Flash on Mobile Phones: Coming Soon?

Mobile Flash in 2010

You know it's a slow news week when the biggest thing to talk about is an article from the BBC regarding Adobe's commitment to have Flash available on "most higher-end handset" by 2010. I feel like I'm back in 2007 when people thought Flash would come out on the iPhone (despite no official promise from Apple, of course). The manufacturers Adobe has on board when they say "most" are Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, Google Android, and Nokia Symbian. If it weren't for a demo they put together of Flash running on the Palm Pre, I honestly wouldn't have believed it. It looks really nice in the demo, but until we get it in our hands there's no telling how well it will actually perform. I hope it's not telling that the demo starts out with full battery life and the phone is in the red by the end of the demo.

There's a reason why Flash Lite was first released: Flash is really heavyweight. Flash is predicated on vector graphics, which are pretty CPU intensive and need solid hardware to perform well. Flash barely works on some modern-day computers without crashing - fitting it on a mobile device with the hardware available today almost seems unreasonable. Is there not a distinct possibility that Flash is something that just can't can't work well on mobile devices? I want Flash on my phone just as much as the next guy - having access to Lala at all times is really attractive. However, the Palm Pre has formidable hardware and struggles at time over even Sprint's strong 3G network to load long pages and can be sluggish in loading pages with heavy Javascript. Will heavy Flash objects lead to terrible battery life and painstaking wait times? Adobe would have you believe that Apple hasn't jumped on their ship because they're being arrogant, but I imagine that Apple has these same concerns. Why is everyone else on board? Because they're all trying to get a leg up on Apple and think that this is the key. To be honest, if Flash can be tweaked to work well on a mobile phone then it just may be a boon to some otherwise less-popular phones. However, the bottom line, in my opinion, is that Flash on mobile phones is a little ahead of its time given our current situation in hardware and wireless connectivity. I'd like to think that it will work seamlessly well someday, but I'm very wary of that day being later this year.

It could be that the way to get around having to have a phone fully support Flash is to be able to simply port your Flash-based applications into native applications for your favorite mobile platform, like you now can for the iPhone. Obviously, for sites with navigation and features entirely based in Flash rather than just games and widgets, this won't work so well, but when you go to a mobile device I think you have to accept some compromises.

Verizon Gears Up For War

Last week was a fairly big week for Verizon. They did multiple things that indicate their dedication to trench warfare against AT&T. The first thing I noticed was during the new House last Monday: a commercial that blatantly pokes fun at the "there's an app for that" commercials from Apple by using the popular perceptions of AT&T's weak 3G network against them. I was so impressed that I got up and clapped for Verizon - it was a pretty stiff jab and is exactly the sort of stuff Verizon needs point out if they're going to stand a chance against AT&T. It may not endear them much to Apple to strike a deal to bring the iPhone to Verizon, but who knows if Apple would even consider such a thing (though they really should).

The other major piece to fighting AT&T is having a solid base of competing handsets, which Verizon just doesn't have right now due to the stifling requirements they tend to impose on hardware manufacturers. There's been a lot of buzz for the HTC Hero, the first Android-based touchscreen smartphone to reach the U.S., and Verizon announced last week that it will be available on their network in November. This got little press coverage, but it's probably going to be a big deal to Verizon loyalists and I'm sure will become Verizon's crowning jewel since the Storm was such a disaster and they've still been mum on details for getting a Palm webOS-based smartphone.



There's even bigger news for Verizon though: they've reached a partnership with Google many months in the making to co-create Android-based handsets with them, which I presume will be Verizon-exclusive. Verizon was so interested in making this deal happen that they even agreed to support Google Voice. I'm not sure if that means anything other than allowing someone to install the Google Voice application on their Android phone (maybe it will pre-loaded?), but this is probably partially Google looking for solace in Verizon since AT&T unexpectedly did not approve Google Voice on the iPhone a while back.

Touchscreen Innovation

Enough about mobile phones, let's generalize a little bit and talk about touchscreens for a minute. Among other things, the support Windows 7 is providing for multi-touch has served as an impetus for advances in touschreens for PCs. I found the demos fascinating and nifty, but I don't think that they're necessarily the future of desktop PCs or even laptops. I've never had the desire to touch my laptop screen rather than use my mouse, or reach across my desk at work to open a program. Where touchscreens really shine are in collaborative environments. There have been plenty of meetings I've been in where I wish I had a touchscreen to draw on and access data on my computer from rather than dealing with projectors on whiteboards. I love whiteboards and can get along just fine without giant touchscreens, mind you, but I can see them enhancing the experience.

Quickies

I'm starting to nod off here so it's time for the remaining tagged stories I have here.

IBM has decided to offer a cloud computing e-mail service to compete with Gmail. They're a little late to the game, but they are still a major player, even if they aren't as sexy as Google.

nVidia has stopped development on future chipsets due to an injunction from Intel caused by a misunderstanding in their chipset agreement.

Microsoft is replacing Microsoft Works with Microsoft Office Starter, which has ad-supported versions of Word and Excel. It's an interesting choice, but it's not like anyone uses Works anymore anyway who's not on a 486.

Kevin Rose (co-founder of Digg) posted his FOWA talk on taking your fledgling site to 1 million users. I consider it an interesting depiction of how different getting eyeballs is now than it was even just 10 years ago.

Digital Trends has a round-up of multi-function devices, and I wanted to plug it because it turned me on to some gadgets I had no idea about - like the new Canon PowerShots that shoot in HD.

Conan hunted down the real Ajay Bhatt (co-creator of USB) as popularized by the recent Intel ads, and did a hilarious interview with him. It's definitely worth watching.

I'm not a violent person, but I still enjoyed this photo gallery from Newsweek of high-tech military weaponry.

If you're a huge nerd like me and tried to figure out how to crack a Master lock when you were bored in middle school, wonder no more.

Get on those rain coats and enjoy the week, everyone!

The Scheduling Dilemma

Makers vs. Managers

I'm extremely short on time this week. The parentals are still in town so that squeezes my free time. It's nice to have them around, but it also throws me off balance so I have less time to blog. Still, I wanted to highlight at least a couple of things from last week.

The best thing I read last week, by far, was an essay from Paul Graham about engineers' schedules compared to managerial schedules. They basically operate on totally different wavelengths. To an engineer: meetings suck. Engineers have set tasks to get done each day and each meeting is an interrupt and considered a time suck because it doesn't immediately drive down towards burning down a task even if it has long-term benefits. The day-to-day for an engineer is valued in the amount of work that's been done towards an eminent deliverable, not the amount of time spent in the office. This isn't to discount how managers work: they operate on schedules. They're tied to their Outlook calendars and consider a good day of work being that they get done in their allotments of time what they meant to get done. An engineer's problems aren't so easy to plan for, all an engineer knows is that a task has to get done and he can come up with a rough estimate for it at best.

It feels like a constant struggle, but the solution is really just for each side to understand one another. Planning out days with meetings is important for engineers, but it's also important for managers to understand that mid-day time is at a premium for engineers because when you're in the zone you don't want to stop for a meeting. It's really all about balance, but it wouldn't be a challenge if the balance was easy to attain.

Security Glitches Galore

There were too many security issues last week for me to not touch on them real quick. The most high-profile one was probably that Network Solution, a company that handles credit card processing for e-Commerce, had a breach that could have exposed up to 600,000 customers. Even though they were in compliance with industry standards, malicious code was somehow snuck into their system. I wish they would share more information to help other companies guard against the attack. Hopefully, the folks maintaining the PCI standards will share their findings from the case with other vendors.

