current infrastructure.

Hulu Loses Heavy Hitters

In the world of media conglomerates, Viacom is a pretty thirsty beast. Unfortunately, Hulu's revenues couldn't quench Viacom's thirst and so Hulu has lost their two biggest shows: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It's odd that Viacom thinks that they can do better with these two properties than Hulu, which is a fairly established brand nowadays. It's well known in the mainstream, especially because of the recession as people cut out their cable providers. Contrary to the Christian Science Monitor, I don't think Hulu is in quite as deep of a hole as it may seem. Hulu still needs more time to grow revenues, and as other offerings gain success, I think Hulu will show that not only is having your shows available online is approaching a point of becoming vital, but no one does it more efficiently or effectively than Hulu. Of course, YouTube is probably Hulu's biggest competitor, but YouTube is definitely not as browsable for this kind of content compared to Hulu.

More Competitors to the iPad

I don't have much to say about either of these devices, but I definitely think they're worth knowing about. The HP Slate is starting to materialize by way of official video footage, and it's clearly proud of running Windows 7 and supporting Flash, which Steve Jobs is still trying to woefully will out of existence. While I can see the argument for HTML 5 being better in the long run and Flash maybe not being so vital on a small device, I think it's absolutely important on a tablet in the short term and it's definitely one of the things HP should capitalize on. More importantly though, the Slate will give you more freedom to run the applications you're used to if you're already on Windows 7 on your desktop/laptop. Whether or not people want that experience is yet to be seen though.

Meanwhile, a fresh leak has been dropped regarding the Microsoft Courier, which is a tablet that looks like a foldable booklet. The video footage revealed is similar to what we saw months ago, but still very exciting. Who knows if it'll ever become a reality - it seems more like a concept bred from a set of requirements than anything else.

Closing Stories

Ok, as much as I love my new laptop and how much easier blogging is on it, I have other things to do so I'm going to wrap this up with some quick stories I still think are worth taking notice of.

I have too much App1e negativity in this post already, so I'm not going to really talk to the heinous secret agreement Apple has its iPhone developers sign. It's so detrimental to the developer that I'm almost surprised that it's legal.

Real Networks gave up their fight for Real DVD, which aimed to legitimize DVD copying by replacing the DRM already on DVDs with their own DRM. I don't know if it kills the future of copy protection, but it could've created a major precedent so it's definitely a disappointing ending.

Gizmodo has an excellent article detailing the sordid history of Sony. I have a love-hate relationship with Sony - I love some of their products, but their vision is often misguided.

Props to YouTube for launching auto-captioning. That's an insanely awesome technology.

The Core i7 6-core Gulftown processor is finally out and I actually enjoyed reading this review. It's a fairly technical review, but it sounds like a great architecture.

The FCC has released a very capable tool for measuring your Internet speed with the added bonus that they can use your data point to help understand the status of broadband Internet speeds across the country. In addition to just down and up speeds, it even gives you latency! The URL is easy to memorize: braodband.gov.

Torrents are now legally available of free music from SXSW 2010. Check them out!

Popular Science has opened up the entirety of its 137-year archive for free!

I'm a big fan of these free, troubleshooting tools for Windows. If you only download one, definitely get the Blue Screen View one. My next vote is for WinDirStat, which is an application I've needed for years.

Last, but certainly not least, College Humor has a great video on the true use case of Google Wave: cyber sex.

How to Survive a Trip to India

2010-03-09T00:36:00.000-08:00

Introduction

I'm afraid that I don't have time to put together a full post this week. I was out of town all weekend on a mini-vacation and, aside from catching up on chores since getting back I've also been setting up a new computer. I finally upgraded to Windows 7 with great 16" Asus laptop and I'm loving it! The keyboard is much easier to type on, it has HDMI out, and it can actually handle multi-tasking. You'd think a Core 2 Duo would be enough for that but somehow my HP Pavillion laptop never understood that concept and would only reliably handle one thing at a time. Even though I've used Windows 7 before this I have to admit that this was an even smoother user experience migration than I expected. I don't get the opportunity that often to give props to Microsoft so I have to give it up now: great job on the robustness. I love compatibility mode so that my old applications can run even if they're not quite compatible with Windows 7 by default. I feel like the instability of one application now is not going to crash my system anymore, either. The combination of this new hardware and Windows 7 is really going to make it a lot easier for me to blog without spending long amounts of time waiting or having to restart my computer.

Anyway, to replace my normal post I thought I'd post a speech I prepared last week for Toastmasters regarding my recent trip to India. I'll be back next week with a normal post. Until then, I hope you enjoy my speech!

Surviving a Trip to India

My heritage is Indian, and yet my recent trip to India made it quite clear that I’m culturally very much an American. I’ve been spoiled by Western luxuries like clean, running water and toilet paper that doesn’t feel like sandpaper. I went to India, for the second time of my life, on vacation in January with my brother, his wife, her sister, and a friend of ours. What we discovered that India is an incredible country where a rich culture meets modern society, which means that you’ll look out of one side of your cab to see a guy on his smartphone and out the other side to see a cow stuck in traffic. But I still haven’t said a single word about the abundance of affordable, exquisite food. I stand before you today to encourage all of you to consider making a trip to India yourselves, and there are a number of things I learned during the course of my trip that I wish I had known before I left SeaTac. Since my time with you today is limited, I’m going to cover what I consider to be the big ones to help you survive your trip and understand some of the local customs.

As your high school shop teacher probably once said: safety first. You should check the Center for Disease Control, or the CDC, website for what immunizations they recommend and get them taken care of at least a month before your trip. They actually have a list of travel clinics on their site, and the easiest thing to do is to give your closest one a call and set up an appointment. They’ll usually charge you a nominal fee for the consultation and set you up with everything you need, some of which may be covered by insurance. I actually ended up getting a stomach parasite on my trip and was so glad I had visited a travel clinic and gotten the medication I needed in advance. The pharmacists, or chemists, you find in India often aren’t very well-educated and have no qualms about giving you prescription medication over-the-counter. So if you visit one and come back to America with hair growing on your palms, you’ll know why. In addition to seeing your travel clinic, be sure to stock up on pain relievers, fever reducers, and antacids, at the very least.
One of the other shockers we encountered there is that public bathrooms rarely have soap in them. The pollution can get pretty heavy in the big cities and in your sightseeing and shopping, you’re bound to get your hands dirty, so be sure to bring plenty of hand sanitizer and moist towelettes to use before and after your meals, and, of course, bathroom runs.

Speaking of food, make sure you only eat at clean restaurants. Avoid getting food on the side of the road. When you see a guy wipe his nose with the same hand he uses to make your Bombay Burger, you’ll quickly lose your appetite. There is no Health Department in India, so you’re on your own. No matter where you eat though, definitely don’t drink the tap water. Unlike America where our water is processed assuming that it will be consumed, Indian water isn’t really filtered and only the most iron clad stomachs can handle it. Bottled water isn’t that expensive, so buy and drink plenty of it. Dehydration isn’t uncommon for travelers, especially in the South where it’s hot year-round. Another reason you’ll want bottled water is for brushing your teeth - some travelers get sick from brushing with tap water.