In the White House, information on a Secret Service safe house for the First Family was leaked via a P2P network. It's disturbing that P2P software was allowed on a computer which such sensitive information. I hope that this leads a deeper investigation into all branches of federal government and their security protocols.

Last week was really not a great week for Apple. First, it was discovered that they had sold exploding iPod Nanos. Then, it was uncovered that a series of invisible SMS message could hijack your iPhone. A patch has fortunately been released, but they don't force updates over the air and so any unpatched iPhones are vulnerable to this attack. I find it ironic that they have tight app store policies and yet they're now powerless to definitively stop a potentially catastrophic attack. To be fair: it's unlikely that anyone will try this exploit since it's not the easiest thing in the world to figure out, but never say never.

Google Voice Rejected from iPhone

There was a surprisingly backlash last week from tech journalists regarding Apple's denial of a Google Voice application for the iPhone. The application seemed to enhance the phone's functionality but Apple claimed that it duplicated existing functionality. Supposedly, the trigger was really pulled by the folks at AT&T. I don't think any of us have the full story, but the point is that the process is clearly ridiculous. Google had been already been talking to Apple about this application and I'm sure they're not happy that they wasted all that time and money. In the meantime, an unofficial version is floating around for the Palm Pre. If it becomes official soon, I may have to jump on this Google Voice bandwagon.

Yahoo Gets in Bed With Microsoft

The Microsoft-Yahoo deal has finally come to fruition was an ice cold reception. I have to admit that the terms are pretty strange: Yahoo's official search technology will henceforth be Bing, but Yahoo will be both company's international salesforce for search. Microsoft will additionally get a 10-year exclusive license to all of Yahoo's core search technologies, and Microsoft will compensate Yahoo with revenue sharing (at an initial rate of 88%). I think Microsoft made out like bandits, and, from looking at the stock price, so do investors. It's not necessarily a bad deal for Yahoo, but it definitely throws a wrench in everyone's predictions for Yahoo's future and I think it'll be a couple of months before anyone can forecast if its to Yahoo's benefit or not.

The Small Stuff

Ok, I'm 5 minutes overdue for bed, so time to race through the remaining stories.

AT&T blocked 4chan - pwnage ensued before AT&T un-blocked them.

There's no supported upgrade route from Windows XP to Windows 7 - the only real option is a format before installing 7 (unless you want a virtual machine).

Sprint bought Virgin Mobile. Still, no cares about Sprint. (Just kidding - I do because they have great prices, but their customer service still blows)

YouTube is now allowing in-video ads with FreeWheel.

Barnes and Noble is going to be offering free WiFi nationwide in a "suck it" move to Starbucks's iPhone-only WiFi.

If your Firefox 3.5 is sluggish, try these things.

Unemployment is higher in the Silicon Valley than it was during the dot-com bust, but I think it's just because a larger portion of their economy is tech-oriented now than before and the tech industry is now part of a cross-industry economic event.

I went to a the only American-owned sakery in the US yesterday and loved it so much that I think that sake is my new favorite liquor! To commemorate this, here's a picture of a cool mural I took at the Sake One sakery (by the way, my favorites are their Momokawa Pearl and Moonstone Coconut Lemongrass - gotta love that nigori):

Microsoft Store Details Leaked

The Microsoft Store

You know it's a slow news week when the top story is a leak about the Microsoft store that's been announced but no one cares about. Still, the leak was interesting enough that I thought it was worth talking about.

When most people hear about the Microsoft store, they probably wonder why Microsoft needs their own store. Isn't every electronics store a Microsoft store, after all? Well, the concept is to take the best elements from what you see at the Apple stores and the Sony Style stores. There are, obviously, other brand-oriented electronics stores (like Nokia, for example) that they claim to take ideas from, but I see the most elements from those two. The real goal here is to re-brand Microsoft. In a weird way, it makes a lot of sense. Vista has given Microsoft a huge black eye. I don't think Vista is the worst thing Microsoft has put out (I don't think it's half bad, to be honest), but it's still done a lot of damage to their name. An ad campaign and Windows 7 goes a long way towards fixing that, but a store would help even more. The Apple stores have drummed up a lot of excitement for the iPod and iPhone releases as they provide a more personal link to Apple and its products. With Microsoft, you just have the knowledge of whoever happens to be working in Best Buy the day you walk in. Imagine walking into a Microsoft store and seeing a wall that's really a screen that helps inspire your own decal for your PC, which you can then customize using a Microsoft Surface table computer:



Other big ideas include an Answers Bar (think Apple Genius Bar), in-store demos of products you'd ordinarily only read about (can you imagine testing out Project Natal for yourself?), and inviting product layouts on the tables. In general, they really want a store that's going to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling and give you a direct channel with Microsoft rather than relying on third parties to help you buy or solve problems. The idea is starting to grow on me the more I read about it, but I don't know if they're really going to be able to pull it off. It's definitely going to be hit or miss though. Either they're going to nail it or they're going to crash and burn.

I have much less faith in the Alienware kiosk idea. Why would you want to buy over-priced gaming rigs at a kiosk in Micro Center? I think the Alienware brand is starting to get dated. I feel like the PC gamers have become more sophisticated than the guys at Alienware.

Amazon Buys Zappos

It's official: Amazon.com has acquired Zappos for around $880 million in stock! Given that they were probably the biggest player in online apparel out there, I think it's awesome that they're now part of the Amazon family. They honestly have a lot of ideals that fall in line with Amazon's core values, and so I almost feel silly that I didn't figure out in advance that this was going to happen. It will continue to operate independently under the wing of Amazon and maintain the culture they've cultivated there. Obviously, there will be a lot of sharing of ideas and I'm sure that it will only improve Zappos and Amazon.com.

One thing about this that I thought was really awesome is that Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) prepared a video for the Zappos employees that I totally flipped my lid for. I shared it with as many people as I could because this is the kind of stuff I go to work every day for. These are the values that my manager goes to bat for, and I feel like it's very honest. It's not lip service, it really is reflective of the kinds of things he communicates to us directly and the stuff that propagates down the food chain through our managers. I feel like he's a really down-to-earth kind of guy when he speaks and I enjoy that style.

Oh, and Amazon posted Q2 results. Year-over-year growth was still solid considering the economic situation, but profits were down from last quarter. I don't think that's a big shock though given our normal Q2 results.

HTC Hero

Engadget reviewed the HTC Hero, and they didn't sound too impressed with it. Unless I'm terribly mistaken, this is the first touchscreen Android phone without a keyboard to be sold in America. It has been available under different names around the world, and it doesn't look like they did much to improve it for its stateside release in terms of hardware. It sounds to be, once again, a case of good software ideas put to shame with underpowered hardware. This is become a sad tale for Android. I really am rooting for Android. I'm rooting more for webOS, of course, because I have a Pre, but I think Android has great potential. Looking at the layout of HTC's modifications on the platform to help make it easily personalizable on the Hero via widgets is actually pretty neat, but if the phone runs like a hog then it's all for naught.

iPhone 3GS Encryption Sucks

I was disappointed with how Apple billed the iPhone 3GS to the public. I feel that they were talking about things without the fine print. The feature to locate your phone if lost is cool, but they don't mention that you need a stupid MobileMe account to take advantage of this or that a thief could easily turn this off if your phone isn't password protected. Then there's the encryption targeted at enterprise users, but this is irresponsible. Jailbreaking the phone and getting the raw disk image isn't hard, as videos posted online corroborate. No encryption is perfect, but the encryption in this case is useless (much like in some of the earlier Diebold voting machines). To market your device around a feature that's inherent broken is crazy. Even the remote wipe feature that MobileMe touts can be easily disabled by removing the SIM card. You don't have to implement features like this, but if you do then you should do them properly.