For your day-to-day expenses, you’ll need plenty of cash. In a country with over a billion people and fraught with small towns and villages, it’s not too hard to understand why credit cards are unpopular. I recommend using a money belt so that you don’t risk getting pick-pocketed. Additionally, I discovered why frugality runs in my family. It turns out that Indians are used to bargaining for literally everything - from meals to clothes to hotel rooms. Even being brown I was immediately recognized as an American by everyone and so the prices pitched to me were always ridiculous by Indian standards. You’ll get better and better at reading how low someone is willing to go on a price as you shop, but don’t be afraid to walk away because they’ll often end up ceding to you. If you’re traveling with friends then you can almost always get great bargains by buying multiple things – kind of like shopping at Costco but without the free samples. Unless you see the words “fixed price”, just assume that you can bargain.

Prices aren’t just cheaper there for tourist trinkets and food though, domestic travel is also much cheaper. Trying to drive around there yourself is like trying to drive on I-5 blindfolded – it’s just not a good plan. We were able to get a driver for a van for less than $40 a day. If you take a rickshaw, the vehicle of choice in Mumbai, you can expect to pay about $1 for a 30-minute trip across town. Of course, being in a rickshaw has the added bonus of letting you see your life flash before your eyes numerous times as your driver weaves in between lanes and gets within a couple of inches of huge trucks.

While I recognize that some of my tips may have been a bit intense I hope that I haven’t discouraged you from considering a vacation in India. It’s a great break from the cold in the winter, many people there understand English, you’ll discover the most delicious food you’ve never eaten, like vada pav, and there’s great beauty to be explored all around, such as a marble Bahai temple shaped as a lotus flower. There are some more common sense things you can do to prepare for your trip, like getting a visa, packing sunscreen, and bringing extra toilet paper, but I think I’ve given you the bare minimum in order for you to make it back home in one piece. You can [post a comment] if you’d like to learn even more about traveling to one of the most amazing and unique countries in the world.

Apple Becomes Your Mom

2010-03-01T23:47:00.000-08:00

Apple Removes "Sexy" Apps

Apple has finally done it: they've become like a concerned mother wagging their finger at you. Last week, they took down hundreds of apps that satisfy more prurient interests. Yes, unfortunately, this was the biggest story last week. Call it a post-MWC funk.

Anyway, I really hate to harp on Apple about the iPhone app store, but every once in a while I think they need an "I told you so". I don't mean an "I told you so" that the app store would be unsuccessful - it's obviously doing gangbusters. Rather, a lot of tech journalists pointed out that censorship is a very slippery slope. Once you start policing what can be done on the devices you sell, you open a Padora's box of customer concerns and developer frustration. This latest app store bust is pretty crazy - even the biggest iPhone lovers have to agree. When you're literally kicking apps out because they have pictures of figure skaters in them, you're taking it too far. What's worse is when you kick out the little guys, like Suicide Girls, and instead preserve Playboy and Sports Illustrated. Now, Apple is not taking a stand for morality or against objectifying women, they're instead making a token concession while implicitly supporting Playboy. Yes, that seems crazy, but it's basically what they're doing. When you establish hard rules of what you're going to throw out of the store and then let someone off the hook who clearly breaks those rules it's a big contradiction.

Why did Apple do this? Apparently, they were getting too many customer complaints from concerned parents and women, in general. Apple already ceded a while ago by allowing you to restrict a phone to not be able to download mature apps, but you can still see them when you browse the app store. I think that was a valid concession (albeit, somewhat silly since it's not like there's already half-naked women all over TV and the Internet for curious teenagers). This censorship is just another reminder that Apple literally holds the incomes of more than a few mobile development shops in their hands. It's a lot of power when you consider how popular the app store has become. It's really unfortunate that they're being so irresponsible with it. If they had removed Playboy and Sports Illustrated then that would be more understandable, but Apple is basically showing that there are no rules in the app store other than the rules they make up depending on who you are and how much money you bring them. They can do this as long as Android, Palm, and Blackberry stay in the backseat, but I really hope that competition from Android helps them come to their senses. Between that story and the one on child labor at some of their factories, I feel really bad for Apple PR.

The Other Smartphones

I do have some news on your other favorite smartphone competitors.

Microsoft is actually putting some effort into courting developers with Windows Phone 7, which is something they've done a terrible job of with previous versions of Windows Mobile. Right now, they're working with hardware manufacturers to get some unity across different Windows Phone 7 devices (a big issue with previous Windows Mobile devices), but there's still no details yet on the development kit. Surely, Microsoft understands that this platform is dead in the water if they can't attract mobile developers, so we'll see what they do in the months to come. At the Engadget Show last week, an LG Windows Phone 7 device was actually spotted, but it doesn't seem all that exciting. Just another smartphone until we see more of it.

For the two of you out there interested in webOS: version 1.4 came out over the weekend bringing a number of welcome improvements including video recording (and editing), huge compatibility improvements in the browser, a much improved way to start apps to promote multi-tasking, and blinking light notification on the gesture area. Now that webOS 1.4 is out, Flash 10.1 beta is just around the corner as 1.4 has changes necessary to support it, which will make the Pre and Pixi (and, of course, their Verizon counterparts) among the first phones to support Flash. This has been one of the biggest updates to webOS since the Pre's launch, but it doesn't matter unless Palm starts pimping out these features in their ads.

If you think that the iPhone leads the smartphone market, then think again. I believe that graph reflects worldwide revenues, which is why Nokia is so big even though it's a struggle to spot a Nokia phone when you walk down the street. I know Nokias are big in India because I remember wondering when I was there how people could tolerate such terrible UIs. Nokia has even had better sales growth that Apple, who was actually 3rd behind RIM. I wish the graphic would've included webOS and Android, even if their combined market share is smaller than HTC (I hope that it isn't).

Google Hacker Discovered

The source of the attacks on Google from January has been discovered to be a Chinese security consultant. The attacks were cleverly disguised as coming from the IP addresses of a trade school, which doesn't prove anything given that they could easily have been part of a botnet. The government is believe to have leveraged this consultant's code to conduct the attack, but China still denies involvement.

This same guy may have been part of an attack on Intel that occurred around the same time. This theory hasn't been proved yet, but given the nature of the circumstances, it's likely that the attacks were related. Apparently, Intel and Google were two of 34 companies that were attacked around the same time, so this thing was a pretty big deal. Intel is remaining pretty mum on what damage the attack did, which could mean that serious secrets were leaked.

Unrelated to the January attacks, a major phishing exploit hit Twitter last week by way of direct messages. It asks if a given link is you, and when you click through it uses your account to send a similar message to 10 other people. It's not clear whether or not your login credentials are leaked in the process to send out future spam, but given that people are being advised to change their password if they've clicked through I'd bet that whatever else happens on click-through is not good.

Quickies

I'm almost falling asleep here while typing so it's time to wrap up.