While I'm on security, I really enjoyed this article about research to create self-destructing text. It's basically specially encrypted text that can be easily decrypted via a Firefox plug-in if opened within a certain time frame. I don't know how bullet proof it is right now, but it's a good idea, at the least.

The B&N eBook Store

Here's something you may not think you'd hear this decade: the market for books is really heating up. Barnes and Noble has recognized the threat coming from Sony's eReader and Amazon's Kindle and have decided to team up with Plastic Logic (who have been trying to sell their hardware to suppliers for a while now, but I haven't talked about it because I never found these stories very interesting) to sell eBooks. They're not going to sell exclusively with the Plastic Logic reader, and it's not even clear if they'll sell the readers (though they probably will), but the point is that they're jumping into the market on the bandwagon of a nascent competitor. From what I've read about the reader though, I'm not impressed. It's cool that it'll support a wide range of formats, but you won't be able to buy on the reader itself, and the pricing isn't clear yet.

webOS 1.1 is Out

The long awaited 1.1 update of webOS for the Palm Pre was released last week, and it came with a wide variety of fixes and upgrades. It didn't hit everyone's wish lists, but it covered important points like full implementation of the Exchange Active Sync protocols, an improved Javascript engine for the browser, performance improvements throughout the OS, fixing the broken sync with iTunes, and the beautiful font seen elsewhere in the OS is now baked right into web pages as they're rendered.

Quick Notes

As always: it's past my bed time so here are some one-liners.

Cisco demoed their vision for the future of virtual meetings with holographic-like displays, and it looks awesome.

You can now search for stuff in Google Maps while keeping the route you requested directions for.

Star Trek is finally available for pre-order at Amazon on Blu-ray and DVD. Despite all Blu-ray bashing in the past couple of months in mass media, the top selling movie on Amazon is Watchmen on Blu-ray and even Star Trek is at #6 on Blu-ray while at #7 on DVD. Anyway, the official site has an extended trailer for the DVD and Blu-ray editions, though it looks like the Blu-ray actually has more extras include a 360 interactive view of the starship. I pre-ordered my copy and am really stoked for November 17!

Yahoo is preparing to release a re-vamp of their UI soon, and you can check it out straight from the home page.

This is a great round-up of alternative mp3 players to the iPod that are actually pretty solid. The Archos is definitely a highly respected line, and the Zune has been gaining credibility over the years, as well.

Lastly, I was on ESPN! Check me out around 0:20 in this clip in the upper right corner.

I haven't decided if I'll put up an essay next week or a normal post, but I'll figure something out. Have a great week, everyone!

Office 2010 Goes Online

Office 2010 Technical Preview

I don't know what was going on last week that there was so little news, but the most interesting thing to come out was truly that they new Office is now available for testing. Why is that interesting? Because I don't think I've talked about the fact that Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and probably other applications within the Office suite will be available online to use to store, share, and edit documents. Google was the first major player to the collaborative document editing game, but Microsoft is the one with the the enterprise standard software spanning more than two decades of development. Google Docs and its friends are great for students and just normal folk, but has not been considered secure enough for a lot of big companies and they haven't had a whole lot of success selling it to enterprises. Given that online functionality will be free to most companies though when they upgrade to Office 2010, Microsoft will have no problem. The fact that Google Docs exists and people use it at all shows that Microsoft has fallen behind and has gotten an appropriate nudge from Google. Could Office 2010 edge out Google from the market? Probably not. It has gotten a pretty good reputation in education and some small businesses, but they will probably be marginalized to the fringes of the market unless they can somehow 1up the Office web application. I'm not saying that's possible, but from what I've heard from insiders, this is going to be a great suite of web applications.

What else is new in Office 2010? Not a whole lot. It's really just an incremental improvement over Office 12. To be honest, I'd be happy with bug fixes, performance tweaks, and an overhaul of Outlook. I love Office 12 - except for Outlook. Of course, Outlook is going to just get small improvements, as well, since fixing how heavy it is would make too much sense. What I find coolest is that OneNote will integrate online. If I can get OneNote on my Pre, I'll be happy camper because I actually prefer the OneNote UI to Evernote, but I love the portability of Evernote. It just ties back into what I was saying with Google: shouldn't they have already done the online syncing like Evernote is? It feels like Office 2010 is a response to the market more than anything else. While this disappoints me because it almost seems like everyone else is coming up with the ideas for them, I feel like Office is a market leader for a reason and this new release is likely to keep it in the lead. I hope that they take some more time for the next Office though and really give us something to provide some innovation. With all the web integration possible, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with ideas.

Azure Takes On AWS

Let's continue on with Microsoft for a bit more. With Azure, Microsoft has its crosshairs on products like Amazon Web Services that provide the digital raw materials that developers need to build their web applications. They've finally announced pricing, and it's not quite as competitive to AWS as I would've thought. I'm a little surprised that they're entering this market so late because it's definitely not an easy market to join unless you have a really big advantage, but I'm not seeing it. It sounds like their pricing structure will be more complicated than what AWS charges, but I've heard that they may be differentiating in offering more advanced services than what Amazon provides, which is where you're paying a premium. I'm sure that more details are forthcoming, and it'll be interesting to see who gets on board with them.

Microsoft Streams Music

I have one last piece of Microsoft news for you. They're planning to launch a streaming music service this month similar to Spotify that would let you stream and share any music you'd like if you can put up with some ads, or pay a monthly fee to remove the ads. I think it's going to be a huge challenge for them since music is always hairy to work with, but it could end up being awesome. A free music service that works on your computer, Xbox 360, and Zune could be very appealing. If they allow it to be on mobile devices other than the Zune, I think that they can really do well with it - but I don't imagine that they'd have it available on other platforms initially. The Internet radio market is still very experimental and while this sounds like it's freer than an Internet radio station I hope that they have the resources to create a business model for it that works well.

Nokia Gets No Love

I've recently made reference on more than one occasion that Nokia is actually the worldwide leader in cell phones even though I'm sure that if you polled people who have or know about the iPhone they'd think that Apple is king of smartphones. So why don't you see more Americans get as excited about a Nokia phone as a Blackberry or an iPhone? I think at the head of it is really their poor carrier relationships. Who's going to buy a $700 N97 (no carrier will subsidize it) when you can get a $200 iPhone or Pre (or a Blackberry for even less)? The next biggest thing has to be their software. Whenever I've shopped for a phone I've never been impressed by a Symbian phone. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if more people in the U.S. have heard of webOS than Symbian. Despite how long its been around, they haven't attracted a lot of great applications. Without that, how can they have a long tailed future? I think that there's more room for a pendulum swing in cell phones, especially smart phones, than most other markets. I think it's very possible for Nokia to fall off their throne in the next 5 years if competitors get more aggressive. With Android and the iPhone pushing harder worldwide, Nokia definitely has cause for concern. It's only a matter of time before Palm gets its worldwide strategy in place, as well. I think that their inability to attract American consumers is a leading indicator that they're not going to be able to attract international excitement for their products either.