Ars Technica did a really great investigation of why most of the US doesn't have 100 Mbps internet connections. I wish I had more time to talk about it, but it's definitely worth a read.

3 Google executives were convicted for failing to comply with Italian privacy laws in a case where Google Video allowed a video to be uploaded of an autistic kid being bullied. This case has definitely gone too far and Google feels pretty sore about it.

Sony, Samsung, LG, Hitachi, and Toshiba have been accused by a small electronics store of price fixing on optical disc drives. Apparently, this sort of stuff isn't that uncommon in the East so these charges may have some merit behind them.

Amazon was the most trusted brand of 2009 (according to market research company Millward Brown)! Amazon actually sells about half the other brands on that list and ships merchandise through two of them.

UT Austin made Network World's list of the nation's 10 hottest computer science schools! Hook 'em!

The winners of the Engadget Awards have been announced with the PS3 and Droid aimpressively going home with two awards apiece. It was kind of interesting that the editors thought the Nuvifone was the worst device of the year whereas everyone else was more let down by the 3G Shuffle.

Have a great first week of March, everyone!

Windows Phone 7: It's About Time

2010-02-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

A Windows Mobile OS You Might Actually Want

Over the past 7 or so years, Microsoft has carefully dragged the Windows Mobile brand in the mud. Of course, it started out as Pocket PC, but some of us would much rather forget those days. In any case, WinMo has had a lot of issues over the years and got pummeled by Blackberry and Apple in market share because Microsoft simply wasn't being competitive enough in innovation. As such, rumors of a Zune Phone have been around since the Zune hit the market and created a small fan base. While those rumors never quite materialized, out of their ashes has emerged Windows Phone 7, which is more or less a re-branding of Windows Mobile.

I recommend watching the videos that Engadget has posted from the announcement last week because seeing is really believing here - this UI is slick. It very much feels inspired by the same design principles that inspired the Zune, but it's still set apart a bit from the Zune UI in that it clearly looks more geared towards a mobile PC experience. It's visually dominated by clean typography and screens that seem to be horizontally very long to encourage side-to-side navigation. It also aims to plug you into the Internet more easily and automagically kind of like the live widgets familiar to Android users.

While there's no Flash support, it's gotten at least as much good press as the iPad has gotten bad press. I like Gizmodo's wording of the UI as being "function-centric". It's not centered around screens of apps, just a simple interface for exactly what you care about. Despite all this buzz though, I don't know if Microsoft will succeed here. Palm made a big splash around this time last year with webOS and Palm is arguable a more respected name in mobile phones than Microsoft. They released the Pre in the summer and they're still struggling despite critical acclaim for the Pre and Pixi. Microsoft's timeline is this winter, so do they stand a chance in a world where 9 months can mean 1-3 major mobile OS upgrades for Android, webOS, and the iPhone?

Well, I'll admit that they have an ace in the hole: Xbox Live. The way to market phones nowadays tends to be around a specific feature that it does really well. It may do other things decently well but being the biggest player in one specific feature can really help move merchandise. The strategy with Blackberry was for enterprise users and heavy texters and for Palm with webOS it was multi-tasking. I'm sure there will be little independent games on Windows Phone 7 like on other phones, but the real killer feature here would be cross-platform gaming, which is exactly what Microsoft is proposing. Being able to play a casual game on your Xbox 360 from Xbox Live Arcade against someone on their phone is an awesome idea. I can already picture the ad of a dad on a business trip playing Bomberman on his phone from LAX against his son who's at home on their Xbox 360. Past just casual games like this though would be a concept pioneered by Sega with the Dreamcast, which was way ahead of its time. Remember those VMU thingies? Where you could play little mini-games on them? What if you could play a Mass Effect 2 mini-game on your phone that integrated with the storyline from your Xbox 360 Mass Effect 2 saved game? If I had an Xbox 360, I would most definitely buy a Windows Phone 7 for an extended experience like that. Sony has tried to bring together the PS3 with the PSP and had limited success, but it requires people to buy a gaming device whereas everyone needs a cell phone these days.

While we're still in hype mode right now with Windows Phone 7 and the videos show how unpolished it is in terms of speed and bugginess, it's a very cool concept. There's no guarantee that it'll be enough to bail out Windows Mobile, but after seeing all I've seen I really hope it ends up standing a chance.

In Other Mobile News...

Hey, it was Mobile World Congress week so last week was all cell phone news.

Nokia and Intel have teamed up to create MeeGo, a new Linux-based mobile OS designed to work on all mobile devices, not just cell phones, and is basically a re-imagining of Intel's Moblin OS. I think they basically took a good look at the iPhone and Android and decided that they were in big trouble. Given that this is all we know, it's not promising. Nokia doesn't have a great track record for clean UIs, but Intel still has the power to popularize this OS at least among netbooks and tablets and it is going to be an open source OS. The official site says that the development platform will be C++, which may make it more attractive for people used to writing Objective C for the iPhone, but C++ is definitely not as popular a language as it once was.

The HTC has named its successor to the Nexus One: Desire. It's an Android 2.1 device with the same Snapdragon processor and sports a beautiful AMOLED multi-touch screen. I can't get enough of AMOLED - it's too awesome. The main difference from the Nexus one is that the trackball is gone in favor of the Sense UI, which is HTC's UI built on top of Android that was introduced with the HTC Hero. So nothing terrible new here, but it is probably the next big Android phone.

Adobe announced that Air is slated to be available on Android later this year (I think in the first half of the year), and they stated their grand plan of developers writing applications on the Flash platform to work on all phones that don't have "iPhone" in their name. As much as Apple doesn't want to admit it, Flash is big. HTML 5 isn't here yet and everyone already uses Flash for mobile video and a lot of casual online games. I think Flash may be in trouble in 2012 when HTML 5 has hopefully caught on, but for right now it's an interesting proposition that developers can put mobile video widgets on their site via Flash that will work on a lot of non-iPhone phones. It's not going to kill Apple, but it would certainly be a thorn in its side if Flash ends up being implemented well (read: stable and power-efficient). Plus, developers could just develop some applications to just be for the iPhone OS and then for Air and that could end up covering an enormous majority of the market. Like any good conference, this is all just pie in the sky talk for right now. It won't be long before we see what happens, especially with the Pre expected to get Flash support in an OS update before the end of the week.

Why You Should be Scared of Apple

This post simply wouldn't be complete without covering this article from Cracked. It grew to be quite popular. Despite all the great things that Apple has done for technology in the past 30 years, they're riddled with problems that people like to pretend don't exist. It doesn't make you a bad person if you have an iPhone just because Apple does a lot of bad stuff, but it's worth knowing the things they do behind closed doors, like run campaigns of fear against their own employees and take extreme measures to combat leaks. When an employee of an Apple contractor commits suicide because he's being tortured over a prototype he accidentally lost, that's a really bad sign.

The real issue with Apple is the amount of control they continue to wield over their products. It's hard to cheer for someone who makes massive innovations in a technology only to cripple it with restrictions that don't make sense. The app store on the iPhone is a prime example of that, but it's not much better that they use updates for programs like iTunes to sneak other unrelated software on users' computers. I think stories like this are important to know because I believe corporations should be held accountable not only by their shareholders but by their customers. Ultimately, Apple is only around because of the people who buy their products, and their lack of regard for what customers really care about kind of sucks. It'd just be nice to see that change because they clearly have a lot of talent in Cupertino and they can really pump out some impressive hardware.

Yahoo Going the Way of Alta Vista

PC World posted a fun little editorial posing the question of whether or not Yahoo is becoming another Alta Vista. I definitely had a chuckle when I read the title because I remember trying Alta Vista back in the days when people thought Yahoo was the Internet. They're really hitting heavy stagnation when it comes to innovation and a home page that's attractive at all, and it's unfortunate to see them fall like this but they're totally being undercut by Bing. Even though Bing isn't a new player under the hood, it's very telling how quickly Microsoft was able to usurp mindshare from Yahoo.

The Rest

And now the stories I have very little to say about.

Flash 10.1 will support porn mode - I mean private browsing. You have to admit that it's kind of funny how quickly the whole "private browsing" feature has caught on.

40% of US households do not have broadband, and 38% of those people aren't interested in getting it. That's really terrible. The industry and the government clearly aren't doing a good enough job helping the Internet fit in people's lives.

Google Gears is dying in favor of HTML 5. I think everyone saw that coming as soon as they heard about HTML 5.

Maximum PC has a really good roundup of useful web applications. They're not all winners, but most of them truly are really good.

Lastly, this image very aptly sums up the truth about how annoying DVDs have become nowadays. Do the studios not watch their own DVDs? How does all that crap not irritate them?

Have a great last week of February, everyone! Oh February 2010, we hardly knew thee.

The Buzz About Google Buzz

2010-02-14T23:51:00.000-08:00

Google's Social Foray

Be forewarned: I have to talk about a lot of Google news today. They just dominated the media last week - there's no getting around it.

At the center of it all is Google Buzz, which has clearly attracted at least the amount of attention as the iPad from the tech community. Compared to most other Google launches, except for Wave, the amount of buzz it has gotten is kind of uncharacteristic of a new Google product. I don't think it's quite the buzz that Google wanted though.

So what is Google Buzz? Simply put, it's Google's take on social networking. It's a tab in your Gmail account that lets you connect with your friends as they interact on a number of services including Twitter, Picasa, YouTube, Blogspot, Google talk, Google Reader, and Flickr. It basically gives you a feed of the people you follow ala Facebook and lets you update also kind of like on Facebook where you can say stuff or post a link or photo. You also get some finer controls on privacy. Their vision for this is a little bigger than what you see in your web browser though since you can have a Buzz layer on Google Maps to see where your friends are (I guess like Latitude but on speed?), and the mobile apps do voice recognition. If you're on webOS though you're out of luck - Google didn't show any love for Palm.

Why would you want this thing? Well, Google is selling it on the premise that it hooks into your Gmail so if you're on Gmail then you get it for free and it just gives you the stuff you care about, but I don't know how it figures out what you care about unless it strictly bases that off when you click to "like" stuff. In my opinion, it's kind of silly and unnecessary. And I'm definitely not alone in that camp. For one thing, it doesn't really add any value except for the Google Maps layer, which I can't vouch for and is something you can kind of already do with Latitude and Foursquare. I can understand that Google doesn't want to get left in the dust with social networking (as they've already shown with domestic failures Orkut and Dodgeball), but this isn't really great timing for it. My running opinion of technology is that it should solve a problem or fill a need, but I don't think this does either.

To make matters worse, there have been serious privacy concerns called to attention. For example, the default when it launched was that the people you followed was public and you were auto-following a bunch of people from your Gmail contact list, so this was basically revealing part of your address book to the world. They've fixed that, but as CNet aptly puts it, using Buzz is still kind of awkward and not compelling.

The most insightful thoughts on Buzz though, in my opinion, have come from Digg co-founder and Internet celebrity Kevin Rose. In a nutshell, he believes part of the intent of Google Buzz is to hook directly into Google Search and provide real-time relevancy for up-and-coming sites and news articles. While Digg already does a great job of people-driven news promotion, Google Buzz is a wider base, is intended to be as easy to interact with as Twitter, and provides data that other sites can farm to improve what they do, assuming your feed on Buzz is public. This theory is actually further supported but Google's acquisition of social search service Aardvark, which lets you pose natural questions to real people in your social network so you can get real answers instead of having to search for information yourself. In the end, it all ends in beefing up Google Search. Of course, that's just one theory though.

I don't think it's fair to write off Google Buzz already. It's not that exciting right now, but this is Google we're talking about. They tend to not settle for developing mediocre products. Plus, sometimes these things just take a while to catch on. Facebook and Twitter didn't get so big overnight.

Google Broadband

While we're talking about Google let's move on to something that's actually much cooler than Buzz. They're planning on building an ultra high speed broadband network with speeds up to 1Gbps (which is probably 150x faster than what you have right now) at competitive prices. I'm totally salivating at this idea. They're only going to test it out in a few markets to start out with for 50,000 to 500,000 people. Google claims that their interest in doing this is to test out applications that would need lots of bandwidth to perform well. Still no idea what markets they're looking into, but this is the kind of competition we really need in the broadband market. Verizon is the only company out there really pushing the envelope on a large scale and it's all kinds of exciting that Google is taking an interest simply because they have enough resources to actually compete. Even if they end up canning the program, if they get Comcast and Time Warner to wake up and try to provide better products then it'll be a success in and of itself.

Is Google Killing Startups?

This is a really interesting story that I'm really at odds with. Business Insider has an editorial up claiming that every engineer Google snatches up is a missed opportunity for a startup. They would probably include a couple of other companies hypothetically, but the most obvious example is Google. Ultimately, the security blanket of these larger companies is bringing in top talent rather than a market where people have to be entrepreneurs and create their own jobs.

The thing is, most startups don't succeed. It's an extremely risky venture and I vehemently protest that idea that any developer has the chops to start their own company. It's like when the government said that anyone is entitled to a house even if they can't afford it. Starting a company is hard work and requires a certain type of person, and not every developer that goes to Google has that even though they're really smart and work great as a cog in a much larger machine. I love that the US is a place that encourages entrepreneurial spirit and I'm not disputing the value of startups at all, but I don't think Google is killing them. I've heard plenty of stories of people leaving places like Google and Microsoft to start their own company. The experience they got in a larger company ends up being invaluable to their venture. Not everyone can come out of school and go straight into creating a startup because not everyone is Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but more people definitely can after being in the industry for a while and learning from the brilliant people out there, who have tremendous influence on the industry by impacting these individuals at places like Google.

If you want to blame anyone blame our country's educational system for its failings in properly promoting science and technology, and cutting back on scholarships. I don't know who this guy has been talking to, but the talent pool is definitely limited out there compared to the positions available within computer science. I do think it makes sense, however, having entrepreneurs go to schools and teach them about starting a company so that they have that option, but I don't think it's productive to call Google the bad guy in this situation.