Facebook Pimps Your Photos

Facebook has really been making it too easy to take jabs at them. The Download Squad blog called them out for farming out users' pictures in advertisements served to their friends. While it could be disabled, it was initially turned on by default. This is pretty slimy, in my opinion. I don't see any scenario in which it's ok to use people's likenesses to sell products without compensating them. If stuff like this continues to crop up, I definitely see users wondering how they can trust Facebook.

TechCrunch Uses Leaked Twitter Documents

I don't really have a lot to say about this story, but it's important enough to bring up for you to think about it. An undisclosed hacker managed to gain access to the account for a Twitter employee and leaked some private documents. Techcrunch bought access to these documents and is prepared to use information from them while Twitter feels that they're acting on stolen trade secrets. I'm rooting for Twitter here: even if TechCrunch didn't steal the documents, it's unethical as a journalist to spread stolen information in the face of being asked not to. They're not really journalists though, they're bloggers. Their audience isn't as big as many newspapers, so do they count? Since mass media sometimes gets tipped off from these blogs, I think so. What do you think?

Final Stories

Once again, I'm out of time. Let's go for a lightning round!

The DDoS attacks I mentioned last week against the US and South Korea may have just been the work of some hooligans inn Asia since the attack seemed rather unsophisticated.

Microsoft reportedly was called by someone at Apple who asked them to stop running the laptop hunters ad campaign. Much to Apple's chagrin, the ads are, in fact, working.

ShareTV has recently grown quite a bit and aggregated a lot more TV shows. This is a great site to use as your digital television portal.

Amazon launched a store for outdoor recreation!

If you've ever seen a piece of computer circuitry and stared at it in wonder, now you can look up what it is.

Mashable posted a bunch of inspirational design videos from Vimeo that I think are really neat. It's worth checking out for fun (especially Muto).

Popular Mechanics has a cool story about the next evolution of touchscreen technology being buttons that can pop-up when necessary. Very cool idea for dealing with touch keyboards.

Apple has blocked the Pre from syncing with iTunes in the latest update, but that's been overshadowed by the release of the Mojo SDK! I still need to play with it (was having install issues tonight).

I don't know if I'll have a post up next Sunday since my parents are going to be here, but I've been working on an essay that I'll be putting up either next Sunday or the following Sunday. Have a great week!

Microsoft Takes on Google...For Real This Time

Bing

Before I start, does "Bing" really give you that positive a connotation? Yeah, it was the last name of a character on "Friends", but that doesn't amount to much. Anyway, Microsoft has had a hell of a time trying to compete with Google's chokehold on search with Live Search and MSN, so they decided to try out something new in Bing. They're investing $80 to $100 million in advertising on it to try to make people aware that the search experience they have right now could be so much better with Bing. It actually isn't too bad of an idea since people really use Google for the brand name - it's not like they compared it to many competitors.

The reviews of Bing so far aren't that bad. It's a clean interface and it gives you a sidebar with smart spinoff searches that try to get at what you want (for example, type in a TV show and one of the things on the left sidebar will be "Theme Song"). The results aren't always on par or better than Google, but the search experience is definitely decidedly different. It tries to encourage you to help it refine down to what you're really looking for and has customized ways to do this for different subjects. Try a type of food and it'll have a Local tab that will let you filter by atmosphere, price range, etc. Try videos and you can play videos on rollover rather than having to open them in new tabs or hit "play" and wait for them to load. The little things like that are kind of neat.

The reason I decided to highlight Bing today, besides the fact that it was a slow news week, is that it's just funny that Google has been a big deal for over 10 years now and Microsoft still hasn't been able to put a sizable enough dent in its market share. To be fair, neither has Yahoo. I think search is a fascinating market because people are so complacent - they like Google only because it's familiar and simple. I don't know whether or not Bing stands a chance or not, but I think that a lot of advertising is definitely going to be necessary for it to get off the ground. If Microsoft were really smart though, they'd be going after mobile phones. Put out strong search applications and appliances for major cell phone releases soon after they come out and try pushing that. Mobile search is the one place people are going to be more picky because time is important to them. If you're searching for a restaurant nearby and your friend is driving, time is super important. Google has some great mobile applications, but I think it's somewhere that Bing can get their foot in the door and make a name for themselves if they can really answer users' mobile needs.

Microsoft's Netbook Limitation

This is another quirky Microsoft story: there are rumors that they're planning on limiting the cheap version of Windows 7 to laptops no bigger than 10.2 inches. This could, in effect, limit the largest netbook you'll see to 10.2 inches since any bigger and the manufacturer will not be able to keep a competitive price due to the Windows 7 licensing fees. Of course, they could sell Linux netbooks in any size, but people are going to be more interested in a familiar OS, and Apple hasn't shown an interest in netbooks because they think it's beneath them (seriously, they think they're too high-end to sell netbooks, I don't have the time to hunt for the article but they've said something to this effect), so that just leaves Windows machines.

Is this fair? To be honest, I think so. The fact that they're selling a cheaper version of Windows 7 to netbooks is already sort of a concession, and they have to protect themselves against the slippery slope of normal laptops being called netbooks and manufacturers shaking them down for lower prices. Also, any bigger than 10.2" seriously is a laptop. I have co-workers with 13" laptops and they don't call them netbooks because they're not designed for people with child-like hands (I kid, I kid - netbook keyboards aren't that bad).

Zune HD Announced

Here's a story I'm excited about: Microsoft finally validated all the rumors about the Zune HD by just coming clean about it. It looks pretty sexy, in my opinion:



It's a full-on touch screen mp3 player (like the iPod Touch) with a few important additions. It has an OLED screen, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that OLED screens are beyond gorgeous. It's shocking how great they look even in small forms. It allows you to output via HDMI, which is a very forward-thinking step with digital distribution growing in the HD realm since you can't otherwise carry digital copies of movies easily to friends' places. Playing on the HD name, it will also broadcast HD radio, which usually carries more artist and track information than you can get from terrestrial radio and is, supposedly, much better quality. I don't think it ever really caught on, but it's a neat little feature to throw in there. It's also WiFi enabled with a full web browser.

As you can tell, it's definitely a direct competitor with the iPod Touch much like the previous Zune was to the scroll wheel iPods. I really want this device to not fail miserably, because I like seeing companies try to innovate and compete with Apple. I don't think this is the most innovative thing Microsoft could've come up with, but it does look slick, and I'm really interested to see how it'll integrate with Xbox Live. If they handle it well, it could be a killer app feature. Microsoft has no handheld gaming system, so maybe they want this to be it? They'll be revealing more on the Xbox Live integration this week at E3, so I'm sure I'll have more to talk about next Sunday.

Pre Syncs with iTunes, and More Randomness

Yep, Jon Rubinstein announced last week at All Things D (a conference put on by the Wall Street Journal) that the Pre can sync with iTunes. I wonder how many rules they broke by doing that. There's no way that's sanctioned by Apple, and Rubinstein was SVP of the iPod division until he left in 2006 (and subsequently joined Palm's Board in 2007), so am I crazy or can't Apple just sue him for sharing trade secrets? I'm sure his NDA only lasted for like 18 months (which makes me wonder how he was allowed to work for Palm since he definitely knew about the iPhone before he left Apple), but it's still secret information as far as being able to have a third party device identifies as an iPod by iTunes. In any case, you can sync your Pre to iTunes until Tim Cook leads Apple's legal team to Palm's doorstep with pitchforks and torches.