Google Stands Up to Australian Censorship

See? I told you it was a ton of Google news. It happens sometimes.

Let me sneak in an only slightly related piece of YouTube news: they've created a safety mode to help filter out objectionable content, presumably so YouTube can be whitelisted for educational uses and even children's use at home (or adults' use in the office).

The real provocative story is that Google is refusing requests for censorship on YouTube from the Australian government. This may be part of the motivation behind their threat to pull out of China: their censorship cessions have opened a Pandora's box of requests for them to censor elsewhere. What you really have to consider is what an impact Google can make in these countries. I'm not a Google fanboy, mind you, but I think they could have the power to change things in some of these countries. Right now, the requests that the Australian government are making are due to their self-interest rather than law, and Google has pledged to abide by the laws in the countries it's in. If Australia decides to change their law and Google refuses, what happens? If Google pulls out, will people get really upset and question their government's censorship? I'd hope so, but it's a hard thing to measure.

The Last Bits

What a terrible pun. Wow. Anyway, just a few quick stories before I sign off and get back to playing some guitar - my V-day treat to me.

A new Russian crimeware called Spy Eye has an option to remove competitor Zeus software from the users machine, along with stealing banking credentials. The intent of the program is to create Trojan horses so the person who installed it had it coming, but just a funny way to try to kill off a rival.

AOL has integrated Facebook Chat with AIM. Do people really use Facebook Chat on a regular basis?

Google Maps has added 9 new experimental features including rotatable maps and aerial imagery. Very nifty stuff!

The founder of 4chan, the least well-known gigantic cultural influence in the world, spoke at TED. Very interesting talk about privacy.

Google Street View did Whistler! Check out this sucker:

Have a great week everyone!

Gone Phishing on the iPhone

2010-02-09T00:44:00.000-08:00

Cybersecurity Shmybersecurity

There was a pretty good amount of security news last week but not much of anything else. Given that I'm kind of tired from yesterday (worked all day and night), I'm going to keep this kind of short since it was a slow news week anyway.

Network World kind of informally posted what they think the 10 best IT jobs will be in 2010. I don't know that they had hard evidence to back their list, but it's actually a pretty good list. Guess what's at the top of that list? No, not a shmybersecurity expert but a security specialist. The list has some other cool choices, like open source evangelist and service assurance manager (super important), but let's stick with security specialist.

Almost every week for the past several months I've had at least one security issue a week to talk about. Sometimes I don't cover them just because they get repetitive. Last week alone there were two biggies. Google was at the center of a corporate espionage attack a couple of weeks ago and so last week they teamed up with the NSA to get to the bottom of the attack, which is believed to have originated in China. It was so serious that Google decided that they're not going to filter search results in China anymore. I'm not sure if they've stuck with this policy or not since then, but they were clearly frazzled by this. Given that the accounts violated were active human rights supporters in China, it's very likely that the attacks originated within the Chinese government.

More recent than that was that a security flaw was discovered in the iPhone opening the door to phishing attacks. I wonder if this will make security on the iPhone a big deal like it is for Internet Explorer on PCs? It basically allows someone to easily modify your mobile configuration files over the air and make it look like it came from Apple. Someone who didn't know about this exploit could do something like connect to a malicious server instead of a VPN and have all their transmissions compromised.

With all these stories cropping up, it's not surprising that a security specialist would be in demand. Coming full circle back to this section header, a lot of people don't understand cybersecurity at all. However, it's not easy to understand if you want to be safe from every kind of attack you're likely to come across. Even the tech savvy get tricked. It's an arms race because the bad guys get more and more clever as we figure them out - like a polymorphic virus. I don't know if it will pan out since often things don't in a government as complicated as ours, but the House has approved legislation to authorize the NIST to develop a cybersecurity education program. This would be not only for the government but also for businesses and consumers to make our economy stronger against security scares. I hope that it ends up leading to real results, because it's something that we've needed for a long time now.

Superbowl Ads

Internet video has gotten really big. It's exciting. I remember blogging about IP TV a few years back and looking forward to a future where people control what they watch and have a much larger platform of content in the Internet. We're not quite there yet, but it's promising that 178 million US Internet users watched 33 billion online videos in December. It's crazy that 40% of those videos were on YouTube and 3% was on Hulu, which was the next highest percentage. The times have really changed from a world where the Internet wasn't a big deal and no one was using much of their bandwidth unless they were pirating stuff.

Anyway, it's cool that I could turn to Hulu for Superbowl ads since I missed the game. A couple of my friends had planned on doing that since they don't like football (I know, blasphemy). Hulu did this last year, too, but I think they improved this year with showing you how much people liked each video (at least I think that's new). I had the game on in the background and actually managed to catch the really good ads live because they happened to catch my attention. My favorites were definitely the eTrade one, the Doritos House Rules one, and the Megan Fox one. Honorable mentions though to Snickers and the Doritos Underdog one. Jeers to Prince of Persia (stop embarrassing good video game franchises, please) and The Backup Plan. Am I crazy or were the movie trailers last Superbowl much better? This year also saw Google's first Superbowl ad, and it was creative.

Let eBooks Grow

I don't want to talk to this too much since I have a vested interest in Amazon (I assure you that I have 0 insider knowledge on this thing), but I have something to say.

A part of me is stupefied by how book publishers are dealing with eBooks, but a part of me is glad because it's exposing them for the inane people they are. Amazon is selling eBooks from HarperCollins, for example, for less they pay HarperCollins and now Rupert Murdoch is bemoaning the death of paper books and wants to force prices of eBooks up like Macmillan does. When is this guy going to retire? He's so out-of-date he probably etches his notes on stone tablets. This is the same guy who didn't want Google indexing his news articles, mind you, because he can't see the writing on the wall. Book publishers have gotten away with over-charging people for books and under-paying authors for too long and these arguments with Amazon are only surfacing how shady they can be. I don't understand what's so wrong with trying to sell eBooks for less money than a physical version. It's all profit as a digital copy! First they didn't want a computerized voice reading their books on the Kindle, and now Amazon is offering them a better revenue split at the $10 price point but they're still recalcitrant! Whether they like it or not, paper books as we know them aren't going to last forever. I know you're clutching your copy of Catcher in the Rye and staring blankly at the screen but it's true! We don't even live in a world anymore where everyone reads newspapers on paper.

Ok, stepping off my soapbox. Thanks for indulging me.

Last Notes

Just a couple of items before I sign off here.

This is a really fun article about 18 gadgets that used to be high-tech. It's so enlightening sometimes to think about the past and how far we've come and how we got here.

The CEO of Sun resigned following the heels of their acquisition by Oracle. Kind of sad that Sun has fallen so far from grace, but it happens. At least he resigned in style via haiku.

Are relational databases dying? Very interesting thoughts from Computer World.

Enjoy the sunny weather outside while you can! I'll see you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.

The Apple iPlop

2010-02-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

The iPad

I don't know how many years it's been since we've had rumors of an Apple tablet. When people saw the Modbook - OS X running on external tablet hardware - I think that really fueled the fire. I never really thought it'd be more than a giant iPhone given how much Apple had invested in the iPhone, and it looks like I was right. Instead of a Mac-based tablet we got an iPad. Engadget did their normal great job of liveblogging the whole event, but it was all about the iPad. It's funny because when you look through the pictures and read about the iPad it actually sounds pretty good. I'm sure seeing Steve Jobs demo it made it even more enticing. However, it's not long afterwards that you start to realize what's wrong with it.

In case you've been living under a rock: the iPad is literally almost just a big iPhone at about 9.5" x 7.5". It can do everything an iPhone can, other than make calls (or send texts), take pictures, or take videos, but it can show you eBooks natively, comes with iWork, and supports painting. Some of the other native apps are a bit varied from what you'd see on the iPhone but just to take advantage of the larger size. I don't think it's bad at anything that it does, but at $500 it's too expensive for the need people don't have for it. It's more or less a toy device for people who already have an iPhone since it's limited by the Apple App Store. You can see some videos of it in action here.

I figured that everyone else would be drooling over it, but not so much. At least not among the tech journalists. I think it's a neat niche product that will sell a few units, but it won't be a smash hit with this many people disappointed almost to the point of being offended by it. It has plenty of things wrong with it. It's locked to the Apple App Store, there's no HDMI, still no support for Flash (supposedly because it's buggy), and you can't really multitask. On the plus side, it's fast and it does has affordable data plans starting at $30 a month. Oddly enough, they partnered with AT&T again for the data service, which may be just that AT&T gave them the best deal. Plus, AT&T has a more widespread WiFi network than Verizon.

I wonder if this will end up being the nail in the coffin for the tablet PC? It's a niche market that has never taken off and maybe it's a product that's cooler to think about than actually develop? Or maybe it's still ahead of its time? If there was an iPod or iPhone of tablets though, I don't think anyone is going to look back on he iPad and consider it that thing. I think if it was $300 cheaper it would be a really awesome device, but at $500 it keeps it out of reach of the average person. We'll have to see when it comes out if people forget its negatives and buy it anyway. Until then, if you watch one parody video you should definitely watch College Humor's.

CES 2010

I missed out on CES being in India, but if you missed out also then it's never too late to catch up. I don't think there was a lot of really impressive stuff, but Robert Scoble put up a pretty impressive roundup of the biggest articles around CES. One of the more high profile announcements was Microsoft's tablet, which was seen as a flop, as well. Microsoft keeps trying to build tablets without carefully thinking about what the user interface should be like.

The coolest thing I saw was the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus coming to Verizon (just a week ago, actually), which feature tethering in addition to more RAM and more on-board flash memory. With the new webOS coming out next month though all Pres and Pixis will get video recording, video editing, and Flash support. This will either support Apple's criticism of Flash or debunk them. The new webOS update is coming later this month.

Apps on the Kindle

Amazon recently announced an SDK for the Kindle to allow for third-party apps on the Kindle. Some people have criticized the Kindle as being a one-trick pony (even though it does do that one trick very well), so this touches on that a bit. I think it'll be neat for really simple applications, like word games and restaurant guides and stuff. It's not the reason you'd get a Kindle, but I'd file it away in the "nice to have" category.

Firefox 3.6

We now have Firefox 3.6, which has HTML 5 support, form auto-completion (like entire forms, not just individual fields), personas, and significant performance improvements. It's still not at Chrome's level yet, but I'm glad that they're at least trying to close the gap.

Ready for 3-D?

Digital Trends put up an article that I wanted to talk about because it's an issue that keeps coming up: do we really need 3-D TVs? Will they sell? Well, as I understand it, it's not very expensive to add to TVs (at least the kind where you need to put on 3-D glasses) but helps drive sales to buying new TVs for folks who don't have high definition yet and just needed that one more reason to upgrade. In reality, it'll still be at least another couple of years before people actually seek out 3-D TVs. The content just isn't there, which I think makes sense. Why invest in 3-D content if no one can view it? That would be like creating a bunch of HD channels when no one has an HD TV. HD TVs didn't make a whole lot of sense when they first came out but it wasn't long before they did become useful. I think we'll see the same with 3-D, we just haven't reached the point yet where it's really desirable.

Quickies

I'm surprisingly exhausted so I need to end this post rather quickly and pass out. Here's some quick last notes.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (still weird to say that) is taking a hard stance for cybersecurity and the free flow of information. This supports Google's decision to stop censoring their Chinese site and tries to combat censorship in other countries as well. It may be a little overreaching, but it is important for the portion that seeks to punish those who do hack the United States military.

Samsung threw its hat in the e-Reader game. It doesn't impress me, but it's just YAER (yet another e-reader).

After a long courtship, Oracle now owns Sun, he creators of Java among other things. In other news, Oracle is slowly taking over the world (it wasn't long ago that they acquired Linksys).

If you want to know how secure the identity of your browser is, this is a really cool tool to find out.

Have a great week, everyone!

My Trip to India

2010-01-29T23:22:00.000-08:00

I plan to have a normal post up early next week, but until then I thought it would be fun to put up some of my favorite pictures from my vacation in India, where I visited Mumbai, Goa, New Delhi, and Agra. This definitely doesn't cover all of my trip and is simply my favorite pictures (not necessarily my favorite memories though), which provides a pretty decent cross-section of the trip. Even though we were slumming it at times, it was definitely a lot of fun. It's definitely an adventure to be out of your comfort zone and experience a different culture. Even though my parents are Indian and some of that culture seems through, it's incredible how different life is there even compared to Indian communities in America. If there was any doubt that I was 100% American, it was definitely eliminated on this trip. I saw some things I always wanted to see, got to spend a lot of time with some great people, and re-connected with family members I hadn't seen in a very long time. Without further ado though, let's get to the pictures (you can click on any of them to enlarge, by the way).

We all flew into Mumbai and on one of our first days we visited Elephanta Island, which is World Heritage Site and was cooler than I thought it would be. However, it was also our first taste with a common theme in India: the people do not take care of the culture like people in other parts of the world do. It's sad to see trash like this at caves that are centuries old:

Also at Elephanta were evil monkeys. This monkey here is holding a bag he attacked a woman to get:

We went to Leopold's in Mummbai and the food was really good. It wasn't the best restaurant we'd eat at, but the butter garlic shrimp was pretty insane. Anyway, they served a pitcher of beer in a very fun way:

In Mumbai we took a short walk on Marine Drive at sunset. It was a very nice view of the city, and the water:

I think the beach we went to that same night was Chowpati - it was closer to the center of town:

This post wouldn't be complete without a nod to Bademiya. It's an absolute must-go if you're visiting Mumbai. It's basically Indian street food done right.