The real shocker (for some, at least) is that Verizon claims they'll be getting the Pre in January. They are a CDMA network so it's not a huge technological leap. I think we already heard that Sprint's exclusivity would be short-lived, but I wonder how much of a boost the Pre will give them if people on competing carriers will be getting webOS phones (AT&T and Verizon, at least) before this time next year. Anyway, Verizon will also be getting the Storm 2 in January, which is supposed to be a huge improvement over the Storm, but I don't think improving over a terrible phone is a huge challenge. I've messed with a Storm and the haptic feedback thing doesn't help at all with typing.

Lastly, Gizmodo has a pretty comprehensive guide to everything you could want to know about the Pre if you know nothing about it right now (or not enough, in your own opinion). If you want to learn even more though, the manual and some other documents from the upcoming launch were leaked in the middle of last week.

H-1Bs Outnumber the Unemployed

The issue of immigrant workers is a very sensitive subject for a number of reasons. Adding fuel to the fire though is the recent revelation that there are more H-1B workers in the U.S. tech industry than unemployed Americans in tech. Apparently, the government has been going after companies with fraudulent visas. While I agree that it's unfair for subpar foreign talent to displace great domestic talent, but I don't think that's happening. I don't think there's anything wrong with highly qualified and motivated foreigners displacing lazy, stupid programmers. It's going to hurt us in the long-run to protect employees who suck at their job and would be better off in another industry. It's a delicate balance though because there has to be a cap, especially in education if talented Americans are getting sidled out of top programs by foreign workers. We have to give the people here who want to excel a fair shake, and doing that is really hard. It's not fair to read a headline that there are more H-1Bs than unemployed techies and become outraged, because companies shouldn't fire good employees because they're from abroad.

Identity Theft and Spam

I don't want to go too in depth on this because I could easily put together a entire post on identity theft, but I definitely wanted to plug New Scientist's story on the subject because it's a really well-written and exhaustive explanation of the dire situation we find ourselves in. "Identities", which are really just someone's credit card numbers, social security number, date of birth, and mother's maiden name (to name a few) are traded readily online at fairly affordable prices. What really sucks is that even if you avoid phishing and social engineering attacks and all that stuff, the people you trust when you do business could be incompetent and lose your data. Thinking that you're going to go cash only and abandon plastic is not the safety net people think it is, it only is likely to make you less careful in situations where a credit card may make you more paranoid (in a good way).

What can you do about it? To start with, here are some Firefox extensions that would really help your cause. If you're not using Firefox 3, then that's your first problem. Those extensions are seriously awesome though and cover some of the most common attacks you could run into, like forms that go to malicious third parties, hidden Javascript code that could re-configure your router, password sniffing and cracking, and hidden trackers.

Semantic revealed last week that 90% of all e-mail sent over corporate networks is spam. 58% of this spam is coming from botnets, which means that there are a lot of people sending spam who don't even know it. It's a dismal statistic, but it's pretty rare to see good news in security, to be perfectly honest.

Hulu on Your Desktop

Hulu has released a desktop application to better jive with home media PCs and laptops with remote controls in the side of them. In other words, it's what Joost should've been if it had better content and was less CPU and memory intensive.

I've been so busy with work that I didn't get a chance to test drive it, but Ars Technica has some great thoughts on it and I always trust their reviews. It's interesting that they don't want to be a part of Boxee and yet the content providers are ok with Hulu's own homegrown desktop application. This is a big step towards putting a nail in the coffin of cable television as we know it (i.e. watching shows at a pre-determined time) and helping coax Hulu into the mainstream.

Final Notes

Ok, I've really got to get a good night's rest tonight so it's time to wrap up with some quickies.

Google Chrome now has extensions! It's long overdue and small in selection, but Google is aiming to make them easy to develop to help ramp up in comparison to Firefox's expansive add-on library.

Google also announced a new online collaboration tool called Wave (in beta, as always) at their I/O conference, and it seems like the next evolution of Google Docs.

Dell's earnings dropped 63% last quarter, but they're expecting a solid rise this winter due to Windows 7. It looks like until then they'll have to try to dial down their cost structure.

If your computer has become considerably sluggish, then this article has your name written all over it. It's a pretty solid article of easy tweaks to make your computer perform better (analogous to a tune-up for your car).

Have a great week everyone! I know it's going to be very long for me as I await the Palm Pre, and hopefully I'll be able to actually get one.

Why the Kindle is the Future of Reading

My Two Cents on the Kindle

Disclaimer: I have no non-public information on the Kindle. I don't even work in the same building as those folks. The following are just my own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Amazon.com or any of its employees or partners.

I was walking home from the gym a few days ago and was listening to Buzz Out Loud bash the Kindle DX when I reached an epiphany that may be obvious but I wanted to share it anyway: the Kindle is ridiculously forward thinking and will most likely be the future of reading.

I've read several articles and heard multiple podcasts bash the Kindle, and I'm pretty tired of it. I don't own a Kindle, but playing with it for a bit was enough to sell me on it. The first thing wrong with all these "pundits" writing off the Kindle is that they're often not the target audience. Not everyone loves reading, and that's ok. The Kindle is designed for people who love reading. It's not designed to be a super sexy gadget like the iPhone or the Pre or anything like that - it's meant to be as functional as possible. I feel like we've entered a world of gadgets where style taking precedence over substance helps sales, and it sells some reporters on the devices, as well. I don't want to discredit all people that review gadgets, that's just an observation I've made about some of them. I haven't heard anyone who has a Kindle and enjoys reading tell me that they hate it or regretted getting it.

The real point I want to make is that a lot of the best technology starts out unpopular. Do you know why MSN was so late to the game with it's Internet services and web portal? Because Microsoft thought that the Internet was a fad (it's pretty hard to find a citation for this, but he definitely said something to the effect of "The Internet? We're not interested in it"). When most people hear MSN now they probably think of MSNBC, whereas the ISP didn't do all that hot (competing with the likes of AOL and Earthlink) and the web portal never caught up to Yahoo, which never caught up to Google, and the rest is history (although MSN is still around). Nowadays, the odds are slim to none that you'll go through your day without directly or indirectly interacting with the Internet. Our lives basically revolve around it, but I'll get back to this point.

There are a couple of other great examples of technologies that people mocked early on. When Jeff Bezos invented e-Commerce in 1994 with Amazon.com, people thought he was out of his mind. Why would people want to buy stuff online they could drive to their store and get instantly? Why would you buy a book that you can't flip through in a bookstore? And yet, here Amazon stands as a formidable force in retail in the U.S. with a growing presence across the world. The people who doubted Jeff Bezos weren't stupid, they just weren't thinking ahead that far. The DVD format was seen as ridiculous since it required a new player and the discs cost more without a very big jump in quality as far as most people were concerned, and yet now almost every house has a DVD player. Heck, just a couple of years ago pundits thought that the iPhone was prohibitively expensive and no one would want to pay that much money for a smartphone without a keyboard. I think we all know what happened there.

The lesson to be learned here is that you can't believe what you hear in mainstream media - take it with a grain of salt. The common thread is that the doubters weren't forward thinking. The iPhone provided so much value and gave people such a rich experience that price just wasn't an issue to them. The Kindle is expensive, and yet people are still buying them. I don't need top secret information to know that - I see them outside on the bus and at the gym. Amazon sold out of them this past winter. If you don't want to believe that, you have to believe that 35% of sales on all books that have a Kindle edition are that Kindle edition. Books are the bedrock that Amazon.com was founded on, so 35% of a book's sales being for the Kindle is a pretty big deal. As much as all these journalists want to naysay, people aren't being deterred.