My cousin got married in a nice chapel on a hill in Goa, and the ceremony ended near sunset. It was hard to get a good picture of Goa from this hill because of the way the lighting worked out, but I did the best I could:

The wedding reception had really neat hand-made flowers:

On one of our walks near Colmar beach in Goa we ran into a water buffalo. Apparently he had an owner, who was giving it a bath:

I was surprised I got this shot, but I managed to get it without any people in it. This was at the entrance to the Qutb Minar area in Delhi:

The Qutb Minar was pretty incredible and very photogenic. Here's a few more shots I really liked from it:

Afterward we saw the Lotus Temple, which is an incredible designed Bahai Temple. It was more impressive on the outside than inside, but still tastefully simple and elegant on the inside. The lotus flower is very important in Indian culture and represents purity. The outside structure was really something to wonder at:

We couldn't get too close to the India Gate, but we did our best with as close as we could get:

We saw the President's estate from afar while we were in New Delhi, and I'd like to think I made the best of a foggy shot:

In Agra, I was actually more impressed by the Agra Fort than the Taj Mahal because of the ridiculous detail all around. I mean this right here is only the archway to a room that they used as a temple:

The room where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son:

Of course, you can't go to Agra without seeing the Taj:

One cultural oddity we discovered is that straight men (and women) freely hold hands, and even pinkies, over there. It's not considered gay at all, it's just a sign of close friendship:

We got to visit the grave of Gandhi, which was a really cool setup:

Given how much good food you can get in India, I can't go through this post without showing you one of our favorites. This was a Murg Musallam Lucknowi, and we pretty much scraped the plate clean:

One of the trippier things we saw on our trip was a cowboy themed 50th birthday party in Mumbai. These were strangely hanging all around from the ceiling:

The menu was really cute:

Also pretty trippy in Mumbai was Crawford Market, where you can get whatever your heart desires if you know where to find it and are willing to bargain:

If you're Facebook friends with me then you'll probably see more pictures go online tomorrow. Anyway, hope you enjoyed these shots and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Avatar

2010-01-03T23:50:00.000-08:00

A Sci Fi Classic is Born

I feel kind of silly talking about Avatar 3 weeks after its domestic release. Most of you have seen it by now. There wasn't a lot of tech news over the past couple of weeks though (just a lot of lists of things from the past year or decade or predictions), and I just saw Avatar in 3-D today so it seemed silly to make something else the headline of this post given that nothing that's been happening compares to Avatar. I walked out of the theater over 6 hours ago but it's still on my mind.

In case you haven't seen the more revealing trailers, Avatar's story falls in the family of films like Pocahontas or Tarzan - the clash of two disparate worlds. A human company has arrived at Pandora to mine for a very valuable rock, but there's a village of natives, the Na'vi, who are sitting on a large deposit of this rock. Sam Worthington's character is part of the Avatar program, in which a human's being can be transferred to a genetically engineered Na'vi version of himself, to try to learn from the Na'vi and find a way to get this village to move. I know that sounds like I just spoiled the whole movie for you, but that all probably happened in the first 20 minutes. It's literally nearly 3 hours long, so a lot happens in it. I'd say 4 major acts, in all.

There are some movies that you can look at over the history of film making and know that they are classics for one reason or another. On my short list of classics would be Chinatown, The Godfather, The Matrix, Star Wars: A New Hope, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can say what you will about them, but they're definitely classics. If I had an honorable mentions list it'd probably include Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but neither of those series' starting movie was as important as the movies I just listed (which is obviously not an exhaustive list). I think Avatar is a movie we're going to look back on as a big deal in science fiction films and probably in films, in general.

I heard all this hype about the movie but didn't buy any of it because the movie didn't look interesting to me. I was as big a skeptic as they come and insulted that James Cameron claimed a CG movie was an innovation, even if it was 3-D. Both those technologies had already existed, so what was the big deal? Well, he was right: I don't think I've ever been so impressed with computer graphics before in my life. He was able to map his actors/actress's faces to their computer-generated forms to display real emotions. It's phenomenal. I felt more for these characters than many movies I've seen with live action movies. As for being in 3-D - it looks amazing in 3-D. It's no longer that stupid gimmick at your local science museum from when you were little where at special moments you'd put on these gigantic classes to see something silly coming at you. It's not a gimmick at all in this movie, in fact - it's a part of how you experience the movie. It makes everything very palpable to the point that I don't know how I'd react to some scenes if I saw them in 2-D. The idea of depth of field you get in some scenes is very valuable for conveying a lot of information to you without having to spend a lot of time on it or just use camera tricks. To not see this movie in 3-D is a disservice to yourself since seeing it in 2-D will be easy once it's out on home video. Back to just the visuals though: the level of detail in this movie is awe-inspiring. You definitely willfully would forget that the world you're seeing isn't real and that these creatures are just computer generated - they're that realistic. Part of what makes you believe is that when you see scenes that didn't need to be computer generated - the scenes between just humans - they don't look computer generated at all. If you see this movie for nothing else other than to enjoy it as a visual feast then it was well worth the price of admission.

When it comes to the acting and writing, you start entering somewhat thorny territory. I enjoyed the story more than I thought it would. It was somewhat formulaic but still epic and engaging. It wasn't as predictable as I thought it would be, but I was still happy with the direction it went in. Some of the writing came off to me as a little kludgy and corny. Strangely, I found myself moved even by a couple of the cornier scenes. The acting by most of the leads was strong, especially Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, and Zoe Saldana. Giovanni Ribisi never made sense to me though and Stephen Lang's role as the Colonel felt hollow and stereotypical. I think that's more due to the writing than his portrayal though. I did find myself enjoying Michelle Rodriguez as the same character she always plays, but I have a soft spot for her so I was ok with that. The movie was definitely way too long. I don't know what they could've done about that, but it was quite long. To be honest, I enjoyed it enough that I didn't mind sitting through all of it, but I can see other people losing interest during the slower parts. The set up of the film feels like a bunch of scenes I won't want to watch whenever I get it on Blu-ray, but once it gets going it really does fly by. It reminds me a bit of the end of a Metal Gear Solid game where the ending keeps getting prolonged. I know I'm saying a lot of bad stuff here, but the writing was good overall and I thought the language they created was actually kind of cool. All the Na'vi characters were very cool and well-designed.

The bottom line is that you have to see this movie. There's no reason to not go out and see this movie in 3-D if you're in a place that has it in 3-D. If you do not you will almost certainly regret it. Whether or not you like sci-fi, this is an important movie to see right now in theaters. Even if you don't love it like I did, you will at least appreciate the significance of the technology at play here. Even the people I knew who didn't love it definitely didn't hate it, so I think it's a fair bet that you won't hate it either. It'll almost certainly come out on Blu-ray in 3-D, possibly the first movie to do so, but unless you're rich I'm guessing that you're not getting a 3-D TV set and this is one of the very few movies where 3-D adds to the experience. If you see it in 3-D and hate it then you can yell at me about it later. My overall score for Avatar is an A-, by the way, for those of you keeping score at home.

More on Nexus One

The Nexus One has become the darling of the cell phone world and it hasn't even been formally announced yet! For the record, I don't see what's so special about it. Word is that it'll be $180 subsidized or $530 unsubsidized, and you'll have to get a special T-Mobile plan for it even if you're already on T-Mobile (welcome to the world of many Palm Pre adopters 6 months ago). Engadget somehow managed to get a unit to test out and even put up a video. Aside from being snappier than any other Android phone on the market the only other advantages it seems to ostensibly have are UI tweaks, like "live" (animated) backgrounds and a quick view of all your homescreens. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it'll be a very good phone, but it just seems like another touchscreen Android phone (that I believe is being manufactured by HTC).

Google Voice Going Enterprise

Word on the street is that Google Voice is going to be joining Google's lineup of Google Apps targeted at small businesses (which includes stuff like Google Docs and Gmail with a higher tier of service). Everyone's best guess is that it'll be a virtual phone system, but it would make a lot of sense that this is true since they'll want to continue to milk their bigger products with enterprise licenses.

Apple in Talks For Online TV

The Wall Street Journal made a short note the week before last about talks that Apple and Disney had started regarding a subscription-based online TV service, and Hollywood Reporter put up a very interesting editorial about how this only supplements cable TV instead of killing it. It's just another experiment to diversify an industry that has dropped off a bit in recent years. In my opinion, cable TV is on its way out no matter how you slice it. In 2020 I'm sure we'll be talking about something that put the nail in the coffin of cable TV because it's definitely not serving customers' needs well enough.

DDoS and ICANN

Those two things wouldn't normally be together, but they happen to be at the core of two major security issues.

The first was pretty major: a major DNS provider used in e-Commerce was hit was a DDoS attack two days before Christmas. If your DNS server is down then that means that people can't get to your site unless they know your IP address or have you cached on their router. They were down for an hour and one of the impacted sites was Wal-mart. I can't comment on the impact on Amazon at all since I don't know anything internally, but I am impressed (just from reading that article) that they were able to isolate the issue to just Northern California so quickly. It just shows you how your site doesn't have to have a security flaw for you to get impacted by DDoS.

Here's a very interested story I actually heard about TWiT in passing but never reported on: ICANN has decided to allow non-Latin characters in domain names, which is kind of scary. If you've seen the Russian alphabet, for example, you'll note that some characters are exactly the same as those in the Latin alphabet, like the letters in the word "paypal". Now major domains will have to register their domain in multiple languages to ensure users don't get accidentally lured by a malicious fake version of their site. Be very careful about the links you click to popular sites now - even more so than before. Something like Web of Trust would probably help.

Quickies

TechRepublic has a very exhaustive article on all the differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0 including all the different connector types and the 10x speed difference.

The Kindle became the most gifted product ever on Amazon.com during this past holiday season - take that, Nook!

PC Mag has a good short list of what you need to know about Intel's new line of mobile processors: Arrandale.

Engadget wrote an article that I largely agree with regarding the ten gadgets of the past decade that really defined it, but as you can see from my post last week I definitely didn't agree with everything.

I'm going out of the country this Saturday and don't expect to post again until the week of January 24, at the earliest. I'll try to put up some pictures before then while I'm in India, but no promises. Have a great few weeks, everyone!

The Decade of Technology

2009-12-31T20:13:00.000-08:00

Sorry that I wasn't able to put together a post this week, but between unpacking from last week and getting ready for my trip to India next week, I've been slammed. I have, however, put together a rough draft of a Toastmasters speech I'm going to be delivering next week, so I thought I'd share before I start cutting it down. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

If someone asked you how you’d characterize the 2000s, what would you say? The 60s had civil rights and the Vietnam War, the 70s had disco and Star Wars, and the 80s had terrible hair styles and the birth of yours truly. The hosts of the trivia game I participate in every week claim that it was the worst decade ever, but I disagree. I think the past decade was dominated by rapid advancements in technology. Instead of the flying cars and humanoid robots we were promised we got iPhone apps and Rickrolled (should I play the Rick Roll video on my Pre at this point? Alternate joke: lonelygirl15), but the combination of developments from the decade has created a very different world from the world of 1999. I humbly ask for your ears so I can prove it to you.

In the year 2000, a little product called TiVo hit the market and gradually gained a base of enthusiastic users, including myself as of last year. The importance of TiVo is evident in the fact that it has become synonymous to the term “DVR” to the layman much like soda has become “Coke”. It gave control of the living room to the consumer in a way that VCRs always fell short of and paved the way for other set-top boxes, like Roku, which are what helps the Amazon Video on Demand business grow, among other things. This idea of control versus watching shows on a schedule also helped give way to audio and video podcasts, and we now stand on the brink of a world where traditional television is dying.

That wasn’t the only box connected to people’s TVs in 2000 that has had a long-lasting effect on history as we know it: the PlayStation 2, or PS2, was also released. The PS2 has grown in popularity to the best-selling console of all time and is still selling fairly well. I’d argue that this is the console that really helped bring video games into the mainstream moreso than any console before it and even lured away many PC gamers who traditionally felt that console hardware was somewhat weak. More importantly though, the PS2 was truly the first device to successfully pioneer the idea of a multifunctional home entertainment system since it also played CDs and DVDs.

From the comfort of your living room, let’s move to the palm of your hand with Handspring, which was later acquired by Palm. In 2003, the Palm Treo 600 was released and blew the door off the mobile computing world. Here was a device that had a touchscreen interface, e-mail, Internet, a camera, and third-party applications, all in addition to a great text messaging interface. It wasn’t the first smartphone, but it was the first smartphone to get it right and fostered the first true mobile platform developer community around Palm OS. Without the Treo 600 there would be no iPhone, and without the iPhone there would be no Pre or Droid or any other nifty smartphone you probably have in your pocket right now and use for everything but making calls. The world has moved away from the personal computer being at the center of our technological lives to the smartphone being at the core of it, and you get to tell your grandchildren that you lived through that.

A general theme that has naturally come out of all these advances is that they focus on improving the life of the average person, which actually gives rise to a collection of technologies that has become popularly known as user-generated content. MySpace was probably the first to take off in this category with its launch in 2003 as a social networking site – a place for people to come together and waste copious amounts of time. It was followed up shortly thereafter by Facebook in 2004. Also in 2004 though we saw the birth of Flickr, which popularized the idea of a community around hobbyist photography. Then, in 2005, we were graced with the phenomenon known as YouTube – which started out as the ultimate way to share home movies and has evolved into a major online video content platform that has impacted pop culture in probably the most significant way of anything else in the past 10 years. Last, but not least, in user-generated content: blogging and microblogging has usurped control of the news as we used to know it and broke down the barriers of entry for many people into mass media, such as Perez Hilton.

What’s even crazier than some of the stuff on Perez Hilton’s blog is that I’ve only scratched the surface of the past decade. I haven’t said a peep about the iPod, the widespread adoption of ultracompact digital cameras and camcorders, Windows XP, the rise of torrents, or a number of other equally exciting developments. The next time someone asks you what your take was on the past decade, I hope you’ll hold your head high and tell them that even though you’re disappointed that the robot apocalypse isn’t upon us, you’re pretty stoked that you can see cats swinging from ceiling fans off your mobile phone. Thank you.