So why are people paying so much for a device that serves a single function? In a way, I think it serves a lot of functions. Not to sound like a broken record, but we live in an information society. Think about that for a second. The amount of knowledge we have available instantly at our fingertips has grown dramatically in the past couple of decades. I'd posit that people are actually becoming smarter because even though they haven't to remember less stuff overall since they can always just look it up, they also look up and learn more stuff because they can. We know names of random actors and actresses because of IMDB. Small underground artists are building worldwide fanbases through digital distribution. Let's face it, books aren't as portable as we'd like to think. If we want to read multiple books, we have to carry them in a bag. If you're a student - this really sucks (especially math and science texts). The Kindle not only lets you carry all these books in a thin, easy to carry package, but you can get leverage the Internet to get books directly onto it. Past that though, you can highlight and make notes without damaging the book, and you have more room than just the margins. Plus, you can define words you don't know on the fly (context clues don't always work), and having that kind of power for younger students can really encourage their thirst for knowledge.

If I'm not convincing you by now then maybe I'm just not explaining it right, but the Kindle is an improvement on a dying technology. People just don't have a whole lot of free time anymore. We wait around a lot, or ride public transit, or do other random things where we happened to be free, but it's not really free time. That's why carry mp3 players to fill that time. Books often lose the battle for our time because they're just not as convenient as carrying your iPod. If a Kindle is portable enough to carry to a gym, then it's portable enough for most anything. I fully understand that people love the feel of books, but people love the feel of CDs and yet they're still around while mp3s are popular. Why can't the same be true for books? I think books will die off in favor of digital copies some day, but that's a really long time from now. The Kindle may be a bit ahead of its time, but it's going to take a while for it to really catch on because an e-Reader is such a radical concept. Amazon has just done well because they have the online book store with access from where ever.

As for price: the first iPod and iPhone were expensive at first, too, but the price went down. Same with HD TVs, DVD players, personal computers, laptops, etc. It's going to be a while. For college students, the cost of a Kindle DX amortized over 4 years would easily be cheaper than real textbooks if the cost of these books were maybe half (even without the ability to re-sell books). For grade schools this could put a huge dent in their budgets if they could give each kid one of these and pay less for books (plus the drop in administrative costs if they could be managed remotely). The possibilities for education are really endless, and it's really a lot easier to study if your books are always with you in a portable device. I know I would've gotten more done.

Ok, I think I've gone on long enough. I hope that thoughts haven't been all that scattered, I just feel like I need to stand up for the Kindle because I honestly believe in it. I think that Amazon has been really smart so far in its diversification of not only its stores and acquisitions but also AWS, and I think that the Kindle is another key cog in its future (much like when Apple jumped into mp3 players and cell phones, which ended up re-vitalizing the Mac). The Kindle vision is "every book, every made, in any language, available in under 60 seconds". That vision is immensely inspiring. It feels pie in the sky, but it is possible. I think that alone should be enough to sell people on the idea of the Kindle being the future of reading. The idea of having the entirety of human knowledge available at your fingertips in under a minute is priceless. The Internet has taken us on that path, but it doesn't have the full text of every book every made in any language. The point I really want to get across is that we're at the forefront of an entirely new industry, much like digital music when Napster got big or the beginning of the end of broadcast television as we know it when Hulu came out - savor the moment. Don't buy into the hype and don't buy into the cynics, just be reasonable. That's all I ask.

Microsoft vs. Apple Ads

The advertising war between Microsoft and Apple is alive as well. It was pretty lopsided for a while, probably partially because Microsoft didn't want to seem like it was bullying an underdog, but Apple pushed too hard and woke the sleeping giant. The latest spin out of Redmond (aside from the commercials where people buy cheap PCs) is that it costs $30,000 to fill an iPod. The reason they can get around this with the Zune is that it's subscription-based, which has the advantage that for $15 a month you get all you can eat music plus you can keep 10 of them each month. Anyway, I still thought that this was kind of a stupid tactic from Microsoft, but meanwhile Apple came up with an attack that you couldn't get a PC without the stuff people hate about computers.

Which is a more ridiculous ad? The answer is that they're equally crazy. You may think that the Zune one is more dumb because most people already have a library of CDs and music to fill up their mp3 player with, but the Mac ad doesn't make any sense. Macs aren't as stable as people think they are - if you use certain software you will see crashes. I used iMovie for few months on a Mac Pro last spring and it crashed almost each time I used it. There are definitely security vulnerabilities for Macs, too, and it totally ignores the inflated price of a Mac. I'm not saying that Macs are bad computers, but these ads are slinging mud. They know that people won't fact check, but they're not quite slanderous so Apple can get away with them. My point is simply that when Microsoft comes up with ads like this Zune one, just remember who cast the first stone.

I have one more thing to slip in here: Google started airing a Google Chrome ad created internally by Google Japan just for fun. It's interesting that they care this much about Chrome (what's their master plan?) and that they're using a competing advertising venue to sell themselves.

Facebook's Funny Money

Ok so they don't really call it funny money, but I still can. Facebook is toying with an idea that's certainly not inventive, but it could definitely help them get on the track of a successful business model. They're testing a payments system with developers where virtual money can be used between applications to buy and sell virtual (or I suppose even physical) goods and services. It would make buying stuff easier and safer (like getting a wristband of money at a water park), and Facebook taking a cut of the transactions could help them replace/supplement their oft controversial advertising model with something less obtrusive. I don't really know if it'll work because I don't know if people will really trust Facebook with their money or want to buy what third party developers offer, but I'm definitely anxious to see what happens.

Meanwhile, their employees are going in the opposite direction: having imaginary money turned into real cash. Facebook has sought funding (to the tune of $150 million) from private investors to buy back their employees' stock to keep loyal employees around who have been chomping at the bit for a cut of the profits they were promised but haven't come to fruition quite yet. Won't people leave if they get rich off their stock? More importantly though, isn't this a dangerous financial decision? $150 million seems like a lot of money to bet if they don't come up with a good business model before their star burns out. I hope they know what they're doing.

Final Notes

Aside from being tired from today (didn't sleep enough last night), I think you're tired of reading this post by now (assuming that anyone is actually still reading this). Let me link you to a few other interesting tidbits before I send you on your merry way:

Google has launched a search options feature to try to get themselves closer to real-time search. They're actually pretty nifty.

The CEO of Sony Pictures admitted that he doesn't see anything good as having come from the Internet. You don't have to scroll up very far to get my opinions on the glory of the Internet, but it goes to show how backwards the movie industry can be and why licensing for TV shows and movies and their related properties is so wacky. If their CEO is living in the past then how can they hope to have a future?

The judge in the Pirate Bay trial has been under fire recently for having been involved in a pro-copyright association in Sweden (which he claims didn't bias him), but now they're starting to discover that his appointment may not have been random (as is supposed to be the case in Sweden). The plot thickens! Will it be called a mistrial?

Smashing Magazine has a really well-written article on how to optimize your website's conversion rates with usable designs, and it's full of pretty pictures. I love the concepts they point out here, and I think it's worth a read if you're interested in usability at all.

Coldplay is releasing their live album for free. Enjoy.

I hope you all have a great week! I think I'm going to spend my nights trying to learn how to play this.

The Weather is Nice Outside

Summer Came Early?

Winter hasn't really ended yet in Seattle - evident in that it was snowing last Thursday. I'm going to use today's incredible weather as my excuse for not reviewing the Slumdog Millionaire Blu-ray. I do have it though (Amazon's magical ways somehow got it to me the day after release). For now, I'll say that I was disappointed with the Blu-ray but I'm still happy with it overall. I just don't have to time right now to go into details so you'll have to come back next week to learn more!

The time I would've spent going through all the special features and writing the review went instead to walking around outside today and putting together this short video from it, which is half just huge flowers and half cityscape (please click on the 'HD' in the lower right corner once it starts playing to see it in HD, or just click through to the YouTube page and watch it in HD there):



It was shocking how perfect the weather was. I used to consider T-shirt and shorts weather to be weather where you'd sweat too much wearing pants and shoes, but it didn't feel too warm at all out. It's funny how not only was the market packed but there were even more cars than usual going through Belltown. Not to get too religious here and divert from my typical tech focus, but it's really humbling to be one person witnessing such beauty from a higher being. I didn't think I'd enjoy it so much since I couldn't find anyone else free to go with me to the BBQ competition in the market, but it was nice and relaxing. I'm not even usually a big flower guy but when you see so many huge, colorful flowers it's hard to not stop and notice them.

Time Warner Screws 4 More Cities

Most of the nation already has a well-developed hatred for Comcast, and the rest turn their anger towards Time Warner Cable - the other massive cable monopoly. A while ago they tried out a tiered Internet program that charged customers by how much bandwidth they used, and now they're rolling it out to Austin (*tear*), San Antonio, Rochester, and Greensboro. I suppose this is better than it going out to all their markets, but it's not a good sign if they're pleased enough to expand this trainwreck. Having to pay $55 a month for 40 GB of bandwidth is an enormous price jump, especially in a place like Austin or San Antonio where salaries aren't as high as other parts of the nation to cover such a price gouge and may have people turning to DSL instead. I can see it doing one or more of a few things. People could cut out cable TV to get a beefier Internet plan, especially families with teenage kids and tech geeks. People could use the Internet less and less for rich content ending in a big lose for online on demand video services, Netflix streaming, YouTube and Hulu, and any other beefy sites. People may look into alternatives like WiMax (or, as I mentioned earlier, DSL).

People are definitely getting pissed about it whom are soon to be affected. If enough people get through to local government and complain to Time Warner, it's possible that they can nip this in the bud. It's sad that we have to encourage grassroots movements to get companies that provide major utilities to not spit in the faces of their customers. I don't know what's more reviling to me, their discouragement of the expansion of the Internet in our homes or the fact that they're trying to profit off the naivete of the average person who has no clue that Internet infrastructure costs are only going down with time and extra bandwidth doesn't really cost them extra money. If they want to start their lowest bandwidth plan for $30 at 100 GB and then charge $50 for like 250 GB, that I can understand. The rates they're intending to charge though are basically highway robbery. If you're going to be affected by these changes, please fight back. You're not just fighting back for yourself, but the other cities they may expand to if you accept it willingly.

YouTube's Upcoming Re-design

I don't like to usually talk about features and re-designs that haven't happened yet, but I just found it interesting that YouTube is planning on changing its navigation to focus on "Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos". What does this mean? It looks like they're feeling the pinch of not having had a lot of success with monetizing their content. While one side of that coin is keeping their number of unique visitors strong and engaged the other side is attracting advertisers to trust them and to display their advertisement with the desired brand image. With the first three tabs clearly delineated as premium outside content, advertisers may feel more secure not being mixed in with people hurting themselves and strange clips from other countries.

In my opinion, this is an extremely risky move for YouTube. I don't see it ending well, but it's really hard to predict how it'll turn out. I don't want to say it's a stupid movie because Hulu being locked up (to the point of the HTML being encrypted) has really painted them in a corner. Their PR has been really terrible since they denied Boxee the ability to stream their content, and plus there's the fact that they only have the last few episodes of any given shows. I don't know if YouTube can strike up much better deals than Hulu since Hulu is backed by NBC Universal, but they may be able to differentiate enough from Hulu while keeping a good reputation with advertisers to attract more content, money, and happy customers. I think this is the right time for YouTube to give it a try, but I definitely worry for them. They were built on user-generated content, and branching out in the online world is never as easy as it looks.

Microsoft's Brand Image

Typically, I'm not a fan of John C. Dvorak's columns. I feel like he often says crazy stuff just to get people talking about something. I guess that's not so bad, but I feel like I can't believe him half the time. Anyway, I still think he's a smart guy and occasionally agree with him, like regarding his article about Microsoft's brand image getting worse. When Songsmith came out, everyone was railing on how stupid it was. If it was some Silicon Valley startup though, you know everyone would be praising its creativity. Let's take a bad Microsoft product: Internet Explorer. If Safari was the same thing as Internet Explorer, Mac users would still claim that it's the best browser out there because they think it came from Apple. It's amazing how many ridiculous features Apple releases for the iPod and iPhone that no one uses and yet everyone seems to love. Who really uses cover flow? Come on.

I feel bad for Microsoft. They're really trying hard to improve their image, and I think Windows 7 is a big step in the right direction. I never thought before about how much the company who makes a product matters in its reception and popularity. I guess it's always existed in things like cereal and detergent and products like that, but I never thought about it really in software.

Ton of Quickies

Ok, I'm seriously about to cough up a lung here, so I need to wrap this up and get to bed.

Wikileaks put up some fun facts about Western countries that are censoring their people, like that Norway, Denmark, and Finland have an unregulated censorship agreement with their ISPs.

PC World has a really great article about old pieces of technology that used to be very popular but are now almost never heard of. A lot of them are actually still available, it turns out. Like did you know that MiniDisc got upgraded to Hi-MD? Or that Iomega still sells Zip disks? I thought it was funny that Circuit City made their list.

Palm Pre demos have been fed to us to keep us interested in the device with no release date yet, but some of the 3rd party developers are clearly taking advantage of the background processing ability that Apple refuses to put into the iPhone API. Taking a stance on development opposite of Apple is what's going to save Palm, if they handle it properly.

What are the 10 skills developers need in the next 5 years? The list is debatable, but I think soft skills, web development, and "development hygiene" will definitely be key.

Digg launched the Digg Bar. It never works for me in Firefox because my Firefox seems to have a huge bug where it can't load Digg at all, but I'm sure the Digg Bar is peachy. It gives you short URLs with a little toolbar to make sharing easier - no special add-ons necessary.

Conficker didn't destroy the world yet, but it has create an enormous botnet. Fun fun.

Samsung announced the world's first WiMax mobile Internet device: Mondi. WiMax will get you faster speeds than 3G (probably on par with DSL, I'd imagine) and probably better rates than normal phone data plans, but WiMax isn't available everywhere.

A friend of mine released a really cool add-on for Firefox last week that lets you check movie ratings from Rotten Tomatoes really easily. Check it out! More cool add-ons here.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 could give the president the power to nearly shut down the Internet. Basically, he would be able to designate some private networks as "critical" and order the limitation of traffic to these networks in an emergency situation. The bottom line is that it's too broad and needs better language to keep from giving up too much power.

The Anywhere Network

The Yankee Group's Open Letter

Every once in a while, stuff happens that makes geeks proud to be geeks. I don't care how corny it is, the Yankee Group's open letter to Obama about an Anywhere Network definitely made me proud to be a geek. It's not perfect, but it's backed by a lot of great principles, and I relish the opportunity to spread its good word.

First of all, the Anywhere Network is a fairly new concept of (ask you can probably guess) being citizens and governments being connected via a unified front of normal broadband and mobile platforms (i.e. your PC and your cell phone). Broadband penetration (i.e. the number of people with broadband Internet access) in the U.S. is bleak compared to a lot of other countries, though no one seems to agree on where we fall (almost never in the top 10 though). The reason that it's important is that we're at an ideal time to overhaul a lot of inefficiencies in our daily lives and in our governments. Weren't you pissed when you had to wait in line for 4 hours for your driver's license or license renewal or license transfer? How many times do you drive somewhere rather than take a bus because reliable information isn't readily available as far as when the next train/bus will be by? Did you know that ordering a hamburger is more technologically advanced (typically) then getting a check-up from your doctor? Wouldn't having online advisories with nurses using a webcam help reduce the number of people who go to the hospital for benign issues and probably increase the number of people who talk to a health professional who hate going to the doctor's office? Fortunately, I don't face this problem at Amazon, but how much could we save in traffic congestion and employee happiness if more people could work from home regularly and, hence, spend more time with their family?

Having everyone on the Internet doesn't fix all these problems, but it creates an impetus and helps a lot indirectly. Some people argue that those in rural areas don't feel like they're missing out on much, which I think is more of an argument for how desperately we need to get people connected. There's more to than Internet than Facebook and YouTube, there's a wealth of information and a digital marketplace. We can't ignore the fact that our economy has spent the last couple of decades gradually becoming more and more of a service economy. Protecting our manufacturing doesn't make sense when we should be fostering our service industries to create new jobs, and the infrastructure you can build online inexpensively for small businesses is pretty awesome. However, we need more people that are computer literate and online-literate. In some instances, we also need more users for these great sites and online businesses.

I could go on and on about this, but the fact of the matter is that we could and should be doing better. While only 1% of the stimulus package is going towards shoring up our broadband network, we need to commit to making firm plans so that we achieve the goals I outlines above and more. To be honest, I believe that technology is going to play a big role in getting us out of this economy. It's one industry where a little investment can go a long way, and the hardware only gets cheaper and cheaper. Microsoft is even going to start offering free tech training online - if more unskilled laborers who need work could get online and access training like this, it would probably lead them to a decent job with a bright future where maybe previously they had no hope. I'm really excited and hopeful that we'll see this Anywhere Network in the next few years and a revival of interest in building up this country's economy the right way.

Oscar Hangover



I was watching the Ultimate Trailer Show last week and ran into a trailer for a movie I totally forgot about: Quentin Tarantino's 7+ year project, Inglorious Basterds. I'm pretty stoked about this one. The trailer may be off-putting to some, but I can see the scene snippets going from weird to really awesome with some more context. How can you really go wrong in a movie about a group of Jewish-Americans killing Nazis? After watching There Will Be Blood tonight I realize that I've moved away from straight serious movies to enjoying more of the stuff that's off the beaten path, even if it is ridiculous or unrealistic.

Reuters ran an article I thought was kind of funny last week about all the Oscar snubs in exchange for all the Slumdog Millionaire praise. I only heard of the movie at first from an episode of the Totally Rad Show and never thought it would get this much acclaim. The Curious Case of Benajamin Button won in only 3 of its 13 nominations, Doubt and Frost/Nixon were left in the cold (no pun intended), and I'm sure that plenty of people were shocked to see Mickey Rourke lose Best Actor to Sean Penn. Very interesting year for Oscars, but it always seems like plenty of people get snubbed.

Blu-ray licensing has finally gotten easier: you just need one instead of dealing with 18 separate companies. That's right, 18 companies with different Blu-ray related patents. I'm impressed that Sony, Phillips, and Panasonic managed to get them on board together, but it is necessary if they want to actually turn a profit on the fledgling format. That article I linked was focusing on whether or not Apple would jump on board since they were reticent due to licensing issues, but now they're free from that restriction. I don't want to debate that point much, but I think Apple's future lies in completely dominating people's living rooms (especially in an economy where people are heavily relying on home entertainment for their escapism fix), unless they're satisfied with putting new paint on old technology. Blu-ray is incredible and its only worthy competitor is a sudden influx in high-definition digital movie downloads (which requires more people having broadband and less caps on how much you can download in a month through your ISP, as opposed to just renting the Blu-ray disc). I never thought I'd say this, but I can hardly watch my DVDs anymore because they're so comparatively disappointing.

More on the Kindle 2

Our fearless leader, Jeff Bezos, was on The Daily Show last week and I loved his interview so much that I have to share:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jeff Bezos

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

I think he handled Jon's subtle jabs pretty well and I think it's great how he can be so good-humored and yet very committed to making the right business decisions.

There's also a really good review in Wired that's not loading for me right now but has a great rundown of all the pros and cons to the new Kindle. It's the best, most balanced review I've read of it and highly recommend checking it out if you're interested in it at all. Price notwithstanding, I think it's a nifty device. When you see it in person, it really is pretty impressive.

Massive Credit Breach and More Security Randomness

One of the nation's biggest credit card processors had a massive security breach that spans multiple states and has compromised the credit cards of an undisclosed number of people. I don't know if they know yet who did it, but I couldn't find any other details on it. Heartland has been named by several people, but they deny it. Please, be careful. Check your credit card transactions online daily for now, and then you can lower the frequency down to every few days after you're sure you weren't affected.

Meanwhile, Xbox 360 users are becoming the targets of Denial of Service attacks from sore losers on Xbox Live. I don't know if I've ever heard of this before, but it's funny how the immature kids out there get more advanced with each generation. At first, it was just text chat, and then there was the boom of forums, and then voice chat, and now to see malicious attacks like this is disturbing. The attack doesn't sound Xbox-specific so I don't know what Microsoft can do, but hopefully something to help contain it.

This isn't heavily security-related, but definitely watch out for what you download on P2P networks. This prank proves how things aren't always what the seem. Trying to download a bestiality video could get you a clip of Billy Idol.

Final Notes

I'm sorry to do this, but I've had a terrible day. To avoid stretching this post out another evening, I'm going to have to wrap it up now with a quick rundown of my remaining stories.

Windows 7 is going to include native support for .mov files, so I'm guessing that they finally actually want Windows Media Player to be at the center of your multimedia. If you forgot about the other new features in Windows 7, this is a good list of them.

Steve Ballmer claims that Linux is a bigger competitor to Windows than Apple after looking at the distribution of market share across the operating systems. While this may sound ridiculous, you have to consider how important Linux is for enterprise users, a market that Apple has always struggled with. Ballmer says a lot of crazy stuff, but that wasn't one of them.

TV.com is now streaming CBS and Showtime content directly to the iPhone in the wake of Hulu giving Boxee the cold shoulder (see last week's post).

The RIAA has been hit hard by the economy and their massively incompetent campaign of suing people, and so they're now having to lay off a lot of people. I hate to see people get fired, but there are consequences for irresponsible choices so it was really only a matter of time. Oh, and despite what you may have read, Last.fm never supplied them with user information.

Flexible touchscreen displays, they're coming. Someday.

Google has had so many outages recently that they've come up with a dashboard so you can keep up with all their failures. I don't know how much happier that's going to make users if they assume carte blanche status to have outages without dealing with root causes.

If you like Twitter but hate the UI, you're going to want to read this. It's a roundup of alternative faces to Twitter, and I've fully switched to Tweetree since reading it.

Mashable has a great article putting together some great resources to help you find a job. It's a good read even if you feel safe in your job, just for future reference.

If you ever have to do web development, you know how painful it is to get cross-browser compatibility down. This is a great roundup of sites to help you do just that.

I hope you have a better week than I've been having, everyone!